Whose Bengal is it anyway?

As the BJP raced neck and neck with the TMC, Mamata must have regretted the cosmopolitan liberalism that allows Bengal to embrace outsiders as favourite sons

It was a sign of things to come. Dilip Ghosh, Bengal’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief, chattered away in Hindi on national television to an interviewer who was as much a home-grown fish-eating Bengali as he. She opened in English but since she needed her story, and Ghosh was clearly determined to establish what I can only call his cow-belt credentials, she tamely followed suit in such Hindi as she could muster.

In another age and at another level, Tagore responded with “a volley of Sanskrit” to Oxford’s Latin citation when it honoured him with an honorary doctorate. Perhaps he was