What Bengal did this week, India has done before. Yet the turn of events in the fourth-most populous state was stunning given that none of this was thinkable even on May 3.
A month after the BJP’s spectacular triumph of winning a two-thirds majority in the state, the declaration of autonomy by two-thirds of Trinamool Congress legislators is a resounding vote of no-confidence against Mamata Banerjee in general and, more specifically, against Abhishek Banerjee, denying the nephew locus standi as the party’s national general secretary.
The disintegration of Trinamool is a body blow to Mamata Banerjee—for she embodies the party. The break from the past is even more remarkable when you consider that a relative newcomer in Trinamool politics, Ritabrata Banerjee, has been selected leader of the breakaway group of 58 legislators, who have been recognised by the new Assembly Speaker Rathindra Bose as the principal opposition.
It’s a flame-out Mamata does not appear to have anticipated herself. It leaves her alienated from the party she founded in 1998 after quitting the Congress. The likelihood of this eruption seemed improbable before May 4. Before and during the election, the Trinamool Congress was a large, popular, dominating political presence in West Bengal. However, after the breakup, it now seems entirely expected, as more and more legislators and other party leaders spew venom against Abhishek’s monopolisation of power and Mamata’s acquiescence, if not active indulgence of his takeover as the dynastic successor.
The crisis in the Trinamool Congress is familiar in most regional parties founded by or taken captive by a single family. A game of thrones is triggered when the right of a son or daughter to succeed the founder is challenged by an upwardly-mobile popular leader from outside the family. The fight between the bloodline and the outsider is a replay of feudal succession battles. Political parties are not hereditary fiefdoms, even when the parallels are unmistakable.
Between dynastic succession and choices determined by bloodlines—as in Abhishek Banerjee’s approval of Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay as the Trinamool Congress Leader of the Opposition, and a democratic choice by a majority, Ritabrata Banerjee—there is always the probability of a split.
In Maharashtra, the Shiv Sena split twice; first when Raj Thackeray quit over Uddhav Thackeray’s succession to the Bal Thackeray legacy and then when Eknath Shinde exited and took the bulk of the party with him along with the name and electoral symbol that have immense resonance among voters in the state. The Nationalist Congress Party also split to leave founder Sharad Pawar in the minority, while his nephew, the late Ajit Pawar, seized the larger chunk. In Assam, the large-scale exodus from the Congress led by Himanta Biswa Sarma to the BJP was a fallout of the late Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi’s dynastic ambitions for his son Gaurav.
In the Hindi heartland, there have been multiple feuds over succession, starting with when Akhilesh Yadav had a hard time taking over the Samajwadi Party from his father Mulayam Singh as well as a host of claimants related by blood or long association. The same is true for Tejashwi Yadav, who did not get to lead the Rashtriya Janata Dal without a fight. When Mayawati lost the election in 2012, after her fourth and final stint as chief minister, the Bahujan Samaj Party began crumbling as a significant political force in Uttar Pradesh, as rivals began scrambling for what remained and she dithered over choosing her successor, as she continues to do even now.
Curiously, Akhilesh Yadav, Gaurav Gogoi and Mayawati all moved beyond state politics, choosing to use Parliament, both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, as alternative sites for continuing their political careers when winning majorities in their state legislatures became unachievable targets.
The option is open for Mamata Banerjee, too. Having started her career in electoral politics as a member of the Lok Sabha in 1984, when she defeated CPI(M) stalwart Somnath Chatterjee, that may be one place from where she can start over to rebuild her image, retrieve her reputation and leverage the remaining political capital to rebuild the Trinamool Congress.
A contest between the people who helped build the party and believe they rose through the ranks by sheer merit and hard work versus the bloodline is now normal in Indian politics. The contest has consequences. It makes the party vulnerable to poaching and splits. The crisis in the Trinamool Congress is, therefore, just one more in a long line of fights between rival claims to succession.
Mamata’s choices are limited; she has to find a way of cutting her losses without cutting off her nose to spite the face—in other words, she has to figure out what to do with Abhishek as her deemed successor, and salvage whatever political capital she has left after the election fiasco. The chances are that investigations by various agencies into the sordid antics of her party leaders and their money-grabbing machinations could further damage her credibility and reputation.
By dissolving all party committees and centralising power in her own hands, Mamata is repeating a mistake she made some years ago. Then, too, the fight between old-timers and Abhishek had reached a crisis point. The distrust is mutual between leaders who represented the party at different levels and Mamata plus her loyalists, though how long how many of them will remain loyal is open to speculation.
Mamata has lost the first fight in keeping the leadership of the tanking Trinamool within the family. From out of nowhere, Ritabrata Banerjee emerged as a strategist who could engineer a break within the party to invent a legislature version of it, which clearly has the approval of the BJP. For the BJP, the Trinamool’s infighting is a second windfall—the losing side is even weaker than before. In the Assembly, the BJP now has a recognised opposition that has vowed to work responsibly and not indulge in opposition for opposition’s sake.
The era of cooperative politics is being reshaped. What happened in Maharashtra seems likely to be the template for the approved opposition’s role in West Bengal.
Shikha Mukerjee | Political commentator
(Views are personal)