The history that’s not there

Yogesh Maitreya

The beginning of the 1970s swept aside the political lethargy of Mumbai. The decade saw the emergence of Dalit literature and Dalit Panthers, a social organisation that started in Mumbai a movement against casteist crimes across Maharashtra. One of the crucial aspects of this movement was the literature by its leaders like Raja Dhale, Namdeo Dhasal and JV Pawar. The work of these leaders, intellectuals and historians blew away the literary ideas and frameworks of Brahmins, in which the depiction of lives was confined to particular localities and people, namely Brahmins and Sawarnas.

Across the road of Shivaji Park, theorists, intellectuals, poets and leaders like Dhale and Pawar would sell Dalit literature at the seashore of Dadar Chowpatty. If the high tide came, it would sweep away the books. Once the tide subsided, these leaders would again start selling the books they had managed to save from being swept away. Over the years, booksellers of Dalit literature increased so much that they have shifted to Shivaji Park ground. From the 1980s onwards, Shivaji Park started witnessing lakhs of people coming to pay their respect to their leader, Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar. Also, the number of book stalls and book lovers has grown. If you go to Shivaji Park on December 6, the death anniversary of BR Ambedkar, you can’t miss the energy of Ambedkar’s followers and their unmatchable spirit.

But then, if you are a good observer, you could see many bungalows shut and deserted for two-three days. The size of these bungalows would tell you the richness of their occupants, but if you are a keen lover of oral history, you can’t miss their reactions on seeing the followers of Ambedkar coming from across the country. Many of the residents of Shivaji Park can’t digest the presence of Dalits from December 5-7 in their locality. The repulsion in their eyes is apparent. During these three days, many of them go on a holiday to avoid the presence of Dalits around their ‘posh’ homes. This is caste, operating in and around Shivaji Park. Yet, it is totally erased from the history that was written and is being written about Shivaji Park. The latest on the subject is Shanta Gokhale’s Shivaji Park: Dadar 28: History, Places, People.

Gokhale, a Brahmin writer, who is also a renowned playwright, translator and cultural critic, traces the history of Shivaji Park and it’s coming into being. At the beginning of the book, she traces the historical roots of Shivaji Park’s adjoining locality, Mahim, which was known as Mahikavati during the rule of King Pratap Bimb. Although she narrates the trajectories of emergence and the development of Shivaji Park, her references are writings by Brahmins and Sawarnas. Comfortably forgetting that the real history of any place is not of its settlers but of the displaced, she transports us from the history of native conquerors to the colonial environment and its role in shaping the course of Shivaji Park.

In her glib narratives, she attempts explaining the roots of emergence of places, both cultural and commercial, in Dadar. This would lead to the imagination of background against which Shivaji Park came into being. The book makes no mention of how Shivaji Park replaced the old caste order and made way for its spacious bungalows. While the majority of Mumbai’s inhabitants lack personal spaces in their homes, the privileges which Shivaji Park has — its roads, bungalows and locality hardly find any mention in this book. She discusses the architectural development, aesthetic qualities and durability of its spacious homes, but in complete isolation of the other side of space-politics of Mumbai: congestion of space for an individual.

For her, Shivaji Park owes much to its Brahmin and Sawarna cricketers, politicians, film actors, musicians, dubious ‘freedom’ fighters, and city architects, etc. Of course, Shivaji Park is still an elite place and you can get a sense of it as soon as you witness it — the Mumbai which never appears in books, except in the stories of Dalit writers. The book seems to be an ardent attempt at connecting histories of famous personalities who have lived here and to illustrate how significant they were in the making of Dadar. From the outset, it appears to us that the subject of the book, Shivaji Park, is nothing but a creation for, by and of Swarna-Brahmin elites, who had never really contributed to making Mumbai a democratic city. This interpretation would sound sceptical and unreasonable, but you must acquire an ‘anti-caste’ gauge to understand the narratives of Brahmin writers.

The history and the emergence of any renowned place is not only about its settlers (conquerors) but also of the people displaced from it and erased from the literary imagination. At the beginning of the book, she mentions an excerpt from a book called Mahikavatichi Bakhar, edited by VK Rajwade, a Brahmin writer. This excerpt reads:

At the time Mahim was under the rule of Vinaji Ghodel. It took no more than Pratap Bimb’s mere presence to drive him away. Pratap Bimb stayed in Mahim for some time to take stock of the place. He saw that the beautiful coastline and the surrounding region having fallen into the hands of atishudras like Ghodel, who possessed not even a strip of cloth to hide their bottoms, was totally destroyed and desolate… It struck Pratap Bimb then that he could persuade good Brahmins and Maratha people from his own country to settle here and return it to its erstwhile glory.

If Mahim was under the rule of ‘atishudra’ Vinaji Ghodel, where do we find his history in this book? Nowhere except in this vitriolic excerpt. The writer assumes the beginning of history of the place from its upper caste settlers, Swarna developers, and not from its displaced ‘atishudra’ ruler, Vinaji Ghodel. This is apparent throughout the book. The book also carries the photo of dogs, sitting on the cement katta of Shivaji Park. But we see no photo of those who clean its roads, who maintain its daily life with sweat and blood.