West Bengal Election is not a Victory but a Wake up Call for the Bengali ‘Bhadrolok’!
Back in May 2011 when Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress swept over the West Bengal state assembly elections, my father declared that he will not be stepping foot into Kolkata again. Baba supported the CPM, which had ruled West Bengal uniterrupted for 34 years since 1977. He always said, “no matter what happens, CPM is always guaranteed one vote, and that is from me.!
Nandigram and Singur
In the wake of Nandigram and Singur protests, Baba knew that the tide was changing in his homeland. So, in January 2011 we undertook what was supposed to be our final visit to Kolkata. We visited the Boi mela (Book fair) where the theme country was United States, and a pristine white installation of Capitol Hall stood as an emblem of democracy. We made our usual stops to College Street, Calcutta Rowing Club, Park Street and Swabhoomi as if our experience of our favourite places was an ode to something that would never come back.
Baba supported Buddhdev Bhattacharya’s decision to install industrial plants including a chemical factory and the Tata nano plant on farm land in Singur and Nandigram. Since 1977 the CPM had built an excellent track record for land redistribution. By 2005, poverty had reduced by 55.35% compared to the Indian average of 49.22% (Guruswamy et al., 2005). While the agriculture sector improved, the industrial sector was in decline, in part due to Central Government allocations but also due to a vile culture of confrontational politics in the state. Between 2008-2011, somewhat ominously, it was the same land issue, which had once propelled the CPM to power that also brought its decline.
Baba, was worried that politics in Bengal would now move away from the generation of lawyers, scholars and literateurs he so respected to a “Jhograti” (fighter) Didi. On this trip, we made our customary gourmet visit to Nizaam - the favourite joint for egg rolls. We were the only customers, eating in at this restaurant which was clearly in decline. While walking up the stairs to the restaurant, I noticed that in one corner there were very old men, dressed in red holding up flags in protest. While the egg for our roll was being beaten with that familiar assertive whisking motion, and the oil was sizzling on the giant tawa (frying pan) , I stepped out to speak to the protesters, Elderly and frail, they mentioned that they had lost their jobs and although Nizams was now under a new management they would neither get their jobs or their pensions. I walked back to Baba, and said that this is why CPM is losing West Bengal. I had spent time in Madhya Pradesh with the Narmada Andolan (anti dam agitation) a few months before, so back then our political views were quite at odds with each other.
While the violence of the state and the CPM against farmers and protestors was indeed wrong, Baba did have a point on the development future of West Bengal. Tata pulled out of the Nano factory in Singur, and returned over 9000 acres of land to the state and farmers. Meanwhile, it is rumoured that it just took a one worded SMS from Modi to Ratan Tata, that said “suswagatham” to welcome Tata to Gujarat. In 14 months Tata Nano was opened in Sanand, in Gujarat - now regarded as a automobile manufacturing hub. Yet, we cannot lose sight of the fact that development and nationalism are closely linked, and the Gujarat model of development hasn’t worked for India, leave alone West Bengal.
The Fall of CPM, The Rise of BJP
But this ‘nationalism’ is the subject on which I ask the Bengali Bhadrolok - the term used to describe educated, liberal minded, secular, elites to raise some self probing questions. While celebrating the victory of a Didi in a chappal (slipper) against the mighty Modi, ask if you are not part of the problem? In West Bengal’s state assembly, there are 77 seats held by BJP candidates and 213 by the Trinamool Congress. The Left Front has a score card of ‘0’. Over the last two decades the BJP has sucecssfully taken away the CPM vote share. Much of this transition was started by Mamata Banerjee herself. When she broke off from the Congress Party in 1998, she allied with the BJP. The partnership helped her to negotioate resources from the Centere, while for the BJP it earned secular credentials in a state where their MLAs were ridiculed as the “Ram-Hanuman” party.
