Play Mistry for me

Aditya Thackeray has chosen the low road into politics

If nothing else, Aditya Thackeray as the head of the newly minted Yuva Sena must be applauded for his consistency in upholding the tradition of cultural intolerance that masquerades as the ideology of the mother party, the Shiv Sena. His campaign to excise Rohinton Mistry’s novel Such a Long Journey from Bombay University’s curriculum, for containing what he considers remarks derogatory to his grandfather and father’s party, probably helped him pass a loyalty test that the eldest Mr Thackeray can no longer take for granted from his family. Never mind if he hasn’t actually read the book he has deemed offensive. Much criticism has been heaped on the eagerness of the vice-chancellor of Bombay University — a nominally autonomous institution — for the alacrity with which he acceded to one pupil’s demand, as conveyed by the Sena’s students’ wing. No doubt, he is eager to avoid the kind of treatment to which Mr Mistry’s novel refers — and which has been the fate of other academics who have cared to oppose fundamentalist protestors. Tacit support from Maharashtra’s Minister of Education Rajesh Tope — who is not even from any Sena party — will strengthen their case.

If the youngest Mr Thackeray were to apply himself to a study of recent world history — and he appears to hail from St Xavier’s history, not English, department — he would see that exclusionary ideologies are not viable in democracies, and mostly gain ground in times of economic stress. Hitler’s Nazism — which the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper once described as “bestial Nordic nonsense” — fed on Germany’s inter-war economic disintegration and built on latent anti-Semitism. Maharashtra’s problems are not of the same magnitude, of course, but the stresses of globalisation on India’s second-most populous state are all too evident. Maharashtra is one of India’s fastest-growing states but its public finances are increasingly under stress, as are its industrial and agricultural infrastructure. That is why neither the private nor the agricultural sector has been able to fill the gap in employment left by the state government.

This has, inevitably, created social tensions of the kind that created the ideological space for Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navanirman Sena, with its one-point agenda of reserving jobs for Maharashtrians — and establishing itself with calculated violence. Yet he has gained enough traction for the ruling Congress to consider it prudent to extend a cautious hand of support. West Bengal’s Left Front government, presiding over an even greater economic decline, has in the past thought fit to waste its time banning Taslima Nasreen’s writings if only to pander to one section of conservative voters. Aditya Thackeray has shown himself to be an ambitious politician, so he too has chosen an easy entrée into state politics. But if he were a serious one, he would be better off exerting himself to solving the many problems that afflict Maharashtra’s shaky economic future. The state, after all, accounts for 13 per cent of the country’s GDP and can ill-afford politicians — especially young ones — who waste their energy on pointless causes.