By Sushil Kutty
On a Sunday or for that matter on any of the weekdays, Mumbaikars and other Maharashtra citizens can expect a war of words between Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari on anything that is grist for the mill. The two stand ever ready to lock horns. Right now, it’s over the brutal ‘Sakinaka rape-cum-murder’ and it looks like the Chief Minister is getting the better of the Governor!
They say, and it’s a shame, that ‘rape’ is a specialty of the Indian male; not every male but some who are the scum of the earth. And of no particular domicile either. Mumbai has rapists, so does Delhi. Lucknow, Bengaluru and Kolkata, Bhopal…Hyderabad, Chennai, Kochi. Small towns and big metros. The village in Rajasthan and the hamlet in Assam. In the suburbs, and in the heart of the city.
Rape is a common factor, denominator – combined, collective shame. So singling out the ‘Sakinaka rape-murder’ for special mention is rank opportunism. The prime example of vengeful politics. The day before the Sakinaka outrage, there was a gang-rape of a minor Pune girl. Guv Koshyari didn’t raise a stink then, why the demand for a discussion in the assembly only after ‘Sakinaka’?
Again, what changed? Of course, Guv Koshyari must be getting his instructions from New Delhi, meaning from the Centre, from the Union Home Ministry of Amit Shah. It’s now old news that the Shiva Sena and the BJP are sworn enemies, and Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray has been at the receiving end of a series of mostly ham-handed BJP attacks for close to two years.
So far, the CM has held strong and steady to whatever has been his stand on the various issues over which the Centre picked up a row with him, and with the state. And every time it was Guv Koshyari who led from the front for the Modi Government. Successive defeats haven’t discouraged the Centre so far from going continually after the Thackeray government.
The Bharatiya Janata Party is smarting. The failure to form government in Maharashtra. The annoyance at being ditched and rejected by long time ally Shiv Sena. There’s a festering wound to the BJP’s psyche. There is frustration and it rankles. There is anger and there’s the urge to exact revenge. And Koshiyari, like Dhankar to the far east of India, is the Centre’s appointee, an HMV!
To the aam aadmi in the Maharashtra street, the Uddhav-Koshyari war of words is a constant. It started with Governor Koshyari writing to Thackeray expressing his concern over “Sakinaka rape-murder”. He asked Uddhav to call a special Maharashtra Legislature session to discuss “Sakinaka, and safety of women in general”.
Thackeray agreed but threw in a spanner, saying that “women’s safety” was not peculiar to Maharashtra alone. In his letter to Koshyari, Thackeray wrote of the string of incidents of atrocities committed on women in BJP-ruled states – Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Uttarakhand… And in places like Bihar, Delhi and J&K.
Thackeray told Koshyari to ask the Modi Government to call a 4-day special session of Parliament to discuss crimes committed against women across India. The CM told the Governor to stop behaving like a “political activist”, stating that the Governor joining the “clamour” was not good for parliamentary democracy, it would only “stoke a fresh controversy”.
For emphasis, Thackeray pointed to Gujarat and asked whether women were safe in the ‘Gujarat Model’? Of course, Thackeray was skirting the main issue by deflecting to Gujarat, which is the Prime Minister and the Home Minister’s home state. But Thackeray covered it up by stacking his argument with statistics pertaining to Gujarat’s record on women’s safety.
Thackeray also spoke of Delhi, where law and order was the Centre’s jurisdiction, and the gang-rape and murder of a minor Dalit girl in Delhi. “This is the scenario in the city where the entire country’s cabinet is based,” wrote Thackeray. He lined up incidents of rape in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh and reminded Koshyari that the situation in BJP-ruled states was no different from that in Maharashtra and Mumbai.
To the citizens of India, buffeted by vicious crimes against women on a daily basis, this war of words between Chief Minister and Governor isn’t anything to feel good about. It’s ugly and it’s belittling the victims, making trivial – trivia of – the crimes against women. Neither should Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari nor should Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray or the Modi Government take crimes against women for granted, or lightly for that matter. Crimes against women are not weapons to wage political war with. (IPA Service)
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