Mamata Banerjee on Monday launched her Bhasha Andolon (Language Movement) against the saffron regime’s “Bengali-phobia”, weaving into the issue the contentious special intensive revision (SIR) of the Election Commission of India that she alleged was for a “backdoor implementation” of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise.

The Bengal chief minister started the movement with a 2.5km march and a rally in Bolpur-Santiniketan, the soil associated with two of the six Nobel laureates with a Bengal connect — polymath Rabindranath Tagore and economist Amartya Sen.

“I am not against any language, but against divisive policies. We want the unity in diversity that is our nation’s foundation.... (Indian) Bengali-speakers are being harassed in (various BJP-ruled states),” she said, picking up from where she left off on the Trinamool Congress’s Martyrs’ Day event dais in Calcutta exactly a week ago.

“We will never allow (Indian) Bengalis to become homeless in their own nation... If you steal our addresses and try to make us stateless, we will make sure that you, too, are left without one.”

She had promised the Language Movement at the July 21 event.

“The Election Commission of India, with all due respect, are you playing the Centre’s NRC game? Such audacity.... Now he (chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar) is taking suggestions from the double-engine government and conspiring to remove voters so that his friend (Union home minister Amit Shah) can win. We will not bow our heads and silently tolerate this. We know how to fight,” Mamata said, adding that she would sacrifice her life but not her language, and vowing to resist alleged attempts to eliminate Bengali oshmita (pride).

Thousands gathered to witness her march from the Tourist Lodge crossing to the Jamboni bus stand. Holding a picture of Tagore, the Trinamool Congress chairperson walked, along with ministers, senior elected representatives and other leaders.

Mamata has been pulling no punches in her attacks against the BJP over the alleged linguistic discrimination and against the commission for the alleged conspiracy to disenfranchise the poor and the marginalised, who she says are unlikely to vote for the saffron camp.

Multiple sources in several sections of the saffron leadership in Bengal have already admitted to discomfort and uncertainty over the electoral outcome of this line of attack, which the BJP is yet to properly begin to address.

The Trinamool chief claimed the BJP-led Centre, hand-in-glove with the commission, was going after not only minorities but also OBCs, anybody who is poor, besides all Bengali-speaking Indians through the SIR that she believes is a covert NRC-related operation.

Daring them to try removing voters from Bengal, she said: “Those saying they will remove voters, it seems as if the country is their jomidari (fief). But the jomidari belongs only to the people, not you. Today, you are in power, so you are doing whatever you wish, misusing the agencies. Be warned, the people will rise.”

“I have faith that this Union government will not last till 2029. Do you have a place fixed for where you will go then?” she asked.

“The ECI has made a new rule that the existing lists will no longer be used, all names must be re-entered from scratch. They are asking for the birth certificates of parents... ask them if they themselves have their own birth certificates. Those who are part of this conspiracy, do they have all their documents in order?” she asked.

“I will never allow the NRC or detention camps here.... Whoever comes to collide with us will be crushed to pieces,” added the chief minister.

Expressing gratitude for all the love received from the people, Mamata underscored the role of Bengal in the Renaissance that began here and swept through South Asia in the 18th-19th centuries, and the freedom struggle that Bengalis led from the front.

Attacking Prime Minister Narendra Modi without taking his name, she said: “They only know Chai Pe Charcha and Mann Ki Baat. When you go to Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia and hug the sheikhs, do you ask whether they are Muslim?”