Column

Sotto voce

Whenever I hear the word culture, I reach for my revolver,” is a quote often attributed to the leading Nazi Hermann Goering, though a little bit of digging shows that the real author was someone else entirely. It doesn’t really matter who said it— what does is the quote’s import and implication.

Culture is the most used and abused notion of our times. The Nazis were adept at the cultural game — without culture, Nazism would have collapsed.

In India, parties like the BJP brought culture into the public space, deploying it to great effect during the Ram Janmabhoomi agitation.

Bal Thackeray had raised the question of Marathi culture in the 1960s, touching a chord among a community that felt their status was being marginalisedin Bombay.

It worked beyond his own expectations and built him up into a powerful figure though whether that has helped Maharashtrians in any tangible way is open to debate.

Borrowing a leaf from his uncle’s book, now Raj Thackeray has also gone down the same route, attacking north Indians (chiefly migrants from UP and Bihar) to woo Maharashtrians.

He has tried to tap into a sense of cultural loss among Maharashtrians, which is a subject that the community and its intellectuals have been debating for some time. But he has no answers or solutions, only invective. And he has gone a step further that his uncle — he hascome out sharply against Amitabh Bachchan.

Thackeray Jr’s grouse against Bachchan is that the actor has only identified himself with his native UP and done nothing for Maharashtra.

He stood for elections in Allahabad, he was brand ambassador for UP, he has opened a school in that state and what’s more, he even sang ‘Chora Ganga Kinaare wala.’ (Presumably Raj would have been happier if Bachchan had sung ‘Chora Mithi kinaare wala.’ We haven’t been told.)

Trying to blame north Indians for the alleged problems, cultural or otherwise, ofMarathi speakers is a bit disingenuous; but bringing Bachchan into this silly debate is even more ridiculous. Among Thackeray’s many miscalculations, the criticism of Bachchan was the worst.

To begin with, equating Bachchan with the auto-driver just doesn’t work. Both may hail from Uttar Pradesh and may have come here for opportunity, but beyond that there is no connection. His appeal is not limited to his community-wallahs; Bachchan is an icon for the entire country. He has not claimed to be a leader of the city’s auto and cab drivers.

But Bachchan is more than just a pan-Indian cinema star. His personal life too reflects a pan-Indianness not often seen among public figures. He is the child of a Kayastha father and Sikh mother; He studied in Delhi and worked in Calcutta; he married a Bengali from Madhya Pradesh; his daughter is married to a Punjabi and the son to a Mumbai-girl of Karnataka origin.

How much more culturally mixed can one be? He typifies the secular spirit of Bollywood, of Mumbai and of his country-— trying to fit him into a narrow, parochial base is simply absurd, indeed, laughable.

Which is why, Thackeray’s attacks on Bachchan have met with hardly any response. Maharashtrians love Bachchan —why shouldn’t they? I seriously doubt they would walk out of Don because he sings, on screen, of his love for the Ganga, or turn off the television when extols the virtues of UP (though they may wonder about his friendship with Amar Singh.)

What has all this got to do with culture? Well, culture is the great weapon that is sometimes visible, sometimes hidden. Thackeray is not merely trying to provoke grievances about job losses — he is tapping into latent prejudices about the cultural practices of the ‘outsiders’ — the noisy crowds of Chhat puja for example.

The newly arrived ‘Bhaiyyas’ tend to congregate among their own, which is typical migrant behaviour, and take some time to fully assimilate. That disturbs the locals, as the Sikhs and the East African Indians did to the British in the 1970s.

Does that mean that Maharashtrians (or Mumbaikars in general) will rally behind Raj Thackeray and bash up the north Indians? No. Maharashtrians may be prejudiced like everyone else, but are also cosmopolitan. Mumbai is not parochial-mindedlike other cites-- that is our strength.

So the question begs itself — why did he suddenly start all this? And why, even if he wanted to score political points, did he have to drag Amitabh Bachchan into it?

Email: sidharth01@dnaindia.net