Desher Samay: Chief minister Mamata Banerjee will be visiting Bongaon on first week of February as a part of her district entourage .However in backdrop of CAA Act the tour assumes significance as the area is dominated by Matuas who might get citizenship status but is opposed by Banerjee.Santanu Thakur , who won the Bongaon Loksabha seat is also a dent in the confidence of the Trinamul party which she might try to repair.
In backdrop of such turbulence over citizenship and NPR politicals analysts are eagerly waiting what stand she will take during her tour in the area. Earlier Mamata had wooed the matua matriarch Binapani devi popularly known as boroma .But since the Matua family divided into two parts with younger strated supporting BJP Mamatbala Thakur the former Trinamul MP from the area had tough time.Moreover Trinamul’s stand to oppose CAA bill and NPR also eroded the votebank of Trinamul in the subdivision of the North 24 Parganas district.
The stats are not lost as Prime Minister Modi chose the Matua stronghold of Thakurnagar, 30 km from the India-Bangladesh border, to launch the BJP’s Lok Sabha election campaign in Bengal in 2019—a state where the party is looking for a putsch this summer to unseat its entrenched bugbear, the Trinamool Congress of Mamata Banerjee. In his speech, interrupted by appeals to the crowd to keep calm, he underscored his government’s citizenship amendment bill that will guarantee Indian nationality to Hindus from Bangladesh.
He touched a chord as the Matua community, which is also a religious sect that has matriarch Boroma at the helm, consists almost exclusively of Namashudra Dalit immigrants from East Bengal after Partition and Bangladesh after 1971. And many of them are said to be fighting for Indian citizenship.
Citizenship is an issue that could make many Matuas lean towards the BJP. A sizeable chunk who came after Bangladesh was formed says the current cut-off date of March 25, 1971, for Indian citizenship doesn’t help because people were forced to leave the country years after its independence. Besides, the Mahasangha—the structured apex body of the sect—has been demanding post-Partition citizenship rights for every community member.
The community, according to analysts, makes up more than a third of all Hindu immigrants from Bangladesh.
But Mamata opposes the Centre’s bill—a point Modi didn’t forget to mention during his 17-minute speech in Thakurnagar in 2019. He asked the chief minister to endorse the proposed legislation, which finally became an act. Mamata says the bill discriminates between immigrants on religious grounds. “The Centre will have to withdraw the citizenship bill and there is no question of supporting it.
We will not let Modi succeed,” she told a Bengali news channel. Mamata knows all too well the influence of the Matuas and so, to keep the sect on her side, her government gave land rights to people living in 94 refugee colonies in the state irrespective of their faith last week.
