Women expressed their anger in a spontaneous manner against turncoats who crossed over to the BJP from Trinamool Congress in several areas during the eight-phase polling. Most of those ‘betrayers’ tasted the bitter fruit of humiliating defeat. They ran after the pelf and power of BJP but were contemptuously rejected by the electorate. For the women, the main task was to prevent the lotus to blossom at Nabanna, the seat of power of West Bengal government. Virulent campaign of ‘cut money raj, corruption at ground levels and nepotism of chief minister Mamata Banerjee's household failed to influence the decisive section of woman voters.

Women’s extensive preference for TMC and chief minister Mamata Banerjee was basically due to two reasons. First is empowerment of girls through Kanyashree Prakalpa, Rupashree Prakalpa and Sabooj Sathi schemes plus periodical ‘Saheli Sabhas’ (women’s meetings) in all the 341 blocks of West Bengal. In June 2017 United Nations bestowed honours of the highest public service award on the Kanyashree Prakalpa as the best among 552 such social sector schemes from across 62 countries.

True, despite these, the BJP won 18 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats in 2019 with lead in 121 of 294 assembly segments, bagging sizable portion of woman votes. This time there was a reflex of making amends for wrong preference for BJP candidates. The second is the hateful rebuff of ‘second sex’ towards the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s misogynistic phrase ‘Didi-O-Didi’. Modiji resorted to ‘‘mimicking the tone and tenor of roadside rowdies who harass women traversing the public-masculine space by making cheap, lewd and misogynistic comments’

Woman activists and intellectuals outside West Bengal took umbrage at the indecorous way Modi kept attacking Mamata at every poll campaign speech. This turned suicidal for the Sanghis which won 77 seats in contrast to 121 leads during the last LS poll. The BJP cashed in on the splitting of anti-BJP votes by the Left Front and Congress, but for which, the BJP’s strength would have been less than 60, leave alone seats that were stolen by the saffron party through electoral manipulation with the help of central forces and Election Commission-appointed observers.

Women responded to the endeavour of the TMC government by reversing the underrepresentation of women in the political landscape which no state did so far (not even Kerala. Modi government’s claim of ending the discrimination against Muslim women by criminalization of triple talaq was discordant with the recalcitrance of BJP-led NDA government towards enactment of the Women’s Reservation law. In contrast, the TMC government scripted statutes for reserving 50 per cent of the seats in panchayats and municipalities for women. Of the 22 TMC members of Lok Sabha, elected from West Bengal nine are women. Of 11 Rajya Sabha members, four are women.

The BJP’s jingoistic misogynism, aggressively campaigned by the Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, did not only fail to resonate with the Bengali audience albeit partial acceptance in the Northern states of India, but generated strong protestation among Bengali women who voted for TMC candidates with their grit of ‘no vote to BJP. Otherwise, popular BJP councilor of BJP, Ms Meenadevi Purohit would not have lost by nearly 13,000 votes from Jorasanko constituency of Kolkata. Bengali women reflected their anger against the UP CM’s threat to impose ban on love marriages (‘love jihad’) if the BJP would come to power. The Sanghis lacked the cerebral sense to gauge the mood of the ‘the relatively free-spirited women of Bengal that have been aware of their fundamental right to choose their partners, irrespective of religion and caste.

The women had spontaneously were on war path against the very symbol of lotus, outwardly rejecting the RSS-BJP’s poll strategy of communal polarisation, The CPI(M)’s polit bureau and the CPI’s central secretariat expressed satisfaction over the West Bengal’s electorate’s refusal to respond to Sangh Parivar’s call for consolidation of Hindu votes. The rebuff came from the woman voters through a militant solidarity beyond the imagination of ‘Didi’.

One is reminded of the famous poem, Yamunavatee, of Jnanpith laureate poet Sankha Ghosh, written in the very early 1950s in indignation of police firing at Coochbehar): “Mother’s cry can’t annihilate the wailings in daughter’s boiling blood / The daughter is on war path (in Bengali, ‘Chollo Meye Rawne / Chollo). The drum doesn’t harp, nor did anyone hear the clanging weapon / The daughter is on war path (free translation of a portion).

No less important role was played by woman scribes, particularly of Anandabazar Patrika group, who consistently wrote against ‘communal conspiracy’ of Sangh Parivar. Anandabazar the largest selling newspaper in Bengal and it editorials and commentaries have deep impact on the floating voters. ABP consistently took an objective anti-BJP position explaining to the readers the real designs of the BJP-RSS leadership. This bold stand of the ABP and its sister publication The Telegraph played an important role in moulding the opinion of voters against BJP.

The bright women brigade of BJP led by editor Ishani Dutt Roy took a leading role in turning the editorial page of ABP into a battle cry to save Bengal from Sangh Parivar onslaught. The other senior writers like Semanti Ghosh and Jagori Bandyopadhayay came out with excellent analysis exposing the BJP’ ideology. They played the role of catalysts in sowing seeds of women’s awakening against fascism of Hindutva strain and rallying behind , Mamata Banerjee, against imposition of rightwing Nazi-type majoritarianism. (IPA Service)