Thursday, September 18, 2008

Marathi Manus in Danger - A propaganda

I recently got a Power-Point Presentation describing how there are virtually no Marathi people in the top bodies of central as well as state governments.

I have converted it to pdf and am uploading it here.

There is some Marathi text in the document, and for the benefit of those who don't understand Marathi, all of that is roughly translated to : "Maharashtrians are systematically kept away from Important Positions... There is no Maharashtrian in any decision making positions…etc. etc"

I don't object to the data given in the document : it is true that there aren't many IAS/IPS officers from Maharashtra.
But I cannot and will not accept that this is because there is some League of North-Indians who are conspiring to keep Marathi Manus out of the top-jobs.

Page-18 of the document throws up a series of comments/questions like this one:
Why Indian governers have to be Reddy and Raanganathan?
I think almost all the states have been getting non-resident governors (at least) since last few years.
Here is a complete list of CMs and governors of Indian states.
Just a random look at it tells us that
  • In the north:
    • Chandigarh has a South-Indian Governor : Shri E.S.L. Narasimhan (South)
    • Bihar - Shri R S Gavai (Marathi)
    • Himachal Pradesh - Shri Justice Vishnu Sadashiv Kokje (Retd.) (Marathi)
    • Rajasthan had a Maharashtrian Governor : Smt. Pratibhatai Patil, who is now the President
  • In the south:
    • Karnataka - Shri Rameshwar Thakur (north)
    • Andhra Pradesh had a Maharashtrian Governor : Shri. Sushil Kumar Shinde, who is now a Union Minister
  • In the east:
    • Nagaland - Shri K. Sankaranarayan (South-Indian)
    • Orissa - Shri Murlidhar Chandrakant Bhandare (Marathi)
  • In the west:
    • Maharashtra & Goa - Shri S.C. Jamir (North-East) - note he is not reddy or ranganathan
    • Gujarat - Shri Naval Kishore Sharma
Then there is this thing about Not having any Maharashtrian in decision making posts.
I think the answer lies in the fact that an average educated Marathi youth is not so enthusiastic about preparing for IAS as much as he is about preparing for GRE/Toefel.
Bihar is producing maximum number of IAS officers in the country. So they will have people in key-posts.

Maharashtrians have had a good representation in other few departments, though.
Please have a look at this list.
Of course there are many more names to be added to it - Vikram Pandit (CEO citibank group) is immediately coming to my mind.
...

Well, what really bothers me is the statement : Maarthi people must unite and fight against this injustice!!!
Maharashtra is considered as one of the progressive states.
Marathi Manus is considered honest, faithful, well-cultured, and in general well-off.
If such people decide to fight then what will those states who really have a life-and-death situation at their hands do?
Prosperous states like Maharashtra must stand up and help the other weaker states.
Is anyone aware of the ground realities in J&K or the north-east?
The total no. of engineering colleges in J&K is 8, whereas the list of engineering colleges in MH runs for 8 pages.
Thousands of students from these states come to the other parts of our country for better education, better infrastructure, better life.
What will they do if we start "fighting against the injustice"?

And what is bothering me even further is Page-19: photos of Chhatrapati Shivaji, Lokmanya Tilak, Mahatma Phule, Dr. Ambedkar and Rajguru, and lines underneath asking whether the sacrifice they made was for Delhi? (ie. for the benefit of North Indians?)
It really pains when propagandists use revered figures like these to try prove their point.
They are actually diminishing the stature of these truly national figures.
They are restricting these great people to Maharashtra,
Let me remind those who are creating such documents that Shivaji did not fight for a piece of land in Western Maharashtra, he fought for the principles of freedom.
Lokmanya Tilak was not a leader of Maharashtra, he was the Father of Indian Unrest.
Phule and Ambedkar fought against the discrimination in the name of humanity, not regionalism.
And Rajguru kissed the noose in Lahore, miles away from Maharashtra, but a part of India, his motherland.
...

In the end, I just want to mention that, there will be a few who might have had not-so-good experience at the hands of some riksha/sabji-walla-"bhaiyya" in Mumbai/Pune and may not totally agree with me.
But please have a look at Page-21 of the document, saying नाहीतर स्वतंत्र महाराष्ट्र देश तयार करावा लागेल !!!
(otherwise a separate country "Maharashtra" will have to be created)
This clearly is the height of madness and any amount of support to this propaganda will mean a support to such a horrible idea.
So I request all of you not to support this in any form.

...
Finally, it is not a Raj (as in secret - pun intended) who is behind this propaganda, and I sincerely hope that this madness will fade away soon. Those notorious politicians behind this don't really have any constructive agenda, and hence are behind this propaganda.
BTW, I am a Marathi Manus myself, and wouldn't mind supporting the demand for signboards in Marathi, but I have a doubt: If I paint my shop's signboard "Delhi Durbar" in Hindi: "दिल्ली दरबार", can it be distinguished from the Marathi "दिल्ली दरबार" , given that the script is same ?

I also believe that
  1. Maharashtrians from other parts of the state are equally responsible for crowding of Mumbai as is any North/South Indian.
  2. Identifying and deporting illegal migrants from Bangladesh/Pakistan should take a much higher priority. And young, energetic politicians should utilize their time and energy in issues like these than regional-rhetoric.

3 comments:

Nitin said...

Well, somehow i cannot endorse the view that signboards should be in regional languages only.
Signboards in TN are mostly in Tamil. What is worse is that 90% of those signboards donot have any other language. How is a non-Tamilian supposed to understand that?
Or do they expect none of the non-Tamilians to enter the state?
I hope this doesn't become the norm in other states.

KGV said...

All I want to say is that one should know the law and the language of the land where they live. If you have come to stay in Mumbai then come stay like a guest and go back. (I am here 'only to stay in Mumbai' and not to live forever- I shall go back to my Motherland as soon as possible) But if you wish to settle here forever you need to at least understand the language here. I am against beating up the poor autorickshaw drivers, but at the same time is it so unreasonable demand by a Marathi Manus to ask others to use Marathi as well?? At the end of the day this is Maharashtra and it is formed on the basis of Marathi. So there is nothing wrong in asking people who live here to learn at least the elementary marathi. Even the Britishers who came to India learned a bit of Hindi so whats wrong in learning a bit of Marathi?
At the same time , I think this is a soverign country anybody can go anywhere and live anywhere. Its good to have people from various states living together and there should not be any pressure on anybody to leave.

Anonymous said...

मित्रा महाराष्ट्रात जवळपास आपल्याला पुरेल एवढा पाणी साठा आहे, आणि जर आणखी बाहेरून लोकं आली तर आपल्याला ते पाणी पुरणार नाही आणि भांडणे होतील तर मग हे योग्य नाही का की आपल्या च लोकांना इथे जॉब मिळवा , आणि शेवटी संसाधने ही मर्यादितच