{"id":773,"date":"2012-08-17T07:50:35","date_gmt":"2012-08-17T07:50:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/teekhapan.wordpress.com\/?p=773"},"modified":"2012-08-17T07:50:35","modified_gmt":"2012-08-17T07:50:35","slug":"ek-thi-tigress-why-mamata-tilts-at-every-windmill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vivekkaul.com\/2012\/08\/17\/ek-thi-tigress-why-mamata-tilts-at-every-windmill\/","title":{"rendered":"Ek Thi Tigress: Why Mamata tilts at every windmill"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/em>\"\"<\/a>
\nVivek Kaul
\n<\/strong>
\n\u201cMamata Banerjee ko gussa kyon aata?<\/em>\u201d is an intriguing question.
\nWhy does she brand people who tend to disagree with her as Communists and Maoists? Very recently Shiladitya Chowdhury was arrested under non-bailable sections when he questioned the West Bengal government\u2019s policy farmers during a rally being addressed by Banerjee. As The Hindu<\/em> reported \u201cEyewitnesses said that Ms Banerjee was heard giving directions to isolate him from the crowd, referring to him as a \u201cMaoist.\u201d\u201d
\nA few months back she had called some students \u201cMaoists\u201d after they had asked her uncomfortable questions during a television interaction organised by CNN IBN<\/em>. \u201cI must tell you that you are CPI(M) cadres, Maoist cadres \u2026 I cannot reply to CPI(M) questions,\u201d Banerjee had said on that occasion before she walked out of programme. This happened in May.
\nA little earlier in April Ambikesh Mohapatra, a professor at Jadhavpur University had been arrested for posting cartoons of Mamata Banerjee on the internet. \u201cThey don’t do any work but think of ways to frame me,” Banerjee had said justifying the arrest and alluding to the CPI(M) being behind the cartoons.
\nAnd now she has taken on the judicial system in this country. On the occasion of the platinum jubilee celebrations of the West Bengal assembly she recently said \u201cat times favourable verdicts are given in return for money. There are instances when judgments have been purchased. There is corruption among a section of the judiciary. I know there can be a case against me for saying this. But this must be said and I am ready to go to jail for saying so.\u201d
\nNow why does the Chief Minister whose alliance has 227 out of the 294 seats in the state assembly want to go to jail? Even if we were to leave out 43 seats which belong to the other alliance partners, her party, the All India Trinamool Congress has 184 seats in the assembly.
\nWhy does the Chief Minister of a state whose party has absolute majority in the assembly, bother about small dissent so much so that it forces her to label the dissenters as Communists and Maoists?
\nThe answers to all these questions lie in the 42 years that she has spent in politics.
\nMamata Banerjee entered politics in 1970. As Monobina Gupta writes in Didi \u2013 A Political Biography<\/em> \u201cAs an undergraduate in Kolkata\u2019s Jogmaya Devi College, she became active in Chhatra Parishad, the Congress\u2019s student wing. The college union was then controlled by the Democratic Socialist Organisation(DSO), students wing of the Socialist Unity Centre of India (SUCI)\u2026Her dogged fight against the DSO drew the attention of some Congress leaders, even though she did not known them personally then.\u201d
\nBy the late 1970s Mamata was at the forefront of the protests happening in Kolkata (then Calcutta). \u201cMamata was out on Kolkata\u2019s streets defending Indira Gandhi after the latter lost the parliamentary elections\u2026From waving black flags at the then prime minister Moraji Desai on his visit to Kolkata to getting into a bloody fight with the Left student activists in Ashutosh College, she was gaining a reputation for being a strong combatant of the CPI-M,\u201d writes Gupta.
\nMamatas big stroke of luck came before the 1984 Lok Sabha elections. Indira Gandhi had asked Mamata\u2019s then mentor and Congress legislator Subrata Mukherjee to find a suitable woman candidate. As Mukherjee tells Gupta in her book Didi\u2013 A Political Biography<\/em> \u201cThe elections were approaching. Indira ji suddenly asked me to find a woman candidate. The Congress was in a bad shape. Finding a woman candidate was a tough job. I suggested Mamata\u2019s name, and she got her nomination from the Jadhavpur constituency.\u201d
\nIndira Gandhi was killed by her bodyguards Beant Singh and Satwant Singh on October 31, 1984. In the sympathy wave that followed, Mamata Banerjee won, becoming a Lok Sabha member at a young age of 29. She defeated CPI(M) stalwart Somnath Chatterjee. The Congress party won 16 out of the 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal.
