Book Review | Jayanta Ghoshal provides detailed coverage of West Bengal Assembly Election in Mamata Beyond 2021

I remember that at the end of 2020, when I was in Delhi, the national media used to only talk about massive defections in Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress. Several top leaders of TMC were abandoning Mamata Banerjee, then the two-term West Bengal chief minister, and joining the Bharatiya Janata Party. The entire media was showing the BJP in a way that in the 2021 election, they will sweep Bengal. Some months later, when I started covering the Bengal election, I realised that the ground reality is completely different. Senior journalist and author Jayanta Ghosal, in his book Mamata Beyond 2021, has captured the real grassroots stories of the Bengal election. However, this book is just not about the Bengal election but it outlines Banerjee’s game plan to become the key opposition face against Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led BJP. The 2021 Bengal election was important for several reasons, and the best part about Ghosal‘s book is that he has explained every aspect of this election. Many senior journalists, analysts, and even politicians got the predictions of Bengal wrong because they failed to understand the realities of the state. Here comes the importance of Ghosal‘s book. This book is an explainer of Bengal, politics of Bengal, perception about Hindutva in Bengal, and most importantly, about Mamata Banerjee. Ghosal has been a political journalist covering Bengal for the past four decades. He has worked for Bengali newspapers like Ananda Bazar Patrika and Bartaman, along with several national news platforms. He has written several books in Bengali about the state of Bengal, and most importantly, he is also the biographer of Banerjee. This book is originally written in Bengali, and this is a translated edition. The translation is done by Arunava Sinha. I have gone through the Bengal book as well, and the translation is accurate. On one side, Sinha has maintained the tone of the book, and on the other side, he has walked an extra mile to make it suitable for the larger audience, who has lesser knowledge about Bengal’s dynamics. On every page of this book, it is evident that Ghosal is a kind of a journalist who not only understands Bengal but also has a deep understanding of the person Mamata Banerjee. In the first chapter of his book, Ghosal presents Banerjee in front of the readers. This presentation is not of a leader who speaks not-so-great Hindi or who is always in an attacking mood. Here, the author presents the leader Mamata Banerjee, who understands the politics of Bengal, loves the state, and is calm and confident about her politics and future. In the time of misrepresentations, this accurate presentation will hook the readers. The book can be categorised in three different aspects: the Bengal Assembly election 2021, why BJP’s effort to grow and its Hindutva did not work in Bengal, and Mamata’s national ambitions. The author narrates every aspect of the election very precisely. As a journalist, in the entire book, Ghosal has tried his best to present the report in-hyphenated. Reportage on elections is nothing new but the unique feature of this book is his choice of the state, understanding of the state’s dynamics, and presentation from scratch. To understand the 2021 election of West Bengal, it is very important to get an idea about Bengal, Bengalis, and their culture. In the second chapter itself, Ghosal talks extensively about Bengali culture and the state’s relationship with the BJP. The party and its parent organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh targeted Bengal for several reasons. And one of the key reasons behind their idea to venture to capture Bengal was Syama Prasad Mukherjee, the founder of Jan Sangh. The author explains this idea through his conversation with senior BJP leader and former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The BJP tried to capture Bengal not only politically but also through several central agencies and the governor. In this book, Ghosal narrates how the Central Bureau of Investigation targeted the TMC and Banerjee before the election in great detail. Years before the election, the president appointed a new governor to Bengal in Jagdeep Dhankar. Reportedly, from the very first day, he has been harassing the incumbent government and the TMC leaders. In the chapter named “The Role of the governor,” the author presents the battle between Raj Bhavan and Nabanna [the state secretariat].

Ghosal’s vivid understanding of India, its cultural diversity, and the knowledge of the RSS ideology as a journalist are visible from the way he has differentiated between Bengal’s faith in Hindu religion and RSS’ idea of Hindutva.

Run up to the Bengal 2021 election, during my interactions with Delhi journalists, I encountered that most of the journalists were looking into BJP’s Hindutva and Bengal from their understanding of Hindi heartland. The culture and religiosity of Bengal are different, which resulted in the non-acceptance of the BJP in this election. Ghosal’s profound understanding of the very essence of Bengal’s culture as a Bengali makes this book real, and not superficial commentary. With many positive aspects of the book, the key drawback is the lack of content on Mamata beyond 2021. After seeing the name of the book, as a reader, I was expecting a detailed analysis of the future of Mamata Banerjee’s politics at the national level. However, apart from the last chapter, he only dwells on this issue in the chapter that contains the story of Abhishek Banerjee, the nephew of Mamata and the number two in the TMC. Having said that, apart from this aspect, which cannot be the sole responsibility of the author, this book is right now the only and the most extensive reportage of the Bengal 2021 election in English. Mamata Beyond 2021 is published by HarperCollins India. Sayantan Ghosh is an independent journalist based in Kolkata and former policy research fellow at Delhi Assembly Research Center. He tweets as @sayantan_gh Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.