It’s just as well politicians don’t have a retiring age. Otherwise, Mamata Banerjee, who is facing flak now for non-performance and imperiousness, would one day have also faced the same hassles as General V K Singh and the late Justice J P Mitter, who retired from Calcutta High Court in the sixties. She claims in this emotional but shrewdly selective outpouring to be five years younger than her official age.
Originally published in Bengali before she became West Bengal’s chief minister, My Unforgettable Memories is interesting reading. But the English translation is full of colloquialisms that clash with the overall style. Phrases like “any which way”, “where we were coming from”, and “a hello here and a hi there” are like the plums that NRIs pick up at random in the US and stick into the chapatti of their Indian English. Worst of all is the awful affectation among Indians who have come late to the English language of replacing mother with “mom”. There’s little point, however, in lamenting the indigestible mish-mash that is emerging as urban India’s lingua franca.
Given the author’s key position and ability to hold the United Progressive Alliance to ransom, Memories will be read eagerly for clues to her personality and policies. It is curiously disappointing in the latter respect. Banerjee’s overflowing and abundantly affirmed compassion for humanity is too closely intertwined with her hatred of the Marxists who ruled West Bengal for 34 years to lead to objective systemic reform. As chief minister-in-waiting, she didn’t seem to have any strategy to transform wishes into horses as she moved from one emotive high to another, or rather, one miraculous escape from death to another.
West Bengal’s murderous “harmads” – a word that is rooted in the Marxist-Trinamool confrontation – and the partisan police force that did the CPI(M)’s bidding must have been singularly incompetent since they repeatedly allowed Banerjee to escape. Or, perhaps, she was protected by those mysterious forces she is forever invoking. They make their presence felt through a tweeting night-bird, an unknown visitor who gives her a gold charm, the telephone’s unusual trilling and even supernatural vibes.
A disregard for mundane detail goes hand in hand with these flights of fancy. Readers aren’t told exactly when she decided to enter the political fray and why. We are left guessing as to whether she considers her Trinamool Party to be the “real” Congress – she compares it to Indira Gandhi’s Congress(I) – or a valid separate organisation. Obviously, her partnership with the Bharatiya Janata Party – and ministership in the National Democratic Alliance – is an eminently forgettable memory, for there isn’t a single reference to it in these 190 pages, though she pays personal compliments to the long-retired Atal Bihari Vajpayee. But that pales into insignificance compared to the eulogies lavished on Rajiv Gandhi, whose assassination apparently left her numbed and speechless for days.
In contrast, one assumes that the sarcastically mentioned “Queen Mother” is Sonia Gandhi. Since there are no fixed positions in politics, it’s not surprising that at one stage Banerjee should urge Mrs Gandhi to take over the Congress party. The latter’s demure “I am a foreigner” suggests the famous “inner voice” was audible even then. The author’s tortuous relations with Pranab Mukherjee and Subrata Mukherjee are touched on but one has to read between the lines to decipher her code, and some encounters and conflicts are not decipherable at all except those who are also steeped in the political conspiracies of which she complains. Nicknames, enigmatic references to Big Brother, Middle Brother and Little Brother who, we are told, are villains of the piece, and to Congress “hardliners” and “softliners” don’t make for clarity. Herself a dab hand at outmanoeuvring opponents and organising rent-a-crowd demos at short notice, she must be believed when she speaks of Congress’ “yes boss culture” and the high command’s alacrity in crushing assertive regional factions. Indeed, at times the Congress leadership seems as much her enemy as the Marxists.
The looming question is: can she rise above all this as chief minister of an impoverished, faction-ridden, criminalised state? She is contemptuous of political leaders, “If you win and the government survives for five years, you are in clover. Once you win, there is no need to remember anyone, no need to be grateful even.” Will she be different? Is she to be believed when, without quite repeating Kissinger’s “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac”, she muses philosophically on the abuse of power and affirms her own preference for “moral values, integrity, and ideals”?
She began with a dream “to do something different – to look at politics from a humanitarian angle”. “I have not lost hope yet,” she says. Amen to that. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Nine months into her rule some of the people who invested most in Mamata Banerjee may be finding it hard to sustain the dream. A compilation of idealistic waffle doesn’t promise the good governance West Bengal needs.
MY UNFORGETTABLE MEMORIES
Mamata Banerjee
Roli Books
190 pages; Rs 250
