Narendra Modi, the BJP's prime ministerial candidate, visited Kolkata on Wednesday for the first time as a part of his countrywide campaigning tour.
In his speech, he played to local sentiments by talking about Bengali heroes and food, but analysts say that his strategy was far more complicated than merely seeking votes.
“If you vote for the lotus, you will have three advantages,” he said at the rally. “Mamataji will be your chief minister, I will be at the centre and your Pranab-da [Mukherjee] will be the president.” This was one of the more perplexing statements in the speech, considering that all three hail from different parties.
He went on to say that the Congress passed over making Mukherjee prime minister not once, but twice. The first instance was in 1984, when Indira Gandhi was assassinated.
Despite Mukherjee being in Delhi and, according to Modi, the senior-most party official, Rajeev Gandhi was flown in from Kolkata to be sworn in. Later, in 2004, when the UPA came to power, Mukherjee was once again not given his due.
“The problem with Mukherjee is that he was seen as not being royalist enough,” said Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, author of a biography of Modi.
Modi, according to Mukhopadhyay, is doing two things. “He is basically pandering to Bengal’s larger aspirations. What Bengal thinks today, India thinks a hundred years later, is the impression he is trying to create. India has not had a single national level leader from the state for a long time.”
He is also trying to cultivate the president and get into his good books. “In case of a sharp-edged, hung parliament, he is definitely angling for slight concessions,” he said. “There is a lot of presidential prerogative at the time of government formation and if things are not in Modi’s favour, he will need some way to prevent the Congress from coming to power.”
Whether or not Mukherjee falls for the flattery, that seems to have been Modi’s focus, apart from his usual stock offerings, such as greeting the crowd in the local language and reading Bengali literature to them.
Modi also attempted to woo Muslims, who constitute 25.2% percent of the state’s population in 2001. According to Modi, West Bengal’s Hajj quota is under-utilised, whereas the Gujarat one is packed. A Muslim applicant wishing to travel to the Hajj will by default be wealthy because of exorbitant fees. The last time he said this, almost verbatim, was at a rally in Patna in October.
“This is in fact a statement to his centrist supporters, who are slightly uncomfortable with his communalist stances," said Mukhopadhyay. "With instances like this they can now argue that Modi is moderating his politics and becoming secular.”
Given that all Modi said of significance in his speech was aimed at an audience not in the state, it begins to explain why he would spend so much time in a state where the BJP has only a nominal presence.
“The BJP reckons it has a very popular leader in Modi and that he is somebody who can take it to its optimum strength and appeal in the country,” said Ashok Malik, a senior political commentator. “As a political party it has a right to test this belief, especially in regions where it has traditionally been weak.”
The BJP certainly has been weak in West Bengal. The best the party has ever done in the state was in the 1991 assembly poll just after the BJP was created. At that time, it got 11.3% of the vote share. Since then, that share has steadily declined, hitting a low in 2006 with 1.6% of the state’s total votes. It picked up again to 4.1% in 2011, but it did not get a single seat then or in the 2009 general election.
With 42 Lok Sabha seats, West Bengal ranks third in the number of parliamentarians across the country. This is why first the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and then the Trinamool Congress Party were able to dictate terms at the centre for two consecutive UPA terms.
Even Modi might find it difficult to translate the BJP’s relatively insubstantial vote share into actual seats, which might remove the necessity of having to appeal to Pranab Mukherjee for help in forming the government. However, he might be looking at the long term.
“Purely in terms of seats, the BJP is unlikely to win many, or any, in Bengal,” Malik continued. “In terms of vote share, there is a strong possibility it could finish third, beating the Congress, which is likely to win more seats, however.”
Mukhopadhyay agreed. “Modi is pulling votes for the BJP that have never existed for the party before in those states,” he said. “So even in the worst case, if he can pull an extra 8 to 10 percent, he might be able to squeeze one or two seats or come within striking distance of it, and they score a huge political entry in the state.”
In 2013, he recalled, when party leaders debated whether or not to appoint Modi as their prime ministerial candidate, Modi implicitly stated to them that he had the capacity to run for elections on his own steam as a regional candidate.
“A dramatic increase in vote share – with or without the miracle translation into seats – would be a psychological boost for the BJP and would allow Modi to strengthen his claim that he is now a pan-Indian leader,” Malik concluded.
Tomorrow, Modi will move on to Guwahati, Agartala and Silchar, making his current tour schedule truly pan-Indian. What he is doing now is capitalising on the media publicity generated by his rallies, with a clear focus on long-term gains.
