Militant, violent politics proves an ineffective minority in Mumbai as “My Name is Khan” opens
February 14th, 2010 by Wil Robinson
Once again, Mumbai proved that letting a few voices in the media frame our values and fears is not the way to live peaceably with 20 million neighbors. It’s a lesson that, in a globalized world, the rest of us would do well to learn.
Shahrukh Khan, or SRK as he is often referred to for brevity’s sake, is a dancing, acting and commercialized celebrity in India on a level unparalleled in the West. He also is owner of the Kolkata Knights cricket team.
A couple of weeks ago, when the Indian cricket league drafted new players, teams purposefully passed on Pakistani nationals. SRK said what everyone was thinking – that it didn’t make sense to leave out good cricketers just because they were Pakistani.
The Shiv Sena (“Army of Shivaji”), India’s version of the KKK, the Tea-Baggers, and the Taliban all rolled into one, saw an opening. The militant Hindu group, which has a political arm powerful enough that it controls the Mumbai city government, is anti-Muslim and also aims to exclude Indians from the north or south – preserving Mumbai and the state of Maharashtra for Marathis only.
Last week, they questioned the loyalty and patriotism of SRK for making the remark about Pakistani cricketers (because, you know, Muslims that didn’t emigrate to Pakistan in 1947 surely can’t be good Indian citizens…).
The Shiv Sena called for protests against SRK’s upcoming film, “My Name is Khan,” which was set for release on February 12th. Except Shiv Sena “protests” are always more than just a picket line and slogans. Violence is an inherent part of their demonstrations, and people are often killed, either from flying rocks or a mob of angry Shiv Sainiks with sticks.
It’s happened plenty before. Either at the behest of Shiv Sena, or their off-shoot, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), a mob of misguided Marathi men go on a rampage.
If the protest is about North Indians taking jobs as taxi drivers, then taxis are destroyed and north Indians are beaten (occasionally to death).
If the protest is about rising electricity prices, than a mob of Sainiks rampage the local municipal offices, burning vehicles, throwing rocks, and generally causing property damage (which, ironically, probably just adds to the rising costs of services…).
The Shiv Sena and/or the MNS have, over the past two years:
- Forced shopkeepers to change their signs from Hindi to Marathi.
- Publicly slapped a politician while he took the oath of office in Hindi (instead of Marathi).
- Imposed a law demanding that all taxi drivers in Mumbai speak and read Marathi (this in a city where a large proportion of people are illiterate in any language).
- Attacked north Indians taking a exam in Mumbai to apply for jobs with the Indian railway.
- The leader of the MNS, Raj Thackeray, threatened that “the entire Maharashtra will be set on fire” if he was to be arrested for inciting violence (the irony of his defense was lost on him…).
- The Shiv Sena have said they will not let the Australian cricket team play in Mumbai until the recent spate of attacks on Indian immigrants in Australia stops (because committing physical violence against Indian immigrants in Australia is wrong…but beating and/or killing immigrants in Mumbai…well, that’s different).
And now, the Shiv Sena threatened violence if SRK’s film were to be released: “Wait and see what happens on Friday despite huge security” one of their leaders said.
Except a funny thing happened on the way to the protest last Friday.
No one cared.
The build-up to Friday looked grim. Mumbai police were stationed at every major theater after scattered protests started even days before the film opened. The media (oh, how the Indian media loves yellow journalism) were all over it, and several theaters stopped selling tickets.
But come Friday, the best the Shiv Sena could manage was a few minor scrapes, which in turn, were inflated by the media. At one multiplex in the neighborhood of Chembur, dozens of police were present. Except the crowd was only 7 Shiv Sainiks who tried to attack the theater.
Seven.
In a city of 20 million, they managed a whole 7 people. Seven who were then promptly beaten back with lathis (bamboo sticks) and arrested.
Fans of SRK turned out in droves, and the movie enjoyed a big opening weekend. Three young men outside a theater in the borough of Sion passed through the cordon of police guards, bought their tickets, and headed inside with smiles. Were they concerned about any protests or violence?
“No, not at all,” said one young man in his early twenties. “We’re excited to see SRK in a new role; it’s something new for him.”
For these young men (all Hindu, by the way), the story wasn’t the Shiv Sena’s protest – it was that SRK was playing a “new role” (as it were, a rather serious role about an American Muslim with Asperger’s Syndrome who marries a Hindu woman and then faces Islamophobia after the 9/11 attacks…try making that plot line up).
Despite the widespread support for Shiv Sena that appears in the Indian media, and even though the political arm of Shiv Sena runs the Mumbai government, the movement’s extremist views represent a very small minority. One might look at the violence – the protests, the beatings, the forced closing of shops – and think that the Shiv Sena represents a threat to India’s secularism.
But they don’t. And every time their demagogue leaders try to expand their reach and use fear and hate to rally support, they are proved wrong by the millions of people that call Mumbai home.
There are striking parallels between the Shiv Sena and other hate groups in the world – the KKK, the Tea-Baggers, the Taliban. Each group claims to represent the sole voice of the people. Each group thinks it has a monopoly on power and is defending their divinely-bestowed rights. And each group, in some way, uses violence (or the threat of violence) to bully their way into political life and try to force the hand of the general public.
But what we see in reality, once we pull away from the 24-hour cable media hype and the sensational reporting, is that people that use hate and violence are a minority.
These small groups of extremists are, however, a particularly loud and media-savvy minority. It’s up to us recognize this, and to refuse to generalize, stereotype, and selectively choose “facts” that suit our own narrow interests.
