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ShareThough I live and work in Mumbai, I was born and brought up in Bombay. The past is another country, wrote LP Hartley and from this distance of so many years, it does look like this city was another country altogether. Not that we did not have our share our nativists and bigots, but it was certainly more civilised and cultured.
Anyway, I often slip into using that name for the city. Around me are several younger colleagues, locally-born or migrants who effortlessly call it Mumbai and gradually, I have noticed, I too have given up Bombay in conversations. The same thing had happened when Poona had become Pune, Thana became Thane and Flora Fountain turned into Hutatma Chowk. There was initial confusion and even some resistance from diehards, but gradually the name change became part of our daily vocabulary. This is a comfortable duality that people can live with.
So why the fuss when the word Bombay crops up in a film? We all know the answer to that one--there is a crucial election looming and every little advantage counts. Raj Thackeray, who is fighting his first state level poll and is eager to show that he is a power to be reckoned with, is looking for ways to establish his credibility.
Buoyed by the performance of his candidates in the Lok Sabha elections, he feels that the native Marathi speaker in the city is torn between supporting him and the Shiv Sena. What will win that fence sitter over to the MNS? Raj thinks that whoever demonstrates he can look after the interests of the Marathi manoos has a good chance of getting support from the urban Maharashtrian. Ergo suddenly he has upped the Marathi-chauvinism quotient. When he heard that Karan Johar's film Wake Up Sid used that foul word 'Bombay', he saw an opportunity.
Now Raj Thackeray definitely knows much about politics than ivory tower journalists, but I think that this may be a miscalculation. Getting young Karan Johar to eat crow before him may give a small twinge of pleasure to some of his supporters -- yet another bloody migrant shown his place -- and speaking in Marathi on satellite television may get a brownie point or two, but all this has insignifant impact on voting.
Those who will eventually vote for Raj Thackeray's party or not vote for it have many other reasons to do so. They may think that a vote for him would be wasted; they may be sentimentally inclined towards Bal Thackeray;they may not be convinced he has it in him to make a difference; despite being Marathi manoos, they might not be chauvinistic or enamoured of either of the two Senas.
The Marathi manoos mantra is a bit of a red herring. If people voted only according to their linguistic or religious affiliations, then the Shiv Sena would have been perpetually in power in Maharashtra. Yet, it took the party nearly two decades after formation to win even the municipal elections in the (then) Bombay. After that, the party had to win another decade before it could form the state government.
Millions of Marathi speakers are quite content to vote for the Congress, the NCP, the BJP, the Peasants and Workers Party, the CPM and now the Bahujan Samaj Party. Mumbai, Pune and Thane have the most pro-Shiv Sena voters, but here too it will depend on the candidate and many other local dynamics. There is the loyalty factor--many Sainiks have simply refused to jettison the party they have been with for decades. The Shiv Sena continues to be a reasonably well-oiled machine at the grassroots level which cannot be said about the MNS yet.
But most of all, it would be foolish to assume that all the Marathi manoos thinks about is his language and culture. True, these are issues that bother the community in different ways, but not everyone is convinced that humiliating others or beating them up is the way to save Marathi or Maharashtrians. In Parel or Shivaji Park or Dadar Hindu Colony or Sadashiv Peth, they are not sitting and cheering the fact that Karan Johar had to say sorry; they are looking at ways to send their children abroad or failing that, getting them good jobs. They are worried about security, crime, infrastructure. They will vote for the party they feel can deliver on that front.
Meanwhile the political game goes on. It is a pity that Johar capitulated so fast but the government's mealy-mouthed response is even more shocking.Ashok Chavan should show he believes in the law.The MNS is not the law. This country is run on the basis of the Constitution. That can never change, whether in Bombay or in Mumbai.
