WRITING in his 1987 autobiographical memoirs, Thy Hand, Great Anarch!, the celebrated Bengali essayist Nirad C. Chaudhuri described the Hindu god Rama as, ‘the incarnation of Vishnu, who was worshipped as God, particularly as the warrior God, by the Hindustanis.’ In Chaudhuri’s writing, as it is in the Bengali language even today, ‘Hindustani’, refers to residents of the Hindi belt (and not a pars pro toto stand in for all of India, as it is in Hindi-Urdu). Chaudhuri, without making any sort of political point, was clear that Rama was not a Bengali god but identified in Bengal as one worshipped by North Indians.

Much has changed since then. Chaudhuri’s definition does not hold any more in the Bengal of 2019. For the past few years, Bengalis have been celebrating Ram Navami – the birth anniversary of Rama – with some enthusiasm. Marches have been held across towns and villages, many of them conducted with weapons such as swords. In North India, the worship of Rama has an unmistakable political element.¹ This holds true, to an even greater degree, in West Bengal. The Ram Navami rallies held in the state are organized by the Sangh Parivar and its affiliates. In most cases, the local BJP leadership has a major role to play in organizing the rally.

Like in 1992, the use of Rama for political mobilization has paid handsome dividends for the BJP electorally. The saffron party won 18 seats in West Bengal during the 2019 general election, its best ever performance by far. In the previous Lok Sabha it had only two seats from Bengal. The saffron party’s vote share doubled and stood at 40% – just a shade below the ruling Trinamool’s 43%. By all accounts, the BJP had pulled off a stupendous turnaround in a state where not only the party but right wing politics itself did not find much space until recently. How was such a feat accomplished?

 

The most obvious – and accurate – reason is Hindutva. The BJP ran a focused campaign around Hindu nationalism and religious identity. Its first move was to organize belligerent Ram Navami rallies. This was a strategic act: it skirted the difficulties placed by the Trinamool controlled administration in disallowing opposition political activity. A religious rally could not be banned. Or if it were, the act of banning itself would give further fillip to the BJP’s charge that the Trinamool was against Hindu interests. Moreover, it gave the BJP a fantastic political platform, allowing their cadre to dominate certain areas of a town. This was earlier achieved in Bengali politics by the Left and their disciplined cadre base, who would jam a town when mobilizing for political activity. The BJP was doing the same but organizing it around Rama rather than the Red Flag.

The slogan ‘Joy Shree Ram’ became incredibly common across West Bengal given it was the principal rallying cry used by the BJP at its political events. In some cases, BJP cadres took to flinging the slogan at Mamata Banerjee, who unable to comprehend the new circumstances, took to countering it in her trademark belligerent style. The BJP social media machine quickly took videos of Banerjee’s reactions and circulated them across the state, as more purported proof that the Trinamool administration was working against Hindu interests.

 

A similar strategy was employed with the widespread circulation of allegations that the Trinamool government had banned Durga Puja – a narrative based on a 2017 incident where idol immersions were ordered to be delayed by a day to prevent it clashing with the Muslim ritual of Muharram. The BJP’s accusations of minority appeasement levelled against the ruling Trinamool were spectacularly successful. In village across village I visited in Bengal, often political choices would hinge on faith – an astounding fact for West Bengal where this kind of politics was quite unknown till recently. Muslim villages would express happiness with the Trinamool. Hindu hamlets would convey anger at either the Trinamool’s local leadership or in some cases Mamata Banerjee herself.

This, of course, did not mean there was a hermetic split. But by and large, if there was Muslim Bengali anger at the Trinamool, it would be expressed softly. In many cases, voting preference would not change, since the state’s Muslims did consider the BJP a viable option and a vote for the moribund Left was a vote wasted. Hindu Bengali preference for the Trinamool was similarly muted. A vote for Mamata Banerjee carried none of the emotional charge of a ballot cast for the BJP. In many cases, Hindu Bengalis voting Trinamool were driven by utilitarian factors such as netting welfare benefits distributed by the Trinamool-controlled local administration.

