Vivekanand Jha Ranchi: BJP is in cloud nine. Naturally, it has the viable reasons for the same: capturing Bihar through masterly application of electoral arithmetic on the one hand, and putting to shreds the alliance Dharma by ensuring that its alliance partner is significantly depleted to do its bidding eventually, tantamounts to setting a new precedent in the polity where publicly you remain in political alliance, yet privately you remain at a daggers drawn with each other. The new era of Nitish Kumar in Bihar is anything but comfortable, with pliable  Sushil Kumar Modi destined to be set into a political exile, and two new bloodhounds being unleashed to keep Nitish Kumar under check and balance, is definitively re-writing of a new political trajectory for the coalition government, with the junior partner in the driver’s seat, while the pillion rider firing from all cylinders to dictate the terms to the driver who, henceforth, will be held hostage to the whims and fancy of the pillion rider. No wonder, BJP has emerged from Bihar election as somehow invincible for the time being. With its agenda clearly defined, which Prime Minister has so subtly insinuated during his speech in the BJP headquarter, in the wake of victory at the hustings in Bihar, that Bengal is the next bastion to be conquered, Mamata Banerjee’s heart must have surely rent, with the mighty resurgent BJP determined to oust her from power, will she be able to survive the mighty onslaught coming from the invincible BJP, in the upcoming election in West Bengal? The daunting question that not only bothers Mamata but it anguishes the countless citizens of India who are so fond of their democracy which, given BJP’s invincible spirit of triumphalism, is destined to come under stress, if Mamata too, eventually ends up as a casualty to BJP’s conquest of her hitherto secured political citadel.

 In fact, it would hardly be an exaggeration to suggest that the upcoming battle in West Bengal will be the bloodiest ever, where Didi, desperate enough to fend off the trespasser-she considers BJP as the trespasser by dubbing it as an ousider-will have to stretch all her imaginations to keep BJP at bay. Unfortunately for Mamata, the Muslim vote bank, hitherto her milch cow, too may not stand as solidly by her as they stood all along, for Owaisi’s victory in the just concluded Bihar election,  if it provides any indication of the upcoming scenario in West Bengal, he will prove to be harbinger for BJP while giving nightmare to Trinamool which so overwhelmingly banks upon Muslims to enable it to sail through at the hustings.Didi, being fully aware of the division in Muslim vote bank, of late had shown a desperate effort to keep Hindus-both Bengalese and non-Bengalese– in good humour. Whereas she had offered stipends to Hindu priests at par with Maulvis, she had started visiting temples, reciting Mantras of various Hindu gods and goddesses to please Hindus. Further, to bolster her Bengali vote bank, she had spawned a group of ‘Bangla pakha’ to nurture the myopic feelings of being Bengalese to polarise Bengali voters in favour of Trinamool. Such a trend, sectarian in its contour, is the resurrection of ‘Amra Bangali’of 70’s. Also, she tried desperately to keep the culture of clubs alive and vibrant by offering donation of rupees fifty thousand each to the local clubs during Durga Puja, for keeping them in good humor, even though she recklessly botched up by dubbing the deadly Corona as Modi’s creation, and allowing people to move freely and unfettered, she later quickly repealed it by imposing an arbitrary lockdown which too showed an apparent communal bias–the lockdown relaxed on account of Muslim festival, yet deliberately imposed on 5th of August, 2020 when the nation celebrated the Bhoomie Pujan at Ayodhya.

Interestingly, West Bengal stands today where it stood decade ago when she took the reign of administration from Buddhadev Bhattacharjee of CPIM. There has hardly been any tangible improvement in the employment scenario of West Bengal. With the plight of Bengalese remaining as pathetic as it was when the Communists ruled West Bengal, the situation in West Bengal has hardly improved despite Mamata’s promises galore. Yet, she had mastered the art of keeping Muslims in her side, even more robustly than the Communists had. In the process, she had even preferred to be called as Mamata Begum. Worse still, in her visceral hatred for Communists, she had sought to completely marginalise it, thus offering BJP a free space to rise so fast. Incidentally, when she realised her blunder of demolishing Communists and, thereby, offering space for the messianic rise of BJP in the process, her endeavours for course correction could not yield any result, as BJP, by then, had already risen to become an albatross around her neck. No wonder 2019 general election where BJP secured 18 of Parliamentary seats, just ending few seats behind Trinammol, has, unequivocally triggered a new political awakening in the state: The rise of an outsider BJP.

 Notwithstanding all the omissions and commissions of Mamata Banerjee, she is the last bastion of hope for democracy in the country. Lal Krishna Advani, the patriarch of BJP and India’s greatest living politician, writes in his autobiography, My Country My Life that how Loknayak Jayaprakash Narayan was the first to predict that the lanslide victory of Indira Gandhi, in the wake of the liberation of Bangladesh, did not augur well for India’s democracy. Unequivocally, Jayaprakash Narayan’s prophesy proved to be such a real threat for the nation in the years to follow. Indira Gandhi, in the later years, had blown democracy into smithereens by emasculating the opposition. Willy-nilly India today has been inevitably following the similar trajectory, with Modi having replaced Indira. The status of opposition today is even more brittle than it was during Indira Gandhi’s time. Hence in this backdrop, the fact cannot be ignored that, Mamata Banerjee, notwithstanding all her omissions and commissions, is the last bastion of hope for Indian democracy to stay. Or else,  her defeat is a precursor for the eventual doom of the republic where the hubristic BJP with its predominant position in the polity, will spell even a greater disaster than what Indira Gandhi had wrought on the republic. Incidentally, Mamata Banerjee represents the last beackon of hope for the nation, for India’s democracy to stay, whereas her defeat would be tantamount to writing an obituary not only for Mamata Banerjee, but also for India’s democracy. Therefore, Mamata, despite fighting the monster of far greater might, she invariably has the moral support of the nation. Though Mamata is no less than a wick, diya, striving to burn against the mighty storm of BJP, yet she has the blessings of the divine and the strong support of the different stakeholders in the polity. In the upcoming battle of titans, she is a sentry of democracy, crusading against the might of the fascism that has already spread the ugly tentacles to encompass the republic in its octopus like grip.