Mic Testing: Mahua Moitra, the Trinamool MP who pulls no punches

Growing up, Moitra rarely, if ever, strayed off the beaten path. Born in Assam in a family of tea planters, she studied hard, aced her school exams, secured a scholarship to pursue a degree in mathematics and economics at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, and landed a high-paying job as a banker in New York and London.

Somewhere along that path, she took a pause — and took a different turn. That moment of reflection had come at her 10th college reunion in 2008, Moitra told a gathering of school students in July 2019. “Do I want to come back at my 20th reunion as another managing director of JP Morgan or do I want to come back having made a difference?”

This time, Moitra did not hedge her bets. She returned to India, did a brief stint with the Congress during which she led the ‘Aam aadmi ka sipahi’ booth-level campaign conceived by Rahul Gandhi in Bengal, before joining the Trinamool Congress in 2010.

Now, as she wages a lonely fight against shrill calls for her arrest, the first-time MP from West Bengal’s Krishnanagar constituency remains unruffled.

“I want to reiterate that I did not in any way endorse or say even one word about the film or poster. My statement was one of fact and experience of how Ma Kali is venerated by her devotees and what she represents to me. Religion is an integral part of our personal lives and it is high time we take this bull by the horns and reassert our right to be able to speak about our beliefs and practices,” she told The Sunday Express.

Her remarks are consistent with the Trinamool’s vigorous invocation of Bengali sub-nationalism, a strategy which helped the party counter the BJP’s Hindutva narrative in the 2021 Assembly polls. But convinced that Moitra’s remarks may torpedo its prospects to grow beyond its home turf, the Trinamool was quick to distance itself.

In a highly polarised atmosphere, where the Trinamool remains vocal against “divisive politics” while trying to fend off the BJP’s attacks on “minority appeasement”, Moitra’s remarks may have upset that tricky balance for the party. The Kolkata Police had, after all, sent summons to Nupur Sharma and the Assembly had passed a resolution  against the BJP leader’s comments on Prophet Muhammad.

“It’s not just what she said, but how she said it. Saying Maa Kali is offered whisky is different from saying Maa Kali is offered karon sudha (an alcoholic drink offered at the feet of the goddess in certain traditions). Saying Maa Kali eats meat is different from the concept of animal sacrifice, which has also come down over the years due to greater awareness and judicial interventions. A good orator keeps those nuances in mind,” said a TMC leader on the condition of anonymity.

But Moitra feels tip-toeing around religion benefits the BJP. “Many people tell me to avoid talking about religion in these times. This is exactly why the BJP has been able to foist their version of Hinduism on us. Hinduism is not their territory and I will not cede an inch,” she said.

After a three-year stint as MLA of the largely rural Karimpur constituency bordering Bangladesh, Moitra was elected to the Lok Sabha in 2019 from Krishnanagar. Soon after, she was made the party’s Nadia district president — a sign of party chief Mamata Banerjee’s confidence in Moitra.

But it was in Parliament that she stood out, with her articulate speeches that often lifted the Opposition depleted in strength and spirit. She has also filed petitions in the Supreme Court against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and the sedition law.

Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, who was among the few who supported Moitra after the uproar over her remarks, told The Sunday Express: “I have seen Mahua in action in two capacities — as a speaker in Lok Sabha debates on behalf of her party, and as an active member of the parliamentary standing committee on Information and Technology. She has been impressive in both roles,” he said.

Tharoor’s colleague in the party and Parliament, the Congress’s Karti Chidambaram, said, “Mahua is a very spirited and passionate member of Parliament. She is single, educated, independent and an opinionated woman, the idea of which is not something the BJP likes. That’s the reason why it attacks her sharply and brutally.”

Yet, there are others who say Moitra’s conduct in the House borders on the “immature and impulsive”. During the last Budget Session, she had lost her cool over the presiding officer cutting short her speech for overshooting the time allotted to her, and later even tweeted criticising Speaker Om Birla. The House had condemned her behaviour the next day.

Said a Rajya Sabha MP, “Everyone keeps a distance from her, because MPs feel she is a bit temperamental. Articulate but shrill.”

Shrill, immature, impulsive. Moitra shrugs off these labels, even seizes them. “If a man has these qualities, he is a leader, but if a woman has them, she is a  b***h. It’s across the board. It’s part of the territory, and now I quite enjoy the tags rather than try and fight them,” she says.

However, talk of her “arrogance” finds an echo in Nadia district, which is part of Moitra’s Krishnanagar constituency.

On June 22, shortly before the state Assembly had reconvened after a break in the proceedings, those in the front rows, mostly Trinamool ministers, had returned to find a yellow pamphlet on their tables. The leaflet was a grievance list against their Krishnanagar MP, Moitra. The complainant, who went by the name Pratikar Mondol, alleged that as district president of Nadia, Moitra would “regularly humiliate senior leaders of the districts”.

A Trinamool leader from Nadia said, “She thinks humiliating senior leaders is the only way to show her strength. She forgets that these leaders are the reason behind the party’s deep roots.”

Another younger leader, however, disagrees: “She has her own way of building an organisation. She is articulate, well-educated and tech-savvy. Some senior leaders who are back-dated are not ready to accept her.”

In August last year, Moitra was dropped as the Trinamool’s Nadia president as the district unit under her had struggled to rein in factional feuds and failed to deliver in the Assembly elections — the party only won eight of the 17 seats, the BJP bagging the rest.

Last December, Banerjee had during an administrative review meeting in Nadia ticked off Moitra over infighting in the district ahead of the civic polls. In a video that went viral,  Moitra was seen quietly nodding as Banerjee pulled her up. The incident was the first sign that Moitra may have ended up on the wrong side of the leadership.

On the allegations, Moitra said, “Every human being is misunderstood by someone or the other at various points in life. The most important thing is to be true to oneself.”

Back in the early 18th century, Raja Krishnachandra Roy, an influential zamindar of Nadia after whom Moitra’s constituency Krishnanagar is believed to be named, issued annual diktats, ordering people to worship Goddess Kali, warning his subjects of punishment in case of non-compliance.

“In consequence of these orders, in more than 10,000 houses, in one night, in the zillah of Krishnanagar, the worship of the goddess was celebrated. The number of animals destroyed could not be less than 10,000,” Baptist missionary William Ward documented in his book A View of the History, Literature and Religion of the Hindoos.

As the modern-day public representative of the region battles a political crisis over her remarks on the same deity, it’s a parallel that is hard to miss.