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Mumbai developments : Wake up Congress, BJP |
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B.I. Saini
A political party with hardly much presence even in Mumbai, Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) tried to rake up the sons of the soil plank during the last ten days, disrupting life in the metropolis and leading to clashes with Samajwadi Party workers. The party was not able to reinvent itself, but the developments have certainly raised questions about the role of the national parties.
The silence of the Congress as well as the main opposition, the BJP, on what was happening in Mumbai in the initial phase is significant. Both the parties appeared to be weighing the reper¬cussions of any reaction to the Mumbai developments on their respective vote banks. None of the two appeared to be in a hurry to alienate the Marathi-speaking people of Mumbai and Maharash¬tra.
And when the reaction came from the two main national par¬ties, it was muted. The initial hesitancy and the final muted reaction indicates that the national parties have not woken up adequately to the danger posed by fissiparous tendencies sought to be aroused by Raj Thackeray’s party.
Raj Thackeray himself appears to have decided upon this strategy after his adoption of a moderate stance after splinter¬ing from his uncle, Bal Thackeray’s Shiv Sena did not yield much results. In the Municipal polls held last year, his party could not make much of a dent into the Shiv Sena support base in the urban areas of Maharashtra. So Raj Thackeray apparently thought that he must invent a new constituency for himself, going back to Bal Thackeray’s Marathi constituency, from which the Shiv Sena chief had moved towards the Hindutva space. Bal Thackeray had apparently found that with the Hindutva line he could expand his base as Mumbai has a large number of people from other states living in the city.
The parochialism sought to be promoted by outfits like the MNS has dangerous implications for a multi-religious, multi-linguistic polity like India’s. It takes away from the very idea of India as a nation. If people following various religions and speaking different languages cannot coexist peacefully, it would start the process of breaking up the unity and integrity of the country. Such challenges have been there in the past also in different parts of the country and are still there in some areas. But over the years, the idea and credibility of India as a nation has gained momentum. But incidents like those in Mumbai during the last ten days, and more significantly, the silence of the major national parties are ominous.
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