Mumbai for Marathis
I have been reading and watching a lot about the statement made by Raj Thackrey on this topic that Mumbai is only for Marathis and everyone else should just pack their bags and leave. I understand that he has said this just so that, he can create rift among the people and get more votebanks, but the worst part of it was the violence which has followed this. It reminds me of the Gujarat incident where all the events that took place where mostly because of the various parties that wanted to create a divide among the people to gain vote from people of specific religion.
Mumbai is like India’s New York(not visually), where there are people of varied ethnicities living together. The divide that these people create just ends up making people feel, that they are right and everyone else is wrong. Such feeling creates problems such as, these violent acts that have taken place in Mumbai in the last week. Claiming Mumbai to belong to a certain group of people is not correct. Though it may not hurt the Marathis living in Mumbai but the Marathis who live in North India and other places in India will be discriminated against just because, someone thought it would be fun to stir up the people. I have had many Marathi friends over the years and they have been very nice to me. I don’t think they would be the people, who would like to fight others just because they live in their city. I personally feel the statement by Raj Thackrey was wrong at many levels.
The problem does not lie with the people but the infrastructure of the city. Even a small city can accommodate many people, if the infrastructure of that city is good. If Raj Thackrey had genuinely wanted good for the city, he should have brought all the problems faced by a common man in the city to light. I don’t understand what happened to the country, where everyone was proud to be an Indian and believed that all Indians are their brothers and sisters. I believe that even though schools make children recite the pledge everyday, they don’t exactly explain it’s meaning in the school. It shows how our education system lacks many fundamental things. If a person who studies in school that, all Indians should be proud of the fact that they are Indian and should never forget that, he or she would never be part of such regional fight. But I guess even schools have played a big part in creating this regional divide. Children are not taught to be patriotic. I have come across many students who have a strong hatred towards the country, which in turn comes out in such forms. Even though people say our country is progressing, such events remind us of the bitter truth that Indians still haven’t exactly developed in terms of their mind set.
I saw on some news channel someone had said that anyone can live in Mumbai without knowing Marathi but no one can live in Chennai without knowing Tamil. I found this to be totally nonsense since when I came to Chennai I didn’t even know one word in Tamil but since my mother tongue(Malayalam) is similar to Tamil I was able manage. Here the thing to be noted is that, since Marathi is similar to Hindi anyone knowing Hindi can get his work done in Mumbai. But what about the person who doesn’t know Hindi and Marathi, he might never be able to communicate with anyone ever. Same way if a person doesn’t know Malayalam and Tamil or any other South Indian language for that matter; is it so that the guy won’t be able to live in Chennai. But to tell that truth nowadays even in Chennai you can get things if you know English or Hindi. There is a really large population of North Indian people in Chennai which makes it easy for an outsider to interact with people since you can ask every second person to translate something for you or help you. Even though Tamilians here have problems with people of other states, they are less vocal about it since the major businesses here have a huge contribution of these people .
I truly believe that all this is just total gutter politics. Anyone who divides the people of any place on basis of their religion, region, skin colour or anything else is just trying to make people fight among each other and get his work done.I hope politicians of my generation would actually bother about the country rather than their own personal agendas.
God save the country.