Mamata Inflates Crackdown on Illegal Bangladeshis into Attack on Bengalis

"Bengalis are being profiled, harassed, deported, lynched. This isn't incidental, it's a systematic, state-sponsored ethnic purge. You are targeting a language, a culture, a people... You lit this fire, BJP. Now face the fury!"

- SUPROTIM MUKHERJEE

Saturday's post on the Trinamool Congress' X handle succinctly summed up the party's strategy for the 2026 Assembly polls, even as it tried to downplay its own role in facilitating grant of identity papers to Bangladeshi infiltrators. With these documents under scrutiny across the country, the ruling Trinamool Congress has plunged headlong into an emotionally charged campaign centred on identity politics.

At the heart of this campaign is a powerful narrative: the defence of Bengali linguistic and cultural pride amid what the party alleges is an organised effort to harass, criminalise and deport Bengali-speaking migrant workers from BJP-ruled states.

The finding of the dismembered body of a 35-year-old migrant worker from Bengal's North 24-Parganas district in Maharashtra's Vasai area last week and the reports of assault on four other workers from Murshidabad in Tamil Nadu have given fresh ammunition to the Trinamool Congress.

In another incident, a labourer from Malda was allegedly detained and deported from Rajasthan despite having valid citizenship documents.

These incidents, Trinamool leaders claim, are part of a wider attempt to delegitimize Bengali identity across India, even though BJP leaders across the country have said that the drive is against all those illegal migrants who have crossed over from Bangladesh with the tacit help of the Trinamool Congress and have now spread across the country.

All reasons, therefore, existed for the Trinamool to mount a full-fledged denial operation.

That reached its crescendo with twin rallies in the heart of Kolkata. Mamata Banerjee and Trinamool scion Abhishek Banerjee addressed mammoth rallies in central Kolkata on July 16 and its Shaheed Diwas on July 21.