NEW DELHI: Mumbai has been India’s city of dreams, approximating most closely to New York in the USA, a melting pot as it were for those across the country wishing for a better life, not least because it is where India’s vast ‘Bollywood’ movie industry is headquartered.

Mumbai today is at the heart of a raging controversy over its identity, with a regional political party, the Shiv Sena, trying to claim ownership of the city for Maharashtrians only and sparking a major national debate about what comes first; national identity or regional politics. Mumbai is the capital of Maharashtra province, where the lingua franca is Marathi, one of the 22 languages recognised as a national language.

At stake is the cosmopolitan nature of Mumbai. At stake also is the nature of politics in India as leaders grapple to raise economic growth across the hugely diverse country. Will rising economic aspirations force national political parties like the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP which is allied to the Sena), which have a pan-Indian presence, encourage the exclusive nature of these theses on the basis of region, caste and community, or will they strive to provide the inclusive kind of politics and governance that the Congress professes to follow?

The Shiv Sena, a radical Hindu communal and provincial (‘Mahashtra for Maharashtrians’) party, has been an important part of the political culture of the city for over four decades. The Shiv Sena has not won provincial elections to the state legislature along with the BJP in the last two elections and, in a bid to regain power in the state particularly among local people it calls ‘Marathi Manoos”, has now begun targeting ordinary migrants particularly from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

According to Manohar Joshi, a Sena leader, Mumbai belongs to Marathis only and “Hindutva and Marathi go hand-in-hand.” In a shocking bid to win away this core constituency of the Shiv Sena, the Congress-led government in Mumbai recently decided to make it mandatory for all taxi drivers and owners in the city to know the Marathi language and to have lived there for at least 15 years. The outrage to the move prompted the provincial government led by Ashok Chavan to withdraw the order. However, the Shiv Sena began threatening not only taxi drivers, but also eminent residents like industrialist Mukesh Ambani, cricketer Sachin Tendulkar and movie star Shah Rukh Khan, who contended that Mumbai (and all other Indian cities) was for all Indians.

The Shiv Sena has threatened to physically stop the screening of Khan’s forthcoming movie (‘My name is Khan’) and sent rioters to his residence because the movie star also attracted their ire for speaking in favour of Pakistani cricketers who were not bought by Indian franchises for the Indian Premier League cricket tournament.

Joining the debate against their ally and in support of the migrants from Bihar and UP, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Hindu nationalist organisation, has denounced the Shiv Sena, and promised to protect migrants in Mumbai. RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said, “Mumbai is for all Indians. People of all languages, communities, tribes are children of India...Nobody can prevent Indians from moving to any part of the country in search of employment.”

India’s Home Minister P Chidambaram today also rejected the Sena’s slogan of ‘Mumbai for Maharashtrians’ as a “pernicious thesis”, forcefully clarifying that the financial capital belonged to all Indians who are free to live and work there.