DECODING CPI(M)’S DECLINE IN BENGAL

The CPI(M) finds itself relegated to a supporting role as the BJP and the Trinamul tussle for supremacy — a staggering fall from grace for the once all-conquering Marxists

May 23, 2019, will go down as a significant date in Bengal’s political history. As BJP members and supporters celebrated victory from 18 Lok Sabha seats in the state at Muralidhar Lane — headquarters of the party’s Bengal unit — visitors to 31, Alimuddin Street barely a few kilometres away were greeted with stony silence.

As the main power centre in Bengal politics for the best part of three decades, the nondescript Muzaffar Ahmed Bhavan — headquarters of the CPI(M) — had witnessed several historic firsts. Only this time, there was no cause for celebration— the Left Front had drawn a blank in Bengal in the General Elections for the first time since Independence and the CPI(M) had all but surrendered its position as the main opposition to a party that was till 2014 a bit-part player in the state’s political arena.

ALIENATING CORE SUPPORT

Having stormed to power in 1977, the Jyoti Basu-led Left Front government undertook Operation Barga — a land reform movement to record the names of bargadars (sharecroppers) while avoiding the time-consuming method of recording through the settlement machinery. It bestowed on the bargadars legal protection against eviction by landlords and entitled them to the due share of the produce.

The success of Operation Barga formed the backbone of the CPI(M)’s rural stronghold and had led to a groundswell of support for the party in its heydey.

But that success would eventually turn out to be a double-edged sword when Basu’s successor, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, embarked on a drive to industrialise Bengal’s largely rural economy.

“…The campaign (to industrialise Bengal) ran into an unyielding obstacle: because of the party’s own policies, it was difficult for anyone to own enough land to build a factory on it,” Alex Traub wrote in The Collapse of Secularism in West Bengal.

“Rather than resolve this contradiction, the CPI(M) sought to impose its will. The party seized land from poor farmers, its traditional base, provoking mass protests that police and party cadres tried to crush.”

Bhattacharjee would not have needed to embark on his rapid industrialisation drive had militant trade unionism and alleged extortion not led to the flight of capital, rendering thousands jobless.

“…the workers could not even enjoy their earnings in full because ‘the party’ took a cut. And now even the workers understand that fear of ‘the party’ is keeping capital away from Bengal — and without money there can be no upgradation of machinery, nothing spent on teaching new skills,” T.V.R. Shenoy wrote.

While essentially a party of the workers and peasants, the CPI(M) also enjoyed support from the urban elite — the so-called Bengali bhadralok. Singur-Nandigram and the excesses of the party’s cadre base alienated this support as well.

AN ANTICIPATED ROUT

For the CPI(M) (and Left Front) that had been at the forefront of politics in Bengal since its formation in 1964, either as the ruling party or a militant opposition, the decline has been staggering.

Having surrendered its 34-year reign to Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamul Congress in a rout, the CPI(M) vowed to introspect, purge the lumpen elements, and come back stronger. Nine years later, it finds itself even further away from the mainstream.

The CPI(M) leadership, once known for an uncanny ability to read ground realities, had completely lost touch with the grassroots by the time it was voted out. For a Communist party, that is as close to blasphemy as it gets. Decades of power had made the leadership complacent, egotistical, and, in all probability, delusional.

“Was it plain and simple arrogance, accompanied by a noticeable decline in the quality of the leadership, which led the (Left) Front, and the Marxists in particular, to wear blinkers?” Ranabir Ray Choudhury wrote in 2011 as he tried to decode the reasons behind the CPI(M)’s spectacular collapse.

“If so, was the arrogance a natural growth flowing from having exercised power continuously for 34 long years, something which would perhaps have afflicted any other political outfit in a similar situation?”

What Ray Choudhury didn’t take into account was a Communist party is not “any other political outfit”. Long known and revered for its cadre-based regimented structure with an ideological fountain to drink from, the CPI(M)’s foundation was shaken when it started inducting and elevating strongmen into the party fold.

