On October 21, Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered an address inaugurating the annual festival of Durga Puja. His remarks were addressed...
On October 21, Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered an address inaugurating the annual festival of Durga Puja. His remarks were addressed to the people of West Bengal and his point was simple: Bengal has always led the way when it came to India’s progress.
As proof, the prime minister recited a litany of names, the famous reformers, poets, musicians, and religious figures whose names, for him, are synonymous with both Bengal and India’s greatest accomplishments: Ramkrishna, Bankimchandra, Rammohan, Abanindranath and Surya-da.
So what is interesting here?
A tale of two states
Well, for one thing, we have the former chief minister of Gujarat praising the cultural accomplishments of a state that might be thought of as almost diametrically opposed to Gujarat – geographically and politically, to say the least. If Bengal stands for progress and reform, Gujarat – not least during Modi’s time as chief minister – came to be associated most tragically with the forces of recidivism, chauvinism and inter-religious violence.
To remember Godhra 2002 is to say enough. And of course, the unfortunate pairing of Gujarat and Bengal along the axis of tolerance has found expression in works of scholarly and political commentary, perhaps most notably in Martha Nussbaum’s book, The Crisis Within.
For Nussbaum, looking at the rise of...
