As feared, West Bengal politics has descended into mayhem after the BJP wrested power from the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in the Assembly election earlier this week. Supporters of both parties have been indulging in arson, murder and vandalism in several districts, including Kolkata, Howrah, Asansol, Birbhum, Sandeshkhali and Murshidabad. Four deaths have been confirmed by the police. The victims include potential new chief minister Suvendu Adhikari’s personal assistant, who was shot dead at his doorstep in Madhyamgram, a BJP worker in New Town and a TMC poll agent in Beliaghata.
The situation could not be more worrying for citizens who wish for nothing more than a return to everyday concerns after a bitter election campaign. To them, this convulsion is a sign of things to come. Daggers drawn are workers of two parties with a tendency towards violence, one operating under the guise of ideology and the other bitter about having to let go of an extortion system that kept them in clover for 15 years. For BJP supporters, this victory provides cover for vengeance, an opportunity to pay back for the brutality they were subjected to since their party began to challenge for power in 2016. For TMC workers, the election defeat means an immediate loss of livelihood from the brokerage regime they lorded over, dictating rents and local deals and meddling in civic disputes.
The worry is that this will lead to wider interfaith conflict in a state with a 27% minority presence and a new ruling party whose founding principle is majoritarianism. Major political shifts have historically segued into communal conflict in Bengal, going back to the Hindu-Muslim riots when the province was partitioned by the British in 1906 and then again in the lead-up to another partition in 1947. In more recent times, whenever an entrenched party was dislodged from power in the state, as when the Left Front was ousted by TMC in 2011, political violence erupted and soon turned communal.
While reports indicate that both contending parties are responsible for the present violence, the BJP leadership and the Election Commission of India must take the lion’s share of the blame, one for triggering the conflict and the other for presiding over a vicious election campaign and then allowing things to slide despite having control of the state’s law and order machinery and some 2.5 lakh security personnel deployed for the election.
It was clear even as the election results started coming in that BJP workers were itching for a fight. They organised victory processions that took deliberate detours to pass by TMC offices and residences, including that of Mamata Banerjee. Police stood by and watched as Trinamool offices were razed in Kolkata, Jamuria and Siliguri. In an unmistakable signal of intent, BJP supporters marched with bulldozers through Muslim localities, a tactic copied from the genocidal playbook of Israel and invoked upon poor people in Madhya Pradesh and UP.
To the minorities in Bengal, this is a threat display, meant to add insult to injury after no less than 27 lakh names, mainly Muslim, were disenfranchised in the recent election. And to the average citizen, it is a crushing disappointment that the new party in power intends to govern, but not quite as much as it wants to execute its Hindutva project.