But for Friday’s restraining order by the Bombay High Court, Mumbai would have seen a bandh, most probably complete in most parts of Maharashtra.
Bandhs cost the economy, and cause hindrances to even essential services, the court held on two PILs with notices returnable on October 9.
The rape and murder of two four-year-old girls on August 21 involved the arrest of a male attendant of a school in Badlapur, Thane district. This crime has since sparked widespread protests in Badlapur and elsewhere in Maharashtra.
Bandhs in India are not spontaneous. Political parties call for it and those who make the call enforce it. People by themselves do not take to the streets spontaneously and educational institutions, shopkeepers, and businesses do not observe it. Those who ask for the closure of all businesses have their prestige at stake and ensure that people fall in line.
A bandh – a general strike – called and not observed is a loss of face for those who issue the call are forced to enforce it. The outrage in Badlapur was perhaps one of the exceptions where it spilled onto the streets and railway tracks the other day and the Opposition plan for today’s bandh wanted to piggyback on it. With no option but to bow to the court, they abandoned it.
Had the political parties – the NCP (Sharad Pawar), Shiv Sena (Uddhav Thackeray), and Congress – had the time to challenge it, they would have knocked on the doors of the Supreme Court; Sharad Pawar said almost as much in his post-restraint tweet. Despite Badlapur’s non-political spontaneity organising a bandh is no child’s play. The right cadre has to be assigned roles.
Mumbai’s bandhs, as opposed to that action in other cities are well planned drills and no one knows it better than the Shiv Sena. Though it is split, a big part of it is still alive and the boss’s instructions are to be followed, no questions asked. The boss here is Uddhav Thackeray. Had the bandh been allowed, it would have been a success, and partner parties would have wallowed in its ‘success’.
George Fernandes, a socialist who later made peace with the Right Wing had developed that uncanny knack of using the taxi drivers who, at any time of the day or night were spread all over the city were his ‘mobile phones’. Only those who didn’t oblige were asked, not stoned, to strike. Most trade unions controlled by Fernandes – municipal, bus staff, clerical staff from shops, restaurant employees, hawkers unions, stock exchange staff, etc. – were entrenched and a call was enough to disrupt the city.
The Sena’s technique has been different. Their cadre on the rail tracks at Mumbai’s edges just before peak hours, Mulund on the Central Railway lines, and Dahisar on the Western, stop the trains, stone a few buses and that had the compulsive commuters who instinctively strap-hang daily in overcrowded local trains return home. No trains meant a successful bandh. Newspapers generally spoke of a “complete Mumbai bandh” and partial in other locations across the state.
Sena’s calls did not fail because the underlying fear for their reputation is palpable because of their past where they enforced bandhs whatever the cost. After the murder – a real whodunit even now – of Krishna Desai, a communist leader of the city, “fearsome” became Sena’s other name or identity. Even its leaders speak of “the Shiv Sena way” when seeking resolution of their demands from the government. The breakaway Navnirman Sena led by Raj Thackeray speaks of “our way” of getting things done.
Till BJP led the government in Maharashtra under the leadership of Devendra Fadnavis, that party too had ridden piggyback on the Sena’s influence for public action. No party dared fill up the entire 28-acre Shivaji Park except the Sena and that made for a lot of awe about it. If the bandh had been organised today, Mumbai would have been a city of shuttered shops, empty roads, disrupted offices, and policemen all over.
Since the party has spilled over to other parts of the city, with the aid and abetment of other Opposition parties it would have been a “success”. Ordinary people do not have to oblige. They are forced to stay at home and “observe the bandh”.
Mahesh Vijapurkar is a senior journalist based in Maharashtra. He has extensively reported on Tamil Nadu, erstwhile AP, Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Maharashtra.
