A senior Indian politician has postponed her visit to Cambridge after a political rally held in her home state of West Bengal descended into violence.

Last Friday Mamata Banerjee cancelled a lecture that was scheduled to be delivered to the Department for Politics and International Studies on October 25 after fighting erupted between supporters of her party, the Trinamool Congress, and those of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI-M).

Mrs. Banerjee is a junior member of India’s ruling United Progressive Alliance coalition and is the Minister for Railways. Her party heads the opposition in the federal state of West Bengal, currently led by the CPI-M.

Both factions have a long history of animosity. Each accuses the other of promoting political violence and failing to address a Maoist insurgency which has gripped India’s so-called ‘Red Corridor’ for over four decades.

The conflict has claimed close to 170 lives in West Bengal in the last year alone.

This month’s confrontation took place in Kolkata at a Trinamool public gathering attended by Mrs. Banerjee. Reports indicate that shops were looted and burned in the chaos and small arms fire exchanged. Six people received treatment for gunshot wounds.

Mrs. Banerjee has declared that she wishes to remain by the side of victims of the “unabated violence” and keep up pressure on the CPI-M in the run-up to state elections due to be held in summer 2011.

 University sources told Varsity that they regret Mrs. Banerjee’s absence but understand “her need to stay in Bengal”.

 Coincidentally, the Secretary-General of the Communist Party, Parakash Karat, is expected to address the University on October 22, just three days short of Mrs. Banerjee’s planned visit. He will be speaking about the relevance of the Indian Left.

 Many commentators had been relishing the prospect of the two arch-rivals locking horns on campus. Both Mr. Karat and Mrs. Banerjee had brushed off suggestions that their paths might cross on British soil.

 Mrs. Banerjee’s visit and the inauguration of the Centre for the Rising Powers which she had been due to launch have now been pushed back to Lent term 2011.

 No representatives from either the Trinamool Congress or the CPI-M were available for comment.

 Cambridge University has long been an intellectual nexus of Indian politics. Prime Ministers Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajiv Gandhi, and Dr Manmohan Singh all studied here