17 - Wake Up!!!

The recent incident regarding the film Wake Up Sid! is a very sorry one. Seriously, it is a real shame someone like Karan Johar, who is such a well known and powerful personality (though not physically) does not have even a bit of spine to stand up to some crackpot like Raj Thackeray. If people like Mr. Johar whom these MNS hoodlums cannot touch, behave so, then what about the common man.

What is more disturbing is the fact that MNS objects to the fact that in the film the characters casually refer to the city official called "Mumbai" as what it is widely known - Bombay. That, when the lead characters are depicted as working at a magazine called Mumbai Beat. Personally, the renaming of the various Indian cities is a very sorry issue. Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, Thiruvananthapuram... the last one is great, it will take you a year to spell that compared to what the British named it Trivandrum. Anyways we Indians didn't develop most of these cities, we still depend on what the British built so long ago. Even today in Mumbai/ Bombay, the best roads and city architecture - the mix of buildings and open spaces can be found only in South Bombay (what the British built), move out to the regions of Dadar, Andheri, Kurla, etc. and we can see what we Indians have done. Seriously Sick!

This is the sorry state of politics of today. These crazed politicians have no issue that to speak of so they invent silly, divisive platforms to stand on. What these people who follow them fail to realise is that" is this any different from what the British did?" Divide and Rule. In such a case, why a nation of India... Why not Individual nations of Maharashtra, Bihar, etc.?? We need to realise that we exist because India exists and as Indians we are free to live anywhere in INDIA. WE LIVE IN INDIA AND NOT IN A STATE. A state is just an administrative boundary. Maybe after asking for jobs for Maharashtrian's, Mr. RajThackeray may later do that ask for a country called Maharashtra...you may never know. Today, looking back I feel that the reorganisation of the states based on Language was the biggest fallacy that the Union of India ever committed.

Let me quote Shekar Gupta's editorial in the Indian Express newspaper dated 5/10/2009, "The point is not that Raj Thackeray (and Bal Thackeray before him) have seized upon Marathi manoos disenfranchisement to define a coarse and resentful politics -- the point is that they get away with it. The city in Wake up, Sid is definitely not the hick town of Raj Thackeray's dreams -- it is indeed "Bombay", the fabled gritty city where young people come from Kolkata and Bangalore, seeking their own private grails. Why isn't our politics aggressively sticking up for that expansive vision? We know the uses of taking an extreme position: you help decide or determine where the centre will fall. By not countering the narratives, we -- and indeed, quite glaringly, Chavan's own administration -are letting goons forever blight the idea of Bombay.

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Hope we realise this, that we are Indians and live as Indians!

You can read the full editorial at the link below(you will have to register to read it). If not I'll mail you the same if you give me your email address and please do leave your comments on this.
Wake up, Mumbai

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