Later, ofcourse, Mamata broke off from the BJP even though during the 16th Assembly election Modi tried to appease her with his slogan, “Didi in Bengal, BJP in Delhi”. Yet, the voting patterns thet set in made some lasting changes. If we take education as marker, then while most non-literates and upto primary level educated voters support the AITC, and only 7% and 14% of them for the BJP, then almost an equal number of College educated voters split the vote between AITC, BJP and the Left. Almost double the number of Hindus vote the AITC over the BJP (40% - AITC, 21% BJP) (NES, 2014). However, class-wise voting patterns show that most of the poor and lower class (neo-middle) support the AITC, while the rich and the middle class tend to distribute their votes almost evenly across the AITC, BJP and the Left. Muslims steer clear of the BJP, with only 2% vote. Mamata’s success owes in part to the populist gestures that she has shown to the Muslims who make up 30% of the population and to the poor and neo middle class who are a growing majority (NES, 2014). Most upwardly mobile Bengalis migrate out in search of jobs. Further, many Bengali workers make up the migrant labour force in Kerala, Karnataka, Delhi and other states as jobs and income security are limited in their home state.
Elite Bengali Nationalisms: Part of the Problem
Here, I ask with all this rhetoric on Bengali intellectual culture and secularism, how much is the Bengali elite in tune with the class inequalities on the ground? For that matter, do Bengali elites realise how they have themselves played a part in pushing forward these nationalist notions that divide societies? The BJP made much of Shyama Prasad Mookherjee in their electoral campaign. He became the first President of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh with the backing of the RSS and saw a limited period of electoral success mainly from Hindu refugees from Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) between 1951-53. He was invited to join the Nehru Government as Minister of Industy and Supply, but resigned as he opposed the Delhi Pact (1950), which was a bilateral treaty between India and Pakistan to protect minorities in their respective countries. A point that Amit Shah often mentions in light of the Citizen Amendment Act in 2019.
Shyama Prasad Mookherjee was a barrister and represented a form of elite Hindu nationalism, that emerged in the wake of the violence of partition. He stood firmly for the partition of Bengal along communal lines. Mookheejee’s politics stood in opposition with the Congres Party. He opposed the Quit India Movement, and famouly in his letter to the Governor of Bengal, he wrote that any Government (including the British) must crush a movement that opposes the state in a time of war. In the run up to the partition of Bengal, he opposed the United Bengal Movement led by Suhrawady and Sharat Chandra Bose.
Rentier Hindus vs Liberal Bengali
Similarly, a generation before Mookherjee, in the early 19th century, nationalism in Bengal was divided beween the Hindu elites vs a new liberal elite of professional Bengalis. Naba Gopal Mitra with the patronage of Debendranath Tagore started the National Paper in 1867- an English weekly where he promoted the idea that Hindu society was best served by a caste system, as lower classes educated in English were no substitute for the natural leaders of Indian society . In response, the Bengalee an English newspaper started by Girish Chandra Ghose in 1862, argued for representations of Indians at all levels of the colonial governement but equally pressed that working classes in Caclutta should change their social habits to be eligible for the formal offices of the states. This divide between the tradititonal rentier elites pushing for cultural Hindu nationalism to preserve the social status quo and the new professional elite pushing for liberal values and reform of indigenous society has had a lasting legacy in the making of nationalism in Bengal and beyond. I discuss this in detail in my Chapter on “Governing wthout the Politics” in the book Postcolonial Governmentality, 2020. Both versions of elite Bengali nationalism saw the working class and the rural peasantry as a subject of reform than a political voice, and often supported the colonial state in suppressing their political agitation in the name of order and stability.
Wake up Call
It is this divide and disconnect from the real Bengal - in its villages, in its migrant workers, in its struggling working class, in its new middle class aspiring for staus without the resources - that I believe is the reason for the success of Mamata’s tokenist gestures. On the other hand, it is the legacy of elite nationalisms, led by privilege and power that has made it possible for the BJP to penetrate. I therefore argue, that this West Bengal election should be a wake up call to make this state- its development, its secularism, its social fabric work for the real Bengali!
References:
National Election Studies, 2014. Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Data Unit.
Guruswamy, at al, 2005. Economic Growth and Development in West Bengal: Reality vs Perception. Economic and Political Weekly, 40:21, pp. 2151-2157.
