People's Democracy

Trinamul, Naxalites Chase Away Dasmunshi

A COUPLE of dozen-odd irate Trinamul Congress and Naxalite activists chose to heckle and jostle ‘PM’s emissary’ and Pradesh Congress leader of the pro-Mamata Banerjee faction, P R Dasmunshi and drove him away from the dharna manch in downtown Kolkata where the Trinamul chieftain remains ‘on fast,’ for the 22nd consecutive day.

The day started with hectic activities on the part of the pro-Dasmunshi men and women of the Trinamul Congress making fervent appeals for the ‘PM’s intervention” to ensure Mamata Banerjee ended her programme. In the meanwhile, the Trinamul supremo had undergone a lot of climb-down from the days barely a month back when she had chortled that she ‘would not allow any automobile factory to come up in Singur, at all.’ She was now desperate enough to want the Bengal Left Front government to ‘assure that land would be returned to those who had given land unwillingly.’

Dasmunshi conscious of his pro-Mamata stance inside the Pradesh Congress received ‘an assurance’ from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (in the metropolis for an official programme at the Indian Statistical Institute) that a request would be made to Mamata Banerjee to cut short her fasting. Dasmunshi carried with him a letter not from the PM but from himself delineating therein the ‘PM’s wishes.’ This was duly leaked to Mamata Banerjee and her Naxalite stormtroopers who have been clinging like a bunch of persistent leeches onto the dharna manch of late. 

No sooner had Dasmunshi along with two of his henchmen approached the manch, a furore sparked off. Through the jostling Dasmunshi somehow managed to reach the fasting Trinamul chief and bending unctuously low before Mamata Banerjee, communicated his letter to her. A furious Mamata dismissed Dasmunshi’s letter as ‘lollipop’ and said that she had been on fast for real and not trivial reasons, taking ‘nothing but water, and that, too, during the night-time only, minus oral rehydration solutions, too.’ 

She then started in a voice and demeanour forceful than ever, to address her thinning group of Trinamul, Naxalite, and SUCI takers, telling them that the automobile factory was a ‘joint venture with participation of the Congress.’ She had of course been informed by now that that Prime Minister Singh had identified Bengal as an advanced industrial state in the days to come, and not a mention of Singur. 

Dasmunshi’s lugubrious progress from the manch to his official car was filled with plenty of push-and-shove, and with loud and ornery expression of the kind of expletives that only the low-life peopling the Trinamul Congress, the SUCI, and the Naxalite groups are capable of uttering. The verbal abuse was followed by resounding cries of ‘go back Dasmunshi, you thieving agent of the Tata Motors.’ Later, Dasmunshi would blame only the Naxalites for his discomfiture at the manch.