After conquering Uttar Pradesh, BJP president Amit Shah and RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat have declared they have West Bengal in their gunsights. Even before their war cry, Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh had fantasised about getting Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee “dragged by her hair” in Delhi as punishment for criticising PM Narendra Modi over demonetisation. Central agencies like the CBI and ED are also mounting pressure by arresting scam-accused Trinamool Congress MPs.
But the belligerence betrays the Hindu Right’s rage over its pathetic track record in Bengal since Independence. The irony is that a Bengali Brahmin, Syama Prasad Mookerjee, founded the Jan Sangh, the BJP’s precursor, in 1951. Despite his exalted position in the Sangh Parivar pantheon, there are hardly any portraits of Mookerjee in Bengali homes. But representations of Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi, Subhash Chandra Bose, Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Jyoti Basu and even Banerjee are common in drawing rooms, unequivocally underlining Bengal’s choice of icons. A road in Kolkata is named after Mookerjee—and that’s it.
In post-Partition Bengal, the Jan Sangh and Hindu Mahasabha got everything they could ask for. There were frequent massacres in East Pakistan and reprisals in Bengal. For instance, The Statesman
reported that on February 12, 1951, a large number of Hindu passengers at Dhaka’s Kurmitola airport awaiting evacuation to Kolkata were slaughtered in the presence of armed Pakistani soldiers. The backlash in Murshidabad killed many Muslims and sent over 25,000 scurrying to Kolkata for shelter. The killings and influx of refugees were unstoppable. Joya Chatterji writes in Spoils of Partition that 60 lakh Hindus crossed over from East Pakistan to Bengal while 15 lakh Muslims left Bengal for Pakistan
up till 1967.
Not surprisingly, the Hindu nationalists got a break initially. The first Lok Sabha (1952) had two Jan Sangh MPs from Bengal—Mookerjee won in Kolkata and Durga Charan Banerjee in Jhargram, while Hindu Mahasabha’s Nirmal Chatterjee was elected from Hooghly. But for the next 25 years, the Hindu Right failed to win a single LS seat from Bengal. The drought ended in 1977 when Jan Sangh’s Bijoy Mondal won from Bankura on a Janata Party ticket. Then, after 21 years, Tapan Sikdar won from Dum Dum on a BJP ticket. In subsequent elections, the BJP has bagged one or two Lok Sabha seats.
The first BJP MLA in West Bengal was elected only in 2014! At present, it has three MLAs.
How did the Hindutva forces lose the plot in Bengal despite perfect conditions for their brand of politics? The communists proved to be their undoing. Hindu refugees did not succumb to the charms
of the Jan Sangh which specialised in Muslim and Pakistan-bashing. Instead, they fell for the CPI which genuinely fought for their rehabilitation in Bengal, bitterly opposing Congress CM B C Roy’s plans to pack them off to Dandakaranya or the Andamans. The communists split in 1964 but both factions fought for the refugees’ right to security and equality essential for restarting life afresh with dignity. They also gave them a world view, firing their imagination with stories about revolutionary China, Russia, Cuba and Vietnam.
While the Hindu Right stuttered, deft handling of refugee politics swept the CPM to power in Bengal in 1967 in alliance with the Bangla Congress. Called the United Front, it won again in 1969. The Basu-led Left Front finally triumphed in 1977 and ruled until 2011, when it was trounced by Banerjee’s Trinamool. The BJP thought that after the Left’s debacle, Bengalis would repose their faith in it. But the electorate quietly switched its allegiance to Trinamool, leaving the BJP fuming.
The BJP’s biggest drawback is that it hasn’t won over a single iconic Bengali like author Shankho Ghosh who received the 2016 Jnanpith Award, actor Soumitra Chatterjee whom Satyajit Ray cast in many
films, or cricketer Sourav Ganguly. The BJP is yet to infiltrate the Bengali middle class which has public intellectuals as its lynchpins. It did pull off a coup in 1991, fielding Victor Banerjee—of Ray and David Lean fame—in a parliamentary contest but he lost so badly that he quit politics. Sitting MPs Roopa Ganguly and Babul Supriyo have limited appeal as they are from the entertainment industry. In the absence of competent state leaders, the BJP’s national leaders have to do most of the talking about Bengal.
Objectively speaking, the BJP’s best catch in Bengal so far is M J Akbar—an intellectual made in Telinipara on Kolkata’s outskirts, Calcutta Boys’ School, Presidency College and Anand Bazar. As
he flies in and out of Kolkata, addressing seminars on BJP’s pet topics like triple talaq or Vedic maths, many wonder if he is Shah’s new pointsman. But to my mind, even a massive leap of faith can’t steel an ageing Akbar into leading the Hindutva charge, considering the murderous attempt on his father by “extremist” Ram Chatterjee forcing him to flee Telinipara for East Pakistan, so vividly recorded in Blood Brothers—Akbar's autobiographical novel. Chatterjee, for the record, earned the tag of “saviour of Hindus” by killing Muslims during Partition. What will Akbar do if Shah appropriates Chatterjee
proclaiming Bengal today needs hundreds of Chatterjee-like “saviours” to restore Hindu pride which Banerjee has “shattered” by pandering to her Muslim voters?
Shah is free to devise his strategy and assemble a team for Mission Bengal. But he will inevitably realise Bengal presents a set of challenges a resurgent BJP hasn’t encountered anywhere else under Modi’s leadership. No state has rebuffed the Hindu Right with greater disdain and contempt as consistently as
Bengal. This is a historical as well as contemporary reality Shah must factor in if he is serious about his goal.
The author is an award-winning journalist and commentator based in Kolkata.
Email: snmabdi@yahoo.com