How West Bengal Halted the BJP’s Chariot
Jawhar Sircar
(The Wire, 2 May 2021)
The
election results in West Bengal are still coming in, and ‘leads’ are being
replaced by ‘wins’ or otherwise. Even
so, one is perhaps entitled to stick out one’s neck to try to make sense out
the most spectacular drubbings that
the BJP has been handed in seven years.
One had
withstood the overwhelmingly dominating narrative of a sure-shot BJP tsunami in
West Bengal that was manufactured in Delhi — and had said so in this online
journal, to the derision of many. An integral part of the agenda that was
repeatedly being told was that the ‘bhadraloks’ of Bengal would be
wiped out in the ongoing, never-ending elections. Most people, including
Bengalis, incidentally had/have only a hazy notion of what this term stands
for.
Now that
this force-fed narrative has been proved wrong, let us take a quick look at the
possible reasons for Mamata Banerjee’s spectacular victory and the role played
by the class that goes by this completely unofficial but widely used term
‘bhadralok’. There is no doubt that there was a strong anti-incumbency wave
against Mamata’s Trinamool Congress for reasons not unjustified. So many field
surveys by agencies and ground reports from media-persons were certainly not
wrong but the exit polls failed to capture the ‘crouching dragon’ of the
floating vote-block led by bhadraloks that was never associated with the TMC
and the lady they were fond of lampooning.
This
left-liberal group decided to swing in her favour this time and its numbers
surely helped supersede the negative anti-incumbency votes. We may leave the
confirmation or variation of this postulate to pundits once they generate more
granular data and start analysing it region-wise and strata-wise. The fact that
the TMC realised that it was indeed up against a strong anti-incumbency wave
was clear from several extraordinary steps it took to make up for this with
last-minute counter-planks. Banerjee’s brainwave called Duarey
Sarkar actually brought many government assistance and welfare
schemes to the doorsteps of citizens/voters, even though it is difficult to
sustain such go-to-the-people initiatives for too long. Banerjee’s
indefatigable energy in pursuing her favourite schemes to any extent certainly played
a deciding role with beneficiaries. Her other credit lies in overruling
hundreds of objections by her own party-men and to implement many (not all) the
recommendations made by Prashant Kishor, after careful planning and applying
management techniques.
Just as
Pramod Mahajan’s sneering smile and the BJP’s highly-visible and expensive India
Shining campaign of 2004 exuded over-confidence and
antagonised voters, ending Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s rule, people in Bengal were
similarly put off by the cocksure swagger of the BJP. This applied to both
local and more so the ‘visiting leaders’ from other states. Bengal had never
seen so much money flow during elections and it astonished everyone, including
those who were repeatedly hammered in with messages like honesty in public life
and a fakir leading this pack.
Wealthy
merchants of the state committed to Shri Ram openly showered
more funds on the BJP and this was also an irritant to many, some of who may
have gladly partaken a bit of this splurge. To many, the scale of
ostentatiousness appeared to overshadow the ill-gotten wrath made by local
Trinamool leaders, who were the butt end of the anti-incumbency surge. As
explained in an earlier article on this platform, as the TMC had no fabulously
wealthy patrons like the BJP, nor mining mafias or mega-scale infrastructure
projects to milk, local leaders resorted to ‘cuts’ which could not escape the
eyes of voters but somewhere the tables turned a lot. Flashy and long
entourages of expensive SUVs in which the BJP leaders arrived to address them
amazed the politically conscious voters of Bengal, and obviously, they would
hardly comment on these eyesores to field surveyors or the press, unless
they were pointedly asked about this.
Over 200 chartered planes
and helicopters reportedly flew in and out of Kolkata and
Bagdogra (Siliguri) airports ferrying BJP leaders, as never seen before in the
state’s history. Modi-Shah helped inadvertently to convert Mamata from an
autocrat to an ‘underdog’ who was surrounded by bought-over defectors and
back-stabbers. This image garnered unexpected sympathy for her in the state and
outside, and her fight was seen as a David and Goliath struggle all over.
No job
reservations for locals were announced or even discussed in Bengal, unlike some
other states, nor did she rouse parochial sentiments. It was thus quite unfair
to blame Mamata for stoking Bengali sub-nationalism — which the Delhi-based
media was fed and led to write. What may have hurt the people here was the open
and blatant ‘Hindi-fication’ of the discourse and that the emphasis that Hindi
is the only language in which BJP leaders tolerate. The unabashed murder of the
Hindi language by heavily-accepted, grammatically-erroneous Bengalis,
especially by TMC defectors to the BJP camp, may have provided some comic
relief to all-India BJP leaders. But everyone seemed to forget the fierce pride
that Bengalis have in their language, for which they actually carved out their
own state a few miles away, wading through blood and gore.
