Parallax View: How Mamata Banerjee turned into Attila the Hen

Shortly after I moved to Calcutta in the 1980s, a very senior person at the newspaper organisation where I worked

told me a few things about Bengalis. “You are from Bombay,” he said. “You have never worked in Calcutta before so you will not know what we Bengalis are

like. The bad thing about us is that we are all conspirators. But the good thing, at least from your point of view, is that Bengalis are inept conspirators. So, you have nothing to worry about in the long run.”

 

   As the years went on, I found this characterisation of Bengalis to be unfair. They were not particularly conspiratorial and as editor of Sunday, the only conspiracies I faced came from non-Bengalis. My Bengali colleagues, on the other hand, adopted a live-and-let-live attitude and rarely mustered up the energy to mount any kind of conspiracy.

 

   But, the very senior person who advised me about Bengalis in my very first week in Calcutta, missed a key element of the Bengali character. While Bengalis are neither conspiratorial nor malicious – in fact, they are among the warmest people in India – they do tend to have a conspiracy-theory view of the world. They often believe that people are plotting against them. They regard it as likely that events are working to some sinister design and not just to the dictates of fate. And sometimes, they are quick to take offence when none is intended. (Sorry about all this politically incorrect stuff but after so many years in Calcutta I think I am entitled to one or two ethnic generalisations of my own.)

 

   I thought back to the Bengali propensity to see conspiracies in everything when I read about Mamata Banerjee’s latest act of lunacy: the arrest of a professor who emailed a cartoon of her to his friends. Even Mamata’s greatest supporters find it hard to defend this act. It is, by any standards, far more intolerant than anything the CPM did in the 34 years during which it simultaneously ruled and destroyed Bengal.

 

   Not that the CPM was immune to its own conspiracy theory view of the world. During the 80s, CPM commissars always acted as though Delhi was out to destroy Bengal. When Rajiv Gandhi made the factually accurate statement that Calcutta was dying, this was seen as proof of the great North Indian conspiracy against Bengalis. When he joked that the Marxists owed more to Groucho Marx than to Karl, this was treated as final proof that the rest of India was mocking Bengal’s rich and glorious political tradition.

 

   Foreigners were also part of the great anti-Bengali conspiracy. When Rolland Joffe came to Calcutta to shoot City of Joy, a film based on the sickly-sweet and nauseatingly sentimental book about Calcutta by Dominique Lapierre, Buddhadev Bhattacharya led the opposition to Joffe. In those days, Bhattacharya was not chief minister but was nevertheless a powerful Stalinist commissar. He railed against the book (which had actually done much more for Calcutta’s image than anything the CPM ever managed), accused Hollywood of seeking to defame Bengal and Bengalis, and tried his best to get the shooting stalled.

 

   While the CPM’s conspiracy-theory view of the world was, in keeping with the party’s character, focussed on conspiracies against the Bengali proletariat, Mamata’s view (in keeping with her own character, perhaps) has been somewhat more egocentric. Bengal is only marginally the target of the conspirators. The real aim, she believes, is to defame the great Mamata Banerjee and to foil her tireless efforts on behalf of the people (or peepuls, if you prefer).

 

   I have known Mamata Banerjee for a long time so I am not necessarily unsympathetic to her. I do not, for a moment, doubt either her sincerity or her integrity. She has no interest in money, no interest in anything, in fact, except for her brand of politics. And, to be fair to her, many of the conspiracies she alleged during the 80s and the 90s did turn out to be founded in fact.

 

"The magnitude of her landslide election victory has not made her more secure; it has only turned her into a bit of a megalomaniac."

   I do not question her claim that the CPM set out, if not to kill her, then certainly to immobilise her and to finish her off politically. She was viciously and violently assaulted on the streets of Calcutta. Her injuries were so serious that it took her years to fully recover. Her party men faced intimidation and violence. A person with less self-belief and determination would have given up. But Mamata had the courage to stay the course.

 

   But here’s what I think the problem is: having suffered so much at the hands of the CPM, Mamata now believes that everybody is out to get her. You can see this from the way in which she runs her own party. Atilla the Hun would be proud of her attitude to discipline. No dissent or criticism is tolerated. A single untoward remark by a colleague (or even by his wife) can lead to banishment. Any cordiality towards an ally will be seen as evidence of disloyalty, punishable with exile if not expulsion. (Just ask Dinesh Trivedi, who served loyally and faithfully as her ambassador in Delhi during the years when she was out of power in Bengal.)

 

   That attitude extends to allies. If Pranab Mukherjee does not do what she asks, then he is acting against the interests of Bengal and trying to thwart Mamata Banerjee’s glorious rise to further glory. If the local Congress unit does not teach its members to supplicate before the great lady, then the Congress must be taught a lesson.

 

   Now, that intolerance has extended to include the rest of the world. A woman claims she was raped on Park Street? What nonsense! No such thing is possible. The claim is clearly part of a conspiracy engineered by the political opponents of the glorious Mamatadi.

 

   A professor dares to draw a cartoon of the beloved chief minister! Clearly, he is functioning as an agent of anti-people forces. He must be arrested and the conspiracy must be nipped in the bud.

 

   Ever since she has come to power, two things have become clear. One, that Mamata Banerjee does not know how to govern West Bengal and two, that she suspects that a conspirator is lurking behind every lamp-post. It is these two factors that have guided her stewardship of West Bengal: chaos and conspiracy.

 

   Some of this, I concede, can be attributed to the Bengali love of the conspiracy-theory view of the world. But much of it, I think, stems from Mamata Banerjee’s own insecurities and the setbacks she has suffered during her political career. She has been knocked down so often that she now spends her entire day trying to guess where the next punch will come from. And if no punches are forthcoming, she conjures them up in her imagination.

 

   Hard as this may be to believe, given the events of the last few months, I have always liked Mamata. I have sat next to her on aeroplanes when she has been swathed in bandages, her limbs held up by splints and her head bruised from police lathis. I know some of what she has gone through. And I admire her for her courage and her tenacity.

 

   Alas, the qualities one looks for in a fighter are not those one looks for in an administrator, let alone a chief minister. The trouble with Mamata Banerjee is that she has not been able to make the transition from street fighter to chief minister. Her insecurities still dog her at every step. And the magnitude of her landslide election victory has not made her more secure; it has only turned her into a bit of a megalomaniac.

 

   This is a tragedy on so many different levels, only one of which is Mamata herself. The more significant tragedy is that after 34 years of CPM misrule, Bengal finally has a chance to reclaim its place as one of India’s greatest states. Sadly, it does not look like that will happen.

 

   And that’s because our plucky street fighter has turned into Kim Il Sung in a cotton sari.