For over 50 years, West Bengal and its political parties have joined Bangladesh in paying homage to the 1952 martyrs of the Bhasha Andolan (language movement) on Ekushey or 21st February. This year was different. The mood was sombre, heavy with a foreboding that events in the neighbouring country had changed the common ideological and cultural heritage.
In a spontaneous effort to compensate and almost as a move to reassure people, political parties across the spectrum did a little more in Kolkata. The apprehension articulated by author Abul Bashar that in the “confusion” of the turbulent times in Bangladesh, it has “lost itself” was affirmed by speakers of all stripes. Constrained by her position as chief minister, a circumspect Mamata Banerjee said, “We should not talk about another country,” at the event organised by her government to do two things at once, pay homage to the martyrs and celebrate International Mother Language Day.
In Kolkata’s College Square, lined by bookshops and universities, the CPI(M) organised a programme that paid tribute to the language martyrs of Dhaka through the National Book Agency in collaboration with the Students’ Federation of India, and celebrated the Red Book Day to mark the publication of the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848. A pamphlet with an article by Communist Party founder Muzaffar Ahmad on fundamentalism, authoritarianism and imperialism as well as former Chief Minister Jyoti Basu’s 1946 speech in the then Bengal Legislative Assembly was released.
Regardless of the 2,217-km border that separates the Muslim-majority population of Bangladesh from the Hindu-majority population of West Bengal, the two sides are bound by the shared language, ideological and cultural heritage of Rabindranath Tagore and Kazi Nazrul Islam on the one hand and the Bengal Renaissance, a period that stretched from the late 18th to the early 20th century, on the other. And yet, the communalism of religious identity has also been a powerful ingredient in the politics of both West Bengal and Bangladesh.
The weaponisation of Islamic fundamentalism in West Bengal by the BJP to create a constituency of Hindus is not new. It has, however, acquired an edge it lacked before. Evidently, the BJP senses it can strengthen its ties to its core constituency of ‘Hindu refugee families’ who fled across the border for safety by raising the spectre of Islamic fundamentalism.
In the West Bengal assembly, during the budget session earlier this month, the leader of opposition, BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari, accused Mamata Banerjee of hosting Islamic fundamentalists linked to terror networks, called her a ‘stooge’ of the Muslim League and a patron the Ansarullah Bangla Team, a radical Islamic group in Bangladesh. Its leader, Jasimuddin Rahmani, was said to be involved in the bomb blast in West Bengal’s Khagragarh in 2014. He was released recently by the interim government of Muhammad Yunus.
The BJP’s emergence as the challenger to Trinamool Congress over the past decade has ratcheted up accusations against Mamata Banerjee for her ‘appeasement policies’ of providing stipends to Muslim clerics to build up a minority vote bank.
In 2024, infiltration from Bangladesh was a key issue for the BJP in the Jharkhand elections too. The connection between peace and infiltration has been routinely underscored by Union Home Minister Amit Shah. “I urge the people of Bengal to bring in change in 2026, and we will stop infiltration, and peace will come.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Shah have made protection of minorities a key issue in dialogues with Bangladesh. As an addition to the communally-loaded campaign in previous elections when the Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens featured prominently, the expectation seems to be that the nervous settlers in West Bengal will flock to the BJP for protection.
In the run-up to 2026, Islamic militancy and the danger it poses to Hindus is emerging as a tactical choice for the BJP, especially among refugee communities like the Schedule Caste Matuas. The attacks on Hindu priests and places of worship sparked by an alleged attack on a member of the radical Islamist Hefazat-e-Islami group by followers of Chinmoy Krishna Das, a former Iskcon monk, has strengthened the feeling that Hindus are in danger.
Some 400 hotels in what is colloquially referred to as ‘mini Bangladesh’ in the iconic New Market area of Kolkata have taken a hit as visitors have dwindled. The Association of Hospitals in Eastern India is worried that the drastic drop in patients seeking care in Kolkata will be a “permanent setback”.
However, the rising tension over inflow of “illegals” from Bangladesh seems to be neatly packed in a leak-proof compartment from the shared concerns that are served through people-to-people interactions between the two sides. The common ideological and cultural heritage appears to be stronger and more durable than the seasonal confrontation of electoral politics.
(Views are personal)
(s_mukerjee@yahoo.com)
Shikha Mukerjee | Senior journalist based in Kolkata