Didi's soft Hindutva to leverage votes before polls
The Statesman|June 23, 2023
Yesterday, on the day of Rath Yatra, the “chariot journey” of the mythological Hindu god, Lord Jagannath, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee offered prayers at the feet of the deity.
DOLA MITRA
Didi's soft Hindutva to leverage votes before polls

Inaugurating the religious festival at the ISKCON temple in Kolkata, she also performed “puja” a ritual of showering rose petals and holy basil leaves on the idol and his two compatriots, Subhadra and Balaram.

Ostensibly, it was an act of a devotee worshipping the deity. In fact, Banerjee has often said, “Religion is an individual choice.”

However, make no mistake that this is also an astute politician’s poll strategy at a time when she faces two important elections – the Panchayat polls next month and the Parliamentary elections next year.

Banerjee’s chief political rival in both cases is the Bharatiya Janata Party, which with its out-and-out Hindutva ideology may not have been able to snatch “secular” Bengal in its quest to widen its base throughout the country since coming to power at the Centre in 2014, but it HAS managed to wrest some ground from right under Banerjee’s feet.

この記事は The Statesman の June 23, 2023 版に掲載されています。

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