Commentary/ Dilip D'Souza

Here a bandh, there a bandh, a pox on bandhs

I feel strangely confident that this sentence is the first ever written in the history of mankind that mentions both Boris Becker and bandhs. But don't dispatch any congratulatory notes just yet. You see, this column was meant to be about that man Boris (thanks to you-know-who-you-are), but events in Bombay over the last few days mean that he gets postponed to another week.

And what happened that managed to upstage Becker for me? A bandh. For those unfamiliar with this Bombay-bred phenomenon, a bandh is usually a forced closure of the city that's called 'voluntary.' Since George Fernandes, in the 1960s, turned bandhs into a potent political weapon for parties in the opposition, they have become a feature of life here. As on Saturday, July 12, when dalit parties called a bandh. As these things go, it was a 'success', in that the city more or less shut down.

Which meant, among other things, that we could not get a taxi to bring my 90-year-old uncle -- who has just had a stroke, has lost his speech and is partly paralysed -- back from the hospital where he had had a brain scan.

No, I do not think this bandh was a 'success.'

Fernandes notwithstanding, over the years bandhs in Bombay have become associated with the Shiv Sena. Every time they decide one must be held, gangs of Sena men roam the streets, closing shops, colleges and other establishments 'voluntarily' for the day. This did not change after the Sena came to power: when Bal Thackeray's wife Meena died towards the end of 1995, the city was forced to 'voluntarily' shut down as a 'mark of respect' to her. At least one principal was -- perhaps this was a 'mark of respect' too -- beaten up by Sainiks for being so audacious as to keep his college open that day. And the hundreds of impromptu cricket matches on empty roads all over the city? I suppose those were 'marks of respect' as well.

The latest bandh was a response to police firing which killed 10 people in the eastern suburbs the day before. They, in turn, were part of crowds that were protesting about a statue of Dr Ambedkar which had been garlanded with slippers. In India, that's a terrible insult.

That's how it began, but events after that took on a life and meaning of their own, leaving onlookers like myself thoroughly bemused. Here's a rundown to show you what I mean.

To begin with, Chief Minister Manohar Joshi announced his government would pay compensation to the families of the victims. Good enough. But two other men announced more compensation. One was everybody's favourite gangster, Arun Gawli, now out on bail. The other was Union Railway Minister Ram Vilas Paswan, who flitted through the city, met victims briefly and promised to double the compensation the Maharashtra government was offering. What brought these two men crawling out of the woodwork? Why were they offering money to the victims?

Then a man called Chhagan Bhujbal, a Sena man turned Congressman, was among those who called for the bandh. Bhujbal was the first politician to show up at the scene of the firing. Now there is nothing in the least respectable, honourable or trustworthy about this man. Nothing. His offer of support to hurt and enraged Dalits should have, at best, been treated with extreme distaste. They should have known that this was just a way for him to make political capital, that he will dump them and their cause as soon as the winds turn. That's Bhujbal's style.

Still, what choice did dalits have? What is their party in the state, the Republican Party of India, splintered into more quarrelsome pieces than has the old Soviet Union? Its faction leaders are no more worthy of trust than is Bhujbal. So whether they liked it or not, the dalit protesters were stuck with Bhujbal.

News and comment focused gleefully on how the bandh was a show of strength for dalit forces. "We can close the city down too, just as well as you can," was the message that went out to the Sena. Along with much clearly pent-up abuse directed at the Sena and its leaders.

All of which are good things, in the sense that somebody is finally standing up to Shiv Sena bullying. Someone is showing Bal Thackeray that, much as he may think so, he does not have a monopoly on the city's pulse, its loyalties. But they are also bad things, because what has this show of strength brought us? Still another bandh. Nothing else. Are bandhs the only things parties show any alacrity about? Is our political choice going to come down to different sets of bandh-enforcers? Will we never have a party, a government, just as fervent about bandh-busting? That will preserve the law, keep the peace?

Bemused, did I say? I'm just getting warmed up. The day after the bandh, two prominent politicians were attacked. First it was Ramdas Athavle's turn. This one-time dalit leader is now seen by dalits for what he really is: just another small-minded opportunist, a man who has betrayed their cause and actively splintered the RPI. Forty-eight hours after the fact, Athavle ventured into the area where the shootings occurred. What happened there, I can only hope, will send him permanently into the obscurity which is far better than he deserves. Enraged residents surrounded him, linked arms to prevent his rescue and began thrashing him, reminding him all the while of his failures. The few "supporters" he came with ran away. Athavle is lucky to be alive: a squad of policemen managed to break through the cordon and drag him away.

Bhujbal was also attacked. Hundreds of Shiv Sainiks, led by Lok Sabha member Mohan Rawale, no less, stormed his home and vandalised it. Perhaps furious that they had been upstaged as Bombay's bandh experts, they were baying for Bhujbal's blood. Of course, that's something they have longed to taste since he defected from the Sena several years ago. Bhujbal cowered in a locked room -- while the Sena's brave heroes did their worst, while the police looked on. For good measure, the heroes then went next door and broke the windows of the Congress Opposition leader in the state assembly, Madhukar Pichad's house. Again, the police looked on.

Manohar Joshi and his deputy, Gopinath Munde, asked for their reactions to the attack on Bhujbal, did not have the gumption to condemn it. "The guilty will not be spared," they said, but of the several hundred, precisely 10 were arrested. Of them, two were already out on bail by the afternoon. None of the 10 was Mohan Rawale, MP.

Joshi's and Munde's remote-controlling boss, Bal Thackeray, called the attack on Bhujbal entirely justified. After all, he has a score to settle with Bhujbal. After all, he made this kind of violence respectable. After all, he hasn't yet seen the day it turns around and bites him.

My head positively reels with the intricacies of all this. Athavle was taught a lesson in possibly the only way he would ever have learned it. But must we therefore condone that kind of thrashing? Bhujbal deserves no respect, no sympathy and I hope he is getting none. But where is this culture of thuggish violence that the Shiv Sena pioneered in Bombay going to take us? What is the meaning of law and order when an MP shows us he is no more than a routine house burglar, when his boss applauds him?

I don't like it at all that the police killed 10 fellow citizens. But having said that, how else are these men in uniform to confront stone-throwing mobs bent on destruction? But having said that too, how is it that they did not similarly fire on the Shiv Sena mob advancing on Bhujbal's house?

Above all, what must I think about bandhs? Yes, I'm glad that the thugs in the Sena learned that day that there are other allegiances, other centres of power in this city. But that only saddled us with another bandh; with the same forced voluntarism, the same intimidation, the same violence. Even the same desperate situations -- like I faced with my uncle -- that many people must find themselves in every time there's a bandh.

Bemused or not, I got an unexpected holiday, so why am I grumbling about all this? Good question. Perhaps I should simply have written about Boris Becker after all.

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