The instant decision of not delivering her speech in protest against the “discourtesy” and “breach of dignity” was well thought out
When West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee took umbrage at being “greeted” or “teased” with the greetings of ‘Jai Sri Ram” in the presence of Prime Minister Modi by some from among the audience at the Victoria Memorial during a programme marking Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s 125th birth anniversary, it signalled the communal polarisation that the coming State Assembly election is set to witness.
Her instant decision not to deliver her speech in protest against the “discourtesy” shown to her and “breach of dignity” of the august occasion was not an impetuous, on the spur of the moment reaction. It was a calculated move to rake up communalisation of politics and project Bengal’s “injured pride” in the legacy of Netaji as a potent electoral weapon to fight the BJP. Whether she fell into a BJP trap or tried to prove her credentials as a champion of the minority population is another matter.
Significantly, Abbas Siddiqui, a cleric of Furfura Sharif, launched a new outfit – Indian Secular Front (ISF) — two days before with the avowed objective of “playing the kingmaker’s role” in the election adding a new dimension to the high voltage electoral campaign.
This WB Assembly election will pivot around Mamata Banerjee, Shri Ram and Siddiqui. The Trinamool supremo is desperate to retain power while the BJP has got the best opportunity ever to capture Bengal for the first time with its spectacular results in the last Lok Sabha election when it bagged the State’s 18 of the 42 seats.
The saffron party’s trump card is its political creed of Hindutva and tapping the majority Hindu sentiments while its share of Muslim votes has been increasing slowly but steadily from 1% in 2006 to 4% in the 2019 LS election. Of about 10 million people of Bengal, the Muslims account for a little over 27% and are a decisive factor in 100-110 seats.
This is why Mamata has been trying to zealously guard her hold on the Muslim votes. When the Trinamool was struggling to grow at the cost of the Congress in 2004, it had the support of 21% Muslims in the State. It rose to 51% in 2016 and peaked to 70% in the 2019 LS election. This was mainly by eating into the Left’s support base among the Muslims, which dwindled from 47% in 2004 to 10% in 2019.
Mamata lapped up the opportunity to exploit the sentiments of the minorities when some among the audience at Victoria Memorial chanted “Jai Sri Ram” the moment her name was called out by the announcer inviting her to address the gathering. During the 2019 election campaign, BJP supporters had tested the limits of her patience by using the chant when she moved in her convoy in the villages. In one case, she even asked her driver to stop her car, got off the vehicle and shouted at the fleeing villagers daring them to do so again in front of her.
The incident raised the temperature in the poll-bound State with Trinamool supporters condemning the chant as the BJP’s “war cry” and its opponents jeering at the Trinamool chief for “overreacting in a fit of frenzy and fear of losing the election”. Since then the chant is being used as a red rag enrage her.
Even Nobel laureate Amartya Sen got involved in the duel and remarked Shri Ram is adored in Bengal as an ideal and epitome of the noblest qualities in a human being rather than a “god”.
He also echoed what many suspect that the chant is a “war cry” of the BJP.
Mamata couldn’t have got a better opportunity to showcase her antipathy to such “saffron zeal” than take on it in the presence of the Prime Minister. She cleverly played the communal card by slamming the chant as a brazen show of “indignity” destroying the decorum of a “government” programme which was “not a BJP party event.”
Perhaps, the Prime Minister was too stunned by the turn of events and didn’t utter a word on the incident. Later, many criticised Modi’s silence and said he should have defended the Chief Minister, and a woman too, by admonishing those in the audience who chanted Shri Ram. Hence, the Prime Minister is believed to have given his tacit support to the “communalisation” of the electoral battle in the State.
In an intriguing development, All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) president Asaduddin Owaisi met Pirzada Abbas Siddiqui of Furfura Sharif in the first weekend of 2021 adding a new twist to the electoral battle. After the meeting, Owaisi told the media: “We will work with Abbas Siddiqui and support whatever decision he takes.”
The Trinamool immediately reacted by dubbing both the Muslim leaders “agents” of the BJP and accused them of injecting communal poison into the State the way it was done before the partition of the country. But the charge is unfounded since Siddiqui has all along been maintaining good rapport with the CPI-M-led Left Front to project his brand of politics as secular. He made it clear after launching his new outfit that he was exploring a tie-up with the Left and the Congress.
In fact, he told a rally in north Bengal on January 27 that he had earlier proposed to the Trinamool to form an alliance and demanded 40 seats. The latter not only shot down his offer but started harassing his supporters by slapping false cases, he alleged. On the contrary, the Trinamool has welcomed the BJP to raise the communal pitch so that the battle is fought between the two of them marginalising all other parties, he asserted.
The strategy of Siddiqui and the Left-Congress combine is to prevent the Muslims from voting for the Trinamool en masse and revive the traditional Bengal politics of mobilising the Muslims under the banner of one political party or the other instead of stoking communal sentiments. As for Owaisi, he is trying to carve out space for greater Muslim representation and an alternative to ‘secular’ parties nationally and in several States as well.
Siddiqui appears to be doing a balancing act. If he, with the help of the Left and the Congress, succeeds, he would be able to fulfil his objective of playing the kingmaker’s role, while the Left-Congress combine can play their game of keeping the BJP at bay in the event of a fractured mandate with neither the Trinamool nor the BJP in a position to form the government on their own.
(The author is a political analyst, and associated with Peoples Pulse, a Hyderabad-based research organisation)
Now you can get handpicked stories from Telangana Today on Telegram everyday. Click the link to subscribe.
Click to follow Telangana Today Facebook page and Twitter .