Mamata Banerjee, a formidable force to reckon with

Mamata Banerjee is indeed a fighter. The latest political developments taking off from West Bengal, where she came up with that piercing shrill cry to halt the BJP-RSS moves, is only a continuation of her determined effort to keep the Right- Wing at bay, away from wrecking communal strife and havoc in her State.

In fact, in a recently launched book on her- ‘Didi – The Untold Mamata Banerjee’ (Penguin) the author Shutapa Paul focuses on Mamata Banerjee’s political graph and on her determination to be a political fighter. Also, her firm resolve to remain secular, trying her best to foil any of the divisive tactics of the Hindutva brigades.

Yes, she comes across as a formidable force. Not to be bullied by any Right-Wing tactics. To quote from this book “Two years since her second conquest in 2016, today, Mamata is sure she that she has a new adversary. The growing influence of the BJP in the state has been bothering her. The national party has conquered almost the entire northeast and it greedily eyes states such as Bengal. Didi knows that the next election will not be a cakewalk. However, she is not new to enemies. She has fought formidable political adversaries all her life. West Bengal’s only woman chief minister and for that matter the state’s sole woman politician of repute, toppled thirty-four years of Left Front rule in 2011, and brought an entire regime to its knees an unthinkable feat a few years ago.”

Perhaps, Mamata Banerjee’s childhood paved way for her to be drawn towards politics as her father, Promileshwar, was an active Congress supporter, “who allowed his office to be used for party meetings. Local Congress leaders would come home regularly for tea, much to Mamata’s delight. She would listen to endless tales of the Indian freedom struggle and their revolutionary ideas. She would willingly prepare home-made glue to paste their posters. It was during this impressionable age that Mamata learnt about both the Congress and the communists.”

Mamata’s activism along with the expected strain right from the student days paved way for political battles. In her memoirs she says that she would often take her books to the protest sites, and if arrested, study in the police lock up. “Mamata has famously been referred to as a ‘street fighter’, a nomenclature that is not unjustified. ‘Fighting for our lives on the streets of Calcutta was something we did, 330 out of 365 days in a year. Everyday there were protests, meetings and slogan-shouting. Everyday there was violence,’ she says. Under Subrata Mukherjee’s leadership, the Chhatra Parishad organised a slew of protests between 1978 and 1983; Mamata played a central role in almost all the agitations whether it was against Jayaprakash Narayan or Farooq Abdullah.”