Mamata’s Personal Ambition Poses Threat to Opposition Unity

 

Mamata’s Personal Ambition Poses Threat to Opposition Unity

In the articles -The Tug of War: Modi Vs. Mamata and In an Epic Battle Mamata Trounces Modi, published on my Blog on May 5 and June 5 respectively, I had praised Mamata for her guts and gumption for standing against the onslaught of  Modi-Shah duo and defeating the BJP decisively in the West Bengal Assembly election. As a firebrand street-smart political leader, she proved a perfect match to them. She received wide media coverage for holding against the BJP, despite many odds.

 

However, the success at the hustings seems to have entered her head, losing a sense of balance, she began to entertain a personal ambition of being a Prime Ministerial candidate of non-BJP front in the next Lok Sabha election, replacing the Congress and its leadership. The objective of any political party is to capture power. So, there is nothing wrong if any regional party leader aspires to head a national government.  After all, as Bismarck said, politics is the art of the possible. But in politics in India, we have the Gandhian-Nehruvian ideal of means justifying the end results. Politics is an instrument to serve people selflessly. It is not a naked pursuit of power. Otherwise, politics becomes ‘the last resort of scoundrels”, as Samuel Johnson said.

 

During the past three months, the TMC engineered high-profile defections from the Congress, including Ex-Assam MP Sushmita Dev and former Chief Minister of Goa Luizinho Faleiro. Last week, the TMC poached 12 MLAs from the Congress in Meghalaya, led by the former CM Mukul Sangama, along with his three family members, and ‘merging’ the Congress into the TMC and thus the latter emerging as the largest opposition party in the Assembly, when it didn’t have a single elected member. This unethical conduct is highly deplorable.  The TMC is doing what BJP has done – of poaching the Congress MLAs to topple its elected governments and prevent it from forming the governments-a la Karnataka, MP, Uttarakhand, Goa, Meghalaya and North- East states.

 

In the defections of the Congress leaders, the role of Prashant Kishore, the political strategist of Mamata, is intriguing. The TMC – essentially a West Bengal regional political outfit- wants to expand outside the state at the expense of the Congress, and make it weak and vulnerable. Incidentally, Prashant Kishore wanted to join the Congress; and has been negotiating with the Gandhis for a very envious position in the party, and when it didn’t work out, he turned against the party, engineering defections of its leaders. After the West Bengal Assembly election, he made public his intention to quit for good from the present job of a political strategist. But now he is back in a backdoor maneuvering, and Mamata seems to have fallen into his trap.

 

Otherwise, how does one understand when until recently she proclaimed that the Congress and the TMC are natural allies, and now suddenly carrying vociferous attack on the party and its leadership, charging the Congress of being incapable of fighting against Modi. However, the fact, that any neutral observer of Indian politics could observe, is that it is the Gandhis, particularly Rahul and Priyanka, who have been the uncompromising vocal critics of the Modi government. They  are the only opposition leaders unsparing in their attack fearlessly on Modi and his style of governance, highlighting his failures and misdeeds. They are the first to visit the families of victims of the extreme right-wing elements, consoling them, offering empathy and support, and taking up the people's issues.

 

There is a consensus among the opposition parties that Modi must not be allowed to recapture power third-time in 2014, in the larger national interest of saving India from the threat posed by the rising militant majoritarianism and authoritarianism. Hence the talk of unity among the anti-BJP parties. It is an open secret that the BJP wants Congress Mukht Bharat. However, what Mamata now doing is just that. Her personal ambition is to be the Opposition’s Prime Ministerial candidate, by weakening the Congress, and making her party TMC replace the Congress at the national level. It is a wishful thinking- a pipe dream - the TMC emerging as largest single opposition party and Mamata as a consensus opposition Prime Ministerial candidate, writing death-knell of a party that won the independence and built modern all-inclusive secular Indian State. The opposition unity is aborted, making it a façade.

 

Why the TMC can’t replace the Congress as a national alternative? First, Mamata is a regional leader, who derives her support by arousing the Bengali sub-culture and linguistic identity, just as the BJP uses religion to polarize Hindus for electoral gains. She has no clear ideological commitment. She turned out to be a rank political opportunist. She had the record of changing alliances with the NDA and the UPA several times in the past, depending on how the political wind blew. She is known for practicing violent politics, and authoritarian style of functioning. In her own state, she could not stop the BJP winning 18 Lok Sabha seats, out of 42, in 2019 election, with the TMC securing 22 seats as against 34 it won in 2014.

