Image Courtesy:economictimes.indiatimes.com
Since May 2, when the BJP lost Bengal despite all its hyperbole, led by its two unilateral supremos from Gujarat, it’s like a silly C-Grade horror movie being enacted day after day with its poor script missing the wood from the trees. Even for their fanatic fans, indeed, this is truly a lousy movie, and it gets more depressing and predictable by the day.
The great secular, pluralist, egalitarian and democratic victory on May 2 – the whole of Bengal celebrated quietly, discreetly, with dignity, and peacefully. Even while a certain kind of inevitable and localised violence across groups flared up, and only in some areas, some of them unidentified, some identified. A certain infamous ‘IT cell’ predictably circulated fake and old videos from different geographical locations, trying to sell the propaganda that Muslims were targeting Hindus in Bengal. There were diabolical WhatsApp campaigns of fake Hindu exodus in some areas, as if a reverse partition has re-visited contemporary post-poll Bengal. This was a low, nasty and dirty game played abjectly and brazenly, and exposed soon after, as abjectly and brazenly.
This sinister project was proved for what it was in a few hours, even while the other mournful narrative became apparent that they just cannot digest their defeat in Bengal and the huge victory of the Trinamool Congress. A peaceful transition to power of a duly elected government was seemingly not acceptable to them.
Mamata Banerjee was blamed for the violence even while it was still the Election Commission which called the shots in Bengal, and the central forces were still out there in full force soon after May 2. There was an orchestrated, high-decibel campaign from Delhi, oh, look at Bengal, oh, look at the violence, etc. Even a central team was dispatched. Inevitably, and predictably, the Governor joined in.
Nothing worked out. It all turned out to be fake. A sinister project which was bound to fail in a state which peacefully voted secular across the caste and class spectrum, across the rural and urban spectrum, especially women, especially women in rural Bengal. Besides, the entire city of Calcutta defeated the BJP, and Trinamool won from all kinds of unexpected places in vastly different geographical and demographic terrains.
Mamata Banerjee took over as chief minister for her third term in a simple Covid-appropriate ceremony, and declared the Covid crisis as her principle priority. She said no violence will be allowed henceforth, whosoever may be involved, and distributed compensation to the families of the victims, with no bias towards any particular political group. Since then, no such political violence has happened in Bengal, and no such violence has been allowed to happen by the state government. All this happened as lockdown was declared, the entire machinery geared up to fight the second surge of the Covid 19 virus and to help all the people cope during the lockdown with ration and food at their doorstep. The focus has been the daily-wagers and working class and all this went hand in hand with pr-emptive evacuation and other measures in preparation for Cyclone Yaas, which was looming over the horizon in the Bay of Bengal, and which had a fierce, deadly, landfall on May 26.
It was a huge victory in the face of yet another massive and over-funded, cynically orchestrated campaign which started in early 2021. The campaign line ran: the BJP would conquer Bengal this time, come what may! Led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, now sporting a huge white beard – for alleged reasons of ‘image management’, according to hardcore cynics. Not Tamil Nadu or Kerala, not even Assam, the PM and his home minister, Amit Shah, along with the entire RSS-Sangh Parivar hydra-headed organism, wanted Bengal – and only Bengal, at any cost.
That they lost their sweetest dream of all appears to have brought on the onset of recurrent insomnia in bad faith and ritualistic bitterness. Both reactions are in bad taste. These have been manifest in brazenly vengeful actions, often defying basic political wisdom or diplomatic finesse, all becoming ugly public spectacles with the entire country bearing witness. These have also broken both historic protocol and convention, which determine smooth and efficient relations between the states and Centre, a constitutional pre-requisite that outlines the “union of states” in a federal paradigm.
Since then, two senior ministers and two senior leaders of Trinamool have been arrested by the CBI on charges involving an old sting operation, even while two top Trinamool turncoats, now in the BJP, who also face the same charges, appear completely untouched by the drama. Law enforcement and especially CBI (that reports directly to the PMO) have ensured that they have nothing to worry about at all. This stark contest too, is brazen.
The target was and is transparently clear and there was nothing to hide – to unnerve, punish and harass the new government led by Mamata Banerjee. The C-Grade horror movie has continued with its unhinged and morbid narrative.
And, now, the chief minister’s chief secretary, the senior-most bureaucrat in the state, who is handling the serious issues of both the Covid crisis and the post-cyclone disaster management, has been under the Centre’s radar. While he is on the verge of retirement. Yet again, to push the chief minster to the wall!
Has this succeeded?
No.
So what happened?
The chief minister has emerged stronger. She has acquired, yet again, national stature of great defiance and stoic courage. She remains, even more so, both a mass leader and street-fighter, greatly admired for her guts all over Bengal. She has yet again taken on the revengeful establishment in Delhi with a lucid and consistent determination not witnessed in recent times in contemporary politics in India.
Bengal has yet again seen through this badly played screenplay and theatre of the absurd. And once again the entire state is totally aligned behind its brave and resilient chief minister who has, for the umpteenth time, has openly defied the Centre led by Modi and Amit Shah. Interestingly, Mamata Banerjee brought in two hated figures from the history of fascism and Soviet Russia in her acerbic rejoinder: “PM, Amit Shah, are behaving like autocrats such as Hitler, Stalin,” she was quoted in The Telegraph online.
Bengal will not crawl. This is the message which has spread across the pandemic and lockdown landscape. Bengal never crawls. Bengal will write a new narrative of defiance. Bengal will re-write the writing on the wall.
