The Rediff Special / Kumar Ketkar
'We have to fight fascist tendencies within us'
While the Shiv Sena and Bharatiya Janata Party
appear to be the two constituents of the
alliance that rules Maharashtra, there are two others, apart from
41 Independent legislators due to whose support the alliance can remain
in power, that influence its functioning. They are the Thackeray
family and the more invisible RSS.
The RSS and the Shiv Sena represent different cultures and ideologies.
There is no other party in the country whose every section and
element has remained devoted to one leader and that leader alone
for 31 years. Even the RSS cannot make that claim.
For one man to remain undisputed leader of an organisation for
31 years, and even after that party comes to power, control its
every move without holding the reins of government and assuming
responsibility is a unique achievement. In these 31 years, he
has commanded the support of not merely the uneducated but undivided
loyalty of the educated middle class. Thackeray is such a figure.
That aspect of his role must not be underrated.
I have attended Thackeray's first public meeting in 1966, thereafter
in 1976, 1986, until today. He has always hurled filthy abuse
at the press, barely concealed diatribes against Muslims and also
enthused youngsters to violently challenge their family's political
leanings.
Where did this strength and support come from?
For the youth who saw some hope even in the obviously malevolent politics
of the Shiv Sena? How could a force like the Shiv Sena and all that it represents
be born on Maharashtra's soil?
This is one aspect of the Shiv Sena and its appeal that has been ignored
by the Congress, Left and progressive forces. Which is why they
wittingly and unwittingly contributed to the Sena's popularity
and today its rule. Apart from that, ruling Congress governments
in the past blatantly allowed the Shiv Sena and Thackeray to get away
with their often unlawful conduct. So what's to stop them now
that it is their government? If they had not been able to get away
with their conduct in 1966, 1971, 1982, they would not have been
in power today...
Many parties and political formulations reflect alliances of different
streams...
Within the BJP, this conflict between the BJP workers and its
RSS base is becoming more and more visible. In Rajasthan, and
in Gujarat, particularly this conflict is out in the open. In Gujarat
despite having an absolute majority, the BJP could not contain
this conflict and it burst out in the open.
But in Maharashtra the support the RSS has had traditionally
from the educated, thinking, upper middle class. The hold of the
BJP has emerged from the fast-urbanising, upper caste and upper
class elite and its support of Hindutva. In the last two years
in the state, and over the past decade, nationally, it is this
section -- the upper caste and upper middle class -- which provided
the critical support base for this Hindutva alliance in Maharashtra.
Without this section that is with the BJP and Hindutva, there
was little possibility of this alliance coming to power. The most
consolidated vote bank for Hindutva in Maharashtra is from this
excessively urbanised class. Remember Maharashtra has witnessed
the maximum urbanised growth in the country.
The BJP could pull the support of this class and give the Shiv Sena the
respectability of the middle class it needed, while it was the
Shiv Sena that could provide the numbers from the ordinary Marathi manoos.
Political opportunism and a wedding of numbers that is what the
alliance represents. It is an alliance of mutual needs, not an
ideological bonding. The RSS and BJP worker still feels utter
contempt for the Shiv Sena and its style of functioning while the average,
young Shiv Sena worker knows little how to work with the BJP-RSS style.
But still they have made the alliance work...
What we have to remind ourselves is that this alliance in Maharashtra
represents a linking, or bonding, of two distinct trends, two
cultural trends within us, within our own society, within our
families.
Only if we are willing to recognise and admit this, will we be
able to emerge out of delusions and struggle against what the
BJP and Shiv Sena represent. Because that battle, and that struggle is
one that we will first have to wage within our own homes, within
our own drawing rooms, in our chawls, in our middle class housing
colonies.
Let us not fool ourselves that the Shiv Sena does not enjoy wider support
from various sections of society. Even after their recent reversals
in local elections (municipal corporations all over the state)
the sound base of their support will not simply disappear or go.
They may also lose in Konkan and may also politically face defeat
in Bombay during the next polls.
But that ideological base will stay. Another party may benefit
from the same culture, the same thought process, the same tendencies.
These may temporarily shift loyalties elsewhere, to the Congress
even, but the dangers that these tendencies represent will remain.
That does not mean that it is not of the paramount importance
that this alliance be defeated politically. It is vitally important.
But for the dangers that these forces represent to disappear,
a deeper battle has to be fought. The mere political defeat of
the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance is not going to purge our society of the fascist
tendencies that they represent. Let us not make any mistake about
that.
We have been deluding ourselves these forty years or more. We,
who consider ourselves the educated middle class, the readers
of Maharashtra Times and Loksatta, have been deluding ourselves
and thus been unable to control or detect these tendencies within
us. Even in many progressive households it is often said in confidence,
"But whatever you say these Muslims saale are like that. They
are uncouth, fanatical, they breed like rabbits, their birth rate
is higher than the Hindu birth rate."
Despite the fact that we know the contrary. That the birth rate
of Muslims is on par, in certain regions even less that of Hindus.
This is the normal, off-the-cuff, drawing table, party conversation
in many an educated middle class household, that proclaims itself
to be anti-communal and supporter of the Congress!
Once such tendencies
exist, and are given credence, the poison slowly spreads Then
it does not remain restricted to voicing prejudice against only
Muslims but also dalits, then other castes and finally exposes
itself for what it is -- fascist.
That is the challenge before Maharashtra today. To struggle against
the fascist thought-processes within society that this alliance
represents and that is slowly eroding, or wiping out genuine
Maharashtrian culture that is full of dissent, struggle and debate.
Nor merely defeating the Shiv Sena and BJP.
In the central government, too, we have an alliance, maybe of
opportunistic rogues. But I believe that at a crucial juncture
they did put the country above all else and saved us the consequences
of a fascist regime. If the BJP had remained in power today, the
text books in all our schools would have been changed, our democratic
institutions would have been eroded, and they would have attempted
to crush the genuine, secular, democratic trends within society.
Because forces like these like to distort reality and even dictate
which side the sun rises.
Kumar Ketkar is executive editor, Maharashtra Times. This is excerpted from
a lecture he delivered on the seventh anniversary of the Marathi evening newspaper,
Aapla Mahanagar.
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