Meher Marfatia: The men and women who fought for Bombay 60 years ago

It was the best of times or the worst Depending on the lens filtering standpoints on this agitation In his memoir Sentinel of the Sahyadris ES ModakmdashInspector General of Police Maharashtra 197678 controlling crowds as DCP Mumbai in the 195556 outbreak of the Samyukta Maharashtra movementmdashcalls the protests independent Indias largest field riotsHe hardly underestimated their impact From slow simmers to conflagrations claiming over a hundred lives frenzied clashes across town fulminated at Flora Fountain now Hutatma Chowk or Martyrs Square honouring campaigners felled in the Battle for BombayModak remarked to his fiancee earlier in 1942 My life seems one long chasemdashafter either dacoits or saboteurs Years on he handled the tumult to wrest Bombay for Marathispeaking Maharashtra As Deputy Commissioner during the fateful 195556 phase he acted with Commissioner of Police KD Billimoria The latters daughter Jeroo Mango says At a function when he was CM Sharad Pawar told me A young man at the time I cant forget your dynamic father braving it to Fountain in an open jeepLinguistic subnationalism combined with socialist ideals deepened and widened the democratic process says Sandeep Pendse His father Lalji Pendse prominent in the Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti was close to the Communist Party of India CPI though not a formal member Our Girgaon rented room was the unofficial local hub of the Samiti Perhaps leftists saw the necessity of decentralised administration for the true benefits of 1947 he reasonsThe antiCongress coalition involved a socialist majority barring a few with reservations Affiliations ranged from the CPI and Praja Socialist Party to the Republican Party of India and the Marxists Peasants and Workers Party Steadily gaining ground as an uprising of plebs the proletariat vs bourgeoisie schism paralleled a language issue which asserted supremacy of their mother tongueTextile mills established by the British enterprising Gujaratis and Parsi sethias sharply reshaped Bombays demographic and sociopolitical contours Wealthy mill magnates employees came from the hinterland to power operations native fishermen settlers could not Those villagers moved away from the weakening traditional balutedar system balutedars were artisans providing upper castes services in exchange for food or landThe migrant mazdoors were plunged in unrest on Bombay soil as well Initially trying for a bilingual entity Jawaharlal Nehru as PM then mooted Maharashtra and Gujarat as fullfledged states with Bombay under the Centres direct rule Samyukta Maharashtra proponents rejected the plan According to them the administrative language playing a key role had to be that of the people for democracy to be anything more than a word explains Pendse Congress was tackling two united adversaries the communist and proMarathi factionsThe trigger was Nehrus All India Radio announcement of Bombay as a separate city state on November 20 1955 Tensions peaked with firing the next day in Dadar Lalbaug Parel and Kalachowkie On February 6 1956 the Samyukta Maharashtra Chalavala demanded a carving of the Marathispeaking state of Maharashtra with Bombay its capitalPainting of social reformer Prabhodankar Thackeray who was active in the Samyukta Maharashtra movement by SM Pandit Picture courtesy Sena BhavanThe resistance protesters dealt with was from the ruling party and the government I do not think masses of people attacked each other The violence lay in confronting the state machinery the clashes were between demonstrators and police forces says PendseOn the other side Indulal Yagnik dominated the Mahagujarat Andolan Coined by writerpolitician Kanaiyalal Munshi the term Mahagujarat included all Gujaratispeaking areas mainland Gujarat and peninsulas Yagnik addressed public meetings supposed to pull in heftier numbers than Nehrus rallies on the same day A schoolboy at the time Kundan Vyas editorinchief of the Janmabhoomi group of newspapers witnessed mayhem in community strongholds like Bhuleshwar and KalbadeviReports reached of a Gujarati exodus from Bombay Central in jampacked trains says Vyas Police firing at Fountain killed an accidental victim the Janmabhoomi news editor just out for a stroll Decades after in 197778 during a debate in the Lok Sabha I was on the Speakerappointed committee and in the press gallery myself heard this statement from Morarji bhaimdashNehru asked me to call army vehicles to stop mob violence I said No they are our own peopleAs a young Elphinstonian collegians like activist Pushpa Bhave excitedly discovered themselves always on the scene because morchas terminated at Kala Ghoda SM Joshi and PK Acharya Atre were leaders who completely caught the public imagination Strangely for the first time since freedom Nehru found no one behind him she says It was about everyone coming together labour the middle class leftists even lumpen elements who made us uneasy But I have seen wonderful things too Like the policeman who could have been badly mauled had SM Joshi not stood between him and the mob That was truly a moment to cherish Filmmaker Jayprad Desai emphasises the event was a glaring example of people power shaking an empire Media has barely explored the movement Turbulent