Battered & bruised Siv Sena chief seeks explanation from people for ditching party

[Durran3]

Can you please enlighten me where did i show arrogance and why I am stupid???

He is referring to Shiv Sena not you

 

[Joe Shearer]

God Forbid if Shiv Sena ever comes into Power... I am sure they will take a more centrist approach since all governments do when they are in power but nonetheless.. to radical and to dangerous to be winning.. I think the Indian public is pretty intelligent to not vote for these thugs.. Congress won by a landslide.. which is great.

Dear Sir,

Firstly, it is in the highest degree unlikely that the Shiv Sena will come to power. They have already lost their base in Mumbai City, where in an internal migration, labourers and artisans from UP and Bihar have swamped the Maratha sons of the soil completely. It is no longer open to them to get a majority in the city in a democratic way.

The high profile that they continue to enjoy is due to the residual aura of their glory years which are now behind them, when they were courted by the Sangh Parivar, and indeed acted as an outlying wing of the Parivar. They then had branches and wings outside Maharashtra, and still do, but not as many as at their peak. It is interesting that several of their north Indian branches closed down when the leaders of those branches realised that the same tactics were being used by Thackeray's home grown variety against their own people working in Mumbai, as they were using themselves in north India against anybody and everybody who didn't fit their criteria of eligibility for Indian citizenship.

It is to be hoped that the Congress in Maharashtra stops playing the Zail Singh gambit, that is, to encourage the MNS led by Thackeray's nephew, to defang the original Shiv Sena. This is such a transparent strategy that it is almost laughable to see it being played out in public. It may not have escaped observers that the Shiv Sena lost so resoundingly precisely because its votes were divided with its MNS rival. Raj Thackeray has played his part to perfection, not only by causing the defeat of those fascists that he came from, but also by failing to win any seats for himself.

Another ironic note over the years was the replacement of the Madrasi, so called, and the Udupi restaurant by the Bhaiyya, so called, and the taxi driver as the favourite objects of hate.

Secondly, please do not assign any special virtue to the Congress. It was the folly of the Congress, and the petty jealousies of sections of its leadership, which prevented the CMP from being adopted, and left Jinnah with no alternative but partition. It was petty-minded and juvenile in its treatment of the communal question before independence, and it tried to make amends by servility and self-abnegation to the most backward elements in the Muslim community after independence. For both these acts of stupidity, it paid the price.

While you have seen positive signs in the way it faced and fought the recent elections, and rightly derived comfort from it, it is regrettably not yet a part of the Congress DNA to be truly secular, that is, hostile to the intrusion of religion, any religion, into public affairs, rather than secular in the Gandhi-Nehru sense, secular by inclusion of every religion into public affairs. Please consider that this model of secularism, slightingly and somewhat unfairly called pseudo-secularism by the fascists of the Parivar, is responsible for a wide assortment of problems within our polity, and needs replacement with the austere form of secularism that should have been the only one considered at any time.

It is a matter of regret that the left in India has effectively died, largely through a lack of ideas and of intellectual nourishment.

The Congress, alas, is not an answer; it is only an interim solution. The Sangh Parivar is not an alternative to the Congress, only an impediment to the continued growth of India, a criminal impediment, in fact.

Regards,

'Joe S'

 

[Joe Shearer]

Maybe they can start by changing the name of their party. How would it look if Jaesh-e-mohammad wanted to contest the elections. Being a right-wing religious party might hit the spotlight once in a while but will not last for long.

Dear Sir,

In my humble opinion, this is a mistaken categorisation. They are not a religious party but a political party. In other words, they are not bigots, but fascists.

Please consider that a bigot is largely indifferent to democratic means of governance, provided that the governance is of the right religious adherents, and by the appropriately qualified religious adherents. There are of course theocratic factions and fundamentalists who deny any dispensation validity other than their own internal 'prescribed' hierarchy.

A fascist on the other hand uses followers of other religions, or even people different from their own constituents as figures of hate and suspicion in order to mobilise and unite the frightened and insecure members of a given religion or ethnic group, and rule the country. They expressly dislike democracy, and typically seek to impose their (minority) will on the country by tactics of terror and intimidation. Religion is not important except to create external bogeys, and quite honestly, ethnicity is just as good a whipping boy for them.

On applying these yardsticks to the Shiv Sena, I hope it will become instantly clear where they belong.

On applying these yardsticks to the BHP and the VHP, likewise, it is possible to conclude that the first is fascist, the second bigoted.

Regards,

'Joe S'

 

[EjazR]

Thanks for pointing that out Joe. I agree Shiv Sena do not represent a religious Hindu party in any sense. They are just using religion (and ethnicity) to get political milage. I know of many religious Hindus who dislike Shiv Sene as well and can completely understand that categorizing them as religious is wrong.