BJP mixing religion with politics: Mamata Banerjee on 'Jai Shri Ram' row

Videos of the CM getting rattled by BJP supporters chanting "Jai Shri Ram" at her convoy had gone viral over the past several days.

"From Ram Mohan Roy to Vidyasagar to other great social reformers, Bengal has been a seat of harmony, progress and forward thinking. But now, the misconceived strategy of BJP is targeting Bengal in a very negative manner. I have no problem, regarding any particular slogan of political parties in their rallies, and for their party purpose. Every political party has their own slogan. My party has Jai Hind, Vande Mataram. The Left has Inquilab Zindabad. Others have different slogans. We respect each other," Mamata wrote on Facebook.

"Jai Sia Ram, Jai Ram ji ki, Ram naam Satya hai etc have religious and social connotations. We respect these sentiments. But BJP is using religious slogan Jai Sri Ram as their party slogan in a misconceived manner by way of mixing religion with politics. We do not respect this forcible enforcement of political slogans on others in the name of so called RSS which Bengal never accepted. This is a deliberate attempt to sell hatred ideology through vandalism and violence which we must oppose together," she said.

"One can fool some people sometimes, but cannot fool all the people all the time."

"This is high time that proper action is taken to restrain political workers not to indulge in activities of creating unrest, chaos, violence and disruption of normal life by taking recourse to misplaced ideologies in the so called name of religion to create divide among the people. If all other political parties start resorting to these sort of divisive and disruptive activities, then the entire environment would become highly vitiated and counterproductive," said Mamata, who changed her profile picture from Vidyasagar to one with a host of Indian legends with the words "Jay Hind" and "Joy Bangla" written in Bengali.

"We have to and would oppose such moves of BJP very strongly in order to keep secular character of the country as enshrined in our constitution," Mamata added.

Mamata's TMC suffered heavy losses in the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections where her party was reduced to 22 seats while the BJP made unprecedented gains and won 18 seats. Several TMC leaders have also switched over to the BJP.