By: Dr. Ratan Bhattacharjee
The Stage was ready. Finally Mamata Banerjee emerged as the victorious goddess to the people of Bhowanipore on the eve of Durga Puja which is a worship of Mahisasurmardini. After she had clutched a historic victory breaking her own record of 2011,2016 and the victory of Shobhan Deb in Bhowanipore election of 2021, the followers have started calling her Modishahsurmardini. Mahishasura was a buffalo Asura (Demon) in Hinduism. He is known among Hindus as a deceitful demon who pursued his evil ways by shape-shifting. He was ultimately killed by Goddess Durga – after which She gained the epithet Mahishasuramardini (‘Slayer of Mahishasura’). In the Assembly Election 2021 both Narendra Modi and Amit Shah became nearly daily passenger from Delhi to Kolkata and Modi taunted Mamata in each meeting by calling loudly ‘Didi, O Didi’. Those who love Mamata and her charisma did not like this indecent gesture of the country’s Prime Minister against the only female Chief Minister of the country even in the election campaign. So may be this new epithet used jointly for Modi and Shah was not unexpected from the admirers of Mamata who is now very popular in Bengal for her social projects like Kanasree, Laxmi Bhandar or ration at door, Government at door projects undertaken by the Trinamool Government . Mamata Banerjee who retains Bengal CM chair, defeats BJP rival by record margin of 58,389 votes
Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo Mamata Banerjee has retained her Bengal CM post after emerging victorious from Bhabanipur/Bhowanipore assembly constituency in South Kolkataa. As per the Election Commission(EC) data, Banerjee has defeated her nearest rival, Priyanka Tibrewal, a BJP candidate with a record margin of nearly 59,000 — 58,832 votes to be specific. “I have won the Bhabanipur Assembly bypolls with a margin of 58,832 votes and have registered the victory in every ward of the constituency”, said Mamata while addressing her party workers in Kolkata. This victory is significant for a various reasons. First, it proves that the referendum of the people did not accept the constant complaint of Priyanka about the collapse of law and order system and the post poll violence in West Bengal. Secondly, this victory will inspire Mamata to extend her political activities beyond West Bengal to Tripura, Assam, Goa and even Meghalaya where many senior leaders have responded to the Trinamool Supremo either by extending support to the issues raised by Trinamool at the national level or by joining Trinamool. Mamata Banerjee said that people of Bhabanipur have given a befitting reply to the conspiracy that was hatched in Nandigram. Banerjee had lost to BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari in Nandigram. With this win, Mamata will now secure the chief minister’s post, which she would have had to vacate in the event of a loss. “I have won the Bhowanipore assembly bypolls with a margin of 58,835 votes and have registered the victory in every ward of the constituency,” a jubilant chief minister announced in Kolkata.
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The Trinamool Congress chief also lashed out at the Centre for allegedly hatching conspiracies against her. “Since the elections started in Bengal, the central government hatched conspiracies to remove us (from power). I was hurt in my feet so that I don’t contest the polls. I am grateful to the public for voting for us and to ECI for conducting polls within 6 months,” she said. Mamata Banerjee personifies populist force in Indian politics. She spent her life fighting the Communists and now she is the biggest obstacle for the BJP attempt for economic liberalization in India. Being a leader of the small regional party, she is no less popular than Prime Minister Modi and her name comes to the Times’ list of 100 influential personalities all over the world. In the present scenario of weak opposition to the mighty BJP at the centre she is gradually being regarded as the rising force in spite of the presence of Congress in national politics. In a recent article in the Trinamool party organ Jago Bangla , Congress is described as ‘a stagnant pool’. Even the former Chief Minister of Goa who was elected seven times in Congress ticket or Congress leader like Sushmita Dev have already joined Trinamool being inspired by the charisma of Mamata .She was invited recently to Rome in the World Peace conference but the Foreign Ministry cancelled her proposed visit to Rome without assigning any proper reason.
