'Step Back from the Abyss or Go Over the Edge'

Although I've lived in Bombay for so many years, and have come to expect nothing but the worst sort of thuggery, brutishness and gangsterism from anyone bearing the name Thackeray, I have to say that even I was taken aback by the Shiv Sena's demand that Rohinton Mistry's superb novel, A Fine Balance, which has been admired in India and abroad for decades, be removed from the Mumbai University Syllabus. I wasn't surprised however that the university was quick to do so because the vice chancellor of the university has bones and bones, as we know, can be broken. 

This morning the critic Nilanjana Roy linked to Mistry's response to the Shiv Sena, and what he said made be terribly sad for my once great city. Of course, when one thinks of Bombay as a great city one refers to a time fairly long ago, certainly before the older Thackeray came to power. One thinks of a Bombay that inspired hope and encouraged dreamers, of a city that was built on the conviction and courage of people from across the country, not just of a monolithic group of those who spoke a single language, and thought a single antagonistic thought. Now Bombay is broken, literally and otherwise, and that's part of what makes little Aditya Thackeray's desperation for power so tragic. What does this twenty-year-old with his spotty face and centipedial moustache want power over? Writers who will write of Bombay, but not in it? Filmmakers who will show Bombay from outside of it? Intellectuals who will tell of Bombay's fables from an ocean away from it? 

When little Aditya become a big boy he may indeed have power. But that power will be the power of one goon lording over a thousand other goons, and that isn't power it's a criminal gang.

Update: Read Roy's response to the ban, Rohinton and the Rat Pack, here.

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