In Mumbai, BJP unleashes penguin politics to help it fly in civic polls

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Earlier this week, a Bharatiya Janata Party official in Mumbai named Nitin Bankar caused a flap when he led a demonstration outside the city zoo in Byculla: he was demanding that recently hatched penguin chicks in the facility be given Marathi names.
It was the latest reminder that the vastly popular icy enclosure at the Veermata Jijabai Bhonsale Udyan does not only afford the opportunity to gape at flightless birds – it also offers a glimpse of some of Mumbai's most confounding debates and challenges.
Bankar's protest on Tuesday transported the city's long-running sons-of-the-soil controversy to the animal kingdom.
Since March, three penguin chicks have been born in Mumbai city zoo. They have been named Noddy, Tom and Pingu.
Those Western-sounding monickers have offended Bankar and his BJP colleagues. 'Giving English names to these penguins is injustice to the Marathi language,' he told reporters. 'Isn't this hatred towards Marathi language?'
The first penguins introduced to the city zoo in 2016 were imported from Seoul. They were called Bubble, Mr Molt, Donald, Daisy, Popeye, Dory, Olive and Flipper.
But since then, the Humboldt penguins have reproduced rather prolifically. Eight years later, the enclosure holds 21 birds.
It's the identities of the new arrivals that have ruffled the BJP's feathers. 'When penguins were brought from abroad to the Veermata Jijabai Bhosale Botanical Udyan and Zoo, we accepted that their names would be in English,' Bankar told journalists. 'However, chicks born here, on the soil of Maharashtra, should be given Marathi names.'
With elections to the Mumbai municipal corporation imminent, the BJP is attempting to kill two birds with one stone. To begin with, it is trying to position itself as the champion of Maharashtrian identity, snatching that platform from its rival, the Shiv Sena faction led by Uddhav Thackeray.
In the 1960s, Uddhav Thackeray's father, Bal Thackeray, had forcefully campaigned for the employment rights of Maharashtrians and for the use of Marathi in the multiethnic state capital.
Bankar's protest was also aimed at giving new wings to the allegations first aired in 2016 by the BJP and other parties in opposition in the city municipal corporation that the ruling Shiv Sena's proposal to induct the birds into the zoo would allow it to feather its own nest.
Claiming that project costs had been vastly inflated, the Shiv Sena's critics began to refer to Uddhav Thackeray's son and rising party leader, Aaditya, as 'Baby Penguin'. The Thackerays dismissed the corruption claims as a flight of fancy. But a little while later, a social media user who used the taunt was arrested.
It isn't only corruption allegations that echo in the Byculla penguin enclosure. The structure also reflects the challenges Mumbai faces in housing its expanding human population.
The 2,000-square-foot facility has the capacity to accommodate only four more birds. Since no other zoos have been willing to do a swap deal for penguins, the authorities in Mumbai have announced plans to expand the enclosure by 500 square feet and double the size of the quarantine facility. All this would cost around Rs 2.5 crore, they said.
But if the birds keep breeding at this rate, it isn't immediately clear how later arrivals can be housed.
Mumbai has waddled on a long way from the time the municipal authorities are first thought to have discussed penguins, about 35 years ago. Faced with a problem of mounting litter, they are said to have decided that offering dustbins with a cutesy animal design was the route to getting citizens to actually use them.
Every creature was rejected except for the penguin. Evidently, it does not appear in Indian mythology and so no one would be offended by putting rubbish in its maw.
If the BJP's demand for hatchlings to be given Marathi names is accepted, perhaps the penguin will finally go native after all.
Here is a summary of the week's top stories.
Bengaluru stampede. The Karnataka Police arrested four persons, including an official of Royal Challengers Bengaluru, in connection with the stampede that took place outside the city's Chinnaswamy Stadium. Those are Nikhil Sosale, the marketing head of the cricket franchise, along with event management firm DNA Entertainment Networks' Sunil Mathew, Kiran and Sumanth.
This came after Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Thursday said that the state government had ordered the arrest of representatives from the Karnataka State Cricket Association, DNA Entertainment Networks and Royal Challengers Bengaluru.
A first information report was filed against the persons based on a complaint alleging that criminal negligence had led to the stampede.
Eleven persons had died and several were injured in the incident on Wednesday. Fans had gathered to celebrate the team's victory in the Indian Premier League.
The census roadmap. India will conduct its population census, including caste enumeration, in two phases. The first phase of the census will be conducted in hilly and snow-bound areas in Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. The reference date for this phase will be October 1, 2026, the Union home ministry announced.
The second phase will be conducted in the rest of the country, and the reference date will be March 1, 2027.
The reference date of a census means the specific point of time for which population data is collected. The last decennial census exercise was held in 2011.
In 2020, India was set to begin the first phase of the exercise but it had to be delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Ladakh's grievances. The Union government notified rules of a new reservation and domicile policy in the Union Territory of Ladakh in response to protests by political, religious and social groups since 2019.
Now only those who have stayed in Ladakh continuously for 15 years, beginning in 2019, will qualify as domiciles. This means that non-native persons living in Ladakh will be considered domiciled only after 2034.
The government also announced an 85% reservation for Scheduled Tribes in government jobs in Ladakh, addressing the fear that non-natives would corner employment opportunities. More than 97% of the population in the Union Territory belongs to Scheduled Tribes. Earlier, only 80% of government jobs were reserved for them.
In August 2019, the residents of Ladakh lost exclusive rights to own immovable property and get government jobs in the region. This was after the Union government rescinded the special status of Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 of the Constitution and divided the state into the Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.
India's deportations. The Supreme Court refused to entertain a petition challenging the Assam government 'pushing' back to Bangladesh persons who have been declared foreigners by Foreigners Tribunals in the state. The bench asked the petitioner to approach Gauhati High Court.
The court was hearing a petition claiming that the state government was arbitrarily pushing Indian citizens to Bangladesh without following due process under the guise of deporting undocumented migrants.
The petition came against the backdrop of a surge in detentions of declared foreigners in Assam since May 23. Families say they have no information on their relatives' whereabouts. Some of them have identified their missing relatives in videos from Bangladesh, alleging they were forcibly sent across the border.