WEST BENGAL: A THREE-FRONT WAR
Abroad ‘secular’ alliance is in the works in the run-up to the West Bengal assembly election, with the Congress-Left combine warming to influential Muslim cleric Abbas Siddiqui and his Indian Secular Front (ISF), launched on January 21.
Siddiqui is the 33-year-old pirzada of the Furfura Sharif shrine, which controls over 3,000 mosques in Bengal and holds sway among Muslims in the South Bengal districts of Hooghly, Howrah, South 24 Parganas and North 24 Parganas. His ISF includes eight organisations, representing Dalits, Adivasis, backward classes and the Hindu Matuas, and promises Muslims and other ‘weaker sections’ a new deal based not on appeasement politics but their rightful place in society. “We will play kingmaker this time (assembly election),” Siddiqui tells the surging crowd at one of the numerous
rallies he has been holding. They cheer in support. The Congress and the Left have finalised seat distribution in 230 of the 294 constituencies and are reportedly ready to give Siddiqui a chunk of the remaining 60-odd seats. Siddiqui is cold to the offer. “If interested in an alliance, they (Congress-Left) should begin seatsharing negotiations with me. I gather they have finalised 230 seats between themselves. That does not leave too many options for me,” he says. Seat distribution isn’t the only impediment. Any electoral pact between the three parties will also hinge on Siddiqui willing to dissociate himself from Asaduddin Owaisi and his AIMIM (All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul-Muslimeen)—seen by many as the ‘BJP’s B team’. Owaisi plans to contest the Bengal election and has been in talks with Siddiqui.
The Congress and the Left want to keep Owaisi at arm’s length given how the AIMIM queered the pitch for the opposition grand alliance in the Bihar election by splitting the Muslim vote. They are also apprehensive that Owaisi’s brand of politics, laced with communal rhetoric, may further polarise the electorate. Bengal delivered a highly polarised verdict in the 2019 Lok Sabha election, with the TMC and the BJP garnering about 83 per cent of the total votes (43.3 per cent and 40 per cent, respectively). A post-poll survey by CSDSLokniti showed how the religious binary ate into Left and Congress votes. The survey found that about 40 per cent of the traditional Left supporters voted for the BJP and over 30 per cent for the TMC. Among the Congress supporters, 32 per cent shifted to the BJP and 29 per cent to the TMC.
So far, the Left and the Congress have made all the right noises to get Siddiqui on board. Left Front chairman Surjya Kanta Mishra called the ISF a secular platform representing the backward and the oppressed. “Siddiqui has said that he is not only advocating the cause of Muslims but also the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and marginalised Hindus,” said Mishra. Congress leader Abdul Mannan wrote to party chief Sonia Gandhi that an alliance with Siddiqui could be the “game changer” in the election as the cleric is popular “not only among Muslims but Dalits and tribals [as well]”. Muslims make up about 30 per cent of Bengal’s 100 million electorate. A quarter of them are concentrated in the four districts where the Furfura Sharif (read: Siddiqui) has mass following. Of the 125 Muslim-dominated assembly seats in the state, the Congress and the Left won 40 in 2016 and finished runner-up in the remaining 85. With Siddiqui on their side, the new front could make a killing at the expense of the TMC. “After pulling away the Muslim vote from us, Mamata Banerjee has tried to retain them with tall promises. But now, Muslims are ready to abandon the TMC—they are exploring a safer alternative that can fight the BJP ideologically,” says CPI(M) politburo member Md Salim.
The BJP is well aware of the damage the Congress-Left can inflict, with none other than Prime Minister Narendra Modi leading the charge against them. At a rally in Haldia on February 7, Modi accused the Congress-Left and the TMC of “match-fixing” to defeat the BJP.
Siddiqui, on his part, has been punching holes into Mamata’s image of being a messiah of Muslims and questions her claims of working for their development. “Under Mamata’s rule, the BJP secured 18 Lok Sabha seats in Bengal for the first time and emerged as the principal opposition party. Muslims have come to realise that Mamata and the BJP complement each other,” he says.
Congress leaders feel a pact with Siddiqui—but without the AIMIM— will help their party retain its hold over its traditional bastions of Murshidabad (South Bengal) and North Dinajpur and Malda (North Bengal). For over a year, the AIMIM has been trying to make inroads into these districts and chip away at the Congress’s Muslim base built over decades by heavyweights like Adhir Chowdhury and the late A.B.A. Ghani Khan Chowdhury.
The Congress is dead against giving up any seats for Siddiqui in South Dinajpur, Malda and Murshidabad. The ISF founder reportedly wants 40 seats in South Bengal, where 72 of the 125 Muslim-dominated seats are located. The Left is okay with the demand as it believes this will help break the TMC stranglehold on the Muslim vote and cost Mamata dear. In the 2011 assembly poll, a 7 per cent swing in the Muslim vote in favour of the TMC ended the Left’s 34-year rule in Bengal.
“Muslims in Bengal want an end to appeasement politics, but that won’t be possible while the TMC is around. Rather than government doles, edu
SEAT-SHARING ISN’T THE ONLY HURDLE. THE CONGRESS-LEFT EXPECT SIDDIQUI TO DISSOCIATE HIMSELF FROM ASADUDDIN OWAISI
cated Muslim youth want jobs and a place in the administration and the police,” says Abdul Khalek Mollah, a TMC supporter from South 24 Parganas, who believes Siddiqui can truly empower Muslims.
If Muslims desert Mamata, they will invariably opt for the proposed Congress-Left-ISF combine, feel analysts. “A shift [of the Muslim vote] from the Trinamool is visible. It will be complete once Muslims sense Mamata’s electoral prospects to be dim,” says former Presidency University principal Amal Kumar Mukhopadhyay. “Mamata is desperate to project that, despite defections from her party, her house is in order. She has been claiming at rallies that she will return to power and all her welfare schemes will continue.”
The TMC and the BJP are, meanwhile, fighting the perception of being mirror images of each other. “The BJP made the Left’s task easier by filling its ranks with Trinamool leaders. People now see the two parties as one and the same,” says a Leftleaning professor from a renowned university in Bengal.
In the previous general election, the Left Front had a vote share of just 7 per cent, down from 30 per cent in 2014. The erosion in support translated into a 20 per cent gain in vote share for the BJP. In the upcoming election, though, sections of the Left cadre may have a rethink on voting for the BJP. With several questionable imports from Mamata’s party, including some facing corruption charges, many see the BJP as a worse version of the TMC.
According to some Left workers on the ground, once the dust settles, the electoral battle will narrow down to BJP vs. TMC. “The Left cadre, who have been at the receiving end of the Trinamool’s atrocities for a decade, will again vote with a vengeance for a change of government. While the presence of strong Muslim leader (Siddiqui) may swing some of the Muslim vote, the Left’s Hindu voter has made up his mind,” says a former Left local committee leader, probably alluding to a slogan doing the rounds in poll-bound Bengal—‘Duhajar Ekushe Ram, Chhabishe Baam (Ram (read: BJP) in 2021, Left in 2026)’. ■