By Anirban Baumik
Prime Minister Narendra Modi (click here) appears to be set to take the Bharatiya Janata Party’s campaign to win away the “Epar Bangla” from Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress to “Opar Bangla” too.
Just a day before the first of the eight-phase polling for the assembly elections in West Bengal, often referred to as “Epar Bangla” (Bengal on This Side), will take place, the Prime Minister will embark on a two-day visit to Bangladesh a.k.a “Opar B.
And, with his BJP already on a no-holds-barred campaign to wrest power from the Trinamool Congress in the State, the Prime Minister’s March 26-27 visit to the neighbouring country too is expected to be loaded with political messages to the voters in West Bengal.
The most conspicuous will be the one that will come out of his visit to Orakandi, a small town in Gopalganj district of Bangladesh.
The ‘Thakur Bari’ in Orakandi is the most sacred shrine for the Matuas – a Vaishnavite Hindu sect, which, with a population of over three crore in West Bengal, has emerged as a ‘vote-bank’ that the BJP is keen to win away from the TMC. Modi is likely to pay obeisance to the temple dedicated to Harichand Thakur, who founded the sect out of a reformist movement in the early 19th century. The sect comprised Namashudras, Chamars and Malis, who were then treated as untouchables by the upper caste Hind...
Modi will meet his counterpart Sheikh Hasina in Dhaka. He will take part in the celebration of the birth centenary of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Hasina’s father and the founder of Bangladesh, in Dhaka....
