Occupation of the middle ground – the regional alternative

A Mamata Banerjee-led regional alternative would rob BJP of its easy target, namely the Congress and its naturally ageing legacy, as the source of all the ills facing the nation and its Hindu majority

The year 2021 will be remembered in Indian politics as the moment when the Bharatiya Janata Party's confidence in its organisation and limitless resources to steer the course of elections was shaken. In West Bengal, the combined might of the enormously popular Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his, till then unchallenged, mastermind Amit Shah was defeated by a puny regional party and its formidable woman leader, Mamata Banerjee.

The defeat sent shockwaves through the Indian political establishment and the BJP. There were consequences and changes because the BJP felt there were lessons it needed to learn from the loss it experienced. One lesson was clear that hard religious Right politics needed to be moderated by broader, more inclusive rhetoric that foregrounded development and hope and relegated divisive communalism to the background.

If the BJP learnt a lesson, so did Mamata Banerjee and the anti-BJP opposition forces and regional parties. The Congress, immersed in its unending procrastination over its leadership problems, could not calibrate its response to see that the political ground that had seemed to be baked hard with the heat and fervour of the BJP's Hindutva agenda had begun to loosen up.

Mamata Banerjee certainly saw that a fresh opportunity for occupying the middle ground, or the politically and ideologically centre that was neither hard Right nor extreme Left, had emerged after May and the BJP's defeat in West Bengal. She used the Bhabanipur campaign and the huge national media attention it received to broadcast her political message packaged as a pledge that she would work to defeat the BJP and its machinations of transforming "Hindustan" into a Pakistan and stop the takeover of secular, inclusive democratic India by a hard religious right, Hindutva version of the Taliban.

It was a gambit to position herself as the Centre and an alternative to the communally divisive, exclusionary identity Hindutva politics of the BJP on the one hand and as a champion of the middle ground, that is, neither Right nor Left.

Without losing time, in the middle of the by-election campaign, Mamata Banerjee launched her party in Tripura and Goa by acquiring political assets and that too, mostly from the Congress. Her party is in parleys in Meghalaya to win over former Congress chief minister Mukul Sangma and several MLAs. And she has acquired Sushmita Dev, who headed the Mahila Congress and has her base in Assam's Barak Valley.

Having won the Bhabanipur by-election with a huge 72 per cent vote share, Mamata Banerjee is now armed with a new mandate as the champion of the median masses, of voters who have disowned the Left and consider the Congress too feeble and voters who probably voted the BJP in May but now chose the Trinamool Congress. The confirmation of her position as West Bengal chief minister by erasing the slur of being a loser from Nandigram frees her up to take the fight where she believes there is an opportunity and a need.

For the leader of a regional party, actually a party in a single state as of now, the plan to go national appears to be ridiculously impractical and impossibly farfetched. More so, because in true Didi style, Mamata Banerjee seems to have embarked on the "BJP hatao" mission without first forming an alliance or a coalition or even partnerships in her target states.

That time is of the essence is something that Mamata Banerjee has said over and over again in recent months. She has warned that an immensely resourceful and determined BJP is already embarked on rolling out its strategy for the 2024 general elections making it all the more urgent for the anti-BJP opposition to launch itself as the alternative, without engaging in a series of formal negotiations on patching together a coalition-alliance-partnership.

Targeting Congress assets in states where that party is perceived to be withering away is a risky but smart move. The Trinamool Congress is using the same tactics as the BJP did in Goa. The BJP picked up 12 MLAs of the 17 MLAs elected on the Congress tickets in 2017, acquiring two legislators in 2017 and 10 MLAs in 2019. It was entirely likely that the five remaining Congress MLAs would be wooed before 2022. By stepping in, the Trinamool Congress seems to have set up an alternative destination for nervous, disgruntled or dissatisfied politicians to the BJP in Goa.

That certainly sets Mamata Banerjee on course for a direct fight with the BJP, if not for the capture of the state assembly, then for the acquisition of leaders who could be groomed for the bigger fight in 2024, when the Narendra Modi-led BJP will face its biggest challenge of defending its regime after ten years in power and the inescapable build up negative political capital that comes with it. The Trinamool Congress will certainly project itself as a party that aims to defeat the BJP in Goa in 2022. It could pull off what would be an unbelievable feat if it emerged as a challenger, replacing the Congress as the alternative to the BJP in the four months left before Goa votes in February next year.

Regardless of the 2022 outcome in Goa, the Trinamool Congress will have dug itself into a state where the Congress has all but vaporised, leaving the rank and file of party workers and the die-hard Congress voters in the lurch. As a message that is easy to read, the opening up a battlefront on the other side of the peninsula in Goa against the BJP positions Mamata Banerjee as a challenger to the hegemonic ambitions of the Sangh Parivar and its goal of establishing a Hindutva state.

By acquiring political assets from the Congress, as she seems to be doing in Goa, in Assam and Tripura and probably in Meghalaya, Mamata Banerjee is avoiding the risk of being perceived as a threat by other regional parties, who have established themselves in their specific geographies as the opposition to the BJP. As and when Mamata Banerjee ventures into Uttar Pradesh which she has promised to do soon, the Congress is an easy target for poaching political assets.

Would her poaching make her an enemy of that party? To some in the Congress, it would, and to others, it would not. As a member of the larger Congress clan, the Trinamool Congress is packed with old Congress leaders who have links to Congress leaders in other states. Offering a shelter or an "umbrella," a description frequently used by Mamata Banerjee to explain the political exercise of bringing together anti-BJP and even anti-Congress regional parties and opposition forces, would be one way of salvaging the political centre, once dominated by the Congress.

It could point in the direction of changing political landscape where the fight to defend the secular, inclusive democratic idea of India is not centred around the Congress. It would rob the BJP of its easy target, namely the Congress and its naturally ageing legacy, as the source of all the ills facing the nation and its Hindu majority. It would push the BJP to undertake the enormously complicated task of rewriting its playbook that divided the political space into an "us" versus the Congress.

The BJP is not comfortable handling coalitions because it requires making compromises that push it ideologically away from the Right and force it closer to the middle ground. As a monolithic organisation, the BJP's ideological uneasiness with multiple political foes saying the same thing in slightly different ways is understandable. It has, however, benefited enormously from an opposition that is split and as much in competition with each other as it is engaged in fighting the BJP. If this opposition gets round to adjusting its differences and consolidating its votes, a formula that Mamata Banerjee has repeatedly tried to sell, the BJP would be seriously disadvantaged.

A splintered middle ground makes it easy for the BJP's right-wing support base, which is just over one-third of voters, to give it the numerical edge it needs to win elections. A middle ground that consolidates itself is a problem. It makes Mamata Banerjee the champion of the splintered anti-BJP and anti-Congress opposition a challenger and the face of the next big fight in 2024.

(The writer is a journalist based in Kolkata)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the authors' own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.