Arjun Appadurai has an article that gets interesting toward the end. I say that because his hating on the Hindutva BJP (who may well deserve some of it) and attempt to tie them into an atrocity perpetrated by a group that has been supported by the Pakistani state for some time now, is just typical idiotarian stupidity.

He gets more interesting in the last half of his article, where he talks about some of the forces pulling on Bombay/ Mumbai from various cultural and regional directions. He could have very profitably started his article, then gone right into this and kept going...

"Gujarati-speakers still regard Mumbai as their city, usurped by the Maratha peasantry and the Marathi-speaking lumpenproletariat of the city. Among other things, the recent events in Mumbai are a struggle between the Indian Ocean (the Arabian Sea) and the Marathi and Gujarati hinterlands for control over Mumbai. Modi is the voice of the Gujarati jihad against the Islam of the Arabian Sea, just as Bal Thackeray is the voice of lumpen Maharashtra against its land-based enemies from Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, U.P, Bihar, etc., all now telescoped into the battle against land-based Islam in India..."