Mamata Banerjee will on Monday lead a march from Bolpur, chosen for the area’s association with Rabindranath Tagore and Amartya Sen, kicking off her Bhasha Andolon (Language Movement).
The event will launch Mamata’s campaign for next year’s Assembly polls with a fresh narrative of Bengali pride and victimisation by the BJP. The chief minister arrived in Bolpur on Sunday evening.
“Our leader Mamata Banerjee will begin her Bhasha Andolon in Bolpur by seeking the blessings of Rabindranath Tagore, who had vehemently protested the 1905 partition of Bengal by the British with the song Banglar Mati Banglar Jol,” state urban development minister Firhad Hakim said.
“She will lead a long march against those brutalising Bengalis in BJP-ruled states.”
Hakim too was in Birbhum on Sunday, attending Nanoor Martyrs’ Day at Nanoor to remember the 11 landless farmers allegedly hacked to death by CPM-backed goons on July 27, 2000.
Mamata had in her July 21 speech in Calcutta announced plans for a statewide Bhasha Andolon amid reports of the brutalisation of Bengali-speaking migrants in BJP-ruled states like Odisha, Maharashtra and Delhi and the alleged deportation of several Bengal residents to Bangladesh.
On July 22, she had announced her Birbhum visit and her decision to launch the first protest march.
On Sunday evening, the chief minister shared a video claiming a child and his mother — migrants from Chanchal in Malda — had been beaten up by Delhi police.
“Terrible violence! Look how the Delhi Police brutally beat up a child and his mother from a migrant family in Chanchal, Malda! Not even a child is spared from BJP’s linguistic terrorism against Bengalis!” Mamata wrote on her X handle.
Mamata is expected to walk about 3km and address a gathering at Jambuni after paying tribute before a statue of Tagore.
Before the 2021 Assembly elections, the chief minister had marched along the same route with her “outsider” narrative against the BJP.