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The Bengal gamble

The Bengal gamble

Amit Shah continues to drive the CAA as a key campaign plank for the Bengal polls. What should Mamata do?

No matter what the results of the Delhi elections have been, no matter how people rejected the politics of polarisation and divisiveness, the BJP will not stop running with the flare gun. Even if it burns lives and sears memories, it will go ahead with its identity politics in the name of cleansing and securing the nation. If the promise of development was the access card for the 2014 mandate, May 2019 onwards the rationale is about why development is in ferment because of pollutants among people, because the nation is not secure from “virus” threats of the “alien” kind implanted many centuries ago. This justification works in core factories of the Sangh Parivar, one that has led Union Home Minister and party supremo Amit Shah to unfurl his campaign for the Bengal 2021 polls with a renewed emphasis on the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). The BJP hopes this will be a trumpcard for three reasons. First, it sharpens the polarity with its harshest critic on its identity and race-profiling policies, Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee. Second, Bengal has become a fertile ground for polarisation with the decimation of both the Left and the Congress as secular entities. It is home to about 27 per cent Muslims that congeal around Mamata and is a swirling petri dish of latent anxieties about Partition and infiltration. Third, Bengal represents the Leftist liberal way of life and, as another bank of the ideological divide, is one that the BJP wants to desperately breach. Emboldened by its performance in the Lok Sabha polls with 18 seats, the BJP is pitching CAA as its arrowhead, hoping to consolidate those numbers. Hindu refugees are a deciding factor in about 80 Assembly seats and spread around 50 others in the 294-member House. Besides, by just talking about the CAA, Shah is selling it as a virtuous proposition in itself, as opposed to Mamata’s linking it with census profiles under the National Population Register (NPR) and National Register of Citizens (NRC). Even at the national level, the BJP is using CAA to explain how it helps persecuted Hindi refugees and covering up what it implies, that it is exclusionary in violation of the Constitution. Or that Muslims left out for want of legacy data in census drives, intentionally or not, have no other way of proving citizenship or seeking redress. Mamata is the only politician to expose a sinister design behind the CAA-NRC combination that has put the BJP on the backfoot in a State that hasn’t taken to divisive politics, except in pockets dominated by migrant labourers or border districts. Hence, Shah’s fervent appeal to Hindu refugees like Matuas and Rajbanshis to vote for the BJP because by protesting against CAA, he argued, Mamata was eroding their settler status vis-a-vis Muslims. Matuas, who migrated from Bangladesh during Partition, matter in 74 seats. Since 2009, they have been with the Trinamool. But ever since the death of their leading matriarch, Boro Ma, who was close to Mamata, they are a house divided. And BJP has successfully used Mamata’s overt minority appeasement of the past to tell Matuas that they have been cheated. 

Mamata, too, has wisened up after the Lok Sabha debacle. At her recent rallies in these constituencies, she has run down CAA as a needless exercise, saying she had regularised refugee colonies and that official recognition meant that all Hindu residents were genuine citizens. She, therefore, nullified the need to queue up for fresh documents under CAA. She is also making right noises about “extremists” among minorities and may have to follow through her promises of a Matua Welfare Board, dedicated colleges and a university. While the polarisation of the Hindu and Muslim vote had helped her at one time, the Trinamool chief, like many other Opposition leaders, has realised that the predominant Hindu sentiment is now a decisive factor in the country’s political eco-system. One that is not about winning over Muslim votes but about convincing Hindu voters that they are a priority. Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Arvind Kejriwal also displayed signs of Hindu ritualism, which is the new normal, despite winning a mandate based on his performance. The BJP has successfully supplanted votebank politics with a consolidated Hindu appeasement. Mamata is a Kali bhakt herself and chooses to live her faith than sporting it for political reasons. That is the reason she played to the Muslims through visual rhetoric, landing herself in the BJP’s trap. The question is how reactively Hindu she will be in the light of the local body elections later this year? The bigger question is, can her all-pervasive crusader image afford it? But Didi has a pulse of her people and a personality cult that makes her almost a demi-god to the masses. For the first time, she can’t take that for granted.

