A Left Front Election

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
MUKULIKA BANERJEE
Keyword(s):  
West Bengal ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Messages ◽  
Left Front

This chapter discusses the electoral ethnography of a campaign in the state of West Bengal. It presents a thick ethnographic description of the campaigning process and traces the numerous techniques used. The political messages and organisational hierarchies at every level of the state's population help in answering why incumbent governments suffer repeated electoral defeats.

scholarly journals The Political Asceticism of Mamata Banerjee: Female Populist Leadership in Contemporary India

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Proma Ray Chaudhury
Keyword(s):  
West Bengal ◽  
The State ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Political ◽  
Leadership Models ◽  
Interpretive Analysis ◽  
Semistructured Interviews ◽  
Political Landscapes ◽  
Religious Iconography

Abstract Operating within the androcentric premises that support idealized models of populist leadership, self-representations cultivated by female populist leaders often involve precarious balancing acts, compelling them to appropriate contextualized traditionalist discourses and modes of power to qualify for conventional leadership models. This article engages with the stylistic performance of populist leadership by Mamata Banerjee of the All India Trinamool Congress in the state of West Bengal, India, focusing on her adoption of the discursive mode of political asceticism, nativist rhetoric, and religious iconography. Through an interpretive analysis of selected party documents, autobiography, and semistructured interviews with Banerjee's followers and critics, the article delineates Banerjee's populist self-fashioning as a political ascetic and explores perceptions of her leadership. The article argues that while the self-makings of female populist leaders remain fraught and contested, they contribute substantially toward redrawing the boundaries of both conventional leadership models and the broader political landscapes they inhabit.

Beyond Conspiracy and Coordinated Ascendancy: Revisiting Caste Question in West Bengal under the Left Front Rule (1977–2011)

2021 ◽  
pp. 2455328X2110084
Author(s):  
Ayan Guha
Keyword(s):  
Land Reform ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
West Bengal ◽  
Political Mobilization ◽  
Unintended Consequence ◽  
Political Support ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Tactics ◽  
Lower Castes ◽  
Left Front

This article has critically engaged with the speculative claim that the disappearance of caste question from public discourse during Left rule in West Bengal was a result of conscious upper-caste ploy to silence articulation of caste interests and tactfully eliminate the possibility of Dalit political assertion. To verify the veracity of this claim, this study has critically scrutinized Left Front’s political mobilization strategy of rural population and also its landmark land reform initiative. The investigation attempted by this article, in this regard, has revealed that there is little to suggest the existence of any organized upper-caste conspiracy. It is, however, true that the articulation and aggregation of political demands along the lines of caste was indeed averted in West Bengal through political tactics and developmental strategies devised by the upper castes. But, the marginalization of the caste question in mainstream politics was an unintended consequence of such political tactics and developmental strategies which were primarily designed with the objective to preserve and enlarge the political support base, rather than to contain the lower castes. Thus, political motives acted as far more important determinants of political and developmental activities rather than any inherent caste bias.

Mediating Conflict

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sirpa Tenhunen
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Phones ◽  
Political Action ◽  
West Bengal ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
The State ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Political Work ◽  
Congress Party ◽  
Left Front ◽  
Different Levels

Chapter 6 provides an overview of the studies on new media’s role for political activism and then examines how mobile phones mediate political action by exploring activists’ use of mobile phones for their daily political work in rural West Bengal. The ethnographic fieldwork was carried out during the rise of the opposition, the Trinamul Congress Party, in West Bengal; consequently, the chapter also highlights the factors that helped bring the Trinamul Congress Party to power after decades of the Left Front Government’s rule of the state. This chapter illustrates how phone use builds on earlier political patterns and meanings, but has made politics faster, more heterogeneous, and translocal. Incidents that appear to be spontaneous reactions to the ruling party’s misdeeds often originate in communication between different levels of party hierarchies, followed by the horizontal spreading of information both within and outside the party.