Most conservatives do not believe that Obama is going to turn the U.S. into the next Soviet Union. Just a couple of ignorant southerners are Knights of the KKK. Only a tiny fraction of Muslims sympathize with the Taliban or Al Qaeda.
And in Mumbai, a city of 20 million, apparently very few people believe that India is a country exclusively for Hindus.
Perhaps only seven.
Tags: MNS, movie, Mumbai, politics, protests
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C’mon, dude - I know a few northerners who agree with your “few ignorant southerners” regarding Obama’s nefariousness. But, anyway, great article.
And don’t forget to mention the hypocrisy of the groups in part of their core issue - how the Maharashtra terror organisations want to ban Australian cricketers from playing in Mumbai because there has been a spate of attacks on Indian citizens staying in Australia (perhaps taking jobs away from the beat-happy unemployed there), but these groups see no problem with Indian cricketers playing in Pakistan. Of course, maybe they respect others’ territory and leave those xenophobic protests to their Pakistani analogues…
It’s just unfortunate that a group of people judges their skills as so poor that they can’t accept competition from others. (Of course, that’s why I’m afraid of Mexicans - my days of itinerant tomato picking are surely done, and I’ve been forced to attend a state-sponsored university using grants and loans to acquire a stupid education so that I can find a job the wetbacks can’t steal just by undercutting my wages. It’s worse for my brother - he’s not a good student, so he’s out of the fields and into a position at WalMar where a fluent English speaker is needed. Poor guy - never going to achieve his dream of picking his 10 millionth tomato…)
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Perhaps all was well in Mumbai, but what about the bombing in Pune? Its quite close to Mumbai and is also heavy with Shiv Sena. We lived in Pune last year, arrived just before Valentine’s day and were shocked and horrified by all the furor that arose over the holiday. All of the fuss was put up by extremist, sounding much like the Shiv Sena. When I first heard of the Pune bombing I thought of those same Marathi/Hindu extremists, not any Pakistani terror outfit…
I’d be interested to read your thought on the Pune attack.
Maggie–
Thanks for your comment.
I, too, immediately thought of Hindu fundamentalists when I heard about the Pune bombing (and to be honest, I’m still not sure they’ve positively established who was at fault). Pune seems to have a long history with the Hindutva movement (going back to Godse, Gandhiji’s assassin).
But the response to the Pune bombings, like the Mumbai attacks and the many bombings in the summer of 2008 (Ahmedabad, Delhi, etc.), is what impresses me. India seems to understand that “terrorism” is defined by response, and has moved away from the days of communal riots. It seems Indians - probably more than Americans - understand that extremists are a minority, and look forward in the face of violent acts.
Valentine’s Day? Of course, I don’t condone any violence or imposition of views on others - but Valentine’s Day does have a very “Western” value to it (i.e., commercialism of love…) and I’d hate to see it take on the same identity here in India. Christmas is similar - the commercialism of Christmas in the U.S. has already spread to Japan. How can India avoid ruining a religious holiday by attaching everything to the almighty dollar? (or rupee, as it were…)
Great article, as usual, but I’m puzzled why you think Tea Party associations (there are no “memebers” or any real organization to mention) are “hate groups”, are violent or use threats of violence in any way. I’ve been to tea party rallies and they were simply people who were angry at the way (currently) liberal politicians have tried to force bills through Congress that will undermine Constitutional guarantees. All of that according to the Tea Partiers’ understandings of the Constitution, of course. I’ve never seen or heard of anyone using violence or the threat of such at any time. In fact, I think they are simply outraged at the ongoing and increasingly obvious corruption and opportunism practiced publicly by American politicians of both parties. I would warn against seeing “angry” people as necessarily “violent”. There’s plenty of cause here for anger.
If my preferences mattered, I would prefer not to have Sara Palin associated with them. Oh, well.
Jim–
When Tea party participants make comments and carry signs that make racial and hateful accusations about our president regarding his “muslim” faith, his “unamerican” origins, and compare him to Hitler and the Nazis (without any real evidence, other than they have been taught that anything evil must be Hitler), visibly and publicly tote around automatic weapons as proof that no one is going to take away their constitutional right to own an M-16 assault weapon (to kill British redcoats should they invade again, I would assume, if they are really constitutionalists), encourage vigilante activism to keep out foreigners, muslims, mexicans, etc. who are “illegal” or just “unwanted,” spread lies and rumors about a Muslim invasion, muslim beliefs, muslim intentions, and the Koran, and continue to support American military intervention (see: Iran) in sovereign states, as well as the bombing of people from unmanned drones in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen that care little for “collateral damage”…
…then yes, I categorize them as “violent” and a “hate group.”
And that excludes tea-party associates/supporters with public images like Rush Limbaugh and Pat Robertson who think the Haitians deserved the earthquake because they made a deal with the devil (or that Obama is just “using” the Haiti thing to make himself look good with the “blacks”). It also ignores the large majority of tea-party members and supporters that believe human rights only apply to those who fit a certain profile (i.e., heterosexual, Christian, preferably white, etc.)
P.S. - Our previous administration “forced bills through Congress,” made political appointments without approval of people who represented the U.S. abroad, outright lied about a war and spent how many billions of dollars that was used directly for enriching private corporations involved in the military-industrial complex…one company of which the Vice president held 400,000 unexercised shares before their stock went up 300% as a result of their contracts in the Iraq and Afghanistan war…blah blah blah.
Where were the “constitutional defenders” then?