People take from Mumbai, but don't give anything back: Benegal

Jan 11, 2013 IANS

Kolkata, Jan 11 (IANS) National award-winning filmmaker Shyam Benegal feels that people living in Mumbai nowadays take from the city, without giving anything back to it in return.

"The city came up the way it did because people who took from the city gave back to it. Now, Mumbai is 'Allah miyan ki gaai' (God's cow), people keep drawing milk from the cow without feeding it," said Benegal at the fourth Kolkata Apeejay Literary Festival here Friday.

"If you look at 19th century Mumbai and now, they are two different cities," he added.

According to Benegal, earlier in Mumbai one did not identify people based on religion or caste.

"It used to be the characteristic of the city of Mumbai that you didn't identify people in that fashion - based on religion or caste. But all that has changed now," he remarked.

Elaborating on the changes the city has gone through, the filmmaker added: "When I had come to Mumbai nobody really worried about these things. Your worth was only measured by the work you did."