Handshake Muck Rake

The Congress’ backroom deals with Raj Thackeray’s MNS in Maharashtra has put the grand old party in a fix in faraway Bihar.

The Congress Party is in a strange dilemma in Maharashtra, a state it rules in alliance with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). Should Raj Thackeray, president of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) and estranged nephew of Shiv Sena Chief Bal Thackeray, be openly termed an ally or should his ‘assistance’ be a closely guarded secret?

Despite seeking help from Raj Thackeray to contain the growth of the Shiv Sena, the Congress is not keen on shouting out loud about this backroom handshake. With Bihar’s Assembly election slated later this year, this could injure the Congress. After all, the MNS has been creating a ruckus over ejecting Bihari migrants from Mumbai. Sadly for the Congress, word is out—and around. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has started highlighting its friendship with Raj Thackeray to nix its chances in Bihar.

The BJP’s Bihar unit is distributing handbills depicting the Congress’ hand symbol with Raj Thackeray’s face placed on the palm. Alarmed, the Congress has broken into a cold sweat, with a clear message being sent out to party leaders in Maharashtra to distance themselves from the MNS, and to squash any reference to Raj Thackeray’s help in securing extra seats in the Assembly, Lok Sabha and State Legislative Council polls. 

Biharis in Mumbai, though, have seen no let up in the MNS’s hate campaign against their presence in the city. Raj Thackeray’s instructions to his party workers remain as explicit as ever—that Biharis must be driven out of jobs in Maharashtra. Cab drivers, street vendors and construction workers, mostly, they have been at the sharp end of Raj Thackeray’s invective that has incited mob violence on occasion. Among the sufferers is Mumbai’s construction industry, which finds labour hard to come by, resulting in delays in several private and public sector building projects. 

Bihari tales of fear and insecurity have reached all the way back to the north Indian state, where fury rages against Raj Thackeray even in villages. Any hint of a tie-up with him could thus spell doom for Bihar’s electoral prospects of the Congress, which has spent the past week or so gloating over the fix that the BJP’s Narendra Modi has put the state’s ruling BJP-Janata Dal-United coalition into (by publicising covert cooperation between Gujarat and Bihar). Touche, the BJP seems to be saying, by exposing a hush-hush MNS-Congress nexus.

Aware of the party’s vulnerability in Bihar, Congressmen in Maharashtra are now playing down their MNS links, though Raj Thackeray had directed his party legislators to vote in favour of the Congress-backed candidate Vijay Sawant in the recent Legislative Council election. In a post-poll media interaction Thackeray categorically admitted that he had a deal with Maharashtra’s ruling alliance to revoke the suspension of four MNS legislators (Shishir Shinde, Ram Kadam, Vasant Gite and Wanjale) in return for his party’s votes. Acknowledgement of a partnership has also come from the state’s Deputy Chief Minister Chhagan Bhujbal, a senior NCP leader. The idea was to defeat the Shiv Sena candidate Anil Parab, reportedly close to Uddhav Thackeray.

Only the Congress is left red-faced by the issue. To shake off Raj Thackeray’s looming shadow, the Congress’ Chief Minister Ashok Chavan and state unit chief Manikrao Thakre have now started saying that Sawant was never a Congress candidate. But they have no explanation of why Sawant met Congress President Sonia Gandhi and the AICC in-charge of Maharashtra AK Anthony immediately after the election in question. Or why Raj Thackeray received so many calls from senior Congressmen on his birthday, 14 June. To compound matters, the MNS chief is an ardent fan of former Congress Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. 

Where does all this leave the Congress’ sworn saffron enemy, the Shiv Sena? Screaming itself hoarse over the MNS cuddling up with the Congress. The Sena had expected the MNS votes to come its way, given that the Thackeray cousins were no longer on awfully bad terms anymore, and the discovery that its splinter party had played spoiler once again was a rude shock. It’s déjà vu for the Sena; in the 2009 Assembly polls, the Congress-NCP alliance won 11 of the 12 seats that the MNS contested, with the Sena as runner-up. The Sena/MNS suffered a vote split in some 50 other constituencies as well. Likewise, in the Lok Sabha, the Congress swept all six  Mumbai seats. 

The MNS’s ‘Marathi manoos’ (sons-of-the-soil) agenda has served the Congress so well that the state government appears keen on adopting it. Ostensibly in response to local sentiment, it has announced a separate ministry for Marathi development, mandated domicile certificates for admission to professional courses in a bid to limit out-of-state students, doled out special grants to Marathi schools, and made the local language a qualification for the issuance of taxi and autorickshaw permits. What’s more, the state’s new cultural policy has made Marathi the official sarkari medium. Business circles are apprehensive that private companies, multinationals included, would be asked to ensure that sons-of-the-soil hold a certain percentage of their jobs in the state, as demanded by the MNS. Such a policy could harm Mumbai as India’s commercial capital, but even a vague move to this effect would allow Raj Thackeray to claim victory for his manoos supporters. 

At the moment, denial suits the Congress best. “We never asked for MNS help,” Sanjay Nirupam, Congress MP from Maharashtra, tells Open, “They did not want to vote Shiv Sena, so they voted Congress. Besides, in the attack against Biharis, there are about 9,000 cases pending against MNS workers. Cases have also been filed against Raj Thackeray. So the state is taking very strong action against this gentleman.”

Nirupam, a prominent Bihari face, is also a former Sena colleague of Raj Thackeray. His memory may fail him occasionally, but it was the 2008 attacks on northerners that gave the state’s Marathi agenda a fillip. In politics, never underestimate what myopia can do.

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