BJP’s Muslim outreach in Bengal: Can it turn bypoll gains into lasting support?

The support the BJP received from sections of the Muslim community in two recent by-elections has prompted West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari to describe the victories as evidence that Bengali-speaking Muslims had found a “friend” in the party. He said the support offers the BJP an opportunity to expand its appeal beyond its traditional Hindu support base.

But the gains should also give the BJP a sense of deja vu, as sections of Bengali-speaking Muslims had gravitated towards it even in the past, only for the party to fail to retain their support.

It is this past experience, and the lessons drawn from it, that will determine the success of the party’s plans to expand its minority base to capitalise on what it describes as a change in perception among Muslims.

Outreach programmes planned

Buoyed by the response from the minority communities in the Nandigram and Rejinagar by-polls, the BJP’s Minority Morcha has now decided to launch outreach programmes across the state.

“We will launch the engagement drive in all districts after Kali Puja on November 8. These would include seminars, meetings, and rallies, followed by a major rally in Kolkata,” Ali Husain, president of the BJP’s Minority Morcha in West Bengal told The Federal.

He said the party aims to increase its minority membership from about two lakh to one crore by the 2029 Lok Sabha elections, arguing that the BJP government’s implementation of welfare schemes without religious discrimination is helping dispel the “perception, peddled by the opposition, that the party is anti-Muslim”.

Expressing optimism about meeting the ambitious target, he said Muslims would gravitate towards the ruling party to participate in its development initiatives.

Also Read: Bengal bypoll results: BJP wins Nandigram, Rejinagar; Congress sees hope

The BJP’s renewed optimism over minority support brings to mind 2014-15, when sections of Bengali-speaking Muslims, particularly in Birbhum district, moved towards the party amid local political conflicts and opposition to the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC).

In December 2014, then BJP president Amit Shah handed over cheques to the families of four Muslim youths who had been killed in political violence after joining the BJP.

The incident highlighted how some members of the community had not only aligned themselves with the BJP but were willing to risk their lives for the party despite its national image as a vehicle for Hindu nationalism. That support, however, did not translate into a lasting political realignment as the BJP increasingly relied on Hindu consolidation and pursued a more explicitly Hindu-centred political strategy.

Why some Muslim voters back the BJP

Political scientist Maidul Islam of the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, sees the latest support partly as a familiar pattern of Muslim voters gravitating towards the party in power, as they did under the Congress, the Left Front, and the TMC.

In two by-elections, he said, sections of Bengali-speaking Muslims had voted for the BJP, drawn in also by its promises of welfare, development, and employment. For voters whose choices are shaped more by livelihoods than religious identity, these concerns can outweigh emotive political issues, Islam said.

He also argued that Bengali-speaking Muslims do not share the same collective memory of communal riot trauma as Urdu-speaking Muslims in parts of north India, which could make some of them more receptive to the BJP. But the past experience suggests that such support can prove to be fleeting.

Also Read: Bengal civic polls: Grassroots gap fuels BJP outreach; Congress bets on workers

Samsur Rahman, a former vice-president of the BJP’s Minority Morcha who campaigned in minority-dominated areas of Nandigram, said some Muslim families told him they had voted for the party because they had received government jobs or benefited from schemes such as Annapurna and Awas Yojana.

“It is now the responsibility of our party to reciprocate and help improve the lives of minorities, who have all these years been used by other political parties as vote banks while being deprived of development,” Rahman said.

Muslim voters wanted “hatte kaj, pete bhat” (work for their hands and food for their stomachs) he said, arguing that they would support whichever government met those needs. His emphasis on livelihoods underlines the importance of translating welfare benefits into lasting improvements in people’s lives if the BJP hopes to retain Muslim support.

Economic barriers facing Muslims

The economic disadvantages are substantial. Muslims account for about 27 per cent of West Bengal’s population, or 2.47 crore people, according to the 2011 Census.

A 2016 study titled “Living Reality of Muslims in West Bengal”, published by Association SNAP and Guidance Guild in association with the Pratichi Institute, found that nearly 80 per cent of rural Muslim households had monthly family incomes of Rs 5,000 or less. Some 38.3 per cent reported incomes of Rs 2,500 or less, while only 3.8 per cent earned Rs 15,000 or more.

Also Read: Bengal heist: How BJP captured the state by hollowing out democracy

Rahman said little had changed in the past decade and stressed the need for the BJP to focus on education, employment, and the community’s wider socio-economic disadvantages to consolidate the support it started getting from sections of Muslims.

Islam, too, made a similar point, arguing that whether the party could convert the community’s latest response into sustained support would depend on how it treated Muslims in the coming years.

Issues that could alienate Muslims

He said issues such as the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) and the conduct of fringe groups associated with the BJP and the RSS could become red lines. At the same time, Islam said, some progressive sections of the Muslim community, including women, might welcome certain aspects of the UCC.

Rahman also admitted the need for consultation with Muslim representatives on the UCC and greater clarity on the party’s position on madrasas.

The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls is another source of tension, with the large-scale deletions already affecting Muslim voters raising questions about how the exercise could influence the community’s ties with the BJP.

Also Read: BJP won Bengal promising to end TMC’s ‘jungle raj’; 5 months on, violence mounts

Blaming the previous TMC regime for the “mess”, Rahman said BJP workers had been asked to help people whose names were deleted apply for inclusion through Form 6.

Husain, however, argued that contentious issues such as the UCC and SIR would not matter to what he called “nationalist Muslims”, a term the BJP generally uses to identify those who have come into its political fold.

The distinction raises questions about whether the party will address the socio-political issues confronting the community without prejudice.

Can the BJP change its approach?

The answer, as Islam put it, lies in whether the BJP has learnt from its past mistakes and is willing to rethink its approach towards minorities. “It cannot simply expect Muslims to vote for the party. It must also offer them meaningful representation within its organisational structure,” Islam said.

Rahman summed up what the BJP’s approach should be by quoting a Bengali adage, “Je shohag kore shei shashon korte pare”, which roughly translates as “Only the one who shows affection can govern”.