In the wake of the recent riots in Bangalore following thespian Dr. Rajkumar's death, there has been some soul-searching in the legislature of Karnataka (the southern Indian state whose capital is Bangalore), in the newspapers, and on the internet as to who or what was responsible for the total breakdown of calm and order over two whole days in the city. Finger pointing is in full swing. As is to be expected, political parties blame each other while residents blame the government and the police.
What I did not expect was the blame laid at the feet of "non-Bangloreans."
In his Last Word column in The Week magazine, Mahesh Dattani, author and playwright, writes in an essay titled "Winds of change" this week (April 30, 2006),
This wasn't an outpouring of grief that we witnessed. Perhaps this is the shape of things to come. Violence as an outpouring of anger and frustration.What else can it be? Forcing the city to close down was actually a very perverse act, but a cry for justice nevertheless. Dr Rajkumar, unknowingly, became a mascot for the oppressed indigenous people who feel their language and identity are slowly being eroded by the winds of globalisation. The IT industry is not the villain. The villain is Time. And no one can fight Time.
You wake up one day and find that your neighbour speaks a strange language; your job is taken over by someone who moved into town last month and has an utter dislike for all things south Indian. Your job in a government office as a peon was a matter of pride and achievement, until the office boy working for an MNC boasts of a pay five times more than you earn because his English is better. It just seems so unfair. Maybe it is. But it is to the credit of the indigenous people that they tolerated this unfairness for a very long time.
A few months ago, it was the new weekly, Bangalore Bias, expressing similar sentiments in its manifesto. I had then provided longer excerpts from the manifesto and had written an essay countering the arguments. Here are some brief tid-bits from that manifesto:
The time has come to ask, "Whose city is it, anyway?"Where there was time and space for libraries, literary debates, science fairs, Sunday beers, bicycles, Karaga, Christmas carols, kadalekaayi parise, jazz evenings, dolls' exhibitions and the grace of it all. In a city of seven million, there should still be that "Island of One Million" that knows what Bangalore was, but more crucially to the point, what it ought to be. We believe this community of one million cares for a lifestyle of grace and charm beyond the transactional logic that threatens to become the sole basis of our civic society.
The Bangalore community could well feel that it is now under siege. The City's sensibilities have been invaded by unfamiliar, sometimes unwelcome strains of attitude and affectations. There are new people that now claim to represent Bangalore, but the Bangalore community is justified in feeling unrepresented.
I fail to understand the logic of these arguments.
First of all, who is a citizen and who is an "outsider?" Everyone that lives in this city, no matter how far the generations that have lived here go back, came from somewhere. The earlier generations shaped the character of this city as they saw fit and now the current generation is shaping the city as it sees fit. A city is a living, changing, amorphous creature that cannot be frozen in time and that image taken to be its true representation. "Whose city is it, anyway?" Well, it is the city of every single person living here, whether they landed here yesterday at the airport, bus station or train station and are setting up homes as we speak, or whose families have been living here for generations.
Article comments
1 - Matthew Milam
IT Industry booming? I think not. Chicago for instance consistently pushes the PC tech jobs to the suburbs. Why? They can't get anyone out there willing to drive to east hell to get there. People from the city will do it because the jobs are few are far between, but they won't do it for 17 an hour and have to cough up alot for gas.
2 - sujatha
Matthew, the NY Times article talked about the IT industry booming in Bangalore, and it is. The growth is so fast and so large here, that every IT company has jobs to be filled in the hundreds, if not thousands.
3 - abcd
Hi,
Good judgement, i see its the biggest problem bangalore is facing, ppl who do not like anything south indian are coming in search of food but once they have it, why not my family and they too dont like anything south indian, setting up a small community, forget it .. they keep cribing all the time. Same thing in US also, they move in here and crib cos ppl dont eat dal here..
but Bangalore is more hit by the tamil migration starting from SEs to gate keepers.. but Tamils eventully learn & adapt and co-exist without much destruction of ppls pride and ways of life.
4 - Umesh
Hi,
I personally believe that when different people meet there will be a clash of cultures.But this clash was expected to result in new trends in a place like bangalore.
It is the people of the place which make a clash of cultures and opportunity as opposed to a disaster. In 1453 the conquest of constantinople heralded the Reanissance becuase of which we had great advancements in fields of art, science etc.
The biggest example is 'Mona lisa' the greatest work of art in the world. But then,The same clash results in incidents like September 11.
Finally, it is bangalore which will decide where it wants to go.
I used to sincerely believe that bangalore was that sort of place. I'm not so sure anymore. Maybe it is the politics.
5 - sujatha
Umesh and ABCD, thank you very much for your comments.
ABCD, I agree that the "outsiders" have as much responsibility to integrate themselves into the life of a city as do the "indigenous" people to not keep harping on how the "outsiders" are destroying their way of life. That is part of the deal when we travel away from our homes and try to make a living elsewhere.
Umesh, from my vantage point, the riots in Bangalore was the work of a few miscreants looking to create trouble. I don't think they had any agenda in mind other than to smash glass windows (as is the popular notion, these were not just the glass windows of IT companies - many of those windows belonged to "indigenous" companies as well) and create trouble no matter what the circumstances, no matter what the occassion, no matter what the consequences. I wouldn't go so far as to characterize this as a clash of civilizations or cultures although people like Dattani would like to have you belive that.