‘Left to make comeback, TMC, BJP politics stuck in mandir–masjid’: Fiery Bengal candidate Dipsita Dhar | Exclusive

At the forefront of this push one of Left Front’s promising candidate Dipsita Dhar, whose sharp, direct campaigning style has drawn comparisons with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Dipsita Dhar, a Students’ Federation of India (SFI) leader fielded by the Left Front from Dum Dum Uttar seat for the Bengal assembly elections 2026, has done her PhD in Population Geography at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).

In an exclusive interview with hindustantimes.com, Dhar speaks about the Left’s decline, lessons from its years in power, and why she believes the party is poised for a political revival in Bengal.

Our election boxes were snatched. The counted voting lists were snatched. So I don’t think if at all we are irrelevant, the ruling government or the ruling party has to be so proactive in taking away people’s rights. Track Bengal elections April 2029 updates here

And if you’re going to look into the last elections, the left had gained its ground considerably. So we don’t agree to this idea that left is irrelevant. In the last whole election time, the BJP had been talking to their voters less and trying to talk to our voters more and asking them to vote for the BJP. If at all we are irrelevant, if at all our voters were irrelevant, I don’t think this all would have happened.

We are relevant because we believe we are the only alternative who are talking about pro-people policies. Both Trinamool and BJP, rather than talking about people’s development, rather than talking about bread-and-butter issue, about employment, about education, their whole politics had been on the binary of mandir and masjid.

It’s all about your religion, it’s all about your identity. It’s too much identitarianism that is happening in Bengal, which was not there previously, before 2011. So we think we are the only one who are looking beyond the binary.

So we are the most relevant political force for every working class in Bengal.

So this state dependence is something that has affected us most. A lot of people who became the leader of the communist party, they didn’t really represent the ideals of communism. So people who were voting for us, they felt a discontent.

They felt that this is not the kind of party that we ought to vote for. And there was, of course, anti-convention. So after 2011, there was a rejection.

People rejected whatever they had seen. Also, we as opposition leaders… since most of our prime leadership at that time, they became leader during the time when we were in power, they also didn’t have the training to become, how to become an opposition and power as such.

So in the first five, ten years, it was all a learning and unlearning period for us. How you de-learn or unlearn what you have learned for the last 34 years, or the last 15 years, and you try to incorporate a new form of opposition.

But I think we are ready now. There’s a huge number of young people who are right now in the leadership position, who have come to the party not because we are in power.

They have come to the party because they believe in the principle and the ideology.

So what I want is a revamp of people’s agenda and people’s power.

If there is no industrialisation, what will happen to the young people of Bengal? We are all witnessing it. We have become a migrant-sending state from a migrant-receiving state. Our white-collar workers or blue-collar workers, all of them are forced to go to other states or other metropolitans to just ensure that they have some food in their belly.

This was not a situation that we are anticipating when we are thinking of industrialisation. The precise idea was we have ensured that there are so many educated people, they need to be given jobs in their own land, not outside. So industrialisation is something that we are standing by.

But during the jomi odhigrohon period, there were some kind of mistakes that were done from our party. The kind of consultation that should have been done with the landowners, the kind of consultation that should have been done for the farmers and the agriculture workers who were dependent on those lands, that was not there in Singur. That was a mistake that we should have been correcting.

But in the case of Nandigram, all these things were not there. That was more a conspiracy, etc. So these are the two things.

We are sticking to our policy of industrialisation, of bringing back our children from different parts of the country. But we also think that that cannot be a hasty decision, that cannot be an imposed decision. It has to be a collective decision by every other stakeholder.

When he started in New York, New York is a city where it has the highest number of Jews after Israel. Even after that, he never said that he does not have a pro-Palestine position. He was very vocal about his pro-Palestine position.

But along with that, what he kept on speaking is the bread and butter issue. He talked about affordable housing, he talked about affordable public transport. And this is something that I think I get inspired to, that even if it’s a tough battle, you should not be compromising with your core ideologies.

You should stick to what you believe in. And maybe you should change the way you speak to people, the way you communicate with people. Okay.

