Trinamool walks a tightrope in West Bengal

Subir Roy

The total silence maintained by West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on the Supreme Court verdict allowing a temple to be built at the site of the demolished Babri masjid has come in for wide comment. In fact, her silence has turned out to be resounding.

This is particularly so because she has been known to be a highly  voluble and loud politician who is prone to occasionally making intemperate utterances. Restraint, not to speak of absolute silence, is the last thing that would normally be expected from her when a development of such great importance takes place.

But the comments result from a lack of understanding of Banerjee’s total persona. She is often loud mouthed and sometimes unparliamentary in her utterances but that is not the whole of her. She is also an artist and occasionally writes poetry.

Those aware of this will not be surprised that instead of going to town with her views on the verdict she has instead a few days after the event chosen to write a poem. Going through it carefully will in fact reveal all that she has to say.

Here is a gist of the poem, in itself short. Freely translated from the Bengali, it says something like this:

“Many a time you can say a lot without saying anything. By not saying anything you can speak more powerfully. If you don’t get food when you are feeling hungry, you can understand hunger. If you cannot go to sleep at bedtime, you understand the value of sleep…. When you suffer, its importance is there in every line. If you can’t speak, words create pain and pollute the mind. But once you have spoken, the gates are opened.  It gives strength to the heart – remains there."

The Muslims of West Bengal are a tremendous electoral asset for her. The mood among them across the country after the verdict was to quietly mourn and not make any public statement as they would have to go on living in the country and not give any section a chance to use anything as a provocation. Banerjee, being close to them and knowing their anxieties, was keen to stand by them and quietly express her solidarity. Hence it is that she wrote a poem which said a lot but did not utter a word in public.

The rise of the BJP signalled by its performance in the parliamentary elections earlier this year (returning 14 MPs compared to the earlier two) has created a communal divide in West Bengal which was not there earlier during the whole period of Marxist rule. This has made the electoral challenge before the Trinamool Congress significantly more complex.

It cannot simply stand by the Muslims’ right to live without fear and seek to improve their lot as it did in the past. It has to simultaneously ensure that the majority community does not feel left out in the state ruling party’s scheme of things. This is what the BJP would like to have the Hindu voter believe as it accuses the Trinamool Congress of minority appeasement. So it has to do a delicate balancing act by reassuring one while not antagonizing the other.

The new political path that the Trinamool Congress is treading was highlighted by the way Chhat puja was celebrated by the Biharis living in south Kolkata. The state government was under strict orders of the Pollution Control Board not to allow any kind of offerings to be made in the Rabindra Sarobar (Dhakuria Lakes) waters. Hence alternative small water bodies were created and a lock was put on the gates of the Lakes.

But in the small hours of the morning someone broke open the lock and the devotees were there by the Lakes in huge numbers going ahead with their traditional ritual of casting offerings into the water. Significantly the police was nowhere to be seen although a faceoff had been widely anticipated. And the state government pretended not to know who did what under cover of darkness.

The bottomline for the Trinamool Congress was: the Bihari vote is too important in the state to be ignored and nothing should happen which can give a handle to the state BJP to accuse the ruling party of ignoring the sentiments of the Hindus, Chhat puja being a prominent Hindu festival for Biharis.

There are other ways in which the Trinamool Congress is seeking to fine tune its political strategy. It has initiated a campaign of mass contact through “Didike Bolo” (Tell Didi) whereby anybody with a complaint regarding some entitlement can ring up a toll free number or log onto a website and register his plea. The idea, which has come from Banerjee’s newly acquired political advisor Prashant Kishore, who began by advising Narendra Modi, has elicited lakhs of responses.

Plus, in order to address specific grassroots issues, the Trinamool Congress is bringing out constituency specific manifestoes with promises of action for the coming three assembly byelections. It is too early to say if this will make a difference. The only material development so far is the Trinamool Congress winning back control of several municipalities which it had lost because of defections to the BJP. It may have to pay a price for taking in defectors indiscriminately.

Subir Roy is a senior journalist and author. The views expressed are personal.