Second, she has a crisis of credibility. She has become hostile against the Congress, because many of her party leaders, including her nephew Abhishek Banerjee- the second in command in her party- are raided by the central agencies- ED and IT Department etc.- for alleged scandals and corruption and facing criminals charges. Perhaps she wants to soften her stand against the Modi government by taking on  the principal opposition party. Machiavellism doesn't pay political dividends in an open democratic society,. Mamata choosing to pound the Congress, with a suicidal belligerence, betrays lack of political maturity and wisdom and a malevolent intent. A fickle mind is dangerous in politics. 'Khela-hobe' is an enchanting slogan but politics is not sports. 

 

Third, there are many aspirants among regional parties- NCP, TRS, BSP, Shiv Sena, BJD and AAP-Sharad Pawar, KCR, (who had political training in the Congress), Mayawati and Kejriwal - for the top leadership of the country and they will not accept Mamata as the Prime Ministerial candidate of a non-BJP front. The Shive Sena snubbed Mamata for her attack on the Congress. The editorial in Saamana – the party’s mouth piece- December 4, reads: “the Congress party should be an integral part of the non-BJP front in the run-up to the next Lok Sabha election…. there can’t be a front by keeping the Congress at bay...even if those, who are fighting the BJP feel that the Congress should cease to exist, then this attitude is the biggest threat. TMC is more interested in fighting Congress than BJP. TMC is doing everything to break opposition unity.” The ‘Federal Front’ of non-BJP regional parties, even if it materializes, will not be able to secure majority seats on its own in Lok Sabha; and will not be able  to  form government without aligning with the Congress. And it is foolhardy to expect the grand old national party to play a second fiddle.

 

And finally, the Congress is most likely to emerge as the single largest opposition party in the next Lok Sabha election, improving its performance compared to the last two elections, and consequently decide the leadership issue of the post poll alliance, considering Rahul Gandhi’s aggressive unequivocal ideological stand that Hindutva is not the same as the Hinduism and that his party is fighting the divisive communal forces to protect the constitutional democracy. His stand is gaining support from the people at gross root level. It is naïve to think the Congress is irrelevant, just because it did badly in the last two elections. It is the only national party, having foothold throughout the length and breadth of the country, rising above caste, religious, and parochial linguistic identities, unlike  the regional political outfits.

The Modi-Shah juggernaut can’t be stopped, unless the leaders of non-BJP parties rally behind the Congress, setting aside their egos and personal ambitions, and strengthen its hands. Sooner this is realized, better for Mamata and the nation.   

PS:11.03.2024:

On 10 March, 2024 Mamata has announced that her party Trinamool Congress (TMC) would fight alone the Lok Sabha election, due in April-May. It is a politically unwise shortsighted decision. It is arrogance and unholy politics that make her blind to the larger cause of the opposition INDIA Bloc, of checkmating the Modi-Shah juggernaut to save democracy. She betrayed the opposition alliance, of which she is a party.  The Hindustan Times, March 11, 2024, has reported: West Bengal Congress chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury accused Chief Minister Mamta Banerjee of being fearful of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. She is worried that if the ED and CBI start visiting TMC on Modu’s orders, it could pose a risk to the TMC. The TMC’s rebuff will represent the largest pre-poll setback for the INDIA bloc, given that West Bengal has the third largest share of parliamentarians (42), after Utta Pradesh (80) and Maharashtra (48). In the previous Lok Sabha elections, the TMS won 22 seats, while the BJP sprung a major surprise, winning 18 seats. The Congress won the remaining two seats. 

To add insult to injury, Mamata has fielded an outsider, cricketer Yusuf Pathan, from Baharampur, playing the Muslim card, against the Congress state President Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, the seat that he won five times since 1999. In the face of the ruling BJP at the Centre using the Sandeshkhali incident to polarize the people, Mamata’s decision to fight the election alone is likely to help BJP, denting her support base, with the Congress and the Left Front pitted against the TMC.