Lok Sabha Elections 2024: Livelihood becomes top priority in this tourist spot of religious co-existence in Bengal

Murshidabad: “This is Katara Masjid,” Monirul Sheikh brings his e-rickshaw to a halt and tells the group of tourists he picked up from the station about the 18th-century mosque, which is a must-see in Murshidabad. “You can get in through that gate. I will be waiting here for you to come out. Please don’t forget to see the Shiva Mandir inside.”

Yes, the Katara Masjid, not only has under its stairs the tomb of the first Nawab of Bangla-Bihar-Odisha, Murshid Quli Khan, who, himself, got it built between 1723 and 1724, but also has an ancient temple of Lord Shiva adjacent to it. “A temple near a mosque!” one of the tourists appears surprised. “You will find several such instances in and around Murshidabad,” says Monirul’s friend, Subhajit Roy, who also runs an e-rickshaw and occasionally doubles up as a guide to earn some extra bucks.

Murshidabad – once the headquarters of the Nawabs of Bangla-Bihar-Odisha – will go to polls on Tuesday, along with three more Lok Sabha constituencies in West Bengal. The voting in the neighbouring Baharampur LS constituency is scheduled to take place on May 13.

The two constituencies will decide the success or failure of the electoral understanding between the Congress and the CPI(M) in West Bengal. While the West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee president Adhir Choudhury is contesting from his pocket borough Baharampur, the CPI(M) has fielded its state secretary Mohammed Salim as its candidate in Murshidabad against the Trinamool Congress’s Abu Taher Khan, who had won in 2019 with a margin of 227,417 votes against Abu Hena of the Congress. The BJP’s Humayun Kabir had come third with 247,809 votes, followed by the CPI (M)’s Badaruddoza Khan with 180,793 votes.

Murshidabad had been a flourishing regional hub for trade and commerce in the 18th century. Its decline had started after Siraj ud-Daulah, the last independent Nawab of Bengal, Bihar, and Odisha, had lost the Battle of Plassey to the East India Company’s forces led by Robert Clive on June 23, 1757. “The livelihood of most of the people in the city of Murshidabad now depends only on tourists,” says Syed Gowhar Alam Mirza, who runs a small shop near Hazarduari Palace (the palace with a thousand doors) that was built during the reign of Nawab Nazim Humayun Ja between 1824 and 1838. “The farmers, particularly the jute farmers, are also hit hard by lack of irrigation facilities in the rural areas.”

Monirul and Subhajit, both in their mid-20s, had spent several months in the past couple of years in Delhi and Chennai, working as construction workers, just as many in Murshidabad do to eke out a living for their families.

“Salim is pulling crowd everywhere he goes. He is talking about creating local jobs,” says Monirul. “The TMC candidate was hardly seen in Murshidabad in the past five years after he had won in 2019,” adds Subhajit. They, however, also note that most of the e-rickshaw unions in Murshidabad were under the control of the TMC, including the ones are affiliated with, and the seniors asked them to vote for Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s party, which was relying on her government’s welfare schemes for the people.

The Bharatiya Janata Party has fielded local legislator, Gouri Shankar Ghosh, in the Murshidabad LS constituency, where the people of the minority community account for over 60 per cent of the electorate. The recent clash during the Ram Navami celebration at Saktipur in the neighbouring Baharampur Lok Sabha constituency was highlighted by the BJP in Murshidabad too, but it apparently failed to create much impact on the ground.