When the Chief Minister of West Bengal Mamata Banerjee called for a new movement of Independence, she completely overlooked, nay violated, the dignity of her constitutional position through this comment. And, Independence movement against whom? Against the popular government of India with solid majority and mandate? It was unthinkable before but today it has become a grim reality. An impartial analysis of this situation tells us that this belligerence of Banerjee is not an isolated statement but rather demarcates a civilizational struggle for India. This should rather be known as The Fourth Battle of Panipath (2019).

The barbaric assault on the pluralistic Indian civilization is not a new thing and the defenders of Indian civilization are fighting the barbarians to protect this civilization for the last few centuries. This Indian resistance is found in the battles of Panipat in which the Pro-Indic Forces (PIF) time and again met the Breaking India Forces (BIF).

The leader of the PIF was Rana Sanga during the first battle of Panipat. They wanted to dislodge Ibrahim Lodi, the leader of the barbaric forces and to achieve that goal, they invited Babur from Kabul to India. Babur came and won the first battle of Panipat against Lodi. But, then he turned against PIF. The destruction of the Ram Temple at Ayodhya was just one sign of his anti-pluralistic attitude. Rana Sanga raised his sword against Babur at the battle of Khanwa. But then it was too late against deeply entrenched Babur.

Overall, the first battle of Panipat was an absolute disaster for the PIF.

In the second battle of Panipat, the PIF chose Hemchandra Vikramaditya or Himu as its leader. The Pathans joined him. He captured Delhi in the preliminary battle.

Bayram Khan was the commander-in-charge of the BIF after the demise of King Humayun. In the military power, Himu was well ahead of Bayram Khan. Bayram Khan understood the message of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), “War is deceit” (narrated by Bukhaari, 3028, Muslim, 58). Bayram strategised to assassinate Himu on elephant-back. This strategy worked, and Himu’s head was decapitated after falling from an elephant’s back.

The second battle of Panipat was still disappointing for the PIF but less as compared to the first battle of Panipat. Had Himu lived a bit more, perhaps PIF could have won. Perhaps emperor Akbar, who was very much present in the battlefield, realised this and embraced the Indic pluralism in his administration.

The tide turned during the rule of Aurangzeb who decided to destroy Indic civilization. There came Shivaji who, in the words of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore, aspired to bind together fragmented India into a Kingdom of Dharma. During the reign of Nanasaheb Peshwa, the successor of Shivaji’s movement, the PIF conquered Lahore and Peshawar. General Raghunath Rao won over the fort of attock and saffron flag fluttered in the first after centuries in 1758.

The BIF hit back under the military leadership of Ahmad Shah Abdali. Both the armies of PIF and BIF faced each other in the field of Panipat for months (Interested reader may go through Uday Kulkarni’s “Solstice at Panipat”). Finally, the day after Makar Sankranti, the battle broke out. The core Maratha cavalry, the Hujurat, nearly vanquished Abdali’s army at noon. However, Abdali gathered the remnant of his fleeing soldiers and offered a decisive blow in the afternoon to finish off the Marathas. General Sadashiv Rao Bhau and Vishwas Rao, the Peshwa’s son, died fighting.

The PIF lost again by a whisker. But a pyrrhic victory for Abdali who left India within months and the British took over India.

The ideological consolidation of the PIF again started. Now, Bengal was the centre. However, PIF, imbibed by the thinking of Vivekanand-Aurobindo-Shyamaprasad, could not take over India. The public mandate was hijacked by Nehru who self-admittedly was “Muslim by culture, English by education and Hindu by an accident of birth”. The rule was then passed over to Nehru’s family. Once a while independent Indians like Lal Bahadur Shastri, P.V. Narasima Rao, and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, did become prime ministers but they could not liberate India from the clutches of Nehru’s Lutyens. The plot changed in 2014 again with the arrival of a powerful leader Sri Narendra Modi as India’s Prime Minister. The BIF is afraid now, very afraid. The journalists on the payroll of the BIF have regularly peddled fake news to prove “intolerance”, “Rafale corruption” and what not! All in vain. BIF knows it well that another full term for Sri Modi means the collapse of “Bharat tere tukre honge” gang, the disappearance of Maoist violence, no big brother attitude of China, no tolerance of Pakistan-backed insurgency, an end to corruption and empowerment of the weaker sections of the population.

CM Mamata has received the historic anti-red mandate of West Bengal in 2011 and once again in 2016. But instead of rising of WB from the communism-induced abyss, people observed an even bigger fall of WB to hellish pits. CM has shown her exceptional capacity in minority appeasement, criminalisation of political space, corruption and intolerance. Education and health of the marginalised sections is not her concern and she would not let the Federal government assist the poor too for petty politics. She recently commented that the Federal Government should be concerned only about external affairs, finance and defence. The last time a Bengali CM made such a comment, was in 1946. That person was Shaheed Sohrawardi of “Direct Action Day” fame.

The patriotic people in Bengal are feeling that Mamata is acting as the mouthpiece of the BIF. Having said that, I am also confident that the Bengal of Tagore and Netaji Subhas will not make any mistake now.

The original article was written on bongodesh.com by Debjit Sarkar, an adovate by profession and President, Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, West Bengal.