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Even after being pelted with a stone at Nandigram on Wednesday morning, Mamata Banerjee, who was shifted to Nandigram Hospital for treatment, told her partymen to maintain restrain. The fiery petrel of Bengal has decided to adopt a peaceful political strategy and means to stump the CPI(M) in her fight to protect the farmers' land in Bengal.

To extend support to Mamata in her fight for the farmers, BJP Leader of the Parliamentary Party LK Advani is coming on Saturday with a strong NDA delegation. The Advani-led NDA team would visit Nandigram and meet Mamata at the SSKM Hospital, where she is recuperating.

"I am not going to make provocative statements. I am also not going to adopt aggressive politics to take on the CPI(M) here. I don't want to be bracketed with Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee who is making irresponsible statements and instigating violence in the state," Mamata Banerjee told the Hindustan Times.

Mamata said that in the last three decades, she has been pursuing an aggressive line of politics, but since that has failed to yield substantial result, henceforth she is going to adopt Gandhian politics to remove the 30-year-old Left Front government here.

"At one point of time, the English believed that the sun never sets in the British Empire. But it did. And the man who brought about the full solar eclipse is Mahatma Gandhi. If Gandhi brought freedom for India through non-violent means, why cannot I bring down this government by following that method," said Mamata.

Indeed, when the Left Front government refused to budge from setting up the Tata Motors plant in Singur, Mamata undertook a Dandi March from Kolkata to Singur along with her party workers. Again, when Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee used force to fence 1,000 acres of land in Singur and stopped Mamata from holding a public meeting there, she went on a hunger strike for 28 days — the longest by a political leader in Independent India.

"I broke my fast to honour the President APJ Abdul Kalam and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who assured me that the CM would talk with me to resolve the Singur issue. But the CM has no such intentions. So the people of Bengal have seen that Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee tells lies. This has not harmed my credentials but has exposed the CM," alleged Mamata.

And the latest example of Mamata's restrained politics is her comments after the Nandigram killings. Very surprisingly, after the news reached about the killing of farmers in Nandigram, she remained calm and refused to spit fire.

Instead Mamata said: "We have not seen such killings before in Bengal. It is not the time when I have to explain how heinous the CM's action has been. And if I understand the pulse of the people, I am certain that the people of Bengal want to register their protest by calling a Bangla Bandh. And so we called a Bandh," said Mamata.

But why change in style of politics? Mamata candidly says that she doesn't want to give any more grounds to the CPI(M) to say that "she instigates violence in Bengal" or her "trademark of politics is violence" — the two pet lines of the CPI(M) State secretary Biman Bose and the CM.

What's more, Mamata wants the people of Bengal to realise that it is not she or the Trinamool Congress but the CPI(M) that sheds blood on the streets and takes recourse to violence to subvert the democratic voices against their regime.   

Meanwhile, it is learnt that Mamata is being shifted to SSKM Hospital in Kolkata on Thursday evening. Mamata is physically weak, as she has undergone gall bladder operation to remove stones a couple of weeks back.

Email Arindam Sarkar: asarkar@hindustantimes.com