A Modi-powered Saffron surge in Bengal

Syama Prasad Mukjherjee, who founded Bhartiya Jan Sangh in 1951, was happy to win two out of 25 seats in the first Lok Sabha election held in 1951-52. He died in a prison in Jammu and Kashmir a year later, at the age of 51. Now, 66 years after his death, a later day avataar of his party has not only won more than two-fifths of the Lok Sabha seats in his state, it has got about 40 per cent of the votes as well. Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) is still ahead, but not beyond striking distance of a serious challenge in the 2021 state Assembly elections.

This is undoubtedly a record of sorts. A rightist party has been embraced by a large segment of the people of Bengal for the first time. The credit goes to Narendra Modi, who addressed 17 rallies in the state during this election campaign. In fact, this time Bengal witnessed the highest concentration of his rallies (one for each 2.5 constituencies).

When the winter of 2018 was setting in no one in the state was prepared to bet on the BJP getting more than four to five seats. But Narendra Modi and Amit Shah had chalked out a different strategy. As usual, it was centered on engineering a Modi-wave in Bengal. The winnable target was fixed at 10 initially. A sampling test was done by Modi on February 8, when he addressed the first ‘Save Democracy’ rally at North Bengal’s Maynaguri, a place which can be approached easily be people of the 5 constituencies of the northern-most parts of Bengal. As the crowd there responded to his anti-Didi rhetoric with electrifying spontaneity, the strategy was soon changed thoroughly, and the target was fixed at 20. At the time of writing the BJP was leading in 19 seats.

Few in the state BJP believed, even a month ago, that the party could win more than 12-13 seats. But Modi created a wave in the Northern, Central and Western parts of the state where BJP had just 2 seats in 2014. In 28 constituencies in these regions, the Left was completely decimated and a majority share of anti-TMC votes came into the BJP’s kitty, helping it win more than half of these seats. However, the Modi wave fizzled out before reaching south eastern Bengal, the old bastion of Mamata Banerjee consisting of Kolkata and its surrounding districts having 14 seats. It enabled TMC to scrape through the halfway line of 21 seats. Though Congress managed to open its account (it had four seats in 2014), the Left (which held two seats last time) failed to win a single seat in the state.

Various factors acted as catalysts for the change. The first and foremost is the ‘appeasement policy’ of Mamata Banerjee (like the decision to give a stipend to 56,000 imams and muezzins) and a few low-intensity riots in the Central and Southern parts of the state, targeting the majority community. The Left had no answers to these. But the ‘Hindu party’ BJP had a lot to say, including the NRC (identification of the infiltrators) and Citizenship Bill (offering citizenship to Bangladeshi Hindu refugees). The second factor was corruption at the lower level and alienation of a large chunk of rural folk (Hindus, and Muslims alike). It frustrated Mamata Banerjee’s dream of a monopoly over 30 per cent Muslims voters. These two factors led to the third factor, and the clinching one: Polarization of Opposition votes in favour of the BJP.

In the face of such a disaster-of-sorts, TMC has survived thanks to polarization of Muslim voters (about 30 per cent) in its favour. It helped Mamata Banerjee to retain her 2016 assembly vote share (44 per cent). But the political atmosphere is now charged up. BJP will gear up its organization, and may even try to split the TMC to force Assembly elections before 2021. Mamata, the great fighter, will surely combat such efforts tooth and nail. The bitter tussle may create a tense situations in the near future.

The results may do some good to the state as well. Jyoti Basu made confrontation with the Centre and institutions like the Election Commission a hallmark of his political style. It was the tool of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) to portray themselves as strong and almost invincible. He cornered and frustrated Mamata Banerjee so much that it forced the 'Bengal Tigress' to ally her party with the BJP when Atal Bihari Vajpayee steered the government at the Centre. It helped her present herself before the people as an alternative icon having the backing of central power. Since 2014, Mamata too has adopted the confrontational style. Now that it has been proven that the style is not working, Bengal may expect to see Centre-state cooperation in matters of administration in the near future.

(Diptendra Raychaudhuri is a Kolkata-based journalist and author of books including 'A Naxal Story'. He is a deputy editor at the Bengali daily 'Aajkal')