West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will hold her first rally against “linguistic terrorism” in Bengal’s Birbhum district on Monday, which she calls “second language movement” against torture and harassment on the Bengali-speaking migrants in BJP-ruled states.
Trinamool Congress has started the protest on the issue on Sunday across the state as announced by the Trinamool Supremo. Meanwhile, BJP Bengal leadership has said there are 1.5 crore illegal Bangladeshis in Bengal and SIR will clean the electoral rolls in Bengal.
Meanwhile, posting a video today, Banerjee, lashed out in her X Handle, said, “See how Delhi police brutally beat up a kid and his mother, members of a migrant family from Malda’s Chanchal. See how even a child is not spared from the cruelty of violence in the regime of linguistic terror unleashed by BJP in the country against the Bengalis!”
Coined as “second language movement” by Banerjee, it holds a special significance for Bengalis, as Birbhum is the land of Kabiguru Rabindranath Tagore, whose name is synonymous to Bengali language and culture. The original ‘Bhasha Andolan’ in erstwhile East Pakistan was a political movement, seeking the recognition of Bengali as an official language of the country. The movement saw a lot of bloodbath and then Bangla was recognized as a state language of Bangladesh.
Starting the movement from July 27 across the state, the protest will continue till the 2026 assembly polls.
Trinamool Supremo has chalked out a multi-pronged strategy to take up the issues of the alleged persecution, detention and deportation of Bengali-speaking people in BJP-ruled states and the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Parliament and outside in the run-up to the 2026 assembly election.
“The internationally reputed and New York-based multi-country NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) has also now highlighted the issue of harassment, persecution, and illegal deportation of Bengali-speaking people of India by the BJP governments in various States,” Banerjee has said in her X Handle post yesterday.
“The human rights organisation has released a report saying what we have been saying: Bengali-speaking Indians (of different castes and communities) are being arbitrarily abused and pushed out in a concerted manner by the BJP establishment. Elaine Pearson, Asia Director at HRW, has on record said, BJP is fuelling discrimination by arbitrarily expelling Bengalis from the country, including Indian citizens,” Banerjee said in her post.
“HRW reports that this has been happening systematically in the BJP-ruled States of Assam, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha and Delhi, following a directive by the Ministry of Home, Government of India. Now, even international human rights organisations have started taking note of the linguistic terrorism unleashed in India,” Banerjee said.
Meanwhile, BJP Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari said that there are 1.5 crore Bangladeshis in the voter list and they must be screened. Adhikari has demanded that SIR should be implemented in Bengal to clean the electoral rolls from the Rohingyas and illegal Bangladeshis.
