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The war within

Last week, six contentious issues hit the headlines. All set to create, or so it appeared, a further cleavage between those who root for Hindutva and those who oppose it as an obscurantist, retrograde political agenda. Swearing, instead, by secularism.

What actually happened, however, was exactly the opposite. These six contentious issues created, instead, a cleavage between the two saffron partners in Maharashtra. The Shiv Sena and the BJP, both of whom swear by Hindutva but are increasingly finding their routes to political survival diverging.

But, first, let us look at the six issues, ranging from music to art to politics to sports to culture to law, and find out why the political agenda of the BJP is so entirely different from that of the Shiv Sena today.

1. Disrupting the Ghulam Ali concert.

Shiv Sainiks disrupted the Ghulam Ali ghazal concert at the Juhu Centaur and threatened to stop all Pakistani entertainers from entering Maharashtra. While the prime minister and His Master's Voice Pramod Mahajan condemned the attack and expressed their open disapproval, Deputy Chief Minister Gopinath Munde went one step forward and promised to offer full fledged security to all Pakistani artistes who are ready to risk Thackeray's wrath and perform in Bombay. Frankly, this is nothing short of a declaration of war.

2. The attack on Husain.

Bajrang Dal activists tried to ransack painter M F Husain's flat in Cuffe Parade in protest against his paintings that showed Hindu gods and goddesses frolicking in the nude. While Thackeray has openly supported the Dal activists, the BJP (traditional allies of the Dal) kept its distance and, in fact, described it as "the politics of intolerance." They appear to be embarrassed by what they see as an act of cultural intemperance that is likely to lose them their middle class base among the liberal intelligentsia who see Husain as an art ambassador for India.

3. Making public the Srikrishna Report.

Despite being fully aware that the Shiv Sena does not want to make public the findings of the Srikrishna Commission Report, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee openly stated during his Bombay visit last week, that the Maharashtra government ought to table the findings within six months. While this has endeared the prime minister to the city's press corps, it has angered Thackeray and frightened Mulayam Singh, who sees this as an attempt by the BJP to make inroads into his (till now unassailable) Muslim vote bank.

4. Banning Jansher Khan.

While the Shiv Sena has openly said it will not allow Pakistani world champ Jansher Khan to train squash enthusiasts in the city as long as Pakistan continues to train terrorists who kill innocent Hindus in Kashmir, the BJP has refused to back Thackeray on this issue. What is even more surprising, it has adopted a totally liberal stance and promised to encourage greater sports and cultural exchange between the two nations. After accusing former prime minister Gujral of being soft on Pakistan, this is a clear volte face for the BJP.

5. Unleashing the Culture Police.

The unleashing of Pramod Navalkar's culture police has already outraged what has traditionally been India's most cosmopolitan city. Navalkar as culture minister has singlehandedly succeeded in making it look dowdy, dreary, dismal. If he continues to run the state's culture policy, Bombay will soon become as boring as Burma and you can write it off as the nation's commercial capital. Marc Robinson kissing Sophiya onstage at the Savage Garden concert at the SNDT university campus is an act of political defiance that every citizen identifies with. Not because Sophiya is so eminently kissable but to underscore the point that Bombay cannot be intimidated. By Dawood Ibrahim or Arun Gawli or Navalkar's culture police.

6. Releasing TADA detenues.

Prime Minister Vajpayee's declaration that the government intends to release all TADA detenues has also not gone down well with the Shiv Sena, who have all along held that the Bombay riots of 1992 were in response to aggressive Muslim posturing in the wake of the demolition of the Babri Masjid. That is why they have held the bomb blasts as an act of extreme provocation by the Muslim underworld. Now, to suddenly find their own alliance partners promising to release the TADA detenues is like a slap in the face of the Sena. It may well turn out to be the last straw on the back of the camel and break the stormy alliance between the two saffron parties, each seeking their own political nirvana in the wake of their recent debacle in the Lok Sabha poll.

In fact, rumours are rife that a certain section of the RSS is already clamouring for the BJP to break its alliance with the Sena in Maharashtra. The reason? As the BJP pitches for a soft, smiling face for Hindutva -- as leaders of the unstable ruling coalition in Delhi -- the RSS wants to hijack the hard line that the Sena currently espouses. They have no option since the BJP (because of its coalition compulsions) is swiftly losing its political identity.

A year down the road, when the BJP will begin to look, sound, speak and steal public funds exactly in the same way as the Congress did for 45 years, the RSS wants to retain its nationalist Hindu image so that it can then jockey for upfront political power instead of playing the backroom boys. Their current agenda is to, therefore, ensure that no one hijacks that platform. Not even the Sena which is now tending to take an independent line on many issues that the BJP is soft pedalling for political reasons. The RSS fears that Balasaheb may emerge as the new Hindu Hridaysamrat, replacing Vajpayee and Advani in the changing Hindutva pantheon.

So you now have the amazing sight of the BJP changing its colours from saffron to green -- trying to grab Mulayam Singh's vote bank and woo the minorities who have traditionally bulwarked the Congress party's political base -- and the RSS and the Shiv Sena fighting to become the true representative of Hindutva.

As it is, more and more people are now understanding the language that Thackeray speaks. They may not entirely agree with him but they also feel that it is unfair to allow Ghulam Ali to hold concerts in India and Jansher Khan to train squash enthusiasts when the nation they represent is busy training terrorists who kill innocent men, women and little children for no reason. They agree that while it is fashionable to speak in terms of cultural interchange and the spirit of sportsmanship, the sad fact is that Pakistan has always seen India's liberal policies as a sign of political weakness. That is why they allow the Nusrat Fateh Ali Khans and Ghulam Alis to lull our intelligentsia to sleep and their Junoons to become fashionable role models for the young while (behind the scenes) they fulfil their true political agenda, which is to destabilise this nation and make it weak and politically vulnerable.

It is no use blaming them. This is their dharma. But that does not mean we must sit back and accept it in the name of liberal politics. It is this disaffection with liberal politics, this anger and outrage every time we read about the murder of innocents in the name of religion, that Thackeray and the Shiv Sena are now trying to politically seize. It is their answer to BJP's agenda of putting out a brand new liberal face to Hindutva so that it can expand its already substantial electoral base by bringing in more voters from the mainstream.

The BJP's strategy in the coming months will be to try and isolate the Sena as the bad guys among the Hindutva fraternity and then dump them when the time is ripe. Otherwise, they fear that they will lose Maharashtra to the Congress and its allies, who have successfully brought the Muslims, OBCs and Dalits on a common political platform. That is why the BJP wants to distance itself from the Sena and project themselves as the nice guys. That will make it easier for them to get into more compromising coalitions that will posit them as a mainstream alternative to the Congress. Not as part of a hysterical Hindutva platform. Led by belligerent sadhus and streetsmart Sainiks.

That is why the BJP now wants to release the TADA detenues and release the Srikrishna Commission Report. The reason is obvious. They want to embarrass Thackeray.

In response, the Sena and the other allies of the BJP -- like the RSS, the VHP and the Bajrang Dal -- are keen to seize the vacated spot on the political scenario. That is why you have the attack on Husain, the strong line against Pakistani entertainers and sportspeople who come to India and get huge, admiring audiences even as their government shells our borders, kills our jawans, trains terrorists, murders innocent people and subverts our foreign policy. This is their way of grabbing the traditional constituency of the BJP and building on it. Of emerging as the new masihas of Hindu revivalism, propagandists for swaraj and swadeshi.

Till this war is fought and won, Maharashtra will remain in turmoil.

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Pritish Nandy