Some days ago I had said that Raj Thackeray in his political ambitions in Maharashtra is slowly breaking India. The lovely edifice built on the base of Hindu tolerance and given concrete shape by great men like Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi is being chipped away at by pygmies like Thackeray.
Perhaps the problem is more complex. It is a conflict between laggards like Bihar and the comparatively affluent state like Maharashtra. But for an united India, a broad-mindedness is needed.
What is more worrying is that the two main national political parties are viewing the whole affair through the prism of political profit. The Shiv Sena is a BJP ally. That is one reason for it to stay mum. Secondly, both the BJP and Congress are refraining from taking a stand as they fear criticising Thackeray would amount to hurting Marathi interests and losing votes in the next elections. Narendra Modi did the same thing in Gujarat. He won two state elections despite the Godhra riots, because he invoked Gujarati asmita (pride).
The Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is a good man. He is making protesting noises but no one listens to him as he has no political base in the Congress party.
Raj's hate campaign is seeping down to the common man. I reproduce fully an article that appeared in the Times of India. You will get the point.
MUMBAI: "Loud discussions have given way to whispers...that's what's really scary," is how a north Indian techie who has spent the better part of
his life in Mumbai described the new mood in the city. The divisiveness, which began as a political tamasha a few weeks ago and spiralled into violence, has begun to slowly but steadily seep into the life of the ordinary Mumbaikar. Suddenly, the man on the street is defining himself as a 'native' or an 'outsider'.
Whether in offices, on trains, in marketplaces or school compounds, a sense of anxiety has surfaced. Tension is especially palpable in stressful surroundings such as a jam-packed train compartment. Susheel Sukhraj, an entertainment professional, wrote in to TOI to say he had witnessed several instances of young boys being cussed on trains as 'bhaiyyas' and cases in which rank strangers had banded to turn on a fellow traveller with, "You have dirtied our city."
Clarifying that he himself is a "Marathi from Panchgani", Sukhraj says that he is disturbed by the things he sees everyday while travelling from Navi Mumbai to Andheri. "At Mankhurd station, a north Indian boy standing at the door was deliberately hit on the head by someone in the surging crowd. The man then quickly disappeared inside the compartment but continued to pass snide remarks to provoke a fight," says Sukhraj, recalling an incident that took place on Thursday morning.
Even middle-class north Indians are feeling the chill. Jaiprakash, an engineer with an IT firm in Andheri, says that north Indian employees at his officeprefer to hang out together after work and "feel odd" about interacting with Marathis, lest something provocative be said.
But the real brunt continues to be borne by poor immigrants—cab drivers, watchmen, daily wage-earners and odd-jobs men. "On Thursday night I found an autorickshaw driver weeping at Gokuldham in Goregaon. I asked him what was wrong and he said that his previous passenger, a Marathi man, had refused to pay him and slapped him when he asked for his fare," says a senior media correspondent. "Then, on Friday afternoon, a cabbie told me that a young man got into his taxi at Churchgate and said, "Girgaum chal, main batata hoon. When they reached Girgaum, the man simply walked away."
The fallout is best summed up by Kishan Rajak who moved to Mumbai a decade ago and started working with a laundry at Kanjurmarg. When he saw pictures of a bus burning after Raj Thackeray's arrest, the 24-year-old said, "This place is not safe anymore," and left for Faizabad in UP.
Raj's hate campaign is seeping down to the common man. I reproduce fully an article that appeared in the Times of India. You will get the point.
MUMBAI: "Loud discussions have given way to whispers...that's what's really scary," is how a north Indian techie who has spent the better part of
his life in Mumbai described the new mood in the city. The divisiveness, which began as a political tamasha a few weeks ago and spiralled into violence, has begun to slowly but steadily seep into the life of the ordinary Mumbaikar. Suddenly, the man on the street is defining himself as a 'native' or an 'outsider'.
Whether in offices, on trains, in marketplaces or school compounds, a sense of anxiety has surfaced. Tension is especially palpable in stressful surroundings such as a jam-packed train compartment. Susheel Sukhraj, an entertainment professional, wrote in to TOI to say he had witnessed several instances of young boys being cussed on trains as 'bhaiyyas' and cases in which rank strangers had banded to turn on a fellow traveller with, "You have dirtied our city."
Clarifying that he himself is a "Marathi from Panchgani", Sukhraj says that he is disturbed by the things he sees everyday while travelling from Navi Mumbai to Andheri. "At Mankhurd station, a north Indian boy standing at the door was deliberately hit on the head by someone in the surging crowd. The man then quickly disappeared inside the compartment but continued to pass snide remarks to provoke a fight," says Sukhraj, recalling an incident that took place on Thursday morning.
Even middle-class north Indians are feeling the chill. Jaiprakash, an engineer with an IT firm in Andheri, says that north Indian employees at his officeprefer to hang out together after work and "feel odd" about interacting with Marathis, lest something provocative be said.
But the real brunt continues to be borne by poor immigrants—cab drivers, watchmen, daily wage-earners and odd-jobs men. "On Thursday night I found an autorickshaw driver weeping at Gokuldham in Goregaon. I asked him what was wrong and he said that his previous passenger, a Marathi man, had refused to pay him and slapped him when he asked for his fare," says a senior media correspondent. "Then, on Friday afternoon, a cabbie told me that a young man got into his taxi at Churchgate and said, "Girgaum chal, main batata hoon. When they reached Girgaum, the man simply walked away."
The fallout is best summed up by Kishan Rajak who moved to Mumbai a decade ago and started working with a laundry at Kanjurmarg. When he saw pictures of a bus burning after Raj Thackeray's arrest, the 24-year-old said, "This place is not safe anymore," and left for Faizabad in UP.
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