Features

Bengal Turns BJP, Didi Falls

Published

3 weeks ago

2026/05/10

Mamata Banerjee

During peak hours of the election campaign in West Bengal there was a joke circulating on social media and in ordinary public conversation. Accordingly, “Yesterday, in a star hotel in Kolkata, there was a Bengali wedding function. The board at the entrance to the venue read: Pinki weds Chiku. Someone asked the bride’s father why he used nicknames and not proper names. The father replied that the hotel management refused and threatened to cancel the booking if he insisted on using the real names of the couple. It would have read: Mamata weds Narendra.”

The result, when it finally arrived, made that joke look less like satire and more like an accidental preface to a political rearrangement that had already been set in motion. Mamata Banerjee widely known as Didi, who once defined Bengal’s political grammar almost single-handedly, has been decisively defeated. The BJP has crossed into a space it had never occupied in the state before, converting long-standing opposition energy into governing authority.

The numbers themselves are blunt enough. BJP: 207 seats out of 294. Trinamool Congress: 81. The rest fragmented. Mamata Banerjee did not accept the result in the way electoral convention expects. She said, without hesitation, “This mandate has been taken away, not given.” In another statement she went further: “The voter list has been cleaned to remove my people.” Whether one agrees with her claim or not, it is now part of the political record that she has challenged the legitimacy of the process rather than its outcome.

The Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls became one of the central flashpoints. Nearly nine million names were removed during the exercise. The Election Commission described it as verification. The BJP described it as correction. The Trinamool described it as exclusion. There is no neutral emotional space around such a number. In villages and urban wards alike, people spoke less about ideology and more about whether their names still existed on paper. In many ways, the election was not only about who people voted for, but who was allowed to vote at all.

The presence of central forces in unprecedented scale added another visible layer. More than a thousand companies were deployed across phases. Armoured movement through rural roads, checkpoints near polling stations, and armed presence inside schools turned the act of voting into something physically mediated by security infrastructure. Supporters of the ruling party at the Centre called it protection. Critics called it pressure. A voter in a district near Murshidabad described it in plain terms: “We were voting, but we were not alone in the room.”

Violence after the results reinforced the volatility of the transition. Reports of arson, targeted killings, and retaliatory attacks spread across multiple districts. One of the most widely reported incidents was the killing of Chandranath Rath, aide to BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari. Police confirmed that he was shot on his way home, with spent cartridges recovered at the scene. No arrests were immediately made. Adhikari called it “a cold-blooded murder in broad daylight.” The Trinamool Congress condemned the killing as well, stating that “violence has no place in democracy,” but also accused BJP supporters of attacks in other areas.

This pattern is not new to Bengal politics. What changes is scale and alignment. In earlier cycles, violence was often intra-local, tied to competing party structures embedded within neighbourhood life. This time, the conflict feels less distributed and more synchronized with the electoral result itself. The shift from contest to consequence is visible in how quickly organizational networks reacted once the outcome became clear.

At the centre of the political shift lies a deeper fatigue. Mamata Banerjee’s long tenure began with a historic removal of the Left Front in 2011. At that time she embodied rupture, a break from decades of Communist dominance. Over time, however, the same structure that once appeared as liberation began to appear as accumulation of control. Allegations of localized coercion, administrative opacity, and corruption in municipal systems became persistent background noise rather than isolated accusations. Whether fully substantiated or not in each case, they formed a political atmosphere that gradually thickened.

The BJP campaign understood this erosion and did not rely on a single narrative. It combined governance promises with sharper identity framing. Migration, border security, and citizenship verification became recurring themes. In one rally, a BJP leader declared, “We will identify every illegal entry and secure Bengal’s borders.” Such statements were not peripheral; they were central to how the campaign structured its emotional appeal. At the same time, welfare delivery and direct benefit transfer systems were highlighted as administrative efficiency. The message was dual: correction and protection.

The RG Kar Medical College incident in 2024 became a turning point in public sentiment. The rape and murder of a trainee doctor triggered widespread protests, particularly among women. It became a symbol of perceived breakdown in safety systems. Political analysts repeatedly pointed to it as a moment when governance critique shifted from abstract dissatisfaction to personal fear. One psephologist noted, “Women’s security stopped being a policy issue and became a daily anxiety.”

Mamata Banerjee’s political style has always relied on direct confrontation. She built her identity on resisting central authority, from the Left era to her battles with Delhi under successive governments. Her refusal to step down immediately after the defeat fits that pattern. She continues to insist that the election outcome is not final truth but contested result. Whether that position sustains political relevance or not is now secondary to the fact that it signals refusal to normalize defeat.

