by Bhavna Vij-AuroraI
T has taken 68-long years for the BJP to
establish a political base in its founder
Syama Prasad Mookerjee’s home state,
West Bengal. Mookerjee had walked out
of the Congress and quit Jawaharlal
Nehru’s cabinet to launch the Bharatiya
Jana Sangh, the BJP’s predecessor, in 1951.
Now that the BJP has won 18 of Bengal’s
42 Lok Sabha seats, party leaders claim
there is no looking back. Their eyes are
now set on winning the 2021 assembly
polls. They have already set a target of 250
seats for the party (they have six MLAs
currently) in the 294-member assembly.
BJP national general secretary and West
Bengal in-charge Kailash Vijayvargiya says
that organisation in the state has been str-
engthened down to the booth level and
there is no doubt that the state will ditch
the ‘autocratic’ rule of Trinamool leader
Mamata Banerjee. “We had set a target of
23 Lok Sabha seats, and won 18. Now, our
target is 250 seats in the assembly. We
will prepare our poll strategy and work to-
wards achieving this,” he tells Outlook.
On being asked if ground is being pre-
pared to put the state under president’s
rule, he says, “We are not in favour of
using Article 356 against a democratically
elected government”, but adds that there
are too many internal contradictions and
too much strife within the TMC leadership.
“There is anger among the leaders because
of Mamata’s support to her nephew
(Abhishek Banerjee). They say she is pro-
moting dynastic rule,” adds Vijayvargiya.
Does that mean that the BJP will try and
poach TMC leaders? Another BJP general
secretary reveals that TMC leaders and
workers are approaching the BJP. “They
bel ieve the state’s future is with the BJP
and want to join the party. We are putting
in place a system of checks and balances
bef ore we induct any TMC leader. Onlythose with good public image and organisa-
tional skills will be taken,” he explains.
Once Mamata’s close aide, Mukul Roy
had joined the BJP in 2017 and is believed
to have helped it in finding its way in Ben-
gal. BJP leaders acknowledge his role but
say work by RSS cadres on the ground for
decades is what helped them build and str-
engthen the party. “RSS and its affiliates
like VHP and Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram have
been working in rem ote areas, and it was
not difficult to reach people at the grass-
roots,” says party secretary Sunil Deodhar.
“Once Amit Shah had decided after 2014
to focus on Bengal, the party worked in a
systematic manner. Now the target is to
rule the state,” says another BJP leader.
It is evident from statements issued by
Mamata that she is rattled by the unrelent-
ing onslaught of the BJP. TMC’s seat tally
fell from 34 in 2014 to 22, as BJP recorded
a staggering 40.5 per cent vote share, more
than double from 17 per cent in 2014. As
she talks about ‘Jai Bangla’ to counter
BJP’s ‘Jai Shri Ram’, she has all owed
Hindutva to push her towards Ben gali nat-
ionalism. With continued post-poll violence
and mishandling of the doctors’ strike,
Shah’s ministry of home affairs (MHA) has
been putting pressure on her government.
MHA earlier sent an advisory to the
state, asking for stringent action against
“delinquent officers” overseeing the viole-
nce. On June 15, the ministry sou ght a rep-
ort on the handling of the doctors’ strike.
BJP leaders claim Bengal’s administration
is falling apart. “To Mamata’s Bengali
pride, we will provide a counter with Nar-
endra Modi’s ‘Sonar Bangla’ vision. We will
talk about restoring Bengal’s old glory—giv-
ing weightage to industrialisation to create
jobs, implementation of the citizenship
(amendment) bill and the national register
of citizens (NRC) in the state to make it
secure,” says a senior leader about the
BJP’s plans.^ OHands To Battlements
Its plans to conquer Bengal in place, BJP girds its loins
lain all of it. It’s the silent polarisation
that worked against the Left. It lost its
rural Hindu voters to the BJP
and Muslim voters to TMC. Pabitra
Sarkar, ex-VC, Rabindra Bharati Univ-
ersity, thinks Bengal’s affair with the
BJP won’t last—it’s just an available
tool to counter TMC extortionism. But
the BJP itself has its Mission Bengal
2021 ready, a multi-pronged attack to
pulverise the TMC, including isolating
Mamata by pinning down her key men
on corruption charges.
How will she face the storm? The-
spian Bratya Basu, a minister in Mam-
ata’s cabinet, admits they need to
com municate the ‘grave danger ahead’
to the grassroots. Mamata has floated
two outfits, the ‘Jay Hind Bahini’ and
‘Bangojanani Brigade’, to do that. But
others in the party are sceptical of her
knee-jerk outreach programmes.
Meanwhile, the atmosphere inside
TMC is one of suspicion and intrigue,
where everybody is suspecting others
of being secretly in touch with the BJP.
Also, time’s running out. In July 2020,
some 99 municipalities, including
seven city corporations, will go to polls.
Earlier, of 127 municipalities, TMC
controlled 125—even the Left never had
such hegemony. Now, it’s her turn to
face the heat. An outright crisis, and a
sacking, may create a sympathy wave—
so the BJP may prefer to keep her hae-
m orhaging, via strikes and defections.
Will she endure? Her asset and her lia-
bility are both one: she herself—the
bane of a personality-led party. She is
courageous, and can be counted on to
mount the stiffest challenge the
BJP may have faced from a ‘regional’
leader. But her style of functioning fav-
ours sycophants over saner minds.
Her real weapon is a brand of nat ivist
politics based on Bengali pride. Against
the BJP’s more universal Hindu-Mus-
lim divide, she has her own Bengali vs
non-Bengali spirit, an appeal to ethno-
linguistic identity, to a people that fam-
ously celebrates it. The BJP comes
across as a ‘north Indian’ party, talking
of Ram instead of Kali and Durga. It
lacks a Bengali vocabulary as of now. It
also lacks a mass leader of any signifi-
cance. The space it is moving into is a
kind of unacknowleged gap in Bengal’s
collective psyche. What happens from
now on will be one of the most fascinat-
ing stories in Indian politics. O34 OUTLOOK 1 July 2019
SANDIPAN CHATTERJEE.
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