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MSN News

February 8th, 2008

Dr Heckle and Mr Pride

Rajdeep Sardesai 

Long before there was ‘monkey’, sorry, ‘maa ki...’, there was ‘bhaiya’. The 1979 Ranji game between Bombay and Delhi at the Wankhede stadium witnessed the repeated chants of ‘bhaiya’ every time Madan Lal ran in to bowl. Ironically, a year or two later, as Madan Lal bowled India to a famous win on the same ground against England, the abuse turned to celebration.

In a sense, the contrast was typically Bombay: warm, embracing and cosmopolitan at one level, but unforgiving, narrow-minded, and parochial at another. Mumbai has always been a Jekyll and Hyde city with a fleeting memory span. Madan Lal realised it three decades ago. Now, Amitabh Bachchan is being confronted with the grim reality: a much-loved global superstar one day, targeted as a migrant from Uttar Pradesh the next.

That Maharashtra Navnirman Sena leader Raj Thackeray has chosen to reveal the darker side of  Mumbai in the last week should come as no surprise.

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Politically, this has transformed Mumbai’s map. A Govinda, for example, would not have won a Lok Sabha seat from Mumbai without the staunch support of the north Indian community.

The Congress-NCP alliance would not have won 19 of the city’s 34 assembly seats in 2004 without the support of the north Indian migrant. Even the heir apparent to the Sena throne, Uddhav Thackeray, realised the limitations of anti-north Indian politics and abandoned the ‘Mee Mumbaikar’ campaign before the last municipal elections.

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