[h=5]ल्यो भाई यो भी पढ़ ल्यो ठाकरे की शान मैं
Thackeray and His Legacy
The call of Sunday bandh given by Shiv Sainiks in Mumbai after Bal Thackeray’s death was questioned by a girl in her fb post and another girl liked it. Both were arrested for “promoting enmity between classes” by Mumbai police. The bandh is a mark of protest for grievance redressal. What was Shiv Sainik’s grievance over Thackeray’s death? None contributed to it. Thackeray died a natural death at a ripe old age of 86. Every one has to meet one’s end at some stage.
The blind glorification of Thackeray by all and sundry, gun salute and all that, is amazing. Thackeray had acerbic tongue and acidic pen and used them skillfully to arouse primordial passion of regional identity of “Marathi Manush” blaming minorities, migrants-poor Biharis and UP bhaias etc- for all the ills of Maharashra citizens , forgetting that it is the labouring people of Maharashtra and other states on whose back the corrupt politicians and bureaucrats fill their coffers and corporate houses build their empires. In the process he smashed trade unions and other social organizations fighting for the just causes .
Thackeray’s funeral attracted mammoth crowd. Hitler attracted much larger crowds(Thackeray was a great admirer of Hitler). Does it mean hat Hitler was right? The question of right and wrong, just and unjust, virtue and vice, good and evil cannot be answered by majority-minority equation. If whole of the mankind were arrayed against one Socrates, one Christ, one Buddha and one Gandhi; one Rousseau, one Marx, one Bhagat Singh and one Che Guevera; or one Galileo, one Darwin, one Newton or one Einstein, the multitude would be in the wrong.
Thackeray’s legacy is divisive, destructive and inimical to the national interest and his theory of the sons of the soil pernicious. If mankind has to survive meaningfully in the present nuclear world dominated by the corporate greed and naked exploitation of man by man, all the barriers of caste, community, race, ethnicity, territory etc. must be dismantled by stressing the basic and primary identity of homo sapiens- the mankind tied by the bond of universal brotherhood.
As correctly stated by a Mumbai girl in her fb post,:”Mumai shut down due to fear, not respect.” It is the known bullying tactics and strong arm methods of Shiv Sainkiks which evoked all the tributes for the departed soul of Thackeray. Let his soul rest in peace and sanity prevail on his frenzied followers.
Press Council of India Chairman, Justice Markandey Katju’ s stance of not paying tribute to Thacheray is laudable. He has rightly slammed the Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chauhan for the arrest tow girls. I cast my humble vote in favour of Justice Katju and the two brave girls of Mumbai. I salute them
The great Italian thinker Gramsci has rightly stated that fascism is the excrement of a dysfunctional polity; its consequence and not its cause. The atrocious act of mugging even the social media by arresting some one by expressing one’s opinion while our Constitution guarantees freedom of expression is symptomatic of the growing cancer of fascism. This is the gravest threat to the Indian democracy today.[/h]