oppn parties Time To Bury The Outsider

News Snippets

  • 4 people, including a civilian, were killed when Kuki outfits clashed in Manipur's Churachandrapur district
  • As India stands firm on farm duites, the trade deal with the US is stuck even as the deadline approaches in 8 days
  • Bengal government has asked the Kolkata law college where a gang-rape took place last week to expel the main accused and rusticate two students who helped him
  • IMD says that bengal is likely to have a below-normal monsoon in July
  • 15 killed, 35 injured in a blast in a chemical plant in Pashamylaram village in Medakdistrcit in Telangana
  • GST rate rationalisation on the cards as the direct tax regime compltes 9 years
  • Jalpaiguri tea auction centre to start working again after 10 years
  • Manipal Hospitals, which had taken over Medica, will now rebrand it as Manipal
  • Centre likely to deny Airtel's request to convert dues into equity
  • Markets snap four-day rally, tumble on Monday as profit-taking takes centre stage: Sensex loses 452 points to 83606 and Nifty falls 120 points to 25517
  • India ropes in legendary South Korean Kisik Lee as coach for srchers till the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028
  • Nikhat Zareen and Lovlina Borgaohain reach the finals in Elite women's boxing tournament in Hyderabad
  • Lalit Modi fails to get relief from Supreme Court, will have to pay Rs 10cr fine for FEMA violation from his own resources
  • Second Test: England names unchanged eleven while India still unsure about its team composition
  • India will fast-track deployment of 52 defence surveillance satellites
Indo-US trade deal deadlocked over farm duties even as deadline is just 8 days away
oppn parties
Time To Bury The Outsider

By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2018-06-18 18:38:13

About the Author

Sunil Garodia Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
The very idea of creating states on the basis of language or ethnicity gives rise to the idea of the ‘outsider’, or someone who does not ‘belong’. But whichever the state, an Indian is an Indian. Already, there are several restrictions on buying land in place for people other than those domiciled in the state for a given number of years in many states like J&K and all states of the North-East. The idea of India will be defeated if a Punjabi is treated as an outsider in Meghalaya, as it recently happened. The state witnessed days of curfews and clashes in which even senior police officers were attacked when a minor scuffle between a local Khasi and a local Punjabi snowballed into a major issue that raised questions about ‘outsiders’ bossing over the ethnic population. Meghalaya had already witnessed ethnic antagonism that had seen people from Bengal and Bihar leave the state in large numbers in the sixties and the seventies.

Elsewhere, Maharashtra sees periodic ‘drives’ against the so-called “bhaiyyas’ or people from Bihar and UP. In the sixties, the Naxals had made living hell for non-Bengalis in Kolkata and other parts of West Bengal. That thread was revived in the late seventies by a fringe outfit that called itself “Amra Bangali”. It tired to enforce a linguistic hegemony by painting shop boards in languages other than Bengali with black paint and targeting non-Bengalis. The movement was an alarmist response to the problems being faced by Bengalis in the North-East. But it fizzled out as it did not receive public support and the administration dealt with the miscreants with a firm hand. The idea of an ‘outsider,’ however, received a measure of ‘respectability’ during the prolonged agitation against foreigners in Assam in the 1970’s.

But India is changing. For instance, boys and girls leave West Bengal for higher studies to places such as Bangalore, Hyderabad, Gurgaon, Delhi, Mumbai and Noida, among others. Sensing better opportunities elsewhere, they opt for campus placements and seldom return back permanently to their home state. The same is happening with young people in the North-East and other states. There are thousands of north Indian students in colleges and institutes in south India and likewise, there are thousands of south Indian students in colleges and institutions in north India. In that sense, the whole of India is becoming truly cosmopolitan. Hence, there is no place for an idea like that of an ‘outsider’ now. It is just that petty local politicians inflame passions and create disturbances. The administration must educate the people about cosmopolitan behavior and deal with all such instances swiftly and with a firm hand.