Pot calls the kettle black as another book bites the dust

The entire episode concerning the withdrawal of Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey is rich in irony. The man who has made abuse his personal style statement, objects to bad language in a literary work prescribed as a text for 18-year-olds! Even as he railed against the “dirty words’’ in the book, Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray dug into his own repertoire of invective to describe his political rivals. The words used include “eunuch’’ and “impotent’’, along with trademark references to lungis falling, and finally, his special word of abuse for Muslims, landya (circumcised), the use of which, according to Sena mouthpiece Saamna, brought the house down every time.

It is also strange that the Maharashtra chief minister, who expressed his unease that Rohinton Mistry’s book, with its abusive
language, could be prescribed as a text, said not a word about the language used in a public meeting held just 24 hours earlier, which apparently was loud enough for families in Shivaji Park to hear. Of course, the CM was responding to a question about the book, but not once in his two-year tenure has Ashok Chavan, or indeed, any Congress CM, objected to the gutter language used by Thackeray in Saamna, which is read in thousands of Marathi-speaking households.

Studying Saamna’s editorials could prove useful to Aditya, the youngest Thackeray to inherit the party’s leadership. His entire role in this book withdrawal episode is also not without irony. As a student of English Literature a year ago, Aditya is sure to have studied Shakespeare and John Donne; Chaucer and Pope,
Kamala Das and Namdeo Dhasal. Did their language shock the 19-year-old? Or did he learn to read their works as a whole, not focusing only on the ribald phrases as pimply adolescents would do? Would he pick out “dog Jew’’ and “currish Jew” to label Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice as anti-Semitic? Didn’t Aditya learn the difference between a work of fiction and an essay? After all, his college is among the handful in this city where one can get a decent education in English Literature.

Yet, it was at his instance that the Sena youth wing demanded the withdrawal of a text, based on a few passages read out of context.

This is precisely why it is essential for Aditya to study his grandfather’s editorials in his party’s newspaper. For a student of history (as he now is), 18 years is not a long time. All Aditya needs do is look at the edits of Saamna written from 1992 onwards. He might be surprised to find the variety of abuse that occurs repeatedly there. As a politician, the editor of Saamna is expected to spit venom against his political rivals. But Bal Thackeray’s ire isn’t aroused only by that “black buffalo’’ or that “ram’’ (epithets used to describe other political leaders). Communists and Socialists, Muslims, editors who’ve criticised him, and specially female political figures who’ve taken him on, have been described in words that make you want to rinse your mouth. The editorials are infested with references to faeces, snot and urine; menstrual rags and stale nankatais, women gyrating and lungis flapping.

Yet, only once has Saamna been taken to court — and then it was defended by the Maharashtra government! Leading up to the Babri Masjid demolition in December 1992, and then all through the riots, Saamna wrote edit after incendiary edit, inciting its Hindu readers by invoking images of Hindu dead bodies and of dharmayuddh (holy war). It repeatedly referred to Muslims as “fanatic traitors’’ in whose mohallas flowed “streams of treason’’.

In a perceptive self-evaluation after the riots, Thackeray wrote: (Saamna has prepared a) “burning generation. Saamna’s job is to keep it smouldering… The Hindus… should not become embers again. We should burn and in this burning conflagration, let the traitors be reduced to ashes.’’

But the government stood silently by. When asked to explain its inaction by the high court, which was hearing a petition filed by
JB D’Souza and Dilip Thakore, the government pleader argued that the offensive passages could not be read “in isolation’’. The judges agreed that read as a whole, the editorials did not
promote communal disharmony, since the derogatory references were only to “anti-national’’ Muslims, not all Muslims.

Why doesn’t the Sena use the same argument now for Mistry’s book? According to media reports, Thackeray at his Dussehra rally electrified his followers with his special “Thackeri bhasha’’.

Immediately thereafter, his edits ranted against burkha-clad women and loudspeakers on mosques. The foul language at the rally, followed by these inflammatory writings, provide reason enough for legal action. But the Congress-NCP government pretends nothing’s been said.

“People are trapped in history, and history is trapped in them,’’ wrote American writer James Baldwin. As a student of literature and history, Bal Thackeray’s youngest heir will surely
understand the implications of this statement.

— The writer is a commentator on political and social affairs