Learn to Accept Defeat, Ms. Banerjee

Writing this piece, I find myself thinking of Shakespeare’s Margaret. Those who have read the Henry plays or Richard III will understand why. Margaret rose from nothing to the heart of English royal power. She fought, she governed, and she eventually became an irrelevant shadow haunting the court of her enemies, clutching at past glories, refusing to accept defeat. On the political stage of West Bengal, that scene has just been performed again.

Let me go back a little to some uncomfortable truths that history insists on keeping alive. What did Mamata Banerjee fight against in 2011? The CPM's cadre raj. The syndicate rackets. Booth capturing. Physical violence against opposition workers. The state machinery bent entirely to serve one party. The seizure of farmers’ land in Singur. Murder, rape, the erosion of ordinary people's social protections. Can anyone honestly say those were unjust causes? I still remember her combative conduct in Parliament over the question of Bangladeshi infiltration, something today’s Gen Z would have no reason to know about. People stood with her then. She came to power carrying real hope, because at that moment Mamata Banerjee was a genuine mass leader, the answer to three decades of Left Front suffocation.

And the charges against her in 2026? Identical. Cadre raj, now in Trinamool colours. Syndicate networks, now running coal, sand and cattle smuggling. Booth capturing, the method unchanged, only the party flag different. Attacks on opposition workers: the post-poll violence of 2021 is still raw in people's memory. And in recent years, the parallel government run through IPAC and civic volunteers was simply institutional corruption wearing a new face. The machinery that once ground people down under the Left, and drove them to revolt, was rebuilt and run by her. People revolted again. History offers this lesson repeatedly. Mamata’s tragedy is precisely here: in her campaign to destroy the BJP, there was no one beside her willing to speak this truth plainly to her.

The lesson people delivered to the Left Front in 2011 was sharper than what they had given Congress in 1977. But what has just been delivered is sharper still, and not only in terms of seats and votes (Trinamool itself won 184 seats in 2011). It is sharper because this time the opposition offered no Chief Ministerial face, no single leader to rally behind. West Bengal’s political culture does not usually work this way. People here love icons; they want alternatives presented to them.

There is even a long-standing charge that Bengal’s voters prefer not to do the work of choosing their own leaders. Yet this time people voted against Mamata by doing exactly that, choosing for themselves. Because until now, almost everyone believed Mamata Banerjee was the mass leader, and that no party had anyone capable of defeating her. The mandate delivered without that crutch is all the more significant.

In football, we know the difference between home and away matches. Politics rarely offers such clean illustrations. In 2021, the Nandigram contest between Suvendu Adhikari and Mamata Banerjee was a home match for him and an away match for her. In 2026, it was reversed: Mamata’s home ground, Suvendu away. Suvendu won both times. The truth must now be accepted: Suvendu Adhikari knows how to defeat Mamata Banerjee.

How he did it, not once but twice, can become the subject of future research in political science. In 2011, among the many reasons for Mamata’s rise, this man played no small part. He was her younger comrade then, the eldest son of the Adhikari family, the man who stood up against the CPM in its stronghold of Nandigram.

But why did Mamata lose? What are the visible causes that made this defeat inevitable?

Cynical Exploitation

On permanent employment, her government failed. West Bengal’s migrant workers leave their own state for work elsewhere because there is none for them here. Women's safety is non-existent, and no amount of Lakshmir Bhandar advertising could conceal that. The cynical political exploitation of the Waqf issue confused and alienated a section of the Muslim community. Government employees were treated with contempt, their unions mocked almost as one might dismiss stray dogs on the street. Their legitimate rights were denied. Her own police lathi-charged them on more than one occasion.

And then came the worst wound, inflicted just before the election. The remark suggesting that if one community united, it could finish off the majority in a matter of moments. That single sentence destroyed years of accumulated political capital. You can frighten people into silence, but when a frightened person stands alone before the ballot box, they vote against the fear itself, against the one who threatened them, to protect themselves. This is precisely where the Election Commission's role mattered. They made it possible for people to stand before the EVM without fear. They preserved the public's trust in the voting process. People who had welfare money but no actual right to cast a free vote exercised that right, and they chose freedom: freedom from the atmosphere of fear that Mamata Banerjee had created. She did not understand this simple equation, or chose not to. And that, I believe, is the invisible reason at the heart of her defeat. She came to believe that power had made her accountable to no one.

Shakespeare understood this before any of us did, and more deeply than any political analyst ever has. In Macbeth, on the night after the king’s murder, when Macbeth himself is shaking with fear, Lady Macbeth tells him calmly: “A little water clears us of this deed.” What has been done can be buried, explained away, drowned out by counter-attack.

But the fifth act comes. We see Lady Macbeth walking in her sleep, scrubbing her hands together in the dark, trying to wipe away blood that is no longer there. “Out, damned spot, out.” And then that helpless cry: “Will these hands ne’er be clean?” The doctor watching her understands: he has no medicine for this illness. The stain is not on the skin. It is on the conscience. And a stain on the conscience does not lift through denial.

Fighting Reality

Now, after losing her own constituency by fifteen thousand votes, the Honourable ex-Chief Minister says that over a hundred seats were “looted.” That the Election Commission was biased. That the Centre conspired. Perhaps some of these charges have a basis; perhaps none do. But when the BJP wins 205 seats and 46 per cent of the vote, “loot” alone cannot account for it. The people voted. And that has to be accepted.

Various explanations have been offered. Some point to consolidation of opposition votes. Some say Hindu polarisation. Some say a swing of Left votes. Suvendu himself noted that in Ward 77 of Bhawanipur, every Muslim vote went to Trinamool and not one Muslim voted for him, yet the CPM's roughly ten thousand Hindu votes in that assembly segment came to him. But when his party’s seat tally exceeds even his own prior expectations by such a large margin, all these analyses become secondary. One truth remains: people voted. Across identities, Hindu, Muslim, Left-leaning, anti-establishment, a very large section chose the BJP. To deny this is to deny the people themselves.

Mamata Banerjee has lived a remarkable political life. The young woman who entered Parliament at 29 by defeating Somnath Chatterjee, who left Congress alone and built her own party, who went on hunger strike in Singur, who dismantled a Left fortress standing for 34 years: no one can take that away from her. History will record her name. But the final test of greatness is the exit, not the entrance. Nelson Mandela stepped down after one term. Atal Bihari Vajpayee accepted defeat and withdrew in silence. They are larger in history because their endings were graceful. Had Mamata said today, “I accept the people's verdict, I thank the people of West Bengal,” history would have placed her higher still. Instead, she has chosen denial and accusation. Margaret’s path.

Accepting defeat is not weakness, Honourable Chief Minister. Accepting defeat means accepting the people. And for someone who entered politics in the name of the people, is that really too much to expect?

(The writer is a Natyashastra scholar, theatre director and political commentator. Views personal.)