Your Name Is Marathi...

If we are to believe what we hear and see, the most crucial part of the Mumbai conflict is over. In a tragedy, Shakespearean or whatever, it would be the end of Act III and the beginning of Act IV, Scene 1. But since this is a repetition that keeps repeating itself, we will simply call it a Tamaasha, an Indian farce. A fascist political conglomerate that has built its reputation and political base solely by assaulting disparate groups of people – trade union members,  non-Maharashtrians ("south Indians") Muslims, non-Maharashtrians ("Biharis" and "Bhaiyyas") again etc. – is on another campaign, ostensibly on the grounds of protecting Mumbai from Hindi-speaking cabdrivers and other immigrants, from Muslims who are all secret Paki-lovers and terrorists, and last but not the least, the current uncrowned king of Hindi Cinema: Shahrukh Khan. Last week, in spite of the threats and sporadic incidents, Karan Johar’s My Name is Khan, starring Shahrukh, was released and shown in packed theatres. Politicians and the Bollywood glitterati showed up to show support for the film. Suddenly, everyone’s brother is a film-critic, and the net is abuzz with Shahrukh’s nuanced performance and Johar’s brave political epic. MNIK is doing brisk business all over the world, and all is fine. Mumbai won, the Sena lost; the end, Bollywood-style.

The only problem with the above story is that it is not just untrue but never-in-hell-could-this-happen kind of improbable, like the narratives of most Bollywood films. The Sena did not lose, and Mumbai did not win. If anyone actually won, it is the multi-crore rupee industry of film production and distribution, conjoined with the multiplexes. There have been – to be fair – plenty of discussions about the ridiculousness of the Sena’s demand that all cabdrivers speak Marathi, but that was the subplot, comparable to the murder of the blind imam’s son by Gabbar in Sholay, the main trauma being the violence that Thakur and his family suffered. I am sure I am not the only person in the world to notice right now the amazing structural similarity between Bollywood and Indian politics, at least the shared elements of composition: family, friends, cliques, grand advertisements, tantalizing dreams of change, and clever returns to status quo. At the end of every election and the end of every movie: catharsis and no real consequence.

It is therefore time to wake up and realize that the success of MNIK is not representative of a political or even a moral victory over the Sena’s politics of language and culture, a politics that is juvenile at its best and fascist at its worst. The Indian middle-class needs to recognize that there is politics as usual – with its fair share of nepotism, bribes, scandal, rigging elections etc. – and then there is fascism – with carefully orchestrated pogroms, propaganda of uninhibited hatred and violence, etc. The fact that Thackeray and party have managed to embarrass and alienate the BJP should be the loudest wake-up call for all. Let’s face it: it takes a lot for the party of karsevaks and the likes of Modi to be embarrassed. A bigger issue than that of the untenability of the Sena’s demands is that this is not a hastily put together group of crazies; it is a legitimate political party. It has received the mandate to represent the will of the people in more than 40 constituencies. Fascist regimes in history have almost always been initially legitimized by public mandate, and it is almost always too late to take that mandate back when the hour of the wolf arrives at your door. Forget the history books; have we not seen enough films not to know this?

In the last few weeks, we have heard of the enormous heterogeneity of Bombay’s culture and history, of the strength and beauty of all the colours of the rainbow. We cannot erase three and a half centuries of modern history that begun with a political marriage of convenience between an English monarch and a Portuguese princess. The shining port city that the British built from scratch went far beyond its Mughal rival: Surat. 

Even if we keep aside the colonial layers of economic history, we cannot possibly ignore the history of Bollywood which is more heterogeneous than any national cinema in any other part of the world. The distinct form – the unique mixture of drama, song, and dance – that is Bollywood’s gift to World Cinema is unthinkable without its early link to the Parsi Theater. The Marathi visionaries of Indian cinema were not hung up on Marathi-ness; they simply left indelible marks of their own culture (which was both Marathi and Indian) on Indian National Cinema. In 1917, Dhundiraj Govind Phalke wrote in the Marathi journal Navyug of his yearning for an indigenous National Cinema: 

‘Could we, the sons of India, ever be able to see Indian images on the screen?’ 

The answer to this question and the consequences of that yearning are known to every informed Indian. Is Phalke Marathi or patriotic enough for the Sena? Why cannot the Marathi Manoos take pride in their irrefutable contribution to the city of Bombay, Indian National Cinema, and everything that lies in between? Even the language of Hindi Cinema is neither the shuddh Hindi of All India Radio nor the many dialects spoken in the North, but a unique language that Mumbaikars hear and speak. 

What we need to hear, after the jingoistic madness has cooled and MNIK has made its first few crores, is the powerful voice of the people – not of the immigrants but of all the Marathi-speakers. There should be a clear, sustained voice of the Marathis who love their language and culture, speaking not just through letters and statements but through the ballot. When the time comes, the message from the real Marathi Manoos should be that a handful of hate-mongers do not represent their ideals. Marathi language and culture, with its long radical engagement with politics and history, cannot possibly suffer if every passenger sitting inside a yellow taxi does not converse in Marathi. And it is simply unwise to support a political party which thinks that way. Identity-politics based on region, race, religion or language is not a harmless political idea; it is the first act in every fascist play. We really do not need to see the second act of this one.

I conclude with an oft-used poem that is attributed to Martin Niemöller, a German pastor who was initially sympathetic to the Third Reich for a while, but ended up on the bad side of the Nazis anyways, and spent many years in a concentration camp. He spent the last years of his life speaking of the costly mistake of silence in the face of oppression. The poem has circulated in several versions, but the message remains the same.

“First they came for the socialists,
and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. 
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. 
Then they came for the Jews,
and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. 
Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak out for me.”

No matter who we are, they will come for us one day. If you think that because your name is not Khan but Ranade or Deshmukh you are exempt from Marathi fascism, think again.

Rini Bhattacharya Mehta teaches at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA.