India's liberal foundation

I just read The off-key notes of a Sena scion by Rahul Pandita in Open magazine. The quick summary: Aditya Thackeray is the son of Uddhav Thackeray and the grand-son of Bal Thackeray, both of whom are the most-feared politicians of Bombay. He is now being initiated into politics, and has led the charge by threatening violence against those who would read Rohington Mistry. But his resume up to here features all sorts of nice nineteenth century liberal values such as writing poetry, mostly in English, rap music, Urdu, wearing jeans, and a bit of French. The article correctly draws attention to the hypocrisy of those involved.



But in it, I see another dimension. An upbringing in the Thackeray family is as strong an indoctrination into the sectarian perspective as you could ask for. I find it quite striking that between a certain strong ideology being sold at home, and the broader liberal worldview that pervades India, young Aditya evolved into the culture of an open and inclusive India.



The idea of India is about a great coalition of people who differ in ethnicity, language, religion, skin colour, education, income etc., who have figured out how to live together with a mixture of tolerance and individualism, without getting trapped in hatred or envy. This liberal India was strong enough to be appealing to Aditya Thackeray, and this story tells us that we're in good shape.