Ex-Sainik steals Thackeray’s thunder

The Congress in Maharashtra has let loose a two-pronged attack against the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance in the State. While Pawar takes on the national and other related issues, Bhujbal, led to village crowds by Congress outriders on their scooters and mobikes flying the Congress tricolour and the Dalit blue flags, is systematically carrying on the job of attacking Sena supremo Bal Thackeray, whose 1998 campaign has confined itself to tasteless remarksagainst Sonia Gandhi and her children.

“I made Bal Thackeray into Balasaheb Thackeray. And it is Chhagan Bhujbal who will now turn Balasaheb Thackeray into T. Balu,” he says to appreciative crowds. It is a language that the villages of Maharashtra understand for Thackeray has recently taken to draping ghoongats on stage and swaying from side to side in an exaggerated demonstration of Sonia’s demeanour and gait. Rural Maharashtra, moreover, understands well the tamasha, a local version of nautanki. And among the most famous tamasha groups have been that of Kalu-Balu. Then again Talu-Balu is the regional flavour for “rubbish and nonsense”.

The significance is not lost on the crowds as Bhujbal describes Thackeray as a man in the “bhoomika of maushi (maternal aunt) as was played by men before women came on the scene”. The allegory is all the more significant because Thackeray’s vocabulary for Congress leaders including Pawar today consists almost exclusively of the Marathiequivalent of asses, monkeys, thieves, dogs and, of course, hijras.

But, says Bhujbal, Congress leaders are under instruction of Pawar and other senior leaders “never to hit below the belt, sink to dismal levels in campaign attacks on rivals or in any way exhibit traits of lack of refinement or susanskriti (culture).”

Nevertheless, he says, “If I had not set about turning Thackeray into T Balu, today there would have been temples to him all over Maharashtra. All idols of Sai Baba would have been replaced with Thackeray’s.”

He is not being too far-fetched. For when Sonia first visited Latur to donate funds after the 1993 earthquake, she made a surprising discovery. Invited to tea by a villager, she pulled her hostess’ child across her lap and opened his palms to discover a locket with Thackeray’s photo in it. “See!” she told Congress leaders surrounding her.

Now, it’s Bhujbal’s job to prevent Thackeray’s further deification. So he is now taking the battle into the tiger’s own lair.“Sonia Gandhi comes from a family which has made sacrifices for the country. Thackeray is a coward, I should know, he always sent me to the trouble spots when I was in the Sena. He preferred to hide at home,” he says.

But Sonia, he says, has been to Assam, Punjab, Tamil Nadu and other strife- torn parts of the country. “It needs rare courage to do what she is doing today. Thackeray, a darpok if ever there was one, should be asked to shut up until he has summoned up the guts to cross the borders of Maharashtra.”

Emotion is brought into full play as he counters the foreigner and Christian card by describing Sonia as the daughter-in-law in whose lap a prime minister of India breathed her last. As the widow of another who single-handedly raised their “kachcha-bachchas (minor children) and asked for only Rajiv Gandhi’s boots after his killing so that “she may look upon them each morning before beginning her day. Is there more evidence of what a Hindu naari represents?”

The killing ofCongress sarpanch Ashok Bhilari by Shiv Sainiks in the Konkan, who stabbed him to death 76 times in October 1997, always leads to an uneasy silence among the crowds. For there are all elements of terror, inhumanity and horror in Bhujbal’s description of how his killers kicked the lota of water from the hands of Bhilari’s ten-year-old daughter as she tried to give water to her dying father.

Muslims in the crowd, grow thoughtful at his attack on the government’s slum demolition drive that got rid of Maharashrians under the guise of throwing out Bangladeshi Muslims. And they all applaud as he says he survived the attack on his life by Shiv Sainiks only with their blessings and those of Tulza Bhavani, Maharashtra’s residing deity. He declares to thunderous applause, “Bhujbal will remain full piece. He will die only after he has helped to pull down this unjust government.”

It has been rare for the Congress to attack so directly. But Bhujbal’s style has a militancy not unlike the Sena’s. Strange as they findit, the crowds nevertheless seem to love this roadshow.