Waves of Violence

Bengal, nationally known as a hub of secular-liberal ideals, is witnessing its centuries-old covert Islamophobia turning overt

- Snigdhendu Bhattacharya

IN the run-up to the 2021 West Bengal Assembly elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) released a music video of an election campaign song that recurrently used the name and photos of a Hindu gang-rape survivor from Bangladesh. The infamous incident happened in 2001 during a post-poll violence unleashed by the coalition of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Jamaat-e-Islami that had just won the election. After coming to power, Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government tried to do what it could to stand by her. But for the Hindu nationalist camp in West Bengal, the incident was as relevant as ever. 

The music video, which featured singer-turned-politician Babul Supriyo and several Bengali actors, also used images of security forces’ fight with visibly Muslim mobs and those of Islamic terror groups of West Asia, cautioning Hindus of West Bengal against taking ‘the Muslim problem’ lightly. It actually summed up their central electoral call—defeat Mamata Banerjee’s ‘Muslim-appeaser’ government to prevent West Bengal’s transformation into a mirror image of Muslim-majority Bangladesh.  

Yet, they managed to win only one-fourth of the state’s 294 Assembly seats and polled fewer votes than they did in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Does it mean the people of Bengal rejected the overt Islamophobia spread by the Hindutva camp? 

That would be an over-simplistic conclusion. The election also saw Suvendu Adhikari, who consistently referred to Banerjee as ‘