February
7, 2008 Can Mumbai be
Parochial and Global
at Same Time? By Mayank Chhaya
Rabble rousing has been the centerpiece of the Mumbai-based Shiv
Sena's political philosophy since its inception. For decades it has
substituted genuine vision with nuisance value. That approach has
paid handsome dividends, particularly in terms of giving its founder
Bal Thackeray and his family members a sway over the affairs of the
city way out of proportion to its actual contribution.
Now his rebellious nephew Raj Thackeray is taking a page out of his
uncle's book as he goes about building his splinter group
Maharashtra Navnirman Sena into a force of some influence. Since he
has been reared on a culture of unvarnished political thuggery, the
best option he could think of was to allegedly launch a completely
disingenuous attack on the movie icon Amitabh Bachchan. Whether
Bachchan has used Mumbai strictly for utilitarian purposes, as
Thackeray junior has strenuously argued, is secondary to the more
serious question of the kind of polity India's financial hub wants
to tolerate.
The animus that the Sena and its ideological offspring like Raj
Thackeray has nurtured against those they perceive to be outsiders
has frequently led to serious conflagrations over the past three
decades. These chauvinist groups' targets of hate have changed over
the years depending on the political expediency of the time. It has
shifted from being anti-south Indian to anti-Gujarati to anti-Muslim
to anti-north Indian based on purely cynical political calculations.
For instance, the relations between the city's Maharashtrian and
Gujarati populations, which were once seriously strained, are now
being described by Raj Thackeray's group as between "milk and
sugar".
Those who have been trained in the brand of politics crafted by the
Sena have come to see themselves as the arbiters of the city's
destiny and every time they sense a danger to that role, they resort
to tactics which would have no place in any civil discourse. From
all available accounts, Raj Thackeray's Maharashtra Navnirman Sena
has not been able to fashion any role of influence for itself since
its founding two years ago. The best way to draw attention to itself
and in the process gain some political traction is to indulge in
precisely the kind of rhetoric that Raj Thackeray did.
In many ways the Marathi versus non-Marathi debate is reminiscent of
the Americans versus illegal Latino/Mexican immigrants in the US.
The influx of non-Maharashtrians into Mumbai and that of
Latinos/Mexicans into the US are both fuelled and sustained by the
vast opportunities that exist in the menial sectors of the economy.
For instance, it is being increasingly argued that "bhaiyyas", as
migrant labour from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar are pejoratively called,
are willing to do the kind of work that the more literate
Maharashtrians are not. This is exactly the argument one hears about
why illegal Latino/Mexican aliens are able to find work in sectors
such as agriculture, construction, housekeeping and so on. The
constant refrain of the Sena and its ideological offspring like Raj
Thackeray's group has been that non-Maharashtrians take away jobs
that would have otherwise gone to "Marathi Manus" or local
Maharashtrians. One hears precisely the same argument in the US
about how Mexicans and other Latino migrants ea into the job market
at the cost of legal American residents.
The question that does not get seriously addressed when such frenzy
is whipped up is whether Mumbai can tolerate such parochialism and
still hope to emerge as a major global financial centre. The simple
fact is that most of the economic vibrancy of the city is a result
of its demographic mix. It is debatable whether the city would have
acquired its primacy had it remained insular and dominated by just
one ethnic group.
Having said that though, it is necessary to recognize that migrants
from other parts of the country do bring with them some of the less
than edifying cultural predilections, which are often the cause of
friction with the city's native population. Mumbai has by and large
distinguished itself as a metropolis that respects merit above
everything else. However, as the influx into the city creates a more
diverse ethnographic mosaic, it also creates cultural strains in
terms of attitudes towards gender equality, language, religion and
class. At some level, the tensions between the Samajwadi Party and
Maharashtra Navnirman Sena are emblematic of two political groupings
that have practiced a certain brand of politics that is often bereft
of finesse and subtlety. A large presence of people from Uttar
Pradesh in the city offers a natural constituency to the Samajwadi
Party, which also sees in them their chance to upstage the Shiv Sena
and its progeny.
In any event, both these parties will have to fundamentally alter
their political philosophy if they seriously want Mumbai to rise to
the level of global influence it is so capable of.
(Mayank Chhaya, a former resident
of Mumbai, is a Chicago-based writer and commentator. He can be
reached at chooki6@yahoo.com)
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