Who will save Mamata from Mamata?

Mamata Banerjee has often proved that even benign dissent is not permissible in her arena, be it in the party or in government. Former railway minister Dinesh Trivedi couldn’t stick to his condition — rather a request — that he would resign if the Trinamool chief telephoned him to put in his papers. Instead, Trivedi had to telephone Mamata, saying he would quit.

The episode reminded me of an afternoon on the final day of five-phase assembly polls, at the residence of well-known novelist Mahasweta Devi, who played a pivotal role in the defeat of the CPI(M)-led government. In an informal chat with a few non-party intellectuals, the octogenarian who has been fighting for the adivasis unflinchingly, said in a pessimistic tone, “A crushing defeat for the CPI(M)-led front and a landslide victory for the Trinamool-Congress alliance Mamata Banerjee is now fait accompli. But I am worried about the future. Who will save Mamata from Mamata?” The apprehension was prophetic.

Mamata’s penchant for volte face is now public. During the agitation against the Tata Motor Company’s Nano project at Singur in 2007, she ridiculed her predecessor Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee for arresting a three-year old under Section 302 of the IPC (murder attempt). On April 7 last, the Kolkata police detained a nine-year-old girl for nine hours. She was among the 62 arrested for agitating against eviction of roadside shacks at Nonadanga on the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass without notice.

Mamata out-Buddhadebs Buddhadeb in trampling the subalterns. She scripts her tragedy in a pseudo-Shakespearean way. Her increasing intolerance even to the mildest criticism is in sync with a symptomatic manifestation of her fiefdom. The more hardened this fiefdom, the more shattered her image as the intrepid voice of the subaltern.

It is a sad and murky mismatch with her intrepid struggle against the ‘counter-revolutionary’ Stalinist-Beriaite LF regime under the hegemony of CPI(M).

However, it is politically naive to characterise this utter disrespect towards democracy as an early sign of fascism. At least the Left should not use the term in a cavalier fashion by describing Mamata’s hegemony as even ‘fascistic’. Leftist parties and individual Leftist intellectuals like Dr Ashok Mitra and Sumanta Banerjee should not forget that 13th plenum of the executive committee of the Communist International, prior to the Seventh Congress of Comintern (1935) defined fascism “the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital”, formulated by the then Comintern secretary- general Georgi Dimitrov. “Fascism is the power of finance capital itself”. The level of economic development and the status of finance capital are incapable of instituting ‘open terrorist dictatorship”

Mamata’s dictatorial tendency is a very bad sign of the democratic polity, which is a hedge against attempts at subverting the parliamentary democracy.

She discovers a conspiracy on being reminded of her promise to release political prisoners or withdraw the joint security forces from Jangal Mahal. Take just one instance.

Last year on October 14, a day before she delivered a speech in Jhargram, joint forces and police forces raided the residence of Sushen Singha in Shushnijobi village, under the Belpahari police station in Jangal Mahal to arrest him. Shushen was then not at home. The police and the joint forces found his wife Shibani and raped her. Shibani consumed poison to end her life. A commendable effort by doctors helped her regain her consciousness. Her family members registered an FIR, signed by Shibani, at the Jhargram SP’s office as the Belpahari PS refused to receive the FIR on flimsy grounds. When Mamata’s attention was drawn to the episode, she publicly said, “Whenever policemen enter the villages for investigation, the charge of rape was leveled against them.”

The two Mamatas’ are not mutually exclusive but there is a ‘unity of opposites’. If anyone points out that she or her government is going back on promises, she discovers a conspiracy there. But this transmits a wrong message to willing investors. The Biocon chairman and managing director Kiran Majumdar Shaw’s said on Twitter during the Mamata-Dinesh standoff : “Mamata is a dangerous, populist demagogue: economically illiterate but politically astute — deadly combo!...a sad reflection on just how feudal our society and culture is — talk of human rights!”. Mamata may ignore it and continue with her tantrums, but the end result may shake the future of her government.