Sorry. Wrote too much.

The Maharashtrian people have really punished this biogted man, taught him a lesson he will never forget and made him and other anti-Marathi types realise one thing, first and foremost: that you can’t gratitously insult a community which has a population bigger than Germany and France combined. You can’t insult a community of 10 crores and get away it. You can’t abuse the Marathis-speaking people and go scot-free. They have taught him this lesson by way of…..

Translating the book into Marathi which will ensure that it will reach 100 million more people.

“I am especially interested in your point about how we Maharashtrians never rebel against any of the insults that are meted out to us in public media…” actually we don’t rebel against it because over time, we have come to see ourselves in that same light. We have ourselves got pschyed into believing that we are a third-class bunch of people, and that we are really low-class and somewhat inferior. Our self-image is such. I believe that a massive inferiority complex has developed in us. I think we geniunely believe that we are fit to be looked down on, to be regarded patronizingly and that there’s nothing wrong with us. With such a great inferiority complex and subconscious feeling of inadequacy, we bash ourselves and indulge in self-hatred much more than other communities. So when other people insult us, I think we don’t see anything wrong with it.

This explains why we never rebel…subconsciously, we thinks its true.

The reasons for this are complex and deserve some study. The destruction of the Marathi movie industry (I feel) has left the average educated middle-class Maharashtrian youth without any reference point other than the Hindi movie industry. Less and less Maharashtrians read Marathi books/see Marathi plays (and god only knows how few in a city like Mumbai) so that part of Marathi culture no longer forms a bulwark/reference point. In a city like Mumbai, once you leave your home, Marathi disappears. If your only reference point is Hindi movies…you know what image Hindi movies portray of Maharashtrians. Other than Hindi movies, what are the avenues for entertainment a Mumbaikar might have? Here let us not forget the hypnotic, powerful effect of the movie industry on the average industry. We are a movie mad bunch.

But can you blame the Maharashtrian? He turns on any Hindi movie and sees that the only Maharashtrian characters to be seen are the corrupt pandu/bais. He reads an English newspaper and sees how patronizingly his community is addressed, how slanted the English press is, even contemptous. He sees how anti-Marathi and mocking the English press can be of his community, how an element of condescenion creeps into everything that concerns Marathi-the constant attempts to make out his community to be an inept and bumbling one. He sees the Alpen Libe ads about Bhatawdekar. He sees the bai icon speaking her exaggarated Marathi-accented Hindi on one of the popular Hindi channels (I Think its MTV). He has to constantly deal with taunts that “Bombay is what it is, has been built by, ONLY because/by: (take your pick): Sindhis, Marwaris, Parsis,Nigerians, UPites, Biharis, Gujaratis,Keralites, Telugus, Tamilians, Iranis, Kannadigas, Bengalis, Assamese, Nagas, Punjabis, Rajasthanis, Madhya Pradeshis, Muslims, Kashmiris, Oriyas, Lashkar e-Toiba, Al Queda, HuJi, et al-but most certainly NOT Maharashtrians. ” He keeps on and on and on and on hearing this.

To top it all of, he sees that whenever anyone in Mumbai (even if he’s born, educated, studied, raised and brought up there-even if his family has nothing to do with his native state anymore), if he does something good, all the credit goes to the fact that’s South Indian, North Indian, Gujarati, Parsi, Marwari, Bengali et al-and has nothing to do with the fact that he’s grown up in Mumbai. The innate qualities in his community arguement.

OTOH, if he rapes a woman/robs/murders then the same people will make fun of Mumbai pointing out that you can’t blame outsiders-after all, he was BORN AND BROUGHT up in Mumbai. So Mumbai is to blame-since he was born and brought up there and is a product of Mumbai. So no blaming outsiders, XYZ man/woman was brought up there, not an outsider.

If he goes to the better quality English medium schools/colleges, he finds very few Maharashtrians (teachers/students) and I suppose his inferiority complex only grows. In his workplace he may find very few Maharashtrians and so the cycle continues. He may eventually regard his own language with distaste, even contempt-after all, is it not the symbol of his own backwardness (Note: backwardness qua backwardness i.e. in terms of his community, not self).

Does this explains why the Maharashtrian is always so willing to replace his own language with Hindi? (Something you can’t see anywhere else) Is it a feeling of embarrassment-that he would be seen as a pandu/bai type? Does the Maharashtrian associate his language with a certain backwardness lack of progress, rusticity, lack of sophistication? Does not speaking Marathi therefore make him feel less of a boor? Is his language identified in his mind with a kind of lowclassness? This is a topic worthy of some discussion.

The punchline is this: That whenever and whatever good happens in Mumbai, people keep reminding you and reiterating that it has nothing whatsoever to do with Maharashtra/Maharashtrians or that Mumbai is in Maharashtra. That whatever good in the city there is, it is in spite of and has nothing to do with it being the capital of Maharashtra. In fact, they run away from being called the capital of Maharashtra and keep saying: please free us from being part of Maharashtra. We want to be free from being ruled by these guys.