times provide dynamic backdrops for stories His web series Hutatma casts a girl naive and apolitical affected by an incident from the struggle that upturns her world to set her off on an extraordinary journeyA still from the film Hutatma showing the historic morchas starting from November 21 1955 where demonstrators clashed with the police Pic courtesy Jayprad DesaiThe huge LalbaugParel mill district was fully zapped by fervour Desai adds It was not about linguistic pride alone but the workers daily bread They feared that if Mumbai were handed over to nonMarathi capitalists mill owners representing the establishment would totally control their destinies So they sought to assert the right to earn in their land for their very existence People today especially youngsters are not aware it was the first time almost the entire population of a state agitated against their government on the streets The Samiti also took on the Congress by fair means winning the 1957 electionsAmong those holding that more than Nehru it was really Sardar Patel who resisted the ceding of Bombay is Maharashtra CPI secretary Prakash ReddymdashLed by SA Dange the communists preempted the capitalistbacked Congress with their strike call in November 1955 Comrade Dange Acharya Atre and SM Joshi were the pillars of Samyukta Maharashtra Dange offered the idea of the might of workers Atres oratory destroyed Congress Joshi gave us a moral baseLike Pendse Reddy inherits a robust legacy of principles from patriot parents who were in and out of jail throughout his childhood His mother Tara once at the Quit India forefront became Secretary of the Mahila Parishad wing canvassing for Samyukta Maharashtra and won the BMC 1957 election from Khetwadi where the commune headquartered in 7th Lane GL Reddy his militant trade unionist father diligently documented the struggle to preserve accounts of itLeftists maintain that Sena had little connect with the movement the party itself launched six years after the state However Pandharinath Sawant former editor of the weekly Marmik who considers Bal Thackerays father his mentor says I was the fortunate shishya of a reformer as great as Prabodhankar Thackeray He was a Samiti member present at every meetingPanvelborn Keshav Sitaram Thackeray the prolific author assumed the pen name Prabodhankarmdashfrom the fortnightly magazine he started Prabodhan Enlightenmdashas his own Those at the forefront know many more lives were lost than official figures given Sawant saysA still from the film Hutatma showing the historic morchas starting from November 21 1955 where demonstrators clashed with the police Pic courtesy Jayprad DesaiSome Gujaratis seethed over the fact that news headlines often excluded losses they suffered Pannalal Khimji Chheda narrates how cloth and grain merchants like his father were easy targets Forcibly picked up from their small shops in Kalbadevi Lalbaug Parel and Dadar they were subjected to jhagra tofaan aneh maarfaar fighting rioting and violence A schoolboy in Bordi Chheda heard of the escalating turmoil and admits to being shocked at the polarised situation on his returnChallenging the establishment threw up enough thinkers and intellectuals who published prodigiously and spoke vociferously Strong influences were Acharya Atre with thoughtprovoking editorials and articles in his paper Maratha and scholarcritic Laxman Shastri Joshi I believe 1960 freely changed the surnames of authors and the milieu of literature says Bhave Revolutionary poet Shahir Amar Shaikh was an unbridled voiceLet us sing the hymns of Samyukta MaharashtraWith our heads held up we hit the high noteshellipThe chronicles of history proclaim our prideFor centuries we have etched them in our own blood Let us draw inspiration from those and unleash our strengthJai MaharashtraAmar Shaikh had equally firebrand daughters in Malika who married Dalit poet Namdeo Dhasal and Prerna the progressive writer Anil Barve Following their fathers death the sisters ensured that Humanist was registered in the space for religionmdasha first in the coroners courtA still from the film Hutatma showing the historic morchas starting from November 21 1955 where demonstrators clashed with the police Pic courtesy Jayprad DesaiEventually on May 1 1960 Labour Day Yashwantrao Chavan was sworn in as freshly formed Maharashtras first CM Dr Jivraj Mehta assumed office likewise in Gujarat state A balanced Kundan Vyas says Ultimately after the states divided the brotherhood spirit revived The Gujarat Laxmi and Marathi Saraswati synergy brought prosperity to bothPendse concludes with caution The important lesson from the movement is to clearly understand identity politics What seemed democratic and protosocialist in the 50smdashlinguistic subnationalismmdashshowed its ugly face of intolerant chauvinism and communalism merely a decade laterAuthorpublisher Meher Marfatia writes fortnightly on everything that makes her love Mumbai and adore Bombay Reach her at mehermarfatiamiddaycomwwwmehermarfatiacomCatch up on all the latest Mumbai news crime news current affairs and a complete guide from food to things to do and events across Mumbai Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates MidDay is now on Telegram Click here to join our channel middayinfomedialtd and stay updated with the latest news