BJP in West Bengal | Communal polarisation meets electoral engineering

It is hoped that the change in regime will be smooth, and that life can proceed with a large degree of normality.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has finally wrested control of West Bengal, but in an election marked by what can only be called fraudulent means. The role of the Election Commission of India (ECI) in paving the way for the saffron entry through the back door, marks it out as the most compromised of numerous compromised constitutional bodies, led by Gyanesh Kumar.

Even if we accept that the deletion of the first tranche of voters, numbering around 5.8 million, was a genuine exercise aimed at removing the names of ‘dead, absent or shifted’ voters, it is practically impossible to accept that the excision of a further tranche of 2.7 million-odd voters from the electoral rolls on account of ‘logical discrepancies’ was bona fide. Voters whose names were misspelt, whose addresses did not match, those who were merely one of ‘too many’ siblings, or, risibly, whose parents were either too much older than themselves or too little, found themselves without a vote. Possibly, staring at questions about their citizenship status.

The doubts are all the starker given that women and Muslims, typically Trinamool Congress (TMC) voters, were disproportionately targeted in the disenfranchisement exercise. Common sense was jettisoned in not accounting for the usual practice of women moving home and changing their surnames after marriage, for instance.

In a democracy that has been reduced to elected authoritarianism, however, the ECI functions like an agency of the party in power at the Centre. We can expect more such attenuation of the democratic process and democracy, therefore.

But it’s happened. At this point in time, it is not possible to fully analyse the elections. We shall have to look at the seats' position once it becomes clearer, and we shall, equally importantly, have to look at the voting percentages to get a clearer understanding of who lost how much support to the BJP. We will have to look at the BJP’s final vote share to decode what the distribution of support is for the two main contenders. In a state polity characterised by an extreme form of bipolarity, it will be crucial to examine the situation in which the smaller parties and groupings — the Congress and the Left Front — find themselves.

That having been said, the scale of the BJP's win, as it appears now, suggests substantial majority consolidation and the communal polarisation the BJP has sedulously promoted for the last few years. Analysing the numbers will have to account for the smaller electorate, as well as the huge spike in voting. Though anti-incumbency has not typically been a factor in West Bengal elections, it is possible that it contributed to the increased voting.

We also need to look ahead. The big issue is whether the BJP will try to follow its saffron playbook, perfected in northern and western India, in West Bengal. As we know, this includes attempts to introduce draconian laws against conversion and cow slaughter. The BJP’s war on diversity includes forced changes to dietary habits.

In addition, we must factor in the BJP’s crusade against ‘infiltration’. This could mean that many Indian Muslims will live in the dread shadow of being pushed into Bangladesh. We have had a foretaste of that in the ethnofascist campaigns against Bengali speakers, mostly Muslim migrant labourers, in BJP-ruled states.

Regardless of the election result, it is no secret that there is something called Bengali exceptionalism, historically and in contemporary times. Attempts to fit the state into a procrustean saffron bed might lead to further polarisation and civil strife. Electoral results are not necessarily coterminous with social realities.

It is hoped that the regime change will be smooth, and that life can proceed with a large degree of normality. But for that, both the TMC and the BJP will have to proceed with restraint.

Suhit K Sen is author of ‘The Paradox of Populism: The Indira Gandhi Years, 1966-1977’.

(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.)