Make no mistake, BJP is busy re-imagining its idea of India tomorrow

Following its comprehensive defeat in West Bengal elections, the RSS-BJP establishment is out to subvert and, if possible, overturn the spirit of the West Bengal mandate. Apart from raising a clamour for imposition of President’s Rule and waging a constant war on the state government, the RSS-BJP propaganda machine has also mooted the idea of trifurcation of West Bengal. John Barla, BJP MP from Alipurduar, has demanded separation of North Bengal or Uttar Banga, while Saumitra Khan, BJP MP from Bishnupur (Bankura), has started talking about carving out a separate province of Rarh Banga or Paschimanchal. The state president of BJP has however downplayed these demands as individual opinion and local aspirations. If the BJP were really serious about these demands, it would have included them in the party’s election manifesto. It would have sought votes from people to carry out the trifurcation plan. Since that was clearly not the case, we can view this game plan as a post-poll afterthought.

The BJP virtually swept the polls in the four northernmost districts of West Bengal – Darjeeling, Coochbehar, Alipurduar and Jalpaiguri. It has also secured the majority of the seats in Purulia and Bankura districts. There is obviously disappointment in the party for having failed to realise its overhyped claim of conquering West Bengal. The trifurcation game plan is therefore a desperate response to this situation, and an obvious attempt to consolidate the party’s gains in the said districts.

The West Bengal game plan of the BJP, even though not being formally owned by the party at this moment, may well be part of the BJP’s larger game plan for holding on to power and reshaping India according to its own blinkered vision and narrow political interests.

The party’s expansion bid has come up against powerful resistance, especially in regions outside of the party’s well-established strongholds in northern and western India. The party has a clear interest in redrawing the boundaries of these regions and unsettling the political patterns and socio-cultural environment to disrupt the growing political opposition in the country. Small states dominated by the Centre and monitored by partisan Governors, and preferably also driven locally by ‘double engine’ governments led or controlled by the Sangh-BJP establishment, are very much the BJP scheme for tomorrow’s India.

We have already seen glimpses of this design at work. The surgical strike on the constitutional status and statehood of Jammu and Kashmir soon after the beginning of Modi’s second term marked only a stunning step towards implementation of the BJP-RSS agenda of transforming secular democratic India into a fascist Hindu Rashtra. The reduction of the state of J&K into two union territories, the robbing of the powers of the elected Delhi government, the installation of a pro-BJP regime in Puducherry and the ongoing machinations in Lakshadweep should all be seen as parts of the same design. We should also note that the clamour for post-poll trifurcation of West Bengal coincides with a growing pre-poll buzz for trifurcation of Uttar Pradesh or a possible division of Maharashtra.

The demands and aspirations the BJP is playing with, have their own dynamics though. Uttar Pradesh has long seen brewing demands for a separate state of Bundelkhand or a separate Purvanchal or even a separate Harit Pradesh for the western region. The demand for a separate Gorkhaland state dates back to our days of freedom movement, and unlike many other regions aspiring for statehood, Gorkhaland has a linguistic rationale, at par with many other linguistic provinces of India. The whole of North Bengal suffers from regional disparity, there have been demands for Kamtapur and Greater Coochbehar. Adivasiinhabited regions of Purulia, Bankura, Birbhum, Medinipur have their own concerns about economic deprivation and socio-cultural marginalisation of the local population, both Adivasi and non-Adivasi.

India, however, must find a holistic way of dealing with the question of reducing regional disparities and protecting and promoting India’s cultural diversity. There has been a long-standing demand for setting up a second States Reorganisation Commission to address the pending questions of regional autonomy and formation of new states. There is also the all-important question of saving and strengthening the federal framework of India’s national unity and parliamentary democracy.

Just like dividing the people on communal lines, the BJP is also interested in pitting regional identities against each other, and manipulating the permanently troubled waters through strong central intervention and autocratic governance. Diversity and secularism are integral parts of India’s national unity and democracy, assault on one will weaken the other, and weakening of any part will weaken the whole.

In its attempt to secure its rule and insulate it from dissent and resistance, the Modi government is systematically changing policies, rules and the entire paradigm of governance. Indiscriminate privatisation is aimed at weakening the backbone of India’s organised trade union resistance - from privatisation of banks, mines and railways to the recent reorganisation of the Ordnance Factory Board, there is a relentless attempt to weaken and crush the organised opposition to corporate aggression and neo-liberal economic reforms. The new farm laws are designed to erode the economic strength and status of India’s farmers. The new education policy and attacks on universities are aimed at disrupting the student movement, the use of UAPA to keep protesters indefinitely in jails is meant to curb and silence dissent.

Unnerved by the spectacular defeat of its West Bengal mission, the BJP is toying with ominous ideas to draw up its game plan for the crucial 2022 UP elections and the big battle of 2024. Some ideas are being mooted to test the water while some are being tossed around to distract public attention from the total failure of the regime exposed by the second wave of the Covid pandemic.

The opposition must foil this design by putting up a timely and concerted resistance. Whether it is the game plan to destabilise West Bengal or rein in the farmers’ movement or subvert the Constitution and the tenets of federal framework and parliamentary democracy, the Modi government must not be allowed to play the dirty tricks of its divide-and-rule game. Instead, we must hold the Modi government accountable for its monumental failure and betrayal and uphold the spirit of the Bengal verdict.

(The writer is General Secretary, CPI-ML. Views are personal)