Show no mercy to these terrorists.

Apparently, cultural identity is not a concern of Maharashtrians alone. I came across this news article on the New York Times, which discusses the concerns of the citizens of the United Arab Emirates, in particular Dubai. The only difference is their affluence and government subsidies prevent them from “going out to the street with a stick and chase people out”.

Some people (probably with some acute form of learning disabilities) claim that migration is not an economic issue. Here’s what the Dubai government does to keep the Emirati’s happy …

1. free tuition and expenses for their university studies in Britain, including a monthly stipend of $1,258 while abroad.

2. On returning, government jobs that pay $3,600 a month, which like all income here is tax free.

3. When they plan to marry, the government will give them each a piece of land free and about $200,000 to build a house, plus access to a 10- or 20-year interest-free loan.

The constant din of the roof top revelers of cosmopolitanism against parochialism revolves around the language issue. These flag-bearers of cosmopolitanism claim that Mumbai’s cosmopolitan image is hurt by putting Marathi sign-boards or otherwise insisting on the usage of Marathi language.

Pardon me for being a mutt, but may be these cosmo’s can explain what any language has to do with a city being cosmopolitan? Is Paris any less cosmopolitan for expressing itself in French? What about Tokyo, Shanghai or Seoul? How are these clones, who somehow seem to think it is beneath them to speak the local language, any different from this boy who believes that he is a re-incarnation of some american professor?

Nobody is asking you to play Marathi songs in discotheques; at least not yet. (I do hope that my Marathi music-composer friends are reading this.) But if Bambaiyaa Hindi can be the linguistic Kamikaze on the chaste Hindi of the cow belt, won’t you return us the favor?

But, there is more to this debate than just what the cosmo’s feel about a language. Even bigger than the aspirations of these urbanites is the need to make available the fruits of a democracy to all its people. Take for instance the access to state governmental health care programs. How can a doctor address the needs of his or her patients if he/she can’t communicate with them? Should we wait for a crash course from MNS to impart crash courses to our doctors? This is true for Indian Railways as well. The vast majority of the people who tend to use the Indian Railways are not affluent English speaking, but the poor and illiterate kind, who only tend to speak in their native languages. If people from only a handful of states dominate Railway jobs, how does it benefit these passengers in making effective use of services that are meant for them? Are their rights not being infringed by the malfeasance of the Railway authorities?

Which brings me to the oft quoted counter argument of the pro-migrant lobby that ‘All Indians have a right to move to any part of India.’ Do these people realise how fragile their argument becomes if they have to fall back upon the constitution to defend their positions? Besides, what about my right to feel at home in my home state? Are only those rights that are enshrined in the constitution worth protecting?

I recently came across couple of interesting blogs, both written by non-Maharashtrians, which address the insider-outsider conflict in Mumbai. But, they differ in how one blog focusses on the visually obvious tree’s while the other pans over the bigger picture, the forest.

Atanu Dey in his blog characterizes Raj Thackeray, as an amateur politician. who fundamentally is not much different from the more seasoned politicians, who also tend to use divisive politics for their own empowerment and enrichment. The only difference would be that Raj Thackeray is playing gully cricket, while the other politicians are playing it in the stadium. On the eve of Barack Obama’s historic victory in the US presidential elections, CNN-IBN held a panel discussion, which was attended by Chandra Bhan an advisor to Mayawati (I suppose there are some parallels between Madam Chief Minister and the President-Elect, however suffocating the mere thought maybe.) The notable quote from Chandra Bhan was how casteist discrimination is a national problem that Mayawati is rightly poised to “address”. So, the question facing the people of India is whether they are going to divide themselves along the lines of caste or whether they are going to divide themselves along the boundaries of their language. In this context, let us not forget how the Babri Masjid against Ram Janma Bhoomi was essentially a cow-belt issue that got nationalized through the Rath Yatra.

