Feb.13 : The Shiv Sena has taken two beatings in one week on its home turf of Mumbai. Last Friday it was Rahul Gandhi’s barnstorming trip to Maximum City that punctured the chauvinists on the Mumbai-for-all-Indians issue, thanks to the “Marathi manoos” in whose name the Sena has repeatedly tried to grab the limelight. Some of the impact of the good work seemed to be lost when agriculture minister and NCP chief Sharad Pawar proceeded to pay homage to Sena supremo Balasaheb Thackeray right after Mr Rahul Gandhi’s visit in the guise of talking cricket.

This emboldened the practitioners of goon politics to up the ante on the Shah Rukh Khan issue. But once again, exactly a week following the Sena’s capitulation on the first issue, the “Marathi manoos”, and the people of Mumbai more generally, rose to the occasion. Once the cinema owners agreed after considerable hesitation to risk the Sena’s ire — which can still harm them in the future — and to screen My Name is Khan, the people of Mumbai came out in crushing numbers to defeat the plot of the violence-makers which had rested on large-scale intimidation through vicious propaganda. The show is, thus, on. It was clear from the beginning that the entire affair had little to do with cinema or sports (the Sena campaign had kicked off after Mr Khan’s observations on Pakistani cricketers), and that it was an attempt on the part of the Thackerays to revive their party organisation which had begun to sag ominously after its numbing election defeats.What is noteworthy about the recent happenings is that a political party with a dubious and consistent record of targeting population groups on the basis of their language or religion has been brought to its knees by the determined action of the ordinary people of Maharashtra — first their voting against it in the last Lok Sabha and the state Assembly elections, and now on two separate occasions within the space of a week. People did not act on the basis of whether they were Hindu or Muslim, or Marathi-speaking or not. In the end, they won and the Shiv Sena lost. That will raise spirits in Mumbai, Maharashtra more widely, and in the country as a whole. We must not forget for a minute that the world too watches when negative political developments threaten to break out in India, given this country’s current profile in the international community. News in the end was reassuring. For the positive story that has come out of Mumbai, some credit is also due to another quarter. Tickets for MNIK being sold out in five seconds flat and for as much as one thousand euros at the Berlin film festival on Thursday could not but have given a nudge to the mood of the civil society in Mumbai.Regrettably, it needs to be said that the Maharashtra state government had only a peripheral role in this week’s humbling of the Shiv Sena. First it was Mr Gandhi’s bold foray that came to the rescue of the Ashok Chavan administration, and then the action of the people. The government did well to deploy police in sufficient numbers. Not doing even that would have hurt it irreparably. However, official assurances of providing an environment of security for the first screening of MNIK did not have the desired effect with cinema owners, and only a few were ready to take the risk initially. It was only the subsequent popular wave that transformed the atmosphere. Mr Chavan’s leadership is apt to come under strain in the circumstances. Events of the past week also carry a message for the BJP. Will the country’s main Opposition party continue its association with the Sena?