Doing more harm than any good

I was directed from Amit Varma's weblog to this article which has been published in The Telegraph, a daily newspaper purportedly claimed to be a carrier and propagator of the tradition and the image of the great Bengal. Great as Bengal indeed is unquestionably, having produced numerous talents in all spheres of activities such as sports, literature, science, technology, films, politics to name a few, the said article which apparently wished to uphold Bengal's greatness and raved against the injustices meted out to the Bengalis at a National level for a long time, ironically, ended up doing exactly the opposite, that is, tarnishing the image of Bengal a good deal by subjecting the readers to a grossly parochial, unsound, baseless, concocted, half-witted ramblings across many critical issues. The article is quite predictably charged with inflammatory words presumably meant for brainwashing unsuspecting readers and for eliciting quick claps out of them. You may agree that such writings are very effective for immediate persuasion. Remember how successful Anandabazar Patrika (a vernacular daily with larger readership than any other newspaper in West Bengal) spearheaded by Gautam Bhattacharya was, in instilling into the minds of Bengalis, that Sourav Ganguly was a victim of a criminal conspiracy by the rest of India, by hammering in all rubbish about Chappell, Kiran More, Sharad Pawar, Rahul Dravid, Ravi Shastri and many others ad nauseam. The results of such brainwashing process were soon visible very luridly at the Eden Gardens; the spectators lent their spontaneous support to South Africa instead of India, to the amazement of the rest of India cheered the South African bowlers when they claimed wickets of Indian batsmen, jeered the Indian fielders on the ground and so on. In my opinion, this is one of the most shameful events in Indian cricket, much worse than throwing oranges at Sunil Gavaskar or vandalizing the World Cup semi final match or boycotting the test match for the unjustified dismissal of Kapil Dev etc... Well, back to the main issue, the most dangerous aspect of such rhetoric is that it turns out to be extremely popular among public time and again. The author of the article in question seems to have taken cue from history. I have no complains against the author, because he is just one of the myriads of such type. What surprises me more is how this puerile article was cleared by the Editor of the newspaper. I will be the last person to accept that the image of Bengal is now perennially on a downward slope with all her previous glories and intellectual bequests -- something that the publications of such articles in a premier Bengali daily suggest.

Amit Varma is a half-Bengali, therefore, quite polite on this nonsensical and half-witted article. I am a full-Bengali, therefore, do not care about being merciless when need be.