West Bengal and Assam election results: Not good news for Bangladesh

India had elections at the state level in a number of states including two crucial ones from Bangladesh's point of view. These two states are West Bengal and Assam. In both, particularly Assam, Bangladesh had figured as a crucial issue in the elections. In West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee had single-handedly held up the paradigm shift that the Awami League government and the Congress government in India had wanted in Bangladesh-India relations - that the BJP government also wanted - with the spanner on the Teesta deal. In Assam, the issue of allegedly illegal Bangladeshis in the state had figured as an emotive game-changing issue.
There were some speculations that in West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee could be the victim of the anti-incumbency factor. The Left and Congress had formed an electoral alliance with both favourably disposed towards the present government in Bangladesh. It was under the Left government of Jyoti Basu that West Bengal had played a crucial role that led to the signing of the Ganges Water sharing Deal in December 1996. And of course, the Congress in West Bengal favoured good relations with the AL government. Therefore, if the Left-Congress had won the West Bengal elections, the current spanner on forward movement of Bangladesh-India relations would have gone.
That did not happen and Mamata Banerjee has returned to power with a greater majority than in 2011. Against 184 seats held previously, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) won 211 seats in the just-concluded elections that gave the party a 2/3rd majority in the state legislature. Far from winning the elections, both the Left and the Congress fared poorly, ensuring that Mamata Banerjee and the TMC would govern West Bengal with greater authority than in its previous term. That means that the BJP led government's influence over it on issues involving Bangladesh - and there is a whole gamut of issues of which the Teesta deal is the most critical - would now even be less than before.
In fact, the BJP-led government that also wanted to hand the Teesta deal to Bangladesh when it had come to power in May 2014, had found Mamata Banerjee as steadfast on her opposition on Teesta as she had been when the Congress wanted her to relent. Among many reasons that led the TMC to its overwhelming victory in the just-concluded elections, it was the party's success with the Muslim voters in the State. The Muslims are now close to 30 per cent of the voters of the State; they are mainly engaged in cultivation. Based upon that fact, Mamata Banerjee openly embraced the Muslims and their hopes and aspirations and in many places, Muslim leaders openly spoke with her in her election campaign.
The Muslims were swayed by Mamata Banerjee's campaign slogan "development" in which they were beneficiaries. Schemes such as stipend to students that had a major impact on all communities, including the Muslims, and stipend to Imams were strong factors that swayed the Muslim vote towards the TMC. The attempt by the opposition to spread the rumour that Muslims had reached an understanding with the BJP worked the opposite way. In fact, the rumour pushed the Muslims deeper into the TMC camp whose pro-poor and secular image also attracted the Muslims.
The Muslim vote was a key factor in 102 of the 294 constituencies. Traditionally the Muslims in WB had voted with the Left. The dismal picture of Muslims in West Bengal as revealed in the 2006 Sachar Committee Report set them ready to switch sides. The Congress' policy to back big landowners where the Muslims were primarily in cultivation as sharecroppers did not make that party a viable alternative for the Muslims. Added to that, the rise of Hindu fundamentalism in India under the BJP - the saffron surge - was cleverly taken into account by Mamata Banerjee. She successfully wooed the Muslims towards the TMC on that fact and they obligingly turned to the TMC in full force and ensured its thumping victory.
That the Muslims were the key for TMC's return to power and that too with a greater majority may not be good news for Bangladesh. West Bengal Muslims had not supported Bangladesh's war of liberation for well-acknowledged reasons. In fact, Mamata Banerjee opposed the Teesta Deal partly to please the Muslims aware of their ability to swing the state's election towards the party of their choice.  Another bad news of the swing of the Muslim vote to the TMC is their strong Islamic views that were amply evident from Muslim leaders of the fundamentalist type seen with Mamata Banerjee during the campaign; that only strengthened the perception of TMC's connections with Jamaat in Bangladesh. Earlier after the Shahbagh Movement had erupted in February 2013 in Bangladesh, there were major demonstrations by West Bengal Muslims in Kolkata in support for Hefazat and its Islamic beliefs.
The TMC did not just successfully bring the Muslims almost entirely into its camp. It took note that the Left's 34-year rule based on "strong agenda of social justice", land reform that gave sharecroppers right over the land they tilled, and "army-like cadre" had given them instant social identity and that it would need an alternative strategy and identity to counter that. The TMC thus moved to win over the subaltern caste together with reaching out to the Muslims. It did that through existing national government schemes such as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act as well as rural connectivity where even the villages inhabited by the lower castes have been connected with metal roads. Mamata government distributed cycles to students in classes 9-12 and scholarships to the girl students. Through these measures, the TMC successfully established and asserted its pro-poor identity as its trademark that allowed it to successfully carve its own sustainable niche among the state's voters in a fashion stronger than that of the Left.
AN EMBARRASSING DILEMMA FOR NEW DELHI: The anti-incumbency factor worked in Assam. Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi's Congress government of 15 years was swept out of power by the BJP. The issue that decided the results was the allegedly illegal Bangladeshis in the state. Top BJP leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah, campaigned on this openly anti-Bangladesh platform. The new Chief Minister's first assurance after winning was to reassert the party's election pledge against the alleged Bangladeshis. He promised to seal the Bangladesh-Assam border completely. Those who do not fulfil the citizenship criterion - allegedly illegal Bangladeshis in hundreds of thousands - would be deported to Bangladesh.
Therefore, the Assam elections are only going to heighten tensions in Assam and on Bangladesh-Assam border against Bangladesh. Given the fact that the ULFA separatists are not favourably disposed towards the present Bangladesh government for handing over a number of top ULFA terrorists to New Delhi after coming to power in January 2009, it is only likely they would try to take advantage of unsettled conditions that are now certain to ensue in Assam to their advantage.
The results in Assam and West Bengal have caused an embarrassing dilemma for New Delhi. A new or weaker TMC government would have allowed it to deliver the Teesta deal to Bangladesh and keep its commitment that it broke in 2011. After the victory of the BJP in Assam, New Delhi has already stated that it would support the Assam BJP government's unfriendly actions towards Bangladesh on allegedly illegal Bangladeshis and sealing the state's border. The dilemma will thus expose India's lack of sincerity in dealing with Bangladesh where the Bangladesh government has consistently been friendly towards New Delhi and now is poised to give land transit and use of Mangla and Chittagong  ports to India’s Seven Sisters for their economic development that would ironically also include Assam.
The writer is a retired Ambassador.
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