As if launching a belligerent marketing campaign towards north Indians working in Mumbai weren't sufficient, the Shiv Sena, even whereas lifting the ban on the screening of Shah Rukh Khan’s My Title Is Khan, has known as the star a traitor due to his assertion that Pakistani gamers ought to have been included within the IPL a view shared by thousands and thousands of cricket followers, in Maharashtra and elsewhere in India.

 

There have been assaults, bodily in addition to verbal, towards north Indians, so lots of whom have contributed a lot to creating Mumbai the nice metropolis that's. There was persecution of display screen icons like SRK who’ve made Mumbai synonymous with Bollywood, the worldwide film Mecca which is quick overtaking Hollywood. There was the boycott of Pakistani gamers on the expense of cricket, the largest money-spinning sport on the subcontinent. What are the Shiv Sena and the MNS doing?

 

The reply is easy. Within the identify of Marathi manoos they're chopping off their very own nostril to spite their face. They're taking the Maha out of Maharashtra. Suppose film idols like SRK and others who've been focused by the Sena determine to stroll out of Mumbai, taking Bollywood with them to a extra hospitable atmosphere (the upcoming media and film-making hub in Noida would welcome them with open arms). And suppose enterprise and business fed up with the Sena’s and the MNS’s strong-arm parochialism which aside from anything is unhealthy for enterprise have been to observe swimsuit and go to a extra commerce-friendly clime. What could be left of Mumbai, which right this moment can boast of being the monetary in addition to the leisure capital of the nation? If Bollywood and enterprise have been to tug out, Mumbai could be left with little greater than the Thackeray clan, Bal and Raj, and their respective goons.

 

A far-fetched state of affairs? Not essentially. The Thackerays ought to be taught a lesson from the destiny of what's now known as Kolkata. At a time when it was nonetheless Calcutta, it may lay declare to being the premier metropolis of the nation when it comes to industrial and mental exercise. Then, because of over 1 / 4 century of uninterrupted Marxist rule which inspired irresponsible labour unionism and stifled industrial and financial exercise, Calcutta witnessed a flight of capital and expertise, and have become a stagnant backwater.

 

It was not simply businessmen and industrialists, but in addition professionals within the media and different fields who left Calcutta as financial refugees. I do know; I used to be considered one of them.

 

What occurred to Calcutta can occur to Mumbai if the 2 Thackerays, Bal and Raj, competing with one another in populist chauvinism, have their approach. Will the Marathi manoos in whose identify these two demagogues are doing their greatest to show a vibrant metropolis right into a provincial ghetto permit the Thackerays to get away with this hijacking of their metropolis? Will the Marathi manoos whom the Thackerays declare to symbolize permit them to show Maharashtra into Maha-disaster?

 

It’s time that the silent majority amongst Marathi manoos first rate, hard-working, accommodating as all Indians by nature and custom are usually till they're misrepresented by unscrupulous politicians who falsely declare to talk on their behalf stood up and disowned such ruinously narrow-minded and short-sighted leaders who're main them to catastrophe.

 

What do you say? Significantly for those who occur to be Marathi. Particularly for those who occur to be Marathi.

 

Ought to super-chauvinists be allowed to carry Mumbai to ransom by risk of violence, and by doing so name into query India’s integrity as a nation which ensures equal rights to all its residents? If they will – and can – do that, is there that nice a distinction between them and the perpetrators of 26/11? Who’s the traitor, then?

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