Hindi v/s Marathi??

Monday 9^th November signifies a great historical event i.e. the fall of the Berlin Wall. This was the day when two countries East and West Germany became unified and marked their place in world history. Contrastingly on the same historical day the actions of the MNS MLA’s in the legislative assembly did the job of creating new rifts in the minds of the Hindi and the Marathi speaking population.

It was deeply disheartening to see the elected representatives behave the way they were on a non issue and even more disturbing to see some so called learned people (read Shobhaa De) supporting these actions on National Television.

I call it a non issue because there is no sound logic behind any controversy the MNS creates. Let us know some of the major controversies created by them one by one.

The MNS supporters or the so called leaders of MNS believe that speaking in some other language will hurt the sentiments of Marathi people (Marathi Manoos) and even worse will be disrespectful to Maharashtra and the Maharashtrian culture.

According to me any language in any country is just a mode of communication and if it was really about the cultural aspect than even after so many centuries we would have been still speaking Sanskrit and not disintegrated into more than 20 languages and 100 dialects. So we presume that for ease of communication we invented different languages that were understood by some set of people. Now I would like to remind the MNS supporters that their tallest Marathi icons which they and the whole India takes pride in namely Sachin Tendulkar, Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhonsle, Madhuri Dixit, etc have not achieved fame playing for Mumbai or Maharashtra, singing Marathi songs or acting in Marathi movies but doing so for India or singing & acting in Hindi movies. So I don’t think they are being disrespectful to Maharashtra or Marathi by doing so and hence same for others.

Also our great constitution (whose architect himself was a great Marathi Manoos) has given us certain rights and provisions which we are at full liberty to use. Besides this we have to acknowledge the fact that we live in a modern society with developments in business taking place across geography. Just imagine an IT engineer from rural Maharashtra is transferred to the southern states and he is not able to learn to speak the local language. In this case he will be resorting to the other options of speaking Hindi or English and won’t leave the job. This in no case is disrespecting the local language.

The second issue they rake in time and again is that the “parprantiyas” (outsiders) have stolen all the Marathi Manoos jobs. Also quite annoyingly the definition of “Parprantiya” is constrained to people from UP and Bihar.

I would like to ask that are there no Marathi people working outside Maharashtra? There are lakhs of Marathi people working outside Maharashtra and nobody is stopping the rest to follow suit. If the MNS believes in the principle of local jobs to local people than it is kind of justifying the acts committed against Indians in Canada and Australia (no surprises that Mr. Raj Thackrey has never opened his mouth against atrocities against Indians in foreign countries).

I understand the fact that Mumbai is saturating and there is a lot of load on the infrastructure because of population influx. But the influx is not only from UP and Bihar, it is also contributed to a large extent by other states and rural Maharashtra but as only the UP and Bihar people are not the part of MNS vote bank they are targeted. What Mr. Raj should concentrate on is to target his corrupt Marathi officials who take bribes and legalise the slum houses of parprantiyas and provide them ration Cards.

In perspective it is no war between Hindi and Marathi, it is just Raj Thackrey trying to create a situation and doing what his uncle did 40 years ago against South Indians in order to enhance his political career. He is misguiding people to capture the vote base of Shiv Sena and teach his estranged cousin Uddhav a lesson (“Usne humko bahut mara aur humne usko ek hi mara par solid mara”). The Congress on other hand is playing opportunist and using Raj Thackrey as a stooge to curb Shiv Sena. If Raj had real and logical issues he would be any time ready to debate them on public platforms and not make use of Hooligans on any and every issue he creates.

I still believe that we are a cultured and free society and we are meant to co-exist. Our society as a whole has withstood the test of times. Our political parties have resorted to caste, religion and many other divisive policies but we are still one and will be one nation. This is what Shiv Sena learnt in 40 years and this is what Raj Thackrey shall learn in due course because I still feel that the average Marathi Manoos has not lost his “Manuski”..