POLITICS-INDIA: Vajpayee Troubled By Key Ally

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Jul 25 2000 (IPS) - India’s ruling coalition was bracing for more trouble Tuesday, three members of the government having quit and another sacked by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee over strained ties with a key ally.

All eyes were on the western metropolis of Mumbai where law enforcers were preparing to arrest firebrand, radical Hindu leader Bal Thackeray, whose Shiv Sena party was accusing long time ally Vajpayee of not helping friends in need.

The sulking Shiv Sena, after ordering three ministers to resign from the Vajpayee cabinet, was staying away from a meeting of ruling coalition lawmakers called by Vajpayee to discuss parliamentary strategy in the ongoing monsoon session of the house.

“The government has to run with the support of the alliance partners and if they did not support each other in times of crisis, then what is the point,” a Shiv Sena leader was quoted as saying

Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was meanwhile warning former Law Minister Ram Jethmalani, elected to the upper house of parliament with Shiv Sena backing, of dire consequences for his public criticism of the prime minister.

Vajpayee had asked Jethmalani to resign after the former law minister embarrassed the government by his verbal attacks on the country’s highest court that had earlier rapped the government for speaking in different voices on the Thackeray affair.

The BJP’s troubles arose after the government of western Maharashtra state of which Mumbai is the capital, ordered Thackeray’s prosecution for his role in the anti-Muslim violence in the city seven years ago after the demolition by Hindu zealots of the medieval Babri mosque in Ayodhya.

A judicial probe into the Mumbai riots, in which thousands of people, mostly Muslims, died, blamed Shiv Sena cadres for the violence and indicted Thackeray for writing “communally inciting propaganda” in Shiv Sena publications.

When the result of the probe was announced in 1998, Mahahrashtra was ruled by a BJP-Shiv Sena coalition and Thackeray then contemptuously dismissed the inquiry report and its author, judge B.N. Srikrishna as “pro-Muslim.”

But the Srikrishna report was revived when the BJP-Shiv Sena combine lost to arch-foe Congress party and its ally in the Maharashtra legislature polls last year.

The Shiv Sena is named after Shivaji, the legendary 17th century western Indian warrior chief who carried out a guerilla campaign against India’s then Muslim Mughal rulers.

Thackeray warned that his arrest would result in a serious law and order situation in Maharashtra. This would, in turn, lead to the federal government using special constitutional powers to sack the Maharashtra government led by chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, he said.

Even as the former law minister embarrassed Vajpayee by his advice to intervene in Thackeray’s favour, the Vajpayee government was involved in another controversy by refusing Maharashtra’s request for federal forces to tackle expected violence if Thackeray were arrested.

Deshmukh, who was denied the federal forces by Indian Home Minister L.K. Advani, however, said he was ready to meet the challenge. “My government has already taken a decision (to prosecute Thackeray) and I have done my job. They (the centre) are free to do their job,” he said.

Thackeray, a former cartoonist, has built up a reputation of being invincible in his home state during a 35-year controversial political career.

It began with a ‘sons-of-the-soil’ campaign favouring the local Maratha ethnic community over outsiders for jobs in India’s business and industrial capital of Bombay that was renamed Mumbai a few years ago by the then BJP-Shiv Sena state government. But over time, the Shiv Sena began to target Muslims in Mumbai.

India’s Supreme Court has also found Thackeray guilty of inciting “communal hatred” against Muslims. He has been barred for six years by the national Election Commission from contesting polls and exercising the right to vote.

“This is the man who has needlessly challenged the entire Indian legal and democratic system,” wrote leading political analyst Prem Shankar Jha in the latest issue of the ‘Outlook’ newsmagazine.

“If Vajpayee backs down and puts pressure on Maharashtra to abandon the case the police has constructed against Thackeray, he may as well hold up a sign to advertise that India is no longer under the rule of law,” Jha noted.