The Centre’s minister-minus-portfolio Mamata Banerjee today showed up at an RSS book-release function and, erasing all her past utterances against the RSS and VHP, simpered: ‘‘Yours is a truly patriotic organisation.’’Of course, the subject of the book — a compilation of ‘‘atrocities’’ committed by all shades of Left, from the Maoist to CPM, not just in India but also in Nepal — was close to Mamata’s heart.And she questioned the patriotism of the Left, saying that ‘‘they did not even hoist the national flag in party offices on Independence Day.’’Since the forum permitted unbridled Left-bashing, Mamata’s new political mentor, a very forgiving Union Defence Minister George Fernandes seized the opportunity to tell the audience that they should be circumspect about the Left shedding tears on Gujarat. ‘‘Those are crocodile tears.’’ It has taken Fernandes just 24 months not just to renew his old friendship with a very politically unpredictable Mamata but even have her confiding her political worries.There is nothing new about Fernandes rubbing shoulders with RSS functionaries but the Trinamool chief’s readiness to grab the microphone and pour her heart out against the ‘‘Fascist and hypocritical’’ Left at an RSS forum was a fair indicator of a slightly altered political path being adopted by Didi.Among those sharing the dais with these ministers were BJP MP Balbir Punj, Panchajanya editor and author of the book Communist Atankvaad Tarun Vijay, and Jharkhand chief minister Arjun Munda. In the audience, the most identifiable face of the RSS was that of its joint secretary, Madan Das Devi.Mamata, who finally managed a five minute conversation with a very busy Prime Minister this morning, is still without a portfolio and has refused comment on Gujarat. It is logical, therefore, that her lambasting of the Left this afternoon did not omit a single gory detail. The compilation Communist Atankvad lists incidents of violence, allegedly perpetrated by the Left in Nepal, Jharkhand, Tripura, West Bengal and Kerala. Mamata concentrated entirely on West Bengal.She launched her tirade against the Left, portraying herself as a sufferer. She spoke of her long ‘‘sangharsh’’ and how she had to bear the brunt of the Communist wrath. In 1997, she said, she had no option but to leave the Congress, form her own party and enter into an alliance with the BJP. It’s another matter that she chose not to refer to her brief re-marriage with the Congress in 2001.She spoke of her personal ordeal ‘‘when she was beaten up by CPI(M) goons in 1990.’’ She said her ‘‘left arm took so much beating’’ that she finds it ‘‘difficult to move it even now. and I got back only 80 per cent vision in my right eye’’.She said that the days of ‘‘scientific rigging’’ were over and the Left was ‘‘now rigging elections openly with the government machinery standing by.’’ Her allegation: ‘‘The plight of the ordinary people was pathetic under the Left cadre-raj. Their eyes were being gouged out and they were being subjected to every form of torture.’’Fernandes dittoed Mamata. He felt that the extent of the violence perpetrated by the Left was never fully understood. That he was completely sympathetic to Mamata’s cause came through when he agrred that ‘‘the focal point of a study on Left atrocities should be West Bengal.’’ Without referring to Article 356, he said that both legal and democratic tools should be used to deal with the problem.
