M
J Akbar
Macbeth, Shakespeare’s most self-destructive politician, was confident that he
would never lose power until Birnam wood began to move.
Since it seemed highly unlikely that a whole forest would trot
across towards his fortress, he lived in the complacent world of invincibility.
Every government in Bengal
is equally certain of survival till the Muslim vote begins to move against its
citadel. The largest Muslim concentration in India
is in Bengal ; they constitute 28 per cent of
the population, or twice the national average. The effective percentage is
higher. Muslims, conscious of the strategic value of their vote, poll in higher
numbers. Second, geography is on their side. They are concentrated in an eastern
arc that rises from South 24 Parganas and develops demographic momentum in
districts like Murshidabad, Malda and Dinajpur. They make the difference in at
least half of Bengal ’s seats, if not more.
Quiz question: what is the Muslim vote in President Pranab
Mukherjee’s former constituency? Above 65 per cent. Rub your eyes again at the
next fact. Barring one instance in the 1950s, neither the Congress nor the
Marxists have put up a Muslim candidate from this constituency, until the Left
did so in last year’s by-election.
Being a forest, this vote moves slowly, almost imperceptibly,
but when it shifts the impact is decisive in Bengal .
Till 1967, it supported the Congress. When the mood changed, United Front
governments came to power. In 1971, it went back to Congress because of Mrs
Indira Gandhi, but from 1977 it veered towards the Left and kept Marxists in
power for over three decades. It now forms the vanguard of the Mamata Banerjee
insurrection.
The decline in Mamata Banerjee’s urban popularity is evident
to anyone who lives in or visits Calcutta Calcutta
Mamata Banerjee is too interventionist, a one-woman
occupation force rather than a government. She has not understood the art of
surrendering space to colleagues, if for no other reason but to share the blame
when things go wrong, as they always will. If you hog the spotlight, warts from
elsewhere will drift onto your face. Her nature is confrontational. This wins
applause when she dares a Goliath called Delhi
But slip outside the metropolis and you can smell and see the
change in mood along with the environment. Rural Bengal, on either bank of the
Hooghly river, is as serene as urban Bengal is
squalid. As we drive up towards Shantiniketan, where Bengal
pays homage to the memory of Rabindranath Tagore, there are only a few patches
of the potholed past. On one short stretch, a 20th century road was still being
laid over a 19th century surface through 18th century methods. But these
villages and small towns that echo through the early phase of East India
Company history, remain Mamata territory. The devastation of famine, which came
with the British, may have become a nightmare of the past but poverty remains
pervasive, visible in the low wages and darned lungis of labour.
It is this constituency of the poor that gives Mamata her
political strength. But her true opportunity lies in an area of decision-making
which is rarely discussed. Both Congress and Communists never lose a chance to
claim secularism as their bread-and-butter creed, but neither has ever
empowered Muslims when in government. In any other state a community with a
minimum 30 per cent vote would have claimed the chief ministership. Forget that
thought in Bengal . Neither Congress nor
Communists have even given a Muslim an economic portfolio like finance. As a
senior Marxist once told me, Bengali Muslims are considered good enough for
only livestock.
So far Mamata Banerjee has remained within the conventional
pattern. She has raised the political profile of some Muslim colleagues but
that is not going to be enough for a community that is beginning to understand
its power. If it continues to be taken for granted, fed with occasional
tokenism, the forest will move much faster than before. Mamata Banerjee still
has time. And time shall tell if she also has the will to be different.
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