“Local body elections were just around the corner (in 1977–78). The total number of dedicated CPI(M) members was then estimated at 27,000. There was no way the party could find suitable candidates for the thousands of contests from its own battle-hardened ranks. That was when it decided to co-opt outsiders, winnability being almost the sole criterion,” Shenoy wrote.

“This led to an influx of members who had never demonstrated any allegiance to the core beliefs of the party.”

For a long time, these ‘outsiders’ were only meant to make up the numbers. Once the old guard that had led the party to consecutive electoral successes began to step aside, the ‘outsiders’ started to gain prominence. Many of them went on to be inducted into the state secretariat, the party’s highest decision-making body in Bengal.

As the party slowly began to lose control of the lumpen elements that had made their way into the party, people’s resentment against it started to boil. Nearly a decade after being voted out, the CPI(M) still has to field allegations of Local/Zonal Committee leaders holding kangaroo courts or demanding protection money, which duly went to meet their quota in the party fund, from local businessmen.

“Violence signified and guaranteed party power — until it finally overtook politics entirely, rendering the CPI(M) not just grotesque, but absurd,” wrote Traub.

While Singur-Nandigram may have been the tipping point, discontent against the CPI(M) was brewing for a long time.

“Clearly, the Trinamul-Congress combine’s cataclysmic victory suggests that the intensity of the pent-up anger on the part of the people against the Left Front, and the CPI(M) in particular, had crossed all normal bounds, giving the Assembly elections the character of a dam-burst,” Ray Choudhury wrote.

CULT OF PERSONALITY

For a party that propagates collectivism in its politics, the Marxists in Bengal carefully nurtured the cult of personality. In stalwarts such as Jyoti Basu, former Bengal unit secretary Promod Dasgupta, and Harekrishna Konar, the legendary peasants’ leader, the CPI(M) has quite a few idols that it believes the new generation of party workers should aspire to. Even today, any rally of the CPI(M) would seem incomplete without Basu’s picture adorning placards.

“Inside his party, the no-nonsense Basu was neither known for his interest in ideological hair-splitting nor in lobbying for factional support to establish his opinion. He remained almost unchallenged both in the government and the party after (Promod) Dasgupta’s death in 1982,” was how The Telegraph summed up Basu’s stature among party cadres after his passing in 2010.

Bhattacharjee, during his 11 years as chief minister, constantly battled with Basu’s shadow — both in the party and in government. While he eventually developed a huge following later in his stint, the comparisons with Basu remained.

Many believed, and still do, that the party would not be staring at a wipeout if Basu had still been in charge.

FAILURE TO ADAPT

For a generation of Bengalis who had only seen the CPI(M) in power, tales of its militant opposition were only myths and legend. When it lost power, the party vowed to get back to the streets.

But apart from a few token marches, the CPI(M) has been absent from the streets. Yet it all could have been so different. From the chit fund scam to the Narada sting operation, the current ruling dispensation has given the opposition plenty of fodder to hit the streets. However, a lack of visionary leadership has held the party back.

“The single biggest failure of the Left has been its inability to change according to the times and remain relevant to a fast-changing electorate. The party still continues to talk about the perils of neo-capitalism and globalisation in all forums, failing to see how these issues find near-zero resonance with the electorate,” veteran journalist and analyst Rajat Roy told Outlook magazine.

With the BJP’s rise as a potent force since 2014, the CPI(M) has been pushed to the sidelines even further.

Large-scale defection of cadres, and many mid-level leaders, has also dented the party’s organisation.

“…many social scientists have argued that the CPI(M)-led Left Front used its position in power to develop a kind of patron-client relationship where it secured political support by doling favours via its hold on power,” the Mint reported.

“Not only did the membership of the party and its mass organisations stop growing after it lost power in 2011, it has suffered a significant decline.”

