Patna is never parochial

IBN7: DEVIL'S ADVOCATE : SHOBHAA DE ON MUMBAI VS BOMBAY
Karan Thapar: When we looked at Mumbai from outside the city what we saw was this image of cosmopolitan avant garde modern India. What we thought was going to be our New York. Now Mumbai has become like the rest of India and in fact it is now more and more like Patna rather than New York.

PATNA HAS NEVER BEEN PAROCHIAL.
PATNA CANNOT BE COMPARED TO 'MUMBAI'
THIS OPEN LETTER TO KARAN THAPAR BY TV SINHA
ECHOES MY SENTIMENTS AND LAKHS OF PATNA LOVERS
WHO HAVE MADE THIS TOWN THEIR HOME-AWAY-FROM -HOME


In the interview, you ask Ms De "Mumbai ............is now more and more like Patna ?"
Who has given you the right to denigrate a city like this? Have you been to Patna recently? Have you looked at its crime statistics? Have you had any reports of regional hate?
Do try to recall. Did Patna have a communal riot in decades? This decade? In the nineties? In the eighties? Seventies?

Let me tell you, Patna has never had a communal riot.
Regional feelings?
Patna has a fairly large Bengali population which competes fiercely for the few jobs that are available. In fact, during the early British period, they had a virtual monopoly on the government jobs. But have you ever heard of a hate campaign against them? Marwaris control a large part of the trade in the city. Punjabis are in large number. The second holiest place of the Sikhs is at Patna: the birthplace of Guru Gobind Singhji. South Indians are a thriving community here, numbering about 30,000. Anglo Indians are another thriving community at Patna and nearby Danapur. Two seats [actually one seat- in the Assembly -FK] in the Bihar assembly is reserved for the Anglo Indian community. The author William Dalrymple has himself written to me that his family has strong Bhagalpur connections.
[And we have a large vibrant segment of Keralites and Tamilians and a very active south indian cultural society -FK]]
But for a few minor incidents of Sikh owned shops looted in the aftermath of Indira Gandhi's murder (mind you, no murders of Sikhs at Patna at that time), can you give a single incident of hate crime or campaign based on ethnicity? The closest you will come to a riotous situation in Patna is during the 1942 Quit India movement and the JP movement of 1970's: both for a national cause.
Then how on earth does it occur to you to put Patna as the worst example of provincialism? Is it media hype about Bihar and Biharis? Is it because the elite of India like you have been trained to always denigrate something to make you feel good? Is it plain ignorance? Or is it that since Bihar is poor, hence elites feel that they can get away by criticizing Bihar without a fear of reprisal or offending any section of your audience which has very few Biharis in any case?
(It is another matter that the response of Shobaa De ( I could almost feel her nose contracting in horror) is an even worse example of 'elitist' thinking, but then this letter is about you and the media, not other categories of elites)
For god's sake, this type of typecasting has led to a very explosive situation in the country. You people never tire of criticizing a Raj Thackeray.
Let me share a shocking statistic with you. Out of the new migrants in Mumbai, the percent of Biharis is between 2.3 and 3.5%. Yes I am talking of new migrants, not the percent of Biharis in the total population, which has to be lower since the number has increased from just 0.2% in the sixties to a 'High" 3.5%. This is based on studies conducted by two Mumbai based organizations: TISS and IPSS. (I would be happy to forward the publicly available extract of the study and the link if you find this statistic too difficult to digest). Now surely, you would also agree, this percent cannot be called excessive by any stretch of imagination if there is any truth in Mumbai being the commercial capital of India rather than just the administrative capital of Maharashtra?
Then pray what makes Raj Thackeray demonize Bihar and Biharis? If you think a little about it, you will perhaps agree with my theory that this is so because of the "image" of Bihar, created by powerful mediamen like you.

Let me add, your colleague, another Raj from Maharashtra, Rajdeep Sardesai, wrote an article on the ills of Maharashtra last year where he had no compunction in using 'biharisation' as synonymous to criminalization. Not just in the body of his article but in the headline itself. In fact, the whole article was based on Rajdeep's view that Bihar is a living hell on earth. Is it any surprise then that men like Raj Thackeray, desperate to carve a political space for himself, think first of Bihar when they are looking for a villain?
I am well aware of the bias of the Indian English press towards Bihar. I don't expect it to remember the sacrifice of Bihar and Biharis for the nation: the Champaran movement or the 1942 quit India movement or the agitation against dictatorship in mid seventies. I don't expect the media to highlight the extreme injustice done to Bihar due to freight equalization or inequitable distribution of development funds in each of the five years plans since independence. But this continued bias is now striking at the very root of India. This anti Bihari feeling is now creating a feeling of alienation in every town and village of Bihar. Politicians of Bihar, though accused of playing politics by the media, are trying their best to douse this flame which they had no role to create. If you folks believe in the idea of India, you have to play a role here.
Repeated biased coverage of Bihar in the Indian English press should have convinced me by now that it is futile to expect any semblance of evenness in the coverage.
But what to do, I am a Bihari. I cant give up on my Indianess. And giving up on hope is just not in my gene: whether the centre gives me an ill treatment or the nature tests my tenacity every year through floods, you would not hear a Bihari committing suicide. Hence I still approach you with hope, that things can change and will change.
Thanks
-- Thakur Vikas Sinha