Syed Khalique Ahmed | India Tomorrow
NEW DELHI—It was ‘Bengali Asmita’ raised by Mamata Banerjee during the West Bengal assembly polls that has trumped Prime Minister Narendra Modi and led Trinamool Congress to victory for the third time in a row in the state. Though Mamata Banerjee has lost from Nandigram assembly to her former colleague and BJP candidate Suvendu Adhikari but she will again become Chief Minister as TMC has won majority of seats to form govenement on its own. But Mamata and TMC leaders suspect some malpractice by election officials under the influence of the Central government and they are demanding recounting. While TMC has won 216 seats, BJP won only 74, seats out of 292 seats in the state assembly. Congress failed to win even a single seat. Two other seats went to independents.
Modi, whose political ascendancy as chief minister of Gujarat in 2001 was owing to his use of communally polarising slogans and the same strategy he adopted in 2014 Lok Sabha elections following which he became the PM. He used the same strategy in 2019 Lok Sabha elections that again won him and his party rich dividends, with BJP winning absolute majority in Lok Sabha.
But the same strategy seems to have been rejected by the Bengali voters who seemed to have gone with ‘Bengali asmita’ raised by Mamata against Modi and BJP leaders projecting them as outsiders.
In his 20 election rallies that he addressed during West Bengal assembly polls, Modi never lost an opportunity to polarise the voters. He used words like “Begum” for Mamata, meaning that she was pro-Muslim and also questioned why was she allergic to Jai Shree Ram, trying to tell the voters that she was not a good Hindu. But all this did not cut ice with Bengali voters.
Modi also used a derisive comment like ‘Didi O Didi’ for Mamata in his election phrase. It was like a ‘street-side fellow’ making cat calls on women. Such behaviour coming from PM was not liked by the voters who chose to defeat Modi’s BJP.
WB elections is also a direct defeat of PM Modi because it was he who had converted WB polls as a fight between himself and Mamata. WB electorates have proved that Modi is not invincible as was being projected by Modi and his party leaders as Modi as well as his party leaders, including Union Home Minister Amit Shah, had sarcastically asked Mamata to pack up as she was losing and BJP was coming to power.
BJP’s tactics of dividing Muslim votes that have been voting for Mamata’s party also did not succeed as TMC candidates won with good margins from Muslim dominated constituencies.
Amit Shah considered to be electoral ‘chanakya’ or strategist of the BJP also failed in WB. Election Commission of India going for eight-phase polls in WB that was said to have been done to help the BJP, also did not work. The deployment of central paramilitary forces to guard the polling booths seemed to have angered the local Bengalis who felt that ECI under the influence of the Central Government and BJP was not trusting the West Bengal police. This further seemed to have strengthened the feeling of ‘Bengali asmita’ among voters.
In fact, it was perhaps the Bengali asmita that prevented the consolidation of Hindu voters in favour of the BJP. If Muslim voters further consolidated in favour of Mamata due to polarising slogans of BJP leaders, Hindu voters polarised in favour of Mamata owing to the latter’s Bengali asmita slogans and Modi’s derisive comments against her. Her projection as ‘Bengal ki beti’ by her election strategist Prashant Kishore further helped her in consolidation of support of all the communities of the state.
The results in West Bengal might have given BJP the biggest shock because the party had engineered defection in TMC and won over 50 influential leaders, including several ministers and also fielded them against Mamata in Nandigram and TMC candidates in several other constituencies. The results have shown that money power and polarisation tactics as electoral strategy will not work for ever. The days of tactics of polarising the voters seems to have ended with what WB elections have shown.
Moreover, the myth of Modi as a leader who can bring development was blasted with the Central government under him having failed in bringing any development in the country in the last seven years of his rule. He could not bring any new project or new scheme. What he has been doing is to rename the schemes and projects of the previous governments to hijack them as his own. This seems to have been understood by the people who rejected the BJP not only in West Bengal but also in Tamil Nadu and Kerala as well. BJP has to console itself with retaining power in Assam and winning Puducherry, that are not important in electoral politics of India.
People also witnessed the failure of the Central government under Modi to tackle the coronavirus pandemic that has so far claimed over 2 lakh lives in the country and over one crore people were tested Covid positive. Covid patients are dying of lack of oxygen not only in national capital of Delhi but also in Modi’s home state of Gujarat, with Modi government making appeal to foreign countries for oxygen and supply of equipment to fight Covid 19. This showed Modi had not planned to tackle the second wave of Covid and this was visible to voters and hence, it influenced their voting behaviour in the just concluded assembly polls in five states that went against Modi and BJP.
Unemployment and inflation rose highest during Modi’s rule thus further angering the people who refused to take Modi and his party leaders on their face value.
It is now for Modi and BJP to sit and deliberate to change their strategy from polarisation to development in real sense to win the elections in future.
