On August 16, 1990, Mamata Banerjee was leading a protest march at the busy Hazra crossing in South Kolkata. She was seeking to rehabilitate herself after a humiliating defeat at the hands of a relatively unknown CPIM candidate just a year earlier. That opportunity arrived that very day, but almost at the expense of Mamata's life. A CPIM goon hit her with a lathi on her head. The doctor who attended to her said she had received two separate blows to her head, and if she hadn't fended off the third with her left wrist, it could well have caused "severe irreparable damage."
Mamata was out of action for weeks, and when she reappeared in public, she had bandages around her head and her arm. She campaigned with those during the mid-term poll of 1991. Mamata won her seat by a 13 percent margin against a senior CPIM leader. Old timers say Mamata's visible injuries helped her garner a good many 'sympathy' votes.
Thirty years later, Mamata is back in bandages. She says she was injured because she was "pushed" by a group of men and blames the Election Commission for the lapse in her security. Her opponents say this is pure theatrics. They say the Chief Minister is trying to make the most of an accidental fall. But both the BJP and the Left-Congress alliance will surely be worried that an injured Mamata could help the Trinamool push the notion that Bengal's enemies' want to get rid of 'Banglar meye' (the daughter of Bengal).
Mamata Banerjee said she was attacked while campaigning in Nandigam after filing her nomination papers for the Bengal election
Yet, it may just be Mamata who has more reason to worry. Even though opinion polls suggest she has a clear edge, electoral algebra suggest the race is going to be very tight. And the biggest variable here is the Muslim vote. Without overwhelming support from Muslims, Mamata's party could well have slipped to second position behind the BJP in 2019.
Muslims make up 27 percent of West Bengal's population; they consistently backed the Left Front till 2009. If CSDS-Lokniti's surveys are to be believed, then even in 2014, three out of 10 Muslim voters backed the Left, while four voted for Mamata. The Congress too got a significant chunk of Muslim votes, especially in its bastions in North-Central Bengal. In 2019, however, 70 percent of Muslims voted for the Trinamool. In terms of overall vote share, this gave Mamata Banerjee an 8 percent boost.
Hindu voters moved in the other direction. Well over half of them voted for the BJP. Although most of the BJP's gains were at the expense of the Left and Congress, the Trinamool also lost a significant chunk. Of every 100 new Hindu voters that the BJP won, over 22 came from the Trinamool. In terms of overall vote share, this amounted to a five percent drop for Mamata. She prevailed over the BJP because the Muslim votes she gained more than compensated for the drop in her Hindu votes.
What is more significant is that Mamata's biggest losses came amongst OBCs. The CSDS-Lokniti poll suggests four of every 10 OBC votes that the BJP gained came from the TMC, while three of every 10 Dalit voters who switched to the BJP in 2019 had voted for the Trinamool five years before that. That means a large number of OBC and Dalit voters who once backed Mamata had turned against her by 2019.
Mithun Chakraborty with Prime Minister Narendra Modi
This is what makes Mamata's strategy of giving a relatively free space to the CPIM and Congress campaign after years of political suppression a double-edged sword. While the Left and Congress may win back some of the votes they lost to the BJP in 2019, there is a chance that they could eat into Mamata's votes as well. After all, Mamata herself won these votes from the Left Front in successive elections since 2009.
The problem becomes even more stark when it comes to Muslim voters. Even on its own, a resurgent CPIM can eat into the Trinamool's Muslim votes. The Left-Congress alliance's tie-up with the young cleric Abbas Siddiqui's ISF (Indian Secular Front) is an even bigger worry for Mamata. Siddiqui is popular in Southern Bengal - the core area where Mamata gets most of her Muslim votes; the Congress still has a significant presence in the Northern districts where there is a large Muslim presence. Mamata's gain was the Left Front's loss. Now, Siddiqui's presence in the Left camp could cost Mamata some votes.
Where Siddiqui is also somewhat different from other popular Muslim clerics is that his politics is not restricted to Muslims. The ISF has tried to build bridges with small Dalit and Adivasi groups in South Bengal to create a ground-level alliance that goes beyond just Muslims. This could be a bigger problem for Mamata. It is likely that Dalits and Adivasis who have social ties with Muslims had moved to TMC from the Left. They are unlikely to be amongst those who switched to the BJP in 2019. Any dent that Siddiqui's ISF makes in this segment could hurt Mamata more than the BJP.
The BJP's own rise amongst OBC, Dalit and Adivasi voters is a result of the breakdown of the unique system of political power that the Left Front had established in rural Bengal. As I have written earlier, this system involved the overarching presence of the party in every aspect of rural life, both public and private. When the Left was voted out of power, the Trinamool, with its weaker party structure, had to turn to older forms of socio-political organisations to rule the state. One aspect of that was the revival of caste and community associations such as the Matua mahasangha or the Santal sholo aana. Yet, the Trinamool's top leadership continued to be overwhelmingly upper caste.
This has enabled the BJP to position itself as a party that champions self-representation of OBCs and Dalits. It is interesting to note that the CSDS-Lokniti survey I mentioned earlier shows that when it comes to Hindu voters, the Trinamool performed the best amongst upper castes. Similarly, even though the BJP got the majority of upper caste votes, it did much better amongst OBC, Dalit and Adivasi voters. It could well be that the saffron party's pro-Dalit anf pro-OBC rhetoric alienated some sections of upper castes in West Bengal.
But the BJP cannot afford to ignore upper castes in the state. They may amount to just 12-13 percent of the state's population, but upper castes are a sizeable part of the electorate in the 70-odd urban seats in South Bengal. This is where Mithun Chakraborty could be of immense value to the BJP. Not only is he a Brahmin like Mamata herself, but like her, he can also claim to have risen from a very humble background. Mithun is a big face across Bengal, while at the same time he is especially popular amongst the urban poor and working classes. The BJP will be hoping that Mithun turns out to be that crucial bridge between upper and backward castes that can help it come to power this May.
(Aunindyo Chakravarty was Senior Managing Editor of NDTV's Hindi and Business news channels.)
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