\nThis was enough to rattle the CPI(M) led ruling Left Front government . It unleashed violence across the state and attacked Congress workers. \u201cThis was the scene Mamata entered flush with the success of her maiden electoral victory\u2026She had courted danger right from her days as a student activist. The first in a series of trips Mamata made in this period as to Magrahat in South 24 Parganas, where a Congress worker was brutally murdered and his wife gang-raped by alleged antisocials backed by the CPI-M. Media reports spoke of the horror of the incident \u2013 the assailants \u2018playing football\u2019 with the murdered worker\u2019s severed head. Mamata\u2019s visit and her meeting with the family of the deceased made front page news,\u201d writes Gupta.
\nHer confrontation with CPI-M continued in the years to come. In August 1990, the Kolkata police was following her 24×7 relaying her activities to the higher ups. On August 16,1990, Mamata Banerjee stepped out of her Kalighat residence and walked towards Hazra junction to be a part of the procession she had called for. The atmosphere was tense and Mamata was attacked. As Gupta writes \u201cThe attackers had come prepared. Swinging his stick, Laloo Alam, a CPI-M worker, hit Mamata hard on her head, she (i.e. Mamata) writes in her memoirs. \u2018The right side of my head (just a hairline away from where the brain is) had cracked open and I was bleeding profusely. I was still undeterred\u2026When I saw them getting ready to hit me on the head with an iron rod, strangely in that grave circumstance, I covered my head with my hand,\u2019 Mamata narrates.\u201d
\nCovering her head with hand nullified the impact of the blow on her head, and broke her wrist. Over the next few days Mamata was at a nursing home fighting for her life. She survived and thus started the second phase of her political career. It took her 21years more to beat the Left Front and form her government in West Bengal. Along the way she quit the Congress party and formed her own party, the Trinamool Congress.
\nMamata Banerjee was a leader of agitations who became the Chief Minister of West Bengal on May 20,2011. All the agitations over the years ensured that confrontation became an integral part of Mamata Banerjee\u2019s career and her nature. As Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay writes at www.asiancorrespondent.com <\/em>\u201cThe bottom line is that as a leader of agitations you require to be spontaneous and have the ability to cock a snook at your adversary.\u201d (you can read the complete column here)
\nThis is a trait that has become in-built in her and explains to a large extent why she has been spontaneously branding her dissenters as communists and Maoists. The aggression that came out in all the protests, dharnas and bands she called for against the CPI-M, still needs to come keep coming out, but in other ways. That explains to a large extent why she is hell bent on shooting herself in the foot and is needlessly taking on the judicial system by calling it corrupt.
\nWhat also does not help is the fact that she sees herself as having been betrayed time and again. \u201cMuch of the excess of Mamata\u2019s emotional rhetoric stems from a lifelong sense of betrayal. The hurt and anger run through most of her writings. In school, the classmates she helped stabbed her in the back; the party she grew up ruined her chances of routing the CPI-M by striking undercover electoral quid pro quo deals with the communists,\u201d writes Gupta. She concludes that all this has led to a situation where Mamata Banerjee is \u201chaunted by a constant apprehension of persecution and conspiracy.\u201d
\nHence, this is a major reason where even a hint of dissent gets labeled as a communist or a Maoist conspiracy.
\nThe traits that Mamata had developed over the years held her in good stead as she fought the CPI-M rule in West Bengal. And those are the traits that she can\u2019t seem to get rid off now. As Mukhopadhyay puts it \u201cI have long maintained among friends that she is the Uma Bharti of West Bengal. Meaning, both \u2013 and they are inherently well-meaning leaders \u2013 can lead an agitation to its logical culmination but cannot govern in their wildest dreams. In politics you require the chutzpah to ensure that the government \u2013 or people in authority \u2013 of the day bend before your agitation. But in governance you are required to listen, think, put one against another and act.\u201d
\n\u201cIn governance you need to be routine (diligent if you prefer this word), ensure that the horse comes before the cart (meaning systems are followed) and above all grant the others, the right to disagree with you and agitate if they wish to exercise their democratic right,\u201d Mukhopadhyay adds.
\nBut this is easier said than done because for this to happen Mamata Banerjee will have to stop being Mamata Banerjee.
\nTo conclude, let me put it this way. Salman Khan has been labeled a tiger only in reel life. Mamata Banerjee has been a tigress in real life. But its time she stopped being one because it\u2019s hurting her more now, than ever before.
\n(The article originally appeared on www.firstpost.com on August 17,2012. http:\/\/www.firstpost.com\/politics\/ek-thi-tigress-why-mamata-tilts-at-every-windmill-420914.html<\/a>)
\n(Vivek Kaul is a writer and can be reached at vivek.kaul@gmail.com) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vivek Kaul \u201cMamata Banerjee ko gussa kyon aata?\u201d is an intriguing question. Why does she brand people who tend to disagree with her as Communists and Maoists? Very recently Shiladitya Chowdhury was arrested under non-bailable sections when he questioned the West Bengal government\u2019s policy farmers during a rally being addressed by Banerjee. As The Hindu … <\/p>\n

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