Actor Amitabh Bachchan is the uncrowned king of Bollywood — but apparently not everyone likes him. Early last month his home in Mumbai was reported to have been attacked. On Friday, stones and bottles were thrown at his offices in the city. The culprits escaped but the attacks are believed to be political. Bachchan is probably the most famous north Indian living in the capital of Maharashtra state. As such (and totally unjustly), he has become a scapegoat for the more extreme of Maharashtrian chauvinists, especially Raj Thackeray, leader of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS). In an attempt to outflank the equally extremist Shiv Sena party, founded by his uncle Bal Thackeray but now led by his cousin and rival Uddhav Thackeray, he has whipped up local sentiment against north Indians (for which read Hindi speakers) resulting in last month’ violence across the state. Sad to say, this fresh descent into gutter politics (Shiv Sena started as an anti-south Indian then an anti-Muslim movement) has succeeded. Raj Thackeray has managed to hijack the Mumbaistan movement — but at what cost?
The result of the violence has been that thousands of north Indians have fled the city and elsewhere in the state. This threatens to have serious economic consequences for city and state.
Mumbai is India’s commercial capital and top investment location. But Indians know only too well how a great commercial city can be destroyed by politics. Kolkata was once the greatest commercial center not just in India but in all Asia. Years of mismanagement and political interference by the communists killed it; only now it is beginning to recover. It may seem far-fetched to imagine the same fate for Mumbai but the fact is that business has gone to the city in the knowledge that labor would be there and be available. Much of that labor is north Indian. Many of the businesses are north Indian. People will come back, Maharashtra will survive, but investor confidence has been badly wounded by Raj Thackeray’s poisonous stand.
There is a real danger if he and his cousin continue the xenophobia in their bid for the Marathi vote that Maharashtra will find itself the same position as Kerala and West Bengal — locations that investors avoid.
Sadly the Thackerays are not the only people playing dirty politics in Maharashtra with innocent people suffering. The Congress-led state government’s slow and ineffective response to Raj Thackeray’s deadly and illegal stirring up of communal politics is deliberate as it is scandalous. With its eyes on next year’s state elections, Congress does not want the MNS crushed — not yet. It wants it alive as a counterbalance to Shiv Sena so as to split the nationalist vote. It is divide and rule.
Meanwhile, having gained the advantage over his cousin, Raj Thackeray has now suspended his anti-north Indian campaign although there is no guarantee he will not restart it. It says everything about his and his cousin’s infantile understanding of politics that their Mumbaistan campaign has now moved from the gutter to the trivial with demands that road signs between Mumbai, Pune and Nashik be in Marathi not English. Maharashtra’s growth is under threat but its so-called champions chafe over road signs. It is danger signs that are needed — the language being irrelevant.