 

While much of this template of communal polarization follows what has been seen in other states of the Indian Union, the BJP had done its homework: it also pushed narratives specific to Bengal. Of particular note was the saffron party’s focus on Hindus who had migrated from Bangladesh as a result of the partition of Bengal. Unlike in the Punjab, the partition in the East played out slowly. While there was little violence in 1947 itself, the communal situation in East Pakistan and then Bangladesh had meant the continuous migration of Hindus from East to West.² While this migration has received little attention, the numbers are staggering. According to research by economist Abul Barkat at Dhaka University, from 1964 to 2013, around 11.3 million Hindus migrated out of Bangladesh.³

This migration first impacted the politics of West Bengal in the late 1950s, as the Left tapped refugee grievances in order to build up steam against the Congress administration. While the Left looked at the refugee problem through an economic lens, fast forward half a century and we find that the BJP has used a communal filter, reminding refugees and their descendants that the principal reason they had to leave East Pakistan or Bangladesh was due to religious persecution at the hands of the Muslim majority. While this pitch has been little reported on, in the areas of southwest Bengal bordering Bangladesh, there was a distinct positive correlation between being a migrant from Bangladesh and supporting the BJP. So much so that an angry Mamata Banerjee raised it in a post election speech: ‘the BJP says: you came over from Bangladesh because the Muslims attacked you, that is the reason you need to vote BJP. That will be your revenge.’⁴

 

While this has come to fruition now, the BJP has long concentrated on the memory of partition as a way to centre its politics in West Bengal. The party, for example, opposes dropping the ‘West’ from ‘West Bengal’ largely because the cardinal direction keeps alive the memory of the communal partition.⁵

Of course, the BJP’s greatest partition gambit has been the politics of the National Register of Citizens as well as the Citizenship Amendment Bill. Both measures seek to fundamentally change how Indian citizenship is defined, basing it firmly within the Two-Nation Theory: India is the homeland for the subcontinent’s Hindus while Muslims belong either in Pakistan or Bangladesh.

While the National Register of Citizens was kick-started by an unusually executive-like Supreme Court, the BJP has been quick to claim it as its own. Applicable for now only to the state of Assam – although the BJP has promised in its manifesto to extend it to all of India – the NRC fits in well with Assamese nationalism and has been supported by the state’s nativist groups. Given that the NRC has also targeted Hindu Bengalis in Assam, the BJP has pushed the Citizenship Amendment Bill, which brings in preferential treatment for Hindu migrants from Bangladesh when it comes to awarding Indian citizenship.

The NRC and CAB work at cross-purposes in Assam. While the NRC has angered Hindu Bengali groups in Assam, the Citizenship Bill has left Assamese nationalists fearing that the new rules would bring in a flood of migrants from Bangladesh. Remarkably, however, the BJP has managed to square this circle, getting votes from both Assamese as well as Bengali-speaking Hindus.

In the 2019 general election, the Asom Gana Parishad, the flag bearer of Assamese nativist politics in the state, ended up with just 8% of the vote and no seats, its votes getting transferred to the BJP. The saffron party, however, also managed to eat its cake when it won both seats in the Bengali-dominated Barak Valley. While the Assam conflict was a complex mix of communal and linguistic politics, clearly in 2019, the BJP was able to convince the state that the principle fault line was religion, not language.

 

After Assam, the NRC’s next big impact was on West Bengal. The BJP constantly kept messaging with regard to the NRC during its rallies, starting from Narendra Modi and Amit Shah right down to the booth worker. The pitch fitted well both with its politics of the larger Hindu identity, as well as with its focus on Hindu Bangladeshi migrants. However, the issue of the NRC had much less of an impact on West Bengal than it did on Assam. The BJP’s main successes in the state came from North Bengal and the western parts of the state, bordering Jharkhand. The portion of the state with high numbers of Hindu migrants from Bangladesh remained largely with the Trinamool.

Part of the reason for this was an efficient campaign by the Trinamool Congress, communicating the effect of the NRC on Hindu Bengalis in Assam to the West Bengal electorate. The chief minister would repeatedly remind everyone that according to unofficial estimates more than half of the people left out of the NRC in Assam were Hindus.⁶ The rest of the Trinamool party machine managed to broadcast this message rather effectively during the election campaign.

The Trinamool was also helped by the fact that throughout West Bengal’s history, the Bangladeshi immigrant has mostly been a Hindu. While Assam has had a long tradition of politics ranged against immigrants, there is no such history in Bengal. In fact, under the Left, Hindu immigrants from Bangladesh were given fairly easy passage into West Bengal and allowed to settle down.

