BJP’s ‘bhadralok’ chief in Bengal reaches out to Muslims, Congress, Left to take on TMC

“Jo hamare saath, hum unke saath…bandh karo sabka saath sabka vikas (We are with the people who are with us. Stop saying we are with all to ensure welfare of all),” the BJP heavyweight in West Bengal, Suvendu Adhikari, said at an extended session of the party’s state executive committee’s meeting in Kolkata on July 17, 2024.

Adhikari, the Leader of the Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly, called for shunning Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Sabka saath, sabka vikas’ mantra just weeks after the BJP had suffered a setback in the parliamentary elections, winning just 12 Lok Sabha seats, six less than its 2019 tally, in the state.

The ruling Trinamool Congress had won 29 LS seats, seven more than its score in 2019. Adhikari, who quit the TMC to join the BJP in December 2020, justified his call to the BJP for a shift to aggressive Hindutva, arguing that while 91% of the Muslims had voted for Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s party in the 2021 assembly polls, 95% of them had done so in the 2024 parliamentary elections. “There is no need to have the minority morcha (minority wing) within the BJP,” he said, before concluding his speech with the ‘Jai Sriram’ slogan.

Subtle shift

But, almost a year later, Shamik Bhattacharya, whom the BJP high command placed at the helm of the party’s West Bengal unit, on July 3, subtly moved to make a course correction.

“We are not fighting against Muslims. Our fight is to make the misguided youngsters (of the minority community) stop hurling stones or brandishing swords to trigger unrest, and to make them pick up books and pens instead,” the 61-year-old Rajya Sabha member, who is known for his oratory and his love for literature, said just after formally taking over as the state BJP president, succeeding union minister Sukanta Majumdar.

Bhattacharya, who was the spokesperson of the BJP in West Bengal till recently, repeatedly reached out to the Muslims, urging them to think why the community remained largely deprived of development in the past one-and-a-half decades despite being loyal to the ruling TMC, which came to power in 2011.

Muslims do not need to vote for the BJP, which would surely oust the TMC from power next year, but they should realise that Mamata Banerjee’s party just exploited them as a vote bank, but had done very little for the community, he said, highlighting the syncretic cultural and religious traditions of West Bengal.

The BJP has been accusing Banerjee and TMC of appeasing the Muslims and facilitating illegal migrants from neighbouring Bangladesh to settle in West Bengal after they cross over to India. The saffron party stepped up its aggressive Hindutva campaign targeting the state’s TMC government after the protests against the new Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025, turned violent and led to a communal clash in Murshidabad on April 11 and 12.

The words of the new state BJP chief, however, signalled a subtle shift in the strategy of the saffron party in West Bengal.

The BJP won 18 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats from West Bengal with a 40.7% vote share in 2019, as against just two seats and a 17% vote share in 2014. The BJP’s seats in the 294-member West Bengal assembly had gone up from just three in 2016 to 77 in 2021, with the vote share rising from 10.16% to 38.14%. The TMC had won 215 seats in the state assembly in 2021 – three more than its score in 2016 – with a 48.02% vote share. The ruling party won 29 LS seats with 45.76% votes in the LS elections.

The BJP needs 5%-6% more votes to oust the TMC, but the party’s bid to make the Hindus rally behind it has reached a saturation point. To steal the thunder from the BJP’s Hindutva campaign, Banerjee inaugurated a grandiose temple of Lord Jagannath on the shore of the Bay of Bengal in Digha on April 30 and led the Ratha Yatra celebration in the seaside town on June 27. The TMC took the cue and started raising the ‘Jai Jagannath’ slogan to counter the BJP’s ‘Jai Sriram’. Besides, the BJP is also aware of the risk of its aggressive Hindutva campaign nudging the Muslims to rally behind the TMC in larger numbers.

Muslim outreach

Bhattacharya was indoctrinated in the saffron ideology at the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s unit at Mandirtala in Howrah in the 1970s. His outreach to the Muslims has the approval of not only the BJP top brass but also the Sangh Parivar.

The saffron camp hopes that even if the Muslims do not start supporting the BJP, such moderate messaging from the party’s state leadership may help make a dent in the minority vote bank of the TMC.

The BJP will indirectly benefit if a section of the Muslims ends up voting for the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and other leftist parties, which are trying to revive themselves by riding on public outrage over rampant corruption and high-handedness by the TMC leaders across the state, as well as the incidents of rapes in the academic institutions.

Bhattacharya recently also lauded late CPM leader Jyoti Basu, who was the chief minister of the state from 1977 to 2000, and urged the leftist parties and the Congress to join the BJP in the fight against the TMC to “protect West Bengal”.

The rejection of his proposal by the CPM and the Congress leaders in the state was on the expected lines, but the BJP hopes that the words of its state unit chief may at least appeal to the secular Bengalis, who are either ideologically opposed to the TMC or got disillusioned with Mamata Banerjee’s party over the past 15 years.

The BJP got in Bhattacharya a moderate leader with the “Bangali Bhadralok (Bengali Gentleman)” image to lead its state unit. But, when it comes to elections, the party will have to rely on the organisational skills of Adhikari, who recently said: “I also want to take everyone along. But everyone does not vote for me”.