Bengal Is No Tamil Nadu

With BJP making rapid strides, are we approaching the end of Bengali exceptionalism?

- Sagarika Ghose

A rollicking slogan of Bengal assembly elections 2021 is TMC’s “Khela Hobe,” or the game will be played. In response BJP has raised the chant “Vikas Hobe,” or development will take place. Yet more than these, two other slogans more accurately encapsulate the Bengal contest: TMC’s “Jai Bangla” versus BJP’s “Jai Shri Ram.”

Will Bengal vote according to Bengali identity, Bengali culture, Bengali language and resist majoritarian Hindutva whose locus is in north India? Tamil Nadu is known to vote for the Dravida-Tamil identity premised on fierce opposition to the north Indian brahminical Hinduism and Hindi language. Yet the attachment to Bengali identity isn’t as emotionally charged. In Bengal the Hindi language doesn’t evoke anger or hostility.

Moreover, the Dravida movement started as an atheist one, Bengal’s regional identity, as reflected in figures like Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, is rooted in religiosity, centred around Vaishnava cults and the mother goddess of Durga and Kali. However, a Ram-focussed Hindutva hasn’t traditionally existed in Bengal.

Jai Shri Ram is the Sangh’s electorally rewarding rallying cry designed to cement a religious identity. Jai Bangla invokes Bengali pride. In these elections, CM Mamata Banerjee has urged people to say Jai Bangla instead of “hello” on the phone and repeatedly pointed to BJP as the party of the “bohiragato” or outsiders.