At the same time, the BJP’s victory is being projected at the national level as consolidation. With governance across a large share of India’s population now under its control, party leaders have framed the result as “people choosing development over stagnation.” Prime Minister Narendra Modi, addressing supporters after the result, said, “This is not just victory, it is trust in performance.”

There is also a quieter structural shift underneath the electoral outcome. With Bengal now aligned to the Centre, federal friction reduces in one of India’s most politically sensitive states. Earlier resistance from a major eastern state to central policy frameworks will no longer function as counterweight. This changes not only administrative coordination but also political imagination of opposition space in India.

Yet the more important shift is not numerical but behavioural. Elections in Bengal are no longer being experienced as predictable cycles of alternation between entrenched forces. Instead, they are becoming moments of systemic reset. The presence of voter list revisions, tribunal interventions, security deployments, and post-election violence suggests a state where electoral democracy is increasingly mediated by institutional expansion beyond the ballot itself.

The phrase increasingly used to describe this environment is “Modicracy”, a term pointing to a system where electoral legitimacy, administrative control, and political narrative align under a dominant centralized leadership. Whether one accepts the term or not, the Bengal election offers empirical material for its use. A long-standing regional political order has been replaced not simply by another party, but by a different scale of governance logic.

What remains uncertain is not whether Mamata Banerjee’s era has ended, but what kind of political equilibrium will replace it. The BJP’s victory is decisive, but it inherits a state with deep political memory, strong local identities, and a history of resistance to uniform authority. The same electorate that delivered a landslide today has in the past overturned dominant parties without hesitation.

For now, however, the political map of Bengal has shifted in a way that is difficult to reverse in the short term. The structures of power, once anchored in a single regional force, now sit within a broader national framework. Mamata Banerjee’s defeat is not just a personal political loss; it marks the end of an extended phase in Bengal’s political history where one leader defined the state’s direction almost entirely.

What replaces it will depend not only on governance performance but on whether the electorate continues to view political change as correction or as replacement. At present, the answer is already inscribed in the numbers, the institutions, and the rhetoric that surrounds them. Or are we witnessing the final phase of India’s democracy as we have known it, before it is replaced by an entirely different political order?

by Nilantha Ilangamuwa

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Features

The Division Bell Mystery

Published

1 day ago

2026/05/29

Thilina Walpola

Tales of Mystery and Suspense 3

The murder, in a private dining room in the house, is of a financier with whom the government was negotiating a loan. When this seemed difficult the Minister of Home Affairs agreed to lead discussions, since he had known Mr Oissel the financier when they were young. Hence the private dinner, but when the Minister stepped out for a vote, Oissel was shot just as the Division Bell rang.

The Brahms and Simon detective novels, the first of which I wrote about last week, were amongst several books by the pair that Robert Scoble gave me when I was in Australia towards the end of last year. Amongst them was another thriller of a very different sort, though that too was written and set between the wars.

Called The Division Bell Mystery, it was set in the House of Commons, the first such book I believe, and was by Ellen Wilkinson, a Labour MP who became Minister of Education in Attlee’s government after the war, having served previously as Parliamentary Private Secretary to several ministers. Her hero Robert West is also a PPS, but a conservative, and his Minister, of Home Affairs, is an old style aristocrat, not much loved by the less orthodox Prime Minister, who nevertheless needs his support on many occasions.

The murder, in a private dining room in the house, is of a financier with whom the government was negotiating a loan. When this seemed difficult the Minister of Home Affairs agreed to lead discussions, since he had known Mr Oissel the financier when they were young. Hence the private dinner, but when the Minister stepped out for a vote, Oissel was shot just as the Division Bell rang.

West was just outside the door when the shot was heard, and when he opened it saw only the dead body with a revolver beside it. The assumption that this was suicide was however challenged by Oissel’s grand-daughter Annette, who was his heir, on the grounds that he would never have killed himself. But her view was given greater credence by the Inspector put in charge of the case who said there were no burn marks on the body which would have been the case had Oissel fired the pistol himself.

Matters are complicated by the fact that Oissel’s flat had been burgled while he was at dinner, and Jenks the policeman allocated to him, who had served the Home Secretary and seemed more acceptable to Oissel than someone from the Security Service, had been killed. Matters get even more complicated when Annette says her grand-father’s notebook in which he wrote his secrets in cipher was missing.

That was found in Jenks’ pocket, and then a photographer came to West to say he had been asked by Jenks to photograph this. More worryingly for West, he finds in the Home Secretary’s drawer a few pages from the notebook with what appears to be an interpretation of the cipher.

