16.5.11

Ma, maati, poribartan & Didi











It was Rajiv Gandhi and Arun Nehru who threw a challenge to the aggressive young woman demanding a ticket to fight parliamentary polls in the post-Indira election of 1984. They gave her an impossible Jadavpur — a constituency so decisively red that a non-Communist would not even dream of contesting from there. Astonishingly enough, she gladly accepted. Her mentors in the West Bengal Congress thought her insane not to have politely turned down the proposal. Who wanted to face the humiliating prospect of forfeiting one’s deposit against an unassailable Somnath Chatterjee? A plucky Mamata Banerjee returned to Kolkata, preparing to wage a war against the CPM stalwart with her shrill voice, her rubber sandals and her jhola in which she carried her world. There are three dates which stand out in the life of the new chief minister of West Bengal. She can never forget December 29, 1984, the day Rajiv Gandhi won his landslide riding an unprecedented sympathy wave. Somewhere in that list of Congress winners was the name of a gutsy woman, a raw street-fighter, who was not going to be unnerved by the mammoth election machinery of an organized CPM. Mamata had announced her arrival as a politician. Perseverance and courage were going to distinguish her from her fellow-travellers. In those early years, Mamata impressed Congressmen with her sheer enthusiasm, her ability to take on the Left without inhibition. Then came the second unforgettable day. It was August 16, 1990. She was bludgeoned and brought down by a CPM thug at the Hazra crossing in south Kolkata. When she returned to active politics a few months later, she had been elevated to the status of a distinct political force. Through the 90s, she toyed with charting a separate path of her own, pushed to the brink by a host of Congress leaders, most of them rudderless and devoid of new ideas. When even the high command in Delhi refused to let her assume the state unit’s leadership, she adopted the mantra of ekla cholo re. In 1998, she broke away and launched the Trinamool Congress. Her party won seven seats. It was CPM patriarch Jyoti Basu’s retirement in 2000 that prompted Mamata to assume that she was on the threshhold of causing a major upset. She was convinced that the CPM, shepherded by Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, was no longer invincible.In 2001,she was trounced. Soon, she was back in the NDA fold.In 2006,Bhattacharjee sold his idea of a changed CPM and won a three-fourths majority. That is why the third important date — September 25, 2006 — is so crucial to understand the remarkable turnaround of Mamata. It was on this day that the government began paying compensation to the Singur land-losers. Singur was the beginning of the Mamata magic. Rizwanur Rahman’s mysterious death took her closer to the Muslims who had earlier disregarded her because of her ties with the BJP. Her slogan ma, maati, maanush (mother, land and the human being) suddenly gained volume. Now that she is going to be sworn in as the first non-CPM CM after 34 years, Mamata will be expected to put into practice lessons she has learnt in the past five years.

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