The first five phases of the seven-phase Lok Sabha election in West Bengal have been marked by a lack of political violence - by the state's standards, that is. Only one death in an alleged political clash has been reported and reported incidents of violence have been few. The sole victim, Mintu Sheikh, was a worker of the state's ruling party, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress (TMC).
A peaceful election is an exception in West Bengal rather than the norm. Over two dozen were killed in political clashes during the 'watershed' 2011 assembly election that marked the end of the 34-year-old Left Front rule and brought the TMC to power. The 2014 Lok Sabha election recorded seven deaths during the electoral process. The 2016 assembly election recorded six deaths, including two in a blast while making bombs.
In the 2018 panchayat election, 23 were killed on the polling day and the preceding day. During the 2019 Lok Sabha election, political clashes claimed 11 lives in West Bengal and left over a hundred injured. The 2021 assembly election was comparatively peaceful, except for the death of five people during the fourth phase of the election, four of them in firing by security forces. But the 2023 panchayat elections claimed 19 lives only on the polling day.
The victims and alleged perpetrators belonged to all major parties in the state - the TMC and the opposition parties, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or the CPI(M) and the Congress. The death toll is much higher if pre-poll and post-poll violence is considered. But this year, there have been no deaths in pre-poll political violence since January.
So, have Bengal's political parties learnt a lesson from the past? If political observers and politicians belonging to various parties are to be believed, they have.
TMC leaders claim they have asked the party's local leaders to restrain their workers, as violence in one phase can dent the party's prospects in the following phases.
The main opposition, the BJP, remains restrained for a different reason.
Ahead of the 2021 assembly election, some senior BJP leaders delivered a series of inflammatory speeches, espousing violence. The BJP state unit president Dilip Ghosh gave the slogan 'bodol hobey, bodlao hobey' (there will be a change and revenge). However, after the TMC got a massive mandate, BJP workers bore the brunt of widespread post-poll violence.
The possibility of adverse impact and reprisal has kept political workers unusually restrained and violence or threats of violence have gone missing from the speeches of senior politicians. However, whether the parties have, indeed, learned a lesson on violence can only be ascertained after the elections are over.
Key changes in TMC's strategy
One of the strategic changes in the TMC's campaign is that in 2019, their campaign was more focussed on national issues and multiple TMC leaders had pegged Banerjee as a potential prime ministerial candidate of a coalition between regional parties.
This time, the TMC's campaign is focussed more on Bengal – how the TMC government's welfare schemes are supporting people's lives, while the Modi government is depriving Bengal.
The party barely brought up Banerjee's potential premiership. Rather, Banerjee herself hinted she merely intends to help the INDIA bloc replace the Modi government so that Bengal gets a friendly government at the Centre. The TMC realised that the majority of the Bengali voters were more comfortable with having Banerjee as the CM.
In this connection, another significant change from the 2019 campaign is the TMC's pitch branding the BJP as "anti-Bengali". The party added the Bengali ethnonationalism/regionalism plank to their campaign ahead of the 2021 assembly election, made gains, and is continuing with it.
Recently, responding to PM Modi's remark castigating meat and fish consumption during the Hindu festival of Navratri, Banerjee gave an open invitation to Modi to have any fish preparation of his choice at her home. She said she will cook. Portraying the BJP as anti-fish is a way of portraying the party as anti-Bengali.
Changes BJP made
The BJP, too, modified its campaign strategy.
Suvendu Adhikari, the Leader of the Opposition in the state assembly and currently the leading BJP face in the state, made news regularly ahead of the 2021 assembly election by referring to Muslims as Pakistanis and the Chief Minister as "Begum", "Khala" and "Fufu". Muslims use the last two words to refer to aunt.
This year, Adhikari has toned it down, and so has Ghosh. Adhikari even hugged a few people on the occasion of Eid and tried to explain to Muslims from public rallies that Ramrajya meant good governance and that he would not ask Muslims to chant Jai Shri Ram.
This change came from the lesson that the party's 2021 strategy backfired.
In a state where Muslims make up over 27% of the state's population and a significant number of Hindus prefer liberal religious practices over conservative, the BJP's aggressive anti-Muslim pitch helped "extreme Muslim polarisation" in favour of the TMC, which led to the BJP losing several of their prospective seats.
This time, the plan was to focus on the TMC's misgovernance and corruption to allow Muslim votes to split between the TMC and the Left-Congress alliance. The state unit leaders maintained the strategy even after Modi himself decided to campaign on communal lines, nationally, since his Banswara speech in Rajasthan on April 21.
Lessons Left and the Congress learnt
The biggest learners appear to be the Left parties and the Congress.
After fighting the 2016 assembly election in alliance, the Left and the Congress looked almost set to arrive at a seat-sharing deal in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. However, the whole process fell flat over fissures over a handful of seats. Resultantly, the election turned into a TMC versus BJP bipolar contest, with the overwhelming majority of the voters considering the Left and the Congress too weak on their own.
Conflicts emerged during the seat-sharing dialogue this year, too, especially between the Forward Bloc, a component of the Left Front, and the Congress, over Cooch Behar and Purulia Lok Sabha seats. But the top leadership of the Bengal unit of the Congress and the CPI(M) were determined not to let disagreements over a few seats spoil the whole alliance. The CPI(M), striking a balance, decided to support the Congress candidate in Purulia and the Forward Bloc candidate in Cooch Behar.
Due to the alliance, the contest in about a dozen seats is expected to turn into sharp triangular ones or contests in which the third force plays a significant role in determining the winner.
These seats include Raiganj, Malda Uttar, Malda Dakshin, Murshidabad, Baharampur, Krishnanagar, Jadavpur, Serampore, Hooghly, Barrackpore, Purulia, Bardhaman Durgapur and Bardhaman Purba.
This has created additional uncertainty over the electoral fortunes of both the TMC and the BJP, as it offers a platform to people upset with both major parties.
Polarising factors missing
Two major polarising factors are missing in this election – neither are there incidents like the Pulwama terror attack and Balakot air strike (2019) that could help the BJP with an ultra-nationalist wave, nor is there an incident like the deaths of Muslim voters in firing by security forces (2021) that would help the TMC polarise Muslims. Nevertheless, learning from the past, the TMC has stopped commenting on issues related to national security considering it a sensitive issue, while the BJP has checked inflammatory speeches by its leaders.
The TMC has also tried to strike a balance between appeasing Hindu sentiments and Muslim sentiments.
On the one hand, to earn the trust of the Muslims and liberal Hindus, Mamata criticised and boycotted the Ram Temple consecration event. On the other hand, her party celebrated Ram Navami in a big way to blunt the BJP's "anti-Hindu" charges.
Snigdhendu Bhattacharya is an independent reporter based in Kolkata and author of Mission Bengal: A Saffron Experiment and Lalgarh and the Legend of Kishanji.
(Views are personal.)
