bombay meri jaan

(This piece was written during the MNS campaign against Bihari and U.P migrants. Then the november attack happened and this went into temporary back burner. With elections round the corner, this issue of migration and outsiders is going to flare up not just in Maharashtra but other states as well, Punjab being one of them.)

Every vacation to Delhi in my childhood would see this grand debate between me and my uncle. I guess my lawyer uncle enjoyed provoking kids and arguments away from the court room, so every year the two of us – a pre teen kid and a mid thirties man- would stoutly defend their respective cities. Bombay or Delhi? Which is better? Which has better roads? Better cars? Friendly people? Better places of interest? It was as profound as ‘Gateway of India’ from my side to ‘India Gate’ from his!

Looking back, I can see we were both defending our ‘homes’. After all, we were both, despite that huge age gap, south Indians who had grown up outside the south. We debated about our homes in a combination of Tamil, English and Hindi. Though my Hindi then was much ridiculed as Bambaiya Hindi.

I grew up as a south Indian in Bombay. During the period when the Shiv Sena had declared that south Indians were outsiders depriving Maharashtrians of jobs and hence should leave the city. I don’t know how many did leave. We didn’t then and when my family moved, ironically to Delhi, it wasn’t because of the Shiv Sena. In Delhi, I slowly forgot the Marathi I knew and it took me a very long time to accept Delhi as ‘home’. Years later I learnt about the Shiv Sena when the Ayodhya controversy was hotting up leading to 6 December and as I began to take positions on Hindutva, secularism and communalism. The Sena had by then found that Muslims made a better enemy, a better outsider, than south Indians.

Now as the MNS and its parent Shiv Sena try outdo each other in the vitriolic campaign against migrants, this time around from Bihar and UP, I am reminded of my childhood. Particularly of our neighbours in Bombay, a Gujarati-Marathi family, who were very important in our lives. While my parents retain fleeting correspondence with their south Indian friends in Bombay, everlasting fondness is reserved for this special family. ‘They were the best neighbours ever’- is how both families remember each other. While it was shared childhood for us kids, for our parents the basis of that enduring relationship lay not just in the daily borrowings, mutual baby sitting, little outings, shared festivals and different cuisines which characterise neighbourly existence. It also lay in shared everyday experiences of very tough times. Like the whole period when both the textile mills where uncle and aunty worked were under strike. My dad was with Premier Automobiles then and there was the famous strike in that factory as well. Those were times of irregular salaries and uncertain futures; meanwhile home loans had to be paid, kids had to be sent to school, and the household run.

Around the time of the Gujarat genocide (an event which I think shaped the sensibilities of a whole generation just like the Babri demolition had for mine), I learnt that Uncle has always been a staunch Shiv Sena supporter. And aunty made enough communal statements last time I spoke to her. Now as the anti-migrant campaign has become a constant headline, I wonder at how uncle reconciled his support for Shiv Sena with a close association with south Indians living next door at the time when the Sena was in the flush of its anti-south Indian campaign.

This sounds like a reassuring story. Often we look at instances of friendships between warring and prejudiced communities- Hindus and Muslims, Indians and Pakistanis, Jews and Palestinians, as resources of hope. We cite them to backup our assertion that ‘ordinary’ people don’t indulge in hate politics and are manipulated and humanity survives in these friendships. But this recollection does not make this point. Rather it makes the contrary one.

I don’t think we can dismiss Shiv Sena’s or MNS’s activities as one of goondaism by a few lumpen disgruntled youth. Just like we cannot dismiss communal pogroms and riots of Mumbai and Gujarat as the handiwork of a few. We know that people killed, looted and raped their Muslim neighbours. Or covertly supported the attacks. We also know that people protected their Muslim neighbours at great personal risk. Hence from our experiences of living together and sharing joys and sorrows, we cannot conclude that the majority of the oppressor community was not involved. Because it is, in its collective consciousness, even as individuals have acted heroically due to personal convictions or political values.

When uncle managed to retain his friendship with us (and does to this day), it was not an exception. He could simultaneously occupy both realms- of friendship with the ‘enemy’ as well as resentment against the ‘outsider’. One of these sentiments won, perhaps because there was no real confrontation involved, but it is not a given that it would have.

For all of us who wish to understand the deep roots of biases and prejudices that regressive fundamentalist politics tap into, we need to examine this co-existence, this possibility of ‘living with the enemy’, in people’s lives.. Not only as we have done till now, as evidence of triumphant humanism or resources for conflict resolution. Instead, it should constitute the entry point into exploring the dynamics of collective ‘cosmopolitan’ co-existence of our times.

We cannot assert false truisms like ‘ordinary people don’t believe in hate’ anymore. Ordinary people may not believe in killing or throwing people out. But they share the resentment, paradoxically while maintaining friendships. This resentment is what unifies them with the lumpen activists and organised right wing political fronts. They lend silent support. Which can get tapped to active participation. Any time. As we saw in Gujarat. As we may see again. May be in Bombay, may be not. I do hope not.