We went and said why are you saying all these things? Who are you? We got to know he is the second hand of the Trinamool council there. So this whole idea that Trinamool is really trying to fight BJP on the level of culture, that Trinamool is representing a counter culture, that’s a false claim. In Bengal, the kind of Hindi imposition, the kind of Hindutva imposition that you see today, it’s brought by Mamata Banerjee.

Few years back, nobody knew that Ram Navami was such a big religious event. We used to do Ram Navami but that’s in temple. We have hardly seen Ram Navami rallies.

From where I am, I am born in Howrah, there is a place called Ram Rajatola, which has a 100-year old Ram temple. And people are worshipping it for how many years, we never know. But nothing untoward has ever happened.

But this year election we saw that there is a competition between Trinamool and BJP that who can organise the bigger Ram Navami rally. So by normalising the Ram Navami rallies which has caused riots, which has caused extremely political and religious violence in different parts of our country, by normalising that, they have actually normalised the Hindi-Hindu-Hindustani culture in Bengal. So whatever their propaganda is to become the Bengali, or the Bangla-Nigeria-KHL, it is just a farce.

That’s because our drains, our canals, they are not cleaned properly. That has to be fixed. Our municipal workers, they are not paid properly.

They are mostly contractual. Their job doesn’t get fixed or in permanent terms, etc. That has to be fixed.

Our hospital, municipal hospital, that doesn’t work. You go there and you are going to be referred to another hospital. So people who do not have money, they are in a very difficult condition.

If you are going to get your treatment done, you are not going to get it. So either you have to go to private sectors, which you cannot afford, or you have to go to government hospitals, which are far away from you. So that is another thing.

And of course, the schools. There are so many schools that have been closed down. We have to open our schools, we have to open our libraries, we have to open our stadiums that have been locked and have become like a dumping ground or a parking lot.

If at all we have been chosen in the government, we’ll ensure the SSC and PSC. That is done regularly, how it used to be before 2011. We’ll ensure that there are new farms and there are new kolkarkhana that are being built.

What Mamata Banerjee has done is everything, all the permanent positions that were there, even for women, she has not filled it. She has said that if you are a woman and if you are working after 11 o’clock and if something happens, that’s not my government’s duty. Why are you out at 11 o’clock? So, the moment you say all these things, if you are at all saying that Lokhi Mohandas is about empowering women, women empowerment cannot happen only with cash transfer.

It has to be supported with social empowerment, with political empowerment. In the whole time of Mamata Banerjee, both these things have gone away. It is not there at all.

If you are a political person, if you are against the ruling government, you cannot speak anything. If you are a woman especially, you are going to be bullied, you are going to be trolled. The kind of sexist, racist remark that their MP right now, who made to me during the last Lok Sabha election, and nothing has happened to him.

A few months back, that same person made a derogatory remark to his own fellow colleague, another MP, another woman MP. So, if Mamata Banerjee does not punish these kind of people, if Mamata Banerjee ensures that they are the face of their party, how are you going to talk about female empowerment and woman empowerment? What about their social and political empowerment?

We have grew up with them and suddenly the government comes and says that you cannot vote, you are no more a legitimate voter, which is absolutely discourageable. You cannot really stand by it. And yes, we can understand that BJP’s whole fascist agenda is that, but Mamata Banerjee should have been playing a counter role, right? She has not done it.

Okay, she has made political optics by donning a black coat and going to the court. But inside the state, what should have been her role? She should have been giving more and more people who could have done the whole process more seamlessly. She could have come up and passed a bill inside the assembly saying that all this confusion with Chatterjee, Chattopadhyay, Banerjee, Bandyopadhyay, Begum, Khatun, all that has to be quashed.

If only she could have played both these roles, I don’t think this many people would have lost their right to vote.

They have understood. In 2002, when we are in power, nobody has questioned their credibility. Nobody could say that we are going to throw you away.

Nobody has taken their rights. But now in Mamata Banerjee and Narendra Modi’s power, the people who got mostly affected after the Muslims, they are the Matuas, the Hindus.

We are here because we still believe in the dream of change. I hope, I wish, all of you, you are going to stand by us.