This came amid significant muscle-flexing by the Trinamul, which drove out opposition party members from village after village and took control of CPI(M) offices—ironical, considering how once the Marxists used the same strategy when they were in charge.

ALLIANCE OF CONVENIENCE

The “tactical understanding” with the Congress ahead of the 2016 Assembly elections highlighted the lack of vision and foresight. For members and supporters of two parties that for decades had been taught to see each other as the “class enemy”, the alliance reeked of political opportunism.

These were two parties going hammer and tongs at each other in Kerala but cosying up to each other in Bengal at the same time.

Moreover, the future of the alliance even if it turned out to be successful was up in the air. There was no common manifestos or platform sharing between the two, and this created more confusion among the electorate. The CPI(M) even failed to convince the RSP, CPI, and the Forward Bloc — Left Front constituents — about the need for the “understanding”.

It also came too late in the day for grassroot-level workers to spread their message, resulting in the inevitable return of Mamata with a bigger mandate.

The CPI(M), on the other hand, lost its status as the main opposition to the Congress.

SAFFRON SURGE

The BJP’s sudden rise has pushed the CPI(M) closer to the brink. Being a border state with the history of a bloody partition and communal riots, Bengal has always been sitting on a tinderbox.

“The emergence of Communist parties and the sheer dominance of the Left Front from 1978 ensured that people were workers, peasants and other professionals first and representatives of their community only thereafter. The CPI(M) may have kept religious identity in mind at the time of selecting candidates for elections but this consideration did not become paramount, like in other states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar,” wrote Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.

Mamata’s reign as chief minister, however, has coincided with a surge in cases of communal violence. The BJP has accused Mamata of appeasing Muslims, who constitute nearly 30% of the state’s population and, hence, wield strong influence on the fate of elections. Bengal has not been immune to the growing popularity of Narendra Modi and his anti-Muslim rhetoric as well. This has led to the acceptance that Mamata indeed allows the minority community get away with murder to protect her seat, enabling the BJP to sharpen its rhetoric and expand its base.

Amid this competitive communalism, the CPI(M)’s message has failed to find resonance with the masses despite being the only force ideologically equipped to return Bengal from the brink of identity politics.

Mamata, however, has blamed the CPI(M) for assisting the BJP’s rise. “…They transferred their votes to the BJP in Bengal. The CPI(M)’s henchmen have now become BJP’s assets,” the Bengal chief minister said.

Analysing the changing electoral fortunes of the CPI(M) and the Left Front does, however, lend some credence to her claims.

In the 2014 General Elections, the Left Front cornered around 29.71% of the popular vote. In 2019, its vote share tanked to a mere 6.28%. On the other hand, the BJP, which had a vote share of 17.02% in 2014, increased it to 40.25% in 2019.

In terms of vote swing, the Trinamul’s share in 2019 went up from 39.05% in 2014 to 43.28%, while the Congress’s came down to 5.61% from 9.58%. The CPI(M), on the other hand, suffered a 23.43% negative swing, while the BJP bagged an additional 23.03% votes.

Former Tripura chief minister and CPI(M) polituburo member Manik Sarkar, who had himself seen the party surrender to the BJP in his state in 2018, warned of this tendency of supporters drifting towards the saffron outfit despite their diametrically opposite ideologies.

“To gain freedom from the TMC (Trinamul), don’t make the mistake of choosing the BJP. It will be a blunder. It will be self-destruction,” he said at a rally in Bengal.

But these warnings fell on deaf ears as the BJP stepped into the political vacuum in the opposition space, bagging 18 of the state’s 42 seats.

A BRIGHT FUTURE?

The decimation in the General Elections, however, might still turn out to be a blessing in disguise for the CPI(M). Ridiculed for years for not having any youth face, the senior leadership has started paying more attention to the mass organisations that have for many years been nurseries for new recruits.

