Mumbai shoppy asks Marathi woman to speak ‘Marwari’, sparks row

Mumbai (The Uttam Hindu): A south Mumbai grocer unwittingly kicked off a political fracas after he allegedly asked a woman customer to converse in Marwari dialect henceforth as a Bharatiya Janata Party-led government is coming to power in Maharashtra. The incident occurred on Monday evening when the Marathi woman from Girgaon area had gone to the Mahadev Stores in nearby Khetwadi to buy groceries, and videos of her encounter have now gone viral. When she started placing her order in Marathi, the shopkeeper shocked her by asking to speak with him in Marwari as “a BJP regime is now taking office in the state”.

“The BJP has now come to power here… speak Marwari, Marathi will not work here,” the woman said, quoting the shop owner on that incident which has triggered a rage on social media. Incidentally, the ancient and rich Marathi was accorded the coveted Classical Language status by the Centre in early October, just ahead of the Maharashtra Assembly elections which was swept by the BJP-MahaYuti alliance. Bitter over the slight, the woman complained to Malabar Hill BJP MLA Mangal Prabhat Lodha, but claimed she got no response despite having voted for the BJP.

Disappointed but not down, she approached the Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) which promptly came to her help and summoned the shoppy to its office. The rattled shopkeeper stood with folded hands, admitted to his mistake and tendered an apology to the woman and Marathis in Mumbai in general for his faux pas. The MNS activists gave the shoppy a couple of tight slaps as he expressed his regrets over the comments to the woman sitting beside him.

The issue evoked strong responses from MNS leaders, Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) allies Shiv Sena (UBT)’s Sanjay Raut, Sushma Andhare and Kishore Tiwari, and others from Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (SP). Meanwhile late on Tuesday, as the matter appeared to snowball, Lodha - also a Rajasthani - rushed to defend Marathi language, on the eve of the government formation process today (Dec. 04), attempting a damage control amid speculation that he would return as a Minister. Lodha condemned the incident of spreading ‘linguistic hatred’ in the Khetwadi area of Girgaon, and said such things perpetrated in the name of BJP would not be tolerated and even demanded action against the concerned shopkeeper.

“Marathis is the mother tongue of Maharashtra, our identity! So if someone is forcing you to speak in a specific language instead of Marathi here, that is wrong. Our Mumbai belongs to everyone but it belongs to the Marathi people first, so we wanted action to be taken against the person spreading such linguistic hatred,” said Lodha. However, while the row left a bitter taste among the affluent Rajasthani community in Mumbai and elsewhere, many netizens even lauded the MNS for promptly rising to the occasion to protect Marathi pride and self-respect.