Modi Closes in on TMC | West Bengal
Narendra Modi's image as an antithesis to Mamata Banerjee's draconian ways has only been strengthened in the past year.
Unishei saaf (washout in 2019)," hollered Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Bengali at a rally in Basirhat, West Bengal, on May 15. A counter to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's slogan, "Du-haajar unish/ BJP finish (BJP will be finished in 2019), Modi's slogan invited deafening cheers from the crowd. Exasperated with the Trinamool Congress (TMC) leaders, Bengal's 100 million population was looking for a leader who could match Mamata's might. They believe Modi can deliver West Bengal from Didi's Trinamool Tolabaji Tax, under which people have to pay the TMC to get admission in college, or to get recruited as a teacher in government schools, among other things.
Modi's image as Mamata's antithesis had been gaining ground. "The more you chant 'Modi, Modi', the more she loses her sleep, gets angry and abuses me. I have inculcated a power to face the wrath of Didi for the love of the people of Bengal," he told the crowd.
Sensing this mood of anti-incumbency, BJP's national president Amit Shah planned his Bengal expedition a year and a half ago-strengthening the organisation from within, poaching leaders like Mukul Roy, TMC's second-in-command, and stoking the fire of a Hindutva resurgence amid a climate of alleged minority appeasement. Shah made all the right moves to gain big in West Bengal.
He set a target of 23 out of the state's 42 Lok Sabha seats and promised a whitewash in the 2021 assembly poll. Even before the state went to polls, this tall target was trashed by sceptics. Bengal, they believed, is removed from the caste and community politics of the Hindi heartland and has a secular Left ideology.
But the BJP sensed that Bengal was crying for change. "The mood of anti-incumbency was so high that even a four-cornered fight, where all political parties were on their own, narrowed down the contest to a political binary-the TMC and the BJP. Where the Left and the Congress were not sure of being a challenger to the TMC, they transferred their vote share to the BJP, as is obvious from a dip of 22 per cent in the Left's vote share and a consequent proportional increase in the BJP's," says social scientist Prasanta Ray, who teaches at the Presidency College in Kolkata.
What really caught on with the Bengali Hindu voters was the BJP’s hard Hindutva with a soft touch...no destructive agenda, like the demolition of a mosque, but an emotional appeal to Hindus to be conscious of their astitva
"The Left was suffering erosion since 2011 without a new leadership and the confusion over who was the Left's enemy-the TMC or the BJP-and who was a friend-the Congress or the BJP-reigned," says Aneek Chatterjee, former head of the department of political science, Presidency University.
This time, Mamata has largely been responsible for political polarisation by constantly bashing the BJP and no other party. The consequence? A rise in the saffron party's vote share-from 17 per cent in 2014 to 40 per cent in 2019.
This also led to the TMC being seen as a party that was soft on the minority community and the BJP as the party of the Hindu majority. Mamata's efforts to seem secular by chanting Hindu shlokas and Islamic tenets on the same platform fell flat. While the Muslims did not vote for the TMC en bloc, the Hindus in Bengal, sharing a border with Bangladesh, remained largely consolidated. "We gained at least five to six per cent of Muslim votes this time," says Jay Prakash Majumdar, BJP's state vice-president.
"Modi's pledge to introduce a National Register of Citizens and citizenship rights for Hindu refugees gave the BJP a clear edge in 10-12 seats," says Mohit Ray, a former professor at Jadavpur University.
State BJP president Dilip Ghosh feels that the need to be conscious of our rights has become essential. "The CM did not allow the rath yatra or the sankalpa yatra and played dirty politics to stop the choppers of our leaders from landing and holding rallies," he says. However, psephologist Yogendra Yadav warns: "If the TMC represents a return to the anarchy of the late 1960s, the BJP's rise signals a return to the communal carnage of the 1940s."
Already, word is that TMC MPs, unsure of winning, and disgruntled MLAs, are in touch with the BJP. "Soon things will come to such a pass that [Mamata] will not be able to run the government," claims Mukul Roy.
Meanwhile, Mamata had locked herself in a room at her Kalighat house, playing the synthesiser and writing poetry to calm her nerves. She has accepted the writing on the wall for the moment, but she will bounce back. "Congratulations to the winners. But all losers are not losers. We have to do a complete review," she tweeted.