Since the pan-India lockdown from March 25 was announced, community kitchens run by the Students’ Federation of India, the party’s students’ wing, and the Democratic Youth Federation of India, its youth wing, have drawn huge numbers from members of marginalised communities.

The party had to double its efforts following the devastation caused by Cyclone Amphan. Its frontal organisations also lent support to relief and rehabilitation of those displaced by the super cyclone.

The students and the youths have started taking on more prominent roles in rallies and the media — dominated for too long by grey-haired septuagenarians. The students’ wing also led the protests against Modi when he visited Kolkata in January following the passage of the the Citizenship (Amendment) Act in Parliament.

In an attempt to boost its anti-citizenship act movement, “…the Left party has resuscitated a moribund post-partition-era mass organisation — the United Central Refugee Council — to breathe life into its campaign against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, the National Register of Citizens and the National Population Register,” The Telegraph reported.

The organisation was at the forefront of the Left parties’ demand for rehabilitation of refugees post Partition.

“The organisation was set up by Left Front leaders in the 1950s and it played a key role in the rise of the communist parties in Bengal and the eventual ascension to power in 1977. We have decided to revive it as the new central act and the threat of the NRC and the NPR will affect those born in what used to be refugee families in the sixties and the seventies,” The Telegraph quoted CPI(M) state committee member Gautam Ghosh as saying.

Despite these developments, the 2021 elections would be too early for the CPI(M) to mount a comeback. The best it can hope for is to regain its status as the main opposition before challenging for the 2024 General Elections with a leaner and hungrier cadre base. Till then, its main target should be to stay relevant and go back to its roots.

The views expressed in this blog are mine unless otherwise mentioned.

ON THE ROAD TO RUIN, GUIDED BY BENGAL’S PRIDE

Chronology of Bengal’s slide into the abyss amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, courtesy Mamata Banerjee

Towards the end of February, when the world was coming to terms with the novel coronavirus pandemic, Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee — darling of the state’s liberal intelligentsia — was busy claiming that it was a ploy by the Centre to divert attention from the communal violence that had flared up in Delhi. By this time, the World Health Organization (WHO) had already declared the virus that originated in Wuhan in China’s Hubei province a ‘Public Health Emergency of International Concern’.

At this point, Bengal was still untouched by the virus, leading many journalists who hail from the state to ponder if that was indeed the case or the state government was just suppressing the data. The cynicism was not unjust because Mamata’s tenure as chief minister has not been the most transparent, as evident from accusations that the state government fudged data on dengue deaths and the alleged destruction of evidence in the chit fund scam.

India recorded its first novel coronavirus infection on January 30 after a University of Wuhan student tested positive in Kerala. In the month that followed, the state’s CPI(M)-led government put in place a stringent protocol and tracing system to sniff out contacts who might have been exposed to the virus. The Kerala government’s prompt action has paid dividends with the state having the highest recovery rate in India and managing to almost flatten the curve — for which health minister K.K. Shailja has earned worldwide acclaim.

Bengal recorded its first case on March 17 when the 18-year-old son of a bureaucrat tested positive for the virus. This was after the World Health Organization had already classified the novel coronavirus as a pandemic. Yet, the Bengal government had put no protocol in place.

The government’s lackadaisical attitude to the deadly virus was highlighted by how the teenager, who had returned from the United Kingdom and despite being advised a two-week home quarantine, moved around the city for two days before finally going for a checkup. His bureaucrat mother, meanwhile, continued to meet officials in the state secretariat.

Only after news of the teen’s errant behaviour became public knowledge and some ‘tongue lashing’ by Mamata that the state government swung into action. Mamata herself went around Calcutta to teach social distancing to the citizens.

Having already roped in election strategist Prashant Kishor and keen to bolster her image as the ‘people’s leader’ ahead of 2021’s Assembly polls, Mamata’s Trinamul Congress had launched the Bangla’r Gorbo Mamata (Bengal’s Pride Mamata) campaign. The outbreak of SARS-COV2 in India gave her another opportunity to polish her image.

But the PR exercise was just that — a PR exercise.

On March 20, Mamata announced some measures to control the outbreak and spread of the virus, including e-Offices, 50% staffing for government offices and private enterprises, and a Rs 200-crore fund to tackle the economic impact.

But that was too little, too late. Public transport was still on the roads and market places, malls, and restaurants were all allowed to function as usual.

On March 22, the state government announced a complete shutdown in Bengal from the following day, a day before Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a nationwide lockdown. A meeting of major political parties was called to discuss ways of fighting the deadly virus.

But the optics was lost as news began to emerge of the harrowing state of the health care infrastructure with patients being turned away without testing if they didn’t show symptoms due to lack of isolation facilities. This was corroborated by National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases director Shanta Dutta, who said the state was not testing enough samples despite having adequate test kits.

“I am not aware of the reason. We have enough kits. Our lab is prepared to test at least 250 samples per day. We would welcome more samples for testing,” Dutta said.

This was after Mamata, known for her take-no-prisoner attitude towards the Centre, had already attacked New Delhi for not giving permission to increase the number of testing centres in the state.

Instead of using the lockdown to strengthen the state’s health care sector, Mamata turned a blind eye as visuals of lockdown violations flooded social media. The chief minister went as far as blaming the Centre for extending the lockdown and apologised to her Muslim electorate for their hardships during Ramzan.

Mamata also called questions related to the Tablighi Jamaat congregation in New Delhi “communal” and avoided answers. The state’s BJP unit jumped at the opportunity to criticise Mamata for her alleged “politics of appeasement”.

“She is bringing communal agenda and politics here too. We got a number from Delhi that around 270 people are here. At least seven of them were identified in my constituency Kharagpur. Locals have informed the administration too,” the BJP’s Bengal unit chief Dilip Ghosh said.

But the worst was yet to come. As positive cases started to rise, a peculiar theme emerged in the government’s daily briefings.

“The daily bulletin, which was first released as early as February, was initially an important tool for keeping the people informed. However, as cases grew in the state, the bulletins were constantly altered — sometimes to omit certain details and at other times to add details. This not only caused confusion and panic, but also raised eyebrows about the government’s handling of the crisis,” The Hindu reported.

Bengal reported its first death related to COVID-19 on March 23. Between March 31 and April 2, that figure had jumped from two to seven. “On April 2, a committee of doctors engaged by the State government as a Special Task Force against COVID-19 met at the state secretariat and announced that the death toll had increased to seven. However, within an hour, the government revised the number, The Hindu reported.

Chief secretary Rajiva Sinha said four of those deaths were caused by “co-morbidities” and the death toll from COVID-19 was only three.

On April 3, the Bengal government set up an expert committee that would audit the suspected deaths due to COVID-19 and examine “whether they died of the viral infection or co-morbidities”.

This expert panel would run into one controversy after another as allegations of under-reporting the number of positive cases and deaths came to dominate Bengal.

CPI(M) state secretary Surjya Kanta Mishra, who was health minister in the previous Left Front government, alleged Mamata was misleading the people.

“According to WHO, any person who tests positive for COVID-19, is an infected person. And if an infected person, even with comorbidity conditions dies, then it is considered as a COVID death… The chief minister is misleading people and lying. It is rubbish,” Mishra said.

By the middle of April, data showed that Bengal’s testing was the lowest among the larger states.

The lack of testing and adequate personal protective equipment for medical personnel led to the West Bengal Doctors’ Forum hitting out at the Bengal government.

“There is a huge scope of improvement. We are hearing this from state and the central government but every day we are getting calls from doctors denying to perform night duty as there is no PPE. The doctors have been working throughout and never left the battlefield. But they need their weapons. They need their PPE. I am requesting both the central and state government(s) to provide PPEs…,” West Bengal Doctors’ Forum president Arjun Dasgupta said.

“We have already heard that they have the kits for testing. We have heard about the South Korean model, the Vietnam model, Kerala model. Our testing number needs to grow up rapidly.”

The lack of PPE kits snowballed into a huge issue for the Bengal government, which allegedly provided raincoats to doctors on the frontline, leading many to come out in protest.

But these concerns went unheard. Instead, Mamata and her party leaders continued to attack the Centre for singling it out for blame. This attitude continued when an Inter-Ministerial Central Team visited Calcutta, Howrah and certain other districts to take stock of the situation.

Its report said that at 12.8%, Bengal had the highest mortality rate among COVID-19 patients in the country, and accused it of low testing, weak surveillance, and discrepancies in reporting cases.

The Inter Ministerial Central Team had also sought to know from chief secretary Sinha the system the government’s expert panel used to approve the death of COVID-19 patients.

The team also pointed out multiple flaws on the government’s initiative in containing the virus’s spread, including a large number of patients being kept at isolation wards and hospitals facing difficulties in receiving test reports even after a week.

After being blasted by the central team, the Bengal government performed an uncharacteristic volte face as it admitted that the system of collating data about COVID-19 cases and deaths was not perfect and that some numbers had slipped through the cracks. But chief secretary Sinha still refused to include in the state’s cumulative COVID-19 death count the patients labelled by the audit committee as co-morbidity deaths.

“The arrangement we had started, we thought it was fool proof but all arrangements should be dynamic and improved by our learning,” Sinha said. “We have now tried to ensure no figures were lost in the cracks.”

Since then, Bengal has reported a steady rise in the number of positive cases and death toll. As on May 31, Bengal’s total cases stand at 5,130, of which 2,851 are active. It has so far reported 309 deaths.

While the mortality rate has come down with significantly high number of tests being performed in recent weeks, Mamata’s decision to reopen the state from June 1 has sparked panic.

Bengal is still reeling from the devastation caused by Cyclone Amphan on May 20 — according to Mamata herself, the damage could reach a trillion rupees. Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to live in relief camps and doctors are fearful that these facilities could become the new hotspots for the virus.

Then there remains the issue of migrant workers returning from other states. The state’s policy on testing and isolating them after their arrival is still not clear. After Cyclone Amphan, the situation has even worsened and it is only a matter of time before community transmission grips Bengal.

The manner in which Mamata, a mercurial and enigmatic leader famed for her never-say-die attitude, announced the easing of lockdown measures was also a cause for concern. Instead of asking people to be careful, Mamata said “sleep with COVID-19 as your bedfellow. Turn COVID-19 into your pashbalish (bolster)…”.

“Sorry, I seek forgiveness from the people. Bengal had tried a great deal and controlled the outbreak considerably, but not everything is in the hands of the state government,” she said.

The policy of social distancing has already gone for a toss after the state allowed limited public transport to run. Images of people travelling in packed buses have sparked horror among residents of the state.

Now, with the decision to open up places of worship, eateries, malls, and businesses, the state is bracing itself for an outbreak that its creaking health care sector cannot handle. And the blame lies squarely on its chief minister — the darling of liberals, the conqueror of the CPI(M), Mamata Banerjee.

The views expressed in this blog are the author’s unless otherwise mentioned.

BENGAL: A TINDERBOX OF COMMUNALISM WAITING TO EXPLODE

The Basirhat-Baduria violence lays bare the faultlines in Bengal’s communal harmony

The clashes in Basirhat and Baduria, two towns with sizable Muslim populations, have caught many by surprise, especially the social elite who thought Bengal was insulated from what is, generally, a north Indian phenomenon.

As border states, Bengal and Assam have had to deal with mass immigration in two waves — 1947 and 1971. While Assam has suffered sectarian violence over the years, the influx of mainly Muslims from Bangladesh did not change the demographics or the balance of power in Bengal.

Police records from 2014 revealed the state’s rural parts registered 12 incidents of communal violence in 2008, while that number went up to 106 in 2013. While Bengal has always had a reputation for being a peaceful state, it has previously struggled with communalism.

The Left Front, during its 34-year rule, managed to stem such incidents. However, politics of appeasement and polarisation since then have taken its toll.

The riots in Basirhat are just the tip of the iceberg. A Facebook post sparked the riots, and Facebook is used to fan emotions on both sides. BJP leaders and its vast troll army on Twitter have resorted to using fake images to spread rumours about slaughter of Hindus, while the ruling dispensation is trying to shield perpetrators of vandalism.

Bengal has a historic association with civil resistance, and persistence in the face of severe hardships — it survived the famine, Calcutta Killings, two partitions and Naxalism.

But this time, it’s different. Political parties are stoking the fires of communalism for electoral gains, while religious people are falling prey to that trap and resorting to mass vandalism. Mobilisation of public opinion against such efforts is the need of the hour. However, depending on political forces to do that is a far-fetched dream, peace-loving Bengalis need to take up the mantle themselves.

The battle ahead is long and difficult and Bengal needs to find its spirit of resistance to survive.

The views expressed in this blog are mine unless otherwise mentioned.

THE UNRAVELLING OF MAMATA BANERJEE

Once hailed as Bengal’s messiah, the chief minister has set it off on a path to destruction

The last couple of years of Left Front rule in Bengal was unique. The power centre was, unofficially, almost divided into two — an elected government at Writers’ Building and a people’s one at Harish Chatterjee Street, the location of Mamata Banerjee’s ancestral home.

The loosening of the iron fist with which the Left had ruled Bengal for 32 years (at that time) coincided with Mamata riding high on a “wind of change”. She was being seen as the chief minister in-waiting, the unifying force who would deliver the once-great state to the promised land. The intellectuals, anti-Left voters and the media all lapped up her Badla Noy, Bodol Chai (no vengeance, only change) rhetoric; after all, she was the self-proclaimed “symbol of honesty”.

Bengal had seen an unprecedented “brain drain” during the Left Front rule — education and healthcare were in a mess, industrialisation hit a record low, dissent muffled — Mamata promised corrective measures. Gripped by the passion in her speeches and drawing from her long history of struggle against the Communists, Bengal slowly began to take her seriously. She also found support among the state’s intellectuals.

But then she made deals with the devils — the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha and the Maoist insurgents. Bimal Gurung and his Morcha had set the Darjeeling hills on fire, demanding a separate state for the Gorkhas — Gorkhaland. The hill town was burning, administration was non-existant and tourism suffered. Mamata promised to return peace to the hills.

Although there was no formal alliance with the Morcha, Gurung backed the Trinamul-Congress alliance in the 2011 Assembly polls. She repaid him in kind after the elections, creating the Gorkha Territorial Administration and signing a treaty that included, among other things, a loophole for further unrest on the demand for Gorkhaland.

Then there was the backing from the Maoists in the state’s disturbed western belt, collectively called Junglemahal, where the rebels killed over a hundred CPI(M) and Left workers between 2007 and 2011. Mamata and her party’s leaders shared the dais with Chhatradhar Mahato, a local resident, who liaised between the Maoists under its leader Kishenji and the Trinamul.

Former Trinamul MP Kabir Suman confirmed that the Maoists had supported Trinamul during the Nandigram violence, corroborating the Left Front government’s allegation that Mamata used them to fan violence in the area.

But Mamata’s overwhelming charisma drowned those allegations. She played the Muslim card and began to court imams for their support. Being a border state and with a 28 per cent Muslim population, Bengal was always sitting on a tinderbox of communal violence. One of the greatest legacies of the Left Front government was restricting the outbreak of communal violence in the state. But it never tried to emancipate the traditionally backward Muslim community, even after publication of the Sachar Commitee report, and Mamata used this to her advantage.

Her slogan of “Maa, Mati, Manush” reverberated with the people and she won the 2011 polls in a landslide.

