Shah’s CAA dilemma, Ram vs Durga, Dinesh Trivedi — Every day has a new twist in Bengal

The BJP has gone all out for Hindu consolidation in West Bengal, but if it wins, Matuas will expect it to expedite the CAA’s implementation.

Illustration by Ramandeep Kaur | ThePrint

West Bengal is witnessing the best of politics this poll season—or the worst, depending on your vantage point. You don’t have to be a fan of Union home minister Amit Shah or of Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee—or, for that matter, of Prashant Kishor, Shah’s ex-comrade-in-arms and the Trinamool leader’s poll adviser now. If one has made his name as a master political strategist, the other is a redoubtable street fighter. They may look like bare-knuckle fighters, trying to knock each other down in a no-holds-barred contest. But underlying the public display of muscle and lung power are sharp mind games based on cold calculation and strategy.

So, just enjoy their moves as a chess enthusiast would when Viswanathan Anand and Magnus Carlsen are at it. In Shah-Banerjee tussle, there are new moves every day as the election nears. Each of their moves looks pregnant with possibilities. A look at their moves last week tells as much a story of their strengths as of their vulnerabilities.

BJP putting CAA on back burner?

Last week, Amit Shah said in West Bengal that the granting of citizenship under the Citizenship (Amendment) Act or CAA would begin “as soon as the Covid vaccination process is over.”

He was addressing a rally at Thakurnagar, the bastion of the Matua community, namasudra Hindu refugees who are estimated to constitute nearly 20 per cent of the state’s population.

Matuas must be scratching their heads. Nobody knows when the inoculation programme will be complete. Last heard, Union health minister Harsh Vardhan had said that around 25-30 crore people would be vaccinated by July-August 2021. The Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) government is yet to decide how many Indians would be vaccinated, let alone the deadline for the completion of this exercise.

A day before Shah’s statement in Thakurnagar, his point person in Kolkata, Kailash Vijayvargiya, BJP general secretary in-charge of the state, had given a different timeframe to ThePrint. He said that the CAA ‘opponents’ had filed “168 cases” in the Supreme Court and it might take “at least two to three months” for the court to hear the petitions. “Once the cases are cleared, the government will frame rules, there is no going back on CAA,” Vijayvargiya said.

Two to three months! These cases have come up just thrice in the Supreme Court in the past year.

Earlier this month, Shah-led home ministry had informed the Lok Sabha that it had been given time till July 2021 to frame and notify rules to implement the CAA.

So, which deadline should we believe in—Shah’s, Vijayvargiya’s, or the home ministry’s?

As for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he preferred silence on the CAA when he addressed people in poll-bound Assam where indigenous communities are against this legislation.

For sure, the CAA is not the only legislation whose operationalisation has been pending for 14 months or more. Remember the Benami Act, 1988? It took 28 years after its passage by Parliament to become operational in the absence of prescribed rules. The BJP wouldn’t give up on the CAA because it feeds into its political narrative. But, the fact is, the CAA is West Bengal-centric as far as the BJP’s politics goes. Anti-CAA protests, including at Shaheen Bagh in the national capital, didn’t pay the BJP any electoral dividends in the Delhi assembly election. Nor did they have any resonance in the Bihar assembly election.

Assam BJP leader Himanta Biswa Sarma recently suggested that “Miya Muslims” not vote for the party. He and his party colleagues may want to polarise voters along communal lines by targeting illegal Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh, but that doesn’t address the apprehensions of the indigenous Assamese who don’t want any “outsiders”—Hindu or Muslim.

So, what will the BJP-led government at the Centre do after the West Bengal polls? The party is split between Assam and Bengal over the CAA, but the election outcome is unlikely to resolve this conflict. What if the BJP manages to form the government in both states? What will be its stance on CAA then, give its dilemma now?

