For over sixty years, West Bengal has been a hotbed of political and communal violence in India. The recent attack on Gopal Majumdar’s (a local BJP worker) octogenarian mother manifests the inherent violent antagonism against the BJP among the TMC’s leaders and workers.
The CPI(M) incited this custom of violence during its long reign over the state. CPI(M)’s reign included gut-wrenching massacres such as the ‘Marichjhapi Massacre’ of 1979, where hundreds of Hindus were deliberately massacred by the state police in gunfire. Mamata Banerjee seized power from the Communists in 2011 on the promise of transitioning Bengal from being an epicenter of political and communal violence to a modern, flourishing state. But in practice, after 10 years of her haughty rule, the condition of law and order and the fundamental rights of Hindus to practice their religion and festivals is still grim and lamentable. So Mamata Banerjee and her TMC has offered nothing to the people of Bengal but instead carried on the anti-Hindu legacy of its precursor by appeasing a certain vote bank and vandalizing the resources and properties of the opposition and quashing and brutally murdering its workers and leaders (like the Communists did with the Congress).
Also, these sabotages exhibit the insecurity, rage and vulnerability among TMC. For the first time in these 10 years, an “outsider” party and its high command is challenging to decimate the very existence of TMC from its bastion.
But how is the 2021 assembly election different from the previous elections?
The BJP, once a crippling and trifling party that has never ruled the state since independence, sees a befitting opportunity (highlighting Mamata’s incompetency) to form its government for the first time and hence has emerged as the arch-rival to Mamata’s TMC and the left front including the Congress. Its zealous campaigning and rallies such as ‘Poriborton Yatra’ and ‘Lokkho Sonar Bangla’ can easily mobilize the downtrodden Hindu population, of which 57% cast their vote to the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and BJP got its highest-ever MP’s from West Bengal: 18.
Home Minister Amit Shah is personally handling the elections (which further perturbs Mamata) and has deployed the party’s star-campaigners, including UP’s Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and BJP President J.P. Nadda. In both the interviews given to India Today and ABP News, Shah asserted that his party is optimistic and his political experience says that the BJP is winning 200+ seats and forming its first-ever government in West Bengal. When asked about the Chief Ministerial candidate, Shah added, ‘The Chief Minister will the one who is born and native to this sacred land.’
The 2nd of May 2021 will be a turning point for West Bengal’s political history if the BJP secures a majority in the legislative assembly. If they pass this ‘Agnipariksha’, it would become unequivocal that the BJP, in the grasp of Modi and Shah, is invincible and can even trounce the mighty opposition in any election, once resolved (as we saw in GHMC elections last year). But the core question is: ‘Will the administrative change and induction of a new Chief Minister put a full stop to this unceasing loss of lives and properties?’
Well, the answer lies in the future’s womb. Let it unravel.
