Didi

Preface

Mamata Banerjee has been known to evoke strong emotions. Her fans worship her fearlessness, her simple, ascetic lifestyle, even her melodramatic performances. To her political adversaries she is a stubborn fighter who has repeatedly returned to haunt them despite their attempts to browbeat her out of the political arena. Mamata reigns imperious and unchallenged over her somewhat amorphous party, the Trinamool Congress, which is now in power in West Bengal. In private conversations, Didi’s party colleagues tell you how terrified they are of Mamata’s tempestuousness and her mercurial temperament. But even among sceptics who look down upon her non-gentrified ways, the Trinamool Congress leader inspires grudging awe.

This book tries to capture some of the complexities that make Mamata Banerjee what she is. In order to comprehend the different aspects of her persona, which often contradict each other, I have tried to contextualize Mamata within a broader framework of Bengal’s bhadralok culture and the religious and cultural elements which influence her politics and life. I have tried to understand Mamata’s own perception of herself as a woman; her responses, if any, to feminism; the contradictions between her dictatorial and democratic impulses; and her appropriation of the Left’s culture and radical politics in recent years.

Through a study of books authored by Mamata, and interviews with her colleagues and cultural and human rights activists, I have situated the subject in the larger context of thirty-four years of Left Front rule. Though she experimented with coalitions led both by the Congress and the BJP at the Centre and headed important ministries in the Central government, her attention was always focused on one goal: defeating the Left Front government and coming to power in Bengal.

Written during the run-up to West Bengal’s historic 2011 polls, the book ends with Mamata’s ascendancy to chief ministership. She has inherited a financially bankrupt and stagnating state, politicized to the core. Ironically, her predicament is somewhat like that of the Left Front when, through a bloody struggle against the Congress, it had first come to power in 1977. Hardened in the school of radical protests and agitations, the Marxists then knew little about governance and administration. Mamata, too, has followed a similar path. The people of Bengal now have high expectations from her and the new regime, not just for governance, but also for inaugurating a different political culture.

As the book goes into press, Mamata Banerjee has completed six months as chief minister. Many have done some hurried stock taking of her performance during this brief and dramatically eventful period. Some have pronounced harsh judgment, reprimanding her for continuing to be unpredictable and combative, and still acting more like a recalcitrant Opposition leader than the chief minister of a state. Less inclined to penning an early epitaph, more circumspect critics have adopted a calibrated approach in their assessment. Six months is too soon to come to any decisive conclusion—either by unequivocally endorsing, or by rubbishing her altogether. Nasty controversies have already erupted, dragging Mamata into the conflict zone of ideas, policies, politics and personalities. But this was hardly unforeseen.

In the latter part of the book I have attempted to underline the enormous challenges that lie ahead of the new ruling party and its supreme leader, as West Bengal entered a new political era in May 2010. As is usual with any regime change, the teething period in this case too has been prickly and problematic. In fact, in the case of West Bengal, political and governance shifts were decidedly more challenging, more fractious and riddled with both unexpected and expected pitfalls. Mamata has inherited a moribund political and administrative state. The first six months were bound to be critical. The new chief minister was expected to send the right signal not only to her electorate at home, but also to policymakers and the Congress-led UPA government in Delhi.