Reacting to the Trinamool’s counter-attack, the BJP changed its messaging in the middle of the campaign, promising to reverse the NRC-CAB order. Unlike in the North East, the BJP would first bring in the Citizenship Amendment Bill and award citizenship to Hindus migrants, promised Amit Shah. Only then would an NRC be implemented.⁷ This, however, was too late in the day. The NRC-CAB combine clearly did not have the impact it did on West Bengal as on Assam.

 

While communalism played a big role in helping the BJP breach eastern India, it would be a mistake to think it was the only factor. In West Bengal, I noticed a distinct economic angle to communal mobilization. In many cases, Hindu villagers were quite appreciative of the significant rural development work that the Trinamool government had done after stagnation during the last decade of Left rule. Yet, this would always be followed by a complaint that Muslims got more than them.

This feeling of unfairness was exacerbated by 2018 panchayat elections which saw widespread rigging by the ruling party. Bengal has achieved great success in devolving power to local governments⁸ and the villagers did not appreciate that local panchayats would not be constituted using their votes but instead, with the help of Trinamool toughs and the Kolkata-controlled police force. Given these conditions, there existed a certain economic logic to Hindu villagers mobiliszing under the banner of the BJP in order or pressurize local governments to better divert resources to them.

 

Why the BJP, though? Why not mobilize under the existing Left Front? This was because the Left was undergoing a remarkable collapse – a downfall catalyzed by the Trinamool trying to exert hegemonic control over West Bengal politics, attempting to exercise power not only in Kolkata but in every district, block and village. The Trinamool, in a large number of areas and with the cooperation of the West Bengal police, simply barred the Left from operating on the ground.

The Trinamool did try and do the same with the BJP but the saffron party, with its deep coffers and national presence, was able to better resist these strong-arm tactics. The BJP even managed to get the press on its side. While the Left’s cadre getting attacked received little media attention, BJP workers getting harmed soon made the news on Hindi and English networks, often forcing the Bengali media to react as well.

This, in turn, led to a remarkable phenomenon: Left workers turned from red to saffron and jumped over to the BJP, given that the party offered them much better protection from the Trinamool and the police. The Left leadership, however, did not acknowledge this hemorrhaging, characterizing the Trinamool and the BJP as co-equal evils right till the election results were declared. The one bit of dissent came from former chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya who, while quite unwell, gave an interview during the election in which he wondered if ‘it was wise to jump from the Trinamool’s frying pan into the BJP’s fire.’

When the results were in, it emerged that the Left drew a blank in terms of seats and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) managed a meagre 6% of the vote. There had taken place a fascinating political pole vault: the BJP’s monopoly over the anti-Trinamool opposition space had meant Communist cadre as well as Left voters had moved en masse to the Hindutva formation.

Another point to note here is that while the Left’s vote disintegrated, the Trinamool’s remained intact. In fact, Mamata Banerjee actually saw her vote share rise by a little more than 3% as compared to the 2014 general election. This means that the Trinamool’s Hindu vote more or less resisted the BJP’s Hindutva pitch and stuck on with their party – probably attracted by the state’s expansive welfare schemes that are distributed on a priority basis to ruling party supporters.

Thus while communal polarization was a necessary condition for the rise of the BJP in Bengal it was not sufficient by itself had the Left not collapsed as well. Both factors needed to work in tandem to allow for the BJP’s astonishing vote share spike.

 

A number of commentators, while explaining the BJP’s rise in West Bengal, have pointed to the fact that Hindu nationalism rose first in Bengal during the British Raj. In fact, many figures that the Hindutva movement looks up to as stalwarts – from Vivekananda to S.P. Mookerjee – were Bengalis. However, is there truly a link between the two Hindu nationalist moments in Bengal? Hindu nationalism in colonial Bengal was almost completely the preserve of the upper caste Hindu Bengali. Scheduled Caste Federation leader Jogendra Nath Mandal, in fact, tried to establish Dalit politics in complete opposition to upper caste-led parties such as the Congress.

 

In 2019, however, matters became more complex. While the BJP does enjoy significant upper caste support in West Bengal, what is most remarkable is the quantum of lower caste mobilization it has been able to achieve under the banner of Hindutva. According to post-poll surveys by Lokniti-CSDS, 57% of Bengali upper castes voted for the BJP while the figure for Other Backward Classes was 65% and Dalits 61%.⁹ The fact that the BJP in Bengal is substantially more popular amongst lower castes is noteworthy and turns North Indian Hindutva on its head. Nationally, for example, 52% Hindu upper castes voted BJP in 2019 while the corresponding OBC and Dalit vote shares were significantly lower at 44% and 34%, respectively.¹⁰

A corollary of this is that the Trinamool has received a significant number of Hindu Bengali upper caste votes – also remarkable given that upper caste Hindu Bengalis were seen to vote Left and in opposition to the Trinamool before this. In 2019, after the Muslims, the second largest turnout percentage for the Trinamool of any community bloc was upper caste Hindu Bengalis.

