Tag: Bengal

T-shirts with images of Mamata Banerjee, Narendra Modi, Rahul Gandhi and logo of CPI (M). Reuters/Rupak De Chowdhuri The party has virtually no opposition in West Bengal. This has led to an entrenchment of violent elements.

An installation by Sudipta Das. Photo by author. West Bengal must choose between BJP’s tall claims, Left’s cluelessness and TMC’s governance by gamble. The elections in Bengal seem to have become something of a national pastime. I cannot recall a period when the national media has spent this much time pondering over Bengal’s future. This must surely be an anomaly. The word future in the context of Bengal challenges even the most resolute. The once-mighty Bengal’s perceived fall from grace…

An etching that puns on the Kali figure. There cannot be a three-way election in 2021. That would mean an advantage for BJP, as it will cannibalise on the factionalism in the TMC and on the irrelevance of the CPIM. The dictionary meaning of blunderbuss is two-fold. The more archaic meaning stands for a gun with a short, large barrel, to be fired only at close range. The second meaning refers to an action lacking subtlety and precision. Either…

A painting by Laluprasad Shaw It would be wrong to say that the BJP is taking the Left’s place in Bengal. (co-authored with Anirban Biswas) Jayanta Ghosal’s article ‘Among the believers in Bengal’ (IE, March 26) is so full of cocky generalisations and mistaken observations that it needs a riposte. To begin with, his argument bestows a monolithic identity on the “Bengali”, while using bhadrolok and “Bengali” as interchangeable nomenclature. To remind that within the overarching umbrella of the linguistic…

Red deluged. Photo by author. In Bengal, the party turned institutions into fiefdoms, just like the RSS now wants to make JNU and the government bureaucracy its own.  There is no reason to mourn the death of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). One did hear such laments after the Tripura results came last week. Some on social media and in newspaper columns asked the CPI(M) to introspect. They urged the party to ‘emerge again’ as the chief custodian of…

Representative image of a retro television set with antenna This election is a landmark event not just because of the possibility of a long-overdue change but also because the parties may have understood the difference between mass and polity, writes Sayandeb Chowdhury Tomorrow, Bengal steps into a landmark election. It’s a livewire event — complete with high-voltage, intensive campaigning, television debates, repartees in the media and of course gauche, garrulous throwaways. For reasons historical and emotional, this election is being…