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The Myth of Khairnar

What never ceases to amaze me is how easily we make heroes out of those who hurt the weak and the poor. A typical example is the irrepressible G R Khairnar.

Khairnar is undoubtedly an honest man. He is also brave, stubborn, unyielding. All these are admirable qualities but no, he is not famous for any of these. He is famous as the demolition man. The man who ruthlessly destroys all illegit structures. The tin and cardboard homes of the poor; the limping handcarts of the unemployed who make a livelihood selling their wares on the mean streets of Mumbai; the tiny street temples and prayer rooms where those who have nowhere to go find sanctuary from the vicissitudes of life.

True, most slums are owned by criminal slumlords. True, many street vendors are protected by the local mafia. True, some of the street temples and prayer rooms are a cover for land grabbing. But is that their fault? Is it the fault of the poor that rich slumlords exploit their poverty and force them to live in ugly shanties? Is it their fault that mafia warlords carve out entire cities between themselves and, unless vendors pay off local goons, they have no protection? Is it their fault that the big temples are in the clutches of the rich and you have to pay speed money to get a darshan?

After all, it is we who have created this city of gold where even the pavements are parcelled off to local goons for hafta. It is the cops who do the collection. It is the cops who loot the poor even as they protect the so-called VIPs of our society. The Laloos and Sukh Rams, the Subhash Ghais and Kapil Devs are protected by them while the middle class Maharashtrian boy who cannot get a job despite his second class masters degree gets beaten and thrown off the streets because he tries to earn his livelihood selling second-hand books or cheap white shirts for not so affluent office-goers.

You and I have created these slums. Not the slumlords. They are only exploiting an opportunity. The cars we buy need bigger roads, more overbridges. The contracts are distributed among politically well connected builders who save money by bringing in slave labour from Tamil Nadu and Andhra and Orissa, from drought ravaged districts, from villages wiped out by floods and diseases. These desperate men and women have nowhere to go after the roads have been widened, the bridges built. They hang on, looking for some menial jobs to stay alive. When everything fails, they turn to begging or petty crime.

Those who slog for you at home, your newspaper boy, your dhobi, your milkman, your sweeper, your daughter's ayah, your wife's driver, your servants: they are all your contribution to the growing slum population. And now, when the chicken have come home to roost, you want someone like Khairnar to go and do your dirty work for you. The system of dependencies you have created has brought urban civil society to its knees. Too many cars, too many servants, too many luxuries. Now, you expect a mindless demolition expert to solve your problem for you?

Remember one thing: No one is easily destroyed. When you break down homes or ruin means of livelihood, you end up criminalising people. You create more cheats, more thieves, more murderers. More desperate people ready to slit someone's throat for a meagre supari. At some stage, such people cease to see murder as a crime. They see it as yet another means of livelihood. This explains the popular appeal of Satya and Vaastav. We have pushed the poor and middle classes to such a corner that they are now romanticising crime and actually believing that there is something noble about extorting the rich.

Every Khairnar we unleash creates new criminals. The pao bhaji vendor you push off the streets becomes a pick-pocket or a thief. Every slum you break throws up a dozen defiant rebels who then challenge your smug moral authority. Every young hawker whose wares you seize becomes a full-fledged enemy of your unjust, unequal society, ready to set it on fire. By making heroes out of men like Khairnar we are driving Mumbai to the edge.

Does this mean that slums must grow, streets must be taken away from pedestrians and hawkers must be allowed to sell their wares wherever they want? No. But a responsible society cannot respond to one wrong with another. It cannot destroy the rights of one group of people to protect the interests of another. There must be some give and take. You and I must stop buying the third car if we want our streets not to be clogged. We must stop hiring slave labour at home if we do not want to be killed. We must stop lionising a good and honest but imbecilic officer of the State simply because he goes out and breaks down the homes of the poor, robs vendors of their wares, destroys places of worship, all under the pretext of cleaning up Mumbai.

Pritish Nandy

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