This column, from the Telegraph of 9 September 2003, is about Buddhadev Bhattacharjee, Chief Minister of West Bengal, losing his shirt over Atal Bihari Vajpayee's speech at the 150th anniversary celebrations of Bengal Chamber of Commerce, in which he urged West Bengal government to create a new work culture and and a new pro-growth mindset.
Are the Bengalis touchy!
When the West Bengali Chief Minister blew his top on the
Bhaiya Prime Minister's Calcutta speech – 24 hours too late – I thought
wearily, "Ah! These Bengalis! So red-skinned - I mean, so thin-skinned! So
excitable! So ineffective!" Worse, I was silly enough to express one of
these thoughts in mild terms to some of my Bengali friends, and they rounded up
on me. "How dare you call us thin-skinned! How would you feel if we
pointed out how you guys have treated your Muslims! How if we said you
Gujaratis were crooks and money-grabbers! You are just as thin-skinned as we
are, only you don't show it." I examined my skin, ascertained that it had
not been pierced by these silly pellets, and said, "Well said, my friends!"
In fairness, though, one Bengali friend said, "Of course you are right.
The Bengalis have nothing to boast of; they are living on past glory. No wonder
they are livid if someone puts up a mirror to them."
So let me begin by saying that I am grateful to the Government
of West Bengal for rehabilitating Qutubuddin Ansari, the Gujarati whom other
demented Gujaratis were out to kill but who somehow escaped. His is a shocking
story. It is not the only one. A year ago I got a message from a friend in
Baroda that a large number of Muslims there had had their houses and businesses
burnt, and did not have the money to send their children back to school and
college. I did whatever I could to help. Amongst others, I approached Baroda
residents. Some were prepared to give money, but did not want it to be known.
Gujaratis are intimidated by gangs of communal hooligans who can hold sway
because the authorities let them.
All traces of a large number of Muslim tombs were removed
during last year's riots; amongst them, that of a famous Baroda poet. Some of
my friends felt bad about it. They did not think of rebuilding the roza; they
only wanted to hold a peace march. They approached the collector for
permission. He told them they would be better off not asking for it. He said he
would have to refer their request to the state government in Gandhinagar, and
it would refuse permission. So the peace march never took place. The government
of Gujarat is a blot on the face of India; if the same party had not been in
power in Delhi, Gujarat would long ago have been taken under President's rule.
But let me come back to the government of West Bengal. I do
not want to raise any Calcuttan hackles; but I thought there were better ways
to handle the Prime Minister than Buddhadev Bhattacharya found. I can imagine
the thoughts going through his mind as he listened to Vajpayee. He thought,
"Here I am trying to set up a working relationship with the Centre. I have
been sweetening up Lal Kishenchand Advani. There are billions of Rupees at
stake; just see how my bearded counterpart from Andhra Pradesh goes to Delhi
and gets whatever he wants, while my finance minister gives thundering speeches
in Delhi and comes back empty-handed. We are living in a democracy, and Lenin
is not at hand to help us destroy it. Although these guys speak
incomprehensible Hindi, civilized discourse should be possible with them. At
least one should try. This fellow is an old codger whose brain works at the
speed of a snail. His attention span is thirty microseconds. He fumbles even
when he reads out a speech written by his clever flunkeys. But he has built a
government out of the most crumbly elements and held it together for five
years. He has not done it with ideological correctness or towering
intelligence. All he does is to talk to everyone politely and ask them to do
the same thing. Maybe I should take a leaf out of his book." So he did,
and kept mum.
And for that he got into boiling hot water. His political
colleagues were shocked. The next morning they held a Condemnation Conference –
no, no, not to condemn Bajpai Ji Ji – but to haul Buddhadev over the coals.
They were scandalized: here was a communist given a golden chance to be rude to
a class enemy, and he passed it up. A true Communist-Party Marxist would not
miss an opportunity to be rude even there was no occasion; this gentleman (what
a term of abuse!) could not even think of a good insult when the opportunity
was presented to him. He realized that unless he could quickly summon a healthy
dose of invective, his throne was at risk. So he sailed forth out of the
meeting and had a go at the Prime Minister.
It was not a bad riposte, but it could have been
better. Buddhadev said that growth in
the last year was higher in West Bengal than for India, and that West Bengal’s
per capita income was now higher than India’s. He complained of discrimination
– that FCI did not buy enough grain from West Bengal, that Eastern Railway had
been divided, that central enterprises in West Bengal had been closed down. He
attacked Vajpayee: “The
person (Vajpayee) who is accusing us of dogma has one arm on the shoulder of
the RSS and another on the VHP. He lives in a world of dogmatism and
fundamentalism. We are still suffering from the pains we received from the
Babri Masjid and Ayodhya.” And
he displayed truculence: he said that only Bengalis could ask why they had done
badly. That was a silly line to take; and while there could be useful occasions
for an attack on Vajpayee, the 150th anniversary of the Bengal
Chamber was not one. Either of the other lines – refutation and complaint of
discrimination – might have worked; mixed up all together, none of them did.
Obviously, Buddhadev should have answered Vajpayee on the spot, or kept quiet;
making a statement the next day meant that he missed the national media. And in
the answer, he should have chosen his line. The most natural line for a
politician is an ignorant, polemical line. In that vein, Bhattacharya could
have gone on about Gujarat, Ayodhya, Tehelka, the petrol pump scandal, etc etc.
The other line, about discrimination, promised more. Buddhadev could have said
that he was as concerned about West Bengal’s economic performance as the PM,
and would the latter, when he gets back to Delhi, please get him a favourable
resolution of problems a, b and c?
But if I were Buddhadev, I would myself ask the question
the PM did: “Bengal was the undisputed leader and
promoter of industrial culture in India till the late 1960s. Why did it lose
its way thereafter? From a position of number one in the early
post-Independence period, it declined to a position somewhere in the middle by
the close of the century…Why did this happen? Why did businesses leave Bengal?
Why did new investments skip Bengal?”
And
I would not seek the answer from the people of West Bengal, and certainly not
from the sycophants with whom the government of West Bengal has populated its
public institutions. I would go out and look for people in India, outside,
anywhere, who have thought about development in a wider context – and who would
tell Bengal the truth.
