Burdwan blast: CM Mamata may now be captive of her radical minority support base

As National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval takes a first hand look at West Bengal’s terror links on Tuesday, the spotlight with be on Mamata Banerjee. The blunt truth is that the chief minister’s own party is heavily compromised by some of her strong minority support base, with some of them alleged to have links with the fundamentalist Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), which has been waging a violent campaign against the pro-India Awami League government of Sheikh Hasina. The Burdwan blasts of 2 October showed that the JIB was upto no good, and possibly planning a series of terror attacks in Bangladesh using places in West Bengal as base. [caption id=“attachment_1774289” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. PTI[/caption] The blasts happened in a premises that allegedly housed a Trinamool office ( denied, though, by the party ). The West Bengal police’s initial reluctance to cooperate with the central investigating agencies only made it appear that the state authorities had something to hide. These are issues Doval will have to handle gingerly as he meets the Chief Minister, especially given the confrontationist attitude of the state government to the Modi-led government at the centre. After the Lok Sabha polls, Mamata Banerjee has realised that the most potent political threat to her Trinamool Congress comes not from the Left, but the BJP, which has emerged from nowhere to become the third most popular party in West Bengal with over 16 percent of the vote. The fact is the newly-discovered terror modules cannot be handled without all of us acknowledging some fundamental realities in the eastern states, including West Bengal. First, the problem of illegal Bangladeshi immigration is not confined to Assam. They are now all over the place, including India’s major cities, but specially concentrated in the border districts of West Bengal and eastern Bihar, where they find it easier to seek anonymity than in Assam. Second, and this lesson is for the centre and the border states, demography is destiny. It is possible to stem the illegal influx with border fences and tougher policing, but it is not possible to stop it altogether. With all the technology and expert policing at the USA’s command, Hispanics have already swamped two southern states – California and Texas. Within a decade or two, Hispanics will be the dominant political force, reducing whites to a minority. This has lessons for India’s eastern border: our best bet is to have a mix of both strong border controls and a relaxed immigration policy that legalises the immigrants already here, and offers citizenship at a later date. We should also offer formal work visas to Bangladeshis wanting to work here. Short of a bloodbath on the border, this immigration cannot be reversed on our porous borders. Third, we have to realise that there are two categories of illegal immigrants. The Hindu illegal, which the Sangh would like to favour, may be both a political and economic refugee. The Muslim illegal will be only an economic refugee. So, clearly, there is a case for treating them differently, but not as far as work visas are concerned. The former can be offered political asylum with few questions asked, the latter economic opportunities in steady doses till economic prosperity levels off the current differences between Bangladesh and India’s east. A political deal with Bangladesh should, in fact, allow Indian companies to invest in Bangladesh’s border districts, so that jobs can be provided there itself. So when Doval meets Mamata, he can’t just talk terror, but formal work visas for Bangladeshi migrants too. Of course, this may not be Doval’s short-term brief, but Narendra Modi has to make this a part of the long-term agenda. The problem is Mamata Banerjee needs protection from her rabid supporters. In a two-decade-long solo fight against an entrenched Left in West Bengal, she was not choosy about who was willing to support her. After Nandigram, when CPI(M) goons attacked a Muslim village to take control of it, Bengali Muslim support swung decisively in her favour – which is what enabled her to sweep the Left out of power in 2011. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, this support was even more crucial for her victory. As I had noted as far back as March 2014 , her decisive political vote bank comes from “high-profile clerics who don’t speak the voice of neutral secularism. One such backer is the voluble Shahi Imam of the Tipu Sultan Mosque in Kolkata, NR Barkati. Barkati was the one who asked Mamata to up her criticism against Modi, and he was also vociferously demanding that she distance herself from Anna Hazare because of his alleged RSS links.” Barkati claimed before the Lok Sabha polls that he made Mamata win in 2011. He believes he can sway opinion through West Bengal’s 70,000 mosques. It is not difficult to see why she may, in fact, be a captive of such ante-diluvian forces, which may include radical and fundamentalist elements from across the border. As we had noted in another story related to West Bengal, the Saradha Ponzi scheme has been closely linked to some Trinamool politicians, and it now transpires that some of this money landed up in the hands of rabid fundamentalists planning terror attacks against Sheikh Hasina’s Bangladesh. According to a recent report in The New Indian Express , a good chunk of the Saradha money was clandestinely shipped over to Bangladesh to fund the Jammat-e-Islami Bangladesh (JIB). Several leaders of the JIB have been accused of war crimes in connection with the 1971 Bangladesh liberation struggle, and street protests (including violence) were organised to intimidate the courts after they awarded some death sentences to the fundamentalists. The New Indian Express report said that funds collected by the Saradha schemes, which went bust around mid-2013, were transported to centres close to the Bangladesh border by Saradha ambulances, illegally converted to Bangladesh taka and European currencies by a Kolkata-based (hawala) trader, and finally carted in the last leg of the journey by “armed couriers of radical Islamic outfits.” Thereport, sourced anonymously to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate, says the investigations unearthed this information whole looking at the money trail in the Saradha scam. A Trinamool Rajya Sabha MP, said to be Ahmad Hassan Imran, is alleged to have been a key player in this routing of investor cash to Bangladeshi fundamentalists. The rise of the BJP in Bengal may end up pushing Mamata Banerjee further in the hands of fundamentalists, since this may be the only route to her political future. When confronted with the reality of the Burdwan blasts, Mamata was chastised, yet defiant. “We are all against terrorism. I have no complaint against the NIA (National Investigation Agency). But why won’t anybody inform us? They (Centre) are insulting us but not consulting us.” The Hindustan Times today quotes Bengal Home Secretary Basudeb Banerjee, whom Doval was scheduled to meet, making a non-committal statement: “We just have this information that he is coming to Bengal and will go to Burdwan. Thereafter he will come back to Kolkata. I have no idea what he will do after coming back to Kolkata.” This statement is indicative of a trust deficit between the centre and West Bengal that is growing wider under Mamata Banerjee. Whatever be their politics, the centre will have to make extra efforts to rescue Mamata from herself and her support base. She is in danger of becoming more captive to recalcitrant forces that are inimical to national interests and who are likely to sour relationships with neighbouring Bangladesh.