Identity fault lines, growth goals shape the battle for India’s richest civic body

At the peak of the Samyukta Maharashtra Movement in the 1950s, and the fight over Bombay, two warring slogans resounded in the city: “Mumbai aamchya hakkachi/ naahi konachya baapchi, (Mumbai is ours by right; it's not someone’s fiefdom) cried the sons of the soil.

- Meenal Baghel

Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis, deputy CM Eknath Shinde and RPI chief Ramdas Athawale at a BMC election campaign rally.

(RAJU SHINDE/HT)

To which, votaries of the Mahagujarat movement who wanted Bombay to become their capital, shot back with: ‘Mumbai tumchi/bhandi ghasa aamchi’ (Mumbai is yours; (but you) clean our utensils).

Salman Rushdie captures the fractiousness of that time in Midnight's Children when his protagonist Salim Sinai shouts back at Samyukta Maharashtra activists heckling him to speak in Gujarati: “Su chhe? saaru chhe/ danda le ke maaru chhe” (How are you?—I am well!—I'll take a stick and thrash you to hell!).

Seventy years after the linguistic movement, the old fault line is again gaping wide. Overriding bad roads, bad air, bad water, inept and corrupt housing schemes, elections to Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, India’s richest civic body, are being fought on identity politics.

Atthe heart of this is the Marathi manoos (people) who account fora third of the city’s 10.3 million voters. Estranged cousins Uddhav and Raj Thackeray have come together. Eknath Shinde, the valiant carpetbagger from Thane (not really Mumbai, according to purists), has wrested 90 of the 227 seats from the BJP, to prove, once and for all, that his is the real Shiv Sena. Even the Bharatiya Janata Party finds its hegemonic cultural appeal coming up short against the famously khadoos (grumpy) Marathi manoos. To counter the opposition’s accusations of promoting Gujarati interests, the party has promised that should they win on January 15, the mayor and the chief of the standing committee, which clears all BMC contracts, will be Marathi speakers.