Vidyasagar's broken statue symbolises Bengal politics

Will Vidyasagar, the Bengali Renaissance icon, or his broken bust, be able to return sanity to Bengal? This question hangs in West Bengal’s hyper-politicised air as rivalry between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Trinamool Congress (TMC) peaked before polling in the last round of nine seats due on May 19. The street violence and vandalism seen in Kolkata after BJP chief Amit Shah’s road show, that featured the Vidyasagar statue incident, are indicators of just what is at stake for Mamata Banerjee and the Modi-led BJP.

Before we come to that, first let us acknowledge the wave of disbelief and sadness the incident has generated. A BJP supporting fish-seller in one of the markets of Salt Lake, a comparatively posh area of Kolkata, spoke for many the morning after the vandalism: “I don't know who did it. Maybe BJP. Maybe Trinamool Congress. Surely TMC people were trying to instigate the BJP men during Amit Shah’s road show. They pelted stones at the people on the road. That is not done. But BJP activists should have ignored it. This culture of political violence is going on for too long. Now let’s see whether the broken bust of the great reformer can bring back some sanity.”

But sanity is the one thing that seems to be missing from the BJP versus TMC debate. As mentioned by the fish-seller, political violence is not exactly new to Bengal and the two parties are only re-playing old tricks. The practice of violence (including booth capturing) was imported to the State from neighbouring Bihar and UP in the early 1970s by the Congress. The Left converted it to an art of silent terror. People were threatened with dire consequences if they voted against the Left in certain pockets, and it worked.

To intimidate the posh localities of Kolkata, according to Lalu Alam (infamous for attacking and seriously injuring Mamata Banerjee with a stick in 1990), some bombs were to be hurled early in morning on polling day. It ensured a low turnout of anti-Left voters. After the Left got voted out, TMC accepted in its fold a large section of the perpetrators of such violence. And now the BJP, the rising force in Bengal, is following the same path.

Let’s look at what happened on May 14 when the vandalism took place. Mamata Banerjee’s forces were desperate to mar the publicity of Amit Shah’s road show – a massive affair, the likes of which Kolkata has never seen. TMC workers provoked the BJP cadres, who had come ready to face any such action. Unsurprisingly, the ploy succeeded.

Mamata Banerjee quickly tried to consolidate her votes by making the vandalism at 147-year-old Vidyasagar College a big issue. The BJP retaliated from Delhi the next morning, accusing the TMC of doing the mischief to gain sympathy. The debate raged fiercely from morning to evening. The result: An ugly picture of Calcutta, a picture of lawlessness, was broadcast to the entire nation. The matter went to the EC and it cracked the whip. For the first time in free India, the mandatory silence period was extended from 48 hours (prior to the conclusion of the polling time) to 68 hours to ensure ‘safety and security’ of the electorate in the nine constituencies going to polls. That order led to the next round in the political blame game, with Mamata Banerjee alleging that the EC was compromised and Prime Minister Narendra Modi declaring that he would get a "grand statue" of Vidyasagar installed in the same place.

The net result is still that Bengal stands out as the only state in India where the unpalatable culture of violence still dominates politics and polling. All the parties are to be blamed for this. Unfortunately, everyone tried to reap benefit from the ugly incident inside a college. The Left marched through the streets in protest. Mamata and other TMC leaders tried to portray the whole thing as the ‘Bengalis versus Outsiders’ question. The PM, who addressed 17 rallies in Bengal this season, claimed that Didi has fulfilled her promise of ‘revenge’ by attacking Shah's road show. Elsewhere, at Barasat, Yogi Aditynath said, “Hindus do not demolish any murti (idol or statue). It is the followers of Mamata-didi who do it.”

Which brings us to the prize that the BJP is eyeing and why it has made Mamata Banerjee so defensive. At the heart of it is the surge in BJP’s popularity, which is widely expected to get about 30 per cent votes this time (the party had 16% vote share and two seats in 2014). Moreover, with one out every four residents of Bengal being a Muslim, among whom the TMC has a strong base, the party has seen the prospects for a majoritarian push. The National Register of Citizens and offer of citizenship to Bangladeshi Hindus has helped the BJP gain support among a section of the voters. The party also has the backing of a sizeable section of the urban population consisting of Marwaris, Bhojpuris and Maithilis. The TMC, which has tried to dominate Bengal politics after decimating the Left by practising a brand of pro-minority politics, is now faced with an unapologetic, raging challenge from the BJP. All of this has lead to a spillover of political friction into the state’s social fabric, something that the Left, whatever its shortcomings, had avoided in a planned way for its entire 34-year-long rule.

The nine constituencies going to polls on Sunday were all won by Bengal’s ruling party last time. Now it is to be seen whether EC can really arrange for peaceful polling on Sunday. But even that may be no guarantee of return to sanity in a state where political lines have clearly been re-drawn during the course of this election.

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(Diptendra Raychaudhuri is a Kolkata-based journalist and author of books including, A Naxal Story. He is a deputy editor at the Bengali daily, Aajkal)