Two main charges levelled against the Trinamool chief have hinged on the subjects of economic reforms and Maoist insurgency. The recent high-pitched debate triggered by the Centre’s decision to introduce 51 per cent FDI in multi-brand retail has dramatically brought out into the open the inherent tensions between the ruling Congress and Mamata Banerjee. Mamata’s refusal to endorse the opening up of retail has finally forced the government to put the controversial policy on hold. Standing firmly by her party’s stated position, Mamata argued that FDI in retail was going to hurt small traders and farmers. Already marked as ‘anti-reform’ and ‘anti-industry’, her hard line against FDI in retail has put her in the direct line of fire of large sections of the political and business classes, as well as the media. At the same time, though the Left will be loath to admit it, Mamata has managed—by stalling FDI—to play the role it aspires for. She has not shown any indications of turning her back on her party’s commitment on issues of economic policy. Her stance has surely evoked disappointment among CPI-M leaders who want her to renege on commitments and desert the constituency that she had weaned away from them. Mamata, however, is not yet ready to give up the ‘Leftist’ profile she acquired with Singur and Nandigram. In that sense, her stance vis-à-vis FDI in retail should not come as a surprise to the Congress, which had courted an alliance with the Trinamool leader knowing fully well her stand on contentious issues like this. Paradoxically, with nineteen MPs and as the single largest UFA ally, Mamata has now stepped into the shoes of her Left adversaries.

The other serious allegation against the Trinamool chief, now whipped up with renewed vigour, revolves around her uneasy relationship with the Maoists. Towards the end of November 2011, rising tensions between Mamata and the Maoists led to a major showdown. Following killings of Trinamool workers, Mamata first served an ultimatum to the Maoists, asking them to lay down their arms. Not surprisingly, they refused and demanded that security forces be withdrawn from Jangalmahal. Mamata, however, went ahead and sanctioned a resumption of the security forces’ operations, even as her critics came down heavily on her and accused her of political expediency. Once perceived as a Maoist ally in her battle against the Left, Mamata was blamed for doing an opportunistic about-turn. Shedding kid gloves, she now seemed ready to deal with the Maoists with an iron hand.

But the debate here is multilayered and complex, going beyond naïve and simplistic explanations. During the tribal upsurge in Lalgarh, the CPI-M had launched an acidic campaign, accusing Mamata of aiding and abetting Maoist violence in Jangalmahal. Undoubtedly, her political rhetoric at that time was ambivalent. She did indeed play down the issue in the interest of her ultimate goal of defeating the Left Front government. But to describe Mamata as being hand-in-glove with the insurrectionists would be a gross exaggeration. Her polemical claims aimed at the CPI-M—that there were no Maoists in Bengal—on the eve of assembly elections should not be taken at face value. It was part of the rhetoric of political performance at the time.

Let’s not forget that Mamata—despite her recent alliances with Left-leaning intellectuals, artistes and activists—has always been essentially a political centrist at heart. The recent escalation in tension between her and the Maoists needs to be grounded in a context where after assuming power Mamata had given them enough leeway to abandon arms and come to the negotiating table for talks. She had kept the Central and state joint security forces operation in abeyance, which was one of her key manifesto commitments. But the negotiations did not work. Even as the chief minister announced a slew of development packages for Jangalmahal, the Maoists stepped up their offensive. With Mamata sanctioning resumption of security operations against the Maoists, the bonds between her and a sizeable section of Left-leaning intellectuals and human rights activists seem to be on the verge of snapping. The growing distance was manifest when the government-appointed interlocutors, mandated to negotiate with the Maoists, quit following the killing of prominent Maoist leader Koteshwar Rao, popularly known as Kishenji.

In the months ahead, the Maoist challenge is only likely to sharpen and deepen the conflict between a section of radical, Left-leaning people and Mamata. Her historic tensions with the Congress, starting with her bitter fight as a student and then youth activist with the West Bengal unit, are also likely to be a problem. A section of the Congress state unit has already taken to the streets, protesting some of the actions of the new regime. But the situation as it stands today is that the state Congress unit, weak as it is, needs Mamata for its survival more than she needs it. At the same time, given West Bengal’s depleted financial resources, Mamata is dependent on the ruling Congress at the Centre. She is trying to negotiate a Bengal package to put the economy in some kind of an order. The UPA government has finally, at the end of a tussle, agreed to disburse Rs 8,750 crore. But Mamata is demanding Rs 10,000 crore.

