Let it be Sarkar or Raj…India will Sail!!!

Dated: 15 Nov, 2008
The recent incidents of driving non-Marathi people by MNS workers from Maharashtra served as a dessert with icing on its top for all the TV news channels which went on conducting post-mortems on the issue followed by innumerable discussions leading to fear among many of its viewers and raising a question. “Are Indians becoming more and more intolerable to their fellow state mates largely because of regionalism and intolerance…..Are we going to cripple as a country altogether ?”
Israeli –Palestinian conflict and Sri Lanka’s civil war are the top two conflicts in the world pertaining to regionalist divides among people which makes headlines and large number of civilian causalities in the past three decades and continues to do so posing great challenges to humanity and making permanent scars in the world map which every one would love to wipe off.
The basis of both the issue is people belonging to two different culture (Jews - Palestinians in the first case & Singhalese – Tamil in the second) could not co-exist in one common land largely because of the cultural and linguistic divide resulting in people from one community (universally its the majorities) forcing their identity -language/religion- into others (the minorities) or the primitive methodology of majorities oppressing the minorities largely due to hatred, intolerance and sense of ownership towards their land. Time and again this has resulted in minorities resorting to fighting with arms for their rights and land.
The crux of both the issues is very similar to the nucleus of different Metros in India where people from less opportunistic regions with different culture, language, religion and backgrounds come to bigger cities and live towards their livelihood and dream. The challenge here lies in magnanimity/solidarity of the host and contemplation of the visitors towards the hosts. Always, it’s a win-win situation leading to prosperity for both the parties. Though the sense of regionalism had cropped at few situations hampering the image, largely Indian metros have reaped the benefits for being strong-willed when comes to co-existence of different communities and have mutual admiration.
Living in a deeply diverse city like Bangalore where the every other person you see speaks a language which you don’t own and has his/her upbringing culture very different from yours and sharing my apartment with Telugu, Marathi and Hindi speaking guys its no make-believe that we co-exist with absolute harmony and sanctity.
In the current conflict, fingers were pointed towards two culpable entities for the whole controversy. First, Raj Takrey for his cheap politics and the second being the Congress govt for being soft on Raj which would project him as a savior of Marathi people and this image would cut into Siva Sena and BJP votes, the congress main oppositions in the state. Both, equally disgusting and unpardonable.

It’s very evident that innumerable communities continues to co-exist in India particularly in Metros burying all the differences under one flag is still predominant and will continue for generations to come. Iam pretty sure that we will withstand both the inefficacy of the Central/State sarkars or malicious acts of people like Raj Takrey, simply because the country’s entire fundamental ideology of existence is based on this Unity in Diversity.

~ Siddharth