Why Mumbai can’t honestly say ‘Let’s move on’

In the new-normal Mumbai, religion has come to play a greater part than it did in civic and personal matters

Some phrases acquire the status of axioms in a certain context. “Let’s move on” is that phrase today. In the days following the Supreme Court verdict on the Ram Temple in Ayodhya, this phrase has been all over – from courtrooms to drawing rooms, from airport lounges to bus stops, from WhatsApp messages to television studios and more. It is tantalising to imagine if the multitudes who have been parroting “Let’s move on” in the last few days would have done so had the verdict gone the other way.

Police personnel deployed outside the mosque at Bandra ahead of the Supreme Court's historic verdict on the Ayodhya land case. (HT PHOTO)

“Let’s move on” contains two kinds of messages depending on who says it: it comes from a place of certitude that allows one to shrug shoulders at what happened, or from a helpless resignation that one cannot do anything about what happened. It means the privilege of being on the ‘right’ side of a battle, or it means submission to the majority if one is on the ‘wrong’ side. It acknowledges strife but says it’s time to put it behind, or it conveys exhaustion in a hopeless battle. In the context of the Ayodhya verdict, the “let’s move on” said by Hindus and Muslims does not mean the same.

“Let’s move on” also begs the question, move on to what. Has Mumbai moved on from the inferno that raged across the city a day after the dome was demolished in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992, and could not be quelled for weeks after? More than 800 people were killed in those two months, some by their neighbours. When can a city be said to have moved on? Have Mumbaiites healed from the deep lacerations to their bodies and minds, relationships and communities?

Those who lived before and during that riotous phase of December 1992-January 1993, agree that it was never the same city after that. Mumbai’s social fabric, its community geographies, its acceptance or accommodation of the ‘other’ hit an all-time low; the city became more communally gentrified and ghettoised than ever, it has not really recovered or rebonded since.

In the new-normal Mumbai, religion has come to play a greater part than it did in civic and personal matters. The moved-on Mumbai has more ghettoised communities; informally demarcated Hindu areas and Muslim areas within the city; more Muslims ghettos of Mumbaiites forced to move out to far suburbs; segregation in housing and education; more visible markers of religious identity including of that heightened suspicion about the ‘other’; more unwelcome-ness.

The moved-on Mumbai is, without doubt, less cosmopolitan and accommodative of religious differences; there’s more aggression or assertiveness on display by all communities. The moved-on Mumbai has a police force whose anti-minority bias was witnessed during those weeks of riots and is unable to win back the community’s confidence or trust. The moved-on Mumbai has both Hindu and Muslim families – more latter – who lost their loved ones in those weeks; most have struggled to get a modicum of justice in the last 26 years and are still at it. How do they move on when those memories must be kept alive in the quest for justice?

More than 2,200 cases of communal violence were registered across then-Bombay in December 92-January 93; as many as 1,300 were closed without trial. The late Bal Thackeray, Shiv Sena chief — whose role as a “veteran general” motivating his men in the second phase was recorded by the Justice Srikrishna Commission — was given a state funeral; a memorial is being built in his honour. The cases filed against him for communal offences were either withdrawn or did not get the nod for prosecution even from Congress governments. The Commission was equally scathing of the BJP, Muslim fundamentalist organisations and the then-chief minister Sudhakarrao Naik (Congress).

Only when justice is delivered and seen to be done, there can be a sense of closure. Only then can there be a chance at moving on from hurt, bitterness, and anger. The new growth and glitz in Mumbai is less a sign of Mumabiites moving on and more a papering over of the fault-lines formed then. Mumbai has not fully healed for it to move on; worse, the Shiv Sena and Congress are now openly and inexplicably on the same side of the political turf.