West Bengal to ‘West Bangladesh’ in the guise of language pride

One of the great imponderables of Indian politics is knowing when the national sentiment is predominant and when regional angularities must be accommodated. The choice is never pre-determined and even the best strategists often get it wrong.
Recently, a mid-level

BJP

functionary narrated the pitfalls of a one-size-fits-all approach. His experience of how the party commemorated the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi in 2019 was instructive. Apparently, there was a directive from Delhi to organise padayatras that would involve someone dressed up like the Mahatma — maybe an invocation of the Dandi march. The local party’s feeble protests that the programme, in the height of summer, would clash with local elections was brushed aside. The marches were organised, but they lacked any local connect. The reason was not solely bad timing. The Bengali attitude to the Mahatma has always been ambivalent. While he has always been seen as a saintly figure, his hostility towards the revolutionaries and his treatment of their venerated Netaji has rankled in the Bengali imagination and made his legacy contested.