scholarly journals P. N. Haksar and Indira’s India: A Glimpse of the Domestic Sphere, 1967–1976

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Rakesh Ankit
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
International Politics ◽  
West Bengal ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Domestic Sphere ◽  
The Third ◽  
Congress Party ◽  
Range Of Functions

This article presents four episodes from the political period 1969 to 1976 in India, focusing on the views and actions of P. N. Haksar, Principal Secretary and Advisor to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (1967–1973). Unlike the ‘national/international politics’ hitherto under focus from then, that is, the Congress split (1969), birth of Bangladesh (1971) and the JP Movement/Emergency (1974–1975), the aspects under consideration in this article are of subterranean existence. First of these aspects is the provincial reverberations of the Congress split, the case considered here being that of the Bombay Pradesh Congress Committee. Second is the attitude of the Congress Party towards left opposition, the Communist Party of India Marxist (CPI [M]) in West Bengal, as revealed through the anxieties of Governor Shanti Dhavan. The third aspect under consideration is a glimpse of centre–states relations, as shown through New Delhi’s interactions with the EMS Namboodiripad-led and CPI (M)-dominated United Front Government of Kerala. Finally, the article looks at Haksar’s attempts at planning and development for the state of Bihar. Each of these four themes was among the ‘wider range of functions’ that Mrs Gandhi wished to be performed by her Secretariat and to allow us to test how successful each of it was. Each of these provides a context for contemporary issues.

scholarly journals West Bengal Assembly Election 2021: An Analysis

2021 ◽  
Vol 01 (01) ◽  
pp. 69-121
Author(s):  
Onkar Singh
Keyword(s):  
West Bengal ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Parliamentary Election ◽  
The West ◽  
Deep Dive ◽  
Indian Politics ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
Major Player ◽  
Election Results

West Bengal Assembly election was one of the most keenly watched assembly elections in India in 2021. One of the reasons for this interest was the unexpected rise of the Bhartiya Janata Party in a state mostly known for its contests between the Left parties, the Indian National Congress, and the All-India Trinamool Congress. The Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) had only 3 seats in the last assembly election of 2016, whereas the ruling All India Trinamool Congress (AITC or TMC) party had 212 seats. The BJP was never a major player in the state except during the last parliamentary election (2019) when BJP bagged 18 out of the 42 parliamentary seats. The analysis presented in this paper analyzes the constituency-wise figures for each of the 294 constituencies spread over 19 districts of the state of West Bengal in India. The TMC emerged victorious with 48% of the total popular votes, while the opposition BJP got 39% of the popular votes. Also, TMC won 213 (73%) of total seats, whereas the BJP came to a distant second with 77 (26%) seats, even though it raised its stock significantly in the West Bengal Assembly from its 2016 tally of a meager 3 seats. After the West Bengal 2021 election results, Mamata Banerjee emerged as one of the main challengers of BJP at the national arena of Indian politics. This paper will benefit and help anyone interested in Indian political analysis and would also provide key insights for the political analysts and the political parties interested in a seat-by-seat deep dive. The analysis was done with the help of Microsoft Excel and R Software.

Politični položaj na Slovenskem leta 1919

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2020) (2) ◽  
pp. 359-394
Author(s):  
Jurij Perovšek
Keyword(s):  
State Government ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Liberal Party ◽  
New Era ◽  
Party Organisation ◽  
Western Border ◽  
Historical Phenomenon ◽  
First Time ◽  
Similar Development

For Slovenes in the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes the year 1919 represented the final step to a new political beginning. With the end of the united all-Slovene liberal party organisation and the formation of separate liberal parties, the political party life faced a new era. Similar development was showing also in the Marxist camp. The Catholic camp was united. For the first time, Slovenes from all political camps took part in the state government politics and parliament work. They faced the diminishing of the independence, which was gained in the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, and the mutual fight for its preservation or abolition. This was the beginning of national-political separations in the later Yugoslav state. The year 1919 was characterized also by the establishment of the Slovene university and early occurrences of social discontent. A declaration about the new historical phenomenon – Bolshevism, had to be made. While the region of Prekmurje was integrated to the new state, the questions of the Western border and the situation with Carinthia were not resolved. For the Slovene history, the year 1919 presents a multi-transitional year.

