Bengali Exceptionalism

AT THE END of every election, those of us who happen to be political buffs sit back and reflect on where we got things right and where we misread the tea leaves. I spent the 2024 General Election in Kolkata and my perception of the larger national trends was invariably moulded largely by what I saw, heard and read in Kolkata. Predictably, I missed out on the critical swing of non-Jatav Dalit voters to the I.N.D.I.A. bloc in Uttar Pradesh and the damage done to BJP by the relatively low turnout of its core voters in northern India. However, I am absolutely elated to say that there was one feature of the poll in my part of India that I got right: the inability of the Left to stage a comeback.

On the face of it, this seems like dabbling in trivia. According to the Election Commission website, the once mighty communist parties, now divided into at least three parties— CPM, CPI and CPI(ML) Liberation— together won eight seats nationally, and none from West Bengal, a state that was once dubbed the Red Fort of India. Apart from a solitary seat won by CPM in Kerala, all the other seats were won courtesy the three parties being part of the I.N.D.I.A. bloc. I doubt if any of the Left parties has the strength to win parliamentary seats on its own any longer.

In West Bengal, however, CPM and its fellow travellers spun a different narrative. BJP, it argued, could never emerge as the alternative to the incompetent and corrupt Trinamool Congress of Mamata Banerjee for two reasons.

First, because BJP was hand-in-glove with Mamata. The colloquial expression that found favour was ‘setting’. If Modi and Didi weren’t in a ‘setting’, or so the argument went, the chief minister’s nephew would have been languishing in Tihar Jail. The argument found favour among the tea shop analysts after the arrest of Hemant Soren in Jharkhand and Arvind Kejriwal in Delhi. Abhishek Banerjee’s insouciance was attributed to a covert deal involving the top brass of BJP and Trinamool Congress.

Secondly, the fellow travellers of the Left parties in the Bangla media repeated the argument of Mamata that BJP was singularly out of tune with the culture and ethos of the Bengali-speaking people. With its quaint vocabulary—baithak for meeting, bhojan for meals, and karyakarta for party worker/cadre— and its dependence on a Hindi-speaking national leadership, BJP could never aspire to represent Bengalis. If Mamata had to be replaced, it could only be done by CPM whose Left orientation was quintessentially Bengali in character. At one time, this detachment of BJP was held to be true for the entire non- Hindi belt of the country. However, now that Tripura, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Odisha have come under the sway of the saffron forces, Bengali exceptionalism has been given a new shot of Red Bull.

In this election, it was also suggested that the best and most educated young minds of Bengal had been chosen as candidates by CPM. This was contrasted with the ‘semi-educated’ BJP. Additionally, the media and YouTube channels were replete with visuals of the tremendous response CPM was getting in the homes and bazaars of southern Bengal. In parts of middle-class South Kolkata, CPM was even portrayed as a party enlightened Bengalis should support because the candidate was a People Like Us (PLU).

Some of this must have worked because in the 23 seats it contested, in alliance with Congress, CPM polled a total of 34 lakh votes or 5.67 per cent of the total electorate. However, while this may seem impressive in absolute terms, it must be remembered that 21 of its candidates lost their deposits. Only its General Secretary Mohammed Salim, who fought from the Muslim-majority Murshidabad constituency, managed to secure second place. All the other glamour candidates forfeited their security deposits and secured third position.

Bengal being a state where conspiracy theories proliferate, BJP supporters have put out the theory that the Left put up candidates to split the anti-Mamata vote. In the process, it secured BJP’s defeat in at least eight constituencies.

The argument is a half-truth. There are many Bengali voters, especially those above 55 years of age, who will always vote for the Left because of conviction. To accuse them of tactical voting is unfair. However, there may be a small section that voted Left in some constituencies because they were misled into believing that the alternative to Mamata is CPM. The sooner they realise this is a wasted vote, the better for all.

And the only way this can be done is by puncturing the insufferable arrogance of the Left. CPM should either become the intellectual wing of Congress (as CPI once was) or find a place in a museum.

CPICPMGeneral election 2024I.N.D.I.A.Jatav DalitMamata BanerjeeUttar PradeshWest Bengal