The Bengali new year of 1424 should feel like a happy new year for Mamata Banerjee.

She is queen of the heap in Bengal, sitting pretty at the top. She has singlehandedly decimated her arch enemy the Left Front in the state, poached their cadre and reduced the Congress to a rag-tag bunch. A much ballyhooed mahagatbandhanof the Left and Congress against her failed to dent her. Many of her opponents had thought that the coming together of Congress and the Left would at least clip her wings a little even if it did not dislodge her from the ruling perch. But Mamata trounced all the opposition and won 211 seats out of the 293 the party contested despite the coalition, the collapsed flyover, the Narada sting and the Saradha scam.

But now she's facing an unexpected agnipariksha – Ram Navami and Hanuman Jayanti. Mamata is having to defend her seat against a BJP literally up in arms against her, flashing swords and marching through the streets of Bengal. The BJP and RSS are emboldened by their performance in Uttar Pradesh and want to try and make a play for Bengal. A stream of national leaders have been visiting the state and making that intent clear.

The Ram Navami rally saw some 200 rallies all over the state, wielding swords. Hanuman Jayanti found processions clashing with police after they were denied permission. Rallies and clashes brought the town of Suri to a standstill. Chants of "Jai shri Ram" and "Jai Hanuman", not common to Bengal, were heard all over the state. A youth wing leader of the BJP, incensed by footage of police beating up people with lathis, said "When I saw the video, I only had one thought... that if anyone gets me Mamata Banerjee's head I will give them 11 lakh."

Mamata is having to defend her seat against a BJP literally up in arms against her, flashing swords and marching through the streets of Bengal.

Trinamool seems both rattled and defensive. Some ruling MLAs took out their own Hanuman Jayanti rallies and processions. Mamata issued a Ram Navami tweet and railed at the BJP for trying to appropriate those festivals. "I am not going to tolerate any muscle flexing in the name of religion," an irate Mamata complained. "Some BJP leaders who do not know the culture of Bengal are flashing swords on the streets to intimidate people." A case was filed against BJP chief Dilip Ghosh for brandishing a sword. A police officer tells the Indian Express "In such cases, one has to take prior permission from police to carry weapons longer than nine inches."

That's exactly what the BJP wants and a risky strategy for Trinamool. It allows Ghosh to plead majority victimhood."I have no regrets. What were police and administration doing when arms were brandished during Muharram processions? At that time, they didn't bother to lodge any case as it might hit the votebank of the Trinamool Congress."

Mamata has in her own way made the ground for the BJP. By thoroughly decimating the Left and the Congress, by doing her best to stamp them out of Bengal, Mamata thought she was securing her own fortunes. She was doing that but she was also creating an opposition vaccum that was ripe for the BJP which could claim to be the new broom that swept clean. On top of that, it could paint Mamata as the queen of votebank politics though that is something the BJP also does, just with different votebanks. The Muslim pandering charges have been around for a while. The famous stipends for imams and muezzins that was ruled illegal by the courts were the Trinamool government's idea.