Opinion The city of experiment

Yes,Mumbai is India’s financial capital,but is that the only or the primary reason that it has suffered repeated attacks? Far more important,in my view,is what the city represents as society. Of all Indian cities,Mumbai is the most radical social experiment. Nearly a century ago,Dinshaw Wacha,a prominent Parsi writer and political leader,lamented that the city lacked historical depth. Its architecture did not embody rich and long traditions,and its society was run over by upstarts. Everything was new and plastic. But what the city lacked by way of deep tradition,it made up for by gathering communities from elsewhere. People from other parts of India and beyond washed up on the Island City — Hindus,Muslim,Christians,Jews,and Jains; and Europeans,Maharashtrians,Gujaratis,Tamilians,and North Indians. To be sure,the city’s vaunted cosmopolitan society was built by colonialism and brutal capitalist exploitation of immigrant mill workers. But there is no denying that what made Mumbai dynamic,what turned it into an economic powerhouse was its mix of religions and languages,of castes and classes,of Bombay and Mumbai. The city did not abandon the promise of a modern,cosmopolitan society even after the bitter blow of Partition. This is evident in the Hindi films of the 1950s. Powerfully registered there is the promise — and the failings — of a city of openness and opportunity.

It is this city that is under assault. But the attack began much before the recent spate of terrorist strikes. It began with the rise of the Shiv Sena as a nativist and Hindu nationalist political party in the late 1960s. The Sena campaign against south Indians,communists,and Muslims as “outsiders” struck at the heart Mumbai’s fabled life as a city that welcomed people speaking all languages,practicing all creeds,and following all ideologies. The Hindu-Muslim riots of 1992-93,followed by the bomb blasts of 1993 left its image of cosmopolitanism as charred as the buildings and vehicles damaged by explosions.

When the city’s name was officially changed from Bombay to Mumbai in 1995,many concluded that this encapsulated the demise of the city that had once signified openness to all. Of course,Bombay was always also Mumbai,the name that Marathi and Gujarati speakers used for the city. And now,while Mumbai has the official stamp of approval,Bombay endures in everyday conversations by both high and low,by anglicised elites and non-English-speaking taxi drivers. No matter how hard the attempt to impose a singular identity on it,the city always resists. When the Sena youth wing demanded the withdrawal of Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey from the university curriculum in 2010 on the grounds that the novel hurt Marathi sentiments,the authorities meekly succumbed. But the people protested vociferously.

Without harking back to the nostalgic ideal of the old cosmopolitan Bombay,these protests spoke insistently for the contemporary city’s irrepressible pluralism,for the everyday cohabitation of religious and cultural difference. This is the city,besieged by nativists and terrorists but striving to cope with the challenges of urban life,that is once again under attack. For,what else do these terrorist attacks seek but to inflame a bloody clash between communities,to destroy the city itself as a form of society? What the terrorists hate the most is any suggestion that communities can live with and negotiate their differences.

Mumbai is a repeated target because it continues to represent the ethic of a negotiated life of religious and cultural difference. It is this city that we should defend.

The writer teaches history at Princeton University and is the author of ‘Mumbai Fables’