BJP Fights Trinamool’s ‘Anti-Bengali’ Tag With Dhoti-Clad PM Modi At CR Park, Bangla Tweets

Last Updated:October 01, 2025, 11:17 IST

The BJP’s biggest face was trying to woo the voters of Bengal who, in six months, will decide whether the TMC returns to power or BJP gets a chance to hold the state’s reins

PM Modi at CR Park Durga Puja. (Photo: X/narendramodi)

Prime Minister Narendra Modi chose to celebrate Durga Puja—the most awaited religious-cultural festival of the Bengali community—in Delhi’s Chittaranjan Park, often referred to as ‘Mini Kolkata’. Dressed in quintessential Bengali attire, the prime minister visited Kali Bari to mark the auspicious occasion of Ashtami.

The political symbolism of the visit was not lost on anyone. The BJP’s biggest face was trying to woo the voters of Bengal who, in six months, will decide whether the Trinamool Congress (TMC) returns to power or BJP gets a chance to hold the state’s reins.

The BJP posted a video of the prime minister offering prayers to the Goddess from its main X handle, using the Bengali language.

This is seen as BJP undoing TMC’s campaign against the saffron party, branding it ‘anti-Bengal’ after the illegal Bangladeshi row.

This July, West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee accused BJP-governed states of imposing a “super-Emergency". Her charge was that the state governments were illegally detaining Bengali-speaking people, accusing them of being Bangladeshis. “I’m extremely sorry, hurt and heartbroken. People are being tortured just for speaking in their mother tongue," she said in a TMC rally.

In June, she claimed 300-400 people from Itahar (in north Bengal’s Cooch Behar district bordering Bangladesh) were rounded up and forcibly held inside a house in Rajasthan.

With the TMC sharpening its attack on the BJP as an “anti-Bengali" force, particularly in the wake of the illegal Bangladeshi immigrant row, the saffron camp has been scrambling to undo the perception through a mix of cultural outreach and political messaging, which included Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta announcing free electricity, a single-window system for clearances and enhanced civic facilities for all Durga Pujas of the national capital. Union minister from West Bengal Sukanta Majumdar visited Gupta along with several Puja committees to express their gratitude for the move. But overall, the messaging was for back home that as against TMC’s claim, it is the BJP which celebrates Bengalis’ biggest festival.

For years, Mamata Banerjee has accused the BJP of being a party of bohiragato (outsiders), charging it with trying to impose a “Gujarat model" on Bengal. During the 2019 Lok Sabha and 2021 assembly elections, TMC leaders hammered the point that BJP’s advocacy of NRC and CAA would strip ordinary Bengalis of their citizenship. In 2021, the party ran the now-famous slogan “Bangla nijer meyekei chaye" (Bengal wants its own daughter), pushing for Mamata Banerjee as the custodian of Bengali pride against a Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan BJP.

Now, a dhoti-Kurta clad PM Modi, doing the aarti of Goddess Durga at Kali Temple in Delhi’s CR Park is the best optics for the BJP to counter every charge by TMC.

News elections BJP Fights Trinamool’s ‘Anti-Bengali’ Tag With Dhoti-Clad PM Modi At CR Park, Bangla Tweets

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