The fact
that not a single local leader, not even if he had been a governor, was given
any importance at all was noted and their absence in strategy-making was
unmistakably conspicuous. Besides, Bengal’s BJP was crowded with members from
different and often conflicting origins like ‘original RSS’, ‘old BJP’,
imported outsiders, old defectors from other parties, new defectors from the
TMC and these exacerbated inner party conflicts.
To cap it
all, the publicly aggressive behaviour and the openly pro-BJP attitude of the
former Chief Election Commissioner harmed the Commission and the BJP. He
encouraged openly arrogant behaviour from his hand-picked Special Police
Observer from another state, Vivek Dubey, whose attitude appeared very colonial
indeed. The CEC appeared to think that he could bludgeon the state and its
administration (that was also not always very fair) into submission.
At one
point, some 1,30,000 central armed forces were posted here by the Election
Commission, obviously with the active assistance of Amit Shah. The latter
combined his role as home minister and as BJP’s merciless centre-forward,
rather adroitly but quite unconstitutionally. Police are said to be trained to
be overbearing anyway, but the manner in which the central forces were
encouraged to behave was quite intolerable. In some pockets, they started
acting like an ‘occupation force’. Nothing else can explain why a special armed
section would suddenly land up in a polling booth in Cooch Behar on March 10
during polls and shoot four voters, all Muslims, in the chest and offer not a
shred of proof or any evidence of injury on themselves to justify it. This
incident that was clearly sponsored by the former CEC was widely condemned by
all as Bengal is not habituated to tolerate such feudal bluster or unaccountability.
This was a major landmark and a turning point for voters in the remaining four
phases of elections.
One has
repeatedly bemoaned the fact that by forming a’third front’ the Left and
Congress ensured that secular forces and votes were split, in the darkest hour
of crisis. The Left Front’s highly intellectual but completely wrong reading of
reality brought it to join even with Abbas Siddiqui, an audacious 24-year-old
scion of the family that is entrusted with the state’s oldest Muslim pilgrimage
site. This Third Front kept attacking the Trinamool Congress with all its
strength, especially through caricatures on the social media, behaving as if
this party and not the BJP was its chief enemy. “Ram this time, baam (left)
next time” was an oft-repeated slogan and the fact that this Third Front has
been wiped out speaks volumes of the sagacity of the voters of Bengal.
Many
voters who were traditionally supporters of the Left and the Congress
judiciously decided not to waste their votes this time. So did the Muslims, who constitute 27%, and the complete defeat of the the two
parties that had always received Muslim votes definitively indicates that most
Muslims voted with the TMC. Even Abbas Siddiqi, who was suspected
as a BJP ‘plant’ to divide Muslim votes, was roundly thrashed at the hustings
even though his spiritual influence covers millions.
This surge
against the BJP was led by a solid bloc of liberal and educated Bengalis, the
much-discussed bhadralok (gentry). It is no more the centuries-old tripartite
alliance between the educated sections of the three ‘highest’ castes of the
region. It had opened its doors to meritocracy from other castes as well,
decades ago, without much fuss. Incidentally, urban Bengal finds this business
of caste to be quite messy and brands it as a trait of the backward BIMARU
states. It is amusing to note that large sections of bhadraloks may know Pablo
Neruda far better than their own castes and discussing caste is quite a taboo.
It is not as if casteism does not exist at all, but it surely means far less in
the lives of the people. For instance, caste does not decide postings at all.
What are cherished are education, culture, liberal values and a historic
freedom from orthodoxy.
The
bhadralok class has, of course, an underlying dash of snootiness, but it is
directed at those who do not share its values and priorities. Most members of
this intellectual and argumentative class have historically been aligned to
left philosophies and liberal, secular parties. This strata was openly
disgusted at the crass philistinism of the BJP and the obviously uneducated
approach of its leaders. They felt shocked at the manner in which the PM
catcalled a lady, however aggressive, as “Dideeee O Dideeee!” Many women have
surely expressed their disgust at the polling stations.
A section
of ‘civil society’ came out with an untiring campaign at every nook and corner
pleading “No vote to BJP” and this also paid dividends. As did Modi’s
disastrous image as a classic blundering boaster who is responsible for the
uncontrollable second wave of COVID-19. But this matured into an issue, to some
extent, only during the last two phases of polling, which together counted for
71 of 294 seats.
Bengal has several shortcomings and the work ethic remains a
problem, as is the far higher sense of rights over duties. But its people have
surely done liberal, secular and democratic India proud. It was almost
unimaginable till the day before that the people would rise up unitedly in such
an unequivocal manner to ward off the most dangerous, well-organised threat to
its core values. It is surely a beacon of hope to millions of beleaguered
liberal democrats and proves that Modi can be defeated roundly.
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