There seems to be a perception, though mostly outside West Bengal and primarily in Delhi’s corridors of power, that Mamata’s charm is on the wane; that her voters are beginning to grow impatient with the slow pace of ‘paribartan’. Recent incidents like the chief minister storming into a local police station and rescuing two of her party workers, earlier arrested for rioting, seemed to feed that negative impression. Critics who expect Mamata to fit the image of a bhadralok chief minister are disappointed that she is still sticking to her ‘street-fighting’ tactics. But the ground situation in West Bengal may not reflect this cynical assessment. For instance, in a parliamentary by-election held in Kolkata South on 30 November, state Trinamool Congress President Subrata Bakshi won by a record margin of 2,30,099 votes. No doubt the Trinamool Congress candidate had an advantage. Kolkata South, after all, had been Mamata’s own constituency, from where she had won successive elections since 1991. But even with this inherent advantage, Bakshi’s margin of victory was impressive.

Mamata’s harshest critics accuse her of starting on the wrong foot by refusing to transform herself into the image of a ‘bhadralok’ politician. But, as I underline throughout this book, Mamata’s ‘otherness’—in terms of class, culture, language and gender—is indicative of larger changes that are afoot in Bengal’s political culture. The complexities of this transformative process are bound to play themselves out in unexpected ways. Issues of governance—ranging from economic transformation to health, education, and most importantly the culture of political violence and patronage—will continue to dominate. In the long run, how Mamata addresses these challenges will determine her legacy as chief minister of Bengal.

1

Meet Mamata Banerjee

The year was 1983. Twenty-eight-year-old Mamata Banerjee was getting into the rhythm of active politics. And the All India Congress Committee (AICC)¹ was in full session in Kolkata. Three years ago, Indira Gandhi had returned to power from her political banishment; her son Rajiv Gandhi had been appointed AICC general secretary and septuagenarian Kamlapati Tripathi its working secretary.

Mamata was a volunteer in senior Congress leader Subrata Mukherjee’s team. Her responsibility was to look after party VIPs, a tricky job that the irreverent young woman handled in her own unique way.

For instance, few twenty-somethings with serious political ambitions would dare to play a prank on Congress patriarch Tripathi, and that too one that subverts notions of caste purity. But then Mamata, even as a young girl, had quite an appetite for tomfoolery. Consider this story she tells in her autobiography Struggle for Existence. Mamata complains that, while Rajiv Gandhi did not have volunteers running errands for him, ‘the problem was with the aged leader Kamlapati Tripathi’.² A highcaste Brahmin and a stickler for ‘ritual purity’, Kamlapati would only eat meals cooked by fellow Brahmins. ‘Subrata-da told me, He will eat food which has been cooked by a lady of the Brahmin caste only. For the morning, keep some juice of pistachios, cashew nuts and raisins.’³ Mamata passed on these instructions to her colleague Anima Chatterjee, who had the ‘right credentials’. Anima, who was struggling with a busy schedule, said she would need two helpers. Mamata writes, ‘I replied, Wait, we will outwit the old gentleman. Two of my non-Brahmin colleagues will do the cooking and, Anima, you can serve the food.’⁴ So they did. ‘Everything went according to plan. Perhaps what we had done was wrong! Tripathiji is no more. If he was alive he would have fired me.’⁵

Mamata has brought this playful streak with her all the way from her days as a Congress party volunteer till now when she is the most powerful politician in West Bengal. As recently as December 2010, she playfully dunked an unsuspecting Sovan Chatterjee, mayor of Kolkata and a Trinamool Congress leader, in a children’s swimming pool on a cold winter day. It goes without saying that the man couldn’t have been pleased, but could do little more than put a pleasant face in spite of his dripping wet clothes, the chill, and the flush of embarrassment he must have felt. Trinamool workers do not normally challenge Mamata’s authority.

