WSN-Editorial-Trouble in Maharashtra and the Sikhs

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Trouble in Maharashtra and the Sikhs

The outbursts of Raj Thackeray, head of a Shiv Sena splinter group, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), have kept the Indian politicians and media this past week, and have also revealed the strange bed fellows that politicians in India may chose at the drop of a hat, or a hate-filled comment. Suddenly, Amitabh Bachhan's wife Jaya finds that Bal Thackeray is a "father figure." The comment goes uncontested in the media. Raj Thackeray was panned because he spoke how migrant labourers from UP and Bihar were dominating Maharashtra culture. Demands for his arrest turned into a crescendo, but by that time the Bal Thackeray's blue eyed son and Shiv Sena's de facto chief Udhhav Thackeray found that Raj was walking away with the tag of being a friend of the sons of the soil. So he too adopted the same tune, but by this time, Amitabh had stopped hearing, Amar Singh had gone deaf and Indian media suffered an attack of paralysis.

But why should the World Sikh News be bothered about the shenanigans of the Shiv Sena and its factions and about the shrill debates on nativism theory on myriad Indian channels? Because precisely similar sentiments are expressed in Punjab by one or the other politicians when it comes to influx of migrant labourers.

While earlier some voices were raised from the intellectual circles, the loudest being that of Jaswant Kanwal, against migrant labourers, the debate had become shrill with Simranjit Singh Mann adding his voice to demands for disenfranchising migrants. Soon, many radical voices were heard against the migrant labourers. Many of these concerns are genuine too, though when the politicians express these in the language that must appeal to the lowest common denominators among the crowds, the argument often goes haywire and gets poorly articulated.

It is easy to slam the happenings in Maharashtra as "shameful attacks on north Indians in Mumbai by lumpen elements" and bemoan the deterioration in "India's only cosmopolitan city." It is also easier to forget that it was Raj's uncle Bal Thackeray who modeled himself as a saviour and custodian of Maharashtrian culture, the plank on which he established the Shiv Sena 42 years ago.

You can term the latest spat as part of the efforts of Raj Thackeray to make inroads into a vote bank and call the entire politics as parochial.

Or you can get serious and worry. "Do migrants, when allowed in overwhelming numbers and affecting the demography in a major way, be a threat to the culture and resources?" Try an honest answer, and it may set you thinking. It is easy to slip into a specious argument that "people like Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhonsle, Sunil Gavaskar and Sachin Tendulkar are revered nationally not because they are from Maharashtra but because they are exceptionally talented". The average Maharashtrian has seen hundreds of thousands of jobs slipping away because of the migrant influx. In Kapurthala's rail coach factory, Punjab's only heavy industry functional so far, it is difficult to find a Punjabi. Under a well thought out scheme, Chandigarh's demography has undergone a sea change with thousands of migrants from UP and Bihar being settled here, weakening Punjab's claim significantly.

But when you marshal the argument, keep in mind the fact that thousands and thousands of Punjabi migrants have found their calling in the western nations. It is this Diaspora which is best situated to fine-tune the argument and articulate it. Because when it studies the migrant problem, it does so with the credible plank of also belonging to the category in one way.

The Sikh community should be debating the Maharashtra issue in the light of its own experience. It is time we talked about the problem in a dispassionate way to reach an actionable stage and arguable plank before the time comes to take to the streets.