“Churchill and Roosevelt wanted to end communism,” thunders the Congress’s Abdul Mannan at a public meeting in Khardah, “but faced with the far greater danger of fascism, they joined hands with Stalin to destroy Hitler and save the world.”
With desperate times calling for desperate measures, the CPI(M)-led Left Front and the Congress, implacable political foes for decades, have teamed up in West Bengal to take on Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
In 2011, the ruling Trinamool Congress tied up with the Congress and ousted the Left Front that had been in power for 34 years. Five years on, it is Ms. Banerjee versus the rest. The BJP, of course, is contesting on its own, but it is a minor player.
Till the Left and the Congress came together, political opinion here was that it would be a cakewalk for the Trinamool. The Left Parties had yet to recoup, and the Congress is confined to the three northern districts of Uttar Dinajpur, Malda and Murshidabad.
But pressure from CPI(M) and Congress workers and political pragmatism at the top saw the two come together. While no one is willing to bet on an upset yet, the fact is this coalition has rattled Ms. Banerjee. Her speeches — such as the one she delivered on Friday at Paschim Mednipur’s Narayangarh, from where Surjya Kanta Misra, the face of the CPI(M), is contesting — focus on the “opportunism” of the two allies.
On Thursday evening, at a busy T-junction in Khardah’s Rathaur Bazaar, this new friendship is on display with the CPI(M) and the Congress gathered to endorse the former CPI(M) Finance Minister Asim Das Gupta’s candidature.
The stage here is draped in red and the chairs are red too. But the Congress’s tricolour peeps through the red flags that flutter above. And if Congress stalwarts Abdul Mannan and Arunabha Ghosh are hailed with cries of “Lal Salaam”, CPI(M) veterans Asim Dasgupta and Gautam Deb are honoured with Congress scarves. Party workers mingle and there is much bonhomie.
It is a sight that the bemused speakers emphasise is “unbelievable”, but it is one that has aroused enthusiasm. Conversations in the villages of North 24 Parganas — of the 33 Assembly seats here, the Trinamool currently holds 28 — are revealing: there is an acknowledgement that this alliance has made the widely anticipated walkover for the Trinamool into a keenly fought contest.
The speakers do not waste time on the Trinamool candidate, Finance Minister Amit Mitra, who joined politics straight from his stewardship of FICCI five years ago. Instead, they target Ms. Banerjee for the corruption and suppression of democratic rights fostered by her regime, and their reasons for coming together.
Their object, says Mr. Deb, one of the prime supporters of the alliance, is “not to capture power, but to remove Mamata Banerjee and save democracy.” Mr Dasgupta stresses that this is as much a battle to save democracy in West Bengal as in the country, against the Trinamool’s culture of political violence and intimidation, and the BJP’s propagation of communalism.
Equally, there is an effort to shatter Ms. Banerjee’s halo of being an honest politician being undermined by corrupt associates.
