Mumbai is suddenly awash with sound-bites that recall an older noise. The protagonists have shifted their positions on the chessboard. Most prominently, Raj Thackeray is no longer the Shiv Sena’s first nephew, but a supremo of his own outfit, a Sena splinter called the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena. But the rhetoric is depressingly the same. In the past few days, as Raj Thackeray unleashed venom and vitriol at migrants from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, singling out Chhat Puja and even Amitabh Bachchan, the Marathi versus the Outsider faultline was being worked up again. Can it succeed once more, this parochial politics of provocation? Or isn’t Mumbai different now, its immigrant community more substantial, more confident of itself? If the violence that has erupted in the last few days is indication, there may be reason to worry. The run-up to polls in 2009, both assembly and Lok Sabha, which seems to have already begun, could be a vulnerable time for the metropolis. All political equations are wide open. More specifically, there is unease between the Shiv Sena and the BJP — always an alliance of mutual need more than an ideological coming together — and competition between the Sena and its splinter. The ruling combination of the Congress-NCP is not exactly a close-knit one either, and Mayawati has thrown her hat in the ring. In this interplay between moving and moveable parts, the bigger picture can look dangerously inviting for those on the lookout for creating and resurrecting instant vote banks. The Shiv Sena was born near four decades ago amid fears stoked in Mumbai’s urban youth on the lower rungs of the class ladder about so-called Gujarati-Marwari domination. Over the years, the Shiv Sena has honed its Us-and-Them politics by pitting the ‘sons of the soil’ against Gujaratis, south Indians, Muslims and north Indians. In each case, it has gambled on the same insecurity among the young and the restless — about the closing of opportunity in the city that promises everyone that they can make it big. It is not just that these apprehensions are contrived and overblown, and used to mask the real causes of unemployment; it is also that they deny the metropolis’s very real dependence on its immigrants.The real danger is this: as Raj Thackeray tries to revive old divides, there will be no real opposition to his politics. On illiberal politics, Mumbai’s politicians have shown that they are united across ideological divides. It is not Raj Thackeray and his lumpen band — Mumbai’s real challenge is to find those who can resist the malevolent tide.
