Bengal lived a conceited life of uniqueness from the rest of the country- a claim purveyed y the Leftists for over three decades. The main of events during the elections showed up the worst aspects of a community under direct protection of political parties.

Bengal had paraded its claim about cultural superiority and appeal of rational debates over fisticuffs. These claims have since been blown to smithereens with scenes of dog-eats-dog street fights over minor claims. Lives have been lost in pitching electoral propaganda material in public places. Violence has been endemic, rising to a pitch in a firing incident in a border area.

It is a display of nagging swipes by a people who have historically failed to rise up to any threat of invasion from outside. Bengal has been easily subjugated, while neighbouring Assam or Orissa had bitterly fought for their independence in history.

The second aspect is the communal ugliness that has emerged plentifully is the quality of language. Use of language descended to gutters, while calling names to rivals. In this, none other excelled than the state chief minister who used every possible slang in her speeches from electoral podium. Language which were so far thought to be unmentionable in common conversation have been gleefully used from the top echelons.

Thirdly, in striking contrast to Tagore’s call for bringing down every boundary, all conceivable kind of narrow-mindedness was displayed. Belying its earlier catholicity and openness to pan-Indian ideas and personalities, Mamata Banerjee raised the slogan of “outsiders versus insiders” as her prime electoral platform. She dubbed all BJP national leaders as “bahiragata” and “bahri”.

Ironically, narrowness begets narrowness. The move backfired, when BJP national leaders said that the party’s candidates are all sons of the soil and the next chief minister of Bengal will be a “bhumiputra”, a dialogue never heard before.

The classification by origin became so restrictive, that when Mamata Banerjee filed her nomination for the Nandigram constituency, her rival Subhendu Adhikari claimed himself a “bhumiputra” of the constituency, and claimed Mamata was an outsider being from Calcutta. To this, Mamata replied with a slang which is better left unsaid.

Lastly, Bengal has now heard a political narrative which was never explicit until now. During their close to four decades long rule, the Left had preached from their high pedestal stories about class fights and struggles of the proletariat but in this election, the Left-Congress combination has been sidelined and the two main contestants for power are fighting a sort of caste appeasement election battle which was never there in Bengal in earlier elections. BJP imparted a north Indian dimension to the electoral issues in Bengal.

Fighting the so-called capitalists, the Left rule had denuded Bengal of all manner of industries. Until l 1960s, Bengal was the manufacturing hub of India and every other manufactured article would come from Bengal. Calcutta was the headquarters of foreign capital in India.

With the Left’s class struggle and self-defeating labour militancy, capital left the state and what was left behind was the struggling workers looking for jobs elsewhere. They migrated to other states for employment. No wonder then during the covid infection lock-downs, some of the heaviest migrant labour movement was to Bengal from other states. Forty years ago, it would have been a reverse flow as people from elsewhere in the country would come to Bengal for jobs.

In this election, there were no issues of the working classes, apart from lack of job opportunities. The caste issues have sidelined the class issues and the left parties are witnessing that their working class base built through years of hard struggle by the senior leaders of the earlier decades has got tattered on caste lines.

Castes came out of crevasses. Motua community in the bordering districts were a major play for the rival parties. Motuas were the lower castes of Hindu society in erstwhile East Bengal. They had to flee their homelands in East Bengal in the face of attacks and violence from Muslims there and settle in border districts of West Bengal.

Their numbers are not small — estimated to be around 3.5 crore. These people had their own heroes and the patron saint Harichand Gorachand. There is a temple in Bangladesh which was consecrated by the patron saint and this temple was visited by Prime Minister Modi during his trip to Bangladesh in the first phase of polling in Bengal. The motive of the PM was obvious. A foreign visit of a neighbouring country was made use of for benefitting the vote bank of BJP in the ensuing elections.

The Motua community apart, we have now the Rajbanshis in north Bengal, who claim their descent from some Rajput origins. They are from the same areas from where the family of Jaipur’s Maharani Gayatri Devi hailed. Rajbanshis have asking, among many other things, for a special regiment, “Narayan Sena”, which the prime minister and the home minister, Amit Shah, have promised to institute.

There are so many of the other castes who have come forward with their own demands. Sahas, Subarna Banik, Telis -all over with demands for recognition and reservation. It is Pandora’s Box which has just been prized open and it is any body’s guess. How the BJP leaders will deal with these in the coming days.

Whatever happens, the 2021 poll campaign in Bengal has shown that Bengal is no better or worse than the rest of the country. It is therefore reassuring to know we Bengalis are all the same and that may be the new Indianness to which the BJP leaders including PM and HM have some contribution. (IPA service)