Mamata Banerjee changes tack, prays to contain BJP

KOLKATA : Bengal BJP's expanding outreach in rural areas has prompted chief minister Mamata Banerjee to calibrate her campaign strategy and send out signals that she is a tolerant Hindu.

This possibly explains why Mamata spent around one hour at KapilMuni's ashram with its chief priest Gyandasji during her Gangasagar visit on December 26, ahead of Makar Sankranti on January 14, when lakhs of pilgrims will be taking a holy dip at the confluence of the Ganga and the Bay of Bengal.

"I will come to this place again," the CM said, possibly to appear balanced, and counter the perception that she is pro-minority. Indeed, Mamata has been doing this adroitly, treading a course different from Mayawati or Mulayam Singh Yadav.


The surprise surge in BJP's vote-share in the recent assembly byelections, Sabang and Dakshin Kanthi, where the saffron party doesn't have an organisation worth mentioning, is a pointer to a shift in Bengal's political narrative that was broadly built on class intertwined with caste and the minority votebank. In the Sabang assembly bypoll, Trinamool got1,06,179 votes and the BJP, which had won only 5,610 votes in 2016, jumped to 37,476 this time.

The Trinamool chief has come to realise the change that Narendra Modi has brought in the universe of Hinduism. Modi has included OBCs, Scheduled Caste and Tribes in the Hindu camp, breaking the monopoly of Brahmins and upper caste Hindus.

Taking the cue, Mamata hasn't wasted time to form an SC advisory council, a separate welfare board for the Rajbanshis in north Bengal to take care of identity politics.

The CM has set up boards to renovate temples: Tarapith, Tarakeswar, Kalighat — as she has done for Furfura Sharif. The government is also upgrading tribal burial grounds.

But Mamata is not leaving it at that. She is dovetailing it with development programmes to lure the rising middle class among the reserved category who want employment opportunities.