The memorial push

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The memorial push

Wednesday, 23 January 2019 | Pioneer

The memorial push

The Mumbai mayor has now moved to a zoo campus to make way for Thackeray museum

City zoos aren’t exactly forests but a reminder of what we’ve lost out on in our relentless march towards civilised living — the call of the wild. So long these have been dots of biosphere that enable us to experience the animal world in the gush of the Maximum City. But turns out that just like the forests, we will end up encroaching into these as well and prioritise urban living over allowing other creatures the right to co-exist. So it is that the Mumbai mayor is reluctantly moving into a heritage bungalow in the Byculla zoo as his earlier official residence, also a heritage building, is being converted to a memorial for Shiv Sena founder Balasaheb Thackeray. In other words, one is to safely deduce that no property in the country’s commercial capital could be found to accommodate mayor Vishwanath Mahadeswar. It seems he can only live in heritage structures to continue colonial rituals even if we cannot afford them anymore and though he had wanted two on the posh Malabar Hill and Carmichael Road, he had to reconcile to the Byculla bungalow, which, last heard, was renovated at Rs 80 lakh. The BMC has used much of this to build a gate on the access road to the bungalow to provide the mayor privacy and install sound barriers to keep the animals away. But given the mayor’s busy schedule, the hosting of several events and the newly-created, expansive parking lot, it is difficult to understand how animals can be immune to either noise pollution or human depredations.

Of course, his old Shivaji Park bungalow at Dadar is also a grade II heritage structure though the Thackeray memorial administrators insist that they are complying with the norms, environmental and structural, to ensure that no damage is done to it. Except the working shed and re-imagining the use of the basement space, nothing is being touched upon, they claim. But since the building comes under CRZ 1(Coastal Regulation Zone), even the slightest changes in peripheral construction require the nod from several agencies, including the Union Environment Ministry. The proposed construction has already been challenged in the Bombay High Court for alleged flouting of norms, so formal construction can begin only when that’s settled. But for now a bhoomipujan is sealing that predicted legitimacy with Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis clearing Rs 100 crore for development of the memorial and handing over the bungalow to Sena president Uddhav Thackeray at a token ceremony. The political import of this being an olive branch by both sides in poll season is not lost on anybody. Neither is the fact that by respecting what is an emotional issue for the Shiv Sena, the BJP is keen to heal the recent wounds caused by ongoing public spats and the on-off threats to snap ties of almost two years. The political will to accommodate the Sena’s concerns, to the extent of even asking the mayor to vacate his place against his wishes, can be understood considering that the clearance for the Thackeray memorial was given by the Congress-NCP regime. The larger question is do we pursue a memorial mania just because there are precedents of iconisation even in European history? Isn’t it enough that contemporary history teaches generations after us what matters the most — the contribution of our movement leaders? The Sena trust could run several welfare programmes for the youth and keep the legacy alive in a far more vibrant manner than simply housing a museum in a heritage bungalow. That’s just caging a leader known as the “tiger” once.

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