Bal Thackeray - Valid & Pithy, mostly.

What I would say to Mr. Bal Thackeray anent his quoted remarks – “Who is this Rahul Gandhi? What is there in him? Tomorrow any school kid will rise and ask to be made the prime minister.” – TOI, October 21, 2011, pg. 16, if I could, and I wasn’t interrupted.

Mr. Thackeray, sir, as usual your reported questions and comments give me much to think about, They, your questions, are, and I must admit to a degree of surprise at this, valid and pithy. Your comments, however, quite often leave me puzzled and discombobulated. I find myself trying to parse those comments to get them to fit into the world in which I live. A world, I hasten to add, very removed from the one in which you do, which may of course explain my perplexity.

For instance – Your question on the ‘is-ness’ of young Mr. Gandhi. Valid and pithy. There is rightness to wanting to know about the reality of a potential prime minister; about the reality of anyone who aspires to leadership of the political kind, really. “Are you for real?” you, we, the people, can ask, with full justification. “Do you know how to separate the personal from the important?” you, we, can wonder, recognizing as we do, that a leader better know the difference. After all, we wouldn’t want to be led by someone who is, say, perpetually squabbling, in an unseemly manner, with a sibling.

Then there’s the question on Mr. R. Gandhi’s substance. “What is there in him?” you ask. Valid and pithy.. You, we, have every right to ask that of a leader. What are you made of? Is your substance corrodible? Is there enough mass to withstand the erosions of governance and political expediencies? Is your substance brittle, frangible? Prone to slight and sensitive (some might say hyper-sensitive) to slander? Is lashing out still part of your political armamentarium? “Mr. Gandhi”, we want to be able to say to him, “our leader needs to be a person who considers the destructive capabilities of his power in his leadership. Or are you prone to releasing your myrmidons and then regretting, but understanding, the collateral damage? ” We can justifiably, and honorably, ask of our waiting in the wings 2^nd level leaders whether they understand that a criterion for a democracy is the freedom of opinion; that there is no hierarchy to belief. We can suggest that things like banning the publishing of opinions on heritage, culture, or, for that matter, your opinion, is just not a sustainable component of substance.

See how my thoughts are informed by your pithy validity? See how you have me looking at all aspiring leaders, on all levels of governance with more educated eyes?

So then we come to the comment, and my discombobulation.

See, Mr. T, if any school kid cannot rise up and aspire to prime ministership, then what is the point of a democracy? Why bother paying lip service to a classless, casteless society with equality as a birth right? Why not just keep it in the family and leave governance to the ones born to... Oh, wait, I just realized you don’t like Rahul Gandhi’s family either, do you? All that foreign blood mucking up the purity. Unconscionable.

See, all I had to do is think about your comment, and it all became clear.

Thank you, sir.