Amit Shah’s Bengal Trip – Going for the Jugular

Shah’s visit to WB was not only a strategic move for 2019 general elections but a stepping stone for BJP in 2020.

Shah’s visit to WB was not only a strategic move for 2019 general elections but a stepping stone for the BJP in 2020.

(Photo: The Quint)

Amit Shah went into the lioness’ den on Saturday, 11 August, vowing to rid West Bengal of Mamata Bannerjee with his “Mission Bengal”. It was a call for a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) style ‘pariborton’, the slogan Mamata had coined in 2012 to rid the state of 34 years of Left rule.

The choice of his words left no one in doubt that West Bengal is now going to be atop Amit Shah's priorities. “Mamata kaan khol kar sun lo, main Bangal ke har district maen jaunga...ukhaarh dene ke liye.” (Mamata, listen to me carefully, I will go to every district in Bengal to uproot you.)

Clearly, West Bengal has acquired a high priority for Amit Shah because as a large state in eastern India, it provides an opportunity to garner seats to offset its losses in north India.

BJP’s Foundation Can be Traced to West Bengal

Shah gave an emotional spin to the BJP’s call saying that West Bengal happens to be the state of Syama Prasad Mookerjee, the founder of the Bharatiya Jan Sangh, the earlier avatar of the BJP.

The party could be in power in 19 states but that would not matter till it had captured power in West Bengal. He was responding to Trinamool Congress leaders, who had thrown a challenge at him, that the BJP may come to power in other states but never in West Bengal.

The importance of West Bengal for BJP cannot be emphasised enough. For the Modi- Shah team know, that the party is not picking up in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Karnataka is uncertain, unless the JD(S)-Congress government collapses before the Lok Sabha polls, and the BJP brass will do its utmost to facilitate this.

The BJP is also not a player in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. So the South is virtually out, as far as an accretion of seats is concerned.

Having peaked in the North in 2014, and with the Opposition parties now showing signs of making a common cause in UP, Bihar, Jharkhand and the BJP facing anti-incumbency in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, the party is bound to suffer losses in these states.

The only area which can compensate for the losses is eastern India. Amit Shah can be expected to up the ante not just in West Bengal but also in Odisha, Bihar and the Northeast in the coming weeks.

Victory in 2019 Stepping Stone for BJP in 2022

In taking on Banerjee frontally, Shah also chose to take on the BJP’s most strident critic, who is also seen as a possible prime ministerial candidate of the Opposition. And did so on her own home ground, and in the heart of Kolkata.

It is interesting that the BJP chief is now coming across not just as a planner but also as a player, and the party’s face as much as the prime minister. Shah was positioning his party not just for the 2019 battle, setting a target of winning 22 out of 42 Lok Sabha seats, but also for 2022, calling for removing Banerjee from power.

In so doing, he is trying to occupy the space of the main opposition.

Shah flayed the CM for various scams, Narada, Saradha, and targeted her nephew who is being groomed as her successor. The lines of the attack became clear on 11 August, which included the creation of a Hindu-Muslim polarisation, using – and not unexpectedly – the Assam National Register of Citizens (NRC) as one of the weapons. The timing of its publication has come in handy.

The BJP is openly making a distinction between Hindu Bengalis, who the party sees as “refugees” (and as Shah pointed out, a bill is on the anvil which will enable the Hindu “refugees” to acquire Indian citizenship), and Muslim immigrants who came from Bangladesh over the decades and must be deported – thereby appealing to the underlying tensions that have existed but which were kept in check during the Left rule.

The BJP may also want to deepen, and gain from, a Bengali versus non-Bengali divide. The RSS has been working for decades in the tribal areas of the state.

Tribals do not share the Bengali culture in quite the same way – and there were many from the Jangalmahal area at Amit Shah’s Kolkata meeting. Banerjee is not unaware of the threat this may pose in the future. She had visited some of these parts 48 hours before Shah landed in the state, and is billed to visit them again after his rally, to convince the tribals not to be taken in by the BJP.

NRC in West Bengal: Key Issue for BJP

While Shah is focusing on illegal immigrants (foreigners) and BJP leaders have been talking about an Assam type NRC in West Bengal if they come to power, Banerjee has made it an issue of Bengali nationalism. It is not for nothing that she has talked of renaming the state as “Bangla”. She has repeatedly charged BJP of being anti-Bengali.

She lost no time in criticising the NRC in making it an Assam versus Bengal issue, hoping to consolidate Bengalis behind her.

The subtext of her attack was that the BJP government wanted to send the Bengalis – both Hindus and Muslims packing.

Mamata Banerjee may be losing ground (on issues such as the creation of jobs) but so far, she has been winning elections and is keeping a tight grip over the state apparatus.

Can an Alliance Between Congress and TMC be Termed a Solution?

A moot question is how the Bengali intelligentsia will respond to the “newbie BJP”–which represents a north Indian, Hindi and in many ways what is viewed as a ‘brash’ culture? It is the intelligentsia which has in the past been instrumental in turning public opinion against the incumbent government, be it against the Congress in 1977 or the Left, thirty-plus years later.

West Bengal after all has enjoyed a syncretic culture, with Muslims participating in Durga Puja and even heading Puja committees. The largest concentration of Muslims (around 30 percent) happens to be in West Bengal.

Will Amit Shah’s foray into West Bengal compel Mamata Banerjee to look at an alliance with the Congress? Both the Congress and the Left parties are clearly on the wane, unable to sell any new idea to the people. An alliance may be beneficial but would be viewed as a weakening of Banerjee’s position. It is also not easy, given the antipathy that the state leadership of the Congress has displayed towards “Didi.”

The Bengali papers had reported a brush between the CM and Rahul Gandhi when she had called on Sonia Gandhi at 10 Janpath on her recent visit to Delhi. Rahul had protested against the way she had been poaching Congress leaders in the state.

For Amit Shah, “abhi tho party shuru hui hai.” He has sounded the bugle in Kolkata but its ripple effect will be felt beyond the shores of West Bengal.

(Neerja Chowdhury is a senior journalist. She tweets @neerjachowdhury. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)