Author: Saisuresh Sivaswamy
Publication: Rediff
on Net
Date: July 25, 2000
The first round of the
eyeball-to-eyeball between the Democratic Front and the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra
was a no-contest. Bal Thackeray is the winner by a mile.
Of course, neither the
prime minister-in-eternal-waiting Sharad Pawar nor Chief Minister Vilasrao
Deshmukh or their deputy in different spheres, Chhagan Bhujbal, will buy
that outcome, and instead crow that their point has been proved.
But let us not treat
such outpourings as dismissively as we would normally do, and look instead
at just what it was that this trio has achieved by their supposedly brilliant
strategy.
Bhujbal says the state
government was merely concerned with granting sanction to prosecute, not
with the nitty-gritty of the actual prosecution or conviction by the courts.
Bhujbal obviously thinks his decision would convince the people of the
government's seriousness to proceed against the Sena chief, but the same
people have also seen the previous Congress government sit quietly for
months after the Bombay riots. If Bhujbal's government and/or party
was/is really serious on this front, it would not have dillydallied soon
after the riots, for which it holds Thackeray's writings in Saamna responsible.
Even to a casual observer,
Bhujbal's behaviour smacks of political vendetta. Thackeray's offences
were offences even when the Congress was in power. The riots happened
in December 1992-January 1993 and the Congress party was voted out in Maharashtra
only in April 1995. Inactivity when the law was on your side, and
frenetic activity when the law has shackled you -- that surely can't be
a sign of sincerity.
Worse indictment of the
government's motives there cannot be than in this PTI report on Tuesday's
Thackeray case: The Magistrate also pulled up the prosecution for making
vague prayers in the remand application urging for suitable orders from
the court. What exactly had the prosecution sought through the remand
was not clear, the magistrate observed.
+In the absence of any
specific prayers, the court had no other option but to release the accused
since their arrest was barred by time+, the Magistrate noted. (italics
mine)
"In the absence of any
specific prayers". What exactly did Bhujbal achieve by his grand
campaign against his former mentor? Barring self-goals, nothing.
The ex-Sainik has only revived an organisation whose committed voter base
has refused to grow, and made a giant out of a man who was fast shrinking
to mortal status -- things he could not execute even when he was right-hand
to the person he claims to be gunning for today.
The person who has scored
a century for the losing side is, of course, Vilasrao Deshmukh. The
poor CM had no clue what was coursing through his deputy's mind, but once
he realised what was afoot spent little time in making the most of a bad
situation. Bhujbal, he realised, was playing a double game: while
the former said he was gunning for Thackeray, in reality Bhujbal's aim
was as much on Deshmukh as on the Sena chief.
Deshmukh could have opposed
Bhujbal's initiative only at his own peril. Bhujbal, an ex-Sainik,
was out to prove that his, the convert's, zeal was greater, by battling
for the secular ground the Congress had given up in the mid-nineties.
So Deshmukh did the smartest thing: he went along with Bhujbal's game plan,
despite knowing that it was doomed from the start, for the simple reason
that the blame for failure would attach to the originator of the scheme,
the deputy CM, and not to him.
That the Congress-Nationalist
Congress Party alliance was a marriage of convenience is well known.
But even such alliances need a strong reason to break up, and Bhujbal had
gambled on Deshmukh's rejection of the prosecution -- which would have
given the NCP a surefire winner at the hustings. The last time round,
the anti-Sena votes had been split between the Congress and NCP; this time,
according to Bhujbal's and Pawar's game plan, there would have been no
division. They were aiming for a straight fight with the Shiv Sena
in a mid-term poll.
For Pawar, Maharashtra
was the belljar within which he hoped to experiment and demonstrate to
his former colleagues in the Congress how the saffron brigade can be tackled.
If Sonia Gandhi's party was saved from utter ruin in Maharashtra engineered
by Bhujbal's brinkmanship, she has only Vilasrao Deshmukh to thank for
it.
But Pawar's calculation
was near perfect. While Jayalalitha proved last year that a simple
majority is no majority in times of fractured mandate, Pawar went one step
further: he wanted to prove the adage that a chain is only as strong as
its weakest link, and targeted it. In a way, he was trying to re-enact
the fall of the Janata Party government at the Centre -- and why shouldn't
it work! After all, most of the players of that time are in government
now.
Pawar's gamble was that
the Shiv Sena would force the central government into precipitate action
in Maharashtra, which would alienate the National Democratic Alliance partners.
And with the Centre in disarray, he would, fresh from vanquishing Thackeray
in Bombay, lay claim to a United Front kind of arrangement in New Delhi.
And the scenario almost came about, but for the court's intervention.
The biggest gainers in
this political one-upmanship are obviously the Shiv Sena and its chief.
A new lease of life is not what many were willing to give them even a few
months ago. By the time the next round of elections came about in
the state, it was clear that it would be a dispirited Shiv Sena that would
be going into battle. Today's development negates that possibility.
It's not that the party
rank and file, which was energised in the last one week, will sustain its
morale forever and ever. But having won the first round of battle,
under an inimical administration, they will be harder to put down when
the two sides meet again.
On the other hand, the
biggest loser in Thackeray's arrest that wasn't are the people of Mumbai,
and Maharashtra. And to think Bhujbal could get away saying that
he went through the ridiculous exercise to show the people of Maharashtra
that no one is above the law! That can happen only in India.
