The Challenge Of Restoring Bengal's Lost Glory | Opinion

The BJP's victory in the West Bengal Assembly election will be remembered for a long time not just because it marks the party gaining political power in a state where it has for long been seen as an also ran, but also for the comprehensive and crushing defeat suffered by the TMC.

Mamata Banerjee and her nephew may try hard to delegitimize the BJP’s victory by citing extraordinary measures taken by the Election Commission of India, ranging from the Special Intensive Review of voter lists to the deployment of Central Armed Forces, turning the election into a David versus Goliath fight. But David lost and truth be told there is little or no sympathy for him in West Bengal. (ALSO READ: Suvendu Adhikhari To Be New Bengal CM)

The sheer scale of the BJP’s victory is unimaginable. The party’s top leadership had sensed the discontent and set about the task of harnessing it in a methodical manner. For the past couple of years this preparation went on right under Mamata Banerjee’s nose but she failed to see it and her party colleagues could not muster the courage to force her to see it and stave off an end so humiliatingly brutal.

It would be easy and absolutely correct to explain the BJP’s juggernaut flattening the TMC as the consequence of a massive consolidation of Hindu votes that outweighed the Muslim vote which Mamata Banerjee had banked upon. But this explanation is at once simplistic and not entirely reflective of facts that merit attention for a better understanding of the jhor, or storm, that has blown across West Bengal, from the hills to the sea, uprooting and destroying carefully cultivated to keep the BJP forever an outsider, a bohiragoto, in the state’s power politics.

Cynics would argue that corruption is no longer an election issue in our country and that crime at best has traction in mobilizing street protests. Monday’s result shows both premises are wrong. The voters of Bengal have voted overwhelmingly against the massive corruption that had come to define the TMC Government – images of cash being recovered from a Minister who was possibly the closest aide of Mamata Banerjee have lingered on as have the pain and anguish of thousands of teachers, middle class Bengalis, who found themselves out of their jobs because another Minister had taken cash and given jobs to thousands of others. (ALSO READ: How Suvendu Adhikari Flipped The Script On Mamata Banerjee)

Similarly, the criminality of a callous administration and an indifferent if not complicit political leadership has been punished by the voters. Chanting women are safest in West Bengal does not make sense or carry conviction when facts fly into the face of such claims. West Bengal has the dubious distinction of being lazy about registering complaints and, worse, the conviction rate is among the lowest in the country. While other states have witnessed a decline in child marriage, West Bengal has seen a spurt. This is a state where women are publicly flogged as punishment and the political leadership keeps quiet because silence equates votes.

If Mamata Banerjee thought her extreme communal politics of minority appeasement – it began with declaring Urdu an official language of West Bengal – would not fetch a backlash then she is not quite the astute politician she is made out to be. Over the years her indulgence of Islamists and Jihadists to the exclusion of mounting Hindu concerns has generated anguish and then anger which has gathered pace with political developments in Bangladesh where the minority Hindu population is under attack. The Jamaat winning all constituencies along Bangladesh’s border with India, the Hindu Bengali suddenly woke up to the reality of the enemy at the gate. In a sense, this has served as a tipping point in coalescing Hindu votes against Mamata Banerjee and her patently communal regime.

Last, though not least, dole works up to a point and not beyond. That point has been reached in Bengal. Vast stretches of Bengal now appear to be devoid of young men and women who have migrated to other states to earn a livelihood, leaving behind old parents and ageing relatives. There was a time when Bengal would send out accomplished Bengalis – scientists, technicians, artists, actors, musicians, teachers, doctors, lawyers – who would become a part of the host state’s respected elite. Now Bengal has a diminishing number of accomplished Bengalis to send out. The meme about Gurgaon waiting for their Bengali maids to return after voting in the election was not the least funny; for many non-resident Bengalis, this writer included, it was extremely hurtful and depressing. (ALSO READ: How BJP Broke TMC’s Stronghold In Bengal With 3S)

All this and more that has gone wrong with Bengal has to change, and change fast. The BJP has to hit the ground running. A New Bengal and a second Renaissance are possible. Bengal has the wherewithal for both. What it needs is leadership. The BJP, having proven it can win Bengal, has to now steer the State to a future that would serve everybody well and restore the lost pride in being Bengal, being Bengali.

(Note: The writer, a veteran journalist, is Senior Advisor, Ministry of Information & Broadcasting. Views are personal.)