West Bengal - Khela Hobe, Once Again

The first phase of Lok Sabha elections in West Bengal begins on April 19, 2024, with polling in the North Bengal constituencies of Jalpaiguri, Alipurduar and Cooch Behar, where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) fancies its chances much better than in the rest of the state.

Bengal is yet again witnessing multiple phases of polling stretching for weeks in what is being predicted as a harsh summer, in the same manner as it was done during the assembly polls in 2021.

This is resented by the All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) because the party feels it gives undue advantage to the BJP, which has huge money power at its disposal. The TMC alleges that there is no level-playing field.

During the Assembly polls, the Election Commission (EC) was accused of repeatedly ignoring the TMC’s complaints. This time the party is bracing itself for a different kind of battle, with the BJP putting its entire might yet again to regain the 18 seats it had won in 2019, and score, if possible, victories in many more constituencies.

The battleground has now been replete with a historic and simmering angst so typical of Bengal politics. This was perfected as an art-form by Jyoti Basu and a well-oiled Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) machinery for more than three decades of absolute power in the state.

The angst is based on a singular paradigm: Bengal versus the power establishment in Delhi, how the state is perpetually being given a raw deal by the government at the Centre, and, yet, how Bengal cocks a snook at them, caring a damn!

Most of the time, this card has succeeded on the ground because, historically, and politically, Bengal has never been completely subdued by Delhi, either during and before the Mughal rule, nor by the British, who were exasperated by the relentless rebellions and revolutionary activity witnessed in the state. This theatre of strong emotions and anti-establishment feeling, experienced through many layers in rural and urban Bengal, and also in its cultural forms, cinema and literature, has once again been in full play now, once the polls have been declared.

First, before the polls, Mamata Banerjee, the feisty Chief Minister, did what Jyoti Basu had done umpteen times. She lamented, in rally after rally, how Bengal is being meted a step-motherly treatment by the Narendra Modi regime, by blocking crucial funds, etc.

Banerjee raked up the ‘blocked funds’ for MNREGA, thereby striking a chord with the rural masses, and the poor, who are her solid constituencies, especially women, across the caste, class and religion divide. More so, she said that since Prime Minister Modi is blocking the funds for the poor, she will leave no stone unturned to see that each and every one gets their long-pending dues under MNREGA.

She, thereby, effectively check-mated the BJP which was trying to create unrest among the workers who were not paid – blaming it on Banerjee!

How far this card has succeeded is yet to be seen, but her track-record in terms of social welfare indicators, especially during and after Covid, remains a crucial trump card with the rural masses and the urban poor.

Besides, women and young girls have benefited from all her schemes, including in education, health and health insurance, public distribution system, monthly cash doles to women, and free ration for every household, since the lockdown.

A full meal, for instance, is provided on busy Kolkata streets for Rs 5 – rice and a curry. And this food distribution is also managed by women, who are directly subsidised by the government.

Indeed, the slugfest has become fierce in the first week of April itself, with Banerjee displaying yet again, her street-fighting capabilities, leading the charge upfront against Modi, and all that stands for the repressive state apparatus represented by him and Union Home Minister Amit Shah.

Notably, these were the two heavy-weights, whose helicopters, in what was perceived to be highly expensive trips, hovered over Bengal almost routinely during the Assembly elections in 2021.

This would be usually followed by a huge convoy of cars and BJP flags, with the hyperbole of a sure-shot BJP victory in the air, manufactured on a daily basis by its cash-rich machinery across the state. Many Delhi journalists, on quick visits, fell for this hyperbole.

Indeed, the claim by the duo then that they would cross 200 seats was proved wrong because they could muster just about 70 plus, despite putting all their might on the ground, with the EC accused of playing an openly partisan game.

Didi, with one foot in plaster, and on a wheelchair, took them on frontally, reciting Goddess Kali’s ‘Chandi Paath’ on a stage to a packed audience in Nandigram, telecast ‘live’ in Bengal.

She positioned herself outside the polling booth on voting day in Nandigram, asking rural women to foil any plan of booth-capturing, if necessary by using their kitchen utensils, attacking hired ‘outsiders’ for vitiating the atmosphere, and leading endless spells of slogan-shouting in rallies, with her fanatic female support base joining with full force.

‘Khela Hobe’, she would say, kicking a football to the audience from the stage, Bengal’s most favourite game. The crowd would roar back: ‘Khela Hobe!’

In a rally in Nandigram, this reporter witnessed, she would ask MP Dola Sen, a trade unionist and fabulous singer, to sing revolutionary songs. Then, the atmosphere charged, she would declare BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari, her close aide once, as ‘Mir Jaffer’ – Bengal’s favourite abuse against betrayers and turncoats.

