There are three fundamental stories to tell about the West Bengal election. First is the trauma the people have been put under to exercise their very fundamental right to vote. Bengal has seen a disenfranchisement that appears designed to choose the voters, not be chosen by them. Second, in a season of demanding greater share for women in politics, we see a woman leader fighting on every front — legal, political, rhetorical — as the rules and referees of the election are changed to encircle and defeat her.
Connected to both these stories is the great ambition and frenzy of the BJP to somehow capture the State. For West Bengal is one half of the very first Partition the British carried out in India on religious lines, and the Hindu versus Muslim narrative is fundamental to Hindutva.
Besides, Bengal is the land that gave us the Vande Mataram, which the BJP wants to claim in order to fill up the blank pages of its own history during the struggle for Independence. It is also the land of Syama Prasad Mookerjee, the founder and first president of the Bharatiya Jan Sangh, the BJP’s precursor.
Mamata’s emotional play
On a hot sultry afternoon on the grounds of Dum Dum Central Jail in Kolkata, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee paces the stage, up and down, in her trademark white saree. She is delivering a skilful speech, mostly in Bengali but with lines in Hindi and English. She talks of the subversion of the Constitution, the targeting of her and the ruling Trinamool by Central agencies, the deletion of voters, the use of Central forces, and the many men of the BJP who are out to get her.
The emotional play is the Bengali insider versus the outsiders trying to occupy Bengal, and every great name of Bengal is invoked. She is fighting like an opposition leader in a State where she has been in power for three terms and seeks a fourth.
She is a forceful campaigner who does not skip a beat. The point about women’s representation is also made. The Trinamool has 29 MPs, of whom 38 per cent are women, the highest among all parties. Of the BJP’s MPs, only 13 per cent are women. The BJP has fielded 33 women for the Assembly of 291, just 11 per cent, while the Trinamool has fielded 52 women, or 18 per cent.
Kolkata, meanwhile, is overflowing with Central forces who are spreading out into the countryside. I am covering the campaign of a former journalist colleague now contesting on a BJP ticket from a south Kolkata seat; the next day, when I set out to meet the sitting Trinamool MLA, I find an Income-Tax raid going on.
I reach out to members of I-PAC, the consultancy handling the Trinamool campaign, but a series of ED raids has made them go underground. (I-PAC also handled the Trinamool’s strategy in the 2021 Assembly election and the 2024 Lok Sabha election.) Reports are being circulated that I-PAC has shut down operations in West Bengal. This is later denied by the Trinamool but it is a sign of the great pressure the political consultancy is being subjected to by the powers that be.
With the electorate shrunk, the administration reshuffled, and all wings of the State’s ruling party sought to be neutralised, the playing field has been set to give every advantage to the BJP.
BJP’s playbook
If elections are about arithmetic and chemistry, then, from the BJP’s perspective, it has done everything possible to change the arithmetic — whether among the State’s significant Muslim population or its women voters. In Park Circus, Kolkata, I see a group of disenfranchised voters sit on a dharna while Central forces look on.
As for chemistry, the party seeks to create it through furious campaigning by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but this time there are no personal attacks on Didi. The Prime Minister is also seeking to establish linkages with local people by sharing photos of eating the famous jhalmuri, or puffed rice snack, although he pronounced it jhal-muli. Food is actually very much part of the campaign trail, with BJP candidates walking around with fish to counter the party’s staunchly vegetarian image.
Central paramilitary forces conduct a march-past amid tight security arrangements ahead of the West Bengal Assembly election, in Kolkata, on April 13. | Photo Credit: UTPAL SARKAR/ANI
Still, the main thrust of the BJP campaign is ghuspethiyas or infiltrators. Should the BJP actually win Bengal, it will no doubt bring the Assam playbook to the State, amplifying the pitch and claiming that all Bengali Muslims are from Bangladesh. But the problem is that in Bengal, Hindus and Muslims mostly speak the same language — Bengali.
Still, it’s not as if there is no communal fault line in the State. Many Bengalis are often unconsciously communal but would be horrified if this were pointed out. They do not, however, want a sharp break along communal lines. Also, the bhadralok (elite) see themselves as existing above such base communal and caste emotions.
Trinamool vs BJP
There certainly is anti-incumbency sentiment against the Trinamool in urban pockets, but reports suggest that it is not as pronounced in rural Bengal. The Trinamool also has some very loyal women voters. The best situation for the party would be if the citizens of all communities and social groups feel so harassed by the SIR, which made them queue up and frantically search for legacy documents, that they vote against the Centre, which is now seen as a combination of the Election Commission of India (ECI) and the BJP.
Conversely, the best hope for the BJP is that anti-incumbency and voter deletions in seats with smaller minority populations will be enough to flip these seats. But minority populations in Murshidabad and Malda districts are so sizeable that even the organised disenfranchisement reported from these districts may not tip the scales against the Trinamool unless other non-BJP parties take away significant chunks of the vote.
Still, the BJP has built pockets of support, and some of that comes just from being the strongest force against the incumbent government. It is common in Kolkata to come across one-time Left supporters voting for the BJP because they want to defeat Mamata. Simultaneously, there is talk of the Left picking young leaders to attract more votes and even win a few seats, but it’s unclear how successful that will be. Meanwhile, the wide deployment of Central forces is designed to send a message that the BJP will not only detect and deport ghuspethiyas but, as Home Minister Amit Shah stated, also protect its supporters.
Should the Trinamool retain power in spite of an election designed against it, it is important to emphasise that the struggle to restore voting rights must continue. The feature of “logical discrepancy” rolled out by the ECI in Bengal sets a dangerous precedent where we can visualise a data-controlled future India where voters are deleted at New Delhi’s behest.
One must also make a mention of West Bengal Governor R.N. Ravi, who was transferred from Tamil Nadu before the election. He has the inclination to act against State governments inimical to the BJP. Hypothetically, if the result is close, violence can be orchestrated and the State brought under President’s rule. For now, conventional wisdom in Kolkata says Didi will somehow make it past the hurdles.
Saba Naqvi is a Delhi-based journalist and author of four books who writes on politics and identity issues.
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