How MNS found a lethal weapon in fried fish against Gujaratis

For most Mumbaikars, the annual seafood festivals organised by the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) have usually been an occasion to feast on the fish-heavy cuisine of the city’s Koli community. With the day’s fresh catch, fried and curried the traditional way, the Koli food fests are all about celebrating the cuisine of Mumbai’s fisherfolk and of course, a perfect way of wooing the community. But the MNS’s latest plans of organising a seafood fest seem anything but an occasion to rejoice and feast. If food can be used to woo, it can also be a tool to threaten, the party seems to believe. The MNS reportedly plans to organise seafood festivals outside Gujarati-dominant housing societies, as a mark of protest. All because of a quarrel between a Maharashtrian family and their Gujarati neighbours in a Dahisar housing society. Last week, a non-vegetarian versus vegetarian battle broke out in a housing society in suburban Mumbai. A Marathi-speaking family landed up at the police station to accuse their Gujarati neighbours, accusing them of discriminating on the basis of food habits. The neighbours, the family alleged, threw eggs at their house and attacked them.

For years, the divide between vegetarian and non vegetarian eating people has grown especially when it concerns buying or renting apartments. A number of buildings have come up, in the past decade, that cater to "vegetarian-only" buyers, refusing to sell to members of non-vegetarian eating communities. Parties like the MNS and the Swabhimaan Sanghatna have taken up this issue with protests, targeting the Gujarati population that forms the majority of the vegetarian-only population. If new residential developments discreetly refuse to sell to non-vegetarian eaters, property agents carefully filter to-be rented homes depending upon the client’s dietary habits. With rising complaints of discrimination and corporators, especially of parties like the Shiv Sena and MNS, taking up the issue strongly, the BMC, last November, passed a proposal to revoke permission to developers who refuse to sell apartments to non-vegetarian families.

The Marathi versus Gujarati political battle has been going on for a while. Last year, the MNS opposed the pro-Gujarati advertisements put up by a newspaper on BEST buses which attributed the economic progress and intellectual development of Mumbai to the Gujarati community. Similarly, Congress MLA Nitesh Rane had attacked the Gujarati community for promoting vegetarian-only buildings through a series of tweets.