Regionalism

We shifted to our new house a couple of months ago. Fortunately or unfortunately, there are a few Bengali families living in the same housing block. And when they got news that a new Bengali couple was moving in, as usual they were very excited. Though we did not share their excitement, we knew that sooner or later we would come across them. And in the few fleeting pleasantries that we had exchanged here and there, they had invited us more than once to their homes. Lest we got recognized as the most unsocial beings on this planet, we decided to give them a visit. They were quite nice. Easy going, friendly and helpful. But the aspect that struck us most was their desire for group formation. They told us which Bengali family lived in which apartment, the composition of their families, the nature of their kids, all kinds of information we had the least intention of acquiring. And with a negative bend of tone, they also told us about one family which was not so eager to mix with the other fellow Bengalis, making it very clear which side of the divide they belonged to.

India is a free country and everyone has the freedom to live as he wants. I am no one to pass a judgement on how people should or should not lead their lives. But I guess the same freedom gives me the right to voice my opinion about what I see and feel. And this “groupism” is something that I hate from the core of my heart. Being a Bengali, I have cited the example of a Bengali family. But similar sentiments are applicable to each and every linguistic or regionalistic group in the country. Take a Gujarati, Marathi, Mallu, Assamese, just about anybody and you will find the same thing. Let me make one thing very clear out here – Exceptions do exist and I am very proud and happy to say that throughout my life, I have been blessed with these exceptional people as my friends. Lets come back to the main topic. I don’t disagree to the fact that common language is the basis for many of our relations. I hail from Assam and here I am in Gujarat, two opposite vertexes of India. And when you hear someone out here speaking in Bengali or Assamese, the sense of belonging you feel is just about too hard to resist. So its nothing but natural if you want to know that person or strike up a conversation. You might have never known that person had he been a Joshi or Desai, but the fact that he is a Banerjee or a Barua acquaints you to him. But I guess the ball should stop rolling right there. I mean the ball of “groupism”. What happens between the two of you from then on should only be based on the kind of person you two are and your personal equations and interactions. Speaking the same language or belonging to the same caste or religion should have absolutely nothing to do with it. But it invariably does. People cling to each other not because they love the kind of person you are, but because you speak the same language or because your ancestors might have roamed the same piece of earth. Trying to cling to each other is still acceptable and it might have been ok if the buck stopped there. The problem is that they expect you to do the same.

Now let’s look at this thing from another point of view. Let me narrate an incident to arrive at this viewpoint. One day, having just come back from office, I was parking my bike in the parking space (the whole ground floor of our apartment). Now there are some yellow lines that have been made on the floor of the parking area. There is some kind of circular that everyone should park their vehicles inside those lines (I was not aware of this circular at that point of time). As usual, I parked my bike outside the line. As I was about to get inside the lift, the watchman approached me and told me that I should park my vehicle inside the line. I told him that I park my bike in the extreme corner and so it should not be anybody’s concern whether it is inside or outside the line. The watchman replied “you better park it inside or I am going to deflate your tyres”. I was enraged at this kind of a threat and made it clear that if he had the guts, he could go ahead and do what he wanted. I would keep my vehicle parked where it was. He told me that these were rules made by the housing committee and if I had any problem following them, then I should go and talk to the president of the committee who stays in flat no 305. I told him that if someone wanted to talk to me, he should come to my flat and not vice versa. With these words, I left the scene. Soon a bunch of people came knocking on my door. The “supposed president” from flat no 305 introduced himself and told me that I have to park the vehicle inside the lines as that was the rule; else my tyres would be deflated. I asked him who would actually go and take the action if I did not accept the rule. He replied - “I will”.

I have been exposed to too many threats and so called “Dadagiri” in my life to be frightened or even affected by this kind of an occurrence. But this highlighted something that was more than mere breach of a parking rule. This threat would not have been made had I been a “Patel” or a “Shah” instead of “Ghosh”. The people who had come to my flat that day knew this very well and that’s why they came and spoke to me in the manner they did. If I was a Gujarati, I am sure they would have expressed their discontent in a more refined and cultured manner. Of course, having stayed here for three years, a cultured and civil behaviour is something that I have not come to expect from the Gujarati people. I thus come back to the original thought that I was trying to convey: Maybe it is this kind of a behaviour that compels people to form a group. It makes people realize that as long as they are not alone, but part of a group, they are safe. Even if not safe, at least anybody and everybody cannot treat them in the way I was treated. They can fight back and raise their voice. Being alone, they stand no chance. In this context, the desire of my fellow Bengalis to stick together seems well justified. This was just to provide a possible explanation for the way some people try to form groups. It is not a justification and certainly not an endorsement. For that matter, a Gujarati couple trying to settle down in Calcutta might as well be subjected to the same treatment by the locals out there.