Ellen

Overwhelmed by all this he confides in a recently created peer who knows all about the business world, who insists that they leave the house party at which they had met over dinner and discuss the matter with the Prime Minister who promptly summons the Home Secretary.

But the Home Secretary had gone to Scotland to launch a ship over the weekend, so the meeting could take place only on the morning of the Monday, when difficult questions were expected on the adjournment motion. He admits at the meeting that he had got Jenks to take the notebook, and also that he knew the code since it had been created by him and Oissel when they were young.

He thought he should resign, and even contemplated suicide, but the Prime Minister told him that that would be even worse for the government, and that he should go home to bed. The Prime Minister said that he himself would handle the question, which he did with aplomb, insisting that confidentiality was needed until the inquest. What had happened would be made clear then, he declared, leaving West and Inspector Blackit and Lord Dalbeattie what seemed the impossible task of solving the murder.

Dalbeattie had suggested that West ask a female Labour MP who was very fond of him to get what information she could from the staff. That there was some involvement there had become clear when West, going back late one night to collect a briefcase he had left in a dining room, found someone lurking in the dark in the corridor outside the private rooms. Room J, where the murder had happened, was meant to be guarded throughout by a policeman, but he had left the room having felt dizzy, and it seemed that his coffee had been drugged. West’s sudden appearance however had prevented anyone else getting into the room.

Dalbeattie decides to recreate the scene of the murder and has a dinner party in Room J on the Tuesday night, inviting West and Annette and the society hostess at whose house he had met, and also Patrick Kinnaird, an MP who was engaged to Annette, as well as the Permanent Secretary to the Home Ministry.

After coffee Inspector Blackit comes in with Grace, the Labour MP who had got the confidence of the staff, and a journalist who had also been helpful, and just as they say they think they are on the track the division bell rings. Grace jumps up and tells the Inspector that that provides the solution and they get a ladder, and sure enough find the revolver in the space where the bell is. Directed at the place where Oissel had sat, it had been primed to go off with the ringing of the bell. The waiter who had helped to set things up made clear who the murderer had been.

The reason for the murder and the confused motives of all those involved made for a fascinatingly intricate mix. But also impressive in the book were the descriptions of the isolation possible in the crowded premises of the house, the forceful characterization of the members – Grace based on the writer, the society hostess based on Nancy Astor, the first female MP – and the laid back nature of senior politicians which West realized had to change in the brave new world of high finance.

Features

The challenge of keeping value-based politics alive

Published

2 days ago

2026/05/28

Sahan Weerasooriya

Anti-migrant protests in Durban, South Africa. BBC

The current outbreak of anti-immigrant protests in Durban, South Africa is bound to have taken many a subscriber to value-based politics or political idealism quite by surprise. After all, this is evidence that despite the historic accomplishments of nation-builders of the stature of the late President Nelson Mandela it cannot be taken for granted that identity politics, including racism in its worst forms, is no more in South Africa.

At the time of this writing details are scarce on the substantive root causes of the protests but it could very well be that economic grievances, particularly on the part of the majority community in South Africa, are contributing considerably to the disaffection. Shrinking employment and material prospects are likely to figure majorly among the factors igniting the unrest.

Fortunately, the local authorities in Durban are losing no time in calling for peaceful co-existence among the relevant communities and are pointing to the vital importance of stepping-up national integration processes. Apparently, immigrants in sizable numbers from neighbouring countries are present in Durban. However, international TV footage of the protests quoted some local authorities as saying that the majority of the immigrants in some centres that housed them were not illegal migrants and had the documents that entitle them to be in Durban.

In the Durban protests the world has fresh proof of the socially divisive consequences of the gathering globe-wide economic disaffection, touched off particularly by the continuing crisis in West Asia. Going ahead, the world would need to brace for increasing identity-based unrest of the kind it is just witnessing in South Africa.

Considering that the material lot of ordinary people everywhere could only aggravate progressively, with the US and Iran showing no signs of negotiating an end to their confrontation any time soon, it will be left to the more democratic and progressive sections of the world community to initiate positive measures collectively to bring a measure of relief to the discontented.

The swiftness with which such relief will be provided would depend crucially on the importance those sections taking up these undertakings attach to value-based politics as opposed to Realpolitik of power politics.

Going by these yardsticks, Italy could be considered to be moving in the right direction. Recently Italy came to the fore in initiating the collective named, ‘Rome Coalition for Food Security and Access to Fertilizer’, which has as one of its aims the swift provision of fertilizer to economically weak African countries.

