Dilip Ghosh, eager for a while to claw his way back to some clout in the state leadership, on Wednesday doubled down on Suvendu Adhikari’s polarisation pitch, staunchly defending the latter's aggressive rhetoric.
On Wednesday, speaking to journalists at Krishnanagar, the former state BJP president lashed out at Mamata’s party for failing to act against its minority leaders who allegedly targeted BJP leaders.
“The way some Muslim MLAs and MPs have been threatening BJP leaders… and even saying they will throw them into the river, such a reaction (from Adhikari) was quite natural,” claimed Ghosh.
Ghosh said: “If our party’s leaders had made such threats, Trinamool would have responded in the same manner.”
“That is why such a response was delivered… it has become an obvious reaction to an action,” he insisted. “It is the responsibility of the (ruling party) to control its own people, and we will also control ours.”
Former state unit chief Ghosh, who has uneasily found himself on the sidelines since the autumn of 2021, seems to have mended his purportedly testy ties with the leader of the Opposition recently. The newfound ties, reportedly following a call from the BJP legislature party for a truce between the two in a bid to defeat Mamata Banerjee next year, have been underscored with an Assembly meet-and-greet, replete with a photo op. The Nandigram MLA — who defected from the Trinamool Congress to the BJP under Ghosh’s leadership in December 2020 — was one of the key figures who led to the former Medinipur MP’s fall from grace.
On March 11, Adhikari said: “And their Muslim MLAs that will emerge victorious and come here — the BJP will form the government — we will pick them up by the arms and the legs and throw them on the road! Ten months later, we will throw them on this very road!”
These assertions from Adhikari and Ghosh come even as their party’s Minority Morcha has launched the Saugat-e-Modi, a nationwide Eid outreach, distributing gifts such as food items, clothes, vermicelli, dry fruits and sugar to the minorities.
The outreach was inaugurated in Delhi by the BJP’s national president J.P. Nadda.
Avowedly secular and pluralist for over two decades in the Trinamool Congress, Adhikari has become increasingly vitriolic in his newfound fondness for communalism since switching sides in December 2020, more so since the BJP ended up with 12 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats here.
In July last year, after the Lok Sabha polls, Adhikari declared that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s slogan of Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas (with everyone, development for everyone) should be replaced with Jo Hamarey Saath, Hum Unkey Saath (with only those who are with us), before proposing to abolishing the party’s Minority Morcha.
When the turmoil in Bangladesh intensified, Adhikari sensed in it an opportunity to push the envelope to consolidate Hindu votes through polarisation, repeatedly claiming to be the voice of all of Bengal’s Hindus.
Many influential sections within the party — both in Bengal and Delhi — do have firm faith in the Adhikari experiment.
However, several factions in the state leadership have admitted to discomfort over his vitriol against Muslims, who form a third of the state’s population and decide the outcome of 120-odd of the 294 Assembly seats.
'Putana' remarks
Ghosh on Wednesday also attacked women Trinamool supporters who had protested against him in Kharagpur last week.
“I will worship Sita and Draupadi, but not Putana,” said Ghosh, referring to characters from mythological epics from the Ramayan and the Mahabharat.
“I chased away a few Putanas (demonesses) that day. I had said that I would mow them down with my car,” he added, in remarks guaranteed to fuel the controversy.
“… we will make Sita sit in the mother’s seat, not Putana. We will drive the car over the chests of these Putanas, because they have come disguised as mothers. Shri Krishna understood this when he was only six days old…. I have turned 60,” Ghosh said.
A senior BJP state committee leader, on condition of anonymity, said that Adhikari’s statements had already caused enough problems and wondered why Ghosh was now trying to compound them with his "Putana" comments to refer to women Trinamool supporters.
“This will hurt us in the elections unless the top leadership intervenes immediately to restrain both the leaders…. What might work in the bovine belt will almost inevitably fail in Bengal,” the BJP leader said. “Such language from Ghosh, despite repeated warnings, had cost us in the 2021 Assembly election and was one of the reasons for his removal. What new gains does he hope to make this time, one wonders."