When Rekha Patra and other women from West Bengal’s Sandeshkhali armed themselves with brooms and sticks to confront local Trinamool Congress leader Sheikh Shahjahan and his men, it made national headlines. At one level, it was a fight for dignity by women from Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes against a powerful local don who allegedly sexually assaulted them and engaged in land grabbing.
At another, somewhat subliminal level, it was an attempt to delink the political slogan ‘Jai Bheem’ from ‘Jai Meem’. It wanted to underline the exploitations faced by the Hindu underclass in Bengal’s hinterland, often at the hands of politically-protected Muslim strongmen like Shahjahan.
As Patra became the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Lok Sabha candidate from the Basirhat constituency (under which Sandeshkhali falls) some important questions arose: Was it a conscious push for Subaltern Hindutva? And could Patra promote that narrative by separating Bheem from Meem?
Bheem, Meem and Subaltern Hindutva
The slogan ‘Jai Bheem, Jai Meem’ was raised far away from Sandeshkhali near the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) headquarters in Nagpur in 2015 by the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM). According to a report by The Deccan Chronicle, this was done to strengthen the party’s political base by uniting Dalits, Adivasis and Muslims against communal forces. The choice of venue was interesting because not only is Nagpur an RSS stronghold, but it is also the place where the country’s tallest Dalit leader, Bhimrao Ambedkar, embraced Buddhism along with thousands of his followers in 1956.
The Bheem of Jai Bheem is an ode to Ambedkar whose first name was Bhimrao, while the Meem in ‘Jai Meem’ refers to the Arabic letter ‘M’ or ‘Mim’. It is another matter that Ambedkar’s views on Islam were no less scathing than his views on Hinduism, as evident from his article ‘Pakistan or the Partition of India’.
Four years later, in 2019, when AIMIM president and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi went up to take his oath in Parliament, he was greeted with slogans of ‘Jai Shri Ram’ and ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ by BJP MPs. After mocking them with hand gestures, Owaisi retorted with “Jai Bheem, Jai Meem, Takbeer Allahu Akbar, Jai Hind”.
The call for Dalit-Bahujan-Muslim unity is not limited to the AIMIM. From the Congress to Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Samajwadi Party (SP), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) and Mamata Banerjee’s TMC, complex social engineering measures have been taken over the years to gather support from the underclass of Hindu society and the Muslim community.
The rise of Subaltern Hindutva – a term that gained popularity during the Narendra Modi years – queered the political pitch as BJP continued to wean away the votes of SCs, STs and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) from the Opposition. The aim was to turn its old Brahmin-Baniya party branding downside up.
In his 2021 News18 article, ‘Subaltern Hindutva Has Truly Arrived in Bengal. And That Explains the Rise of BJP’, political researcher Sajjan Kumar wrote: “It [Subaltern Hindutva] is not a saffron version of Ambedkarite discourse, which portrays Brahmanical castes as the common ‘other’. Rather, it defines Muslim as the common ‘other’ for a better representational and cultural space that Hindutva readily provides. Thus, Subaltern Hindutva doesn’t exclude the upper castes; rather it makes them an ally in its quest for power…It takes a constructivist approach of myth-building and argues that Muslim rule and a secular discourse centred on minority appeasement are responsible for their ‘precariat’ position.”
Also read: Bengal is ready for BJP’s Bhadralok Hindutva. Bhadralok Marxism is on its way out
Rekha Patra’s rise & a larger message
Rekha Patra is a Dalit woman who has allegedly suffered sexual violence at the behest of Shahjahan, who, till his arrest on 29 February, was a TMC leader.
Patra isn’t the only woman to have suffered in Sandeshkhali; Shahjahan isn’t their only problem either. She told me in an interview that while one Sheikh Shahjahan is in the custody of the Enforcement Directorate, many Sheikh Shahjahans roam around freely, making the lives of women like her difficult. According to Patra, TMC’s Basirhat candidate Haji Nurul Islam isn’t quite different from Shahjahan.
“Haji Nurul Islam has been involved in communal violence. He was an accused in the 2010 Deganga riots. Yet he has been given a ticket to fight the elections from my constituency. Our fight for justice and dignity is far from over,” Patra stressed.
In the course of her interview, Patra repeatedly referred to herself as “a political novice” while highlighting that both Shahjahan and Islam had been involved in “anti-Hindu activities”.
Journalist Nishant Azad told me that in many cases of sexual violence against workers and supporters of the BJP, the perpetrators belonged to the Muslim community. “This led to a deep distrust between the communities and there was a sense that often, political patronage is provided to criminal elements within the Muslim community,” he said. Azad has been associated with the RSS mouthpiece Organizer Weekly, writing ground reports for the magazine from Bengal after post-poll violence broke out in the state in 2021.
On 14 February, the Supreme Court stayed the proceedings in the West Bengal post-poll violence cases. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had pleaded to shift the cases outside the state due to reported threats against complainants, witnesses, and counsel. With the Sandeshkhali fiasco and Patra’s nomination, the BJP may well be wanting to establish a narrative where Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe women are at the receiving end of violence from the Muslim camp.
Muslims account for nearly 30 per cent of the state’s population. Dalits, according to the Union Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, form around 23.51 per cent of the state’s population, while tribals account for around 5.8 per cent. Pushing the Subaltern Hindutva narrative and pitting the SC/STs against the Muslims, thus, benefits the BJP.
“I may not know the BJP’s political ideology well, but Modi-ji is a father figure to me. I will willingly lay down my life, but not let the Shahjahans and Hajis lord over us,” Patra said, firmly driving a wedge between Bheem and Meem.
Deep Halder is an author and journalist. He tweets @deepscribble. Views are personal.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)
My God, you guys are telling different story compare to what Shekhar and girl discussed in the CTC where your correspondent did not find any evidence