ON JANUARY 11, a day before the 157th birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in Kolkata for a two-day visit. He chose to spent the night at Belur Math, the headquarters of the Ramakrishna Math and Mission founded by Vivekananda. The visit, however, was marred by widespread protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act passed by his government.
Students protested in locations across Kolkata where Modi was scheduled to stop by or would pass by. Waving black flags and shouting anti-CAA slogans, they asked the prime minister to “go back”. The massive protests forced Modi to take a helicopter to the Raj Bhavan from the airport. From there, he took a boat to Belur Math.
While the protests were led by the left parties, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, too, joined in to demonstrate her opposition to the CAA and the National Register of Indian Citizens, even as she fulfilled her constitutional obligation of receiving and accompanying the prime minister. “Nobody knows which side she is in,” said Pradip Bhattacharya, a Congress member of the Rajya Sabha. Mamata clarified that as chief minister she had to follow protocol and receive the prime minister. She met Modi at the Raj Bhavan wearing a black badge and told the prime minister that West Bengal would not accept the CAA, NRIC and the National Population Register. After sharing the dais with Modi, she rushed back to speak to student protesters and asked them not to target the prime minister’s meetings in the city. As the students started chanting “Go back, Mamata”, she joined them and shouted slogans against Modi.
Modi, meanwhile, became the first prime minister to stay at the Belur Math. He has had a long connection with the Ramakrishna Mission. He was very close to Swami Atmasthananda, the former president of the Math, who headed its Rajkot office in the 1960s. Modi had expressed the desire to join the order, but Atmasthananda turned him back, asking him to take up public life. Said Swami Suvirananda, general secretary of the order, “Since childhood, whenever he needed some guidance, Narendra Modi would come and meet the swamijis here. He knows everything about our order and is part of the Ramakrishna movement.”
Modi’s visit to the ashram could be the seen as the launch of the BJP’s 2021 assembly election campaign. The Ramakrishna Mission has wide acceptance among Hindus, especially Hindu refugees in east and northeast India. However, Modi using the Math’s platform to defend the CAA—which privileges some refugees over others, while Vivekananda’s ideal was to welcome all persecuted refugees—has snowballed into a major controversy with the CPI(M) and the Trinamool Congress conveying their displeasure. It prompted Suvirananda to reiterate that the Math was strictly apolitical. “We are an inclusive organisation which has monks from Hindu, Islam and Christian communities,” he said. “We live like brothers of the same parents. To us, Narendra Modi is the leader of India and Mamata Banerjee is the leader of West Bengal.”
State BJP leaders, however, believe that the party’s best chance to win the elections is to keep Modi as its face. “If the prime minister gives his time to Bengal, we will win the elections easily,” said Dilip Ghosh, state president of the BJP. “I told him that Mamata was a little ahead of us earlier. Now, we are marching ahead. The prime minister will now come to Bengal frequently.”
With nearly half of the state’s population tracing their origins to East Pakistan/Bangladesh, the CAA-NRIC issue could prove to be a challenge and an opportunity for the BJP. The partition and the subsequent migration of Hindus from Bangladesh had caused a vertical split in the Bengali society into Bangals (East Bengalis) and Ghotis (West Bengalis). It even divided the football-crazy state as the migrants side with the East Bengal club while the West Bengalis support Mohun Bagan.
“The rivalry was huge,” said academician Pabitra Sarkar, who himself was a migrant. “For instance, inter-caste marriages were not as problematic as marriages between East Bengalis and West Bengalis. Sometimes, couples had to walk out of their homes just because they belonged to different sides of the border. Despite the differences, past chief ministers had ensured that there was no violence. They never discriminated between East Bengalis and West Bengalis. The B.C. Roy government created infrastructure for migrants, while the left front governments gave them land rights, irrespective of their religion.” He warned that the CAA would bring back disharmony. “It has tremendous polarisation effect and the Bengali society will become restive like it used to be when we came from Bangladesh,” he said.
Intellectuals like Sarkar oppose the CAA for moral and ethical reasons, but politicians who oppose the Act face the threat of being labelled anti-Hindu. Nearly 150 of 294 assembly constituencies in West Bengal have a significant population of migrants. Haripada Biswas of the Forward Bloc said migrant communities like the Namashudras, Matuas and the Rajbhangshis, who number around two crore, were yet to get their citizenship papers, despite owning land.
“They require citizenship certificates. Land rights alone will not do as they will be thrown out of the country if the NRIC is implemented,” said Biswas. The CAA seems to be the BJP’s answer to this vexing problem and to consolidate Hindu votes. But Biswas, who is a former MLA, continues to oppose the CAA. “No sensible person would support such an Act,” he said. “Migrants are being used to target Muslims. But all migrants who came to Bengal are not against Muslims. They believe in coexistence. The Modi government is using the migrants for political gains. We will oppose it tooth and nail.” And, he is not worried about electoral implications.
“Let them take advantage of the issue electorally,” he said. “We are not bothered. Citizenship cannot be religion specific. Muslims who came from Bangladesh should be given citizenship.”