The Tripura Vote Will Impact Bengal And The Last Left Bastion Of Kerala

The results of the Tripura, Meghalaya and Nagaland state assembly elections have led to an over-simplification of analysis. Most commentators have linked the outcomes to Narendra Modi’s undiminished popularity and development politics, Amit Shah’s no-holds-barred election tactics, and the Sangh’s growing clout in the North-East.

While there is no denying these factors, we lose a lot of nuance in the process. The fact that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), or BJP-backed regional parties, will lead all three states needs to be balanced by the fact that in two states – Meghalaya and Nagaland – it is the regional parties that held sway. The BJP may have backed the right horses, and orchestrated the right alliances for government formation, but this means little when it comes to small states. The small states prefer not to be on the wrong side of Delhi, and right now the BJP is ruling Delhi. If the dispensation changes tomorrow, the alliances will change, too.

So, the first conclusion: we should not read too much into the Meghalaya and Nagaland results, except to pat the BJP in the back for making the right choices. The really significant verdict is that of Tripura, where the BJP’s thumping victory will have a wider impact. But even here, the impact will not be national, but limited.

Conclusion two: it is what happens in major states this year, from Karnataka to Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, that will set the national agenda, and not what happened in the North-East on 3 March.

But Tripura is big for two reasons.

First, for the first time ever, a right-wing Hindu party humbled a well-entrenched Leftist Chief Minister, Manik Sarkar, a man who had every reason to believe that he had done well for the state. His defeat, and a humbling one at that, raises questions about the long-term relevance of an unreformed Stalinist party that is now an also-ran in West Bengal, and probably likely to lose the next election in Kerala. A key reason for the BJP’s victory is the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh’s (RSS) ability to mobilise people – in an effective counter to the Communist Party of India-Marxists’ (CPI-M) own ability to mobilise. The larger mobilisation won this time. Between 2014 and now RSS shakhas in Tripura have more than quadrupled.

Second, again for the first time ever, a Hindu party like the BJP is making inroads with Bengali voters – voters who have never in the past seemed too keen on the Sangh’s brand of Hindutva politics. Tripura will impact the future of West Bengal politics, too, and Mamata Banerjee has rightly recognised this looming threat by pooh-poohing the Tripura results, and has begun reaching out to other regional parties for 2019. The first sign of real worry is when you say the BJP did not win Tripura, but the CPI-M lost.

The two states that are most important in terms of the Hindu vote besides West Bengal are Assam and Tripura, and both are now with the BJP, with the underlying theme being Hindu vote consolidation. In Assam, the old fault lines between Assamese and Bengalis have been slightly blurred, with the Sangh slowly converting this to a Hindu-Muslim demographic issue. In Tripura, where the ethnically-cleansed Bengalis of former East Pakistan sought refuge in Tripura and reduced the tribals to a minority in their own state, Manik Sarkar certainly deserves some credit for reducing the friction. The BJP, by taking over a substantial chunk of the tribal vote, and also the Bengali vote, will have to continue his good work, if needed by giving the tribal council an even greater share of powers. Its partnership with the Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT) was critical for bringing in the tribal vote, and the latter will surely press its demand for a separate state. At the very least, even greater powers to the tribal council is worth considering, given the sense of disempowerment tribals feel vis-a-vis the refugee inflows of 1947 and 1971.

For the Left, its road to irrelevance has been signposted not by the rise of market-oriented economics, but by the rise of the BJP as a rival for the Hindu vote in the three states where it has a base – West Bengal, Tripura and Kerala.

The Left is a schizophrenic party, where its leadership – both intellectual and political – is largely anti-Hindu in its rhetoric, but its cadre has been largely Hindu by default. The reason for this is historical. After 1947, when the Congress managed to garner the bulk of the minority vote by virtue of its dominance in national politics and its ability to calm their insecurities after Partition, the Hindu vote – in reaction – went to the Left in the states where it had some base. This remained so as long as there was no Hindu party seeking the same vote. Post 2014, the BJP has staked its claim to this vote, and once the Hindu vote is split, it follows that the Left will lose. For Hindu voters, it makes no sense to vote for a party that does not claim to fight their causes, when the BJP claims to do so. It does not matter whether the BJP is actually fighting for Hindu interests – it probably is not doing anything more than paying lip-service to Hindu issues – but in politics what matters is perception. The “secular” parties have done such a great job of demonising the BJP, that it will be considered a party of Hindutva even if it is busy wooing the Muslim vote just like the Congress. When it comes to voting for a party that does not claim to represent Hindus and one that claims so, over time it is the latter that will gain.

When a tipping point is reached, the vote deserts en masse – which is probably what happened in Tripura. This is why Mamata Banerjee in Bengal and Pinarayi Vijayan in Kerala ought to be worried. The BJP now has the power to become the main rival of the former, and consolidate the Hindu vote share that can send the CPI-M to defeat in Kerala. This, and only this, explains the violence of the Left cadres against the Sangh in Kerala.

Whether this will actually happen or not depends on how the other parties make policy shifts. Both the Congress and Trinamool are busy making course corrections, with both Rahul Gandhi and Mamata Banerjee making temple visits a regular feature of their politics.

What Tripura has done is make the Left irrelevant, unless it changes course even more drastically and returns to defending its Hindu roots without being anti-minority.