POLARISED POLITY IN PROGRESSIVE MAHARASHTRA

The state has been a fertile ground for patriotic thinkers. To understand the polarisation seen today, one has to look back at a long history of appeasement

- VINAY SAHASRABUDDHE

Maharashtra goes to the polls today. Many pundits have rued that never before has Maharashtra politics been so polarised. While the validity of this observation is questionable, it would indeed be educative to know why and how some campaigns lead to polarisation.

Maharashtra has been witness to all streams of patriotic polity. From Jyotiba Phule to Lokmanya Tilak, and later from Babasaheb Ambedkar to Veer Savarkar—every other stream of politics inspired by patriotism took shape in this fertile land. K. B. Hedgewar founded the RSS in this land.

It was a Maharashtrian thinker, Justice M. G. Ranade, who mooted the idea of Hindi nationalism, openly proclaiming that he himself was neither Muslim nor Hindu. Leaders like Tilak, Mahatma Gandhi and many others made sincere efforts to win the hearts of Muslim leaders, but sustained success on this front eluded almost all of them.

Again, it was Maharashtra that witnessed the atrocities of ‘razakars’ in areas that are now part of Marathwada. Marathi society also actively associated itself with the Goa liberation movement. Besides, two very serious communal conflicts took place in the state in the late 1960s, at Bhiwandi and Jalgaon.

In the last decade of the previous century, it was Mumbai that witnessed riots followed by a series of bomb blasts, to be followed by the infamous 26/11 attack of terrorists in the next decade.

One can’t forget that one of the most substantive reformist movements for the Muslim community in India’s modern history was initiated here by Hamid Dalwai, which today has almost died down. Last but not least, it was here that Ambedkar rejected the idea of converting to Islam and embraced Buddhism.