Minimum city

The 70-odd men molested two women in uptown Mumbai. The New Year eve outrage has shattered at least two bits of popular common sense. One, that there is safety in numbers. After all, people only become a mob in times when tempers are running high and emotions as well, as in communally charged situations 8212; and not at other times. Two, that this doesn8217;t, it can8217;t, happen in Mumbai. But as it happened outside a five-star hotel in Juhu that day, the mob is all too easily formed, even in Bombay. Especially in Mumbai? That8217;s the disturbing possibility that Mumbaikars and all those who have invested in the idea of Mumbai, need to engage with again.

As an idea, Mumbai has been sprawling, epic, even violent at times, but always on the move. It is the place where aspiration has always trumped inequality, and where it is believed greed will eventually tamp down hate. In independent India, the city was the imagined place of freedom from the prejudice and claustrophobia that New India wanted to emerge from. Mumbai was the place where this was most likely to come true; other cities always seemed pallid in comparison. Over the years, despite the several warning signals, this faith survived. The rise of the Shiv Sena8217;s chauvinist politics, the communal carnage of 1993, all the corruption and gangsterism and the episode of the rape in a crowded train could not dim the big city promise to help you make it 8212; caste, class and gender no bar. For women as much as for men, Mumbai offered an equal chance to partake of the exhilaration and the despair of chasing dreams.

Is Mumbai changing? Is it becoming a place where women are not necessarily safe? A city where a woman can be molested in public spaces, and the culprits get away with it? The crime on New Year eve, and the callous reaction of the metropolis8217;s top cop in the immediate aftermath would suggest that this is so. But for the sake of Mumbaikars and all of us, let8217;s keep our fingers crossed.