But whenever floods/floods/Gateway gropings (2007)/Gateway gropings (2008)/rapes/murders/chain-snatchers/house-breakins/in other words, everything BAD happens, then:
What is the government of Maharashtra doing?
What are the police doing?
We pay 70,000-100,000 crores and get nothing in return-why?
What are these pandus doing?
What are these Maharashtrians doing?
Aren’t all these molesters/rapists Maharashtrian?

Solution: Make Mumbai a Union Territory.

(N.B the same police kept Bombay safe for 40 years. But that was not, certainly not, because of the police. Crime is always because of the police;safety is because of other factors. So however safe Bombay was; it was not because of the police but because of other factors; now that crime is spiralling; it is certainly because of the police i.e. Maharashtrians/Marathi-speakers.

Sometimes, I find that I myself can’t see anything illogical in this arguement (which frightens me dearly). Please do point out any illogicality in this arguement.

P.S This incident at the gateway of India, both 2007 & even more so 2008 was just unbelivably terrible. I came to know about it a few hours ago. To tell you the truth (this is not meant to make myself seem a good guy) I find myself getting restless. Even mundane things like eating, getting on with work and so on seem hard. I just can’t get it out of my mind-the incident. Mumbai is really going to the dogs. But even then, 500,000 lakh people are coming to the city every year. The biggest growth is in the suburbs.

P.P.S-Is this Mr. Hari Menon, the same Hari Menon who worked at Outlook magazine? Is it the same gentlemen? I’m surprised-Outlook has at least half a dozen Maharashtrians, more maybe, listed as journalists, managers, in its Mumbai bureau. (As per their Magazine) He must have worked with them-so how come they didn’t fall in his list of fluent Marathi speakers?

Apologies for this lengthy post. This theory of many Maharashtrians subconsciously associating their language with a kind of backwardness has often been in my mind. I just wanted to share it with you. It explains why Hindi so easily replaces Marathi even in cities like Pune/Nagpur where 80-85 % plus of the population is Marathi speaking. It explains why the non-Marathi shopkeepers/businessmen never have to learn Marathi (unlike all other states), instead the customers adjust to the shopkeeper and speak in Hindi for his comfort. You will never see a place in the world where a customer adjusts to the shopkeeper and speaks in the shopkeeper’s language; everywhere else its the opposite. Only in our state do the customers take it upon themselves to adjust. It explains why the Marathi movie industry struggles unlike Telugu/Tamil/Kannada/Malayalam despite..

Malayalam: 36 million speakers
Tamil: 62 million speakers
Telugu: 82 million speakers
Kannada: 40 millon speakers
Marathi: 80 million speakers

I am especially interested in your point about how we Maharashtrians never rebel against any of the insults that are meted out to us in public media. It’s very, very true. And don’t you think my post has something to rebel against? This is my small step. I can’t stop the book from getting published, but maybe I can stop a few intelligent readers from buying it.

I read the post in its totality. I very much appreciated it. However if you want to know how tolerant Maharashtrians try this exercise:

Suppose Suketu was a Maharashtrian. And he wrote “That’s how the Biharis got back at us.”
Can you imagine?
“‘That’s how the niggers/Hindis/pakis/ got back at us.”
“That’s how the red-necks got back at us.”"
Surely, at least one self-respecting Maharashtrian should have filed a PIL under the “hurting the community sentiments” arguemnt? Heck, Aaja Nachle was forced to change its lyrics because of an indirect line in one song. This 100 times worse. How come no one is using the “hurting the community sentiments” arguement? If this had been any other community, what would have happened by now?

Would Penguin even have published it-allow it get into print?

True true. I was just pointing out the hypocrisy in Menon’s arguement. That’s all-his response reeeked of supercilliousness. I wanted to point a simple fact: replace Marathi with Malayali and non-Maharashtrian with Arab, the same thing holds true:)

The whole Malayali thing…not at all. After all, Mr. Menon/Suketu Mehta et al have based their “”Maharashtrians are an underclass”" arguement on seeing a few Maharashtrians doing certain jobs. It is another matter that a vast number of very menial jobs are done by those very same communities.This belies a straightforward “”rich non-local/poor local”" theory. Therefore, by the same token, the Malayali in the Gulf is also worthy of contempt? If the Maharashtrian is worthy of contempt because maids and hamaals (not all)
are Maharashtrian then is the Malayali also worthy of only contempt and ridicule because his own countrymen are doing dirty jobs in the Gulf? Most Malayalis in the Gulf are doing very very menial jobs. The NORKA (non-resident Keralite Association) website corroborates this. So the logic here is simple: If Maharashtrians=maid/servants, then Maharashtrians=contempt
If Malayalis (Gulf)=maid servants then Malayalis=contempt?

The logic is the same; but who would say that?