Suvendu Adhikari could not have ushered in the new era in Bengal politics on a better day—May 9, 2026, the 165th birth anniversary of poet laureate Rabindranath Tagore. And the new chief minister and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) made the most of it, from the portrait of Tagore on the stage and Rabindra Sangeet during the swearing-in ceremony to Suvendu’s visit to Jorasanko Thakurbari, Tagore’s ancestral home, where he paid floral tributes to the ‘kabiguru’ and recited his poem, ‘Chitto jetha bhoy shunyo (where the mind is without fear)’. ‘Bhoy’ (fear), he echoed Union home minister Amit Shah’s words, had now given way to ‘Bhorosha’ (trust).
