West Bengal CM Lauds British Imperialism

“I love UK because we have an emotional relation, historical relation, and from the heritage point of view of both ours and yours also. 190 years you ruled in India and when you ruled before independence, Calcutta was the capital of India. So you built up so many buildings, the heritage buildings and so many things. Everyday we used to remember that,”– Mamata Banerjee, Chief Minister of West Bengal addressing business people in London on 27th March, 2025.

<EDITORS>

West Bengal Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee’s remarks during a business outreach forum during her trip to London, England, which began last Sunday has drawn sharp criticism from Indians and the Indian diaspora for its praise of British Rule in India for 190 years.

Why this should have astonished Indians who have followed her career is itself rather surprising, for Banerjee has a record of ruling that mirrors her British forbears. She has trampled on free speech, bludgeoned dissenters, protected criminals, and gained successive electoral victories through intimidation and outright violence.

That she should say that she loved the UK, adding – “we have an emotional relation, historical relation, and from the heritage point of view of both ours and yours also. 190 years you ruled in India and when you ruled before independence, Calcutta was the capital of India. So you built up so many buildings, the heritage buildings and so many things. Everyday we used to remember that,” – should surely come as no surprise given the disdain she has shown for running the state of West Bengal as a democracy.

Banerjee was so excited about being in London that, bizarrely, she started walking backwards in a sari and slippers in Hyde Park; the metaphor was not lost on the citizens of West Bengal. Her tenure has walked back the freedom movement to the age of medieval brutality.

Mamata Banerjee walking backwards in slippers and a sari as she walks backward the dignity of free Indians with her words – posted by TMC worker Kunal Ghosh on “X” (formerly Twitter)

Rapes have risen under her rule. When questioned about it, West Bengal’s first woman chief minister dismissed it as natural: “Just as the population is increasing, similarly, incidents of rape are increasing, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee,” she responded five years into her tenure.

She has also blamed the increase in sexual violence on increased freedom of socialization among young people: ““Rape cases are on the rise because boys and girls interact more freely now. Earlier, if men and women held hands, they would be caught and reprimanded by parents, but now everything is so open. It’s like an open market with open options.”

Indeed, although the brutal gangrape of a young trainee doctor allegedly taking place in a seminar hall at the government run RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in August 2024 brought the injustice of rape into sharp focus, Rape has been weaponized by the Trinamool Congress Party, which she heads as a matter of common practice, according to opposition parties.

Belying official statistics, the National Commission for Women, which was established as a statutory body under the Indian Central Government in January 1992 under the National Commission for Women Act, 1990 (Act No.20 of 1990 of Govt. of India) to review the Constitutional and legal safeguards for women; recommend remedial legislative measures, facilitate redressal of grievances and advise the Government on all policy matters affecting women, stated in 2012: “West Bengal has recorded the 2nd highest number of rape cases in the country and the rate of increase in reported cases is twice the national average. Moreover, this state has the second lowest conviction rate in the country.”

Indeed, the commission added that the ages of reported rapes ranged from seven to seventy-two, including, “housewives, working women, mentally and physically disable women, tribal women. These incidents reported the commission, “occurred at all times of the day and night in public places, govt. hospitals, homes, field[s], everywhere.”

The report implicated “political party workers/elders and government workers,” among the rapists. Of cases known by the NCW the following statistics tell a dystopian story: 44% constituted gang rape; 39% victims were minor girls; 17% of victims were mentally/physically disabled; 8% rapes happened in hospitals/trains; in 44% of cases, the accused rapist(s) is/are still at large; in 17% of cases, the character of victims have been attacked; about 39% of rapists were known to women; in about 25% of the cases, FIRs (meaning police reports) were not filed at all, or filed later due to public pressure or court orders to this effect.

The lack of motivation of the state security apparatus to pursue justice for victims has, according to the NCW, “actually make the crime nearly risk free business for criminals.”

With Ms. Banerjee’s government manifesting such lawlessness, the fact that a new anti-rape bill passed in the West Bengal Assembly, last year, with stiff punishments (including the death penalty) would likely be useless in preventing rape because of the asual attitude of the powers that be to actually pursue rape cases criminally.

Ms. Banerjee mentioned British constructed buildings, which apparently make the population of West Bengal, “remember” the British. The fact is that the Indian construction business has not been able to replicate British civil works because of the rampant corruption that is fed by a mafia-style cut money system instituted by Ms. Banerjee’s party on builders. So, they cut corners. They don’t mix concrete properly. They don’t invest properly in construction – and so shoddy edifices result.

TMC party members are implicated in illegal constructions as well. Even orders by judges of the highest court in the state, the High Court of Judicature at Calcutta, go unenforced by the state security apparatus. A case in point is the illegal construction of an engineering college on land in the East Kolkata Wetlands, which is protected as an ecosystem of international significance by the United Nations RAMSAR convention. The High Court ruled that the college should be demolished but the state found a way around the order. To this day, the college continues to grant degrees not only enriching its owner but also its TMC-linked influence benefactors.

Much as the East India Company looted Bengal Presidency of its riches, so too has Banerjee’s TMC has and continues to enrich its politicians and enforcers on the backs of ordinary residents of the state.

Placed in this context, why wouldn’t Mamata Banerjee fling excrement on the legacy of the Indian freedom movement by lauding India’s enslavers? Through her corrupt governance and personality-cult-driven governance (a hallmark of fascism, by the way), Ms. Banerjee is only continuing the legacy of the British in a perennial insult to those who dedicated their lives to India’s freedom.