“I'd make thee eat the mischief thou hast vented”: Discourse of Law in Ben Jonson's Catiline His Conspiracy

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-45
Author(s):  
Akihiko Shimizu
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Legal Discourse ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
State Of Emergency ◽  
Gunpowder Plot ◽  
Effective Use ◽  
Legal Procedures ◽  
The Way

This essay explores the discourse of law that constitutes the controversial apprehension of Cicero's issuing of the ultimate decree of the Senate (senatus consultum ultimum) in Catiline. The play juxtaposes the struggle of Cicero, whose moral character and legitimacy are at stake in regards to the extra-legal uses of espionage, with the supposedly mischievous Catilinarians who appear to observe legal procedures more carefully throughout their plot. To mitigate this ambivalence, the play defends Cicero's actions by depicting the way in which Cicero establishes the rhetoric of public counsel to convince the citizens of his legitimacy in his unprecedented dealing with Catiline. To understand the contemporaneousness of Catiline, I will explore the way the play integrates the early modern discourses of counsel and the legal maxim of ‘better to suffer an inconvenience than mischief,’ suggesting Jonson's subtle sensibility towards King James's legal reformation which aimed to establish and deploy monarchical authority in the state of emergency (such as the Gunpowder Plot of 1605). The play's climactic trial scene highlights the display of the collected evidence, such as hand-written letters and the testimonies obtained through Cicero's spies, the Allbroges, as proof of Catiline's mischievous character. I argue that the tactical negotiating skills of the virtuous and vicious characters rely heavily on the effective use of rhetoric exemplified by both the political discourse of classical Rome and the legal discourse of Tudor and Jacobean England.

Untimely Development, Ugly History:A Drama in Muslinand the Rejection of National-Historical Time

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-183
Author(s):  
Mary L. Mullen
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Historical Time ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
The Core

This article considers the politics and aesthetics of the colonial Bildungsroman by reading George Moore's often-overlooked novel A Drama in Muslin (1886). It argues that the colonial Bildungsroman does not simply register difference from the metropolitan novel of development or express tension between the core and periphery, as Jed Esty suggests, but rather can imagine a heterogeneous historical time that does not find its end in the nation-state. A Drama in Muslin combines naturalist and realist modes, and moves between Ireland and England to construct a form of untimely development that emphasises political processes (dissent, negotiation) rather than political forms (the state, the nation). Ultimately, the messy, discordant history represented in the novel shows the political potential of anachronism as it celebrates the untimeliness of everyday life.

Islamic and Jewish Religious Feminists Tackle Islamic and Jewish Oral Law: Maintenance and Rebellion of Wives

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-63
Author(s):  
Ruth Roded
Keyword(s):  
State Policy ◽  
Political System ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Jewish Law ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Parallel Case ◽  
First Time

Beginning in the early 1970s, Jewish and Muslim feminists, tackled “oral law”—Mishna and Talmud, in Judaism, and the parallel Hadith and Fiqh in Islam, and several analogous methodologies were devised. A parallel case study of maintenance and rebellion of wives —mezonoteha, moredet al ba?ala; nafaqa al-mar?a and nush?z—in classical Jewish and Islamic oral law demonstrates similarities in content and discourse. Differences between the two, however, were found in the application of oral law to daily life, as reflected in “responsa”—piskei halacha and fatwas. In modern times, as the state became more involved in regulating maintenance and disobedience, and Jewish law was backed for the first time in history by a state, state policy and implementation were influenced by the political system and socioeconomic circumstances of the country. Despite their similar origin in oral law, maintenance and rebellion have divergent relevance to modern Jews and Muslims.

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