Earlier her Kanyasree Project was acclaimed as the Best Social Project in the UN and she was awarded for the initiative for women welfare. Earlier Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton paid a special visit to Kolkata to meet her. The ever determined resolutely populist and hardworking female leader more constant than other like Mayawati or Jayalalitha, she holds the balance of power in India’s coalition government and even in the third term of her tenure as Chief Minister she can easily overcome the incumbency factor and now even in Jangipur or Samserganj the Congress bastions and BJP stronghold she ensures 1 lakh margin victory for the Trinamool candidates.
In the last five months five BJP MLAs have defected from BJP to join Trinamool and the list may be longer in the coming days. All these are possible due to her faith in Inclusionism against the BJP divide and rule politics of exclusion. Mamata Banerjee explains the reasons behind her acceptance by the people, MAll AA“We are not Marxist or capitalist, we are for the poor people,” she said in her interview with foreign newspaper like the Washington Post or New York Times. “Our policy is very clear: whatever policy will suit the people, whatever policy will suit the circumstances, whatever policy will suit my state.” Nicknamed ‘Didi,’ or elder sister, Banerjee wrested power from a communist government that had ruled the state of West Bengal for 34 years. Once Bill Clinton talked of the ‘common bond’ she shares with women who have broken through barriers of discrimination and braved the fire of electoral politics.
Indeed, Banerjee claims to be the only woman who has risen to political power in South Asia. A poor school teacher’s daughter, Banerjee never married and still lives in a single room, just 8 by 8 feet, in a Kolkata neighbourhood beside a foul-smelling open drain. A Member of Parliament for India’s Congress party at age 29, she left the party in 1997 over what she deemed an unfair denial of the leadership role in West Bengal. She then formed her own party; the Trinamool (grass-roots) Congress, to take on the communists. The communists controlled every aspect of life in West Bengal during their long rule, politicizing the police and even the education system by putting party workers in key positions and banning English from state primary schools for 25 years. She remains popular among the poor and everyday tries to keep her poll promises. Many in Bengal think that her pro-poor projects are imitated by the Tripura government and even the Modi government at the centre. Her projects are more accepted by the people and it is a fact today. While in the opposition, Banerjee fiercely defended farmers’ rights against clumsy attempts by industry and government to seize their land to make way for factories — forcing Tata Motors to abandon plans in 2008 to set up a car factory. In the last Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha sessions she has motivated her MPs to jointly fight against BJP on the issues of Pegasus and the matter brought to the Supreme Court finally came up with the cudgel against the Centre. She can go vocal at her loudest against the petrol and diesel price hike. And now she is organizing constant protest movement against the sale of the country to foreign or national corporates. In Didi: A Political Biography, Monobina Gupta points out that when examined through the lens of gender, Banerjee’s story stands apart from the narratives of other powerful contemporary women leaders. All her life she was alone but she found her greatest joy in being among the people. It is now known to all that Banerjee’s story is very different from other powerful politicians such as Sonia Gandhi, Mayawati or the late J. Jayalalithaa.
BJP Slogans such as “The mynah from Kalighat does not allow industry to come up” but this is not wholly true. Mamata is now trying to attract industrialists by creating a tolerant atmosphere of peace and harmony. Banerjee’s larger-than-life persona is also no less important — she’s always clad in white, woven Dhaniakhali saris with rubber slippers, loves to paint, has written more than 20 books, still lives in her childhood home with her extended family and is an insomniac who loves Rabindra sangeet—is reflected in her party’s power equation. This human side in her nature is adding more feathers to her crown. It will not be too unnatural if in 2024 as envisioned by her party and many leaders of the Opposition, she may be projected as the only ablest contender for the Prime Minister position.
(The author is a senior academician and a trilingual columnist cum poet who is former International Visiting Faculty USA can be reached at profratanbhattacharjee@gmail.com)