Notwithstanding Raj Thackeray, the concern of every Maharashtrian then would rightly be to avoid the casteist divisions that are bound to follow as an influx of migrants from the Hindi belt brings that peculiar brand of politics to our state. While Raj Thackeray is addressing this on an insider-outsider platform, I’m aghast that the other politicians, national or from Maharashtra, seem to be doing absolutely nothing to unite people across their castes. In a post-Khairlanji Maharashtra, this is particularly required. Take for instance, that after 58 years of a republic, whose constitution was framed by a Dalit Dr. Ambedkar, Indian newspapers still continue to advertise classified ad’s for marriages, which explicitly spell out caste based preferences, if I may euphemestically refer it so. If there is any place to attack these divisions or any other, the matrimonial ad’s it is.

By now, people from across this planet have heard about Barack Obama’s historic victory in becoming the first African-American President of the greatest democracy on earth, the United States of America. The last time a colored man captured the news headlines, media attention and brought the racial divide in the US out in the open was during the trials of O.J.Simpson (a one time popular American Football player) for the murder of his white ex-wife Nicole and her boyfriend. The results of that trial, while also being hailed by the African-American community, left the psyche of this country deeply divided along racial lines. How is it then that in a matter of a dozen odd years, a majority of white americans can bridge that divide and trust their futures in the hands of a black man, who was born in the segregation era?

If you bother to cut out all the commentary, it boils down to one and only one reason … the tremendous faith of the american people in their government to protect their rights.

So … I don’t have to tell you about the disconnect of an un-adulterated trust between the people of India and its governments. Indeed, the very fact that we have linguistic states in India is a testament to the fact that we do not expect fair treatment from the hands of a nepotistic polity. No wonder then that the States Re-organization Committee in the post-independence India acceded to the demands of the people who felt that their interests would be better served by politicians who shared their mother-tongues.

The acts of central cabinet ministers who shamelessly capture jobs for people from their home states are simply put daggers in the heart of the sacred trust that should exist between a people and its government. Why are we then so surprised if India produces Laloo’s, Mayawati’s, Mulayam’s and Thackeray’s while America produces Obama’s?

I came across this very eloquent blog from a fellow Maharashtrian that gives vent to the travails of Maharashtrians in Mumbai. When I read these instances of Maharashtrians being put down with ethnic slurs, to being treated like a cheap criminal in your home state and city for speaking in your mother tongue, I wonder if the backlash against these wolves in sheep’s clothing for signage and communication in Marathi was not to be expected.

What started in suburban Mumbai as the roadside vegetable vendor from north India saying ‘Hamaari Bitiya Indira Gandhi’, eventually morphed in to a self-righteous demand of ‘Hindi mein bolo’. Funny how, what we believed was our national language just turned out to be ‘an official language of the central government‘ just like English. (Interestingly our textbooks in Maharashtra never bothered to clarify that, nor did they ever mention the Samyukta Maharashtra movement.) Equally interesting was the violent campaign against English medium schools in UP/Bihar during the 80’s and 90’s — apparently linguistic ‘Asmita’ is not a Maharashtrian monopoly.

But, our attempts at a more inclusive campaign of ‘Mee Mumbaikar’ only fetched us an in our face ‘Jiska number Mumbai ka, woh Mumbai ka’. So, if Raj Thackeray and his men are paying back ‘Hindi mein Bolo’ with ‘Hindi mein Ro Lo’, who is to be blamed?

The sad part is that the price of spurning the hand of friendship is being paid by soft targets and not the senile bourgeois like Bachi Karkaria, who extol the virtues of multi-generational serfs from Bihar, and who probably never travel in the BEST buses but find angels among gun-toting machos shooting at innocent passengers.

A testament to Mumbai’s infra-structure woes. Hawkers make tea in toilets.

Send us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses; we don’t have enough of ours.

The unfortunate death of DharamDev Rai has grabbed the national headlines as well as eyeballs and clicks on the electronic and digital media. Nothing can justify the death of an innocent individual, no matter how accidental it is. I’m sure many people are aggrieved, as they rightly should be. But, if and when we are past this grief, can some one please pay some attention to the other side of this story from the Mumbai Mirror?

