Amid discontent, BJP moves within striking distance in Bengal
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s policies to appease minority communities have left even the most secular Bengalis seething with quiet resentment, writes ISHITA AYAN DUTT
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s policies to appease minority communities have left even the most secular Bengalis seething with quiet resentment, writes ISHITA AYAN DUTT
Bengal woke up to shock and disbelief on Ram Navami as saffron clad, swordwielding youths chanting ‘Jai Shri Ram, Jai Bajranj Bali, Har Har Mahadev ’ led processions across the state, including Kolkata, a city which conjures up images of a liberal intelligentsia.
Tableaus, processions, slogans, the Ram Navami celebrations in Bengal, organised by the Vishva Hindu Parishad, Hindu Jagran Manch and various other affiliates of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), had gained truly epic proportions.
As the city was coming to terms with the images, the Kanthi byelection took place, and the result was yet another eye opener.
Trinamool candidate Chandrima Bhattacharya won by more than 45,000 votes, no surprises there. But Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s Sourindra Mohan relegated the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Congress to the third and fourth positions. Clearly, the saffron party is spreading wings in Bengal, right now at the expense of the Left.
The numbers confirmed the chatter in public nooks and corners for a while now. “In my neighbourhood there is a park. Every day, a small group of RSS workers used to come for training. Some people used to stand and watch. Now most of those bystanders have joined the group,” says a person at a neighbourhood shop. It’s a story to narrate how the BJP-RSS are quietly penetrating Bengal.
The by-election results have obviously enthused the BJP leadership. Party National President Amit Shah just left West Bengal after a three-day visit and promised to be back in September.
Unlike his last campaigns that relied on political rhetorics, this one was strategic and symbolic: he had lunch on a banana leaf at a tribal home in Naxalbari, once a hotbed of Left politics, visited a slum in Bhawanipore, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s constituency, coined a simple tagline, Ebar Bangla.
Chandra Kumar Bose, grand nephew of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, who took on Banerjee in 2016, says, Shah chose to visit booth 269 in the 82nd ward of the constituency where BJP had particularly performed badly in the Assembly elections.
“We could have chosen one where I had won. But we deliberately chose this one and the response was spontaneous.”
Since no change in West Bengal is possible without the influence of the intelligentsia, Shah also interacted with Kolkata’s most important stakeholders.
In 2011, Mamata Banerjee had issued a clarion call, Paribartan Chai, with the support of the Bengal intelligentsia to topple the 34-year Left government. Iconic cultural personalities: writer and social activist Mahasweta Devi; painters Shuvaprasanna and Jogen Chowdhury; theatre personalities Bratya Basu, Bibhas Chakraborty and Shaonli Mitra; actor and film director Aparna Sen; poet Joy Goswami had come together to shape public opinion and to what effect.
Shah too has kept his tagline simple: Ebar Bangla.
But in 2011, it was a campaign against the Left. So what is the reason behind the rise of BJP in Bengal?
Painter Samir Aich, one of the supporters of the Paribartan Chai campaign, says it’s the Trinamool Congress.
“People are fed up with the Trinamool Congress. There is so much factionalism that even the TMC workers are being attacked by their own partymen. There is no development. Whatever changes have happened are just cosmetic.” Aich has switched camps since. In 2014, he contested the Lok Sabha election on a Congress ticket.
Political analyst Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chadhury explains that the other parties in the Opposition have lost their mojo. “The CPI(M) has the same old faces that were rejected by the people in the last two Assembly elections. The Congress has too many leaders.”
But that apart, BJP’s biggest weapon is Banerjee’s appeasement policy. Her monthly stipend for Imams and Muezzins, scholarships for students from minority communities, and above all, a poor law and order situation have had even the most secular Bengalis seething with quiet resentment.
The BJP always had the support of a pocket of trader community but now there is growing support from a new middle class Bengali.
Of course, the Trinamool can’t be faulted. Its manifesto in 2016 had pledged to protect the minority and backward classes. “We will pay special attention to protect the minorities, the SC/ST/OBCs and tribal people from communal and social oppression.” Banerjee’s pledge has earned her undivided support from the 27 per cent Muslim community in Bengal.
“There was always this latent resentment against the Muslim community in Bengal. Now that is coming to the fore and this is very apparent from the conversations on social media,” points out Basu Ray Chaudhury.
But much before she became Chief Minister, Banerjee got a life membership card of the Matua Mahasangha. The Matua community is about 10 million and even the Left leaders had once hobnobbed with the community leader, Baro Ma.
“Identity politics is not new to Bengal, but it used to be based on ethnic and religious communities. BJP’s approach is more antagonistic, possibly to reap greater dividends,” says Basu Ray Chaudhury.
The party has goals to achieve. The panchayat election is in 2018, the general election in 2019, the semifinal municipal election in 2020 and Assembly in 2021.
Will Ebar Bangla happen? Amit Shah has said that the situation in Bengal is far more favourable than he thought it was, and he would be back in September for a similar exercise.
Bose says, Shah has shown the path. “Shah has shown that you need to do grassroot work. As a national leader if he could do it, everyone in the party should be able to do. Bengal politics is different. People are subtle. They don’t like loud noise.”
BJP did stupendously well in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections in Bengal with a 17 per cent vote share but squandered it away in every subsequent election.
“The problem is, BJP doesn’t have a base here and they don’t have any local leader who will be able to mobilise people. BJP’s chances will ultimately depend on whether they can woo voters from the TMC. Right now, the desertion is from the Left and Congress. But if they can manage some heavyweight leader from the TMC then they will probably get many seats in the upcoming elections,” Basu Ray Chaudhury says.
After the Lok Sabha elections, the only strategy BJP used to fight elections was to combat TMC by engaging in verbal duels in television studios. But Banerjee knows better. She makes frequent visits to districts, holds administrative meetings in districts and hence knows the pulse of the people.
BJP has learnt from mistakes. It doesn’t want to focus entirely on an anti-Mamata campaign. Rather, it will focus on the development agenda.
As Bose says, “BJP cannot bank on Mamata’s failure. That way, we can be a second alternative and we are already eating into Opposition’s vote share. But we need to show results to win elections.”
Bose, for instance, will now endeavour to build toilets in the Bhawanipur slum that Shah visited. He would also like to build houses under a Central scheme, but for all this, he will need support from the local Trinamool councillor.
There is scope for work. Shah has given a host of data to punch holes in Bengal’s development story. The most important among which is that every fifth person in Bengal is in the BPL category. Finance Minister Amit Mitra, however, has countered Shah’s set of data with another set of data to show that Bengal scores better than the country on many parameters.
Ultimately, when the parties go to polls, it’s the deliverables
that will matter, however.