Miracles of Mamata

Arunabha Bagchi , SNS, 08 June, 2016 : During the 2011 Assembly elections in West Bengal, there was unusual coverage of the event in the western media. They never understood the ‘strange’ phenomenon that the people of West Bengal voted Communists to power by their own free will in 1977 and kept them in power for 34 years. At long last, there was the real prospect of the Communists losing power to a diminutive lady who literally built up a one-woman party from scratch. Even my colleagues, with not much interest in Indian politics, asked me about Mamata Banerjee after reading about her in Dutch newspapers. Once she accomplished the miracle of ousting the Communists, the West lost interest in her. After all, her state was not really the hottest FDI destination, nor was it at the forefront of the digital revolution in India.

Political commentators in the national media have characterised Mamata Banerjee’s latest historic triumph as the death of Bengali bhadralok. They seem not to grasp the subtlety of the bhadralok culture in Bengal. Tithi Bhattacharya was spot on when she divided Bengali bhadralok into two sections in her book: The Sentinels of Culture: Class, Education and the Colonial Intellectual in Bengal. She identified them as ‘upper bhadralok’ and ‘lower bhadralok’. They both belong to the same upper castes of Brahmins, Baidyas and Kayasthas. Both sections avidly participated in the English educational system as it spread in Bengal. Upper bhadraloks are descendants of zamindars, the landed aristocrats, along with newcomers from the lower bhadralok section who break the barrier by being successful professionals using their brilliance and hard work. They are almost exclusively from Kolkata. The lower bhadralok section forms the vast majority of bhadraloks in Bengal. They are usually clerks in government offices, book-keepers in small business establishments, country lawyers and schoolteachers. Although they have sizable representation in Kolkata, they are spread all over the state in large numbers.

Upper bhadraloks in Kolkata supported Mamata Banerjee with full force after the firing in Nandigram. With their characteristic smugness, they were convinced that they played a decisive role in her huge victory in the 2011 state elections. They were soon embarrassed with the mercurial temperament of Didi, which did not get a makeover even after she became the Chief Minister from being a rabble-rouser. During the first year of her rule, she seemed to be in a hurry and acted vengefully against any criticism of her performance. She was ridiculed in the national media, with cue from the upper bhadralok section of Kolkata. After a major ministerial reshuffle, Didi seemed determined to pursue her own plans. From then on she ignored the upper bhadraloks altogether.

Banerjee’s most remarkable achievements so far were in Darjeeling and Junglemahal. The discontent among the Gurkhas in Darjeeling has been simmering for decades, almost from the start of Jyoti Basu’s reign. It flared up with disturbing regularity. Neither the CPI-M party bosses, nor the senior bureaucrats, all of them belonging to the upper bhadralok section born and brought up in Kolkata, could figure out how to negotiate a solution with the Gurkhas in the faraway hills of Bengal. It is still a miracle that Mamata Banerjee neutralised the secessionist movement in Darjeeling when it flared up again in 2013. She might have given ground on the autonomy of the region, but firmly affirmed her determination to stop the creation of a separate state there at all costs. In  Junglemahal, on the western fringe of Bengal as far away as possible from Darjeeling, there was a seemingly relentless conflict between the government and the Maoists for decades. After the dubious killing of their leader coinciding with the Trinamul government coming to power, the Chief Minister moved swiftly to appease the villagers with rice for Rs 2 a kilo, free bicycles and constant dialogue to woo them from the extremist insurgency. It is also a miracle that the region seems to be reasonably free of disturbances for the last four years. They voted massively for Trinamul in the latest poll there.

Many commentators have attributed the Trinamul victory this year to several social welfare programmes implemented by the Mamata Banerjee government in the rural areas of Bengal. But the implication that the urban bhadralok abandoned her is untrue.  Her overwhelming victory was checked in Malda and Murshidabad, where the traditional Congress base was bolstered by CPI-M votes, resulting in an almost clean sweep by the Left-Congress alliance in those two districts. They are largely rural districts, with even a significant Muslim population. On the other side, there was clean sweep for Trinamul in Cooch Behar, Jalpaiguri, North and South 24-Parganas, Howrah, Hooghly, and East and West Midnapore. The party finally broke the Congress and Left bastions in different parts of North Bengal and made dramatic inroads there. This was entirely due to Mamata’s personal efforts in connecting with the people of this neglected part of Bengal. Her frequent visits to North Bengal and taking personal interest in the affairs of the region paid handsome dividend in the election. But her remarkable victory in North and South 24 Parganas, Howrah and Hooghly testify to her hold in the urban areas as well. Nothing signifies the scale of Didi’s victory more than her winning 11 out of 11 seats in Kolkata. This was the greatest miracle of this election. This shows that the lower bhadralok section continues to support her on a massive scale.

The upper bhadraloks of Bengal are always under the delusion that they are the standard bearers of Bengali intellect and culture. It is undoubtedly true that Raja Rammohan Roy started the process of India’s modernisation, and is accepted as such all over the country. But Iswarchandra Vidyasagar contributed far more to the Bengali culture and was embraced more emotionally by the lower bhadraloks. Bankimchaandra wrote sarcastically about upper bhadraloks in his classic essay Babu. Rabindranath made fun of them in Shesher Kabita and Saratchandra ignored them. Now Mamata Banerjee, with her lower bhadralok background, has exposed the irrelevance of the entire upper bhadralok section of Bengal.

What now? Assembly election results since 2012 are affording hope to regional leaders of getting their acts together and defeat Narendra Modi in 2019. They have reason to be optimistic. In the 30 Assembly elections held since 2012, the BJP and the Congress had a combined vote share of only 42 per cent, the remaining 58 per cent going to regional parties. In the latest polls, despite much hullabaloo by the BJP, it only won 64 seats, while the Congress won 115.

In fact, parties not in alliance with either the BJP or the Congress won a whopping 465 seats. The first point that Mamata Banerjee mentioned during her interview with Barkha Dutt soon after her landslide victory was her plan to spread out to other parts of India, starting with Tripura. There is an inherent danger with this plan though. Trinamul is built solely on the personality cult of Didi. She does not really trust any leader in her party who has some modicum of public appeal. Her ambition for power in Delhi might weaken her party in Bengal, paving the way for the BJP to make a breakthrough there.

Mamata Banerjee is aware of that and is hedging her bet. TMC is a quintessential Bengali party and has little chance of penetrating adjoining states. Her call for a federal front caused a rush of regional leaders to her swearing-in ceremony in Kolkata. But she indicated only passive support to the front, encouraging other leaders to take the initiative. She is banking on retaining her large entourage of MPs from Bengal in the next general election. If the BJP does less spectacularly in 2019 than in the last general election and the regional parties have genuine possibility of forming a government, Mamata Banerjee would play the role of the kingmaker while staying put in Kolkata. That would be the greatest miracle of all.