Editorial 1 : Mapping a Sharing
Context: Political turmoil in Bangladesh and deep connection between West Bengal and Bangladesh.
Introduction: When students in Dhaka brought down the Sheikh Hasina regime they collectively sang poet-lyricist Dwijendralal Roy’s song, Dhono dhanno pushpe bhora/ amader ei boshundhora/ Tahar majhe ache desh ek shokol desher shera/ O shey shopno diye toiri se desh smriti diye ghera… It is a song written in the early 1900s by a litterateur from this side of the border to inspire the youth against the British Raj. They remembered a shared past.
Legacy of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman
- He was an advocate of the shared Bengali culture and identity.
- While he fought for the territorial sovereignty of Bangladesh, tied down by borders, he became the thought leader of a united Bengali consciousness, a borderless world of ideas and arts.
- Thus, he came to be known as Bangabandhu.
- He championed a movement around the Bangla language, its emotions and associations, its riverine flow of shared traditions that defied both politics and religion.
- Significance
- For India it was about the importance of linguistic diversity and preservation worldwide.
- February 21 — which is marked as the Language Movement Day in Bangladesh — continues to be celebrated in Kolkata as well and was recognised in 1999 by UNESCO as the International Mother Language Day.
- He liberated cultural legacy from being a hostage to politics by choosing Rabindranath Tagore’s composition ‘Amar Sonar Bangla’ for Bangladesh’s national anthem and inviting Kazi Nazrul Islam to move to Bangladesh and become its poet laureate.
Beyond Borders
- Rabindranath Tagore dominates the intellectual consciousness of Bangladeshi students, some of whom still enrol at Shantiniketan.
- Tagore’s birth and death anniversaries are observed with equal honour in Bangladesh and Bangladesh has some of the topline Rabindra Sangeet singers.
- Nazrul with his “soul of the earth” compositions, has a hold on the mass mindset of all Bengalis and continues to be celebrated.
- Rivers and waterways have been the connective tissue of both nations. This has led to a riverine culture where customs, rituals, nature worship and even festivals like Durga Puja are shared by communities on both sides of the border, regardless of religion and geographies.
- The river is the binding force and has inculcated the accommodative spirit between people.
- Durga Puja, which emerged as a symbol of the Swadeshi Movement and Bengali identity, is as much a popular art and culture event in Bangladesh.
- Bonbibi, the guardian spirit of the forests in the Sundarban deltas, who is believed to protect fishermen from tiger attacks, is worshipped by both Hindus and Muslims.
The recent turmoil
- By beheading the statue of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, attacking an Indian cultural centre and claiming August 5 as their real Independence Day, neo-patriots in Bangladesh are snapping the umbilical cord of shared origins.
- The current situation in Bangladesh raises the question, are the Bangla DNA strands untwining on their own or are being forced apart?
Editorial 2 : Social Injustice
Context: Recent Supreme Court judgement regarding sub-classification of caste-based reservation in SC/ST communities.
Introduction: The Supreme Court verdict permitting sub-classification within the same class of Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes and also calling for the creamy layer among Dalits to be taken out of the purview of reservation may be used to dilute affirmative action and pave the way to do away with reservation.
Limitations of the judgement
- It ignores the grim social realities.
- For a large swathe of Dalits in the country whose lives are “poor, nasty, brutish and short”, the issue of reservation has no meaning.
- Trapped in the daily struggle for survival, they neither have the wherewithal nor the luxury of educating themselves enough to benefit from reservation.
- Giving them a slice of the hypothetical reservation quota will not change their lives in any way.
- An infinitesimal percentage of Dalits is eligible to compete for the reservation quota.
- The Supreme Court has ignored the crucial fact that in the name of distributive justice, it will only exacerbate the problem of ‘dereserving’ SC/ST vacancies.
- The Court verdict ignores the complexities and rationale behind reservation for SCs/STs. The reason for granting reservation is not merely economic backwardness or inadequate representation in the “services of the State” but untouchability and its unremitting grip on our society.
- The Supreme Court has cautioned that the criteria should not be based on “whims and political expediency”. But these are precisely the factors that will determine them.
- The judgment violates Article 341 of the Constitution, which authorises the President to issue the notification specifying the caste categories deemed to be Scheduled Castes.
Issues with the creamy layer
- The argument that the creamy-layer concept is applicable to OBCs and hence should logically be extended to Dalit communities is like equating chalk with cheese.
- The OBCs, as a group, are in a different stratosphere, way above the SCs/STs on the economic ladder, and more particularly, in social standing.
- Eliminating the creamy layer from the purview of reservation will only make matters worse for Dalits.
- Splitting of the SC/ST reservation quotas will only benefit vested interests seeking leverage in the fragmentation of these groups.
- It will shatter whatever solidarity exists among the SCs and will drive a wedge between the different sub-groups.
- It makes no sense to disrupt the fragile homogeneity among Dalits by discriminating between them based on tenuous criteria to be drawn up by the state to “establish that the inadequacy of representation of a caste/group is because of its backwardness”.
- Social stigma of “camouflaged untouchability” still plagues Dalits irrespective of their economic status.
Conclusion: Article 46 of the Constitution categorically enjoins upon the state the imperative “to promote with special care the educational and economic interests of the weaker sections of the people and in particular of the SCs and STs and protect them from social injustice and all forms of exploitation.” This is an absolute condition enshrined in the Constitution.