'Bengal Will Protect Hindustan, Won’t Allow it to Be Like Pakistan’: Mamata Woos Bengal’s Non-Bengalis

Bengal will protect Hindustan (India) and will not allow it to become Pakistan or Taliban, said West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee ahead of the Bhabanipur bypoll. She added that everyone will live in unity as this was the land of poet-laureate Rabindranath Tagore as well as Kavi Nazrul Islam, the national poet of neighbour Bangladesh.

The chief minister on Thursday was interacting with the non-Bengali community of Bhabanipur, which makes up 40 per cent of the area’s population. She said, “Bengal will protect Hindustan, and will not allow it to become Pakistan or Taliban as this was the land of Rabindranath and Nazrul, so we all will stay together.”

Though Bhabanipur is Mamata’s home turf, the BJP is trying to woo the non-Bengali community so as to project it has a larger share in the vote bank here.

The BJP has repeatedly criticised the chief minister by citing her “appeasement policy”. Political pundits, however, said the way Mamata projected the idea of unity and diversity in Bhabanipur, it might help change that image.

She referred to the BJP’s “Pakistan campaign” in Nandigram before the assembly election, and said they were trying the same in Bhabanipur as well but people’s unity was the essence of Bhabanipur.

She began the interaction by saying she felt elated that she was getting a chance to contest from Bhabanipur. “In Bhabanipur, there are many communities. We may have different religions, but we are all the same,” she said.

A party insider said Banerjee’s main focus was to answer questions about herself. She said, “I have gone to masjid; I have gone to gurdwara and mandir too. I go to Jain mandir as well and to Park Street during Christmas.”

Trinamool Congress leader Shobhondev Chatterjee, who resigned from the Bhabanipur assembly seat for Banerjee to contest the bypoll, said, “She wanted to uphold unity, which is why she said she will not allow this to become Pakistan or Taliban.”

The BJP, however, said this was an “election stunt”. “One should thank the BJP that she is now going to a mandir. She should go and say this Pakistan thing to her minister Firhad Hakim, who talks about ‘Mini Pakistan’, said her opponent and BJP candidate Priyanka Tibrewal.

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