Tiger Thackeray and Actor Salman

Money gives us the arrogance to break the law and the influence to go scot-free thereafter. It’s true that Salman Khan didn’t go free. But let’s not forget that he almost did. He was let off on a bail of 950 rupees, an all-time historical record. It was public outrage that forced the police to lock him up. And the courts did their bit by denying him bail three times.

Salman Khan was not born arrogant. In fact, when he lived in an apartment block in Bandra, he was a picture of courtesy and good manners. He was polite to the ‘uncles’ and ‘aunties’ in the building and a warm friend to other boys of his age.

Money changed him. Money and the narcissistic ego that came from his body-building. He began imagining that he owned the world and all the people in it, especially the women. Stories of his haughty behaviour on the sets put him in a bad light. Stories of his assaulting heroines showed him up as a rowdy intimidator. Stories of his shooting black bucks revealed an anti-social side in him. Pent-up public antipathy to him burst forth when his rash driving killed a man.

Where a similar build-up of public opinion had not taken place, money had succeeded in subverting the Rule of Law. Think no further than the BMW killings in Delhi. Or that horrible Tandoori killing—unless we put that one in the category of Power, rather than Money.

That certainly is the category for Thackeray. The law of the land prohibits ‘‘promotion of enmity between different groups on grounds of religion … and acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony.’’ Thackeray has violated that law in the past and his call for Hindu suicide squads is a violation of that law again.

But can registering a case against him be any more meaningful today than it was in the past? Fear that Mumbai will be turned into a bloody killing field is what the Shiv Sena banks on. One Sena bully has boastfully warned that ‘‘when they tried a similar stunt in the past, normalcy in the state was disrupted for 15 to 20 days.’’

A political group can threaten violence and that’s enough to bury the Rule of Law. It’s because this message comes from the groups in power today that the courts are finding their rulings blunted. Kalyan Singh openly defied the courts when he was UP Chief Minister. The courts could do nothing. Narendra Modi has outdone Thackeray in ‘‘acts prejudicial to harmony’’. Not only has no law been invoked against him; he is backed by Delhi to continue as chief minister though he does not have even Farooq Abdullah’s moral right to do so.

Yes, Power is greater than Money. A Salman Khan will not have the political sanction to hold a city to ransom. A Bal Thackeray can do so under pretensions of patriotism. We could have asked: Between religion and violence as political weapons, which is more lethal? But how can we ask that when religion and violence are becoming one and the same? Money and Power together have defeated our gods.