Lok Sabha Election 2019: Used by Congress(I), Left and perfected by Trinamool, violence and votes go hand in hand in Bengal polls

Central security forces were sent to Bengal as early as two months before the Election Commission announced the dates of the seven-phase parliamentary elections that begin on 11 April and end on 19 May. The jawans have since been staging route marches and area domination exercises everywhere – from the once Maoist-dominated western districts of West Midnapore, Purulia and Bankura to even middle-class localities in Kolkata. [caption id=“attachment_973265” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  File picture of a house that was ransacked in Friday’s political clash during third phase of Panchayat polls in Howrah district last year. PTI[/caption] The immediate provocation was the allegation of the opposition – the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Congress and the Left parties –that the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) would never allow a free and fair election. In the panchayat elections in May 2018, about 34 percent of the panchayat seats had gone to the TMC uncontested. The opposition candidates were not even allowed to file their nomination papers. Since the panchayat elections were fought on the issue of rural development, Anubrata Mandal, Birbhum district president of the TMC and a blue-eyed boy of Mamata Banerjee, asked opposition candidates not to venture out as ‘Development’ (unnayan) would be lying in wait for them on their way to polling booths. But can Mamata alone be accused of bringing in violence to protect her dominance. Well, poll violence in Bengal is a known malady – though never admitted in public by bhadraloks of all camps. Why? A middle-class that only has art and culture to showcase since Independence can’t really admit that violence in different shapes and scales had always been part of their culture. From Bankim Chandra Chattopadhya’s Anandamath on the Sannayasi rebellion of the late 18th century and the terrorist groups during the freedom struggle to the Naxalite movement of the late 60’s and early 70’s, violence has always been the theme around which politics has played out in Bengal. But opinion makers of the Bengali middle-class have always chosen to look the other way, showcasing art and culture instead as the sine quo non of the Bengali ethos. Mandal once famously said that there was no need to worry about violence in the state – he is one of the leading practitioners of the cult – for the three things that dominate life in Bengal are rasogollah, Hilsa and bombs. He is right in a way. The first obvious question that any election season throws up is: who are the leaders and who are the laggards this time. And then begins the process of assessing who is supposed to bring in how many votes. The campaign and possibilities are then expressed in pie charts and bars and colour codes – the psephologist’s handy tools. But not in West Bengal. The first question that comes to both the voter and the vote seeker’s mind is how effective is the arsenal and the action squads of a particular political party. The voter — assuming he is a non-committed and apolitical citizen — will rarely risk his life to exercise his constitutional right perchance ‘Development’ be lurking around the polling booth. The parties know that power does not come from the barrel of the gun – as used to be claimed once. Power flows from fright, created not only by the gun but also by other kinds of life-taking devices, such as crude bombs, grenades, small arms and even knives and swords. The poll day standard operating procedure is simple in Bengal: Exhibit your arsenal in a way that scares away the voter, organise motorbike rallies so that the voter doesn’t dare come out into the streets, pay nocturnal visits to people who may not vote for you and take over polling booths on D-day. Successfully implemented, this time-tested war strategy can have you home and dry. Leave the mopping up operations to poll experts and analysts. This is how the 1972 elections were fought for the first time and the Congress (I) won the state. On election day in 1977, this writer witnessed a curious scene at one of the poll stations in south Kolkata. Vans and Jeeps full of armed cadres of the Congress (I) were roaming around the booths scaring away voters, while CPM cadres — calm and focused — herded committed voters to their assistance booths where workers were preparing hordes of party workers by smearing coconut oil on the forefinger, so that the ink mark could be wiped away the moment they came out of the booths. The trick, interestingly, is called ‘false voting’. But even the CPM, once in power, steadily built a formidable arsenal and took shortcut methods — not allowing opposition candidates to file nomination papers in rural areas, jamming the voting process through the sheer number of their supporters and, of course, using violence — but judiciously. As long as violence was judicious, the CPM ruled the roast — for 34 years — but first Singur and then Nandigram changed the scene rapidly. The local overlords of the party — drunk with political and muscle power — made the mistake of forcibly claiming land that belonged to the farmer, who — history is witness — turns deadly desperate about protecting his hearth. Actually, violence has always returned to rural Bengal every time the farmer’s hold over his land was threatened. The farmer — always the backbone of the armies of the rajas, nawabs and the zamindars — is not a bhadralok. Nothing worked against the farmer, not even the CPM’s huge armies, amazing arsenal and state power. The farmer, the slum dweller, the clerk, the small shopkeeper, the roadside hawker, the unemployed, and the army of domestic helps who commute to Kolkata homes of the bhadralok every morning from distant villages of rural Bengal then lost faith in the red flag and needed a face who spoke their language. Enter Mamata Banerjee.

Subsequently, the Trinamool Congress learnt the trick well too and turned out to be more effective since they didn’t have to live up to the democratic and ideological commitments of the Bhadralok class. It just wants to be in power for all-round ‘Development’.

Now, the situation is such that even the Bharatiya Janata Party — no matter what its plans for the other states may be — is looking at tricksters and Bahubalis, such as former TMC MLA Arjun Singh — who is contesting against TMC’s old faithful Dinesh Trivedi this time — to face up to the  challenge. The Congress can fight back in pockets, such as former state party chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury’s constituency, Baharampur. The situation is getting curious for the CPM. It’s keen on the dual strategy of a guerilla warfare in the rural areas and playing victim in the urban areas. But whoever wins most of the state’s 42 Lok Sabha seats this time and the state elections in 2021 should remember that the bombs will be ticking for them, too.