PUNE: Veteran socialist thinker Madhu Limaye on Wednesday decried the demand for state autonomy with the center confined to three or four subjects, being “propagated by certain circles in Maharashtra.”
Limaye said the demand was based on a superficial political appraisal and inspired more by pique than by reason.
Ambedkar, the greatest leader that Maharashtra has produced after Lokmanya Tilak, had felt that only a “strong center” could protect the weaker sections, women and minorities from the oppression of the dominant ate cliques, Limaye observed.
The earlier congress government at the center certainly wronged the states but the state leaders are not free from blame, most of them being servile and exhibited a singular.
“While I deprecate extreme systemic changes, lam certainly in favour of a balanced polity under which the center will concede some powers to the states and states will transfer some of their powers to the local bodies”, Limaye said.
It was the underprivileged and the oppressed who came to the center for protection, he added.
Limaye was replying to the felicitation by the Tilak Smarak Trust here, which conferred on him the prestigious Tilak memorial award in recognition of his contributions to political and social fields on the occasion of the 70th death anniversary of Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak.
Article extracted from this publication >> August 10, 1990
