In a political development that came as a big surprise, West Bengal Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee met PM Modi yesterday. The West Bengal Chief Minister has been a vocal critic of PM Modi and has often been at loggerheads with him. Now, she seems to have extended an olive branch towards PM Modi in what seems to be an image makeover exercise following the serious inroads made by the BJP in West Bengal during the Lok Sabha polls earlier this year.
Among other things, what figured prominently in her meeting was her request to PM Modi about the renaming of West Bengal. She said that she took up this issue with PM Modi and received a positive response from him. She said, “We want to change the name of our state to Bangla and spoke to PM about it. We are open to other suggestions too.” She told journalists,” The Prime Minister said he would do something about it.”
It is relevant to mention here that the West Bengal Assembly had passed a resolution on August 2016, to rename the state of West Bengal to ‘Bengal’ in English, ‘Bangla’ in Bengali and ‘Bangal’ in Hindi. The centre had however turned it down in 2017 objecting to the state having these names. In 2018, another resolution was passed to rename the state as ‘Bangla’. However, even though the demand is long pending it is only the first time that Mamata Banerjee has taken it up at a meeting with PM Modi. It is important to decode why such urgency which is now being shown towards this issue.
It must be noted that as per TMC sources, the West Bengal CM wants to rename the state as it would help the state in moving up the alphabetical order in any official circular list prepared by the centre.
Currently, the state sits at the bottom but after removing ‘West’, it would go up to number 4 in the list. Now, in a move that seems to concern with administrative convenience, it does not seem reasonable that the TMC supremo would have taken it up at such high level and that too a full three years after the proposal of renaming the state came into the picture.
The sudden urge to rename the state, therefore, seems to be an attempt to woo nationalists in the state of West Bengal, who would prefer ‘Bangla’ over the anglicised ‘West Bengal’. The West Bengal CM seems to be now pursuing this demand more vociferously than ever before in the aftermath of the Lok Sabha polls earlier this year when the BJP had severely dented TMC’s seat share in the state by winning on 18 out of 42 seats.
It must also be noted that after the Lok Sabha poll results, West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee had roped in political strategist Prashant Kishor, who reportedly advised Mamata Banerjee to tone down her anti-BJP rhetoric and asked her to concentrate on developmental work. She was asked not to be in the election mode all the time. The considerable watering down in her animosity towards PM Modi shows that the West Bengal CM has taken Kishor’s advice seriously.
It must be borne in mind that as far as the state of West Bengal is concerned, the Lok Sabha polls have made it clear that Mamata brand of politics has failed in the state. Her political approach was more about minority appeasement to date. Hindus have never really been seen as assertive in the state and therefore till the Lok Sabha poll results, the strategy of minority appeasement was seen as successful, even if it meant undermining the Hindus. However, the Lok Sabha poll results narrated a completely different tale which left many political analysts befuddled and must also have caught the TMC supremo by surprise.
With its emphatic show in the Lok Sabha polls, the BJP has made it clear that Hindus and nationalism have not become irrelevant in West Bengal politics. PM Modi and Amit Shah proved how nationalism and undermining of Hindus were potent issues in quantifiable terms. For a party, which was virtually seen as non-existent in the state only till a few years ago, winning 18 out of 42 seats was no mean achievement. Now, it is only natural for Mamata Banerjee to realise that she needs a course correction. And in this case, that course correction is coming by raising the issue of renaming the state with the Prime Minister. She knows that the BJP’s vote base in the state is new and developing. It has not yet solidified and therefore she seems to be trying hard to somehow pull it back.
It is in this light that the sudden urgency and priority being given to the renaming of the state must be seen. This might make the nationalists happy, but it does not take away the fact that this move is a sign of desperation on the part of a down and out political leader who is now trying to ride on the nationalist sentiment and somehow stay relevant for another term in power in the state.