Mainstream WeeklyIt must have sounded bizarre to those who do not keep abreast of political developments in West Bengal that the BJP chief minister Suvendu Adhikari, thanked the CPI(M) for helping him defeat Mamata Banerjee by transferring votes to him. Adhikari made this statement to the press even as counting was still going and widespread complaints of opposition counting agents being thrown out of counting rooms were coming in.
For people living in the state however, this connection between Ram (the BJP) and Baam (the Left) has been an open secret for quite some time now.
The CPI(M) had registered a steep decline in its vote share between the 2009 parliamentary election, when it had polled 33 percent of the votes and 2014, the year of the ascendance of Modi to power at the Centre, when it polled only 23 percent. That election signaled a mass desertion of its voters to the BJP.
Adhikari was not referring to them, but to voters are still with the CPI(M). The tendency among such voters to shift en masse to the BJP was first noted during the 2018 panchayat elections and then again in the 2019 parliamentary elections and the 2021 Assembly elections. The slogan on the ground then, unbelievably, was “ekushe Ram, chhabbishe Baam” (Ram in 2021, Left in 2026).
The then general secretary of the party, Sitaram Yechury admitted this in 2019. Though in accordance with the West Bengal CPI(M)’s line, he underlined that it was “the Left support base”, that was driven to vote for the BJP, thanks to the “intense terror and repression” under TMC rule. During the 2021 Assembly election campaign, former Tripura chief minister Manik Sarkar had strongly advised against taking any foolhardy decision like voting the BJP into power, citing the disastrous Tripura experience, where people realized they had made a very big mistake. Both leaders were referring to those who voted for the BJP “tactically”, not to those who had shifted allegiance permanently.
Unfortunately, this is not the whole truth. The swing was not the doing of the Left’s support base alone, for the Party itself had an important role to play in it. This time, various messages to this effect had been in circulation the party’s WhatsApp groups in some districts, apart from the campaign by word of mouth – which has been reported in the media as well as discussed in the social media.
The stance taken by the state party leadership, in identifying TMC as the main enemy that needed to be defeated at all costs, even if that means BJP’s accession to power, has been no secret.
One can have no quarrel with the identification of the TMC as the Left’s main adversary in the state, especially since the former dislodged the latter from power in 2011. But strangely, this discourse has continued unabated from 2011, when there was no BJP threat on the horizon, till well after 2016 – when the designs of a transformed, virulent fascist BJP on West Bengal became absolutely clear. Everyone knows that since 2014, and more aggressively after 2016, the BJP and RSS in West Bengal have been organizing Ram Navami rallies where participants, including children, with swords and tridents, violently chant hateful slogans against “jihadis”.
In other words, even when the principal contradiction had changed, the party continued to sing the same old tune. Even when it became clear that politically, the BJP/RSS project is to turn Muslims into second class citizens, which is being violently executed in BJP-ruled states, the TMC remained the “main enemy”.
The one and only aim behind this perversity, it seems, was to take revenge on the TMC for dislodging the state CPI(M) from power, by returning the favour. It matters little to the CPI(M) what happens to the state, its Muslim minorities, its language and its culture. They have finally taken their revenge!
The position has still not changed when the BJP is rapidly turning the state into another Assam or UP and the same political rhetoric continues. The very first statement of the state secretary Mohammad Salim, immediately after “the results”, was a dead giveaway. It opened with the observation that “the results of the West Bengal Legislative Assembly elections make it clear that the people have voted against Trinamool’s boundless corruption and authoritarian rule. The people of the state wanted the fall of the Trinamool Congress government. BJP has taken advantage of this anger.”
This is as stark as it can be. It was only the BJP that “took advantage” of TMC misrule but the role of disenfranchisement of 27 lakh voters, the naked deployment of the state’s repressive machinery and the forcible capture of the state – all are whitewashed in this statement.
The state CPI(M) leadership in fact, has barely concealed its glee at the overthrow of the Mamata Banerjee government by the central forces, conducted under the watchful, day to day guidance of the Home Minister, for whom capturing West Bengal elections was more important than attending to Manipur, which was yet again on fire. That says something the CPI(M) will not acknowledge.