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This cultural conflagration does not bode well for the state of Maharashtra. While there are undoubtedly some legitimate criticisms of the migrant folks, this tension is a despicable manifestation of regionalist chauvinisms. I also see the migrants as bringing many problems to the areas where they have settled, and in this regards, these laborers are so similar to Mexicans in the U.S., Algerians in France, Turks in Germany...It's just that these migrants are Indian too, albeit with a completely different cultural and linguistic history and background. This tension could spin out of control in no time, leaving places like Mumbai with an intractable regional conflict at its doorstop. In order to preserve social harmony in Mumbai and accentuate the feeling that Indian-ness trumps all types of regional, ethnic, religious, and caste identities, this conflict should be squashed.
India is a super-national enterprise, since it represents the collective political will of so many distinct yet fluid nations within, each with seemingly definable characteristics but ultimately ambiguous and impossible to pigeonhole. The logic of illogic reigns supreme in India. The survival of India for 61 years as a sovereign nation-state has been nothing short of a miraculous triumph of remarkable inter-group cohesion and some dumb luck that is much more powerful than the ephemeral strokes of constitutional framers, planners-extraordinaire, and corrupt-wallahs. Jai Bharat!
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