So many cultures, religions, regions… Mumbai would call itself proudly a city with many hues. There are allegiances to faiths, religions, regions, states, casts, and god know what not and yet we manage to live in relative harmony. Most of the time, that is…

The preamble to the Indian constitution states that we promise to ensure equality in status and in opportunity and yet on a daily basis our politicians pass out decisions and make speeches that are against equality. If Raj Thackeray’s rant on about ‘Me Mumbaikars’ and ‘outsiders go back home!’ is not a racist outlook then nothing is!

We are all part of one country and we should be able to live and earn livelihood in any part of this country no matter where we are from. Then why is it ok for Raj Thackery and his flunkies to go about creating mayhem and attacking successful north Indians in Mumbai? Why hasn’t anyone from the legal community / central government reined these people in and charged them with racism? Why it is that Amitabh Bacchan has had to apologize for something innocuous that Jaya Bacchan had said? Damn it… she is from UP, so what is the big deal if she made a comment saying that she is from UP and she will prefer to speak in Hindi? I don’t get it.

Raj Thackery goes on about the lack of opportunities for the ‘Marathi Manush’ and the lack of focus on the Marathi language. What they don’t get is that if Mumbai belonged to and was built only by the Marathis, then it would not been the commercial capital it is today. The opportunities that exist today in Mumbai, would probably not have existed if the UPites, Gujratis, Marwaris, Punjabis, North Indians had not come to the state and contributed to it as they have.  If it’s not reservations, they go on about the Marathi language. They rant on about how it’s important and all the legal and government documents should be in Marathi only and shops should all have their names written in Marathi so that the poor Marathi speaking Manush can get around his own city. If all this raving and ranting about Mumbai for the Marathis isn’t targeted racism against Indians from other states then nothing is.  

More than 50 years of having a constitution that believes in Equality and do we have it? Nah…I don’t think so.