India : Pride and parochialism

Bombay is one of the world's great cosmopolitan cities, and is the largest Southasian metropolis. Measured by the diverse cultures and plethora of communities – and not only from India – that make Bombay a tremendous melting pot, the city is as unique to this part of the world as is New York City to the West. Administratively, Bombay may fall within Maharashtra, but it hardly fits the definition of a 'Maharashtrian' city. Rather, it is a city without a state. Bombay's culture, along with its power and influence, makes it to India – not Maharashtra – what Berlin is to Germany: a city with its own unique resonances in myriad fields of human endeavour, untrammelled by the narrow and partisan.

Other Indian cities are inextricably tied to their surroundings: Delhi strikes one as a product of Punjab-Uttar Pradesh-Haryana; Calcutta is essentially Bengali, in its best sense; and Madras is very much Tamil. But Bombay is not bracketed as Maharashtrian, either in politics, commerce or the popular imagination, including that of the many migrants that flow into this megalopolis. Delhi may be the diplomatic hub and the 'power centre' for Southasia, but Bombay has an attraction all its own. This pull is very different from the similarities of language and culture that make for the affinity of parts of Nepal with Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, or of Bangladesh with West Bengal. Madras is closer not only to Sri Lanka but also to Malaysia and Singapore. India's neighbours, too, have a different, secular connection with Bombay. For Pakistan, and Pakistanis, Bombay is an irresistible magnet, as it is for Afghans, as well as Iranians and other West Asians.

So, in early February, when a political outfit claiming to stand for "regeneration and renewal" began to stir the melting pot by proclaiming that "North Indians" have no place in Bombay, the ripples extended far beyond the city, state and places from which the targeted migrants originated. Raj Thackeray's Maharashtra Navnirman Samiti (MNS) is neither a political nor cultural movement; it is an outfit in quest of access to the levers to power. Its origins lay in a family feud and rivalry with Uddhav Thackeray, the son of Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray – indeed, the same Bal Thackeray who unleashed a vicious campaign against "South Indians" in Bombay during the late 1960s. Some 40 years later, his nephew Raj, frustrated by the Shiv Sena having been bequeathed to Uddhav, opted for a different war cry. Common between these two events is that now, as then, this new incarnation is a hate campaign against 'outsiders' and migrants.

The Congress party-led coalition ruling Maharashtra initially allowed Raj's perverse hate campaign to be launched, with a view to gaining political mileage against the Shiv Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Though the force of public opinion and prodding from New Delhi eventually made the state government rein in the thugs, during the week that the MNS goons ran riot they forced thousands of migrant workers and their families from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh to flee homeward. Ironically, however, the first person killed by MNS militants, in the pilgrim town of Nashik, was a Maharashtrian.

Sons of the soil
It is a truism that no parochial campaign can be sustained unless encouraged or condoned by the ruling administration, and in Maharashtra the government was clearly culpable. It was the rightwing opposition parties, however, the Shiv Sena and BJP, who ultimately put an end to Raj Thackeray's misconceived crusade, by coming out publicly against his antics. As the Sena and BJP must have quickly realised, without the migrants' labour Bombay would collapse. Indeed, the migrants are the backbone of the city's industrial economy. If Bombay is today looking to model itself after Shanghai as an international financial city, it is on the sweat and toil of these millions – both Maharashtrians and migrants – that the city's growth, success and financial dynamism has been built.

The hard work by Maharashtrians themselves should not be – and is not – underestimated in this equation. As such, the argument that Maharashtrians should be given various types of preference is somewhat understandable, particularly in the context of the similar sons-of-the-soil politics prevalent in other states. And the rhetoric voiced by the MNS is also similar to that of rightwing anti-immigrant forces in a number of other countries: that migrants take away local jobs, vitiate local culture, gobble up scarce local resources and leave the 'natives' in distress. However, this argument is unacceptable in the Bombay situation because each of these worries can be traced to India's overarching lopsided development – and Maharashtra is, of course, not the only state to be affected in this way. The imbalance must be addressed through the larger economic system, and ill-advised campaigners must realise that the inequity cannot be remedied through parochial violence.

Studies in several countries have shown that fears about the probability of migrants 'taking away resources' tend not only to be exaggerated but actually entirely unfounded. Instead, it has been proven that migrants bring more value to a particular area or metropolis, adding to its wealth-generation activities and sustaining enhanced economic potential. Bombay's growth and financial success bears this out, just as it proves that xenophobia will hurt both the city and Maharashtrians, instead of advancing their economic interests.

The paradox of this outbreak of competitive parochialism in Maharashtra is that it comes at a time when the country is pressing for freer movement of people across other national economies. If the countries of the global South, including those of Southasia and, in particular, India, want developed countries to extend the free movement of goods, services and ideas also to people, then it is essential that such sub-national tendencies at home are not just discouraged, but nipped quickly in the bud.