Letter to Bal Thackeray: Gunning for culture

Jawed Naqvi Delhi

Dear Mr. Bal Thackeray,

I was in Mumbai for a day last weekend and yet again enjoyed the few conversations in Marathi that I overheard in shops and cafes, always a lively experience even though it's not my language and I have very little knowledge of it.

Whenever I walk on the Marine Drive, except for a few times in 1993 when the air was filled with fanatical anger and grief, I never fail to think of Johnny Walker in his western attire wooing pretty Kum Kum, cavorting in her nauvari, the still enticing nine-yard sari of old Maharashtra, singing that foot-tapping number from the movie CID. Ye hai Bombay meri jaan neatly summed up the bourgeois metropolis, but with its wondrous gift of home and hearth to a ceaseless tide of immigrants from across the country and beyond.

Of course, the song also took potshots at Mumbai's seamier face and its deep social inequities. Also, if you recall, sir, how Sahir Ludhianavi effectively parodied Allama Iqbal's song of maudlin nationalism - Saarey jahaan se achha Hindostaa'n hamara - in a moving film from the 1950s. Phir Subha Hogi was loosely based on Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment if I remember right.

The forceful song mocked the ideals of nationalism and internationalism alike because the poor mostly felt used and isolated in both the situations. Cheen o Arab hamara, Hindostaa'n hamara, rehne ko ghar nahi hai, sara jehaa'n hamara was picturised on the unforgettable Raj Kapoor. Jitni bhi buildingei'n thee'n, setho'n ne baat li hai'n, footpath Bambai ke hai'n aashiya'n hamara, he sang from the heart. The rich, the song lamented, had cornered the nice buildings, but the footpaths of Mumbai were always there for us.

Did you notice, Mr. Thackeray, how the Urdu lyricists (for that is what they were though they are always supposed to have written Hindi songs for Hindi movies, including the Persianised dialogues of Mughal-i-Azam!) how they used the common description for Mumbai and how both Bambai and Bombay fitted so well with the metre and the cadence of those songs? Remember also Saeed Mirza's gripping tale on celluloid in the 1980s about an old Maharashtrian Brahmin's struggle to get his house back from Mumbai's real estate crooks in Mohan Joshi Haazir Ho. Just listen to the song Amchi hai Mumbai tumchi Mumbai, jiyo mazey se karo naka ghai.

If Mumbai was left out from the old Urdu/Hindi lyrics, Saeed set it right more recently. So what went wrong? Why did you suddenly draw an angry line between Mumbai and its other two lovely names, which were and still are just as soothing to the ears for anyone having a sense of music? And if you did have to insist on Mumbai because of some higher expediency, why did you not go all the way and change the name of the Bombay Stock Exchange too? The impression we get is that you find yourself weak and helpless before the powerful conglomerates that run the stock exchange and perhaps this country.

But returning to culture, Saeed Mirza should be credited for blending Marathi with Urdu to grab the right flavour for his Joshi story. But tarry a little, for there's a problem in this. The Marathi language itself has a large number of modified Persian and Arabic words. This came about because, for a significant period, Marathi came under the influence of Arab traders and Turko-Persian-speaking rulers.