The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which had announced three rath yatras to cover all 42 Lok Sabha constituencies in West Bengal, has run into legal and other hurdles. The Trinamool Congress government in the State banned the rallies, citing intelligence reports that warned of communal violence in the areas that the yatras had proposed to cover.
The dispute landed in the Calcutta High Court and later in the Supreme Court, which will hear the matter on January 15.
Why did the BJP plan this?
BJP president Amit Shah was scheduled to flag off the yatras on December 7, 2018, as a pre-election exercise. Unlike several other parts of the country, the eastern State has not seen such raths in the past, which have more to do with politics than religion.
Even the rath yatra of Lal Krishna Advani in 1992 could not enter the Left Front-ruled West Bengal as it was stopped by Lalu Prasad Yadav, the then Chief Minister of neighbouring Bihar.
The proposed rath yatras were an attempt to increase the party’s support base ahead of the Lok Sabha election. The BJP leadership had plans of three or four rath yatras across the State. These were strategically timed. After the 2016 Assembly election, which brought Mamata Banerjee to power for a second consecutive term, the support base of the Left parties and the Congress have slipped further, and the BJP has emerged as a contender.
What is Trinamool’s stand?
The Mamata Banerjee government’s decision not to grant permission to the yatras did not come as a surprise. Ms. Banerjee’s public statements calling them a means to whip up communal tensions made it clear that the State government would not give the go-ahead. Instead, the Trinamool Congress countered the BJP’s move with a plan to hold a purification ( shuddhikaran ) yatra. On the ground, battlelines are drawn with supporters of both parties often engaging in violence.
On several occasions, the Opposition parties, including the BJP, have claimed that the Trinamool Congress government has denied them permission to hold political programmes under different pretexts. When the BJP approached the Calcutta High Court, the State government cited intelligence inputs on a possible communal flare-up.
Weeks of arguments and counter-arguments over the reasonable restrictions that a State can impose and the right of a political party to hold rallies and political events failed to resolve the dispute at the High Court.
Is there a shift in the narrative?
Whatever be the fate of the yatras, they are indicative of what political observers call a state of “competitive communalism” in West Bengal. While a decade ago, politics in the State hinged on long-drawn agitations against forcible land acquisition that sometimes led to violence that was witnessed, for instance, at Singur and Nandigram, the yatras are indicative of a changing narrative in the State.
A few months ago, the High Court was debating whether giving money to 28,000 Durga Puja committees was within the rights of the State. Those against the move argued that handing out money for Durga Puja amounted to promoting one particular religion.
Prior to this, the issue of giving honorarium to imams and muezzins by the West Bengal government was challenged in court, as was the decision of not allowing immersion of idols on one particular day as it clashed with Muharram.
West Bengal, which has a Muslim population of 27.01% according to the 2011 Census and which shares over a 2,000-km border with Bangladesh, is witnessing a polarised political discourse.
Over the past few years, the State has seen tensions and even riots during Ram Navami, Muharram and other festivals. According to the information tabled in Parliament by the Ministry of Home Affairs, the number of communal incidents in the State rose from 27 in 2015 to 58 in 2017.
