Last week, when Congress president Sonia Gandhi reached out to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to support a common Opposition candidate for the upcoming presidential election, the Trinamool Congress chief was only too happy to give her consent. The two leaders met in New Delhi on Tuesday evening.
Although Banerjee is not as vulnerable as Gandhi whose party has hit a new low in recent years, she could do with friends these days as she wages a lonely battle against a resurgent Bharatiya Janata Party in her home state.
While it is well known that Banerjee was cut up with the Congress when it aligned with the Left Front in the last Assembly elections, the Trinamool chief seems to have decided to let bygones be bygones. For six months now, Banerjee has been reiterating publicly that the Opposition needs to join hands to take on the BJP. She took the lead in bringing together Opposition parties on a common platform last winter to highlight the perils of demonetisation.
She had even shed her earlier antipathy towards Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi when she addressed a joint press conference with him to highlight how demonetisation had hit the poor, and that the Opposition parties would continue their protest against it.
Like the other Opposition parties, Banerjee also believes that the unity forged by them in the presidential election will set the stage for the formation of an alternative broad-based secular front in the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. While the Opposition parties have a long way to go before they can firm up such a grand alliance, Banerjee is set to play a key role in pushing it.
Old ties
It is easy for Banerjee to do business with the Congress as she was a member of the grand old party before she branched out on her own when she formed the Trinamool Congress in 1997.
Moreover, she enjoys good rapport with Sonia Gandhi. However, the Trinamool chief will find it difficult, if not impossible, to be seen in the company of the Left parties given her longstanding bitter political rivalry with the communists. However, both sides may be forced to set aside their differences as their political survival is at stake.
The Congress and the communists are no longer the dreaded political enemies of the Trinamool chief – the two parties have been virtually decimated in West Bengal. Instead, Banerjee has to contend with the rise and rise of the BJP, which appeared an impossibility in West Bengal till recently.
Though the Trinamool chief was a member of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was prime minister, Banerjee is now locked in direct confrontation with the saffron party, which has made deep inroads in West Bengal and has emerged as the chief challenger for the Trinamool Congress.
New threat
Banerjee is no stranger to fighting political battles and street fights. It was her persistence that eventually led to the fall of the well-entrenched 30-year-old Left Front government in West Bengal.
But the nature of politics unleashed by the BJP has unnerved the Trinamool chief. In a state where the communists had convinced the electorate that “religion was the opium of the masses”, and pitched their political narrative on the Marxist philosophy of a class struggle, religion has reared its head with a vengeance. Despite her decades-long battle with the Left Front, Banerjee chose to follow in its footsteps after coming to power. Not only did she usurp the Left cadres, she also hijacked its political philosophy. It was often said that the Trinamool chief had “outdone the Left” with regard to her economic policies and her pro-poor image, supplementing this effort with a strong pro-minority tilt.
The BJP has used its Hindutva plank and what it describes as Banerjee’s appeasement of minorities to make an entry into West Bengal. And it has clearly struck a chord in the state. It is commonplace today to hear cries of “Jai Shri Ram” as you stroll down the newly-developed riverfront in Kolkata. The anger and violence directed against Muslims in other states, also finds an echo here.
Strolling down the busy streets outside Kolkata’s New Market recently, this writer saw a young man driving his scooter at breakneck speed, shouting, “Hato...rasta do. Yeh India hai, Pakistan nahin hai [Get out of the way. This is India, not Pakistan]”.
His aggression and choice of words was endorsed by Shyam Mandal, a vendor. “It is a fact that this city has been converted into a mini Pakistan,” he remarked. While avoiding any reference to Banerjee’s appeasement of minorities, he added: “The Muslims here are a law unto themselves…even the police cannot say anything to them. All the Hindus driving scooters wear helmets but Muslims refuse to do so…they insist on wearing their skull caps.”
BJP’s Hindutva agenda
Realising that there is immense scope for Hindu consolidation due to simmering anger against the chief minister’s perceived preferential treatment of minorities, the BJP is leaving no stone unturned to push its Hindutva agenda here. It recently organised an armed procession to celebrate Ram Navmi and is also invoking the goddesses Saraswati and Durga to woo the Hindu majority in West Bengal. At the same time, the BJP’s state unit uses every opportunity to remind the people about how they are not being allowed to practice their faith in their own country.
Having fought the Leftists on their own ground, the Trinamool chief is struggling to counter the BJP’s brand of politics. Today, it is the BJP which is setting the agenda while Banerjee is busy responding to it. The Trinamool Congress countered the Ram Navmi processions organised by the BJP with Hanuman Jayanti yatras. Finding herself on unknown territory, Banerjee is making strenuous efforts to highlight that she is a true believer of Hinduism, which is distinct from the BJP’s hardline Hindutva. At public events, Banerjee has also taken to invoking Durga and reciting shlokas.
It is clear that with the BJP whipping up religious fervour, the West Bengal chief minister faces a familiar dilemma: how does she ensure that she does not alienate Hindus without abandoning the minorities.
While Banerjee is still figuring out a coherent political strategy to counter the BJP, she is not averse to using the state machinery and her party cadres to take on the saffron party. The violence witnessed in the recent municipal elections in the state is a clear pointer to how this confrontation is going to play out in the coming months.