It is no surprise that immediately after Union home minister P. Chidambaram’s statement about migrants in Delhi being responsible for the spurt in crime in the capital that the Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray had a word of praise for him. “Chidambaram spoke the truth. Now he and his government should implement the permit system (to curb migrants), at least for Delhi and Mumbai”, said an editorial in the party’s newspaper Saamna, which is said to reflect his views.
For the Sena, Mr Chidambaram’s offhand comment was no doubt music to its ears. Here is what the home minister said: “...nevertheless crime takes place because Delhi attracts a large number of migrants. There are a large number of unauthorised colonies. These migrants carry a kind of behaviour which is unacceptable in any modern city”. This is no different from what the Sena and its breakaway group the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) have been saying for years. And to reinforce their point, these parties occasionally come out on the streets and beat up a few poor people, usually belonging to its bête noire community of the moment.
In the 1960s, the villains were dhoti-clad south Indians, who allegedly were taking away clerical jobs from sons of the soil, i.e. Maharashtrians. Then, for a short time, the Gujaratis were the villains. Then the Sena realised that the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Hindutva platform was paying electoral dividends, so it swiftly moved to Muslim bashing. In the last decade, the wrath of the Sena and the MNS has been focused on “north Indians”, which is a code word for Biharis.
Biharis are now a very visible minority in the city, having moved here (and to other states) in large numbers. In Mumbai, they mainly drive autos and work as security guards, both highly visible jobs which bring them into daily contact with the average citizen. Given that autodrivers everywhere can, and do, make life difficult for ordinary folk, they become an easy target to hate. The message has gone home and Marathi films and plays routinely lampoon them; the virus has also spread to the educated class where there are deep prejudices against Biharis (and many other minorities). The Sena and the MNS have been quick to capitalise on this.
So is Mr Chidambaram a closet Sena man? Would he, left to himself, introduce a pass system which would control migrants from entering and living in a city where they were not born? Hardly. He is an erudite lawyer, Harvard educated no less, well travelled, well educated and a thorough professional. Then what makes him say such things?
Mr Chidambaram’s comment must be seen as part of a mindset that believes that slums and shanties are hotbeds of crime. Since these unauthorised slum colonies are usually occupied by poor people, most of them newcomers to the city with little or no roots in their new environment, it figures that crimes are committed by poor migrants. (Richer migrants are apparently honest and, therefore, allowed in.)
Such sentiments are quite often heard in large sections of the urban middle-class which bemoans the erosion of the quality of life in their neighbourhoods or cities thanks mainly to “these outsiders”. The outsiders can be anyone — recently Joel Stein, a writer in Time magazine, said this about his sense of loss at the change in his small town in New Jersey because of the influx of Indians. “For a while, we assumed all Indians were geniuses. Then, in the 1980s, the doctors and engineers brought over their merchant cousins, and we were no longer so sure about the genius thing. In the 1990s, the not-as-brilliant merchants brought their even-less-bright cousins, and we started to understand why India is so damn poor”. Remember the furore that followed? Stein (and Mr Chidambaram, for that matter) did not indulge in or advocate violence, but the prejudice is there to see. Europe is going through internal debates and convulsions about migrants (mostly but not totally of the illegal type); on the one hand, Europeans realise that these migrants from poorer countries are invaluable for the low-level labour market, on the other, their differentness — language, dress, food and culture — make them strange, weird and presumably dangerous.
The important point in the Indian context is that the so-called “migrants” to Mumbai, Delhi or elsewhere are Indian citizens, with a constitutionally guaranteed right to live and work anywhere. Much as the Sena or Mr Chidambaram may want to, no government can impose any curbs on that right. Countries like China and Russia have a pass system that disallows anyone without a permit to settle in the big cities, but India is not China, however much its progress may sound attractive to us.
Mr Chidambaram has withdrawn his statement, unlike the Sena, which is wedded to the anti-outsider ideology. But such a comment from the Union home minister no less causes a lot of damage. The next time the Sena (and its various cousins) attacks a few Bihari cabbies, it can easily say that its stand has been endorsed by the man who is supposed to look after the country’s security.

The writer is a senior journalist and commentator on current affairs based in Mumbai