Why BJP feels it has an advantage in Bengal

Today, as the cacophony of campaigning has receded and West Bengal votes in the second and final phase on Wednesday, the BJP may be on the cusp of a breakthrough in Bengal. Whether or not it makes it to power this time, it is expected, by friends and foes, to improve on its 2021 performance when it had bagged 77 out of 294 seats, up from 3 in 2016.

Will 2026 be a repeat of 2006 or of 2011? The question was being discussed as much at the iconic “Flurys”, a cafe on Kolkata’s upmarket Park Street that has been there since 1927, as at the roadside tea shops.

In 2006, Mamata felt she was in with a chance to defeat the Left Front, but then CM Buddhdeb Bhattacharjee, who had replaced Jyoti Basu, managed to lead the Left Front to one of its best-ever performances as its tally rose to 235. However, the script soon changed following the anti-land acquisition movements in Singur and Nandigram, and that provided Mamata with the chance she was waiting for and five years later, the Left was gone.

Amit Shah holds a roadshow in Kolkata on Monday. (Image source: X/AmitShah)

Anti-incumbency, appeasement politics

The BJP has worked hard to put itself in a position that Vajpayee dreamt of, painstakingly putting in place an organisational structure in which five-member Mandal Shakti Kendras help booth-level mobilisation. Some, however, feel it is still not as organisationally strong as the TMC.

People, across the board, rich and poor, rural and urban, have expressed their dissatisfaction with the job situation in the state and this should help the party. “What use is Rs 1,500 per month? My daughter needs a job which brings her at least Rs 20,000 to be able to live,” said a homemaker, referring to the government’s flagship scheme of direct cash transfer to the accounts of women. It has been lauded by a large number of women, both in the villages and in the slums.

It is not just the dissatisfaction about jobs and failure to bring industry and investment in the state that the BJP brass is banking on. They sense an anger against the informal “TMC system” of young men linked to the party, functioning as clubs or as entrepreneurial groups that insist on getting a contract if you want to renovate your house or intervene to get you a bank loan, or prevent people from going to vote. The “system” functioned even during the Left rule and shifted to the TMC when it came to power. Now, the BJP is believed to have breached it, and according to those in the know, “not all the TMC workers are working for the party today.“

Secondly, the party has tried to paint Mamata Banerjee as an appeaser of Muslims in the hope of consolidating Hindus behind it, as it has done in many states of India to its advantage. Its cry against “ghuspaithiyas (infiltrators)” has had an appeal for Hindus in some parts of the state.

Many say there is a dormant anti-Muslim sentiment amongst some Bengalis, including the upper-class and upper-caste bhadralok, because of historical factors such as the Partition. But it was not considered politically correct to express it till now. Now the “mould is breaking”, as a political observer put it. In the South 24 Parganas district, a TMC stronghold, Muslim women admitted that “while there was no Hindu-Muslim feeling earlier, now it is gaining ground”.

However, so far, it has not acquired a scale that was expected or taken the shape of an assertive Hindutva, as an expression of identity of the kind seen in the Hindi heartland. Hinduism in West Bengal is more syncretic, influenced by many streams, like the Shakti tradition and the worship of Ma Kali, and the ideas of figures such as Swami Vivekananda and Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. Religion and culture often overlap in the state, where the Durga Puja is as much a religious festival as a cultural one.

While Mamata has pitched her fight as a battle to protect Bengali identity, the battle for Bengal is in some ways has also become a contest between Hindu nationalism that the BJP stands for and Bengali nationalism invoked by the TMC chief to prevent the BJP from running the state “from Delhi”.

Learning from its earlier mistakes, this time the BJP has mostly shied away from fielding Hindi-speaking speakers at major public meetings, except Amit Shah, Narendra Modi, and Yogi Adityanath towards the end. Bhupendra Yadav, who was put in charge of the election, remained invisible right through, not seen on posters or in interviews and social media posts. He has been working behind the scenes since September last year.

The BJP’s biggest drawback, however, is the absence of a Bengali face to lead the campaign and identify with the state’s aspirations. In conversations, people identified the battle as a “Didi versus Modi” fight.

The 2021 election was fought mainly as a political battle. This time, with the SIR, the contest has become multilayered. It is not known how the deletions, or the heartburn and reaction to the BJP’s support for the exercise, will affect the outcome. That is a wild card. West Bengal epitomises the push forward by an assertive BJP and a pushback by a determined Mamata Banerjee, and the election’s outcome will have implications far beyond Bengal.

(Neerja Chowdhury, Contributing Editor, The Indian Express, has covered the last 11 Lok Sabha elections. She is the author of How Prime Ministers Decide.)