Opinion Mumbai Violence:
Lumpenisation of Indian Politics
by Amulya Ganguli
The
anti-north Indian violence by a small parochial outfit in Mumbai and
elsewhere in Maharashtra shows that while India has grown economically,
the politicians remain petty-minded charlatans. Otherwise, it is not
possible to explain how a cosmopolitan 300-year-old metropolis, which is
known as the country's financial centre and the home of its
entertainment industry, can fall prey to the kind of sectarianism
associated with a backward village.
As is obvious, the instigation was provided by myopic politicians with
their bands of lumpen supporters. And their rise is the result of the
decline of India's political culture from the broad-minded outlook of
the immediate post-independence period to an insular, mean-minded
localism.
This unfortunate transition would not have taken place but for the
flawed internal dynamics of the mainstream parties, in this case mainly
the Congress. It is probably not entirely coincidental that the rise of
the Shiv Sena, one of the first parochial outfits in India, was in the
mid-sixties when power in the Congress was passing into the hands of
prime minister Indira Gandhi.
It was her policy of centralising all authority in her own hands and
marginalizing the provincial leaders of her party which enabled the
local chieftains of the rival parties to raise their heads. It was in
the mid-sixties that the DMK came to the fore in Tamil Nadu while the
communists, the assorted socialists and the Jana Sangh, which is the
forerunner of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), became forces to reckon
with in West Bengal, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.
The Akali Dal, too, began to gain prominence in Punjab after the
assassination of the dynamic Congress chief minister Pratap Singh Kairon
in 1965.
Significantly, many of these regional parties were boosted through the
1960s and 1970s by the presence of former Congressmen - Charan Singh in
Uttar Pradesh, Biju Patnaik in Orissa, Ajoy Mukherji in West Bengal -
and, during and after the Emergency (1975-77), by Morarji Desai,
Jagjivan Ram and Chandra Shekhar at the national level.
The names of Patnaik's and Mukherji's parties - Utkal Congress and
Bangla Congress - underlined the spread of regionalism.
Since then, the Congress' failure to grow, except in fits and starts in
the 1980s under Indira and Rajiv Gandhi, has ensured that regional
politics will gradually become a potent force. Arguably, this tendency
has been strengthened by two other factors. One is the inability of the
communists to spread their influence beyond West Bengal and Kerala
(Tripura is too small to be of significance), thereby turning their
parties also into state-level organisations.
And, secondly, the BJP's adoption of religion-based politics by the name
of Hindutva reflects the same sectarian and divisive trend typical of
the regional parties, which, too, champion the cause of castes or
communities or regions at the expense of a national outlook.
In Maharashtra, this kind of identity politics, ostensibly based on
advancing the interests of sons of the soil but, in effect, arousing
antipathy against a targeted group of "outsiders", has taken a dangerous
turn because of the conflict between two sectarian outfits which grew
from the same root.
It is possible, of course, that the outbreak of virulent Marathi
sub-nationalism will make some of the other sectarian parties see sense.
The BJP's prime minister-in-waiting, L.K. Advani, for instance, has
deplored the violence against northerners as anti-constitutional,
asserting that every Indian has the right to settle and work anywhere in
India.
That such a basic right of citizens has had to be mentioned at all
underlines the deterioration that has taken place in public life. But it
is doubtful whether Advani would have been equally solicitous about
constitutional privileges if, say, the Muslims were the targets of
attacks in Mumbai.
After all, the Shiv Sena thrived for years on anti-Muslim diatribe with
the covert and overt approval of the BJP as both the parties belong to
the anti-minority saffron brotherhood. As is known, the Sena was
indicted by the Srikrishna Commission for its role in the Mumbai riots
of 1992-93
It was only when the Sena chief, Bal Thackeray, chose his son, Uddhav,
as his successor that his nephew, Raj, broke away to form the rival
Maharashtra Navnirman Sena. And only when the new sena fared poorly in
the municipal polls that it realised that it had to start a chauvinistic
agitation to build up and consolidate its base of support, which, like
that of the parent party, comprises the city's underclass in a large
measure.
This is another aspect of politics which tends to erode the democratic
structure, for virtually all the parties have come to depend on
anti-social elements to do the work of cadres. The recent "recapture" of
Nandigram in West Bengal by the cadres of the Communist Party of
India-Marxist (CPI-M) from their political opponents is an example.
As is the preference expressed by the Supreme Court in favour of moving
a case of murder against Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi's
eldest son, M.K. Azhagiri, to another state since a fair trial was said
to be not possible in Madurai because of the "influence" of Azhagiri's
cadres in this town.
The mixture of narrow-minded politics with the use of lumpen elements by
the parties is evidently a highly combustible one. The riots in Gujarat
in 2002, the violence in Nandigram and the still continuing troubles in
Maharashtra are examples of the dangerous terrain of Indian politics.
As an inevitable corollary to the absorption of anti-socials by the
parties in their ranks, the police have been emasculated so that the
crooks can have a free run. In addition, there are political compulsions
for reining in the police.
For instance, in Mumbai, the alliance between the ruling Congress and
the Navnirman Sena in a number of municipalities has apparently ensured
that Raj Thackeray will not be discomfited in any major way by the
guardians of law and order in the pursuit of his divisive politics.
In such a dismal atmosphere, what the silent majority will regret is
that there is no single leader at present who can rise above such
cynical parochialism to articulate views from a national perspective
and, more important, be charismatic enough to carry his audience with
him.
(Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. He can be reached at aganguli@mail.com)
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