These pranks—separated as they are by time and context—throw light on the contradictory, paradoxical figure that is Mamata Banerjee. There isn’t one analytic lens you can look through to make sense of her. She can be conventional, even traditional, and still subvert caste norms. She can casually dupe a senior leader who she thinks is being irrational. She can terrorize fellow party members, and still enchant and mesmerize them. She doesn’t fit the frame of mainstream politicians or conform to the stereotypes about prominent public figures. It isn’t easy then to tackle the combustive, nomenclature-defying subject that is Mamata Banerjee.

So we must eschew linear projections and unidimensional definitions if we are to understand her. The personality of the Trinamool Congress leader is fragmented, somewhat dishevelled. The personal and the political are enmeshed, often even in collision with each other. Mamata’s flagrant display of wild emotion, her histrionics and her inability to control a runaway temper, all collided sharply with her searing ambition to emerge as the alternative face of West Bengal politics—a nemesis worthy of the over three-decade-old Marxist-led government that was in power in the state. It was a long wait, but she got there; in 2011, Mamata Banerjee formed her own government in the state.

Nothing about Mamata Banerjee’s life was geared to help her cause. In a political class entrenched in prejudices of patriarchy and lineage, Mamata’s lower-middle-class background, her lack of elitist accoutrements—social and educational—made her vulnerable. She more than adequately made up for all this with her careful leveraging of what the urbane would describe as the unsophisticated, jarring-to-the-ear rhetoric of the underclass. She didn’t need sophisitication; Mamata had her aggression.

As she took West Bengal round a historic bend, it was clear that Mamata had become a cult personality. For more than two decades, people had watched her oscillate between shouting her tormentors down and breaking into Rabindrasangeet; braving a hail of bullets one minute and the cut of the knife another, and applying her paintbrush to the canvas the next. She is emotional to a fault, yet ruthlessly dictatorial; a people’s person who could once have passed off as the queen of histrionics; a woman—single, with no rumours of romance and matrimony—without a male patron hovering in the background, or a lineage of privilege and rank rising around her like a halo. For her male adversaries, she has been a compulsive target, but not one they managed to vanquish, despite countless fierce physical assaults and cruel verbal taunts.

Mamata’s politics is as riven and complex as her persona. In her books, she talks about her commitment to the ideology of humanism. But the ideological praxis Mamata has been truly committed to can be whittled down to two words: ‘Combat CPI-M’. She sees no merit in the bipolar ideological/political division that the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI-M), the Congress, and all their allies support: the secularism-communalism axis. Soon after breaking away from the Congress and founding the Trinamool Congress, Mamata joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government. She was not propelled by a belief in the canons of Hindutva politics, but by her perception of the BJP as a far more committed adversary of the CPI-M than the Congress. These tactics aren’t all that different from the Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP), which has also swung from one side of the political spectrum to the other, without the ideological fetters of secularism or communalism. The BSP’s moves rest purely on how much political leverage the party is able to draw from a particular alliance with the Congress, the BJP or even a third front. While many have labelled this, rather simplistically, as political opportunism, the politics behind this flexibility is more complicated than is immediately apparent. Indeed, a little later, I will try to show why Mayawati and Mamata are comparable political personalities.

Mamata has been guided by the same logic of expediency as the BSP. After the post-Godhra pogrom in Gujarat in 2002—which the state colluded in—she claimed to have asked Atal Bihari Vajpayee to replace Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. But when that did not happen, she held her peace with the NDA. It is worth remembering that this same woman, as a member of Parliament (MP), had defied her party whip and publicly taken a belligerent stand against the Narasimha Rao government, demanding revocation of the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA).⁶ Or we might recall the time she refused to speak up on behalf of Taslima Nasreen, when the Left Front government bundled the author out of Kolkata. These are incidents and events that help us to better understand Mamata and, in the course of the following chapters, I will address and elaborate on each of them.

The process of decoding Mamata Banerjee is fraught with hazards. On the one hand, there is the easy characterization: a single woman, intemperate, theatrical, riding an endless emotional roller coaster, all of which has added to her reputation as mercurial and unpredictable—a leader whom, till