The Other Side Of The Story

15th August 2010—Bangalore-: Finally a holiday!! Most Denizens of our IT capital spend the day exchanging a few patriotic messages, spending time with their friends and perhaps watching a patriotic movie or two.
1st November 2010—Bangalore again: It’s Karnataka Rajyotsava!! The streets are decked in yellow and red (the flag of Karnataka). Sweets are being distributed and the tricolour too can be seen fluttering proudly atop government buildings amidst the sea of red & yellow.
1st May 2010—Mumbai: Maharashtra Day. It’s time to reassert that Marathi pride. Loud trumpets can be heard everywhere as the Marathi Manoos pay homage to Shivaji Maharaja and their leader Balasaheb.
And it doesn’t stop at that: “Jai Maharashtra” & “Jai Telengana” are these days heard much more frequently than “Jai Bharat Mata”.
The first and foremost conclusion that a naïve reader might draw from the above instances would be that India is all set to split into a hundred small countries. Are these people (plenty of times including our friends as well) truly patriotic? Why then do they celebrate their own distinct identity and statehood with such vigour? The reason my friend is quite simple. In order to decode any of the above stories, one only has to look at the economics of it all.
15th August 1947 was definitely the day that India was granted independence but genuine freedom was still a far way off for a large part of the country as most of the people still struggled to make ends meet. Development did kick off but in a discriminatory manner. While Mumbai was completely run by Gujratis, in Bangalore the writ of the Tamilians ran supreme. Both the Marathis and the Kannadigas were left jobless and powerless in their own homes. Similar was the case in several other parts of the country as tribals were driven out of their resource rich forests and entire forests were cut down in the Himalayas to serve as furniture for the ruling elite in Lucknow or Calcutta. Before soon the simmering discontent boiled into outright anger and protests and demonstrations broke out in all parts of the country. The Britishers had maintained a semblance of order and equitable development at the point of a gun but the moment the gun was lifted, all hell broke loose and our founding fathers were at a loss to find the same people who had fought together for independence now fighting each other for jobs.
Hunger strikes, suicides and chakka jams soon became the order of the day and each passing day made the situation all the more difficult to handle for Chacha Nehru. Separate statehood emerged as the only viable option to end the crisis and within 10 years of independence, India’s map was being redrawn on linguistic lines. Even then unluckily economic differences were forgotten and more often than not a rich majority was coupled with a poor minority and in democracy obviously the majority rules. The strikes continued and continue to this day as one community finds itself exploited by another.
The situation however wasn’t any better in the new states as Tamilians were chased out of Bangalore and the Shiv Sena was formed with the primary motive of bashing up any outsider who dared to take up a job in Mumbai. The overall financial state of the Marathis and Kannadigas did however improve and they expressed their joy via their own respective Rajyotsavas.
Even now one can find Gorkhas demanding freedom from Kolkatta and Telanganites planning to chase out Andhrites from Hyderabad. The problem after all is economical and little respite can be found from it unless the central government ensures equitable development for all the people and regions of India instead of basing its decision on pure vote bank politics.
To sum it up, I’d like to quote a TOI journalist from my home state of Uttarakhand, “ Independence was granted on 15th August 1947, but it was 53 years later on 9th November 2000 that we actually tasted it.”
Jai Hind!!
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