The shame of it!

I am a Mumbaikar. A very proud one, always identifying myself as belonging to the city and its ethos - a multicultural, multi-dimensional ethos, one that is liberal, accepting, absorbing and educative, all on one wonderful experience. While my parents are not native to Mumbai - or Bombay, as it was known when they moved here and how it is known to most of us who live here even today - I am, since I was born in the city and spent a lot of my growing up time here too. I worked here, I lived here - and sort of still do - and will probably die here, unless I am suddenly transported with bags, baggage and life to somewhere else as interesting as my home-town. All my form-filling existence has been dotted with blanks that demand to know my 'native place'. When I come to that line, I stop, wonder, ponder and have no idea what I should say, since I cannot avail of a mandatory leave travel allowance to go 'back home', since 'back home' is where I am in any case.

But all that is a little besides the intended point. For now, I am vaguely ashamed to be myself, to belong to the city I call mine. Not because of anything I have done, but because of local politics and politicians. One man seems to be holding the government of my home state to ransom, free to vandalise and perpetrate violence, excusing himself and his cohorts with the simple statement of "Mee Marathi manoos". Raj Thackeray, very much in the news for just having been arrested and now out on bail once again, has stirred up a long-subdued sentiment which, in effect, translates to 'Mumbai for Mumbaikars', where 'Mumbaikars' further loosely translates to 'Maharashtrians' or those who are native to the state, speak the local language (Marathi) and find a home here. Those from elsewhere in India, from the North especially, are not welcome. Somewhere along the way, that does not compute. There are so many like me who are born here, live here but are not natives of the local culture, lifestyle or language, but they have contributed extensively to what this city is all about, pay local taxes, keep the economy of the metropolis buzzing happily and add beauty, life and spirit to the already dynamic Bombay beat.

So when Raj T demands that the city be reserved for its native population, the question automatically arises: Who is that native population? People like me? People like the myriad and famous-name industrialist families who have given the city its reputation as a city of gold? People like the many young aspirants who have come here to establish themselves as gods of the big screen? People who make the city function, from the taxi drivers to the garbage collectors to the railway workers to the faceless men who install billboards at strategic locations? How are they 'Marathi manoos' except for the fact that they spend their lives trying to make Mumbai a better place to be?

Wis Raj T doing that makes me cringe? He claims that Mumbai is for those of his ilk - fine, that makes sense, we are all in that broad category. But he goes further, goes radical, and says that only those who truly belong here should stay here. The others, like those from the North (many years ago, his uncle, Bal Thackeray, similarly groused against those from the South, sending the South Indian community into a collective tizzy), should leave, post-haste, and if they do not, they will be ejected with a certainty of force. Instead of using his silver-tongued rhetoric (no, that is not my way of putting it, but a media favourite) and politesse, he has been inciting his followers to choose violence as a method of action. As a result, the small man on the street - the taxi driver, the chana-walla, the pushcart vendor - and the outsider looking for a door that opportunity could knock on, from an exam for a job in the railways to a post as intern with a hospital has been threatened, beaten up, even killed in at least one unfortunate recent incident. These are the people who will take Mumbai to where it can go tomorrow or some day in the future. These are the people who keep the city working, ticking along, so that people like Raj T and his party fanatics can live in the style and comfort to which they are accustomed. And these are the people who are being persecuted, their lives and livelihoods endangered. The people that Raj T thinks do not belong here. Raj T is a Mumbaikar, a trule-blue one, he claims. This is how he supports his claim.

And that makes me ashamed to be a Mumbaikar.