[Urbanstudy] Fourth Posting

[Ramya Swayamprakash]

Dear All,
I am Ramya Swayamprakash, I am a student stipendee.
My project is on the mill lands in Bombay. Trying to place post
industrial change in the city in its ever maddening race to be
'global' by using the sale of the mill lands as an entry point. Also I
am hoping to look spatial changes and their effects on the change.
Attached herewith is my fourth post which is trying to look at the
role of the mill workers in the formation of Maharashtra, more so the
intergration of Bombay into Maharashtra. Please do let me know what
you think of it. Thanks.
Cheers,
Ramya.
Text and voice 91-9869513903
Blog: http://quixoticgnat.blogspot.com
---------------------------------
Life...is like a grapefruit. It's orange and squishy, and has a few
pips in it, and some folks have half a one for breakfast.
Douglas Adams
---------------------------------

The The battle for Bombay was an emotional one. One that was fought
significantly on the playground of Girangaon. The British had
organized their provinces into unwieldy provinces that had little in
terms of geographical or even cultural similarities  as they felt that
a linguistic division would strengthen the regional-national
consciousness and thus, the hostility towards the center. The Bombay
State was an excellent example of this;long before the post
independence debate about the reorganization of the provinces along
linguistic lines Gandhi and his ilk had agreed on the linguistic
reorganization of the provinces given India's abundant diversity since
1920.

Language and the issue of identity sometimes defies all logic. As
history chronicles, language has been a major factor in the states'
reorganization movements in post independence India. Language was seen
as an important tool through which the ordinary citizen could involve
himself/herself in administrative and social spheres. Interestingly
those fought most vehemently in these movements stood to gain precious
little directly from the entire course of events- their involvement
was mostly keeping in mind the generations to come and the
opportunities that their 'new' state would open.

Bombay's distinct  presence even in the political sphere was evident
in the fact that the Bombay Pradesh Congress Committee (BPCC) had a
separate identity despite the presence of the Maharashtra Pradesh
Congress Committee (MPCC) and the Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee
(GPCC). This also pointed to the ambiguity in the status of the future
of Bombay. The BPCC had an important place in the Congress hierarchy.
Trade and commerce in the city was dominated by Gujaratis while the
Maharashtrians were mainly involved in the blue and white collar jobs.
With the coming of Gandhi into Indian Politics, the participation of
Gujaratis in the Congress increased and with it their contribution to
the party kitty. This was accompanied with the Congress's interests in
keeping the industrialists happy. Even Maharashtrian politicians like
S.K.Patil who dominated politics during these times identified the
profits of keeping the Gujarati lobby happy.

For the Gujarati businessmen the demands of the Samyukta Maharashtra
Movement as a threat to their hegemony; even inside the Congress the
Gujarati faction did not want to give any quarter to the
Maharashtrians and wanted to maintain its dominance over the old
Bombay State or the new one.

Historical Precedents1:
Until 1884, half of Bombay's population spoke Marathi as its mother
tongue, but after that the numbers began to decline. As the numbers
declined, the ascent of Gujaratis in trade and commerce went ahead
astronomically which made the Maharashtrians insecure. Although they
still constituted nearly half the population in the city (48% or
1,400,000 to be precise) and the Gujaratis constituted a mere 18% of
the population (520,000), their interests were represented strongly by
the MPCC and not the Gujarati dominated BPCC.

In June 1947, the Dar committee was appointed to look into the
reorganization of states; after going through 700 witnesses and 1000
written memoranda it came out against the concept itself.
Interestingly the committee described Maharashtrians as being
aggressive, feudal, backward by nature. It also called a 'Poona
mentality2 as being particularly terrible. The committee emphatically
stated that Maharashtrians had no claim over the city whatsoever- an
approach bitterly resented by the people of Maharashtra.


Dissatisfaction with the report led to the formation of the famous
J.V.P (Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel and Pattabhi Sitarammiyya)
committee. It was expected that the question of Bombay would be dealt
with in all fairness by this committee as Sitarammiyya was known to be
supporter of linguistic states. But except the demands for a separate
Andhra Pradesh ( sans Madras) , those of Maharashtra and Karnataka
were rejected. Patel went on to argue (on the floor of the house) that
since Bombay was a multi-lingual city which had been built with the
help of many communities especially keeping in mind those of the
Gujaratis it would not be fair to decide the future of the city on the
basis of numbers alone. And thus the issue of Bombay was shelved for a
while.

Then events in Andhra Pradesh took a turn for the worse and Nehru had
to accede to their demands, and Andhra Pradesh was born. This also
strengthened the movement in Maharashtra. In December 1953, the States
Reorganization Committee (SRC) was set up under the chairmanship of
Justice Fazl Ali gave their report in 1955. The committee recommended
the linguistic division of Hyderabad, Bombay and CP-Berar. With regard
to Bombay, the committee recommended a bilingual state which included
Saurashtra (part of CP-Berar) but excluded Vidharbha and
Belgaum-Karwar. The committee justified this by saying that Bombay was
not only a Marathi-speaking area and giving only to Maharashtra and
not Gujarat would be detrimental to the city's growth. With regard to
Belgaum- Karwar (which were Marathi speaking dominated areas), the
committee believed that since these areas had economic links with
Karnataka their inclusion to Maharashtra could not be justified. In
case of Vidharbha which again was a Marathi speaking area, it was said
that the inclusion to Maharashtra would undermine the importance of
Nagpur city.

