On January 28, the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) organised a gathering of 500-odd Hindi-speaking people in Kolkata where Mamata Banerjee, in one of her inspired moments, challenged BJP stalwarts Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his deputy, Amit Shah, to a Hindi reading contest (she alleges their speeches are written in the Gujarati script and read from a teleprompter). The West Bengal chief minister was speaking in Bengali, but her speech was peppered with Hindi phrases. How did it come to this, for it was a volte-face from June 2019 when she first raised the regional/ linguistic rhetoric after the BJP’s stunning performance in the Lok Sabha election? “If you live in Bengal, you will have to speak Bengali,” she had made it clear then.
It was part of Mamata’s fightback against the BJP’s muscular cultural push in Bengal, with its Ramnavami and Hanuman Jayanti processions. (For the average devout Bengali, Ram and Hanuman are not part of their daily prayer nor any community worship.) Sources say more than the BJP’s unexpected gains in 2019, it’s the post-poll violence, where her partymen were getting beaten and driven out of homes and party offices, as in Naihati, that pushed Mamata into raising the ‘outsider’ bogey. “They are outsiders. I will not let them turn Bengal into a Gujarat....”, she had said then, losing her cool after being taunted with ‘Jai Shree Ram’ slogans when she visited the area.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة March 01, 2021 من India Today.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 8500 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة March 01, 2021 من India Today.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 8500 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
Who Will Win The Mahayuddh?
In Maharashtra's Most Complex Political War Ever, Shifting Alliances Fuel A Gripping Saga Of Power Struggles And Betrayals In The Pursuit Of Votes
Grand Young Master
Seventeen-yearold D. Gukesh has become the youngest player to win the Candidates chess tournament
SPORTING SPIRIT
BADMINTON PLAYER ASHWINI PONNAPPA, 34, IS OFF TO HER THIRD OLYMPICS, THIS TIME WITH A NEW PARTNER, TANISHA CRASTO
PORTRAITS OF A PEOPLE
Etchings by the colonial Flemish artist F. Baltazard Solvyns are getting a new lease of life in an exhibition at the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai
Centennial Man
A seminal exhibition of K.G. Subramanyan's works in his birth centenary year at Emami Art, Kolkata takes an imaginative and immersive curatorial approach
Rhythms of Nature
ARTIST AND MUSIC COMPOSER GINGGER SHANKAR'S LATEST SINGLE COMBINES SOUTH INDIAN MUSIC WITH INUIT THROAT SINGING
SEARCHING FOR THE SOUND
Kashmiri musician Faheem Abdullah’s debut album Lost; Found is a collaborative effort
FOUND IN TRANSLATION
With its excellent translations, Songs of Tagore makes Rabindrasangit accessible to the non-Bengali reader
Of Freedom and Friendship
T.C.A. RAGHAVAN'S CIRCLES OF FREEDOM FOLLOWS THREE YOUNG MUSLIMS DRAWN INTO THE FREEDOM STRUGGLE
The Razor's Edge
Salman Rushdie's Knife is an eloquent, first-person account of the horrific attack on him. It's also a love story