'Didi O Didi': Bengal takes umbrage and roars back

Banerjee has the mandate now, and a historic opportunity to shape and lead it at the national level, too

“Otho Go Bharata Lakshmi” — Atul Prasad’s iconic song, which rallied millions during the partition of Bengal in 1905, remains relevant even today. Loosely translated, it exhorts Bharat Mata (Ma Shakti as the divine feminine power in traditional Hindu thought) to rise against the British. As a society that has experienced the horrors of partition twice, the abiding desire for social cohesion and abhorrence to polarisation remains at its core.
 
I had written this in The Quint in March and about Mamata Banerjee’s ability to checkmate the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and expose the fault lines in the “poriborton”