Battleground West Bengal has heated up and how! The clash of the titans is no longer just about who wins the high-stakes eastern state but with four phases having culminated already, the election has become a monumental battle of pride for the competing forces.
On the one side is the mercurial Chief Minister of the state Mamata Banerjee, who in her latest wheelchair-bound avatar post the controversial accident she was involved in during her campaign trail in Nandigram last month, has baffled one and all by recently making a reference to her gotra in order to please Hindu voters. Although, earlier in January, she got upset with ‘Jai Shri Ram’ chants at an event in Kolkata held to pay tribute to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose on his 124th birth anniversary.
And on the other hand is the supremely confident Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the forefront of a boisterous campaign, presenting itself as the choice that will change the fortunes of the state and trying to convince Bengal’s electorate that the Trinamool Congress’s (TMC) victory in the assembly polls will neither be in their interest nor in the larger national interest.
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| image source : tv9hindi.com |
West Bengal’s political configuration saw a paradigm shift from left to right in the 2019 general elections when the BJP won 18 out of the 42 Lok Sabha seats from the state with a vote share of nearly 41 per cent, emerging as the second-largest party after the Trinamool. The party will look to better its performance in the 2021 Bengal assembly polls by swinging the vote share further in its favour as compared to 2019. Poll pundits predict that a 2 per cent positive swing in its vote share will see the BJP triumphing over the TMC.
Be that as it may, the Bengal verdict is still some distance away with four more phases to go. The picture will become clear in the next couple of weeks but for now, the battle is as intense as it gets. The script could not have been any more dramatic. The Mahayudh has forced Didi to reach out to the Hindu vote bank at the cost of Muslim appeasement which comes more naturally to her brand of politics and also at the expense of antagonising Muslim leaders such as Asaduddin Owaisi of the AIMIM.
image source : indiatvnews.com
Mamata’s sorrows
Mamata Banerjee’s election campaign has been a saga of desperation and paranoia. After blaming BJP supporters for allegedly attacking her during her campaign trail in Nandigram on March 10 - an allegation which the Election Commission found baseless and called the episode an accident instead of a planned attack - Mamata has made her anxiety pretty evident through her recent statements like “Ek paye Bangla joy korbo, dui paye Delhi agami dine (Will win Bengal with one foot, will win Delhi with both feet in future.” Her far-fetched political ambitions have made her oblivious to the reality that her fortress is under siege. If anything, this is a telltale sign of a tall political leader who has lost touch with ground reality and trying arduously to win over voters by promising something she cannot deliver.
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| image source : theweek.in |
By portraying herself as a devout Hindu and the custodian of the Bengali culture while accusing the BJP of being anti-Muslim and ignorant of Bengal’s heritage, Mamata Banerjee has committed a trademark mistake that the anti-Modi lobby constituted by the Congress and other left parties does in every election season. This lame formula of playing the regional card or the Muslim card or both together has only played into the hands of the BJP, which has tasted electoral success in assembly elections in recent years on more occasions than one. By resorting to the same tactic, the West Bengal CM may only have further ruined the chances of her reelection.
Another peculiar fact to have emerged from TMC’s poll campaign is Mamata Banerjee’s rather uncharacteristically apologetic attitude, albeit just pretence for political gains. The party’s fear of losing out on its voter base in its traditional bastions is perceptible. Mamata implored Hooghly voters last week to retain faith in the party despite the goof-ups, as admitted by her, done by her close aide and Saptagram MLA Tapan Dasgupta. Notwithstanding her audacious demeanour, Mamata’s gestures have made it abundantly clear that she is cognizant of the chinks in her armour. What this means in the broader context is that a possible defeat at the hands of the BJP looms large in the mind of the West Bengal CM.
Seasonal Hindu
Wooing Hindu voters by masquerading as dedicated Hindus during elections has become a reprehensible trend in India’s recent electoral history as far as the opposition politicians are concerned. The Hindu card has been blatantly abused by the Hindu-hating lobby purely with the intent to overpower the BJP’s colossal popularity within the Hindu community - a party that has rightly dominated the Hindu sentiment in India for decades.
image source : freepressjournal.in
In a bid to embolden the chances of her return to power, Mamata Banerjee jumped into the same bandwagon of political opportunism by making an unprecedented reference to her Gotra, calling herself a Shandilya, during the last leg of TMC’s poll campaigning in Nandigram. This was enough to irk the BJP and people like Asaduddin Owaisi alike who castigated the TMC chief for being a seasonal Hindu. The two sides of the ideological spectrum coming together to unequivocally accuse Mamata Banerjee of being a desperate politician, who resorts to communal politics to retain power, speaks volumes of the nature of governance that West Bengal has witnessed over the years under its current CM.
Quite rightly, according to the BJP leader Giriraj Singh, the apprehension of facing a possible defeat at the hands of the BJP has brought out the periodic Hindu in Mamata Banerjee in the form of her mention of her gotra but what about the gotra of Rohingyas and infiltrators who she has backed throughout her tenure as the chief minister of West Bengal. Are they Shandilya too?
This is all but a laughable political gimmick which will, in all likelihood, get its answer once the result is out on May 2.