It has been very well publicized that DharamDev and his friends were workers at Khopoli, but what has not yet received the same attention is the fact some of the men (and a minor boy) who were involved in the assault were also from Khopoli. In fact these Maharashtrian villagers had given up/sold their lands to the steel plant back in 2003/04 in hopes of securing jobs for their families. Instead once the steel plant was built, a majority of the jobs were given to workers from out of the state, many of them north Indians. This was followed by an agitation by the villagers which involved morchas, hunger strikes and eventually fisticups with north Indian workers. The north Indian workers also organized their morchas which resulted in some of the villagers being arrested and externed.

So, now I’m left wondering who is smarter, UP/Bihar or Maharashtra? The way I see it … the farmers of UP/Bihar are keeping their farmlands and sending their excess labor to states like Maharashtra, Karnataka, Gujarat and Andhra. Meanwhile, these other states are asking their farmers to give up their fertile lands to develop SEZs in hopes of attracting jobs. There are 131 SEZs in Maharashtra which are slated to attract an investment of Rs. 1.35 lakh crores and generate 60 lakh jobs. For Whom?

This is in response to this blog post.

First, let me make it very clear that I do not condone or support in any manner the violent tactics of MNS. The deaths of north-Indians in Mumbai are tragic and regrettable. Any self-respecting Maharashtrian would find these events shameful. But, I’m equally in anguish at the fact that the failure of governments of UP/Bihar to create opportunities for their own people, to provide a secure environment for their people and industries is playing out in my home state. Equally disappointing is the fact that people from UP/Bihar only want to look at the symptoms and not the root cause.

Take for example, your reference to Shiv Sena’s role in the riots of 92/93. Did these riots occur spontaneously in a vacuum? Or should we forget the role of the Rath Yatra and the demolition of some god forsaken Babri Masjid in the Hindi heartland?

There is no doubt that Maharashtra is also inflicted by communalist forces. But, in its almost 50 years of existence, how many years do you think the BJP/SS combine was able to govern over Maharashtra? Barely 5 years.

Besides, if Bal Thackeray is so reviled for his communalist writings, how come the same people, who are now at the receiving end of the MNS campaign, won’t pip a squeak when the minority community is at the receiving end?

I’m not going to defend corrupt politicians, but let us not forget that Abdul Karim Telgi was a migrant from Karnataka. Let us also not forget that the top cop who helped him and is now cooling his heels in jail, was none other than Mumbai Police Commissioner, R. S. Sharma. Besides, inspite of these corrupt politicians has there been a loss of jobs or industries in Maharashtra?

Regarding Raj Thackeray’s statement, don’t you distinguish between statements made for political consumption and those made for galvanizing people? Which state did we see the fires in? Did Raj Thackeray ask the people of Bihar to burn trains or was it Laloo to put more pressure on Nitish Kumar?

I think the Khairlanji murders is probably one of the best examples of how things are handled differently in Maharashtra as compared to UP/Bihar. There can be no doubt that caste discrimination is rampant in many parts of India, including UP, Bihar and Maharashtra. When these brutal murders came to light, there was so much uproar in the Maharashtrian society the state government was forced to take stern action against the perpetrators. In about two years time, 6 of the accused have been sentenced to death, in spite of their political connections. Contrast this with Bihar, where people are scared to even use their last names for fear of identifying their caste.

Perhaps you might want to explain what you mean by your Bollywood jobs for Maharashtrians comment, because I’vent read anything quite as irrational lately. Is Bollywood the only movie industry in India? Who is to decide they won’t get the jobs in Marathi film industry and why? Actually, I’m quite perplexed by the fascination of people towards Bollywood. How many jobs do you think Bollywood creates and how much do you think those jobs are worth? For the kind of attitude that Bollywood biggies flaunt, Mumbai would be far better off without it than with it.

Need I say more?

“Penalty is now ten thousand rupees now …”