With two INDIA bloc suitors, which way will Muslim votes go in Bengal?

KOLKATA: In a state that had been scarred by Partition and its violence, religion always played a role, though as an undercurrent. But in the past 10 years things have changed and suddenly religion seems more in-your-face, more overt. There’s been a steady increase in the number of Ram Navami processions, and Hanuman temples have sprouted across the state — a growing testimony to the rise of Hindutva.

Muslims in Bengal, on the other hand, have also found a way to assert their identity, by interweaving political messaging into religious practices. The “us” and “them” feeling is now giving way to acrimony even among educated urban minds. Such newly formed social habits are actively aiding the politics of polarisation in Bengal.

Numbers tell the story
There are close to 20 Lok Sabha seats in Bengal where the Hindu population ranges from 35% to 50%, an ideal ground for polarisation. These are apart from the Lok Sabha seats such as Berhampore, Murshidabad and Jangipur in Murshidabad district, and Basirhat in North 24 Parganas, where the Muslim population is far above the majority mark.

Muslim voters who had earlier supported Congress and Left, have, by and large, been steadily backing Trinamool Congress against its main opponent, BJP, since 2016. The Lokniti-CSDS postpoll survey reveals that Muslim support for Trinamool grew from 51% in 2016 to 75% in 2021, while the Hindu support for BJP shot up to 57% in 2019 from 12% in 2016, and then dipped to 50% in 2021.

The figures indicate that an increase of 5% in Muslim support for Trinamool and a 7% slide in Hindu support for BJP had stopped the Modi brigade in Bengal in the 2021 assembly elections.

After the firming up of the Congress-Left jote (tie-up) for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, it needs to be seen if Trinamool retains the Muslim support, especially in Lok Sabha constituencies like Berhampore and Murshidabad, Krishnanagar in Nadia, Malda Uttar and Malda Dakshin, Raiganj in Uttar Dinajpur, Birbhum, Purba Burdwan, and Dum Dum.

A parallel secular front
Muslims in Bengal may not, after all, be a monolithic voting bloc. Take the case of the Indian Secular Front (ISF), which shot to prominence in very little time. Founded by Abbas Siddiqui, an influential cleric at the shrine of Furfura Sharif in Hooghly ahead of the 2021 Bengal assembly polls. ISF made its House debut after the party candidate got elected as an MLA.

ISF has now fielded candidates in 14 Lok Sabha seats with heavy Muslim presence. They include Uluberia, Balurghat, Jadavpur, Diamond Har bour, Serampore and Murshidabad. ISF chairman Nawsad Siddique says he wants to provide Muslims and Dalits more political agency, instead of being used by “secular forces’’ as a ladder to access power.

Trinamool politicians are not losing sight of it, but believe that Muslims this time will, by and large, vote for the party because Mamata is the only politician who single-handedly stopped the BJP vote run in Bengal in 2021.

Mamata’s trump card
“Till the day I am alive, I will not allow separatist forces to create divisions among us on the grounds of religion and caste. To me, there is no difference between Sati, Sabitri, Arundhati and Jahanara, Roshanara and Noorjahan. I don’t differentiate between Tudu, Soren and Hansda. To me, Matuas and Rajbangshis are all equal,” she had said during her campaign rallies in the minority-dominated Malda.

Mamata is also building on the CAANRC issue. “PM wants to implement NRC and CAA. He says all of you are outsiders and infiltrators and should apply for citizenship. If he says so, I say, he is also an infiltrator PM and I am also an infiltrator CM. No one needs to apply for citizenship. You have a voter card, and ration
card, and so you are a citizen of India,” she said during campaign.

Local Trinamool leaders do not want to take any chances. Confronted with Congress candidate Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury in Berhampore, who could take away a chunk of Muslim votes that largely switched to Trinamool in 2021, party’s Bharatpur MLA Humayun Kabir was heard telling a gathering, held after the communal conflagration during a Ram Navami procession at Shaktipur: “I’ll not let you people stay in Shaktipur. You are 30% people, we are also 70% here,” Kabir said, a not-sosubtle message to Hindus in the district.

Gofur Sheikh is a Muslim from Beldanga, and has his reasons to back Mamata. “Our children are getting scholarships. Our housewives are getting Lakshmir Bhandar aid,” he says.

Izahar Ali Naskar, a resident of Mirpur village of Rejinagar, has a different reason to vote for Trinamool. “It is a very important election for the Muslim community throughout the country. We (the community) have decided to vote in such a way that the candidate best prepared to defeat the BJP gets all our votes,” he said.

Unhappy muslim voter
A split in Muslim votes can’t be ruled out at least in some Lok Sabha seats because a section of educated Muslims is upset over unemployment and corruption scandals that rocked the Mamata regime. “I graduated in history five years ago and took the Teacher Eligibility Test, with a lot of hope to land a primary teacher job. Then the recruitment process got entangled in corruption. I have been a Trinamool voter for several years
now. But I’m in two minds this time,” said Sabir Ali of Gayespur village.

Citing the Sagardighi Murshidabad assembly bypoll in which the Trinamool candidate was defeated, Jinat Rehana Islam, a schoolteacher from Berhampore, said it would be wrong to assume that Muslims vote en bloc. “Muslim boys and girls in remote villages of Suti, Sagardighi and Lalgola are getting higher education. They have their own perceptions about politics.”

BJP’s messaging
PM Modi during his first round of Bengal campaign had appealed to the Muslim women to vote against Trinamool, pointing to the alleged sexual torture of women in Sandeshkhali by local Trinamool leaders. This may have a limited impact in pockets of neighbouring districts South & North 24 Parganas. But the appeal was missing in the next rounds of the PM’s campaign.

Union home minister Amit Shah, instead, has been constantly raking up issues like infiltration, CAA for Hindu refugees, and the developments in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) to consolidate Hindu support and prevent the slide in Hindu votes seen in the 2021 Bengal assembly polls. “Mamata Banerjee came to office with the slogan of Ma, Maati, Manush but this slogan is now lost to Mulla, Maulavi, Madrasa,” Shah has told rallies in Bengal.

BJP functionaries believe this narrative would work well combined with other factors in Bengal. BJP spokesperson Shamik Bhattacharya said around 2 lakh people from Bengal had visited the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya at their own cost. “We only made arrangements for the trains for their travel,” Bhattacharya said.

With inputs from Sukumar Mahato, Zeeshan Jawed, Tamaghna Banerjee, Falguni Banerjee

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