A Battle For The Hindu Mind

When votes swing in Bengal, they swing big. The CPI(M)’s tally oscillated from 14 in the rigging-marred 1972 assembly elections to 178 in 1977, and  from 176 in 2006 to 40 in 2011. The TMC, which bagged 30 assembly seats in 2006, won 184 in 2011; it bagged one Lok Sabha seat in 2004, 19 in 2009 and 34 in 2014. The BJP, whose tally rose from two in the 2014 Lok Sabha election to 18 in 2019, saw its voteshare at Kaliaganj dip from 52.15 per cent in the Lok Sabha election in May 2019 to 43.54 per cent in the assembly bypolls in November. Similarly, in Kharagpur, its voteshare fell from 57.23 per cent to 34.01 per cent. TMC won the two seats for the first time—in Kaliaganj, its voteshare went up from 27.25 per cent in the Lok Sabha polls to 44.65 per cent in the assembly bypolls, and from 29.58 per cent to 47.65 per cent in Kharagpur. This situation has left BJP and TMC leaders clueless about the probable outcome of the assembly polls this time, prompting both parties to focus on creating polarisations.

“Goons from Uttar Pradesh donning saffron clothes and chewing Pan Bahar are being sent here, and they are destro­ying our culture,” CM Mamata Banerjee told an election rally at Bishnupur in Bankura district on March 25. This came a month after her nephew and the TMC’s youth wing chief, Abhishek Banerjee, told a rally at Dholahaat in South 24-Parganas that “Uttar Pradesh’s gutkha spits would not rust Bengal’s iron”. The BJP’s Bengal president Dilip Ghosh alleged that the TMC chief had made a habit of insulting Hindus and all that Hindus respected. Meanwhile, the BJP and other RSS-affiliated organisations have intensified their campaign against “rising jehadi ­influence” in Bengal. “The coming ­assembly election is a battle to save our land,” Dilip Ghosh tweeted on February 27. “Illegal infiltration (of Muslims from Bangladesh) and the unchecked birth rate is changing the demography in the bordering areas. Jehadi activities are ­rising in tandem. Baduria, Basirhat and Kaliachak stand witness to it.”

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Hindu consolidation behind the BJP was palpable in districts with a small Muslim population, such as Jhargram (Muslims: 2.5%), Purulia (7.76%), Bankura (8.08%), East Midnapore (14.59 %) and Hooghly (15.77%). “Mamata has finally remembered that we also exist. Now, she is trying to be a Hindu, though she used to talk only about Muslims. What is this if not an effect of the BJP?” asks Chunilal Murmu, a resident of Jhargram town, where Muslims comprise 1.66 per cent of the population.

Over the past few months, Mamata has been trying to highlight her identity as a devout Hindu, chanting Sanskrit mantras, talking about her personal involvement with different pujas, including Kali Puja, and visiting temple after temple. Last September, she announced a monthly stipend for Brahmins and a housing scheme for the poor among them. Her overtures have not gone unn­oticed, but they are not working in her favour everywhere. “It is the BJP’s victory. They made her focus on Hindus,” says Bimal Maity, a taxi driver in East Midnapore’s Chandipur area. “Just like Muslims, Hindus too must vote together to influence government policies.”

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In areas like Bhangar and Canning in South 24-Parganas and Basirhat in North 24-Parganas, where Muslims make up a majority of the population in several assembly constituencies, the pol­arisation appeared all the more intense. According to a senior CPI(M) leader, it was after watching Mamata’s increasing focus on wooing Hindus that his party pushed for a deal with Muslim cleric Abbas Siddiqui’s newly launched Indian Secular Front, letting it contest for 26 of the assembly’s 294 seats. With Siddiqui’s jibes at the TMC, Left and Congress ­supporters have found new enthusiasm in taking on Mamata’s party in Muslim-dominated areas. This alliance also seems to have helped in the BJP’s agenda of rallying the Hindus behind it.

“Hindus have no option other than the BJP. The TMC was already pro-Muslim and now the Left too has surrendered before a Muslim fundamentalist,” says Asit Baran Barui of Banshra, a small town in Canning 1 block with a population of 29,521 (2011 census). Hindus comprise 58.29 per cent of the town’s population, though Muslims make up more than two-thirds of the population in the block—a part of Canning East assembly segment. “The BJP is talking of all Hindu/Muslim issues and ­demographics, but the people here are ­conscious and would not step into the trap,” says TMC’s Banshra anchal (panchayat) unit president Bijan Krishna Mandal. Local TMC workers, however, admit their party is struggling with the rise of religious polarisation.  “A section of Hindus has come to believe that Muslims have been more privileged during our rule,” says a TMC worker.

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In north Bengal, where Muslim voters were split among the TMC, the Left and the Congress, the BJP in 2019 won the Raiganj Lok Sabha seat in Uttar Dinajpur, one of Bengal’s three Muslim-majority districts, and bagged one of the two seats in Malda, another Muslim-majority district. Muslims make up 27 per cent of West Bengal’s population (2011 census), and the TMC secured the support of the large majority of them in south Bengal, home to four-fifth of the state’s electorate. This is considered a crucial factor for the party to return to power for the third time, but the Left-Congress-ISF alliance seems to have made matters more complicated, especially in North 24-Paraganas and South 24-Paraganas, the two largest districts (33 and 31 assembly seats, respectively). Muslims comprise 35.7 per cent of the population in South 24-Parganas and 25.82 per cent in North 24-Parganas.

“This election will decide whether Hindus will be able to practise their religion in Bengal or not, whether women will be allowed to blow conch shells, whether Saraswati puja in schools and Durga puja in different localities will happen unhindered,” says the BJP’s Barrackpore MP Arjun Singh. According to food minister Jyoti Priya Mallick of the TMC, the election is “also a battle to save Bengal’s secular culture from religious fanatics”. “The BJP is not the custodian of Hinduism in India and its policy will backfire. The people of Bengal are not fools. They will vote on the basis of the government’s performance over the past 10 years,” adds Mallick.

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Among the TMC’s supporters are beneficiaries of the state government’s social welfare programmes. And among its det­ractors are people aggrieved by the way the TMC runs the administration, especially at the panchayat, block and municipality levels. However, the TMC seems busy countering propaganda on its alle­ged “anti-Hindu” nature and banking on Bengali ethno-regionalist sentiments to break probable Hindu consolidation ­behind the BJP. At Banguri village of Ichhapur panchayat in East Burdwan district, the words “Bangla amaar maa/ Uttar Pradesh hobey naa” (my mother Bengal won’t become Uttar Pradesh) were splashed across a wall. A few kilometres away, “Jai Shree Ram”, written in saffron, can be seen on several walls.

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In Hooghly district’s Goghat assembly constituency, where Muslims are less than 10 per cent of the population, there seems to be a wave of Hindu consolidation due to outfits such as Bajrang Dal and Hindu Yuva Vahini. “Muslims ruled Bengal during the rule of the Congress, the Left and the TMC. Now it’s the Hindus’ turn to rule,” says Arup Roy of Nakunda area in Goghat. According to political science professor Biswanath Chakraborty of Calcutta’s Rabindra Bharati University, Bengal never saw an election in which religious identity was more dominant. “This is unique and ­unprecedented,” says Chakraborty. Accusing both the TMC and the BJP of engaging in “politics of hatred”, CPI(M) central committee member Rabin Deb says his party is “raising issues that ­really matter in people’s lives”.

By Snigdhendu Bhattacharya in Calcutta