The Cool Sainik

At around one in the night comes Mumbai’s witching hour. Every night at this hour, young men in tight shirts and women in shimmering clothes appear suddenly out of nowhere on a lonely road, always in a daze as though just hustled out of a rock concert. This will of course be outside a nightclub, where their request for that one final last drink and one final last song has just been turned down. The more sensible will curse, hail a cab and disappear into the night. While the more resolute will light a cigarette, strike a pose and ask another, “Where next?”

But there will usually not be a ‘next’ in a public place at least. Bombay’s nightlife officially ends at 1.30 am. Political parties have over the years formulated policies to bring this about, and the police, who are anyway—on principle, you understand— against anything that’s fun, enforce this with eagerness.

The chief argument against nightlife— and here the Shiv Sena has been most vocal on the issue—is that, like Valentine’s Day, it is a Western construct. In India, the argument goes, young men and women only sleep at night, and any attempt to lure them into staying awake is a foreign ploy to corrupt not just their sleep but also their minds. The nightclub is hence a den of Western vice.

But now the scion of the very political party that has moral policing in its very genes is arguing in favour of it. Aditya Thackeray, the 24-year-old youth who will in all likelihood lead the Shiv Sena after his father Uddhav Thackeray, is working to allow establishments to stay open all night. He has got the city police to clear his proposal, has asked Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to get the state legislature to amend existing laws, and is currently looking to see if late night local trains could be allowed. He says his proposals will help tourism, generate more jobs and commerce, and will allow the youth, most importantly, to chill. He told The Times Of India recently, “I am one of those who stay up late at night to work or go on a drive around the city. I realised most in my age group do that too, for work, to watch football or to chill. Most of us get hungry. In a city as vibrant as Mumbai, we hardly have places to eat at post-midnight. Other cities like London or New York have nightlife. Mumbai does not sleep—yet, we’re put to sleep by Stone Age laws.”

What’s going on? What is Bal Thackeray’s grandson saying?

Is this the same man who announced his entry into politics five years ago by burning a copy of Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey at the Mumbai University gates, threatening the Vice-Chancellor and saying he wouldn’t tolerate any insult to the Shiv Sena? He admitted he hadn’t read the entire book but still claimed the book made several disparaging references to his party. The university axed the book from its syllabus.

Thackeray has since then been relatively quiet. This proposal is his next big political move. It is possibly not just an attempt to rework the ethos of the city, but to reshape the Shiv Sena itself. He wants to make the party, while retaining its core sons-of-the-soil issue, a modern party of the 21st century. This is possibly, after the death of Bal Thackeray, the only way the party can move ahead and expand itself.

The young Thackeray has been working on this plan to revive Mumbai’s nightlife for some time. He first suggested it two years ago, and got the city’s municipal corporation, which the Shiv Sena and BJP were heading, to propose such a plan to the then Congress state government. Nothing much had come of it then. But with a new BJP-Sena government in power, it is easier to get things done. And, for once, young urban Mumbaikars are not rolling their eyes at the mention of the Sena.

About The Author

Lhendup G Bhutia

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