Author: Jyoti Punwani
Publication: The Times of India
Date: December 3, 2005
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1316615.cms
When Mumbai's leading Urdu daily advises Raj
Thackeray to join the Congress as his close friend Narayan Rane did before
him, you begin to understand why the Congress keeps treating Muslims like
they were its slaves, giving them just enough for survival, and throwing crumbs
at them whenever they threaten to run away. You realise what a sham secularism
has become.
The Congress's recent election victories in
Malwan and Mumbai teach us related lessons in cynicism. Last week, Jaywant
Parab and Shrikant Sarmal-kar, unheard of figures in the non-Marathi-speaking
world, hosted a reception to felicitate Narayan Rane and Priya Dutt for their
election victories. The situation was deliciously ironic.
For more than a decade now, Parab has been
lining up in court as an accused alongside the man who Priya Dutt defeated
in the recent by-election, former Sena MLA Madhukar Sarpotdar.
Along with five other Shiv Sainiks, Sarpotdar
and Parab are accused of promoting communal enmity at a rally during the post-Babri
masjid December '92-January '93 Mumbai riots. Parab was then a Sena corporator.
As everyone knows, the Mumbai police didn't
exactly go out of its way to act against Shiv Sainiks during the riots.
Yet, they filed a case against this rally
immediately, maybe because of the presence of high-ranking officers at this
(banned) rally, maybe because of the provocative slogans raised by the rallyists
led by Sarpotdar, against Pakistan, Babar and "traitors".
No arrests were made of course. The case carries
on in a magistrate's court, with no one showing any hurry to bring the influential
accused to book.
Now, Parab, who defected to the Congress with
Narayan Rane, hosts a reception for the person who defeated his partner-in-crime.
The irony doesn't end there. Priya Dutt is no ordinary victor and the election
she fought was no ordinary election.
The Mumbai North-West Lok Sabha seat fell
vacant because her father Sunil Dutt suddenly died in May this year of a heart
attack.
One of the reasons for the stress he underwent
was the welcome his party gave to the person he had defeated in the 2004 general
elections, Sanjay Nirupam.
During the campaign, Nirupam had attacked
Dutt personally in the uncouth manner of a true Shiv Sainik. Dutt wasn't just
Nirupam's political rival; he was his ideological opposite too, personifying
everything Nirupam and his (former) party hate.
During the 1992-93 riots, Dutt was the target
of a slander campaign by the Sena, accused of 'helping fanatic traitors',
the Muslims whom the Sena was busy hunting down then.
Despite pressure from her party which rewarded
Nirupam by making this ex-Sainik party spokesman, Priya Dutt made it clear
she wasn't ready to forgive his attack on her father.
Indeed, her victory was a slap in the face
of Nirupam, for she had kept him out of her campaign. Later, she was being
felicitated by Nirupam's fellow travellers, the very individuals who fanned
the flames that Sunil Dutt had tried to douse.
Felicitated along with her was the new messiah
for the Congress, Narayan Rane, who had just delivered the elusive Malwan
seat to his new party.
For him, it was no big deal; Malwan was his
fiefdom, as journalists Nikhil Wagle and Yuvraj Mohite discovered at great
personal cost last year.
The editor and reporter of Mumbai's fiery
Marathi eveninger Aapla Mahanagar were beaten up and almost burnt alive by
Rane's Sena supporters while they were encouraging youngsters in Malwan to
stand up to 'Dada's' stranglehold in the area.
The former CM's supporters in Mumbai's suburb
of Chembur have openly declared that their loyalty to Rane stems from the
help he gave them in externment proceedings.
This is the man the Congress has rewarded
with the revenue portfolio, the man the NCP regrets having lost.
To make up, Sharad Pawar set his sights on
Raj Thackeray, whose name continues to be associated with tenant Ramesh Kini's
disappearance; whose followers beat up Biharis at Kalyan railway station last
year; who had threatened violence when the Srikrishna Commission report was
to be released.
Now at least the Congress-NCP can't be accused
of "appeasement of Muslims"!
The writer is a political commentator.
