Opinion | Ma, Maati, Manush Vs Infiltrators: Battle Of Narratives In Bengal |
Opinion | Ma, Maati, Manush Vs Infiltrators: Battle Of Narratives In Bengal
Updated: Apr 29, 2026 10:05 am IST Published On Apr 29, 2026 10:05 am IST Last Updated On Apr 29, 2026 10:05 am IST
Published On Apr 29, 2026 10:05 am IST
Last Updated On Apr 29, 2026 10:05 am IST
There is a particular quality to the political air of Bengal in election season - thick with the fragrance of jasmine, smoke and old argument, with the smell of fish curry drifting past campaign hoardings, and somewhere, always, the sound of drums that could equally be announcing a puja or a rally. It is a state that has never done anything quietly. It invented the Bengal Renaissance, gave India four Nobel laureates, its longest running socialist government, and for 15 years, given the rest of the country a spectacle it cannot quite decode: A woman in a white cotton saree and white rubber chappals, walking barefoot through floods, who has become the longest-serving Chief Minister in the state's post-Left history.
On May 4, as the counting machines begin their cold arithmetic, Bengal will be trying to answer a question: Who belongs to this land? And more precisely -- who gets to ask?
Two narratives have stalked this election with the intensity of monsoon clouds. On one side, Mamata Banerjee's Ma, Mati, Manush -- Mother, Soil, People -- that three-word invocation she coined in 2011 when she broke 34 years of Left rule with the force of a woman who had been lathi-charged, teargassed, and politically buried more times than any reasonable person would survive.
On the other, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah's thunderous campaign noun: Ghushpaithi - infiltrators - the word that the BJP has made into a political instrument as sharp as any sickle the Communists once wielded in these very fields.
Speaking in Bangaon ahead of the second phase of election, PM Modi hit out at the key constituency of Mamata Banerjee, listing sexual assaults on women since the party "came to power 15 years ago". He ripped into Trinamool saying it betrayed its own slogan "Ma Mati Manush". "'Ma' is crying, 'maati' is with infiltrators, 'maanush' is scared," he added.
Two words. Two visions. One Bengal.
The Gospel of Ma, Mati, Manush
To understand what Mamata Banerjee's slogan means in the body and bones of Bengal, one has to stand for a moment in Gangasagar, where the sacred river meets the sea, or in the tea gardens of Dooars where the pluckers have been poor for a hundred years, or in the Muslim fishing villages of the Sundarbans where the land is being swallowed by saltwater.........