(Courtesy: The Pioneer)

The Bengal gamble

The Bengal gamble

Amit Shah continues to drive the CAA as a key campaign plank for the Bengal polls. What should Mamata do?

No matter what the results of the Delhi elections have been, no matter how people rejected the politics of polarisation and divisiveness, the BJP will not stop running with the flare gun. Even if it burns lives and sears memories, it will go ahead with its identity politics in the name of cleansing and securing the nation. If the promise of development was the access card for the 2014 mandate, May 2019 onwards the rationale is about why development is in ferment because of pollutants among people, because the nation is not secure from “virus” threats of the “alien” kind implanted many centuries ago. This justification works in core factories of the Sangh Parivar, one that has led Union Home Minister and party supremo Amit Shah to unfurl his campaign for the Bengal 2021 polls with a renewed emphasis on the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). The BJP hopes this will be a trumpcard for three reasons. First, it sharpens the polarity with its harshest critic on its identity and race-profiling policies, Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee. Second, Bengal has become a fertile ground for polarisation with the decimation of both the Left and the Congress as secular entities. It is home to about 27 per cent Muslims that congeal around Mamata and is a swirling petri dish of latent anxieties about Partition and infiltration. Third, Bengal represents the Leftist liberal way of life and, as another bank of the ideological divide, is one that the BJP wants to desperately breach. Emboldened by its performance in the Lok Sabha polls with 18 seats, the BJP is pitching CAA as its arrowhead, hoping to consolidate those numbers. Hindu refugees are a deciding factor in about 80 Assembly seats and spread around 50 others in the 294-member House. Besides, by just talking about the CAA, Shah is selling it as a virtuous proposition in itself, as opposed to Mamata’s linking it with census profiles under the National Population Register (NPR) and National Register of Citizens (NRC). Even at the national level, the BJP is using CAA to explain how it helps persecuted Hindi refugees and covering up what it implies, that it is exclusionary in violation of the Constitution. Or that Muslims left out for want of legacy data in census drives, intentionally or not, have no other way of proving citizenship or seeking redress. Mamata is the only politician to expose a sinister design behind the CAA-NRC combination that has put the BJP on the backfoot in a State that hasn’t taken to divisive politics, except in pockets dominated by migrant labourers or border districts. Hence, Shah’s fervent appeal to Hindu refugees like Matuas and Rajbanshis to vote for the BJP because by protesting against CAA, he argued, Mamata was eroding their settler status vis-a-vis Muslims. Matuas, who migrated from Bangladesh during Partition, matter in 74 seats. Since 2009, they have been with the Trinamool. But ever since the death of their leading matriarch, Boro Ma, who was close to Mamata, they are a house divided. And BJP has successfully used Mamata’s overt minority appeasement of the past to tell Matuas that they have been cheated. 

Mamata, too, has wisened up after the Lok Sabha debacle. At her recent rallies in these constituencies, she has run down CAA as a needless exercise, saying she had regularised refugee colonies and that official recognition meant that all Hindu residents were genuine citizens. She, therefore, nullified the need to queue up for fresh documents under CAA. She is also making right noises about “extremists” among minorities and may have to follow through her promises of a Matua Welfare Board, dedicated colleges and a university. While the polarisation of the Hindu and Muslim vote had helped her at one time, the Trinamool chief, like many other Opposition leaders, has realised that the predominant Hindu sentiment is now a decisive factor in the country’s political eco-system. One that is not about winning over Muslim votes but about convincing Hindu voters that they are a priority. Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Arvind Kejriwal also displayed signs of Hindu ritualism, which is the new normal, despite winning a mandate based on his performance. The BJP has successfully supplanted votebank politics with a consolidated Hindu appeasement. Mamata is a Kali bhakt herself and chooses to live her faith than sporting it for political reasons. That is the reason she played to the Muslims through visual rhetoric, landing herself in the BJP’s trap. The question is how reactively Hindu she will be in the light of the local body elections later this year? The bigger question is, can her all-pervasive crusader image afford it? But Didi has a pulse of her people and a personality cult that makes her almost a demi-god to the masses. For the first time, she can’t take that for granted.

(Courtesy: The Pioneer)

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