New Delhi: Union Home Minister Amit Shah is taking lessons in Bengali to address the people of Bengal during the campaign for the 2021 Assembly elections in the state. The attempt is to counter the narrative that West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her party, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) are trying to build, that the Bharatiya Janata Party is a Hindi heartland party and thus an “outsider” in the Bengali-speaking state.
Highly placed sources in the BJP have told The Sunday Guardian that Shah has hired a well-experienced Bengali tutor to give him lessons and that the tutor has been tasked with making Shah conversant in Bengali inside the next four months.
BJP leaders who are aware of this development also say that Shah is committed to speak in Bengali during his tours in the state so that he can touch the chord and sentiment of Bengalis and counter the BJP’s image of being an “outsider” party.
After losing Maharashtra and Jharkhand, the BJP is eyeing the upcoming Assembly elections in West Bengal as a challenge that must be won. Bengal is electorally crucial for BJP.
A senior BJP functionary told The Sunday Guardian: “The people of Bengal are very emotional about their rich cultural heritage and literature. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has been expoiting this sentiment to the hilt. This time, the BJP wants to leave no stones unturned. Therefore, Amit Shah himself has decided to learn Bengali. He is also learning about Bengal’s culture and literature so that he can speak about it during the election campaign in the state.”
Though the party performed well in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, by bagging 18 out of 42 seats in Bengal, state BJP leaders feel that if the party fails to evoke Bengali sentiments and counter the anti-Bengali narrative being built up by TMC, the party could lose crucial points in the state.
“Bengal is culturally rich and Bengali has always been a crucial factor for Bengalis. If our party president converses in Bengali, it will obviously dent the TMC’s attempt to malign the BJP’s image as a party of Hindi speaking people. Moreover, the BJP in West Bengal doesn’t have a prominent Bengali face to lead the party as of now and state elections are fought on local issues. Therefore, the use of the local language by the central leadership will help in convincing people that the BJP is not a party of the Hindi heartland, but a party of our own Bengalis. After all, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee is one of the ideologues of the party,” a BJP leader from West Bengal said.
The importance given to Bengali by the BJP can also be gauged from the fact that the national BJP has asked all its MPs to speak in Bengali to the national media to connect with their voters in Bengal.