As violence rises, power shift on Bengal horizon?

If the Congress Party under Indira Gandhi introduced the political relationship between the government and ruling party as one where the former de facto took control of the latter, the Left Front in West Bengal, after 1977, rolled out a system wherein, the “party became the government”. This was chiefly across rural areas where Operation Barga, the land reforms giving inheritance rights to sharecroppers, leased agricultural fields by landlords. Alongside these reforms, the Jyoti Basu government had rolled in the panchayat system. These functioned as local governance units and became the executing arm for the government’s welfare schemes.

Electoral dominance in panchayats effectively meant that the party cadre and local leaders doubled up as government functionaries. Despite the Left Front’s supremacy, in a large number of villages the Congress continued to resist Communist hegemony. In these islands, the Congress or smaller Opposition parties too controlled local governance. This made the “party” endemic in West Bengal, destroying other social institutions. There was no activity, be it the local carrom club, the traders’ association or even the school managing committee, which were not platforms where one party contested another. Not all support for the party — mobilised by local leaders who were more often than not the resident mastaan, a polite term for goon — was ideological. Mostly, the relationship was mutually beneficial — the leaders were free to determine beneficiaries of government schemes and as a quid pro quo, the party was assured of votes.

Mamata Banerjee and the Trinamul Congress played along, for she knew that once the threshold was reached, the local leaders would queue up at her portal. In campaigns to reach the tipping point where the Trinamul Congress could be considered an alternative to the CPI(M)-led Left Front, Ms Banerjee raked emotive the land issues in Nandigram and Singur, besides other non-sectarian issues. Moreover, for close to two decades, she led brave mass agitations and steered street protests, often at great risk to her life. In contrast, the BJP has opted for shortcuts. The party reached this far chiefly on the shoulders of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah, and on rising anti-incumbency sentiment. But the rise of the BJP carries graver portent because this is ideologically driven and harnesses long-dormant Hindu communalist sentiment. What has caused this is besides the point, because the implications of the majority community turning sectarian are more ominous than the other way around.

For a long time, it was believed that the BJP’s Hindutva-centric politics would cut no ice with Bengalis as Bengal was once was crucible of modernity and home to the Indian Renaissance. The idea of cultural nationalism would find few takers here, it was felt. The rapid decline and eventual disappearance of the Jan Sangh after Syama Prasad Mookerjee’s death was cited as an indication of Hindutva’s limited appeal. In terms of realpolitik, little changed in West Bengal, at the policy level as well as in political orientation, after the Left Front was voted out in 2011. The party system remained, and this merely shifted its loyalty from one party to another. As far as the people were concerned, they still had to remain on the right side of the mastaans to benefit from state largesse.

From 2013, when Narendra Modi assumed the BJP leadership and indicated that he was seriously pursuing electoral success in this one-time Leftist bastion, Mamata Banerjee responded with alertness. But, to consolidate her electoral base, she did what the Left Front never did — actively woo extreme elements among the state’s Muslims. This provided the BJP with the opening it needed. The Lok Sabha results from West Bengal are the biggest takeaway for the BJP because it opens the door to political power in the state when Assembly elections are next held, due in 2021. The BJP’s rise in the state, accompanied by political polarisation on communal lines, is extremely worrying.

The Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), which has without fail conducted post-poll surveys for long, has now released ominous data, especially from West Bengal. That the BJP won 18 Lok Sabha seats and got 40.3 per cent voteshare, against the TMC’s 22 seats and 43.3 per cent voteshare is widely known. But more startlingly, the votes of the two parties mirror the religious divide in the state. The BJP voteshare is almost entirely raised on the support the party secured among Hindus in the state while the TMC’s voteshare, and the near decimation of the Left (collectively just 7.5 per cent) is primarily due to Muslims lining up behind Ms Banerjee and her party.

While in 2014, the BJP had an estimated support of 21 per cent of Hindus, this time the backing rose to 57 per cent. Likewise, while in 2014, there was a three-way split in the Muslim vote — TMC (40 per cent), Left Front (31 per cent) and the Congress (24 per cent) — this time the ruling party in the state has secured 70 per cent of the community’s backing. The BJP is yet to secure wrest control of the “ideologically agnostic” party apparatus across West Bengal, but this has been greatly neutralised by the Hindutva-driven push from people. To retain their control over the people and to continue acting like powerbrokers, the mastaan brigade will hereon have to embrace the BJP ideologically.

So far, the BJP has not exhibited any indication of willingness to alter the state’s power mechanics. As the post-poll violence and the insistence on provocatively parading bodies of deceased party workers demonstrates, the BJP appears to be a party in a hurry and is unwMamata Banerjee (Photo: ANI)illing to stop at anything. Attempts to give a communal twist to the death of a Muslim man in a leading Kolkata hospital is also continuing from both sides. Instead of accepting that medical neglect is common in hospitals, Ms Baneerjee is intent on cracking the whip solely on doctors, without even once condemning the violence. The BJP, on the other hand, is using the incident as another opportunity to arouse Hindu passion by depicting it as one more instance of Muslim appeasement. The end result is that the state hurtles towards more violence, which people thought was in the past. Suddenly, history pages are being flipped to see what may yet break out once again.