Successive riots put Bengal’s social fabric under severe strain

Unlike the Hindi heartland where Hindutva lynch mobs are often on rampage against Muslims and secular-liberals of all hues, the Modi-fied BJP is playing the Hindu victim card in Bengal under the rule of its friend-turned-foe Mamata Banerjee. It is paying electoral dividend to the saffron camp as BJP’s vote share shot up to 17 per cent in 2014. It has helped it to bag three Assembly seats in 2016 despite a dip in vote share. The party’s emergence as runner up to ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) in subsequent polls, mostly at the cost of the Left and the Congress, has also underlined the gains it has made among the majority community after a series of incidents of communal violence were reported across the state since early 2016. The Sangh Parivar’s current opposition to the state’s ban on immersion of Durga idols from the night of Vijaya Dashami or Dussera on September 30 to Ekadashi next day, that coincides with Muharram, is a pointer to its game plan of consolidation of Hindu votes.

On the other hand, Mamata’s Trinamul Congress is also confident about harvesting almost total support of Muslims who comprise 30 per cent of the state’s population as she has refused to budge in the wake of BJP’s complaints of Muslim appeasement. Key to at least 60 Assembly seats, consolidation of minority support is crucial for her in a likely scenario of a three-cornered fight against BJP and the Left with the Congress being a fence-sitter between her and the Left unless a Bihar-style grand alliance emerges in 2019. Out of these 60 seats, Trinamul bagged 32 while 18 went to Congress and rest to the Left Front in 2016.

The TMC‘s 45 per cent vote share, a substantial hike from its 39 per cent share in 2011 and 2014 came from its widened support base among rural and urban poor as well as the army of unemployed youth through a plethora of populist projects that included pumping money into neighnourhood club coffers. Further, Mamata’s persistent poaching of the Left and Congress legislative teams by dangling both the carrot and the stick has added to her 2016 kitty of 211 in a house of 294. But it has only weakened the moral and political ground for secular opposition against the BJP onslaught which is more aggressive after winning UP and Bihar as well as Assam. BJP’s surge in Bengal has changed the political and social equations in Bengal that made Mamata more dependent on Muslim votes. The results of the forthcoming panchayat polls will shape up strategies before 2019 parliamentary polls.

The dynamics of communal polarisation

In the meantime, Bengal’s social fabric, which has survived the Partition horrors and post-Independence political violence, is under severe strain. Successive incidents of communal violence has led to communal polarisation. From Kaliachak in North Bengal’s Malda that erupted over the Hindu Right’s insult of Islam in January 2016, to Hajinagar and Chandannagore violence in North 24 Parganas and Hoogly respectively in last October following spats over Puja-Muharram processions, from Dhulagarh in Howrah to the weeklong flare-up in North 24 Parganas’ Baduria and Basirhat in July over a profane facebook post as well as the latest clash in Nadia’s Nakasipara-Palashipara on September 15 over defiling of temples and damage to a mosque - the dynamics of competitive communalism reveals a method in the madness.

The pattern follows highly visible provocations from online and offline Hindutva hawks and frothy reactions from Muslim zealots of Jamaat and non-Jamaat varieties who are inciting violent protests with the comforting knowledge of administrative and political leniency from the ruling dispensation. Both sides are using the Facebook generation as the foot soldiers of their hate campaigns and as perpetrators of mutual violence while mobilising larger community support to ‘defend’ their respective faith and the faithful. Consequent death of innocents, luckily only one so far, and destruction of property reinforces the besieged mentality, victimhood and legitimises preparations for the next round of showdown.