Comment

Two days ago, I was asked on TV how much of Rahul Gandhi’s decision to visit Mumbai was about politics. My answer was that it was about politics and more. At that time everyone — right from the Maharashtra Congress leadership to Bollywood stars — was too weak-kneed to respond to the Shiv Sena’s threat to hold Mumbai to ransom over Gandhi’s visit. But his four-hour visit to the Sena heartland once again proved the old dictum — bullies back offif you have the courage to stand up to them.

Gandhi’s decision not to get provoked by some of the below-the-belt attacks by the Thackerays was a wise one. His silence in Mumbai delivered a message which a thousand words would have failed to convey. It not only showed the father and his son as a venom-spewing duo, it also proved once again that the ground has shifted from under the Sena’s feet.

My friends in the BJP complained that the media allowed Gandhi to steal the thunder. They ought to recognise that the Sena provided him an issue and he seized it. What prevented the top leadership of the BJP and the other opposition parties from doing something similar?

Perhaps Gandhi’s gesture will also prompt some Bollywood stars to stop genuflecting before the Thackerays. They can choose the company they want to keep. But to ingratiate a bully who repeatedly spews venom and hatred and threatens to stifle free speech is a bit too much. They will do well to read Pastor Martin Niemoller’s famous poem on the inactivity of German intellectuals following the rise of the Nazis.

I’m reproducing it for their benefit. “First they came for the communists, I did not speak out, because I was not a
communist; Then they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out, because I was not a trade unionist; Then they came for the Jews, I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew; Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me.”