Bengal had earlier taken the landslide victory of secular forces with discrete dignity, an understated and inward joy, and a quiet personal and collective celebration indoors, assured that the cultural, political and intellectual inheritance of the state will not henceforth be destroyed at the hands of polarising and communal forces who are out to capture it with sheer money and muscle power, propaganda and fake news dispensed by a supplicant media, organised mind games, and a lot of pomp and show, even while there was clearly no Hindutva wave on the ground from day one. Indeed, the BJP campaign had started much earlier, even while their ‘poriborton yatras’ flopped across the state, and rally after rally, with their top leaders exported from Delhi, Gujarat and UP, including the big one at Brigade Ground in Kolkata with Modi as star, turned out —all of them–to be a super flops.
Somehow, despite the ambiguity and people holding their cards close to their hearts, there was an uncanny feeling that ‘Jai Shri Ram’ was just not clicking in a land where people worship Durga and Kali, among others — their goddesses with infinite passion, devotion and commitment, and where the inherited secular, spiritual, revolutionary and cultural legacy of Rabindranath Tagore, Kazi Nazrul Islam, Subhas Chandra Bose, Ramkrishna Paramhans, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Master Surya Sen, Khudiram Bose, among others, still ruled supreme in the deepest core of the Bengali consciousness.
This was best exemplified in the urban terrain with the huge success of the ‘No Vote to BJP’ campaign, rather, ‘Not one vote to BJP’, combined with videos made by independent filmmakers caricaturing their BJP drew lakhs of hits. At the fag end of the campaign, singer Kabir Suman came out with short, stimulating videos with the same message: ‘BJP ke ektao vote deben na’ — don’t give even one vote to BJP. Defeat the fascists, he sang.
This was followed by actors, artists, singers and celebrities of Bengal sticking their neck out fearlessly yet again: coming out with a fabulous video song and dramatic enactment, reaffirming the pluralist and secular ethos of Bengal, implying yet again that Battleground Bengal, this time, was a life and death question.
Besides, women, across the spectrum, especially in rural Bengal, voted overwhelmingly for Didi. There was a social engineering dimension where people across the spectrum, in rural and urban areas, across caste and religion, and within those in the margins, including vast number of women across the kaleidoscope, came out and voted for Didi and her party. Behind this overwhelming support was not only the secular plank, or the fact that the social welfare schemes for people, especially girls and women, like Kanyashree for the education of girls, cycles for women, health insurance of Rs 5 lakh for women, free ration and food all through the lockdown – and now at the doorstep, free, subsidised and high quality public health care including public sector hospitals, hostels for girls in small towns and colleges, roads and infrastructure, among other schemes, had endeared the people to Didi’s government.
Most crucially, the people of Bengal just did not like the manner in which the two men from Gujarat, one, the prime minister, and the other, the union home minister, literally parked themselves in Bengal for months, hopping in and out of the state on expensive helicopters, targeting Mamata Banerjee, a woman leader, day in, day out. This was added to by Yogi Adityanath spreading his own brand of hate politics in a peaceful state where no such pronounced hate exists among communities, despite simmering tensions from the past.
This was like the entire State machinery from Delhi with its huge money and muscle power was out to capture Bengal at any cost, and reduce the only woman chief minister in India into a daily object of ridicule and hate. Their spin masters and pseudo psephologists spun a tale very early, even before the campaign had begun, that anti-incumbency, corruption and a massive, hidden, subaltern uprising would decisively swing the elections and “BJP will sweep the polls”. This was pure figment of imagination and a mind-game propaganda, and proved as bogus from day one. Seasoned journalists were quick to notice this on the ground quite early in the campaign.
Indeed, the macho taunt by the PM, ‘Didi Oooooo Didi’, was a blunder, for which the BJP paid a heavy price. Not only women, the whole of Bengal felt disgusted and angry at this ‘PMspeak’, and the disgust was surely expressed in the ballot box across the state.
Besides, the Election Commission added to the nightmare of the lurking Covid, while the PM praised the huge crowds in the last phase in Bengal – in the backdrop of the Kumbh with millions gathered welcomed by Modi and the BJP-led Uttarakhand government. Even while other states folded up their election scenario quickly, as in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Assam and Pondicherry, the Bengal polls dragged on for a dreary long month in the heat and amidst the pandemic, precisely because, as Trinamool leaders and critics pointed out, to help the BJP spread its campaign and stretch its formidable machinery and leaders from outside, especially because they lacked a cadre or a party machinery on the ground. Besides, the BJP seemed to be bursting at its seams with leaders hijacked or usurped from other parties – so much so, the ‘original’ BJP leaders and cadre seemed to be suffering from serious heartburn and alienation.
Indeed, whatever the BJP wanted was accepted by the EC, the Trinamool complained, even while the Trinamool’s requests were turned down repeatedly. For instance, without an all-party meeting, the EC accepted something unprecedented, a BJP demand – booth agents from outside the local area were allowed. Trinamool immediately pointed out that the BJP did not have their own local booth agents and that is why this new and biased twist in the tale – hence they might get ‘outsiders’ to become booth agents, breaking a tradition established since long. More so, the Trinamool request to club the last phase of the polls in one phase, due to the second surge in Covid, was turned down by the EC.
It’s been just about one month since the new government has taken over in Kolkata. But the harassment is relentless and continuous. However, the main thing is that every time the Centre plays a revengeful card in Bengal, it only proves how it’s still not able to accept a legitimate electoral victory.
Besides, such a card often badly boomerangs. As in this case of the chief secretary, with Mamata Banerjee now riding high on yet another popularity wave in Bengal. And it seems, it’s a wave which will only fly on the wings of more victories in the days to come.
(Part One, to be Concluded)
Related:
Battleground Bengal: It’s Indian democracy at stake!
Battleground Bengal: Manipulation of votes and EVMs will not be allowed, Mamata declares war on BJP
Battleground Bengal: Is BJP’s Poriborton Yatra failing to take off?