Shikha Mukerjee | After CAA rules, contours of confrontation changing

Polarisation on the basis of religion is now the rule because the law has changed. Citizenship is available to select categories of persons from select countries, so long as the applicant under the 2019 Citizenship Amendment Act and now notified rules is not Muslim. The line that separates Muslims from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh is their status as the majority community there. Hindus, Sikhs, Jain, Parsis and Buddhists, as minorities there, are covered by the CAA and CAR.

The statement of the obvious is like telling oneself that discrimination on the basis of religion is now kosher in India, though the Constitution explicitly forbids such differentiation. This was explicit in Article 15, that the State shall “not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them.” The moment the CAA rules came into effect was when India appeared to shift from secular to something else, that may over time begin to resemble the Hindu Rashtra that Anant Kumar Hegde, a prominent Karnataka BJP leader, so ardently desires.

The tectonic shift in India’s identity from secular to something else is timed for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. The Narendra Modi government is fulfilling its 2019 guarantee that new citizenship rules would be enacted targeting the pockets where large numbers of Hindus crossed over from Bangladesh, especially in West Bengal, Tripura, Assam, Meghalaya and elsewhere in the Northeast. The notification was confirmation that the BJP is a party that delivers on its promises.

The polarisation is evident from the reactions that flooded in from Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan, West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, Sitaram Yechury and Mallikarjun Kharge, and smaller and regional parties. The INDIA bloc is against the changes to the citizenship law, while the BJP is crowing over its success.

The impact of the change will impact the political dynamics in West Bengal and Assam more than in other states. Whereas in West Bengal implementing it is straightforward, in Assam it has triggered protests from ethnic groups violently hostile to the presence of Bengali speakers, be they Hindus or Muslims. Much as the chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma tries to explain away the protests as misguided, the fact is that the BJP’s move to give citizenship to Bengali speakers is the polarising factor, not the religious identity of the applicants.

In West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee may have dismissed the change as “lollipops”, but she was alert to the probability that something like this would happen on March 10, when she addressed a mega rally at Kolkata’s Brigade Parade Grounds. She warned that no detention centres would be allowed in West Bengal. She vowed to block implementation of the CAA and National Register of Citizens, and the National Population Register enumeration process.

It is Ms Banerjee’s contention that the CAA is unnecessary. Hindus from the Scheduled Caste Matua community who came from Bangladesh have Aadhaar cards, PAN cards, ration cards, work in the government and defence services, and have been elected as MLAs, MPs and panchayat and municipal body members. She claims the BJP has incited gullible people from the Matua community to swallow the story that the CAA is a life-saver.

The confrontation between the Trinamul Congress and BJP about the status of Hindus who came across the border from Bangladesh till 2015 is about creating loyalty votes. The BJP wants these voters, as does the TMC. The crux is that the Matuas aren’t a homogenous vote bank. Thus, both the BJP and the TMC have to woo them. The lollipops have to keep coming.

“Guarantees” are therefore the new currency in which political leaders affirm their credibility to voters, who obviously calculate the advantages to themselves as individuals by openly siding with one or the other party. Mamata Banerjee has announced her “guarantee” programme at the Brigade rally, including the negative guarantee of no detention centres in West Bengal. Aimed at reassuring the Muslim voter, whose choice influences the outcome in about 125 Assembly constituencies, that is about 16-17 parliamentary constituencies stretching across North to South Bengal, the emphatic commitment is Mamata Banerjee’s gesture to secure support.

In 2024, as much as the Matua vote across a handful of parliamentary constituencies are consequential, the Muslim vote is equally significant. By pushing Mamata Banerjee to declare her stand on Matua and Muslim voters, the BJP obviously expects a negative response from Hindu voters who have swallowed the bait that their status as the majority community is in danger because of the TMC’s appeasement politics and before that by the Left parties and the Congress.

Over two weeks, West Bengal has hosted Prime Minister Narendra Modi four times because he is in pursuit of his target of 370 seats for the BJP and a total of 400 seats with allies out of the 543 elected seats in the Lok Sabha. It’s a different matter that the BJP seems to have scaled down its expectations from winning 40 out of West Bengal’s 42 seats to 25 seats in the same period. The competition and the confrontation is no less fierce regardless of the number of seats that are set as targets.

Voters are being given a choice between the bird in hand, namely the guarantees of Mamata Banerjee, versus the birds in the bush, namely the Modi Sarkar’s guarantees. Offering a choice between a government and administration that is accessible, proximate and can be made accountable for the transgressions of its local leaders like Sheikh Shahjahan for land grab or sexual violence and intimidation, and a remote and distant power in New Delhi, Mamata Banerjee is hoping that she has effectively closed off other options for voters. In reducing the choice to a government that can impoverish itself to pay 23 lakh or 69 lakh people who worked on MGNREGA projects, dues that are pending for over two years, the inducement to vote for the Trinamul Congress in the Lok Sabha elections is very clear.

The 2024 election is tougher than all previous elections since she wrested control over West Bengal in 2011. The rise of the BJP as the Opposition, beginning with its unexpected win of 18 seats out of a total 42 parliamentary seats in the state in 2019, and the 77 seats it won out of a total of 294 Assembly seats in 2021, turns this election into a “mother of all battles” category confrontation.

Mamata Banerjee, like Narendra Modi and the BJP, has set herself a target, of winning more than the 22 Lok Sabha seats her party had won in 2019.