Opinion Big issues,petty politics
Theres so much more to Marathi identity than Shivaji. There should be so much more to Maharashtra politics,too....
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During the heyday of the Samyukta Maharashtra movement in the late 1950s and the acrimony that marked the run-up to the creation of a unified Maharashtra state with Bombay as its capital,among the many arguments the pro-Maharashtra campaigners put forward was the contribution of some of its illustrious sons-of-the-soil to the national cause. Names such as Lokmanya Tilak and Vinoba Bhave were cited to justify how people of the region had always defended national unity and the demand for a separate state with Bombay as its capital was not an indication of any fissiparous tendencies. Tilak and Bhave were and are true national icons,and there can be little disagreement if the name of Dr B.R. Ambedkar is added to this list,just to name three.
However,if one were to trawl through the states grimy headlines these days,and look at the competitive politics over claiming Maharashtras pan-Marathi identity,it seems that those who claim to represent the Marathi manoos are only concerned about the standing of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj,the 17th century warrior-king. The political manipulation of the perception of what Shivaji fought for,and fertile imaginations of the Marathi nation being under similar siege in the 21st century,have spawned a clutch of contentious issues that threaten to further derail the priorities of a hapless state government.
By sheer coincidence,the Supreme Court has been involved in the two controversies that have got the attention of Maharashtras politicians these last few days. First,the Central Government submitted an affidavit in the apex court negating Maharashtras demand for 865 villages and the city of Belgaum,currently in Karnataka,to be merged into Maharashtra a decades-old border conflict that has been kept alive only by Maharashtras politicians. Days later,the court refused to justify the state governments 2004 ban on American author James Laines controversial book,Shivaji: A Hindu King in Islamic India,triggering convulsions among the same worthies.
Separately,a struggle has broken out in Mumbai to be the first to prevent Mumbai International Airport Ltd from merely relocating a recently-erected statue of Shivaji on the airport premises to a more convenient location to help expand the countrys most congested metro-city airport. Elsewhere,Raj Thackeray,the self-appointed protector of all things Marathi,has issued a diktat that people should stop dressing up as Shivaji at cultural events as that,according to him,is an insult to the Maratha king. Meanwhile,Congress minister Narayan Ranes MP-son Nilesh Rane has planned a 3-D Avatar-style feature film on Shivaji and even before the script can be written angry voices have taken umbrage to rumours that notorious Bollywood star Sanjay Dutt was being cast as Shivaji.
The emotions that are frequently whipped up in the name of Shivaji,the regular expression of regional and ethnic insecurity,and the over-reaching craving for more territory despite being Indias second largest state by area are all related to the greed of the states rulers to book short-term political profit at the cost of ignoring the big picture in what was once the countrys most industrialised and developed state. Shivaji is a low-hanging,emotional fruit Maharashtras politicians and fringe groups can regularly pluck and throw at sections of the state which feel beholden to their ethnic identity in the absence of any other substantial sense of belonging.
And even when it comes to Shivaji,there is an obvious selective amnesia which seeks to remember only his valiant battles against the sultans of Bijapur and the Mughals. If Shiv Senas founder-patriarch Bal Thackeray choosing to cite Shivaji standing up to the Mughal empire as a modern-day parallel for Mumbai taking on Delhi were not amusing,a newcomer to the state could not be faulted for mistaking it as the rant of a rebel chief in an insurgency-hit remote state. With rebelliousness being the keyword,there is obviously no mention of Shivajis benevolence,tolerance,his respect for diversity and progressive rule. Which is also why modern day icons such as Bhave,Tilak and Ambedkar,whose seminal contributions to the Maharashtra and India we live in are much more tangible,rarely become mascots.
Maharashtras undying desire for 865 villages in Karnatakas border districts of Belgaum,Bidar,Gulbarga and Karwar,as well as for Belgaum city itself,defies logic. True,there are Marathi speakers in these districts just as there are Kannada speakers on the other side and Gujarati speakers in Mumbai,Hindi speakers in Vidarbha,and so on. The reorganisation of states in the 1950s may not have been a perfect job like so many others and the debate over carving out smaller states from existing mega-states remains a volatile issue as Telangana so recently demonstrated. Why would Maharashtra want to absorb these districts,and add to its burden of governing an already unwieldy state? It has hardly done a great job of ensuring equitable development across its regions such as Marathwada,Vidarbha and the northern districts.
In fact,the state that was once Indias industrial powerhouse is staring at an uncertain future. If language were the sole criteria for these villages to be a part of Maharashtra,then the same argument could be applied to Mumbai as well. Even at the time of the reorganisation of states,the Marathi population of Bombay was around 43 per cent. Today it is estimated at under 35 per cent. At neither time was it a majority but does that mean the protectors of Marathi pride will allow the debate over to whom or where Mumbai belongs,be reopened?
These are all irrational arguments that in no way can help revive the idea of a glorious Maharashtra and put it back on track to becoming,once again,the countrys most progressive state. As a popular line goes,if you have not rebelled by the age of 20,you have no heart. And if you have not conformed by the age of 30,you have not grown up. Maharashtra turned 50 this year and it is high time the state conformed to the larger goal of equitable progress in a conflict-free environment. Even Shivaji Maharaj would wholeheartedly approve of that.
yp.rajesh@expressindia.com
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