More than 2.5 million people who came down on the streets ofMumbai like swarms of flies to attend the funeral of Shiv Sena chief BalThackeray on November 18 demonstrated a remarkable sense of order throughoutthe day. The rest of Mumbai’s population, who were under an undeclared butfiercely enforced house arrest, did not have a choice and demonstrated asimilar sense of order throughout Sunday.
The people inside and the crowds outside both had a hopeeach: the death and afterlife of fear.
The day after also brought to fore many sentinels ofnational interest, who apparently had been waiting for the leader’s death toespouse their much-cherished cause and launch a scathing attack on him. “I knowof the maxim De mortuis nil nisi bonum (of the dead speak only good), but Iregret I cannot, since I regard the interest of my country above observance ofcivil proprieties,” wrote press council chief Justice (retired) Markandey Katjuin The Hindu.
Before you conclude which side I am on, let me tell you,much of that criticism was justified. Thackeray never expected respect even inhis lifetime, let alone death. In interviews, he even claimed he just wanted asemblance of fear in his persona ”something he got but also something with ashelf life.
If TV channels showed his funeral for the entire day andpresenters even hailed him as a messiah and talked with a lump in theirthroats, that’s purely out of professional compulsions, rather than politicalleanings. Twenty-four-hour news channels have to run like that. Thank yourstars that we were saved from watching the funeral of Ponty Chadha and hisbrother!
As leaders cutting across party lines queued up to pay theirlast tributes to the departed leader, inside the tiger’s den it was time forcontemplation. The real challenge lay before Uddhav and Raj. Everyone inMatoshree as well those outside knew there was no magic in that majestic throneThackeray sat on. The magic lay burning on the pyre in Shivaji Park.
The warring cousins have a lot of thinking to do “ toreinvent the party which was born, brought up and sustained by thelarger-than-life patriarch. With that central figure of fear gone, they willhave to find a new mainstay.
in association with Governance Now
