The Moon Belongs To Everyone

Chitra Ganesh- Amnesia Roxanne

The Moon Belongs to Everyone



The moon belongs to everyone
The best things in life they’re free
The stars belong to everyone
They cling there for you and me


From: The Best Things in Life Are Free


In Delhi city magazine Time Out, British-Indian novelist and essayist Rana Dasgupta writes: “Delhi’s is a dislocated personality-and it is precisely from this dislocation that its immense drive derives.” Quite refugee right too, because the native Delhiite would otherwise be the apathetic descendant of the last days of Mughal rule leavened with a smidgen of United Provinces/post-1911 air of a fading British Raj. Dasgupta might have added: and that is why Delhi is saved from the kind of parochialism being witnessed in Mumbai.

Chief Editor of Mumbai’s Midday tabloid Aakar Patel, writing in the same issue, thinks matters would be solved if the city’s Bania ethic was only allowed full play. He says, Mumbai was built by the mercantile class, be they Muslim, Hindu, Parsi or British, and the badge of mercantilism is pragmatism over honour. Patel goes on to endorse the mind-set by asserting “compromise is a sign of modernity”.

But then, unaware of the disconnect he displays, and unmindful of the irony and arrogance of eulogising a teeming metropolis by citing its most elite and sophisticated minority, he crows: “Without South Bombay India would be even more brutal, uncivilized and barbaric than it is.” But maybe it is this disconnect, this South Bambaiyya insouciance, which is at the source of Mumbai’s current predicament.

It is patently absurd to hold South Bombay in counterpoint not only to the rest of the city, but India itself! That too by apportioning unlimited virtue to the enclave while heaping intemperate abuse on the rest of the country. It is a little like condemning revolutionary France for not possessing the supposedly desirable airs and graces of the king’s court at Versailles.

But looking at the parochial vitriol emerging from the central and northern parts of the city of Mumbai is not much fun either. There is paranoia about alleged moves to separate Mumbai from the rest of Maharashtra in a vague foreign-handish kind of way. There is a great deal of Marathi manoos assertion and calls for reservation. Some of this is justified because the Marathi manoos has never been the most enterprising member of the Mumbai public, and probably needs a deal of affirmative action to find his little space in the sun, in what is, after all, his own state.

But the powers that be in Maharashtra, in the ruling combine, but flirting with the same danger; and in the vociferous opposition, desperately seeking populist traction; had better bring the wild talk, threats of disruption, and sporadic violence to an early close. That is, if they don’t want a flight of enterprise, talent and capital witnessed by West Bengal decades ago, in response to similar pogroms by a Communist Left Front, also acting in the name of the people, if defined a little differently.

And in that unfortunate case, the Marathi manoos may well be left with a metropolis without its animus, a city divested of its vitality, because the very mercantile classes which made it great have been driven away.

Neighbouring Gujarat is already a beneficiary of Mumbai’s political unreasonableness, as it has been from the Lal Salaam kiss of death in West Bengal. Delhi and the NCR will and has benefited from Mumbai’s ill wind. Bangalore and Hyderabad have done well over the last few decades because of Mumbai’s expensive real-estate and over-crowding. Chennai, slower-paced, has become the banking and credit card back-office king.

For Mumbai, all that is left now is to drive out the Tatas, the Ambanis and Bollywood to bring about a general exodus of “others”; because it won’t just be the Bihari mazdoor or the Uttar Pradeshi taxi driver that will leave because of the unreasonableness.

And if the Shiv Sena, the MNS, and elements of the ruling combine persist with their present course of agitational and destabilising politics, the Marathi manoos will certainly not be the gainer.

For once the Congress Party and the BJP and most other parties find themselves in agreement that Mumbai cannot be allowed to turn into a provincial bailiwick of local political forces. And pushed to the wall, the obvious seditious and unconstitutional nature of the agitation will have to be put down.

But, what is more likely, in the grand Indian way, is that the matter will be allowed to fester, be democratically opposed and drawn out, till it dies a natural death at the hustings. The idea of India is now well entrenched, and so is the notion of economic progress being the greatest hope and benefactor. It is expected the typical Mumbaikar will want to get on with his life and livelihood. The jihadis have discovered this to their frustration. Now the parochial Marathi-manoos-first parties will also be given their comeuppance. The wisdom of the electorate will eventually show the door to the craven misuse of the meaning of statehood within a country.

The debate of state first, country second, is both churlish and bizarre. That it seeks to assert itself is only good in so far as it is doomed to failure. The assertion will end up acting as an emetic to remove the poison from Maharashtra’s body politic.

But if it is all aimed and calculated to extract special privileges and exceptions for Maharashtra as a price for restoring the peace, the Centre may well have some food for thought. Perhaps this kind of exceptionalism began with the imposition of Article 370 in Kashmir. Several other states, particularly hill states, have enacted local laws preventing “outsiders” from purchasing large tracts of land. Even every colony in New Delhi now routinely locks out the public through an intricate set of gates and gatekeepers in the name of security.

It is frustrating for the people of India to go forward, as in advertising mogul Martin Sorrell’s characterisation of India as “the fastest growing democracy” in a recent Walk the Talk episode with Indian Express’s Shekhar Gupta; and have to deal with the remnants of narrow identities far from subsumed by the benefits of nationhood even after sixty years of independence. But then, nationhood is never a given and facile thing and must be defended.

(1,049 words)

February 6th, 2010
Gautam Mukherjee


Published as Op-Ed Leader in The Pioneer as "Moon belongs to all" on 9th February 2010. Also online at www.dailypioneer.com. Archived online at www.dailypioneer.com under Columnists.