In his speech, he played to local sentiments by talking about Bengali heroes and food, but analysts say that his strategy was far more complicated than merely seeking votes.
“If you vote for the lotus, you will have three advantages,” he said at the rally. “Mamataji will be your chief minister, I will be at the centre and your Pranab-da [Mukherjee] will be the president.” This was one of the more perplexing statements in the speech, considering that all three hail from different parties.
He went on to say that the Congress passed over making Mukherjee prime minister not once, but twice. The first instance was in 1984, when Indira Gandhi was assassinated.
Despite Mukherjee being in Delhi and, according to Modi, the senior-most party official, Rajeev Gandhi was flown in from Kolkata to be sworn in. Later, in 2004, when the UPA came to power, Mukherjee was once again not given his due.
“The problem with Mukherjee is that he was seen as not being royalist enough,” said Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, author of a biography of Modi.
Modi, according to Mukhopadhyay, is doing two things. “He is basically pandering to Bengal’s larger aspirations. What Bengal thinks today, India thinks a hundred years later, is the impression he is trying to create. India has not had a single national level leader from the state for a long time.”
He is also trying to cultivate the president and get into his good books. “In case of a sharp-edged, hung parliament, he is definitely angling for slight concessions,” he said. “There is a lot of presidential prerogative at the time of government formation and if things are not in Modi’s favour, he will need some way to prevent the Congress from coming to power.”
Whether or not Mukherjee falls for the flattery, that seems to have been Modi’s focus, apart from his usual stock offerings, such as greeting the crowd in the local language and reading Bengali literature to them.
Modi also attempted to woo Muslims, who constitute 25.2% percent of the state’s population in 2001. According to Modi, West Bengal’s Hajj quota is under-utilised, whereas the Gujarat one is packed. A Muslim applicant wishing to travel to the Hajj will by default be wealthy because of exorbitant fees. The last time he said this, almost verbatim, was at a rally in Patna in October.
“This is in fact a statement to his centrist supporters, who are slightly uncomfortable with his communalist stances," said Mukhopadhyay. "With instances like this they can now argue that Modi is moderating his politics and becoming secular.”
Given that all Modi said of significance in his speech was aimed at an audience not in the state, it begins to explain why he would spend so much time in a state where the BJP has only a nominal presence.
“The BJP reckons it has a very popular leader in Modi and that he is somebody who can take it to its optimum strength and appeal in the country,” said Ashok Malik, a senior political commentator. “As a political party it has a right to test this belief, especially in regions where it has traditionally been weak.”
The BJP certainly has been weak in West Bengal. The best the party has ever done in the state was in the 1991 assembly poll just after the BJP was created. At that time, it got 11.3% of the vote share. Since then, that share has steadily declined, hitting a low in 2006 with 1.6% of the state’s total votes. It picked up again to 4.1% in 2011, but it did not get a single seat then or in the 2009 general election.
With 42 Lok Sabha seats, West Bengal ranks third in the number of parliamentarians across the country. This is why first the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and then the Trinamool Congress Party were able to dictate terms at the centre for two consecutive UPA terms.
Even Modi might find it difficult to translate the BJP’s relatively insubstantial vote share into actual seats, which might remove the necessity of having to appeal to Pranab Mukherjee for help in forming the government. However, he might be looking at the long term.
“Purely in terms of seats, the BJP is unlikely to win many, or any, in Bengal,” Malik continued. “In terms of vote share, there is a strong possibility it could finish third, beating the Congress, which is likely to win more seats, however.”
Mukhopadhyay agreed. “Modi is pulling votes for the BJP that have never existed for the party before in those states,” he said. “So even in the worst case, if he can pull an extra 8 to 10 percent, he might be able to squeeze one or two seats or come within striking distance of it, and they score a huge political entry in the state.”
In 2013, he recalled, when party leaders debated whether or not to appoint Modi as their prime ministerial candidate, Modi implicitly stated to them that he had the capacity to run for elections on his own steam as a regional candidate.
“A dramatic increase in vote share – with or without the miracle translation into seats – would be a psychological boost for the BJP and would allow Modi to strengthen his claim that he is now a pan-Indian leader,” Malik concluded.
Tomorrow, Modi will move on to Guwahati, Agartala and Silchar, making his current tour schedule truly pan-Indian. What he is doing now is capitalising on the media publicity generated by his rallies, with a clear focus on long-term gains.
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