Modi’s ‘Matua’ outreach in B’desh around WB polls

By Subir Bhaumik Kolkata, March 3 : On the day the West Bengal witnesses the first of its eight-phase state assembly elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi may be heading for an unusual shrine in Bangladesh — Orakandi .
Orakandi is not far from Tungipara in Gopalgunj, the ancestral home of ‘Bangabandhu’ Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and daughter Sheikh Hasina, the now Prime Minister of Bangladesh.
It is the most sacred shrine of the ‘Matua’ community, a Hindu sect whose numbers are considerable both in West Bengal and Bangladesh.
Modi will reach Bangladesh on March 26, the day observed in Bangladesh as Independence Day, when in 1971, Pakistan’s brutal army unleashed ‘Operation Searchlight’, the genocide of Bengalis in tens of thousands that sparked the country’s struggle for freedom.
Modi has already expressed his desire to visit Tungipara, where the ‘Bangabandhu’ lies buried and the visit has been scheduled for March 27 after necessary security clearance arrangements by both Indian and Bangladesh security agencies.
March 27 is when West Bengal goes to its first phase of polls.