Bengal 'tigress' Mamata will prove baggage for oppn in rest of India

Speculations over the leadership of the INDIA bloc, initiated by Mamata Banerjee, the chief of the Trinamool Congress and chief minister of West Bengal, are causing significant divisions within the multi-party opposition alliance. On Tuesday, Lalu Prasad Yadav, the seasoned honcho of the RJD and a long-time supporter of the Nehru-Gandhi family, expressed his support for Banerjee. In response to Banerjee's statement that “I can run INDIA bloc… if they can’t run the show,” Lalu remarked to reporters: “It’s fine, she should be given the responsibility. We agree.” That brings to question the projection of Banerjee as a pan-India figure. 

In the Lok Sabha election analysis, The Squirrels found out that keeping the fact that the Congress had won 99 seats aside, it had gained a mere 1.5% rise in its vote share. Compare that with the Trinamool Congress’s massive lead over the BJP in West Bengal in 2021. While the AITC won 48.02% of the popular mandate, the BJP managed only 37.97%. This more than 11% lead over the nearest rival is not seen in the assembly elections of other states.

Mamata: Giant in Bengal dwarfed by her own politics outside the state

On the one hand, this makes the Trinamool Congress a greater claimant to the position of leader of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (I.N.D.I.A.). On the other, Banerjee suffers from some serious political handicaps. With due respect, her Hindi is funny and her English isn’t good either. You won’t be accepted in large parts of the country if you cannot communicate in both these languages.

What works more against her is the fact that, of all opposition leaders, Banerjee is the most infamous as an anti-Hindu leader. Almost twice a month, there is a communal riot in the state, and every Hindu occasion is reportedly disturbed by Muslims. Worse, even in cases of crimes against women, as in Sandeshkhali, more often than not, a Muslim name features as the prime suspect. And through these incidents, Banerjee keeps giving the accused a clean chit.

Whereas the issue of being local trumps that of Hindutva in Bengal, the BJP will make mincemeat of her on the issue of alleged persecution of Hindus in Bengal at the pan-India level. As an all-India leader, Banerjee’s projection as an anti-Hindu politician will hurt the TMC’s/I.N.D.I.A’s chances big time. Remember, the call for killing Uttar Pradesh’s Kamlesh Tiwari had emanated from West Bengal’s Maldah.

Bengal is different, but Bengal isn't all that there is to India

It works differently in Bengal and outside. To a Bengali, the Bengali identity is supreme. It is so powerful that even the shared ideology of Islam could not keep East and West Pakistan intact and turned the former into Bangladesh. This is a calculation the BJP never made, which gives the Trinamool Congress’s “bohiragato” (outsider) plank an edge.

Banished in a manner after the euphoria of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement of the late 1980s and early 1990s, the BJP had squandered away its chances in West Bengal when the LK Advani-led organisation prioritised a bunch of Marwaris over Bengalis to man the rank and file in the 1990s. Since then, it had been derisively dismissed in Bengal as a “Burrabazar party” [Burrabazar is a market in Kolkata with the maximum concentration of Marwaris in the population].

BJP's opportunistic Hindutva fails in assembly polls, succeeds in general elections  

In 2015, when the BJP made the second, more serious attempt to penetrate the state, it entered the land of Durga and Kali with a typically north Indian “Jai Sri Ram”. Durga/Kali is Hindu too, isn’t She? They could have retained their Hindutva and sounded Bengali too! They adopted “Jai Ma Kali” a few months before the election. That does not work.

It reeked of opportunism — like Prime Minister Narendra Modi being secular for four-and-a-half years and turning Hindu during the election campaign in the last 6 months. They had done it earlier in Karnataka where, days before the election, the prime minister began claiming that the Congress had insulted Hanuman! Kannadigas did not buy it. Hindu Kannadigas saw through this game and dismissed it.

BJP moulded itself according to Northeast, couldn't do it in Bengal

Compare that to the BJP-led NEDA’s phenomenal success in the Northeast. Here, the ‘north Indian’ tag did not come in the way. Because the party shed its Vaishnava vegetarian ideology to capture that region. When it comes to treating Bengalis, however, the lot is by and large looked down upon as voracious "meat-eating communists". Paying them back in the same coin, the Bengalis pooh-pooh the jibes as rants of an IQ-challenged “cow-belt” gentry. The mutual racist, sectarian, stereotypical diatribes make one speech community the foe of the other.

The largely Hindi-speaking people who constitute the support base of the BJP think Raja Rammohun Roy was a closet Christian and Rabindranath Tagore came in the way of nationalism. This general impression emboldens the allegation that it must have been the BJP that vandalised the bust of Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar in 2019 — a charge that is believed to have cost the party at least 4 seats in the Lok Sabha election that year. The general impression in the minds of the people in Bengal and the rest of India about the icons of the Bengal Renaissance is so mutually conflicting that any advantage that the BJP enjoys due to Hindu persecution is eroded.

Conclusion

However, the advantage the Trinamool Congress has in Bengal vanishes right outside the state boundary where Hindutva has increasingly made itself palpable in the last decade. Don’t forget that Mamata Banerjee’s mobilisation of all opposition leaders on one stage in Kolkata before the 2019 election did not work.

Hindus as voters in the Lok Sabha election see the 'larger picture' of the making and inauguration of the grand Ram temple in Ayodhya, Prime Minister Modi's visits to Kedarnath sporting a tripunda (a Shaiva mark on the forehead), his transformation of Varanasi and construction of the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor and Mahakal Corridor in Ujjain, his act of accompanying foreign delegates to Hindu heritage sites, a departure from Taj Mahal visits during the UPA era, the Citizenship Amendment Act, the promise for a National Register of Citizens, the vilification drive by domestic and Western press, etc. This is where Banerjee cannot sink her teeth in.

Beyond being Hindu and speaking Hindi, here's a predicament the whole opposition suffers from:

Here's the opposition's predicament:

Social sphere: It is pro-Muslim, at times trying to be pro-Hindu as well — Rahul Gandhi's 'Temple Run', which he has now abandoned, Mamata Banerjee celebrating Hanuman Jayanti to counter 'Jai Sri Ram' — but that is BJP's home turf. You cannot… https://t.co/kSPmaDo1fT

— Surajit Dasgupta (@surajitdasgupta) December 9, 2024