There will be much celebratory and self-deprecatory talk about national unity as India marks the 60th anniversary of the Republic. In this land of contradictions and contrasts, every statement about India, and its opposite, can be taken as true. For every valid celebratory comment, there would be equally valid critical ones. One must, therefore, strike a balance while commenting on any contemporary political, social and economic phenomenon. Even so, the growing temptation to resort to chauvinism, of various kinds — communal, caste, linguistic, religious, regional — should worry anyone who has the best interests of the Indian nation and the Republic at heart. The ease with which politicians are able to create, maintain, manipulate and exploit a range of chauvinistic political platforms does not augur well for the future of the Republic. What is most worrying is that even ostensibly “national” and nationalistic political parties are willing to yield to this temptation of competitive chauvinism. The manner in which the Indian National Congress, or the Congress party, in Maharashtra has tried to pander to Marathi chauvinism, competing with political parties that it has long fought, should worry nationalists. The latest example, which is mercifully behind us, is the attempt to impose local language qualifications for taxi drivers in the name of the commuter. What is truly ironic about this incident is that the Congress party-led government in Mumbai was seeking to make knowledge of Marathi a requirement for taxi drivers at a time when the government in China has made knowledge of English compulsory for taxi drivers. Clearly, while Beijing and Shanghai are going global, Mumbai’s political leaders seem to want to make this metropolis obsessively local.
There is a larger issue at stake than the language capabilities of taxi drivers. Does the Indian Republic seek a process of urbanisation that unites the nation or divides it? If every city, including the large metropolitan centres, were to close doors to so-called “outsiders”, what happens to national unity? The “Mumbai for Mumbaikars” slogan has already destroyed this great city. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s dream of making Mumbai “India’s Shanghai” is quickly fading away, with even the Congress party pandering to local chauvinism. If the Telangana agitation reverses Hyderabad’s cosmopolitanism and Bangalore becoming Bengaluru is a precursor to the reversal of the city’s globalisation, where will the process end? Regional, caste and community-based political parties will resort to competitive chauvinism, but what role should national parties like the Congress party and the Bharatiya Janata Party play? The victory of the Congress party-led United Progressive Alliance in the 2009 election was viewed by many as the defeat of regional, caste-based and chauvinistic parties. It was assumed the Congress party would uphold the ideas and ideals that define the Constitution of the Indian Republic. Instead, a new crop of weak and ineffective leaders of the Congress party seem to be pandering to the very social and political forces they are expected to fight. This does not augur well for the Republic. It is time the party’s national leadership spoke up and against this unfortunate trend in its ranks.