My first real brush with this vice was in engineering college. The first couple of months in college, glorified as the “Ragging period” was the time when I (as were the other freshers) was introduced to this wonderful (read as awful) concept of “Groups”. The first fifteen days of our college life, termed as the “general ragging period” had just got over and we were happy that we had somehow managed not to succumb to it. But we never knew that Hell awaited us. On the basis of the place from where we had come from and the language our family members spoke, we were divided into Groups. These groups were to become our only entity for the next 45 days (and to a great extent, it remained as one of our most important recognition throughout REC life). People from different parts of Assam having their mother tongue as Bengali were put into the Bengali Group, the Bengali people from in and around Silchar were in the Local Group, the Assamese speaking ones were in the Assamese Group. Most of the other states had their own separate groups. In some cases, where the number of students from certain states was very less, there was some kind of a coalition between some states with regards to the formation of their groups. Then there was the question of some disputed cases where it was a difficult to exactly pinpoint which group one should join (or more appropriately, allowed to join). For example, someone who had been born in Guwahati but whose schooling had been in Silchar, but whose family was actually from Delhi. These kinds of people were inspired and encouraged (tortured) by the seniors of the various group in contention to join them. Anyways, when all these trivialities got sorted out, then came the main part – the actual ragging. But let me not go into that in detail. But what I need to mention without fail are the main ideas that were transmitted to us during those days. I use the word transmitted and not communicated because we were more like machines obeying our masters than human beings. We were told that “the people of your group are your only friends in REC. You are free to mix with people from other groups but do remember that in times of trouble, it’s only your group people who are going to come to your help. For curricular as well as extra – curricular activities, only these people are going to assist you. As long as you are among these people, you are safe. The moment you alienate yourself from your group, the situation you will face is unimaginable”. These were just some of the things we were taught in those days. It was as if we were being tutored to become Jehadis and not engineers. Lest you think that it was only my group that was imparting this kind of bullshit, let me tell you that the same thing was being done in all the other groups and that too more brutally and inhumanly. Basically, what they did was that they created, of course in a very subtle manner, a lot of enmity among these fresh brains who had come from different corners of the country to stay together, study and enjoy the best four years of their lives. I had hated this concept from the core of my heart even then and to this day, I have this same hatred for people who follow this kind of groupism. And to put things in the proper perspective, let me tell you that it was a few seniors from my group who created all the trouble for me and had it not been for a bunch of wonderful seniors (mostly all of them from other groups), life would have become terrible for me. One of these seniors even went to the extent of apologizing in public on behalf of me to save me from some possible dire consequence. I have remained and will always remain indebted to these seniors for what they did for me. And when they passed out, it was my friends (again, nearly all of them from other groups) who supported me and were always there by my side whenever I got into any trouble. Actually, group was never a criterion for friendship in my case. And I guess the same is applicable to the majority of my batchmates, irrespective of the group they had to owe their allegiance to. In our batch, we saw a wonderful mix between the people from all groups and there were very very few instances of the harmony being eclipsed by group sentiments. The only time I actually witnessed a rivalry and hatred between people belonging to different groups was at the time of college elections. Of course, me and my friends took a very humorous approach to the whole issue of elections, but underneath a lot of really nasty things went on at that time. And that really soured the relationship between many people, some of them best of friends, for the remainder of REC life.

The issues highlighted above are of a personal nature and although it does leave a scar on the mind, they do not have earth shaking and far fetched implications. But the way regionalism is graining ground throughout our country, it is an issue that needs immediate attention. It is of course, a very sensitive issue and so has to be dealt with a lot of care. Otherwise, we may do more damage than has already been done. Today, this evil is raising its head in every nook and corner of the country. If the north - eastern regions of the country feel alienated from the Indian mainstream, the people in the southern states have forcefully created a mental block against the rest of India. Kashmiri people feel they have been cheated for decades. Same with the aboriginals of Sikkim and Darjeeling, who have been demanding a separate Gorkha land for years. Things have reached such a disgusting level that there have been demands in recent times for people like Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan to leave Mumbai since they are not Marathis. I am sure there is going to be a back lash against the Marathi people in the states from where SRK or AB hail from in retaliation to these. People from Bihar have been beaten up in Assam, and they have replied with equal vengeance. The list goes on and on. There is something going on in some part of the country. You pick up any newspaper on any given day, and you are certain to find some law and order situation in some state or the other because of regional tensions. Things are not helped by the law enforcing agencies, who are as biased as much unbiased they are supposed to be. Recently, I was stopped by a traffic police for skipping the signal. He cut a challan. Everything was written in Gujarati (basically all official things out here are written only in Gujarati. I can understand encouraging people to learn their own language but this kind of a measure seems quite extreme). I asked to at least write down the amount in English or Hindi so that I could know whether what I was paying him was actually what he had written. He refused to do so point blank. When I told him that Hindi is the national language and he cannot refuse to not do an official work in Hindi when requested, he replied that “this is Gujarat. Everything out here will be done only in Gujarati”. There was nothing more I could say. I paid up the 50 rupees he had demanded and left. At least in Assam, as much as I have seen, every official thing (any form or notice or challan) is written in English or Hindi along with the Assamese text. Out here, even the sign boards and addresses are written in Gujarati, making it virtually impossible for someone not knowing the language to get along.

I guess things are really getting out of hand. We have to make a concerted effort to bring back normalcy in these matters. We have to concentrate on becoming citizens of the country and not of pockets of lands defined my state borders. The tolerance that has been a hallmark of our culture has to be exercised to good effect. We don’t want to become a breeding ground for regional hatred and communal tussles. Diversity is there and we have to acknowledge that and simultaneously look for ways to unite people, not divide them. The British ruled us using this principle for centuries. Now the politicians are doing the same.

In the present scenario, it’s very difficult to love the people you have been or are being taught not to love. Its not only not “easier said than done”, it’s virtually impossible. But we can start by trying to at least not hate the people of other regions. Though a very humble beginning, it will be a beginning none the less. And I am sure we can build upon on this in the times to come and construct an India that will be free from this evil. Only then I think we can proudly and actually claim that “India is shining”