Politics 1:

Now that the Rahul Gandhi circus has left town, everyone can breathe freely. The entire exercise has proven that the man has turned into a politician.
While he may claim his visit to Mumbai was a huge success, it was nothing but a cleverly executed stunt.
Sure, people are free to criticize the Shiv Sena and the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena for their so called political agendas. But this does not mean the Congress has none. That the young Gandhi has none. Why else would he chose to travel in a Mumbai local with a posse of police and securitymen following him? If he really had a point to prove on – all places in the country for all Indians – he would have travelled by public transport in Manipur or Assam, where outsiders are murdered. But no, Mumbai is the jewel that every politician wants in his crown.
If something had happened during the train journey, politicians would have been the first to blame the already overburdened Mumbai police.

On Mumbai for locals
As I have written earlier, every Maharashtrian is not a Shiv sainik. But yes, I am sure every son of the soil – be he/she a Marathi person or a Gujarati or anyone else who was born in Mumbai and is struggling to live and earn here – agrees with some part of their say.
Like many English speaking so called intellectuals would love to say, the Constitution allows every Indian to stay anywhere. Agreed. But it also says not at the cost of the locals.
There is a counter argument that Marathi speaking people should then leave their state to look for jobs elsewhere. Why? Isn’t it because there are too many outsiders coming in and getting jobs here that locals are not getting jobs? Why should one person come into the home of another and force him to leave? The problem arose because too many outsiders come here and are ready to work for a lower pay and live anywhere, alone. They then are able to support their families back home. The local, who does not agree to the low salary is left without a job. Why is it the responsibility of only Mumbai and Maharashtra to support all the jobless from India?
When this issue was brought up and discussed everywhere including the Parliament, all politicians from the north Indian states who were targeted, yelled venomously against Maharashtra at the top of their voices. The chief ministers of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh told youth from their states to go to Mumbai for jobs as Mumbai ‘belongs to everyone’. Why didn’t even one of them say, “Come back, I will give you jobs and get even those Maharashtrians who are jobless, with you. I will give jobs to them also.” But that isn’t secular. Mumbai and Maharashtra bashing is.

On forcing outsiders to learn Marathi
In Rome, do as the Romans do. Then why in Mumbai should anyone do as Gandhi tells us?
In West Bengal, in Kerala, in Karnataka, locals insist on talking in their languages. In Karnataka perhaps they condescend to speaking in English, but never in Hindi. Why must Maharashtrians not insist that everyone who lives in their state speak Marathi? Conversational Marathi is all that we seek.
It was Gandhi’s great grandfather Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru who decided to form states on a linguistic basis. Has Gandhi forgotten this?
I had once watched a TV programme on the Gandhis in which Indira Gandhi said that she insisted everyone in the family speak Hindi when they dined together. Isn’t that one of the ways how Sonia Gandhi was forced to learn it?
Another story known thanks to TV, was about the time Sonia Gandhi first came to India to meet her mother-in-law, Indira Gandhi. Indira Gandhi, who felt Sonia was uncomfortable in English, spoke to her in French, as she did not know Italian, and French was the closest other language Sonia knew very well. How come the Gandhi family, which is so understanding, fails to understand this about Marathi? This is the same kind of respect that Marathi speaking people want for their language. No one disrespects Hindi. But why are a few being allowed to disrespect Marathi?
It is all very well to scream that the Congress is secular and wants a secular India. Just how secular is the question.