This coincides with a narrative pushed mostly by upper caste Bengalis that Hindutva itself is alien to Bengal. In July, for example, economist Amartya Sen said that the slogan ‘Joy Shree Ram’ is not associated with Bengali culture.

This also overlaps with the Trinamool adopting the politics of Bengali nationalism as a way to counter the pull of Hindutva. Throughout her campaign, Banerjee made sure to mention gods popular in Bengali Hinduism such as Durga, in an attempt to counter the BJP’s use of Rama. Her rallies even featured the very Hindu Bengali ritual of women ululating.

 

The Trinamool’s nativist politics got a fillip after a bust of 19th century Bengali reformer Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar was smashed during an election rally by Amit Shah in Kolkata. Banerjee was quick to blame BJP workers for the vandalism and paint the event as proof that the ‘North Indian’ BJP was inimical to the culture of Bengal.

This pitch has had mixed results. The final phase of the election, which took place after the smashing of the bust, was a clean sweep for the Trinamool, which led a number of Trinamool leaders crediting Banerjee’s strident nativist stand for the result. However, after the election, Banerjee herself has been erratic on fashioning a definite party line on Bengali nationalism. Indeed, any Dravidian-style language politics is difficult in West Bengal given the long history of Hindi speakers in the state. In fact, as far back as 1931, eminent linguist S.K. Chatterji noted that Kolkata was essentially a bilingual city, speaking both Hindustani and Bengali.

Also noteworthy is the fact that the BJP’s Hindutva could subsume Assamese nationalism, in spite of its rather strong track record in Assam since independence. Clearly, eastern India is yet to see a politics where linguistic identity can trump religion.

In all of this, it seems almost banal to note that the BJP’s advantage in raising money has played a major role in cementing itself in the East. In West Bengal, the BJP was, by some distance, the most well funded organization on the ground. This also helped it set up a robust social media network that made Bengal’s earlier leftist politics of ground mobilization redundant. Previously, a large rally that crippled Kolkata city signalled political strength. With 2019, the BJP has ensured that the number of WhatsApp groups a party controls are now equally if not more important to succeed in Bengali politics.

 

In both funding as well as social media control, the Trinamool lagged behind the BJP significantly. In fact, after the elections the BJP has started a campaign for local Trinamool leaders to return ‘cut money’ or commissions taken for offering state welfare services. Without corporate money, the Trinamool has depended on small-scale graft to run its operations. Not only was that rather inadequate for fighting a general election, as the party’s hold on power had weakened, even that source might be drying up.

The Bharatiya Janata Party has long pursued West Bengal as a prize target. In 2019, the party, by matching the ruling Trinamool’s performance in Bengal, has ensured that it has nearly met its goal. Now the saffron party has sets its sights on winning the upcoming state assembly election. With a powerful Union government in place, the Bengal BJP are favourites going into 2021.

 

Footnotes:

1. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2059648?seq =1#page_scan_tab_contents

2. https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jjasas 1989/2000/12/2000_12_73/_pdf

3. https://www.dhakatribune.com/bangladesh /2016/11/20/abul-barkat-632-hindus-left-country-day/

4. Mamata Banerjee speech on 14 June in Kanchrapara, North 24-Parganas.

5. Hindustan Times, 19 August 2016.

6. See Banerjee’s speech on 18 April 2019.

7. See Shah campaign speech on 22 April.

8. Shubham Chaudhuri, ‘What Difference Does a Constitutional Amendment Make? The 1994 Panchayati Raj Act and the Attempt to Revitalize Rural Local Government in India’, 2006. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9e14/c650d2587a9b3673ca744cbf4ffdd7141f64.pdf

9. https://www.thehindu.com/elections/lok-sabha-2019/when-the-left-moved-right/article27266690.ece

10. https://www.thehindu.com/elections/lok-sabha-2019/the-verdict-is-a-manifestation-of-the-deepening-religious-divide-in-india/article27297239.ece