The authorities in Maharashtra have at last done what they should have done long ago: arrested the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena leader Raj Thackeray in order to make it clear that his brand of politics will not be permitted in India. This has resulted in the expected disruption and violence in Mumbai, while Patna has seen some re-active violence. But firm action is what is needed, particularly when Mr Thackeray has been able to come this far only because the authorities have treated him with kid gloves. MNS’s latest example of taking the law into its own hands was to disrupt on Sunday some job tests organised by the railways at several locations in Mumbai, so as to intimidate candidates from North India. A few days earlier, Mr Thackeray declared that no Jet Airways aircraft would be allowed to land in or take off from Mumbai (because it had dismissed 1,900 employees); he followed that up by demanding that Jet should give preference to Maharashtrians while recruiting.
All this is untenable, because the Constitution guarantees freedom of movement across the country. Any citizen can go, live and work anywhere, and that is how it has to remain. What is more, Indian Railways is a national organisation which takes special pains to ensure that its procedures are non-discriminatory. A regional railway places an indent for staff with the local recruitment board, which places advertisements in the media in the entire country precisely because all citizens must get an equal opportunity to work in a national organisation.
MNS activists have been violently targeting workers from North India in Mumbai, since the beginning of the year—taxi drivers were an easy target because of their visibility on the street. The situation turned more serious when they also attacked auto industry workers in Pune and Nashik, leading to the hasty departure of 40,000-odd workers, seriously affecting the operations of the industry in the region. The MNS also went for movie mega-star Amitabh Bachchan for some off-the-cuff remarks by his wife. That fracas ended when Mr Bachchan apologised. The railway job aspirants cannot even do that as they have done nothing for which they can be apologetic.
The roots of the latest action go back to the agitation launched against South Indians over four decades ago by Bal Thackeray which helped establish the Shiv Sena. The senior Mr Thackeray then changed his target to focus on Muslims, while continuing to stress Maharashtrian concerns with regard to good job opportunities. The present agitation is perverse in the sense that it is targeting not those who occupy a higher station in life but poor workers who come to make a decent living through hard work in the country’s leading city of opportunity. The root cause naturally lies not in these people but in Raj Thackeray’s compulsion to find a platform after he quit the Shiv Sena. This is a matter of urgency for the MNS leader as his outfit fared miserably in last year’s municipal corporation elections in the city. The state government must tackle the law and order situation on hand with firmness in view of what is at stake, but it must also ensure that it has a proper case to make against the MNS leader. The last thing anyone wants is for ham-handed action to help Raj Thackeray emerge as some kind of wounded hero.
