New Delhi: After her stupendous victory in Bengal, Mamata Banerjee is being projected as the one who is capable of taking on Narendra Modi in the 2024 general elections. But while eulogising the “street fighter” in Mamata and ignoring her weaknesses, most of the commentators have overlooked the remarkable performance of M.K. Stalin in Tamil Nadu and Pinarayi Vijayan in Kerala in the South.
However, the return of DMK to power after a decade in Tamil Nadu and a consecutive second term for a Left Front government in four decades in Kerala are likely to be more decisive for the country in the next five years than Mamata’s win in Bengal.
This is simply because Stalin’s DMK and the CPM under Vijayan, or someone else, are ideologically better equipped than Mamata Banerjee to confront BJP’s Hindutva nationalist politics.
This is not to diminish the single-handed victory of Mamata against the modern day akshauhini pada—Union ministers, chief ministers, the Election Commission and all other mechanisms at the beck and call of the ruling formation—led by the formidable Modi-Shah duo.
The point is that Mamata Banerjee has been a loner in all her fights, be it against patriarchy in Bengal Congress from where she emerged like a phoenix or later against the growing Left fascism in that state under CPM and now against the BJP’s vicious divisive politics.
Bereft of any ideology, Mamata runs her Trinamool Congress single-handedly. Even now, little is known about the organisational set-up of the party. What are the norms that guide hierarchy in the party? All that is known is that anything and everything in Trinamool Congress begins and ends with Mamata Banerjee. She is the God of All Things.
In recent times, there has been talk of her grooming her nephew, but Mamata Banerjee has made it clear that it is too sensitive a subject whenever journalists try to raise the issue. As of now, if you remove Mamata Banerjee from the picture, no one can say what the fate of Trinamool Congress will be tomorrow. The party’s very existence revolves around Didi.
And now they talk of Didi being the glue that would stick a disparate Opposition together in their fight against Narendra Modi. The fact of the matter is that so far, Mamata Banerjee has been able to rally people around her on her terms. Not the other way around. Each time the people of Bengal had a reason to look up to her as the immediate saviour. That may not be the case all the time, especially when looked at an all-India level.
This is where the importance of Stalin and Pinarayi Vijayan and their roles in shaping the Opposition’s fight against the BJP comes in. Though he held many important posts in the DMK over the years, till the time of Karunanidhi’s death in 2018, Stalin was under the shadow of his father. But once he took charge, he has proved to be a seasoned politician. Immediately after taking charge, Stalin could lead his party commendably in the 2019 general elections. The United Progressive Alliance, led by the DMK, won a landslide victory taking 38 of the 39 seats. The AIADMK, which had won 37 seats in 2014 under the leadership of the late J. Jayalalithaa, could manage to win just one seat.
Stalin had come of age. People accepted him not as the son of Karunanidhi, but as the president of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, a Dravidian party that upheld principles of social democracy and stood for social justice. He lived up to his role. As Leader of the Opposition in the state Assembly, Stalin had never attempted to topple the Edappadi Palaniswami government even when it was in a minority following the disqualification of 18 AIADMK legislators. At a time when the AIADMK leadership was dilly-dallying over CAA, Stalin was firm that DMK would not implement the contentious law if voted to power.
In this Assembly election, the alliance of DMK, Congress, Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (formerly Dalit Panthers of India) and the communist parties has bagged 159 out of a total of 234. The figures may not be very impressive, but Stalin has been able to keep his party and the alliance together. This is no mean achievement in the light of the other Dravidian party playing a subservient role to the BJP which has zero presence in the state. That the AIADMK leadership must now be rueing its decision is another matter altogether. Another important takeaway from this election is that the DMK did not fall into the usual trap of Hindutva laid out by the BJP. Though initially there was confusion among the DMK ranks when BJP attempted to play the Murugan (the popular Tamil god who wields a trident) card by taking out a “Vel Yatra”, the leadership soon regained composure. It will be good if Stalin includes allies also in his maiden Cabinet.
The CPM’s performance under the leadership of Pinarayi Vijayan in Kerala is outstanding since the Left Front was routed in the 2019 general elections when it had lost 19 of the 20 Lok Sabha seats to the very same rivals, Congress-led United Democratic Front. The way the Left Front bounced back in the Assembly polls is historic; never before has a communist front won in the state so handsomely. It bagged 99 of the 140 seats, with CPM alone winning 67 seats. With the CPI winning 17 seats, the communists are capable of forming a government on their own, once again a first in the state’s political history. The Congress and BJP’s attempts to raise the Sabarimala issue were blunted. The BJP’s lone account in the state Assembly was also closed for good.
Over the last five years, Vijayan had built up an image of a “doer”, but in the process earned the moniker “Mundudutha Modi” or “Modi in dhoti”. It is true that Vijayan has an autocratic way of functioning; his ministers seldom air their opinions. It is always “as our honourable chief minister said or pointed out or has made it clear”. But perhaps no other chief minister has had such a tough five-year tenure as Vijayan in the recent past. The state experienced two deluges, one the worst in a century, outbreak of two epidemics, Nipah virus disease in 2018 and now Covid-19.
In between, Vijayan had led his party’s political battles too, the most important his stand against the CAA. The Kerala Assembly was the first to pass a resolution against the draconian Act. But what struck a chord in the people’s mind was his ability to bring arch rival opposition Congress to share the podium with him when the Left held a day’s dharna in the state capital Thiruvananthapuram against the law. Earlier, Vijayan had made such a gesture when he invited Leader of the Opposition Ramesh Chennithala to accompany him in a chopper to survey the flood affected areas.
Now that the CPM-led front is back in power, Pinarayi Vijayan’s stature within the party and the state has risen. His age, he is past 77, and certain undisclosed ailments are things to worry about. But CPM is wary of the mistakes the party had made under Jyoti Basu’s three-decade old uninterrupted rule in Bengal. The party is now without a single MLA in the West Bengal Assembly for the first time since 1957. The Marxist party leadership is set to replace all its ministers in Kerala, the only exception being K.K. Shailaja, the “rock star” Health Minister, who had won accolades across the globe for her handling of the coronavirus spread in the state. Earlier, the party had denied tickets to 34 sitting MLAs, among them some heavyweights in the party. Pinarayi Vijayan will continue by dint of his leadership qualities.
Compared to Stalin or Pinarayi Vijayan, Mamata Banerjee is very unlikely to reach out to other Opposition parties, Congress and CPM, in her fight against BJP. She in all probability will be busy guarding her citadel the next five years. Rather, the Centre and the current BJP leadership with open support from the RSS will do everything to unsettle her. Already, the process has been set in motion. The Centre’s decision to provide security cover to all 77 BJP MLAs in the state and the Governor’s decision to visit areas affected by post-poll violence are just the beginning of the real khela.
Mamata Banerjee’s tendency to take decisions at the spur of the moment will only complicate issues that may lead to her undoing. Ideology rather than populism is the need of the hour. The onus is on Stalin and Pinarayi to propel a southern surge to combat BJP’s hyper Hindu nationalism. The role assigned to them by DMK and the CPM is crucial in shaping the country’s destiny in the coming years.