Mamata Banerjee and her followers are products of a certain kind of lumpen political culture. But so are Suvendu Adhikari, Sajal Ghosh, Arjun Singh, Jitendra Tiwari and many more on the other side. Their supporter bases are not fundamentally different either. TMC’s vote share has declined by around 7%, while the BJP’s has risen. The conclusion is fairly straightforward that a section of BJP-leaning TMC voters simply shifted their votes to the BJP's Ballot box /E.V.M.
But voters are rarely as ideologically neat and binary as political narratives often suggest. Politics cannot always be understood through simplistic categories like “either you are TMC or BJP,” or “if you oppose TMC you must automatically be a hardcore CPIM supporter.” Reality is much more layered than that. Among Hindu voters, there are BJP-leaning TMC supporters, BJP-leaning Congress supporters, and even — however strange it may sound — BJP-leaning CPM supporters. The unfolding events suggest that the BJP did not secure a particularly significant number of Muslim votes. (Consequently, I'm excluding the Muslim community from this discussion; otherwise, the situation there would be exactly the same—namely, voters supporting the same political party holding diverse political convictions.)
For years, these voters stayed within their traditional political homes. But under the influence of one or several catalytic factors, those votes gradually consolidated behind the BJP.
A major part of that shift stems from public anger against Mamata Banerjee’s government — authoritarian tendencies, corruption, institutional decay, nepotism, and the deep rot that many feel has spread across the administrative and political system. The rest comes from other factors: the rise of radical Islamist politics in Bangladesh, the BJP’s calculated attempts to fragment Muslim voting patterns, and a form of Islamophobia that is partly rooted in genuine anxieties and partly in exaggerated or irrational fears. Altogether, these forces pushed a significant portion of floating or latent BJP-minded voters toward the BJP ballot box.
And that, essentially, is the so called 'Parivartan'. The political class itself has not fundamentally transformed, nor have the blindly loyal 'Bhakts' who follow these leaders. The BJP — or more precisely the RSS/SANGH_PARIVAAR at least possesses a coherent ideological framework, whether one agrees with it or not. That ideology contains both rigidity and discipline. But the real challenge for them will be whether such an ideological structure can actually control and absorb the chaotic mass of opportunistic supporters now pouring into the party — people arriving from every direction, much like debris carried in by floodwaters.
People, in many ways, have turned toward the BJP out of desperation rather than devotion. The sentiment is less “the BJP is ideal” and more “anyone is preferable if it means the end of Mamata’s "oppression”. The CPIM and Congress have, for all practical purposes, become politically irrelevant in Bengal over the last several years. As a result, the BJP emerged as the only viable alternative available to large sections of the electorate.
That said, the BJP’s record across the many states it governs does not leave much room for blind optimism either. TMC’s intemperance have largely been confined to merely West Bengal, whereas the BJP has exercised power across nearly twenty plus states. Looking at some of their governance patterns elsewhere, it is difficult to feel entirely reassured. Even so, I still think there is a reasonable possibility that they may govern better than the present dispensation in Bengal.
My own assessment is that, despite engaging in unnecessary cultural theatrics and majoritarian symbolism —likewise saffronising public spaces, moral policing around women’s clothing, behaviour, or making exclusionary religious gestures such as restricting temple entry to non Hindu first (then to non Brahmin) — they may still deliver comparatively better outcomes in socio-economic governance.
However, for any of that to succeed, they will first need to keep leaders like Suvendu adhikari in check. At his moment, he is undoubtedly an asset to the party. But figures like him can very quickly turn into liabilities. Though experienced enough as a political figure but a power-corrupt like him is not someone who inspires long-term trust or control over his greed.
#Piyushkanti Bandyopadhyay
#Author, #Analyst, #Poet.
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