In Bengal’s ‘battleground’, idea of I.N.D.I.A. looks far from reality

Hatim Ali Mollah, a TMC worker, like many others cannot believe that ‘Didi’ can ever go for a ‘jote’ (alliance) with the CPI(M) and the Congress.

June 15, 2023, was a fateful day that would remain etched in the memory of Kutubuddin Molla for the rest of his life. His son, Mohiuddin, went to the office of the Block Development Officer at Bhangar in the South 24 Parganas district of West Bengal to file his nomination for the panchayat elections. But just before he could throw his hat into the ring for the battle of ballots, a bullet, fired at close range, killed the daily-wage labourer, whom the Indian Secular Front (ISF) wanted to field as its candidate. The ISF and its ally CPI(M) blamed the ruling Trinamool Congress for the killing of Mohiuddin.

“He was just 24...Just too young to go,” mutters Kutubuddin, a vegetable vendor, who, along with the rest of his family, has been supporting the CPI(M) for years and switched allegiance to the ISF only a couple of years back when the two parties entered into an electoral understanding. He has heard of many political killings and counter-killings around his village but never thought that the cycle of violence – between the TMC on one side and its rivals like the CPI(M) and the ISF on the other – would someday take away one of his own.

Kutubuddin has not yet heard about the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance or I.N.D.I.A, which was launched in Bengaluru on July 18 – in a meeting chaired by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and attended by CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury and West Bengal chief minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee, along with the top brass of 23 other political parties. “I don’t know if they can ever come together,” he sighs and shrugs in disbelief.

Hatim Ali Mollah, a TMC worker in a neighbouring village, too cannot believe that ‘Didi’ can ever go for a ‘jote’ (alliance) with the CPI(M) and the Congress. He shows two pellet wounds on his head and narrates how he was attacked for contesting the panchayat elections as a candidate of the ruling party. “We cannot have an alliance with CPI(M) or ISF, at least not in Bhangar.”

Monirul Islam, a CPI(M) supporter at Joypur in Bhangar, says that he had to leave home after the TMC had come to power in the state in 2011. “Once the government changed, we found it difficult to go and vote. I was an active member of the party. I had to leave, and settle in the adjoining district,” he says, adding that he has recently returned to the village and may stay on as the CPI(M)’s ally ISF gained ground in the area.

“Who did help the BJP get 18 seats in West Bengal in 2019? We don’t feel that the BJP can be removed by having the TMC as a partner in the opposition alliance. At Bhangar, we can’t see this possibility,” says Md Alamgir Hossain, an elected member of Chaltaberia Gram Panchayat and an ISF worker.

The idea of I.N.D.I.A appears outlandish in Bhangar, one of the several ‘battlegrounds’, which witnessed fierce clashes during the recent rural polls that added to the notoriety of West Bengal for political violence, with at least 29 killed and countless others injured across the state.

“We will go by what our leaders will decide,” Arabul Islam, a local TMC heavyweight, says, but quickly rules out the possibility of ‘Didi’ ever leaving Bhangar (assembly constituency) or Jadavpur (parliamentary constituency) for the CPI(M) to contest.

“There is no question of the CPI(M) going for sharing seats with the TMC, which has a nexus with the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh),” says Pritha Tah, who was in her teens when her father Pradeep Tah, a former legislator of the communist party, was murdered in February 2012, just a year after Banerjee’s party ended the Left Front’s 35-year-long rule over West Bengal. “We will never yield even an inch of political space in the state to the TMC without a fight.”

Pritha contested the last assembly elections as a CPI(M) candidate from the Bardhaman Dakshin constituency and lost. She is however one of the young leaders the communist party, which now has no representative of its own in the state assembly, is relying on as it is hoping for a revival in the state. “This (I.N.D.I.A) is a national platform against the BJP. The TMC was not a part of it initially but joined it later. There are reasons to doubt how long the TMC will stay on this platform,” says the 29-year-old student leader.

“Our fight in West Bengal is against both the TMC and the BJP,” Tushar Ghosh, a member of the CPI(M) state committee, says. “There’s no seat adjustment possible with the TMC in Bhangar or anywhere else in West Bengal. If the Congress, under the pressure of its high command, goes for adjustment with the TMC, then the leftist parties and the others will fight against both.”

The monsoon session of parliament saw the TMC, the Congress and the CPI(M) taking on the ruling BJP together. But, in West Bengal, Banerjee continued to target both the BJP and the CPI(M).

After a first-year student of Jadavpur University was recently found dead in the hostel, the chief minister blamed the ‘Marxists’ and went on to accuse them of being in cahoots with the BJP and the Congress to target the TMC. The student died after falling off from the second-floor balcony of the hostel and police already arrested several senior and former students in this connection. “They don't have an iota of shame. They told him (the student who was found dead) that the university was a red bastion and forced him to take off his amulet. They consider the university as their fiefdom,” she alleged, adding: “A section of CPI(M) enthusiasts consider it their birthright to torture young students who come from rural areas.”

Her heir apparent and the TMC national general secretary, Abhishek Banerjee, last month accused the Congress’s state chief Adhir Chowdhury – always a vocal critic of the ruling party in the state – of being an ‘agent’ of the BJP and of echoing the saffron party’s leader Suvendu Adhikari.

Chowdhury, who is also the leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha, has been sharply criticizing the TMC for allegedly unleashing a reign of terror during the rural polls in West Bengal. He did not speak out against the Congress high command’s move to have the TMC in I.N.D.I.A. But Koustav Bagchi, a young leader of the party’s state unit, in a recent social media post, stated that he was not ready to be a ‘guinea pig’ in the interest of Delhi. “There is no question of alliance (with the TMC). We are concerned about our workers. In West Bengal, what matters is their sentiments,” he says.

The TMC and the Congress had entered into an electoral understanding in 2011 when the state assembly polls had resulted in the ouster of the CPI(M) and the rest of the Left Front from power. The two allies had won 184 and 42 seats respectively in the 294-member legislative assembly, while the CPI(M)’s tally had gone down to 40 with vote-percentage being 30.08 per cent. The Congress had secured 9.09 per cent votes with 42 seats. The BJP had secured 4.06 per cent votes but had not been able to win a seat.

The political equations in West Bengal, like the rest of the country, however, have changed since then.