He said, they said…Babri dominates Maha discourse again

Mumbai/Pune: A day after he said that no Shiv Sainik had been involved in the demolition of the Babri masjid, senior state BJP leader Chandrakant Patil walked back on his statement, saying what he said had been said in his personal capacity and that he had been misinterpreted.

But the events of the 24 hours that followed his comments made on a Marathi news channel, sharply highlight the pulls and contradictions that beset Maharashtra’s politics. Shiv Sena founder Balasaheb Thackeray’s claim of being the Hinduhriday Samrat date back to that defining day of December 6, 1992. He had proclaimed on the front page of Saamana, the party mouthpiece, that he was proud that a Shiv Sainik had struck the first blow to the Babri masjid. The espousal of that cause became one of the defining pillars of the Shiv Sena’s Hindutva. Which is why, on Tuesday, both Uddhav Thackeray and Eknath Shinde, reacted sharply to Patil’s comment that the Babri demolition was the handiwork of the Bajrang Dal and the Durga Vahini and that not a single Shiv Sainik had been in the vicinity of the mosque.

While Uddhav Thackeray demanded that chief minister Eknath Shinde sack Patil from his cabinet or step down himself over the insult to Bal Thackeray, Shinde, who is struggling to wrest the Marathi manoos vote away from Thackeray, called his cabinet colleague to express his displeasure. Shinde also instructed Patil who is the state’s higher technical education minister, to clarify his comments in a press briefing. He reportedly reminded Patil that Shiv Sainiks, including he himself, were part of the groups that had brought down the Babri masjid 31 years ago. Both Thackeray and Shinde have visited Ayodhya on separate occasions to cement the Shiv Sena’s ties with the Ramjanmabhoomi movement.

Accordingly, Patil told the media in Pune on Tuesday that his remarks had been misinterpreted. “Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Durga Vahini and Bajrang Dal had been demanding construction of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya since 1983. The movement undertaken for the temple was under the leadership of Ashok Singhal of VHP and leaders and workers from various parties participated as Hindus. There was no separation as Shiv Sainiks or BJP workers. In the interview (to the TV Channel) too I had repeatedly expressed my respect for Balasaheb Thackeray,” he insisted.

Balasaheb Thackeray, Patil further said, had taken the entire onus of the Babri demolition. Uddhhav Thackeray, he said, was a good friend of his. “I am going to call him up to clarify my side,” he said.

Earlier, during his own press briefing, Uddhav Thackeray called the comments a conspiracy to disrespect Bal Thackeray and to undermine his importance to the Hindutva cause. “These rats who were hiding in holes then (during the demolition) are making a lot of noise now. I feel that they want to reduce the importance of Balasaheb Thackeray eventually,” he said, adding that the-then BJP vice president Sundarsingh Bhandari had himself said that the job of demolishing the mosque must have been done by the Shiv Sena. “The day the call came about Babri demolition, Balasaheb had said if the job was done by Shiv Sainiks then he was proud of them.”

There were interviews of BJP leader L K Advani on how people who climbed atop the Babri mosque were speaking in Marathi and not listening to Pramod Mahajan who tried to stop them, said Uddhav Thackeray. Shiv Sainiks had subsequently faced legal cases and he recalled how he had visited Lucknow along with Balasaheb for their trial. “When we visited UP, the issue of Ram Temple was in the cold storage. We demanded a separate law for the construction of the Ram temple, but PM Narendra Modi did not do anything and the issue of Ram temple was solved by the courts,” added Thackeray.

But his doubling down on the demolition issue though only underscores the BJP and Eknath Shinde’s dominant view that he betrayed the cause of Hindutva when he aligned with the Congress and the NCP to form the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi.