A Bharatiya Janata Party rally in support of its Cooch Behar candidate and Union Minister Nisith Pramanik, raising “Allahu Akbar” slogans grabbed eyeballs in north Bengal’s Dinhata on Thursday, but the reverberations could be far-reaching.
In his back-to-back rallies in West Bengal earlier this month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had asserted that Muslim women would vote against the Trinamool Congress because of the torture of women in Sandeshkhali.
BJP Cooch Behar president and MLA Sukumar Roy told The Sunday Guardian that Thursday’s rally was held with Muslims from two Assembly segments, Sitai and Dinhata. “We will be holding a rally with Muslims from the entire district in Cooch Behar town soon,” Roy said.
Roy said a large section of Rajbanshi Muslims from north Bengal, particularly from Suktabari area in Cooch Behar district, had participated in Narendra Modi’s rally in Siliguri earlier this month. “The situation here is changing. People are now labelling the TMC as communal because the party always uses Muslims as a vote bank,” Roy said.
Across the country, the BJP has taken a conscious decision to reach out to the community. PM Modi, in his rallies across the country, has repeatedly referred to the implementation of the Uniform Civil Code, the abolition of Triple Talaq and amid a pitch for unity, he did manage to bring in the topic of Pasmanda Muslims and Muslim women. Pasmanda Muslims are the most backward and socially oppressed among the community and are spread across the country.
The BJP has undertaken a special drive to reach out to the poorer sections within the community, especially those who have benefited from the Central Government’s social sector schemes. The party is also seeking to blunt the “fear mongering” that leaders like Mamata Banerjee are doing by raising a bogey about the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).
The BJP’s “Sneh Milan” and other events like Alp Sankhak Sneh Samvaad are some of the many attempts by the party to woo the community which has traditionally been averse to voting for them.
Taking a cue, Bengal BJP leaders have curated their election campaigns to exclude anti-Muslim rhetoric that had been used during the 2021 Assembly election rallies, and are making it a point to assert that the party is in favour of “Bharatiya Muslims”.
Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari’s rallies across the state now have a common feature: a prominent presence of Muslims in close proximity to the leader, whose presence cannot be ignored by either attendees or the television cameras. After all, as a whole, around 30% or more of Bengal’s voters are Muslim and in some Lok Sabha seats, it is as high as 70%.
However, BJP insiders say that the groundwork to make inroads into the community that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had termed as “her milch cow”, had been in the works for months. And the results are slowly becoming visible.
More than a year ago, the party had identified 65 minority—read Muslim—dominated Lok Sabha seats in India. Out of them, 13 are in West Bengal. The party decided to work in these seats through its Minority Morcha, which is headed by Charles Nandi, a Christian.
The party decided to focus on Diamond Harbour, represented by Mamata Banerjee’s nephew and Trinamool number two Abhishek Banerjee; Krishnanagar, then represented by Mahua Moitra; Basirhat of which Sandeshkhali is a part; apart from Murshidabad, Baharampur and Jangipur, all of which have more than 60% Muslims. Others on the list were Raiganj, Maldah Uttar and Maldah Dakshin, Birbhum, Mathurapur, Joynagar and Jadavpur.
At the heart of this initiative are the Modi Mitras, foot soldiers enlisted from diverse backgrounds, including doctors, educators, lawyers, entrepreneurs, clerics, and retired government employees. They traverse the social landscape, engaging in conversations at weddings, tea sessions, and community gatherings, disseminating the BJP’s economic message and extolling the virtues of the Prime Minister’s leadership.
“In these 13 Lok Sabha constituencies, we already have five lakh Modi Mitras on the ground who are working round the clock for the last six months to ensure that Muslims get to understand how the BJP under Modi-ji is working to bring development to all sections of society. These people get the Modi Mitra certificate,” says Charles Nandi.
“Mamata, the CPM and the Congress have always kept Muslims as voters, not as citizens who deserve to enjoy the fruits of development equitably,” he adds, pointing out that in its 2011 poll manifesto, the Trinamool Congress devoted five pages talking about Muslims. “In the 2016 manifesto, it came down to three pages. In 2021, the word Muslim was mentioned only two times in their manifesto,” he says. This shows the lack of interest on Mamata’s part to develop the Muslim community, he claimed.
“We have to distinguish between the political Muslims and the religious Muslims. While the religious Muslims are mostly the older people who are conservative, the political Muslims are usually the young men and women who understand that empowerment and development are their right and that the BJP government is working for equitable development.” he adds.
Jamal Siddiqui, the all-India president of the BJP’s Minority Morcha, has been coming to the state every month and has addressed meetings in Muslim-dominated constituencies like Jangipur and Maldah South. More are in the offing. The BJP’s Lok Sabha candidates too are following the party’s cues. For example, the BJP’s Tamluk candidate, former High Court judge Abhijit Gangopadhyay, offered a chadar at Mahishadal dargah after praying at Gobindo Jiu temple of Mahishadal Rajbari during his campaign on Friday.
However, the Trinamool Congress dismisses any chance of Muslims voting for the BJP. “Everybody, Muslims and Hindus, know what Mamata Banerjee has done for them. Social sector schemes like Lakshmir Bhandar, widow pension, old-age pension, student scholarships are benefitting all sections of society. The BJP’s uran khatola will crash land on 4 June when the results are declared,” Kunal Ghosh, the Trinamool’s chief spokesperson, predicts.