Mumbai belongs to Indians.
A celebrated and oft-quoted passage we read is
"Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measures, but very substantially. At the stroke of midnight hour, when the world sleeps, india will awake to life and freedom."
Jawahar Lal Nehru
He was talking about India and Indians not about any Delhiite, Mumbaite, Harayanvi , Marathi , Bengali etc. Irony is that, at that very time India had as many as 568 Princely States and now after 63 years of Independence we are still not Indians but people having regional identities.
This system of regional identities is not an Innate event but engineered in our mind by the political opportunist cutting across all the party lines. They have a misconception that masses are still ignorant and they will fall into the trap of regionalism and other petty issues like casteism etc.
Two years ago I was working in Pune, after spending weekend in Delhi I was returning to Pune . I boarded a flight from Delhi to Mumbai , after reaching Chatrapati Shivaji Terminal I took an auto, the driver was basically from Allahabad. I asked about the growing tension in Mumbai created by opportunist (read Politicians), he told me that he was as much against the opportunist of Hindi speaking States as against from Mumbai. Then he dropped me near a taxi as after that place autos could not ply till Dadar. Intrestingly, taxi driver was from Nashik, I asked the same question, again response was same. Moreover, he told me that there were more important issues for the people of Maharashtra and Mumbai than creating furore in the life of ordinary people for such a petty issue. I was astonished to found that he was well aware of the problems in his state than some of the literates of the same state. He told me that these opportunists did not cry for the suicide of the farmers in the Vidharba region, but worried about nothing.
No comments:
Post a Comment