The relationship that Gujaratis have with Mumbai goes back into history. The post-Independence years saw a rise in migration from Gujarat to Mumbai, with people coming in search of jobs or business opportunities. That trend slowed down a little after the formation of two states. During the past 25 years, more Gujaratis have perhaps migrated to the US than to Mumbai.

The city was and continues to be bilingual, with its first language Marathi; its second, Gujarati. The state also had its fair share of Gujarati politicians, foremost among them the redoubtable Morarji Desai. It must also be remembered that the Gujaratis in Mumbai had not demanded a separate state for the Gujarati-speaking people. The demand for Maharashtra, with Mumbai as the inseparable part of the state, was that of the Marathi-speaking people.

In the Bombay of the fifties and the sixties, the traditional rivalry between the Marathi and Gujarati communities got defined along political lines. The Congress was seen as representing the interests of the Gujarati trader and industrialist — the ‘capitalist class’ — and the unionised Marathi community was mobilised under the communist banner. This underwent a sea-change in the eighties and the nineties. Following the alliance of the BJP and Shiv Sena, the Marathi and Gujarati communities came together politically.

The Congress party may not be a favourite with Mumbai’s Gujarati middle class today, but at one point in time —before their political migration to the BJP in the nineties — Mumbai’s Gujaratis had claimed the Gandhi-Nehru-Patel legacy as their own. Over the years, the Sangh Parivar succeeded in appropriating Vallabhbhai Patel’s image, making it appear as if the iron man was a disciple of Sriguru Golwalkar! When the neo-Hindutva movement became strident in the late eighties and early nineties — along with the Ayodhya agitation — Gujaratis in Mumbai, with their NRI counterparts and compatriots in the state, turned to militant Hindutva. The decade which began in 1992 — the Babri demolition — and ended with the 2002 Gujarat pogrom under Modi, saw the high tide of this militant phase. But as time went by, things got far more complex. Today, while the Congress continues to be viewed with scepticism, there is palpable discontent with the negative aspects of hardline Hindutva politics, and its proponents like Modi.

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