Why Thackeray gets away

In the run-up to his much publicised 60th birthday, Amitabh Bachchan was asked by a newsweekly if he agreed with the politics of his friend ...

In the run-up to his much publicised 60th birthday, Amitabh Bachchan was asked by a newsweekly if he agreed with the politics of his friend Bal Thackeray. Bachchan unhesitantly described the Shiv Sena chief as ‘a close friend from a very early age’ and added that they had ‘great regard and respect for each other’. Within days of the publication of the interview came Thackeray’s customary Dussehra message. And that message has turned out to be so incendiary that it probably shook even a die-hard admirer like Bachchan.

Thackeray’s appeal to Hindus to form suicide squads to take on Muslims is by far the most brazen incitement of terrorism. Indeed, Thackeray has surpassed all his old records in Muslim bashing. Unwittingly, he has also served a grim reminder of how the seemingly secular terrorism law operates differently with regard to Hindus and minorities. However grave the implications of his speech, Thackeray cannot and will not be hauled up under any of the otherwise draconian provisions of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA). This is thanks to an improvement POTA is claimed to have made on its notorious forerunner, Terrorism and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA). While POTA focuses on terrorism, TADA had provisions dealing with terrorist as well as disruptive activities. This meant that even if no terrorist act was committed, a person was liable to be booked under the provision of disruptive activities in TADA if he had written an inflammatory article or delivered a incendiary speech. Such a thing cannot happen any more because when POTA came into being last year, the NDA government excluded disruptive activities from its purview ostensibly to check the abuse of the law.

But then, can you imagine any Muslim or Christian leader getting away with a statement even half as incendiary as Thackeray’s? The very same POTA which is so helpless against Thackeray can very well be invoked by a state government against any minority leader accused of stoking communal passions. This gross inequity is a direct fallout of the manner in which the Centre has over the last one year exercised a sweeping power it assumed under POTA: the power to ban an organisation without a judicial review and detain all those who are suspected to be either its members or supporters. As it happened, the 30-odd organisations that have been ostracised under POTA are all related to either minorities or naxalites or are those based abroad. Thus, any Muslim leader straying from the officially acceptable line runs greater risk of being hauled up under POTA as an alleged member or supporter of one or the other banned organisation. On the other hand, none of the Hindu organisations, whether casteist or communal, apparently warranted inclusion in the list of the so-called ‘terrorist organisations’. So, a Ranvir Sena may massacre Dalits in Bihar, a Bajrang Dal may employ Ayodhya to terrorise Muslims, a Vishva Hindu Parishad may organise a retaliation to Godhra and a Shiv Sena may instigate Hindus to take to terrorism. All these organisations seem to be immune to POTA because of the way the law is drafted and enforced. POTA is not against terrorism per se. The hue of terrorism — saffron or green — will determine whether a certain activity comes under the ambit of POTA or not.

Story continues below this ad

The hue of terrorism — saffron or green — will determine whether an activity comes under POTA’s ambit or not

The communal bias is built into the law. This is evident even from the Law Commission’s 173rd report, which provided the blueprint for POTA. In a rather questionable analysis, the Law Commission traces religious militancy in India to bomb blasts that rocked Mumbai in 1993. ‘‘Religious militancy, which had first raised its head in 1993 with bomb explosions in Mumbai, continues to make its presence felt,’’ it said, in the report submitted in 2000. The erudite authors of the Law Commission report, including former Supreme Court judge Jeevan Reddy, make no acknowledgement of the obvious fact that the bomb blasts were a reaction to another instance of religious militancy, the Babri Masjid demolition, and the subsequent communal violence in Mumbai and elsewhere.

Mercifully, for all the bias that works in Thackeray’s favour in POTA’s framework, there are provisions in the ordinary law that could get him. The most obvious one being Section 153-A of the Indian Penal Code which seeks to punish those who promote enmity between different groups on the ground of religion. It is however doubtful whether the Congress-NCP government in Maharashtra has the political will to take action against Thackeray. The same government made an abortive attempt in July 2000 to arrest and prosecute him under Section 153-A for his writings in his newspaper, Saamna, during 1992-93 riots. The state government’s inordinate delay in granting sanction to prosecute Thackeray came in handy to the magistrate to let him off even without considering the chargesheet. This, despite the fact that the law of limitation does not apply to the government’s delay in granting sanction. Like Bachchan, members of the executive and judiciary too seem to have soft corner for Thackeray.