The recommendations of the report sparked off opposition like Nehru,
who was at the time at the peak of his popularity and hence expected
to sail through with the bilingual state, had not imagined. Huge
rallies took place to oppose this state. The spontaneous, continuous
and unprecedented anger and opposition that erupted sent the center in
a tizzy. Barely a month after the tabling of the SRC report it came up
with a new proposal which envisaged three states- a City State of
Bombay, Maharashtra (which included Vidharbha and whose center was to
be Nagpur) and Gujarat (which would included Saurashtra). The City
State of Bombay would be administered independently. This proposal
sparked off a greater opposition- the main phase of the agitation- the
demand for Bombay to remain a part of Maharashtra. The sense of
injustice felt by the Maharashtrians was further intensified by the
recommendations of the committee.

The Bombay Congressmen did little beyond mere voicing of dissent
against the High Command. The infighting made it almost impossible for
them to come across strongly on any side. The constant fabrication by
Congressmen led to the formation of the Samyukta Maharashtra Kriti
Samiti (SMKP)

 The Congressmen came up with the first committee on the issue- the
Samyukta Maharashtra Kriti Samiti (SMKS). Unable to completely defy
the High Command, the SMKP was able to do little and its inactivity
and inability to garner other political forces, led to its dormancy.
Seizing the initiative in 1949, Senapati Bapat formed the Samyukta
Maharashtra Mahamandal which explicitly wanted the creation of a
separate Maharashtra.

With the tabling of the SRC report the Congress led SMKP woke up and
after much debate made a demand for a linguistic state of Maharashtra
in August 1954. In November 1955, the SMKS was formed under the
leadership of Prabhodhankar Thackeray, S.M. Josh, Acharya Atre, S.A.
Dange etc. The SMKS led the Samyukta Maharashtra Movement. The
movement itself received most of support from Girangaon- the workers
associated mill owners and industrialists with Gujaratis and feared
that Bombay would be swung in the industrialists' favor if it were
centrally administered. A centrally administered Bombay would no
longer be the working class Bombay they knew.

The Movement itself:
The class approach of the movement set it apart from other linguistic
movements. For those demanding the new state, India's sovereignty and
democracy which were supreme could only be complemented through
linguistic awareness.
Maharashtra itself had a working class base and was cosmopolitan- it
housed the maximum number of minorities in terms of sects, religions
and professions. And hence the demand was not just for a Marathi
speaking Maharashtra but a Maharashtra that could provide
opportunities for the working class. The movement itself was not a
chauvinistic movement aimed at removing all non-Marathi speaking
people from the state but it was more the against the rich
industrialists who had captured the resources of urban and rural
Maharashtra and rendered it impoverished. If Bombay was not to belong
to Maharashtra, not only would the state lose its biggest asset but
also the rich non-Maharashtrians would have unhindered access to the
city which housed the resources of the state.

Congressmen like S.K.Patil and Morarji Desai indicated that a
Maharashtra that included Bombay was nothing short of a delusion.
Their pique statements only added fuel to the fire as the
Maharashtrians felt even more victimized. In January 1956, two months
after announcing the three state formula, Nehru announced that the
center would take over Bombay. This sent the city into a rage mode,
there was a fresh wave of violence and the police went into overdrive
in order to manage the commotion. The then chief minister Morarji
Desai justified the indiscriminate killing of people by the police
(including children from Girangaon) by saying that the number of
causalities and injured was not commensurate to the number of bullets
fired hence the police had in fact exercised restraint!

According to the Samiti, when on May 31st, 1956, Nehru visited the
city for the AICC meeting and was greeted but a motley crowd of about
50,000 (contrary to the government figure of 500) waving black flags.
Despite sloganeering and constant presence of Satyagrahis who were
lathi charged, Nehru ridiculed the Satyagrahis which led to the Samiti
going to Delhi (the workers collected Rs. 75,000 to finance this
expedition) to protest. In August 1956, the Congress High Command
partially succumbed to pressure and announced larger bilingual state
which would include Saurashtra, Kutch and all the Marathi speaking
areas of Bombay State (the proposal was hastily pushed through
parliament. This proposal in turn led to a spate of violence demanding
a separate Gujarat left 24 dead. Interestingly Morarji Desai went on a
fast to end the violence!

In the elections of 1956, the all party Samiti was on the verge of
breakup unable to sink differences on electoral differences. But it
managed to pull through, and although it lost the majority to the
Congress by a slim difference of four seats, it was a major setback
for the Congress for if present day Maharashtra existed, the Samiti
would have won!

In four successive by-elections after December 1957, including two in
Bombay, the Samiti emerged victorious. Despite being disorganized as
compared to the Congress, the Samiti was more than able to give the
Congress a run for its money. The congress began to squirm. At the
same time, Chief Minister Chavan was having trouble managing his
cabinet which consisted of people from two linguistic groups and
rethinking about the contours of the state began. This was also the
time of the zenith of the anti-communist paranoia of the Congress and
it was willing to do anything to the seemingly unstoppable communists.
The communists were fast gaining ground in Girangaon thanks to the
Samiti and its trade union. Thus the MPCC and the GPCC vied with each
other in an attempt to look more anti-communist. Indira Gandhi who had
by now become the president of the party was one of the main reasons
Bombay was given to Maharashtra.

On 4th December 1959, the Congress Working committee met and decided
to bifurcate the bilingual state of Bombay. With certain budgetary
concessions for the state of Gujarat in the years to come the
negotiations for a separately state of Maharashtra were complete
(although Nehru still wanted it ot be called Bombay and its name was
subsequently changed to Maharashtra). Comrade Dange's suggestion that
Maharashtra be born on Labor Day was also granted and thus Maharashtra
was born on 1st May, 1960.