Season of newfound loves and golden promises
They came bearing gifts.
Christmas: time for the Magi, wise men from the East, to come with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Or just one magus, coming to the east from elsewhere. Gold is for earthly kingship, an aspiration embodied in the promise of a Golden Bengal; frankincense evokes deity, pertinently; myrrh is used for embalming, thus representing death — all around us, from infectious sickness, or unscrupulous violence.
Violence was one of the themes of the Union home minister’s perorations on his pre-Christmas visit to West Bengal. The state is ill-famed for its poll-related violence and the home minister said that 300 Bharatiya Janata Party workers had been killed here. Even the national president of the BJP was attacked on his Bengal tour, which the home minister condemned, since “[the] BJP believes that in a democracy everyone should have the right to voice their views”. He was serious. So was the prime minister when he beautifully described Aligarh Muslim University on its centenary as a “mini India” and declared that its diversity was the country’s strength.