Then, while leading slogan-shouting for almost an hour, she would pause for a while, throw water bottles at journalists near the stage, and speak directly to her women fans: “Cool, cool. Trinamool!” The electric connection was instant, and spontaneous. The women loved her.

So much so, when Modi made a faux pas in a rally mocking her derogatorily, “Didi, O Didi” – it created a wave of mass resentment across Bengal, especially among women. It was a mistake which boomeranged badly on Modi.

In a state where women’s empowerment is a priority, and women’s dignity is considered a universal virtue, Mahua Moitra immediately came on a TV discussion arguing that local street-side lumpens in Bengal behave exactly like this. This macho and chauvinist use of language and tonality by the PM left a bad taste everywhere.

Women across the class and caste divide in rural and urban Bengal decided to teach Modi a lesson for insulting their woman chief minister. More so, many women in BJP-supported households, reportedly, chose to defy their hardline husbands, and voted for Didi.

A sculptor in Kumartuli in North Kolkata, where they make exquisite statues of Goddess Durga during Durga Puja, told this reporter: “Not only women, even men are shocked and outraged. How can a Prime Minister speak like this, and that too in a rally?

“We are watching with absolute disgust how these two Gujarati men, displaying their power, are coming here routinely on helicopters, showing off their muscle and money power, and abusing ‘one woman’ relentlessly. They have no respect for women in a state where women are highly respected at home and in public spaces. They have no clue about the essential ethos of Bengal. And Bengal will give them a fitting reply on polling day.”

Bengal did!

The current war of words followed a recent storm which witnessed widespread destruction. Banerjee was quick to point out, and that too while on the spot: “Four people died and hundreds became homeless because of the natural disaster. The prime minister came here (Cooch Behar) yesterday, and, yet, he did not speak a word about the disaster. It seems he forgot about the natural calamity which has hit the region.”

The summer slugfest arrived in Delhi on Monday, April 8, 2024, when a 10-member Trinamool MP delegation, deputed by their supreme leader, led an appeal to the EC to immediately remove the heads of four major central agencies: the CBI, Enforcement Directorate (ED), National Investigation Agency (NIA), and the income-tax (IT) department.

This was followed by a major tussle with the cops. Derek O’ Brien and some women MPs were dragged on the street.

Trinamool had made its point, and right here in the heart of the capital – pushing the EC and the BJP regime into a corner. And thereby reinforcing their latest counter-narrative – that these central agencies are working against Bengal and its people as an ally of Modi and Shah.

For all practical purposes, this narrative seems to have struck a chord with the masses, once again effectively pitching the discourse of Bengal versus the partisan and revengeful political establishment in Delhi.

“If Modibabu is making the mistake of thinking the central agencies are part of some fiefdom at his disposal, he is very wrong,” MP Dola Sen declared.

“We respect the Election Commission. We want a level playing field in the election, which the commission must ensure. The BJP’s ‘jomidari’ (landlordism/feudalism) must stop,” Sen said. ‘Modibabu’ and ‘jomidari’ – the use of these pointed words are significant in the Bengali lexicon, and strikes an immediate rapport with the Bengali psyche.

Earlier, Modi had said in Bengal that the corrupt will be punished after June 4. Why after June 4, asked the CM.

She said: "The Prime Minister is coming to West Bengal to address election rallies. I have no issues with that. But the way he is saying that stern action will be taken against the opposition over corruption after the Lok Sabha poll results, is unacceptable...

“Is this how a Prime Minister should speak? What if I say I will put BJP leaders in jail after the election? But I will not say this as this is unacceptable in a democracy. This is actually 'Modi ki guarantee', putting all Opposition leaders in jail after June 4.”

The agencies are at the centre stage in these polls because TMC and its leaders have faced their wrath relentlessly since the BJP lost the Assembly polls in 2021. Raids seemed to have become routine, and widely perceived as a series of revengeful actions, following the BJP’s drubbing in the assembly polls.

Other leaders were arrested, and prolonged interrogations and summons to Delhi were deeply resented by the party and its supporters. Even Abhishek Bannerjee, the CM’s nephew, and his family, had to face repeated interrogations. In general perception it has been seen as needless harassment and hounding of the CM and her trusted aides by the Modi regime.

Recently, in Sandeshkhali, again in North Bengal, a mob attacked the Enforcement Directorate officials, when they came to arrest a local Trinamool bahubali, now under arrest.

