Kolkata, July 31 (IANS) After Bolpur in Birbhum district, tribal dominated Jhargram district would be the next destination for Mamata Banerjee’s protest rally on the issue of the alleged harassment of Bengali-speaking people in BJP-ruled states, which the Chief Minister had described as yet another ‘Bhasha Andolon (Language Movement)’.

While the Bolpur rally was conducted on July 28, the tentative date of the second rally at Jhargram is August 6, confirmed a senior member of the West Bengal Cabinet, who refused to be named.

Political observers feel that, like Bolpur, Jhargram also had been chosen keeping the historical significance of the place with whom Bengal and Bengalis are associated in a major way.

“The reason for choosing Birbhum as the starting venue of the protest, which Mamata Banerjee describes as another ‘Bhasha Andolan (Language Movement)’, is the district’s rich association with Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore and the Gurudev-founded Visva Bharati University at Bolpur-Santiniketan in the district.

“Similarly, Jhargram, too, has immense historical and nostalgic significance because of the Santhals’ movement against the British rule in India in the 1920s on agrarian grounds,” pointed out a city-based political observer.

As decided so far, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee would lead a procession from Rajbari intersection at Jhargram to Circus Maidan in that protest rally, and she would be accompanied by members of tribal communities, social organisations, and scholars from Jangalmahal area, the former Maoist-belt in West Bengal, consisting of tribal-dominated pockets of Jhargram, Purulia, Bankura, and West Midnapore districts.

On Wednesday, the state urban development and municipal affairs minister, Firhad Hakim, held a meeting in Kolkata to make preparations for the upcoming language movement programmes of the Chief Minister, including an event on the occasion of World Indigenous Peoples’ Day on August 9.

Jhargram’s district Trinamool President and party legislators like Dulal Murmu, Debnath Hansda, Khagendranath Mahato, and the party’s top leader from the Jangalmahal area were present at the meeting. According to sources, Firhad Hakim will reach Jhargram a day in advance for the final preparations of CM Banerjee’s procession.

According to Debnath Hansda, during the Chief Minister’s visit to Jangalmahal this time, preparations have been made for a series of programmes, including a language movement procession and administrative meetings.

For the last few weeks, Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee has been vocal about the harassment and attacks on Bengali migrant workers in BJP-ruled states.

On several occasions, Banerjee slammed the BJP for orchestrating such attacks against Bengali-speaking people in an attempt to create a sense of fear among them ahead of the 2026 West Bengal Assembly polls.

From her party’s July 21 Martyr’s Day rally in Kolkata, CM Banerjee vowed to fight against these atrocities by starting the second ‘Bhasha Andolan’ against the BJP.

However, she had also faced criticism on this count since ‘Bhasha Andolan’ was a political movement in what was then East Pakistan, advocating for the recognition of the Bengali language as an official language of the country, which ultimately led to the emergence of Bangladesh as an independent nation after erstwhile East Pakistan was liberated from Pakistan in 1971.

–IANS

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