Shuddhabrata Sengupta: Ek Tha Tiger
Death and Bal Keshav Thackeray go back a long way. I doubt if any other Indian politician has the record of publicly handing out as many death threats as Bal Thackeray did in the course of his career. He made death threats in his speeches, interviews and his editorials. He called for war, for murder, for suicide squads, for retaliatory terrorism, for hanging, day in and day out, not covertly, but overtly. And there has been not a single instance when any of his exhortations to violence (judicial or extra-judicial) has ever had any legal consequences for him...The first political assassination in Bombay, an event that changed the course of the city, was the targeted killing of the popular and militant Communist trade union activist and sitting MLA, Krishna Desai in June 1970 by the Shiv Sena. It was this killing, and the previous incidence of arson (1967) in which the Shiv Sena burned the CPI led office of the Girni Kamgar Union that acted as symbolic markers of the Congress patronized rise of the Shiv Sena in Bombay politics.
We have reasons to be grateful that Bal. K. Thackeray has died, a normal, natural death. Several of those whom he admired, didn’t. Adolf Hitler, the fellow ‘artist’ he often invoked, killed himself, his mistress and his dog. Indira Gandhi, and her son Sanjay, the mother and son firm of despots that Bal Thackeray endorsed, didn’t go gently into the night either. Sanjay Gandhi, the ‘bold young man’ whom Thackeray recognized as a fellow spirit came spiraling down in his own airplane, demonstrating that the indifferent sky does occasionally listen to the prayers of the earth to alleviate its burden. Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv both fell to the forces that their own ruling dispensation had nurtured, Khalistani zealots and the LTTE. Bal Thackeray was lucky to have lived as long as he did, sipping his lukewarm beer, spitting out his bile. Very lucky. As for us, we are fortunate that Thackeray did not get to go down as a Maratha martyr, just as a lapsed cartoonist, a would-be caudillo and a has-been demagogue.
Had it been otherwise, had Thackeray been stopped mid-stride by a bomb or a bullet in much the same way as he had personally authorized the culling of many other lives, the city once known as Bombay would not have been the way it is today – relieved to be back on its feet, and reasonably at peace with itself. And no one on television, especially on Times Now, would have had the marvelous opportunity to sing paeans on the day of the state funeral (for someone, who, had he have made his career across the western border, they would not have hesitated to condemn as a ‘non-state actor’ of the script of state sponsored terror) to how ‘nice’, and disciplined, the Sainiks had been, generally speaking.
Arnab Goswami’s enthusiastic eulogies to Bal Thackeray the day before (segueing so perfectly to the really dignified muzak on the soundtrack) unfortunately left him with a slightly sore throat yesterday evening when he had to (rightly) take on Rahul Nervekar of the Shiv Sena on the unfortunate party-pooping embarrassment of the matter of two young women (a ‘Facebook poster’ and her friend, ‘the liker’) who had to be arrested and then let out on bail by the police force of Palghar in Thane, Maharashtra, for daring to suggest that “just due to one politician died a natural death, everybody goes bonkers…today, Mumbai shuts down due to fear, not due to respect”.
How terrible it must be to eulogize the master at one moment, and then upbraid the disciple the next, for following faithfully in the precepts laid down by the master. It is the flawless straddling and negotiation of profound existential dilemmas such as these that makes Arnab Goswami and people like him in our midst such intellectual giants.
As we know by now, the clinic of an uncle of one of the young women was vandalizedand patients had to be evacuated to make way for the sadness of shiv sainiks. The two women have posted bail for fifteen thousand rupees each and as of now, they still have to report each Wednesday to the police station so that the Maharashtra Police can ‘investigate’ their conduct.
Otherwise, this was such a lovely funeral. . Read more:
http://kafila.org/2012/11/20/ek-tha-tiger-death-and-bal-k-thackeray/
Also see: Praveen Swamy on An authentic Indian fascism
Ever since Thackeray’s passing, many of India’s most influential voices have joined in the kind of lamentation normally reserved for saints and movie stars. Ajay Devgn described him as “a man of vision”; Ram Gopal Varma as “the true epitome of power”. Amitabh Bachchan “admired his grit”; Lata Mangeshkar felt “orphaned”. Even President Pranab Mukherjee felt compelled to describe Thackeray’s death as an “irreparable loss”. The harshest word grovelling television reporters seemed able to summon was “divisive”. It is tempting to attribute this nauseous chorus to fear or obsequiousness. Yet, there is a deeper pathology at work. In 1967, Thackeray told the newspaper Navakal: “It is a Hitler that is needed in India today”. This is the legacy India’s reliably anti-republican elite has joined in mourning.
Thackeray will be remembered for many things, including the savage communal violence of 1992-1993. He was not, however, the inventor of such mass killing, nor its most able practitioner. Instead, Thackeray’s genius was giving shape to an authentically Indian Fascism.
