ARE WE A NATION WITHIN A NATION THAT WE HAVE TURNED SO PROVINCIALLY ARROGANT ?

ARE WE A NATION WITHIN A NATION THAT WE HAVE TURNED SO PROVINCIALLY ARROGANT ?

West Bengal must stop believing that it is a nation within a nation. What is this 'outsider' epithet that is labelled against national leaders coming to legitimately campaign here? This epithet we frequently hear on the lips of the Chief Minister of West Bengal. Why? And to what effect? Is not the Right to Freedom (Articles 19-22) inclusive of the Right to Freedom of Movement within the geographical boundaries of India? Then who is the insider and who the outsider, madam? One more thing. Frequently we hear on the Chief Minister's lips that she, her party and her supporters will not allow West Bengal to become Gujarat. Now, what are we to understand by this assertion? Is this a barbed reference to Prime Minister Modi and to Home Minister Shah or to the Father of the Nation Mahatma Gandhi and to India's first Home Minister Sardar Patel, all of whom hailed from Gujarat? Are we to understand this as a sort of a confrontation between the cultures of these two states of the same Republic of India? Is this nationalism? Is this federalism? Is this cooperative provincial living? How does the Gujarati community living in West Bengal feel when this sort of provincial supremacist attitude is flung on their faces by the highest executive authority of the state? Is this also not communalism of sorts? I wonder ! And then to quote Tagore and Vivekananda and Netaji and Nazrul at the drop of the proverbial hat? God bless the politicians of the province !

Written by Sugata Bose