BJP’s ‘Jai Maa Kali’ superhit, TMC’s ‘Hridaya Machhe Kaaba, Nayan-e-Madina’ fuss!

When the results of the West Bengal Assembly elections started coming in, a song started being discussed a lot across the country. However, this song also created a lot of political excitement during the election campaign.

Bangladesh’s famous poet Abdul Rahman Boyati, who was born in undivided Bengal, has a folk song ‘Hridaya Machhe Kaba, Nayan-e-Madina’ as if it is at the center of Bengal’s politics. Actress-turned-politician Sayani Ghosh created a political sensation by singing this folk song during rallies in Muslim-dominated areas during the election campaign. There was a lot of political debate on this during the Bengal elections and now TMC had to suffer the consequences.

In fact, BJP was accusing Mamata Banerjee’s TMC of appeasement politics during the election campaign. The public accepted the song ‘Hridaya Machhe Kaaba, Nayan-e-Madina’ being sung from Sayani’s stage as a reflection of her. In such a situation, Mamata Banerjee’s slogan of Maa, Mati and Manush in West Bengal also did not work this time and BJP was successful in cornering TMC this time.

This time in Bengal elections, along with the slogans of Maa, Mati and Manush, slogans like women’s safety, infiltrators, voter verification, Jai Bangla vs Jai Shri Ram kept resonating. But, amidst all this, TMC will have to wait for 5 years to recover from the damage caused by ‘Hriday Machhe Kaaba, Nayan-e-Madina’.

Actually, the slogan of Kali Bhoomi Se Kaaba did not go down well with the voters of West Bengal. The same song was sung in the presence of Mamta in the Durga Puja pandal, since then it was a little difficult for the people of the state to digest the way TMC leaders were using it as an election slogan in the election rallies.

On the other hand, during the celebrations after BJP’s landslide victory in Bihar assembly elections, PM Narendra Modi had said, “Ganga flows through Bihar to Bengal. The victory of Bihar has opened the way for victory in West Bengal.”

Meaning, from where Ganga originates i.e. through Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and now in West Bengal, Ganga Sagar where Ganga meets the sea. BJP has captured the power there. The people of West Bengal also liked the politics of Hindutva and they joined the BJP.

This time in the West Bengal elections, narratives were prepared more on religious and cultural symbols than on local issues. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) tried to politically capitalize on TMC’s song ‘Hridaya Machhe Kaaba, Nayan-e-Madina’ and was successful in it.

BJP’s star campaigners like Amit Shah and Yogi Adityanath projected it as ‘Kali vs Kaaba’ in West Bengal. He said that TMC may have Kaaba-Medina in its heart, but Maa Kali and Maa Durga reside in the soul of Bengal.

In this election, along with ‘Jai Shri Ram’, BJP also prominently promoted the slogan of ‘Jai Maa Kali’. BJP kept accusing TMC that Mamata Banerjee’s party, which talks about ‘Bengali identity’, is actually trying to impose Kaaba and Medina on Bengal.

‘Mach and Bhaat’, a part of Bengali identity, also dominated the election battle of West Bengal. During a meeting in Purulia, Mamata Banerjee had said, “If BJP comes to power, they will not let you eat fish, meat and eggs. BJP is a party with a ‘vegetarian culture’, which wants to destroy the identity of Machh-Bhaat Bengalis.”

BJP responded to Mamata’s attack and party leaders in Bengal joined the ‘Shakta tradition’ (worship of power). Veteran leaders like Anurag Thakur and Manoj Tiwari ate fish in public to give the message that they are not against Bengali culture. In many areas, BJP candidates took out processions with fish in their hands during their election campaign.

Women voters remained at the center of both the parties during this election. To woo women voters, Trinamool Congress (TMC) increased the amount of Rs 1,000 given to women under the already running ‘Lakshmir Bhandar’ scheme to Rs 1,500 in February, just before the elections.

At the same time, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has gone a step further and promised to give Rs 3,000 every month to women if they come to power. Apart from this, BJP also promised free travel in government buses and 33 percent reservation in government jobs.

On the other hand, before the West Bengal elections, the Central Government called a special session of the Parliament and introduced bills for the early implementation of women’s reservation. However, these bills could not be passed due to opposition. BJP made it an election issue and told the public that the entire opposition including Congress and TMC was opposing it.

Along with this, instead of Mamta’s old statement in which she had advised women not to go out at night, Prime Minister Narendra Modi claimed in the Panihati rally that if BJP government is formed in West Bengal, the women of Bengal will not be afraid to go out even at 2 o’clock in the night.

However, in the last few years, incidents like Sandeshkhali and RG Kar Medical College have affected the image of women safety of the state government. BJP fielded faces associated with this movement in the election field. The BJP has fielded Rekha Patra, the main face of the Sandeshkhali movement, from Hingalganj seat and Ratna Debnath, the mother of the RG tax case victim, from Panihati seat.

Along with this, the biggest issue in the Bengal elections was the change in the voter list. The total number of registered voters in the state was earlier 7.66 crore, but after the special intensive revision conducted before the elections, the names of about 91 lakh voters were removed from the list. After this, the total number of voters decreased to 6.75 crore, i.e. there was a decrease of about 11.8 percent.

This time from BJP’s side, Union Home Minister Amit Shah had a special eye on the Bengal elections. Shah camped here for about 15 days and held continuous rallies, road shows and many meetings.

Sitting with the party workers, he divided the booths into strong, medium and weak categories, with special focus on those medium booths, where the margin of victory and defeat last time was very less. Along with this, this time, like Uttar Pradesh, BJP also implemented the successful ‘Panna Pramukh’ model in Bengal. Also this message was given that the Chief Minister will be from Bengal only.

To deal with the anti-incumbency wave and corruption allegations arising from 15 years of continuous rule since 2011, BJP this time stopped making direct personal attacks on TMC leaders. Instead of Mamata Banerjee, the entire system and ‘Syndicate Raj’ were targeted.

Meaning, the trends and data obtained from the vote counting after this election made it clear that all these factors worked for the BJP in West Bengal and the biggest thing is that the BJP’s narrative of ‘Kali vs Kaba’ overshadowed the ‘Hridaya mache Kaba, Nayan e Madina’.