With a inhabitants of greater than 100 million, West Bengal is the fourth biggest state in India. It has at all times been a very powerful goal for the ruling Bharatiya Janata birthday party (BJP), however in spite of the electoral good fortune of Narendra Modi’s birthday party throughout the entire nation in recent times, West Bengal at all times bucked the craze.
Somewhat than purchase into Modi’s Hindu nationalist imaginative and prescient, Bengali citizens have historically been influenced by means of a powerful sense of regional id. Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) executive intentionally cultivated this when in administrative center between 2011 and 2026. It offered itself because the defender of the state’s language, tradition and way of living.
Banerjee argued vociferously all through debates over citizenship that Modi and the BJP have been looking to smear Bengali audio system, in particular in border areas, as “illegal immigrants”.
The TMC additionally highlighted central executive’s makes an attempt to advertise a Hindu type of vegetarianism as being at odds with Bengal’s pluralistic traditions, the place fish, meat and eggs are staple meals fed on throughout spiritual communities.
Because of this, the BJP used to be now not simply competing towards an incumbent executive. It used to be going up towards a powerful political id that offered itself because the mother or father of Bengal’s historically pluralistic tradition and way of living.
So the BJP victory over TMC in Would possibly represented a vital electoral disillusioned. Extra so, as a result of West Bengal used to be the closing primary state the place BJP have been not able to displace an impressive regional birthday party, in spite of its nationwide good fortune.
Ancient influences
This used to be now not a regimen trade of presidency. To get a really feel for why the BJP’s victory in West Bengal used to be so consequential, you need to perceive its distinct tradition. And to do this, you need to return to sooner than Indian independence, when the British partitioned India on spiritual grounds. This shaped two new international locations: India for the Hindus and Pakistan for the Muslims.
As a part of the method, Punjab within the northwest of India, used to be divided with west Punjab going to Pakistan and the east to India. In a similar fashion Bengal in japanese India used to be cut up with the Hindu majority west going to India and the east to Pakistan, sooner than East Pakistan received its independence in 1971, changing into the brand new state of Bangladesh. Regardless of this, communal violence persisted to spill over all sides of the newly declared borders alongside sectarian traces.
Nevertheless, even lately, each Punjab and Bengal have remained true to their custom of range. That is an embodiment of the primary of “syncretism”. Syncretism is in regards to the non violent amalgamation of various ideals, tradition and practices. It objectives to strike a solidarity amongst numerous traditions – on this case, in particular between Hindus and Muslims.
For years, Bengal’s area of expertise used to be according to the central thought of miśra saṃskṛti, actually “mixed culture” or “blended civilisation”. Hindu and Muslim traditions have been allowed to flourish in combination. Quite a lot of traditions served as cultural symbols that set Bengal except the communal strife affecting different areas of the subcontinent.
Those come with bauls – wandering mystic singers who mix parts of Hinduism and Islam. Those singers are typified by means of Lalan Fakir, the Nineteenth-century poet and religious chief whose estimated 10,000 songs, lots of which mock and condemn spiritual and caste variations, earned him the devotion of thousands and thousands around the area.
Bengal’s dargahs, in the meantime – sufi shrines constructed over the grave of respected holy figures – are used interchangeably by means of each Hindus and Muslims.
By contrast, the BJP aggressively promotes hindutva an ideology which defines India as a Hindu state. This, used to be broadly idea, could be an obstacle in successful votes in West Bengal. However the BJP’s electoral good fortune in securing 207 out of 294 seats confirmed that this syncretism used to be at all times extra subtle than its proponents stated.
Indian top minister, Narendra Modi, with the manager minister of West Bengal, Suvendu Adhikari, and different BJP ministers being sworn in after the Would possibly 2026 election.
Sipa US/Alamy Reside Information
Bengali syncretism, its believe in amalgamation of traditions and ideology, used to be expressed in poetry, song and folks devotion. Nevertheless it by no means penetrated the constructions of belongings, political economic system or electoral mathematics.
Hindus below risk
The BJP seems to have understood higher than its political combatants the concern amongst many of us in West Bengal of the Islamic influences coming in from Bangladesh. The BJP effectively harnessed and politicised this concept as a risk to Hindus in West Bengal. To do that, the BJP tactic used to be to restore reminiscences of partition in 1947 as an solely Hindu tragedy.
BJP additionally coopted more than a few parts of Bengal’s highbrow heritage. They effectively portrayed Bengali cultural heroes reminiscent of novelist Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay and non secular chief Swami Vivekananda basically as champions of Hindu nationalism in speeches, articles and commemorations. It took pains to minimize their position as representatives of Bengal’s pluralist humanism.
The BJP’s victory in West Bengal is in stark distinction with its failure to win in Punjab, any other state the place partition resulted in really extensive upheaval. The key distinction is demographic: while the competition in West Bengal used to be at all times between Hindus and Muslims, nearly all of other folks in Punjab, just about 58%, are Sikhs.
Punjab’s Sikh neighborhood has an id this is assertive and politically impartial with institutional manifestation within the centre-right Shiromani Akali Dal birthday party. So, whilst in West Bengal the BJP used to be in a position to mobilise its Hindu neighborhood by means of the “Hindus under threat” narrative, this tale is neither vital nor efficient in Punjab.
Many Sikhs understand that hindutva diminishes their autonomy and subsumes their unique id into a bigger fold of Hinduism, a trade-off {that a} important segment of the Punjabis are unwilling to make.
But if the BJP in West Bengal promoted its narrative of Hinduism below risk, it found out {that a} sizeable portion of the citizens recognized extra readily with that than with the baul’s songs.
