Author: Vaibhav Purandare
Publication: The Asian
Age
Date: November 13, 2000
The Shiv Sena has attacked
its alliance partner, the BJP, for "abandoning" Hindutva and labelled its
demand for a separate state of Vidarbha as "hypocritical."
Senior Sena leader Uddhav
Thackeray went hammer and tongs at the BJP on Hindutva, while party general
secretary Subhash Desai skewered it on the statehood controversy at the
Sena's two-day mahashibir at Amravati which ended on Sunday. Speaking
at the convention on Sunday evening, Sena supremo Bal Thackeray asked BJP
chief Bangaru Laxman to bring Muslims closer to the mainstream, "but not
as Muslims but as citizens of this country." He added: "The Hindus have
elected you to power. If you abandon them, will they ring bells in
temples. Hindus must first be respected in this country and then
others."
"Don't think we are cowards
because we are tolerant. Muslims should live here as Indians Page
and not as Muslims, Even Iqbal, the man who wrote Saare Jahan Se Acchha,
turned against us. How do we trust these people?"
At the convention, the
Sena also signaled that it would combine Hindu nationalism with a strong
regional identity in the future. Mr Uddhav Thackeray said it was
"shameful" that Hindus in Jammu and Kashmir were being massacred even when
a party that believed in Hindutva was in power at the Centre. "They
remember Hindutva only when they are struggling to gain power. Once
in power, they conveniently forget," he remarked caustically. Referring
to Mr Laxman's appeal to partymen to win over Muslims, he asked why Muslims
had adopted such a distance from the national mainstream in the first place.
"If they've gone so far from us, they could go a little further, into Pakistan,"
he remarked,
Mr Desai, on the other
hand, called the BJP's stance on Vidarbh hypocritical. "Their hypocrisy
is clear for all to see. Pramod Mahajan says the BJP will carve out
a separate state of Vidarbha when the BJP comes to power on its own at
the Centre. Even when a delegation of Congress leaders went to meet
Mr Vajpayee in Nagpur recently, the Prime Minister said it 'hurt' him that
a separate Vidarbha had still not been created," Mr Desai said, adding
that the BJP has now temporarily shelved the demand only because Sena chief
Bal Thackeray voiced his strong opposition to it. Mr Desai appealed
to the people of Vidarbha to "teach a lesson" to all those who came up
with such "separatist" demands.
Mr Bal Thackeray, referring
to the Vidarbha demand, said: "A handful of industrialists are misleading
the people, (on this)... We will never allow Vidarbha to be separated
from Maharashtra. We are prepared for any sacrifice for 'Akhand'
Maharashtra."
Carrying its opposition
to the statehood demand a step further, the Shiv Sena has now decided to
launch a signature campaign in Vidarbha to "expose" the claim that the
people of the region are in favour of statehood. This drive poses
a direct challenge to proponents of separate statehood within the BJP,
the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party.
