My friend MJ has an interesting piece on Why we need National Continuity.
I was also reading an article about the lack of a “national party in India” (Modi versus 20 states) but I found the comment to the post excerpted below to be very interesting and well-written.
A paen to a very different type of India. As in all things the labels Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan are very muddled because they are ultimately foreign labels. But that is not the point of the post or the comment below but rather that there are many many types of Indias not just Modi’s Bharat.
I was a bit surprised that Telangana is divided up between Rao and Reddy, to India’s credit it has funnelled the caste divides into a democratic framework (casteocracy can work). In some forms of culture South Asia is probably the most conservative region on earth since culture is essentially distributed into each caste and clan. The family networks haven’t nuclearised yet and without atomisation, Westernisation is somewhat harder to achieve.
Mr Gupta’s articulation is absolutely in line with what India is. I only hope he believes in the India that is and articulates more strongly and more often about this India. Not the India that is being projected to us by ‘pretending to be independent’ darbari (but really sarkari channels and papers) channels but who depend on the government for advertisement money.
We are a country where the language/dialect varies by district in many cases. If we try distinguishing regions based on multiple factors, India is a combination of few hundred states. We have multiple new years. Some of us revolve our lives around the sun and others around the moon. That itself tell us, how diverse we are. We have common festivals but they are celebrated for different reasons – sometimes very different reasons. How can then our politics be led by one fellow, who thinks of himself no less than God or who is positioned by the darbaris as the reincarnation of God. Given that the God has created us to be different, what business does a self-serving politician or the darbaris have to tell us how to live our life? We are largely independent thinking and that is why no effort at assimilation in the past has succeeded. What does it tell us about who we are? Not to mention that our geography is that of a continent and our economic opportunities vary significantly.
Not everyone can or has to become one kind of citizen – thinking the same way. Continue reading Many types of India prepare to Vote
