LAKHS PAY HOMAGE TO BAL THACKERAY

Thackeray inspired fear, so much fear that the political biggies, fat big money lords and screen heroes all knelt before him. Even in death he frightens them that their absence would be marked by his goons.

He was living testimony of an infirm, almost impotent democracy where muscle, not merit, where power not fairplay rule.

May his successors not be swayed by the lakhs that turned up at the Shivaji Park today, but pay attention to posts such as these… That there are genuine humans, patriotic Indians that hated him their satrap, should make them ponder if this is the ideal lifestyle they seek for themselves?

On a personal note to the mullahs who have been vacillating between ‘Jihad’ and advise of ‘patience’, with ‘Khuda ke haan dair hai andher nahin’ [and who will now say, after the grand 21-salute state funeral accorded to Thackeray, ‘use agli duniya main saza zaroor milegi’] I must ask, where was the slightest justice given to this man: divine or temporal? He roared while alive and died like an emperor. Divinity is clearly oblivious to such earthly happenings, or has long forsaken the devout.

‘Mehshar ki saza’ hardly comforts the bereaved relatives of the 800 odd people brutally killed by his goons in THIS world. Nor to those of the other 300 innocents who perished in the retaliatory Bombay blasts.

Muslims of India needed to organize themselves along democratic secular polity far better, and much earlier, to neutralize such state-patronized terrorists as Thackeray and Modi, with the support of vast numbers of well meaning fair-minded Hindus. But for this the prerequisite is to check our own fundamentalists and hate mongers.

Someone who should have died an ignominious death inside a prison cell to receive state accolades and live coverage of virtually entire national media, pains me no end. And shakes my faith in the potency of our democratic polity. And reminds me starkly of the sheer dispensability of the Muslim community.