This admission of the fact that UP brand of Hindutva politics failed to fetch votes in Assembly polls nevertheless attains importance for the simple reason that it has come from Shivprakash, the joint national general secretary (organisation) of the BJP. No doubt he does not possess the stature of either Narendra Modi or Amit Shah, but it is also an open secret that he is quite close to the RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat.

Yet another reason for it carrying immense importance is he has questioned the efficacy of the politics of the programmes and policies designed by Modi and Amit Shah. A key backroom strategist of the BJP, Shivprakash admitted at the closed-door meeting of the party only a couple of days back that the central leadership had made a mistake by not heeding advice that the state couldn’t be won by replicating the Uttar Pradesh model.

Shivprakash’s observation ought to be seen in the national perspective and must not be appraised in the backdrop of one single state. The RSS and BJP leadership in their quest to spread across the country have been vitiating the politics and also the body politic by resorting to hate politics and communalising the society using Hindutva as the tool. Though Shivprakash referred UP as the laboratory of Hindutva, the fact is Modi and Shah have been using it in all the states.

They hold the belief that this would fetch the votes. It is irony that they cannot think beyond the electoral gains. For them winning of an election symbolises the success of their politics and policies. Backed by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat they could never realise the fact that victories in the election of 2014 and 2019 was primarily not due to their attempt to polarise the people. It was the manifestation of the peoples’ anger against the failure of the Congress to fulfil their aspirations and material requirements.

They should have realised that the gain was of temporary nature. An ideology devoid of a basic political economy tenet would not have lasting impact on the people. Slogan of Hindutva has a temporary psychological implication. Modi and Shah have used the Hindutva in their desperation to win the elections. But their resorting to this strategy will undoubtedly intensify the debate in the BJP on its political strategy in the country as well as in the states that the party is desperate to win.

Modi-Shah ought to take the realisation of Shivprakash seriously. Shivprakash has underlined that Bengal is a secular state and obviously Modi-Shah’s policy to polarise the people did not cut much ice. He is absolutely right. But at the same time he could not comprehend it properly that not only the Bengalis instead the people living in Bengal are secular. Not less than 45 per cent of the population constitutes of the migrants who came to Bengal and settled here. They still have their contacts and roots in their native states. Basically the Indian people are secular.

The BJP has been using force, torturing and lynching the dissenting voices in other states which they could not resort to in Bengal. While the opposition political forces abandoned their moral right to protest against this violent and repressive actions of the BJP in their states, in Bengal the saffron brigade, especially the Sangh goons could not resort to this tactics as Mamata was standing like a rock to foil their dirty game. The strategy of Modi and Shah would not have worked in other states, if the opposition parties would have taken to streets and protested against the homicidal politics of the BJP. No doubt the religion played a decisive role in forcing the people to rally behind the saffron brigade, the spread of politics of repression and violence has actually made the people behave like ostrich and not to venture for opposing the machination of the BJP.

While Shivprakash censured use of the Hindutva policy, some leaders still strongly favour that the party would pursue the path of communal polarisation in Bengal to ensure that it bags the majority of votes of the Hindus, who comprise around 70 per cent of the electorate, in future poll battles. Their approach makes it abundantly clear that they utterly lack intellect and political acumen else they would not have propounded this political line.

True speaking not only Kolkata but Bengal itself, has a cosmopolitan character. It is also a fact that the state had witnessed worst nature of communal riots in 1946, which the RSS is desperate to exploit in recent times, in 2021. But the fact is this has failed to have any impact on the people. The people of Bengal do not survive in past. They look forward to creation of a modern and prosperous Bengal. On the contrary the RSS has been trying to drag them to the past and revive the old memories. If they do not resort to this nature of politics their policy to drown the state in the quagmire of communal politics would not concretise.

For people of Bengal secularism is not a borrowed idea. It has been inherent in their life style. Which is why their attempts to polarise the electorate on the basis of religion didn’t work in “secular” Bengal as the “Hindutva brand of politics” didn’t appeal to most of the voters. Some BJP leaders claim that the party’s polarisation agenda did work and that was why it got around 2.38 crore votes in a state where Muslims comprise around 30 per cent of the electorate. They also argue that if more efforts were made at polarising the voters along communal lines, the party would had got at least six to eight per cent more votes and that would have been enough to beat Trinamool. One feels pity at them. They really live in fools paradise. By unleashing violence you can force a section of the voters, as had happened in some north Bengal districts, but you cannot force the entire population to rally behind you.

RSS and BJP must listen to the sane voices like that of Shivprakash and refrain from indulging in the dirty game of polarising the people. Even after losing the election the leadership has been blatantly pursuing its Hindutva policy. It has been using every kind of machination to dislodge the Mamata government. The Trinamool Congress turncoats have been instructed to vitiate the communal ambience of the state. They have turned more aggressive in toeing the Hindu-Muslim line. Nevertheless some leaders while endorse the stand of Shivprakash also point out that the BJP failed to establish its Bengal connect and lost because of the inability to comprehend the complex Bengali ethos.

The dichotomy of the political line followed by the state leaders has also come out sharply in the form of their stand on splitting the state. While the leaders like the state president Dilip Ghosh who believe in violence, communal divide and spread of politics of hatred are in favour of following the Hindutva line, the former state president Rahul Sinha cites Rabindranath Tagore to ‘counter’ these leaders strongly argue against statehood for north Bengal and urged people to remember Rabindranath Tagore’s call for unity through “Rakhi Bandhan” to protest the British government’s decision to divide Bengal in 1905. Sinha, in a video message posted on social media, said Tagore had taken up the onus for promoting unity through the Rakhi festival in 1905 when the British rulers had first planned to partition Bengal. “These days, we find some people are again talking about partition of our state. They want to finish off the rich cultural heritage and history of Bengal and want to change its name. We should all stand united,” said Sinha.

These contrasting voices underline the fact that the BJP leaders are moving through a bind and they do not have any clear concept of the political line the party should follow. A section of the BJP leaders feel that those who want to change the geographical boundaries of Bengal and its history should realize that it is incongruent to Rabindranath Tagore’s thoughts and principles. These leaders feel “We should all uphold our rich heritage and strive to conserve our history. It would then be a real manifestation of honour to the poet”.

The state leaders endorsing the line of Shivprakash hold the view that the RSS leadership and central leadership of the BJP should redesign their strategy towards the TMC and Mamata. They apprehend that her entry into the national politics would simply endanger the political line of the party and turn it vulnerable as she would be carrying the electoral legacy of the state along with her. (IPA Service)