mumbai

Updated: Apr 09, 2019 18:16 IST

The nation is down to such a sorry state due to the bullying and intimidation of one group of people by another that I never thought I would be tickled pink by one bully taking on and bringing another bully to heel.

Over the past weeks, I have been increasingly impressed by Maharashtra Navnirman Sena president Raj Thackeray’s political makeover. I am convinced that it is Sharad Pawar’s tutelage over the past year that has toned down Raj Thackeray and made him sound secular and acceptable. At his Gudi Padwa rally last week, he delivered a phenomenal address with facts and figures on his fingertips and stripped down the BJP government, both at the centre and the state, layer by layer. Many years ago as his estranged cousin Uddhav Thackeray tried to redefine the Mèe Marathi programme as one inclusive of all Mumbaikars who had lived in the city for two decades or more, Raj beat up North Indians and Muslims and pushed back Uddhav’s efforts to widen the Shiv Sena support base in the city and state.

But after years of following in the Shiv Sena’s tracks, he seems to now be carving a new path for his party and repositioning himself as the saviour of the Marathi manoos – not quite the Gandhian way but definitely less violent than before.

Very few in the younger generation might know that the original battle for Bombay was one between Gujaratis and Maharashtrans. India’s first prime minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was overtly influenced by two Gujaratis – Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Morarji Desai — both the number two in the Union cabinet at different times. Mumbai’s original inhabitants were Koli fishermen, ruled by the Gujarat sultanate in the years before the advent of the Portuguese in India. When the British gained the archipelago as dowry for Prince Charles I, when he married Catherine of Braganza, they soon recognised the value of the seven islands and converted it into both a commercial and naval port, displacing Surat in that regard from its pre-eminent position until then.

A horde of Gujarati entrepreneurs, including Hindus, Jains, Parsis, Bohras and Khojas, then moved their industries and enterprises to Bombay and built up the city brick by brick under British guidance and encouragement. After the states’ re-organisation, Bombay state included areas of Kutch and Saurashtra now in Gujarat, but the Maharashtrian Congress leaders like YB Chavan believed the heavyweight Gujaratis in the party were diverting development funds to their regions and depriving Maharashtra. The Samyukta Maharashtra Movement undertook a fierce battle for the repossession of Mumbai for Maharashtra. But Desai, who by then was chief minister of Bombay state, wanted the city for the Gujarat state capital in case of a division of Bombay state on linguistic lines. The SMM, at a morcha at Flora Fountain marched with the slogan, “Mumbai ahe aamchi, nahi konacha baapachi”. An enraged Desai not only ordered a firing on the morcha creating 106 martyrs for the cause, but also insulted Maharashtrians with his response – Barra, he said, Mumbai tumchi, aata bhaandi ghasaa aamchi, implying that Maharashrtrians were all poor, capable of working only as domestic servants in the homes of rich Gujaratis. That was the genesis of the distrust of the Shiv Sena and the Maharashtrans for the Gujaratis that has intensified since Narendra Modi and Amit Shah became all-powerful in the BJP. That was also the reason why Uddhav tormented the BJP for five years but now that he is in alliance with the Gujarat duo, Raj Thackeray seems to be reclaiming that Marathi space vacated by the Shiv Sena for himself. He has pointed out how the BJP, in connivance with its Maharashtrian chief minister, has been moving all important jobs and institutions to Gujarat and are set on a path to not just cut Mumbai from Maharashtra as Patel and Desai had desired but also render Maharashtrians in Mumbai jobless and without resources in their city, including jobs and housing, as they had been before the formation of the Shiv Sena.

That got the goat of Modi supporters and one of them in a Facebook post described Raj as anti-national. Whereupon MNS supporters arrived at his doorstep, got him to beg forgiveness on camera and made him do sit-ups in repentance. As Gandhian a punishment as it could get, considering their usual violent tactics (the video has now gone viral).

The trolls seem to have met their match in Raj Thackeray. Let’s see them dare dispatch him to Pakistan!