Hindu consolidation key to BJP as Muslim vote gives Didi edge
The Battle of Plassey — often dubbed as Bengal’s first big battle in history — was a defining moment, they say, for the British East India Company.
An English joint-stock firm originally set up to trade in cotton, silk and spices amongst other everyday commodities, it turned into a marauding coloniser of vast swathes of the Indian subcontinent. And it all began with their victory (and arguably the most significant one in Indian history) over Mirza Muhammad Siraj ud-Daulah, the last independent Nawab of Bengal.
For Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that’s seeking a second straight term at the centre, Bengal could well hold the keys to the stairway to the unholy spectre of absolute power in modern India.
The 1757 battle — fought on the banks of River Hooghly and won in just 11 hours by Robert Clive — had helped The Company, as it was called back then, not just consolidate its presence in Bengal but also eventually control the whole of India.
Cut to 2019, this battle of Bengal will take shape over seven phases lasting little over a month and spread across 42 constituencies. And much of Modi’s pan-India aspirations will depend on how well he pulls off the British privateer who established East India Company’s military and political supremacy through the very doors of Bengal, now under the reins of its de facto queen, Mamata Banerjee.
As the founder of Trinamool Congress and the current chief minister of Bengal, she is one of Modi’s harshest and also — by her sheer ring of invincibility — his most vocal and ablest opponents.
Accepted nationally as one of the last standing bastions of secularism and the chief protagonist of the anti-BJP narrative
(despite once being an NDA ally), she is still the unquestionable leader who has the total command of her party. And much like the mighty Siraj udDaulah, a Muslim nawab feared by rivals for the army of Hindus and Muslims he commanded,
she remains the same firebrand secular leader to many who brought a regime change in her state after over three decades, decimating the world’s longest ruling democratically elected Communist party in the world.
She may be born in a family of Hindu Brahmins but Didi, as she is lovingly called, has made no bones about taking Bengal’s burgeoning 24 million-plus Muslim community — a sizeable chunk of her party’s vote share — under her wings. Thanks to her impromptu Eid greetings in pristine whites and her general “arms wide open” approach, she still retains the magic ability to whip up a crowd of hundreds of thousands — with or without star powers like Nusrat Jahan.
The 29-year-old film star will be contesting for the first time from Basirhat that’s home to the most porous stretches of West Bengal’s 2,000km plus border with Bangladesh.
But this former seat of avantgarde leaders like the Oxfordeducated Humayun Kabir and former home minister Indrajit Gupta isn’t even amongst the top Muslim-dominated areas.
At least 14 seats have more than half a million Muslim voters each with six constituencies of more than 700,000 Muslims, giving Mamata’s party still a definitive edge over the BJP that won just two seats as opposed to TMC’s 34 in 2014.
However, in a regime plagued by some epic infrastructure fails, crimes and serious corruption charges, the BJP may think that they might just have got enough to swing voters away this time, especially in reserved seats of Alipurduar and Coochbehar that went to polls on Phase 1 on Thursday. Only last Sunday, Modi addressed a rapturous crowd in the former princely state, coming down heavily on the CM for her supposed support for ‘anti-nationals’.
But trust the TMC supremo who’s given Kolkata, India’s cultural capital, almost an overnight makeover in the colours of the Argentina’s blue and white, to do the job once again. Who knows, adding some timely gloss with veteran actress Moon Moon Sen and the current crop of Mimi Chakrabarty and Jahan, may do the trick?
However, going by factors like anti-incumbency and communal tension seemingly boosting a Hindu consolidation, Banerjee’s trump card may not even be her troupe of silver screen prima donnas.
Like Siraj ud-Daulah, Banerjee may be an irascible, arrogant leader to her critics but she remains an inspiration for many party freshers, including Mahua Moitra. The charming US-educated, former London-based investment banker is another first time Lok Sabha hopeful — like Jahan — from Krishnanagar, the seat of popular 90s Bengali superstar turned errant two-time MP Tapas Paul and the scene of the 18th century battle of Plassey.
Moitra’s replacement of Pal may just be a subtle but a far surer way to convince the growing right-leaning urban Hindu elites who are perhaps only beginning to believe that the charm that got AITC to 34 seats last time up from just the one in 2004 may finally be wearing off.
Only two states (UP and Maharashtra) send more parliamentarians to the Lok Sabha — India’s lower house of lawmakers — than Bengal that’s home to over 90 million people. Perhaps no state stands to sway this election as much Bengal.
The only question remains though: which side. Will the BJP be able to rustle up the threshold and win more seats led by the breakaway Mukul Roy, Banerjee’s former right-hand man and buoyed by enough star power of their own in filmstar Locket Chatterjee and once-celebrated Bollywood singer Babul Supriyo?
Or will Mamata retain her allure once again as the middle class’s leader thanks to her focus on rural economy, job creation and social development incentive schemes for women and girl children?
Only time will tell after the last ballot is cast on May 19 in Kolkata, about 650Kms-odd southeast of Varanasi where Modi will be fighting his own personal battle the same day.