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Thinking Aloud
Maximum city takes maximum brunt
By Dr Jay Dubashi
Mumbai is a market, not a city. This makes perfect sense, if you realise that London and New York are also markets and only incidentally cities. There was a time when you could not do without English in London. But about 15 years ago, I discovered that you can do very well in London without knowing a word of English.
Mumbai is on the boil, once again. About this time last year, on November 26, to be precise, it came under attack from Pakistani thugs, masquerading as jehadis, who killed over two hundred Indians and scared the city out of its wits. Now, once again, the ghosts of that attack are making the rounds. A Pakistani called David Headley, a bogus name, for the man is a Muslim, who is supposed to be a mastermind behind the last attack, is in the news again and so are others involved with him, though, of course, they deny it.
Why do these things happen only in Mumbai? Because it is a city without political authority, where you can get away with murder. Mumbai should have been a powerful city, like London or New York, because of its financial clout, but is probably the weakest city in the state. The state government itself is so weak, it is almost non-existent. It is, in a way, Sharad Pawar’s city, but the man is busy with other things—mostly to do with money—and comes to life only at the time of elections. So do other so-called leaders, including the home minister, a man called Patil, who is more concerned about running the municipality of his home town than Mumbai. All the ministers, including the Chief Minister, are a weak lot and have no clue about running a city like Mumbai which is the nerve-centre of the country’s economic life.
The trouble with Mumbai is that everyone is an “outsider.” This is a tricky word, with political connotations, but the fact remains that 99 per cent of the state’s politicians are outsiders and use Mumbai only to make money. There are also other “outsiders”, like a man called Abu Azmi, a builder from Uttar Pradesh who came to Mumbai forty years ago and is now rated one of the city’s richest men. But, for all his years in Mumbai and Maharashtra, he still can’t speak the local language and has never learnt it. It is not his fault; he doesn’t have to learn it, for you can perfectly get along in Mumbai without knowing the local language, for almost everybody you encounter is an “outsider” and does not know the local language either!
Abu Azmi is not an exception. Most industrialists who have settled down in Mumbai do not know the local language. Tatas have been in the city for a century-and-a-half, and are renowned citizens of the city. But I have never heard any of them ever speaking Marathi, or, for that matter, even Hindi. They have never felt the need for it. Nor for that matter, had Dhirubhai Ambani, who came to Mumbai from his native Gujarat via Aden way back in 1960’s and has been here ever since. So is his business. I have never heard them speak in anything but English or Gujarati or, occasionally, Hindi, for you can do even without Hindi in Mumbai.
In fact, almost all big industrialists of Mumbai are non-Marathis and do not know the language. They are a cosmopolitan crowd, who probably worry more about prices in Switzerland where they take their holidays, than shopping in the local markets, for they rarely shop in local markets. In any case, half their family lives abroad, mostly in London or New York, and they are more particular about getting their Cockney accent right than their Hindi or Marathi pronunciation.
Actually, you can make sense of cities like Mumbai if you think of them as markets, not cities. You live in Mumbai because you have something to sell—yourselves—or buy, and if you can do this in Hindi or English, why learn Marathi? Abu Azmi must be doing his buying and selling in Hindi—he does not look like a man who is comfortable in English—so he has never learnt the local language. It is like having to learn Persian in New York. And he was quite happy about it, until he encountered a noisy crowd in the Maharashtra Assembly asking him to take his oath in Marathi, a language, he said, he didn’t know!
As I said, Mumbai is a market, not a city. This makes perfect sense, if you realise that London and New York are also markets and only incidentally cities. There was a time when you could not do without English in London. But about 15 years ago, I discovered that you can do very well in London without knowing a word of English.
Bus conductors speak Hindi, underground ticket collectors speak Hindi, there are many Indian bank clerks, even the Foreign Office has Indians (though the girls don’t wear sarees) and, of course, some of the best restaurants in London are Indian-owned. In fifteen years’ time, you should be able to live in London without knowing a word of English, just as you can carry on in Mumbai without knowing a word of Marathi.
It is because Mumbai is more of a market than a city, people like David Headley can come and go and almost do what they please, without attracting much attention. This is true of almost all major cities in the world. They have become markets, where you live only because there is no other alternative.
In fact, it is difficult to know now who is an insider and who is an outsider. An insider can be an outsider, and vice-versa, depending upon where he lives. I have never visited Sikkim, so I am an outsider in Sikkim. But if I go and live there, I become an insider, though I may not know the language at all. And a man from Sikkim will be an insider in Mumbai, even if he may not know the local language.
We are actually both insiders and outsiders, particularly in India. In fact, I cannot see how an Indian can be an outsider in India. This whole great country is ours, no matter where we are. If I am a Mumbaikar, I am also a Bengali—because Bengal is a part of India, and I am an Indian, wherever I may be. I am a Tamil, I am a Keralite, I am a Delhiwala, and I am a Punjabi, because Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Delhi and Punjab are Indian territories, and I am an Indian. I belong to all and they all belong to me.
But there is a problem. If I belong to all, I must show that I belong to all of them and they belong to me. I must not run them down, because they do not speak my language or because they dress differently. We are all Indians, we are all one people, wherever we may live. It is a pity Abu Azmi doesn’t realise this. He should have said, “I am sorry I do not know Marathi, but I shall learn it, and next time I shall do my best to take my oath in it. After all, Marathi is as much my language as Urdu or Hindi, for I am an Indian.” Will he say it?
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