Author: Jug Suraiya
Publication: The Times of India
Date: February 2, 2010
URL: http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/jugglebandhi/entry/mumbai-and-370
The Shiv Sena-sangh parivar spat about who
has the right to live and work in Mumbai with the Sena claiming that the city
be reserved exclusively for Marathi manoos and the RSS and the BJP counter-claiming
that the metropolis should be home to any Indian who chooses to make it home
has taken a curious turn.
The BJP has likened the Sena's stance to Article
370, which disallows non-Kashmiri Indians from buying immovable property in
Kashmir, which is anathema to both parties. Apart from the Sainiks, the comparison
will also put a lot of liberals in a bind. If Mumbai ought to be open to all
and all liberals will emphatically endorse that view, even at the discomfiture
of for once having to side with the despised parivar why shouldn't Kashmir
have a similar open-door policy for all Indians?
The old argument that Article 370 of the Constitution
was specifically put in to recognise and preserve Kashmir's 'special' status
has worn thin over the years. Instead of enabling that beleaguered state to
become part of the so-called national mainstream, the 'special' status that
it supposedly enjoys under Article 370 has, if anything, only served to entrench
separatism in the Valley. The 'protection' that Article 370 affords Kashmiris
has been made into a cruel mockery by the plight of thousands of Kashmiri
Pandits who out of fear of extremist menace have been driven into exile in
other parts of the country, and whose fate has largely been overlooked by
successive central governments.
The sangh parivar has long opposed Article
370. Now, by juxtaposing Mumbai with 370 and, in effect, with Kashmir the
saffronites have added considerable force to their argument. What will or
what can the liberal and secular response be?
To say that the two cases of Mumbai and of
Kashmir are very different is only to state the obvious. Of course they are
very different; historically, politically, demographically, you name it. But
equally without question they are both integrally a part of India. So, 60
years after the founding of the republic, shouldn't the basis of their 'Indianness'
be the same, in terms of rights of residence and the acquisition of property?
The parivar's game plan which the secular-liberals
have so far thwarted has been to 'saffronise' the Valley through mass Hindu
migration and so resolve the so-called 'Kashmir problem' once and for all.
The liberal quandary now is how to continue to make a special case for Kashmir
while siding, however uncomfortably, with the parivar's assertion that all
of India should be equally hospitable to all Indians.
All the parties concerned the Shiv Sena, the
sangh parivar, the Congress and other self-styled 'secularists' are playing
vote-bank politics with an eye to their respective constituencies. Like everything
else from disinvestment and other economic reforms to Indo-Pak relations it
all boils down to vote-catching politics. Except that in this case - the case
of Mumbai-Kashmir, or Mumbai 370, if you like it's not just a single or even
a set of policies that is at stake but the very essence of the republic, of
its pluralistic heart and soul. With or without economic reforms, India can
- and indeed has for all these years survived. So has it survived ups and
downs, war and peace, with its neighbours and with other powers. But can India
survive as India if Indianness is made subservient to regionalism, be it in
the name of Marathi manoos or the Kashmiri ethos?
If Kashmir is only for Kashmiris, then what's
wrong with the demand of the Thackerays, Bal and Raj, that Mumbai should only
be for Marathis? Similarly, should Assam be only for the Assamese, Bengal
for the Bengalis, and so on, till nothing remains of India but a name and
a tattered rag that once was the proud tricolour?
- The Sena-parivar shouting match has opened
a can of worms. All 370 of them.