In a recent statement Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Antonio Tajani, said that a principal aim of the project was to ensure that the farmers of Africa gained easy access to fertilizer, considering that food security is a growing concern among some of Africa’s economically vulnerable countries.

The statement went on to mention that some 30 countries hailing from the Mediterranean region, the Middle East, the Balkans as well as the FAO had been invited to join the coalition. The venture is far-seeing in that food security is main among the reasons for social discontent which in turn could degenerate into endemic political turmoil and bloodshed. Separatist violence and geographical fragmentation of countries wouldn’t be too far behind these developments, as Africa itself has often proved.

It is hoped that more G7 countries would take the cue from Italy and do what they could to ease the hardships of economically distressed countries, particularly of the global South. In these efforts they would need to break rank with the US, which is today brutally indifferent to the consequences of its policy of making ‘America First’, come what may.

Going by current developments, the Trump administration seems to be blithely oblivious to the wider, deleterious effects of its policy course in West Asia. Besides rendering Iran militarily and otherwise impotent nothing else seems to matter to Washington, as regards West Asia. This is policy short-sightedness of an extreme kind. After all, right now West Asia could be said to be sitting on the proverbial powder keg.

On the other hand, Iran is not giving the world the impression that it is doing anything constructive to get out of the policy straitjacket that it wove for itself decades ago. Rather than enter into a policy of ‘live and let live’ in relation to Israel in particular and initiate a process of reconciliation with the latter, it has chosen to operate within policy parameters that continue to damn Israel. This has put Israel always on the ‘defensive’ so to speak and prevented the opening up of space for meaningful dialogue.

That said, Israel is obliged to explore the possibilities of entering into a negotiatory process with the Arab-Islamic world that could lead to a de-escalation of tensions and bloodshed. It cannot continue to look at its neighbours through lenses that distort them as archetypal enemies who should be ‘wiped off completely from the face of the earth.’

In other words, the need is urgent for Realpolitik to give way to value-based politicks. Italy is beginning to prove that the latter approach could be pursued with some success. May be the EU and the UK could throw their weight behind these initiatives as well and establish that international politics could be refashioned on the basis of humane, civilized norms. The UN would need to be fully supportive of these moves and prove an organizational nucleus of the operations that follow.

In fact the time is ripe for people of conscience to collectively stand up on the side of peace and say ‘No’ to war and violence. Organizations such as the ICRC, the WHO and Medicines Sans Frontiers have already taken up this call. Referring to the widespread destruction of health facilities and their dehumanizing results these organizations have said, among other things, that ‘This is not a failure of the law. It is a failure of political will.’

True, ‘failure of political will’ among those powers that matter accounts for the runaway, uncontrollable nature of war and destruction in contemporary times, but more fundamentally it is a failure of the human conscience. It could very well be that the phenomenal levels to which violence and war have been unleashed today have had the effect of deadening consciences. This is a matter for urgent study and wide discussion.

Features

Vesak celebrations … with Cuteefly

Published

2 days ago

2026/05/28

Sahan Weerasooriya

Perfect for celebrations, gifts, and meaningful occasions // Gift pack

I would describe Indunil Kaushalya Dissanayaka as innovative and creative, and she operates under the name of Cuteefly.

Indunil always comes up with something novel to celebrate special occasions, and she does it with candles … and that’s her profession.

She was in the spotlight when she created a happening scene, with candles, for Christmas, Sinhala and Tamil New Year, and Valentine’s Day.

As lanterns light up Sri Lanka for Vesak, the Colombo-based candle maker is quietly turning wax and wick into little pieces of the festival.

Candles reflecting Vesak themes

Her candles reflect Vesak themes – light, peace, remembrance, giving, etc., to enable you to fill your Vesak celebration with devotion and beauty.

Among her Vesak creations is a lotus-shaped soy candle, scented with sandalwood, lavender, etc., meant to burn during this Vesak Poya Day.

Indunil Kaushalya Dissanayaka: Customers
praise her for her creativity

These handcrafted Vesak candles are perfect for offering at the temple, she says.

What makes her creations so novel is that they come in different shapes, scents, themes, and all are handmade.

What’s more, her customers have heaped praise on her for her creativity.

According to Indunil, her creations are perfect as a thoughtful gift … to bring beauty, unity, and light into every moment.

Says Indunil: “Our beautifully handcrafted Unity candles are designed with premium detail and love, making them perfect for celebrations, gifts, and meaningful occasions.”

Cuteefly, says Indunil, is available online.

Readers could contact Indunil on 0778506066 for more details.

He Facebook Page is: Cuteefly.