5,000 Priests to Attend Trinamool Congress Rally in Birbhum

The rally is slated to take place on 8 January.

Over 5,000 Hindu priests will attend a rally that Trinamool Birbhum president Anubrata Mondal will organise next month, in order to counter the Bharatiya Janata Party’s allegations that the TMC indulges in minority appeasement, The Telegraph reported.

Given that political parties other than the BJP in West Bengal are known for organising rallies on political and economic issues, this marks a sharp shift in strategy.

The TMC workers have been asked by Mondal to conduct a “census” of Hindu priests in each of the 19 blocks of Birbhum, where the BJP has had a considerable presence since the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, to ensure that maximum priests turn up for the 8 January rally.

We will give the priests a namabali, a Gita, books on Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda, and photographs of Sri Ramakrishna and Sarada Devi. BJP leaders are shaking at the thought of the event.

Anubrata Mondal, Trinamool Congress Birbhum president

This year, Mondal had also conducted an 11-priest yagna form Assam’s Kamakshya temple at the famous Kankalitala temple in Birbhum to counter the the RSS’ Ram Navami and Hanuman Jayanti programmes.

There is no place in our state for the Hindutva card. Our party, our government is there for all.

Anubrata Mondal

The rally is being seen as an attempt to launch a Trinamool-backed Hindu priest organisation on the lines of trade unions, which will help them gain access to government facilities and handouts.

We have already set up several gates in Bolpur to spread the news among lakhs of visitors to the Pous Mela... The gates will be retained for the Chief Minister to see when she visits the district next week.

District leader

The crowds that the BJP was able to pull to its rallies was a matter of concern for Mondal. A 24 December rally in Suri by the BJP drew a crowd size of over 15,000.

BJP’s state president Dilip Ghosh has dismissed the proposed rally as “desperate drama,” but sources within the state unit claim that Bengal’s political discourse has been altered by the party.

Political scientists said they were looking for clues that suggest any change.

This could well be the beginning of an unhealthy trend for politics and society of Bengal, one that should not be taken lightly.

Biswanath Chakraborty, political science professor, Rabindra Bharati University

Mondal’s initiative seems to have resonated well with the priests.

Somenath Chatterjee, state committee member of the Nikhil Banga Sanskrit Premi Samiti, an apolitical organisation of priests, said:

We are observing the role of all political parties. Whichever raises its voice for us, we will naturally be inclined to throw our weight behind it.

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