An open letter to Raj Thackeray

Dear Shri Raj Thackeray,

You will surely be surprised to see me writing an open letter to you. Given our acquaintance, it would have been proper on my part to share my thoughts with you privately. But the issues that you have raised through your recent ill-advised and condemnable campaign against north Indians are of public nature, and hence require a public response.

When a matter becomes contentious, some people find it difficult to see or acknowledge the positive side of the person they criticise. In your case, the national media has painted you as someone who is nothing but a hate-monger. I know that it is not entirely fair. I have carefully read, and re-read, your signed article in Marathi titled Maazi Bhoomika, Maaza Ladha (My Stand, My Struggle) in the Maharashtra Times of February 9, and think that some of your arguments are far too nuanced to be simply categorised as hate speech. For example, should Marathi and Maharashtrian culture survive in Mumbai? Yes, they must, just as Bengali must survive in Kolkata, Tamil in Chennai, and Kannada in Bangalore.

Should people who come from outside show respect for local culture and try to imbibe its good points, while also imparting the good points of their own culture to the new place where they work and live? Most certainly they should.

Let me also point out for the knowledge of people outside Maharashtra that, as a budding political leader, you have been promoting certain constructive activities that are novel, rare and praiseworthy. For example, politicians in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar would certainly be doing great service to Hindi literature and the Hindi publishing industry if they started paying as much attention to these neglected aspects as you have started doing for Marathi language and literature. Have they ever bothered that a best-selling good book in Hindi does not sell, in the entire Hindi-speaking region, half as many copies as a good Marathi book does?

... contd.

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