Milind Deora plays ‘vegetarian’ card against Shiv Sena in South Mumbai

Shiv Kumar
Tribune News Service
Mumbai, April 6

Mumbai’s old battles between native non-vegetarian Marathi population and vegetarian ‘outsiders’ from Gujarat and Rajasthan are seeing a revival with a twist.

This time, it’s the Congress party, rather than the BJP, is playing the vegetarian card to woo the mercantile community after some seats in neighbourhoods dominated by them have been allotted to the Shiv Sena.

In South Mumbai where the Congress party’s Mumbai unit chief and former Union Minister Milind Deora is taking on sitting Member of Parliament Arvind Sawant of the Shiv Sena, the contest is becoming one based on dietary preferences of the population.

”The Shiv Sena insulted the Jain community by cooking meat outside their temple during Paryushan in 2015. You must remember this insult and punish the Shiv Sena in the Lok Sabha elections,” Deora tells an audience of mainly Gujarati and Rajasthani people in one of the smallest constituencies in Maharashtra.

Deora’s harking back to the events of 2015 when the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, under pressure from the BJP, tried to ban sale of meat across the city for four days. The Shiv Sena and the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, which seek to represent the largely non-vegetarian Marathi-speaking people promptly hit the roads and began slaughtering chickens outside Jain Derasars (temples) in protest.

Though the BMC backed down and rolled back the ban on sale of meat in Mumbai, the issue only aggravated the differences between the Shiv Sena and the BJP—which is seen in Mumbai as a party of the mercantile Gujaratis and Jains. Articles criticising the Jain community published by Shiv Sena mouthpiece Saamna are also being distributed by Deora’s supporters in South Mumbai.

 At his press conferences, Deora even refuses to acknowledge that people with non-vegetarian dietary habits are often not allowed to purchase flats in high-end buildings coming up in his South Mumbai constituency.

“I have not heard of any such thing,” Deora told one reporter at one such press briefing. The Congress candidate, who hails from the mercantile Marwadi community, is also falling back on the good relations the business community enjoyed with his late father Murli Deora. The elder Deora, who headed the Mumbai unit of the Congress, was known for his networking skills and his ability to raise funds for the Grand Old Party.
At a meeting with the diamond merchants in the country’s biggest gold and jewellery trading hub at Zaveri Bazaar, Deora has been accusing the Shiv Sena MP of ignoring the community.

“Where was your Member of Parliament Arvind Sawant when demonetisation destroyed you businesses,” Deora asked his audience at one meeting, and reminded the traders that they no longer even talk on the phone with their business associates for fear of their phone calls being tracked by the Income Tax department.
Despite his criticisms of the government, Deora acknowledges that obtaining the support of the mercantile community is a tall ask for the Congress. “Whether you vote for me or not, I promise to support you and help bring changes in the GST laws,” Deora said at the conclusion of one meeting.
Put on the defensive by Deora, Sawant however professes a weak denial that the Shiv Sena is against Gujaratis and Jains.

 “We are not against Gujaratis and Jains,” says Sawant. He also denied that his party workers slaughtered chickens outside Jain Derasars four years ago.
The Mumbai South constituency has around 15,31,437 voters spread over six assembly segments and is spread over tony Malabar Hill, and Colaba and also includes the working class areas of Sewri and Byculla. Men voters outnumber women at 8,42,882 and 6,88,535 respectively. Just 20 voters have registered themselves as belonging to the third gender in this constituency.

While the BJP and the Shiv Sena have two MLAs each, the Congress and AIMIM have one MLA each in the state legislature.