Miss Alone
Prime VIP
Every community in Maharashtra suddenly seems to be in turmoil and each in conflict with the other. Intellectuals, senior journalists, former bureaucrats, lawyers and others have begun to express serious concerns over where the state is going amid reports that despite the silent morchas by Marathas seeking reservations, there are conflicts in the villages of serious proportion and atrocities against all sections of communities on the rise.
The latest in this series is the alleged attempt to rape a minor girl by a juvenile teen in Talegaon near Trimbakeshwar in Nashik district which, for the first time, brought about the suspension of mobile internet services in any district in the state and the arrests of at least seven WhatsApp administrators for vitiating the atmosphere through provocations and rumours.
Following close on the heels of the Kopardi incident in Ahmednagar district in July this year where a Maratha teen was brutally gangraped and murdered by Dalit youths, the Trimbakeshwar incident once again brought the communities in conflict with each other, although the five year old child was reported safe and unharmed, and swift action was taken against the alleged culprit.
Nashik erupted in arson and other forms of violence, including desecration of some posters put up by one community. But it is remarkable that all these incidents happened in villages, seven of them still under curfew, and not in larger towns or cities as might have been the case previously.
However, there was hardly any political leadership in sight to calm the situation. If the violence was contained, it was entirely due to independent action and community interactions enforced by Nashik police. Asks Professor Sudhir Gavhane of the Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University, “Where is the political leadership in sight? Safety of women was always an issue in the large towns and metropolises but now this disease has spread even to the villages. Such acts have a direct co-relation with the failure of government policies in the rural areas over the years and the inability of those in active politics today, both government and opposition, to understand the issues and defuse the situation.”
Gavhane, who deeply studied the social and political issues troubling the country, says Marathas have set an example before the country through their silent morchas, which should be a lesson to communities like the Patidars of Gujarat and Jats of Haryana who were rather violent in their agitations demanding similar reservations. But the fact that Marathas are on the streets at all is not because they want reservations per se but the failure of the farming sector and the inability of various governments to either spot the crisis or stem the consequences.
“I am deeply concerned that if a leader does not soon emerge to take charge of the Maratha agitations, anything could happen and the state could go up in flames.”
As Nashik almost did this week with the flames spreading towards Pune where there were some clashes between two communities, including women, in Lohegaon which were once again brought under control by the police with no political leaders in sight. Political and social interactions are essential, stresses Gavhane. “Police are only law enforcers.”
However, these law enforcers are themselves under attack by criminal elements everywhere. Apart from traffic cops who have been beaten up, even killed, by common citizens for simply doing their duty, even top cops in some parts of the state have been recently threatened with knives and other weapons while on duty. A former police officer, Dhanraj Vanjari, last week led a morcha of families of such police personnel under attack to the Raj Bhavan to petition the governor for their safety. Why not to Mantralaya?
“What’s the use of appealing to ministers who do not do their jobs?” he questions in return. “The goons who are attacking the cops have political patronage. All political parties, whether in government or opposition, support such goondaism. No action is going to be taken against them by political authorities.”
“This kind of lawlessness with political patronage used to be part of some North Indian states. That seems to have travelled to Maharashtra and is threatening to tear apart the State’s social fabric,” says Gavhane.
He clarifies that he does not mean that it is migrants from North India who are creating the unrest. “They are local Maharashtrians but lawlessness now seems to have got into the culture of a previously lawful state. I am not saying that we never had any problems but it was never as bad as it is now.”
That, he says, is because of the lack of statesmanship among Maharashtra’s political leaders, including those from the opposition. “They should immediately have tried to calm the situation in both Kopardi and Talegaon. But all they wanted to do was to throw barbs at each other instead of taking citizens into confidence and soothing their frayed nerves.”
Dr Neelam Gorhe, leader of the women’s cell of the Shiv Sena seems to agree. She holds the guardian minister of Nashik District (Girish Mahajan) responsible for jumping the gun in announcing that the minor girl was unharmed whereas that should have been left, as per protocol, to doctors and the police. “Mahajan’s eagerness to supercede the authorities gave the impression of an attempted cover-up by the government and led to immediate eruption of violence in the district,” she alleges.
Reacting to the incident of an arms haul from the home of a BJP functionary, Gorhe says, “During the police raid, they almost stuck a knife into the officer’s stomach. What does this mean? That they are not afraid of the law authorities any more?” That corroborates both Vanjari’s and Gavhane’s theories that goons in Maharashtra today live under political patronage and that this culture is alien to Maharashtra.
As an ally of the BJP in the Maharashtra governnment, Gorhe adds that while chief minister Devendra Fadnavis is doing his best to calm the situation, there are elements within his party who are moving in the opposite direction, and not just inflaming situations but also attempting to destabilise his government.
Amid all this only one statesman-like leader emerges, says Gavhane. “Thanks to Prakash Ambedkar. After both the Kopardi and Talegaon incidents, he chose not to incite passions. He first prevented retaliatory morchas by Dalits against Marathas and now, after Talegaon, has called for stern action against the alleged rapist while at the same time appealing to people not to vitiate the atmosphere while maintaining law and order at all times.”
Who was that message for – Marathas or Dalits? “Both are equal offenders,” says Murtuza Kachwalla, a senior journalist from Nashik. “No one is less guilty than the other in adding to the tensions.”
However, that does not help to solve the quandary of sociologists and political scientists who are unable to ascertain where all this might lead – except toward inevitable chaos and more unrest.
