The recent clash between West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee and governor Keshari Nath Tripathi after serious communal clashes in North 24-Parganas district on the Bangladesh border, that have spread, is a cautionary tale in how those at the top should act with dignity and courtesy even when they don’t agree.
The governor, a former RSS man and a former UP Speaker, who had been criticised for his partisanship, apparently ticked off the CM telephonically on the basis of what he heard from a BJP delegation. The CM was furious. She went public with the claim that the governor had been insulting on the phone and accused Mr Tripathi of behaving like a block-level BJP leader.
This made matters worse. The governor hit back with a public comment saying he had only asked the CM to control the law and order situation, and the CM’s response was meant to emotionally manipulate the state’s people. It would have been better if the governor had been dignified and not referred to his talk with the CM in public, specially given Union home minister Rajnath Singh’s counsel along those lines to both the governor and the CM.
Also, the governor could have appeared less intrusive. He could have merely urged the CM to have the communal conflagration looked at more closely. He gave the impression of going farther than that. Ms Banerjee is right to remind Mr Tripathi that she has been elected by the people while he was appointed.
In recent times, several BJP-appointed governors have ended up creating trouble for themselves and the state to which they were assigned. Not long ago, the governor of Arunachal Pradesh called an Assembly session in a private space to get even with the non-BJP CM. More recently, the Tripura governor had tweeted communally-polarising statements, saying the “Hindu-Muslim problem” can be resolved only through a “civil war”. In Puducherry, lieutenant-governor Kiran Bedi administered the oath of office to three MLAs nominated by the Centre, thus poaching on the Speaker’s preserve.
Really, what’s going on? As per the Sarkaria Commission’s recommendations, a governor must rise above political partisanship, and to ensure this a politician should be appointed only if sufficient time distances him from his political incarnation, as it were. The Congress too was guilty of sending retired politicians to Raj Bhavans as a reward. But under Narendra Modi, certain governors seem to have gone out of their way to show partisanship. This was not envisaged in the constitutional scheme.
West Bengal’s Trinamul government has taken a fairly tough line on the communal issue. It can be more pro-active. It should also probe if blasphemy was committed against the beliefs of Muslims, who turned violent, by agents provocateur?
