#Bombayphile Why Mumbai Reacts Aggressively To Global Events?

 

Last week, the Mumbai Police arrested four people for sticking flags of Israel on the roads of Bhendi Bazaar, so that people could put their feet on it. It was their way of protesting against the Israeli response to the terrorist attack engineered by Hamas. This is another example of how a section of the Muslim community has been reacting aggressively to the events happening in other parts of the globe. Although there have been reactions across the world since the Hamas attack on Israel two weeks back, and people support one side or the other, this piece specifically delves into the reactions of Mumbai Muslims to global events. In the last 30 years, I have seen around half a dozen protests where the trigger was not in Mumbai.

Author Salman Rushdie wrote his controversial book ‘The Satanic Verses’ in Britain, it was banned by the Supreme Leader of Iran and Fatwa was issued against Rushdie, but the riots happened in Mumbai, which is thousands of kilometres away from both countries. In February 1989, several Muslim organisations of Mumbai came together to protest outside the British mission’s office. The police restrained them at the Mohammed Ali Road, triggering a riot. Twelve people were killed in the police firing that afternoon.

On 6 December 1992, the Babri mosque was demolished in Ayodhya, which led to communal flare-ups in many parts of India. However, the worst riots happened in Mumbai, 1500 kilometres away from Ayodhya. The riots that took place in the two phases and subsequent serial bombings in the city led to the killings of over one thousand people.

In 2006, a few Muslim organisations came together to organize a protest meeting at Azad Maidan against the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, to protest against the publication of the Prophet’s cartoon. The crowd soon went out of control of its leaders. Some vehicles were damaged and a few journalists were manhandled. However, the frenzy was soon contained by the police.

The cops were not that fortunate in 2012 when a meeting was called to protest against the atrocities against Rohingyas in Myanmar on the same ground. As soon as the meeting ended, the crowd turned violent and attacked the cops and media personnel. Several police vehicles and OB vans of the news channels were torched. The rioters desecrated a memorial of martyrs. The police had to fire at the violent mob.

When I went to delve into the reasons for the reaction of Mumbai Muslims to events outside the city or the country, I found that it has been a historical trait of the community. The Khilafat movement of 1919 is one such example when two well-educated Muslim brothers, Maulana Mohammed Ali, and Maulana Shaukat Ali, formed a Khilafat Committee in Bombay to protest against the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate after the Turkish Empire was dissolved post-First World War. Mahatma Gandhi supported the movement and saw it as an opportunity for Hindu-Muslim unity.

After speaking to some intellectuals from the community, I got a few answers to my quest. A primary reason for the protest against something that has happened in another country is the sense of global-Muslim-brotherhood. Secondly, Mumbai being a cosmopolitan and modern city, the Muslims here keep themselves abreast of the happenings across the world. There are a few religious organisations that keep track of such events and mobilise the Muslim youths whenever anything against the perceived interest of Muslims happens.

(Bombayphile is published every week where Jitendra Dixit writes about the past and the present of Mumbai.)