Bombay and the state of Maharashtra

Pandit Nehru, India’s first prime minister and M S Golwalkar, the fiery advocate of Hindu nationalism probably mutually supported only on one issue in their political careers. Both these men at the opposite end of the spectrum were vehemently opposed the division of the Indian on basis of language. But Potti Sriramulu’s fast to death led to the creation of Andhra Pradesh for the Telegus and after this creation of states basis the common language was only an eventuality. And in this was stuck, the beautiful island called Bombay, the city of dreams, of commerce, the cosmopolitan melting pot beyond comparision in this part of the world. How did it become the capital of Maharashtra and in fact how did Maharashtra come into being?

Let me tell you a wonderful story that all of us ought to know.

States Reorganization Committee was formed by the government of India to make recommendations into the issue governing the linguistic problem. Between 1954 and 1955 members of the commission travelled across the length and breadth of the country. They visited 104 towns, interviewed 9000 people and received as many as 152250 written submissions.

One of the longer and interesting submissions was by the Bombay Citizens Committee which was headed by cotton magnate Sir Purushottamdas Thakurdas and had within its ranks other industrialists such as JRD Tata and the city’s most successful doctors, lawyers and scholars. The committee had one point agenda, to keep the city of Bombay out of the state of Maharashtra.

The reasons for keeping Bombay out of the state of Maharashtra were several, according to them:

• There was little Maharashtrian immigration to the city before the end of the 19th century. Marathi speakers formed only 43% of the city’s population.

• Bombay’s was important to the economic life of India, it was cosmopolitan and was India’s window to the world. Likewise it was also the world’s window to India. So, it would be incorrect to let Bombay be taken over by one linguistic group. Bombay, said the Bombay Citizens Committee, belonged to the entire country, India.

• Bombay’s physical isolation, with the sea and the mountains separating it from the Marathi speaking heartland meant that it really did not belong to the Maratha heartland

But behind this veneer, hiding in the façade of Bombay’s cosmopolitanism was one language group that dominated the Bombay Citizens Committee, the Gujaratis. Bombay’s integration into the Maharastrian state would mean that politicians and ministers would be Marathi speakers, a prospect which was not pleasing to the Gujarati speaking bourgeois Hindu or Parsee, for obvious reasons. It was they who ran the Bombay Citizens Committee.

But there was someone opposing this committee and fighting for the integration of Bombay into the state of greater Maharashtra. This was the Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti which was for a long time called the Samyukta Maharashtra Parishad. The samiti sought a state that would unite Marathi speakers dispersed across many political units. In their mind, however there was no doubt that this great state of Maharashtra would have only one capital: Bombay.

They presented a document which contested the points made by the submission of Bombay Citizens Committee.

• This state had to be created with Bombay as its capital. Reason being, the land on which the island city stood had long been inhabited by speakers of the Marathi language. The land to the south and the east of the city was dominated by Marathi speakers. The great city itself apart from being cosmopolitan was the centre of Marathi culture and the press of the language.

• Economically Bombay depended heavily on its Marathi hinterland from where it drew its labour, water and power.

• About the point on the absence of a Marathi speaking majority, the document pointed out in Burma’s capital only 32% of the populace spoke the national language but no one could dare to say that for this reason Rangoon could not be a part or the capital of the Burmese state. It said that it was in the nature of great port cities such as Bombay and Rangoon to be multilingual.

Where was this headed? Was there a resolution in sight?

Bombay Citizens Committee was ready to compromise and implement the idea of a bilingual Bombay state with both Marathi and Gujarati speakers. 

The States Reorganization Committee recommended that Bombay stay out of the state of Maharastra and become an independent bilingual province of Gujarati and Marathi speakers. This obviously did not go down well with supporters of the cause of the state of Maharashtra. The fight was now played out in the parliament. Gadgil, an eminent MP from Pune, warned that now the matter will be shifted from the chamber to the streets. The warning came true. Prominent communist S A Dange and Dr. Ambedkar put their weight behind Samyukta Maharshtra Samiti. These along with the Jana Sangh and the Socialist party and the dissidents in the Congress party formed a formidable force fighting for Bombay’s inclusion in Maharashtra.

Arrests, strikes, riots followed in Bombay. Effigies of Nehru and the Gujarati speaking Chief Minister of Bombay, Morarji Desai were burnt. Some said, the police over-reacted and the violence unleashed by them was on a scale that would make ex-British officials in England blush. In these days, dozens died and property worth billions of rupees was destroyed. It was the worst riot in the living memory.

The slogan on every Maharashtrian’s lips was ‘Lathi goli khayenge, phir bhi Bambai layenge’. Samyukta Maharashtra people organized a petition signed by 100,000 children with the slogan ‘Chacha Nehru, Mumbai Dya’ (Uncle Nehru, Give us Bombay). 

The centre had to relent and in 1956 a bilingual State of Bombay Presidency consisting speakers of both Marathi and Gujarati came into being. The concession for Marathi speakers was the replacement of Morarji Desai with the Marathi speaking Y B Chavan as the chief minister.

But the fight was far from over, the dream of having a separate state of Maharashtra with Bombay as its capital took four more years to come to fruition. It was on 1st May 1960 that the State of Bombay Presidency was spilt into the twin states of Gujarat and Maharashtra. Y B Chavan was the first chief minister of the state of Maharashtra. 

That’s how my friends, most of us came to be known as Maharashtrian, either by nativity or by naturalization.

Jai hind! Jai Maharashtra!