Onus is on the BJP to call Shiv Sena’s bluff

Onus is on the BJP to call Shiv Sena’s bluff

FPJ BureauUpdated: Friday, May 31, 2019, 09:47 PM IST
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The headline in this newspaper on Tuesday morning revealed only half the truth. It is true that by smearing the face of Sudheendra Kulkarni, the organiser of the former Pakistani foreign minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri’s book launch in Mumbai, the Sena blackened its own face (though it could be asked how anyone could have further blackened the Sena’s face). But it needs to be noted that the handful of Sainiks alias hoodlums also smeared the face of their senior alliance partner. The BJP Government in Maharashtra cannot shirk its responsibility for failing to tame these goons. The advance notice of their evil intent ought to have obliged the local police to take all preventive and precautionary measures. On his part, Kulkarni, it must be conceded, put his tarred visage to very good advantage, shaming the self-appointed guardians of national pride on various television channels throughout Tuesday. The Sena deserved no better. The goon squad needs to be isolated. The problem is that the hunger for power has made the BJP surrender to the Sena blackmail.

Given that the two partners together make a very ugly sight, quarrelling openly and undermining each other’s authority, the BJP by now should have called the Sena bluff. The Sena without power would be like fish out of water. It would hurt more if the Devendra Fadnavis Government survived without the Sena support in the Assembly as it certainly would. It may well be that the support of the NCP too comes with some strings attached but at least the people of Maharashtra would be spared the daily bickering and tamasha. Governance has become a casualty thanks to the bitter estrangement of ruling partners. It is always better to part ways than to persist with a horrible marriage. The BJP can seize the initiative — and high moral ground — by putting the Sena on notice. It must tell Uddhav Thackeray in no uncertain terms to behave or else face ejection from the ruling coalition. He cannot be part of the ruling combine in Mumbai and New Delhi and yet conduct himself as if he was a fierce opponent of the BJP.

Having said that, the Congress and others lamenting the ugly behaviour of the Sena goons on Tuesday ought to remember that they are the ones actually guilty of feeding this tiger when it was still in its infancy. For, the Sena was used by the Congress leadership to grind its own axe, whether it was to threaten the South Indians or to break the stranglehold of the militant trade unions. Key Maratha leaders of the Congress had midwifed the birth and the growth of the Sena. When the Sainiks threatened to dig the cricket pitch to protest an India-Pakistan match in Mumbai or when they threatened to disrupt a performance by a visiting Pakistani artist, it wasn’t always that a BJP government was in saddle in Delhi and/or Mumbai. The point is that the Sena has been led to believe that it can get away with its violent and anarchic behavior by various mainline parties. But the task of clipping its wings ironically may have fallen on a party which has been its original ally.

The Sena felt closest ideologically to the BJP than any other political party. But ideology now matters little to the Sena. All that matters is power. How its foolish antics have harmed the country can be gauged from the statement of a leading financial expert who said that given the daily rottenness on display, the idea of turning Mumbai into an international financial centre can be abandoned. Foreign investors do not want to come where the ruling parties are at war with each other, where one of them openly intimidates and blackmails ordinary citizens, where governance goes totally missing. It is for the BJP to salvage whatever little it can from the cracked and fast cracking alliance. No amount of mollycoddling the stubborn Sena, misbehaving to wrest the numero uno place in the alliance, will help. A clear break with the Sena will. Dump the Sena and start governing seems to be the only viable option available to the BJP. A bold leader will take the plunge; a weak one will continue to suffer the wild Sena and pay a huge price whenever the people get a chance next.

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