Unless it loses in Assam—which looks highly unlikely—the BJP’s priority would be to address the concerns of indigenous communities about illegal immigrants. Meanwhile, it may go easy on the CAA’s implementation if it loses in West Bengal. But if the BJP wins in West Bengal, too, which can’t be ruled out, it would be under pressure from Matuas to expedite the CAA’s implementation. It would also be expected to come good on its rhetoric against illegal Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh.

So, what will the BJP do about the CAA implementation if it wins both Assam and West Bengal?  If it wins in both the eastern states, CAA will be a good problem to have from the BJP’s perspective.

Justice to killed BJP workers

Political violence in West Bengal is no news. Therefore, few noticed when the Left kept crying about the killing of its activists, allegedly by Mamata Banerjee’s party workers, around the 2016 assembly election. But, trust the BJP to do what the Left couldn’t. The BJP has made the killing of its “130 workers” in West Bengal an electoral issue. It serves the party two ways—to boost party workers’ morale and to highlight the culture of violence promoted by the ruling party, the Trinamool Congress (TMC).

On Friday, Amit Shah warned Mamata Banerjee in a TV interview, saying, “Aise aapke goonde bachenge nahin. Jab Bharatiya Janata Party ki sarkar aayegi, paataal se dhoondh kar unko dhoondh lenge (Your goons will not escape. When the BJP government comes, we will find the killers even from the nadir).” PM Modi had invited the families of these killed BJP workers to attend his swearing-in ceremony in 2019.

Incidentally, ahead of the 2018 Karnataka assembly election, Amit Shah had said that at least 20 RSS and BJP workers were killed in four years, and the BJP would bring them justice after coming to power.

The BJP has its government in Karnataka today but nobody seems to remember the killings of those party workers. The party had released a list of 23 workers who had been killed by “jihadi” forces. The BJP was, however, left embarrassed when the first person named on that list was found alive.

Who is mixing religion with politics in Bengal?

The BJP has gone all out for Hindu consolidation in West Bengal. It has been attacking Mamata Banerjee for her minority appeasement politics and for not respecting Lord Ram. What’s interesting is the way the TMC is trying to turn the table. State BJP chief Dilip Ghosh unwittingly gave ammunition to the TMC last week, saying in a TV programme, “Bhagwan Ram Raja the…Durga pata nahin kahan se le aate hain!” The Trinamool Congress has pounced on the opportunity to turn it into an attack on women. It has likened Mamata Banerjee, the ‘only woman chief minister’ in India today, to Ma Durga who is fighting against Mahishasurs.

Trinamool MP Abhishek Banerjee attacked the BJP on Saturday, questioning why the saffron party is not saying “Jai Siya Ram” instead of “Jai Shri Ram”. “They won’t take the name of Sita because they don’t respect women,” he said. Bengalis have traditionally worshipped goddesses Durga and Kali, and the Trinamool’s attempt is to project the BJP as a cow-belt party. The BJP has sought to counter it by raising “Jai Ma Durga, Jai Ma Kali” slogans.

Mamata Banerjee’s attempt to introduce a ‘Bengali versus outsider’ element in the larger Hindutva narrative may look desperate, given the BJP’s near-ownership of the subject. But it has certainly surprised the BJP. “They are trying to divide people by mixing politics with religion,” said Dilip Ghosh Saturday.

The boot seemed to be on the other foot, for once.

Aside, Dinesh Trivedi resigned from the Rajya Sabha last week, suggesting that he felt “stifled” in the Trinamool Congress. The stifling feeling that he described in the Rajya Sabha came nine years after he had been unceremoniously removed as railway minister at Mamata Banerjee’s behest. There were many smiles in the political circuit as Trivedi left Parliament to go to the temple in his house and blew a conch shell before the deities, much to the advantage of photographers standing outside the glass partition. That put an end to all speculation about his next party. Sam Pitroda, the Congress party’s overseas chief who enjoys proximity with the Gandhi family, must be wondering about his New Delhi address. He used to stay in Trivedi’s house whenever he would be in town.

Views are personal.