Bombay and Karachi. once acclaimed as the two most cosmopolitan and dynamic commercial centres of South Asia, have been reduced to clusters of warring, sectarian ghettoes. Violent political goons, extortionists and hired killers have thrown a pall of medieval fear and gloom over the two cities that were glittering showpieces of vitality and progress.
Two sectarian organisations and their violent cadres arc the main culprits responsible for the steep decline of Bombay (arbitrarily renamed Mumbai) and Karachi. Tightly controlled by their dictatorial chieftains. Bal Thackeray and Altaf Hussain; the Shiv Sena in Bombay and the MQM (Muttabida Qaumi Movement) in Karachi have used a mix of terror and parochial rhetoric over more than two decades to gain political dominance in South Asia's leading port cities. This dominance, although now diminishing, was made possible only due to the connivance and encouragement of the major political parties and other important interests in India and Pakistan.
In Bombay, the Shiv Sena was set up in 1966 with the initial support and funding of the city's then-powerful textile mill-owners to counter the communist trade unions. The mill workers and their aspiring children, who were largely Marathi-speaking were wooed by the Shiv Sena's fiery rhetoric about Bombay being taken over by outsiders, especially South Indians, and about the local Maharashtrians having become deprived people in their own homeland. These appeals also attracted the Maharashtrian middle class. By the I 980s, the outbursts against South Indians had been transformed by the Shiv Sena into a hate campaign against 'anti-national' Muslims. culminating in the mass killings of Muslims in Bombay in January 1993.
Over a period of 29 years, successive Congress governments displayed a soft corner for the Shiv Sena and no firm action was taken against the organisation and its leader. Bal Thackeray, for continuously making a mockery of the law. In March 1995, the Shiv Sena. in alliance with the 13naratiya Janata Party, was elected to power in the state of Maharashtra, of which Bombay is the capital.