Senior RSS leader Suresh Bhayyaji Joshi’s “Mumbai has many languages” comment has put the BJP in a spot. By suggesting that different suburbs in Mumbai have different languages of their own, Mr Joshi has rekindled the “Marathi pride” plank that has dominated the politics of Maharashtra, Mumbai in particular, for over five decades. While addressing an event at Mumbai’s Ghatkopar suburb on Wednesday, Mr Joshi said that “Mumbai has many languages” and “it is not necessary for people coming to Mumbai to learn Marathi”. What he said was not completely untrue. It is a fact that there are areas of Mumbai which are dominated by people speaking Gujarati, Hindi or Tamil. When Shiv Sena leader Aaditya Thackeray contested the Assembly election for the first time from Worli constituency in 2019, he had put up hoarding “Kem Cho Worli”, greeting voters in Gujarati. In a way, that was also an admission that Marathi is not the only language spoken by Mumbaikars. However, Mr Joshi’s statement is bound to get negative reactions from Marathi speakers as it suggests that Marathi’s importance in Mumbai may have diminished.
The Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi, which has been struggling to regain political significance since its decimation in the 2024 state Assembly election, grabbed the opportunity provided by Mr Joshi with both hands. Their leaders and workers staged a protest at Mumbai’s Hutatma Chowk, which is the monument dedicated to 106 people who lost their lives in the “Samyukta Maharashtra” movement in 1956. Former chief minister Uddhav Thackeray has said that the RSS leader should be booked for treason.
Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, conscious of the political significance of the issue, asserted that the language of Mumbai and Maharashtra is Marathi, which everyone living in the state should learn and speak. However, he pleaded ignorance about Mr Joshi’s statement and thus avoided having to react to it. On his part, Mr Joshi also tried to salvage the situation by claiming that his comment was misconstrued and everyone living in Mumbai was expected to learn Marathi.
However, the fire started by Mr Joshi is not going to be doused so easily. Uddhav Thackeray and his MVA partners will ensure that it keeps burning till the Mumbai civic elections, which are expected to be held anytime soon. Then there is Raj Thackeray, Uddhav’s estranged cousin, who is desperate to revive his dwindling political career and “Marathi pride” could just be the issue he wanted. The BJP’s Mahayuti alliance partners, particularly the Eknath Shinde faction of Shiv Sena, are also feeling uneasy.
It seems that the BJP now has one more sensitive linguistic battle to fight after Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. In Tamil Nadu, the DMK government is at loggerheads with the Union government over the three-language formula in the New Education Policy, which it argues is an attempt to impose Hindi in the Tamil-speaking state. In Karnataka, the Congress government is insisting on a two-language policy in order to ensure that Kannada remains the primary language in the state. The RSS was credited for the BJP’s landslide victory in the Maharashtra election. Now an RSS leader has inadvertently created a controversy that could become the BJP’s Achilles heel.