The story from then is one of decline, her carefully hatched strategies coming undone at every step of the way.

First, she got into a confrontation with the Maoists, culminating in the assassination of Kishenji. Although a decisive victory against the Maoists won her plaudits, allegations of human rights violations were also levelled at her.

The relationship with Bimal Gurung and the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha also did not take long to sour.

Mamata’s hankering for more power and an Opposition-less state led to drove her into registering cases against the Left, Congress, the Morcha, et al. The plan was to scare them into joining the Trinamul. If that didn’t work, money was thrown at them.

The chit fund scam and the arrests of proprieters of many Ponzi forms exposed how the ruling party used fear tactics into exploiting them for money. This money was then used for horse trading of MLAs and Opposition leaders.

Election after election saw the government use brute force and even the police to strengthen the ruling dispensation — be it the panchayat, municipal, Lok Sabha or Assembly polls. Such atrocities were not even seen at the height of “red tyranny”. Former Trinamul leaders had accused her of being a dictator, Mamata was living up to that allegation.

The first instance of this dictatorial trait coming to the fore was when she decided to ban all newspapers apart from those friendly to her government and party from public libraries. She even ordered the Opposition to sit silently for 10 years as she went about pandering to the lumpen elements in her party. The recent spurt in violence in Darjeeling was a direct fallout of this dictatorial trait. All of a sudden, Mamata imposed Bengali as a mandatory language in schools across the state, sparking resentment among the linguistic and ethnic minorities.

With industries unwilling to set up shop, and the existing ones shutting down, she offered tacit support to the syndicate raj that began to run amok in Kolkata and other parts of the state. Most of these syndicates are controlled by the Trinamul and consist of anti-social elements that come in handy to scare voters during elections.

As chief minister, Mamata has constantly blamed the previous government of saddling the state with a huge debt. Yet, she always found money to pay to local clubs, most of which are the breeding grounds for anti-social elements associated with the Trinamul. This diversion of public funds to local goons came at the cost of infrastructure development.

In order to keep the support of the Muslim community, she announced an imam bhata (stipends for imams), sparking widespread condemnation among leaders of other religious communities for such polarising tactics. There have been allegations of Mamata overlooking crimes committed by members of the community, inevitably giving rise to a sense of invincibility among their members. The ongoing communal riots in Basirhat, a town close to the Bangladesh border with a huge Muslim population, also has its roots in Mamata’s attempt to appease and the BJP’s plan to polarise. There have also been allegations that the local MLA tried to shield Muslims who had taken part in the vandalism of government property.

Instead of trying to increase literacy rates in Muslim dominated villages in the state’s backward areas, introducing them to secular studies or creating employment opportunities for them, she adopted a policy of appeasement, as many have claimed.

But the Hindus in Bengal are also not as secular as they are known to be. The Left Front had suppressed all kinds of communal polarisation during its 34-year tenure, but allegations of Mamata appeasing the Muslims have given rise to a new Hindutva brand of politics in Bengal. The chief minister’s desire to purge the threat to her government from the Congress and the Left led her to leave an open playing field for the BJP to flourish in the state, and that has sparked tensions even further.

The BJP’s agenda is simple — appeal to the upper-caste Hindu majority through fear mongering. The BJP began to hark back to times when the Bengali Hindus ruled as overlords. Its Ram Navami celebrations, armed with swords, was clearly aimed at fanning the communal divide, which Mamata began in the state, and use it to its advantage. This sets a dangerous precedent, the Calcutta Killings of 1946 still haunts many survivors from those times and the last thing that the state, already struggling with lack of jobs and infrastructure, needs is another communal violence.

If that happens, that will be the end of Bengal as we know it and Mamata and the BJP will both have to share the blame. It will be the unfortunate end of a cycle of events begun by Mamata, but brought to its natural conclusion by the BJP.

The views expressed in this blog are mine unless otherwise mentioned.