Us and Them just got uglier

We sorted our differences quite well, thank you; now suddenly it’s war.

So one more axis of hate has been created. Whether we like it or not, whether we agree or not, whether it makes legal and constitutional sense or not, there’s a new ‘them’ and ‘us’. The ugly shenanigans of the last some weeks have created new fears new anger, new divides. And now the heat is on us. Suddenly, Maharashtrians are looked at with suspicion and dislike. In Delhi, the Maharahtra Sadan was attacked. Literally, out of nowhere, we’ve become an issue. Congratulations to the person who has single-handedly sponsored the tarnishing of our image as pluralistic, intelligent, easy-to-mix, forward-looking, reformist, and Maha in many quiet ways.
This is the thing about caste-community-language chauvinism and politics. It manufactures enmity out of thin air. And no one is spared. If you thought it wouldn’t touch you, you were wrong. When you thought it’s about ‘Madrasis’, not us in the 70s, for most of us it was just fine. We perhaps wouldn’t actually go do something bad to a ‘Madrasi’, but many, many amongst us were quite content to watch. In later decades, many of us thought it’s about Muslims, not us, and again, while we didn’t maybe actually hate-monger, we didn’t feel any sense of disquiet about what was going on. Along came terrorism and we were even able to lump everyone together and say ‘these people are like that only’. It’s the turn of the Christians in some places, now. And right here, in our backyard, the North Indians are under attack.
The awful thing about all this is that when the issue is not politicized, we co-existed in a much more real way, taking into account and taking in our stride, each other’s ‘community traits’. All us Indians, under the surface do have less-than-perfect relationships with each other’s communities. But we dealt with it in our own way. Either by ignoring those traits, laughing them off, or sometimes addressing the differences. A young man recently told me that when an influx of people from the the North came into their neighbourhood, the incidence of eve-teasing increased. The local women handled it by stopping a few of the teasers and warning them that this was simply not on. Taken aback at by the strong but reasonable tone of these women, they backed off. Yes, some of the women even told them, to drive their point home – we’ll tie you rakhis and make you brothers, or we’ll give you bangles and make your our sisters! It worked. The fellows of course backed off.
Now, after the dogs of hate have been officially let loose, some macho boys of the area went and beat up the ex eve teasers. Just for fun. To ‘assert’ their Maharashtrian-ness the way their ‘leader’ has now taught them. Suddenly, from nuisance that was handled, the new-comers in the area have been re-cast as ‘menace that has to be stamped out’.
And this is my point – why are so many of us sitting pretty in our jobs and homes, now feeling free to say: “these fellows need to have been taught a lesson”? And does that justify killing some poor labourer returning home for Diwali? Nothing adds up. And tell me, havent many of us have quite clearly experienced directly the inability/unwillingness of our local labour to work hard, or to show up at work at all? At that time it’s ok to get in Oriya plumber and Rajasthani carpenter and UP mason, and Andhra drivers, right? And not to forget the Gujarati/Marwari shopkeeper without whom it is unlikely that we would have got provisions from 7 am ato 11 pm. Many of our domestic workers, bais, are cleaning up after us in our homes because their useless husbands couldn’t be bothered to hold a job. Suddenly, just because Mandrake gestures hypnotically, now we believe that ‘these north Indians’ have ‘grabbed’ their jobs? Comeon. Go tell it to the mountain. Let’s not get carried away.
It’s the same thing with the hordes of Indians working in foreign countries. They got those jobs because others wouldn’t do them and they do them well. Tomorrow if the locals start to beat them and put them on planes to come home, we’ll be the first to wail and gnash our teeth at ‘first world arrogance’ etc. What a bunch of double-standards we have in our little armoury.
Today Maharashtra Sadan was attacked in Delhi and the Marathis told to go ‘home’. It was going to happen. Isn’t it sad that increasingly, home cannot be defined as the place you choose to live peacefully and meaningfully in? You leave your place of origin in search of better prospects and make a home for yourself wherever your work takes you. A perfectly human impulse. But then we’re all becoming less than human.