Rhea Chakraborty Controversy Deepens Bengali vs Non-Bengali Divide In Bengal

It’s a bitter ethno-cultural scrimmage fought in, and fostered through, social media. Some recent social media posts, primarily targeting actor Rhea Chakraborty for the death of Sushant Singh Rajput and broadly alleging that Bengali women use ‘black magic’ to control men, have helped intensify a battle of cultures between that of West Bengal and the states of the Hindi heartland that had been brewing in Bengal since 2017.

The trigger was a tweet by Barkha Trehan, a woman who claims to be a men’s rights activist with 31,500 ‘followers’, including Kailash Vijayvargiya, the BJP’s Mad­hya Pradesh-based Bengal ­in-cha­rge. Though Vijayvargiya didn’t ‘share’ or ‘like’ this post, many BJP supporters did, as became evident from the profiles of over 900 users who shared it. Trehan, who hails from UP and is presumably a BJP supporter, wrote on July 31, “STAY SAFE MEN / BOYS. Bengali girls are dominating, they know how to make guys fall for them. They catch big fish, good-looking highly-­paid guys. If you want to be her servant and financer and are okay to leave your family and join her family, then go ahead.”

The resultant furore soon turned into an exchange of abuse between members of different communities. While several users criticised the gross generalisation of communities, barbs like ‘Bengali Communist men’, ‘commie girls’, ‘North Indian cows’ and ‘illiterate Sanghis’ were flung around freely in heated exchanges.

On Twitter, one Debarati Majumdar wrote, “North Indian fraud patriots and BJP fanatics were behind this vilification campaign of Bengali women,” while Sus­hovan Chaudhuri said “the generalisat­ion of Bengali girls as devils are rela­ted to Hindutva, i.e. Hindi Imperialism.” Wri­­ting in Bengali on Facebook, activi­sts—mostly Trinamool or Left supporters—blamed Hindutva forces for orchestrating a vilification campaign aga­­i­nst Bengali women. Those preaching Hin­­dutva were anti-Bengali, they stated.

This wasn’t the first time an issue got a sudden political and communal twist. In June, there were similar anti-­north rea­ctions from Bengali social media users when some Hindutva activists protested the use of the word ‘Kala­nkini’ to des­cribe Radha and ‘Kanu Haram­­zada’ to refer to Krishna in a song penned by Radharaman Dutta and set to tune by Shah Abdul Karim that was used in the Netflix drama Bulbbul. The iconic song, belonging to the baul-fak­iri genre, was once popular, and the end­earing references to Kanu and Radha as ‘haram­zada’ and ‘kalankini’ were widely und­erstood as such. It was argued that the incident again showed up Hindutva forces’ poor knowledge of Bengal’s cultural heritage.

However, the direction of the latest online conflict made BJP supporters wary, with assembly elections expected in less than a year and CM Mamata Banerjee trying to stoke Bengali pride against ‘outsiders’, in an obvious reference to the BJP. On July 21, Banerjee had said that Bengal “shall not be ruled by outsiders…by those from Gujarat”.

An avowed BJP supporter who goes by the Twitter username Ash Rockzz, sensed the danger. “Since someone said a vile statement against all Bengali women (he must be punished I say), several Banglapokkho & TMC guys are up in arms & busy creating a Bengali vs Non-Bengali divide,” he wrote. He then adv­ised, “It is important that Bengali BJP social media warriors keep the focus on Mamata’s failures as CM… but also take on those so-called Hindutva warriors & influencers who are busy creating the Bengali Non Bengali divide.”

In Bengal, the rise of Bengali regional/ ethnic sentiments has a direct link with the rise of BJP, or the Sangh Parivar in a broader sense. Since the saffron camp announced its strength in the state with processions on Ram Navami—never an occasion for celebration in Bengal—in 2017, reaction against it led to the birth of a number of Bengali rights groups—Bangla Pokkho, Jatiyo Bangla Sammelan and Bangla Sanskriti Mancha, which all­eged that the BJP was trying to impose ‘north Indian culture’ on Bengal. All these fringe groups have supporters from TMC and the Left parties.

Sniffing a genuine nativist sentiment against the BJP, TMC has since been reo­rienting itself as lord protector of Ben­­gali heritage. The Bengal units of the CPI(M) and the Congress, too, have rep­eatedly called the BJP anti-Bengali, a charge the BJP top brass vehemently ref­utes. While addressing a gathering in Calcutta in August, 2018, Amit Shah had said, “This is an absolute lie...by the Trina­mool. How can BJP be anti-Beng­ali, especially when Syama Prasad Moo­k­erji was the founder of our organ­isa­­tion?” The BJP, for good measure, repeatedly branded the TMC and the Left as ‘anti-Hindu’.

Politi­cal analysts believe the TMC gained significantly in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections from the controversy around destroying a bust of social refor­mer Ish­war Chandra Vidyasagar during a BJP procession and the NRC in Assam, which the TMC used to describe the BJP as anti-Bengali.

The fringe groups are contributing their mite too. In July, Jatiyo Bangla Sammelan lodged complaints at Kolkata Police’s cybercrime section against six ‘admins’ of a Facebook group run by IIT Kharagpur students, and three other Hindi-speaking persons for speaking ill of Bengalis, while Bangla Pokkho lodged police complaints against ‘Bengali-haters’ in Siliguri and Chinsurah and the cyber crime cell of Bidhan Nagar police.

“The social media controversies are more political than organic. The Hind­utva camp, which also represents Hindi imperialism, runs a concerted campaign to defame Bengal’s cultural heritage bec­ause BJP wants Bengalis to conform to the north Indian brand of Hinduism. This is nothing but a part of the saffron camp’s broader agenda of changing the Bengali psyche,” says Anirban Banerjee of Jatiyo Bangla Sammelan. Bangla Pokkho’s Kaushik Maiti asked, without naming the BJP, “How #Bengali could be trending on Twitter without the legendary IT cell’s hands behind it?”

The BJP alleges a political conspiracy. “Trinamool is using some half-educated Leftists to fuel sentiments against the BJP, branding us anti-Bengali. There is no social conflict between Bengalis and north Indians,” says Sayantan Basu, a BJP general secretary.

According to Sabyasachi Basu Ray Cha­­udhury, a professor of political science, the BJP’s rise has revived dormant Bengali sentiments against north Indi­ans. He says that CPI(M) in Bengal had emerged as a distinctly Bengali party, and the TMC, while trying to appropriate other Leftist policies, also inherited this Bengali identity. “Bengalis and north Indians have regarded each other with disdain for years. Bengali snobbishness disparaged the Hindi heartland from the cultural perspective, while north Indians had a bad perception of Bengalis from an economic perspective. These sentiments mostly remained dormant but now the BJP’s rise is being seen as the rise of the heartland’s culture, triggering backlash,” he says.  

Maidul Islam, who teaches political science at Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, foresees a thickening of the ethnic conflict. The conflict betw­een religious identity and ethnic ident­ity, he says, has its roots in economy. “Pre­ssure of population has increased over the past deca­des. Though the BJP alleges infiltration from Bangladesh without presenting reliable data, migration of workers from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh has increased in the last two decades. Yet jobs have shrunk. So, one side seeks the expulsion of Bangladeshi Muslims and the other trains its guns on Hindi-speaking migrants,” Islam says.

Islam adds that for decades Bengal politics centered on class identity, but the situation was changing. “The ground for a Bengali-centric politics is ready and the TMC is likely to try and exploit it. It could not have played this ethnic card against the CPI(M), which earned a distinct Bengali identity, but it could put the BJP in a spot of bother,” he says.

By Snigdhendu Bhattacharya in Calcutta