Today, regionalism is no longer secessionism, but it can be parochialism strutting under another name. Be it the Ulfa’s attacks on Bihari migrant labourers in Assam, or the Shiv Sena’s hate campaigns against the ‘outsider’ in Mumbai, or Narendra Modi’s smug invocations of Gujarati ‘asmita’ to legitimise his politics, India is being projected as the sum of its parts, defined by their antagonistic relationships with one another. This is dangerous. The CPM and DMK must know the terrible toll their rhetoric can take on the idea of India.
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