A National Investigation Agency (NIA) team was allegedly attacked by locals in another recent incident when it went to arrest certain individuals in an old bomb blast case of 2022 in East Medinipur district. This led to massive tension and unrest in the area against the central agencies.

Mamata Bannerjee said: “They are carrying out raids without prior information, and barging into houses. What can women do if someone enters their house when everyone was asleep, in the dead of night?"

At Cooch Behar on the border of Bangladesh, Modi attacked Banerjee: “BJP's focus is empowering the women. The culprits of Sandeshkhali will spend their lives in jail.

“What happened to the women of Sandeshkhali was a result of TMC's misrule. BJP has vowed that it will ensure the punishment of the Sandeshkhali culprits.”

Around the same time, Banerjee addressed a huge rally in Cooch Behar, taking on Modi. She said that she will not succumb to the "threat of central agencies", and asked the women to file police complaints if "there are instances of BSF torturing locals," ahead of the polls.

The border zones are controlled by the BSF, with barbed wires running in circles across the region. Several incidents have happened in the past when locals, including women, have alleged that they have been harassed, sometimes brutally, by some men of the force.

Human rights group Masoom has documented several such cases, and Trinamool leaders, eminent citizens in Kolkata like actress Aparna Sen, musicians and judges, and civil society groups, have openly come out against such atrocities.

This reporter has travelled across these border zones, visited villages and refugee camps of Indian citizens who have been given citizenship after living in a ‘no man’s land’ since the Bangladesh liberation of 1971. They belong to both the Muslim and Hindu communities.

Hence, using the BSF card is like touching a raw nerve in Bengal and a direct attack on the Centre, yet again pushing the Centre-versus Bengal narrative to the foreground.

During the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, TMC won 22 of the 42 seats in West Bengal, getting 43.3 percent votes. Surprisingly, with no presence in the state, the BJP won 18 seats, securing 40.7 percent votes.

The Congress won two seats, while the CPM was stuck at zero, with a large chunk of its cadre and supporters, in their blind hatred for Banerjee, choosing to vote for the Hindutva party.

This time TMC will contest all the 42 seats. It had offered two seats to the Congress in their traditional strongholds, Berhampur-Murshidabad, and Malda, but the Congress wanted more seats.

There has been criticism of the CM, who had coined the term ‘I.N.D.I.A.’ while forming the opposition alliance on a seat-to-seat basis, for going solo. However, observers believe that her strategy is smart, and on the dot, if she makes an alliance with the Congress.

The CPM is still a spent force in the state. In this instance, the Opposition votes will get divided, and thereby it will be ‘Disadvantage BJP’.

Banerjee has appealed to the electorate: "Don't cast your vote in favour of the Congress and the CPM if you want to defeat the BJP. Not a single vote to CPM and Congress and their ally, a minority party Indian Secular Front (ISF). This minority party is just like AIMIM. They are working to split the minority votes and help the BJP.”

Indeed, the ISF, with its Muslim leadership under Abbas Siddiqui, known to be a rabble-rouser, was banking on the minority votes in 2021. He had earlier viciously abused a famous Muslim actress, aligned to the Trinamool, who is famous for her independent and modern views and lifestyle.

Significantly, it lost badly in its own bastion, Furfura Sharif. Local Muslims here then told this reporter that Muslims will unitedly vote in support of Banerjee with the sole purpose of defeating the BJP. This was the pattern in the whole of Bengal, including in Berhampore and Malda, where the Muslims voted for the Congress en masse.

Observers and activists on the ground believe that the CPM votes will not get transferred to the BJP this time, as the party is trying to regain its support base under state chief Mohammad Salim. Hence, the unprecedented post-Pulwama show in Bengal might elude the BJP this time.

The CAA card has fallen flat in Bengal, predictably, because there has been no historic tension between those who have come from Bangladesh since 1971 in various phases, those who are original residents of Bengal, and those who chose to move to West Bengal from the east after the violent Partition of 1947.

The diabolical ‘infiltrator’ rhetoric of the BJP might gel in neighbouring Assam, but not so in Bengal, where both Hindus and Muslims, from both the east and west, share a common history, and a collective synthesis in terms of culture, language, literature, folk traditions, and food and cuisine.

Hence, the TMC might not find a level-playing field, a phenomenon all the opposition parties in the I.N.D.I.A. bloc are facing. It will be a tiring and long phase of polls in a deeply secular Bengal yet again.

And, yet, the counter-narrative attacking the agencies, and thereby Modi and Shah, might click with the larger support base of the party, along with the popularity of her social welfare schemes. Mamata Banerjee is looking for a big victory – many more seats beyond the 22 she scored in 2019.

Will she succeed? The first phase might just be a mild indicator.