THE cat, at last, has come out of the bag. Devendra Fadnavis, ever eager to come back to power, by hook or crook, finally reached the doorstep of the Raj Bhavan in Mumbai. The gentleman sent from above occupying the gubernatorial seat, to come in handy whenever the RSS bosses wished, has been more eager for the former’s comeback than the come-backer himself. The BJP’s delegation led by Fadnavis asked in the meeting with Koshyari for a floor test in the Maharashtra assembly, claiming that the MVA government has lost the support of 49 MLAs comprising the so called ‘rebels’ and fence-sitting independents, held at ransom in the luxurious Radisson Blu at Guwahati. The governor immediately obliged, and called for a floor test to test the majority of the Uddhav Thackeray government on June 30.  

The issue will certainly echo in the corridors of the Supreme Court. The BJP headquarters will perhaps wonder if the SC order giving a fortnight for those ensconced in a hotel marooned in floodwaters was a blessing at all. The SC order did provide the BJP and the ‘rebels’ a breathing space to rework their strategy of toppling the democratically formed state government. The ‘speaker in charge’ of the assembly had issued a notice to the Radissonites why they should not be disqualified and had asked for a reply by 5 pm on June 27. That the Maharashtra assembly has not had a regular speaker for over 16 months is a gem of the shenanigans the governor is so fond of. But that is a different story.

The top court gave BJP-incited rebels a reprieve till July 12 to file their reply to the disqualification notice. The Shiv Sena had asked the SC to give them relief from a floor test till then. The court had noted that the point did not arise at the moment since there was no such case before it. It would take a call when the time arose, it had promised. The governor’s assent to a floor test on June 30, as asked for by the BJP, will be challenged by the Shiv Sena in the SC. Democratic sentiment awaits with bated breath if the SC continues with its government-appeasement mood as was evidenced in Teesta Setalvad affair and if it will give Uddhav Thackeray time till July 13 to prove the majority.

A video of a telephonic conversation by a Radissonite, himself a habitual Party-hopper, describing in rustic Marathi the surrounding hills and woods has gone viral. They were in heaven and all was well with the world. The tipsiness ‘injected’ into them by ‘who-cannot-be-named’ made him overlook the ‘water, water everywhere’ caused by the devastating flood.  One of the hostage MLAs who managed to escape and come back narrated a horrendous story how a huge posse of Gujarat police caught him escaping from Surat and tried to convince him that he was having a ‘heart attack’ and administered ‘some’ injection. Well, they must be Munnabhais in uniform. This reminds one of how Justice Loya too had a ‘heart attack’ in Nagpur. The alleged blood on Justice Loya’s shirt collar has magically vanished from public memory. This MLA also narrated how the ‘legislators in police uniform’ also brought back an errant MLA, who dared to escape, from a distance of 80 kilometres.  All this is straight out of Bertolt Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. There is widespread talk of Rs 50 crore each being given to the rebel MLAs, and also exemption from ED and IT enquiries. The needle of suspicion is clear.

In the meanwhile, the Shiv Sainiks loyal to Uddhav Thackeray are itching to give a grand welcome to the absconders in the rustic valleys of the Sahyadri, as and when they return. They have attacked the offices and smeared and torn the posters of many of the Radissonites. The union home ministry provided with great alacrity Y+ security cover to these renegades. These are not saints, the Shiv Sainiks know very well. Eknath Shinde himself is believed to have become a multibillionaire, starting life as a humble auto-rickshaw driver.  His irresistible rise has not attracted the attention of the ED, but he cannot escape the piercing eyes of the plebian party worker on the ground. Eknath Shinde may have opportunistically rediscovered the power of brahminical Hindutva, but it is the power of the ED from which he has been so shrewdly let off.

For many MLAs with a criminal background, Hindutva and protection from the dreaded central agencies, ready to pounce at the wish of the BJP central government, provide the last resort. This is the ‘resort’ politics of the real kind. The prologue of the thriller drama is over. The prompter, in the person of Devendra Fadnavis, has come on the stage and is seeking to take over the role of the protagonist. Shinde, Fadnavis and Amit Shah had a not very secret meeting. The hostages will return to Maharashtra with the backing of the coercive power of the State, hoards of ill-gotten funds and the howlers of the corporate media baying for the MVA blood to enact the final act of the coup d’etat.

Let us call this sordid saga by its proper name. This is nothing less than a coup d’etat masterminded by the BJP. Maharashtra had in history its measure of renegades, crawling before the central autocracies, of which RSS is an epitome of squeamish slavery during the British Raj. The state of Maharashtra was born in the crucible of the Samyukta Maharashtra Movement, a democratic struggle against the overarching central government. It was mainly the worker-peasant alliance, led by a united front of communists, socialists, Ambedkarites and democrats of various hues that dreamed of creating a “Socialist Maharashtra in a Socialist India”. 106 martyrs, mostly industrial workers and peasants, laid down their lives for that dream. Public memory is said to be proverbially short, but it is so because it has a tendency to hibernate, waiting to rejuvenate when the weather that is conducive occurs.

This could well be a déjà vu moment in Maharashtra politics. Seventy years ago, in 1952, there was a lone Communist legislator in a house of 315 seats in the then Bombay assembly. But it was the Communists, along with the democratic forces, who successfully led the struggle for the Samyukta Maharashtra from the front. The CPI(M) Maharashtra state committee, which met on June 23-24, during the height of the drama, resolved to go to the people and explain in rallies the sordid coup imposed on the state by the authoritarian and communal central government of the RSS-BJP. RSS, true to its shameless legacy during British colonialism, kept itself aloof from the Samyukta Maharashtra Movement. Not so the real Marathi Manoos.  

There is an added factor. The central government has undermined the state government in its pursuit of handing over Mumbai and Maharashtra to its crony corporates. The Mumbai Municipal Corporation, the richest corporation in the country, will soon go for polls along with several other urban and rural local bodies. The BJP, with obscene corporate funds in its kitty, and having weakened almost every democratic pillar of the constitution, is eying to snatch the golden goose from the opposition.

The times are dangerous but challenging.