The death due to natural causes in Mumbai of Shiv Sena founder-supremo Bal Thackeray (86) brings closure to an inglorious chapter in the political history of India and Bombay — India’s commercial capital — which he perhaps more than any other individual, transformed into Mumbai, the crime capital of India. Despite all encomiums and veneration including a state funeral covered all-day long on television by sombre news anchors, Thackeray’s politics was always anchored in resentment of the Other as perceptively noted by Praveen Swami in The Hindu (November 20). In various whimsical stages of his political career he was anti-south Indian, anti-north Indian, anti-Muslim and anti-social inasmuch as he instigated one of Mumbai’s deadliest anti-Muslim riots in 1992-93. Unimpressed by his muscle and/or divisive politics together with the late J. B. D’Souza, your editor filed a writ petition in the Bombay high court against the Maharashtra state government for failing to prosecute Thackeray under ss.153-A and 505 of the IPC for preaching and propagating communal disharmony and instigating murder and mayhem in the country’s commercial capital. Yet so great was the fear of Shiv Sena goons over the city, that a two-judge bench of the court dismissed the petition on the flimsy technical ground that we should have filed a police complaint before filing the writ. And wonder of wonders, that absurd judgement was upheld by the Supreme Court. Fear of the mob. That’s the legacy of Bal Thackeray. Iron Lady’s vaulting ambition Well into the new millennium until ten years ago, the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank India, which in its avatar as the Mercantile Bank (estb. 1853) predates the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Ltd, Hongkong, the founding member of the globe-girdling London-based HSBC Holdings Plc (pretax profit US $ 21.9 billion or Rs.121,853 crore in 2011), was the most consumer-friendly foreign bank in India. HSBC India’s young managers often exercised their discretion to lend a helping hand to struggling entrepreneurs and small-scale businesses. Indeed, but for a timely overdraft sanctioned by Zareer Cama, who a quarter century later was appointed the first Indian chief executive of HSBC India, Business India (estb. 1978), which gave the first clarion call against the neta-babu, licence-permit-quota raj, would have collapsed under the weight of its modest debts. But after Cama who served as CEO of HSBC India for almost five years was promoted to the position of group general manager of HSBC Holdings London, Naina Lal Kidwai, who had joined HSBC India in 2000, was unexpectedly promoted to the corner office as CEO. Under her dispensation the bank reverted to type. All oleaginous letters by your editor to Lal Kidwai, a social acquaintance (whose son I taught to play squash), requesting a modest working capital loan for this then struggling publication, remained unanswered and an HSBC advertising campaign in EW was abruptly terminated. Instead, under Kidwai the bank aggressively courted high net worth individuals (HNIs) and corporate behemoths. But recent media and government reports indicate that Lal Kidwai, now chairman of HSBC…
