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Mamata Banerjee announces agitation for Bengali-speaking people from July 27
Mamata Banerjee said she would not tolerate the insult of Bengali or any other language by the BJP which has been going after Bengali-speaking people
KOLKATA: Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief Mamata Banerjee on Monday told party leaders to launch a year-long movement against detention of Bengali-speaking migrant workers in Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states (BJP) on charges that they were illegal Bangladeshi immigrants.
“Today I lay the foundation stone of our fight to uproot the government at the Centre. Nobody can stop TMC. I will not tolerate the insult of Bengali or any other language,” Banerjee said at her party’s mammoth annual rally to pay homage to the 13 youth Congress workers killed in police firing in Kolkata on July 21, 1993. Banerjee, who was the state youth Congress president at that time, formed the TMC in 1998.
Banerjee announced the launch of a “Bhasha andolan” or language agitation on July 27 and asked her leaders to hold rallies every Saturday and Sunday till the state elections in 2026.
The move comes days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi targeted the TMC at his rally in Bengal on July 18, accusing the party of creating an ecosystem to shield infiltrators for political reasons.
Banerjee hit back at PM Modi, without directly naming him. “You talk big but the US president controls you. Why couldn’t you capture Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK)? What sort of Hindus are you?” Banerjee said, a reference to India accepting Pakistan’s offer for a ceasefire after a four-day conflict in May.
Among her audience were some relatives of Bitan Adhikary, a Bengali tourist killed in the Pahalgam terror attack that led India to strikes at terror installations under Operation Sindoor, and the father of Jhantu Sheikh Ali, the Army soldier killed in anti-terror operations in Kashmir in April. Banerjee offered them seats next to her on the dais.
She also referred to the planeloads of Indians who were caught by the US for illegally entering the country and sent back.
“The US President sent two planes full of people (alleged to be illegal migrants) to Gujarat. None of them were Bengalis. Bengal sends her talented people to the US. The US can’t do without them,” she said.
“You talked of torture faced by two students in Bengal. We took immediate action but what does the BJP have to say about the student who had to set herself on fire in Odisha?” Banerjee said.
She also took jabs at PM Modi for invoking Goddesses Durga and Kali in his July 18 speech instead of raising the Jai Sri Ram slogan.
“You are invoking Kali and Durga only because we have elections. Durga is our national treasure. I will set up a temple for Durga like the one I have built for Lord Jagannath. A Kali mandir was demolished in Assam recently. I wonder what you would have done if a temple were demolished here,” said Banerjee.
Much of her speech revolved around the detention of migrant workers from Bengal, which she said, was an assault on the Bengali language and the state’s rich heritage.
“On May 2, the central government sent this notification to only BJP-ruled states, empowering them to detain anyone for a month. This is why people are being detained in Odisha, Maharashtra and Gujarat. The Centre’s latest notification to Bengal wants us to have a nodal officer who will identify infiltrators in these states,” Banerjee said, waving some documents at the crowd.
“I have details of all those who were detained but I still don’t know how many have been deported to Bangladesh. A BJP leader alleged that 1.7 million Rohingyas from Myanmar are living here. The last study by the UnIted Nations said there are only one million Rohingyas in the world. Now the figure may have increased to 1.2 or 1.3 million. How can the BJP say 1.7 million Rohingyas are living in Bengal?” said Banerjee.
The TMC chief also reiterated her attack on the Election Commission, accusing the election watchdog of manipulating electoral rolls.
“They use EC and federal agencies. They are deleting names of voters and putting names of citizens from other states in our voter lists. The more you campaign against TMC, the more powerful TMC will become,” she said.
Banerjee also sought to counter the BJP’s narrative that only Muslims were being targeted in its campaign. She presented a man identified as Uttam Kumar Brajabasi, a resident of north Bengal’s Cooch Behar district, before the crowd.
“The Assam govt sent him a notice under NRC (National Register of Citizens) although he has been living in Bengal for the last 50 years. Assam chief minister, you cannot manage Assam but poke your nose into Bengal. If you don’t stop, we will start agitations in Assam. Let me see how many detention camps you have,” said Banerjee, addressing Himanta Biswa Sarma.
TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee said the TMC would “uproot the lotus in 2026. “The Assam chief minister and BJP leaders are branding Bengali-speaking people as Bangladeshis. What action has been taken against Himanata Biswa Sarma? If necessary, we will address the Parliament in Bengali in the coming session. We will not surrender.”
BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari, the leader of the opposition in the state assembly and Dilip Ghosh, the party’s former state president, addressed rallies in north Bengal’s Siliguri town and south Bengal’s Kharagpur, respectively. Both accused the TMC of protecting Muslim infiltrators from Bangladesh for electoral gains.
Banerjee took note of their public rallies to counter her events and declared that she too would hold counter-rallies whenever BJP’s national leaders attended events in Bengal.
BJP state president Samik Bhattacharya said his party has more respect for the Bengali language than Banerjee.
“Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay composed Vande Mataram, our national song. When Madanlal Khurana became chief minister of Delhi he made it mandatory to be sung at all schools. Congress, which was in power at the Centre, launched an agitation opposing it. Banerjee was a union minister. She didn’t utter a word while Saugata Roy, now a TMC Lok Sabha member, said the song has communal overtones.”
Former state Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury attacked PM Modi and Banerjee in his rally.
“Didi (Banerjee) and Modi will bring up Rohingyas, infiltrators and all such issues, before every election. They need each other. This is how they polarise votes. People need to understand this gameplan,” Chowdhury said.
