Race is on between BJP and Trinamool to exploit Hindu sentiment for coming polls

With assembly polls inching closer day by day, both BJP and TRC are upping their campaigning game in order to reap electoral benefits. Both parties are especially trying to exploit the Hindu or rather the Hindutva sentiment to their benefit.

Kolkata: As the Union home minister, Amit Shah and West Bengal chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, attended two competitive rallies by BJP and Trinamool Congress in the same district of South 24 Parganas on Thursday, one thing became quite clear. More than any other issue, the two contending forces are trying to exploit the Hindu or rather the Hindutva sentiment to reap electoral benefits in the forthcoming state assembly polls.

The entire visit of Amit Shah to the state on Thursday was masqueraded by a subtle veneer of religious sentiment. Beginning the day with the visit to the Bharat Sevashram Sangh office in South Kolkata and giving credit to the Sangh for inspiring Prime Minister, Narendra Modi’s Atmanirvar Bharat slogan, the Union home minister made it clear that he will not miss a single opportunity to exploit the Hindutava sentiment in Bengal, where religious flavours had been absent from politics so far.

Thereafter the Union home minister visited the Kapil Muni Ashram at Gangasagr in South 24 Parganas to give a subtle titter to the underlying Hindutva sentiment of the people of Bengal. Even his speech at Kakdwip in the same district was also full of religious piquancy. Much of his scathing attacks against the chief minister was related to how the Hindus in Bengal are denied their right to perform religious festivals like Durga and Saraswati Puja. Next after the rally, the Union home minister offered prayers at a local Kali temple in South 24 Parganas probably to touch the Bengali sentiment with Goddess Kali and the chanting of Jai Ma Kali mantra.

To counter Shah’s strategy on these lines, the chief minister exactly adopted the same tactic to titillating the Hindu sentiment bud during her speech at Poilan, also in South 24 Parganas district on Thursday afternoon. While delivering her speech she challenged the Union home minister to chant Saraswati worship Mantra in clear accent and pronunciation.

“Can Amit Shah chant the Saraswati mantra?” the chief minister and she started chanting the same mantra in her typical and inimitable style. She also alleged that without understanding the vast areas of Hindu religious diversity practised by the people of West Bengal for centuries, the saffron camp is just trying to divide Bengal in the name of religion.

However, the Left Front and Congress, which are in alliance in the polls this year, are yet to jump in the race of titillating religious buds. “We are Leftists and for us, the issues are secular culture, unemployment, proper price of farm products and poverty irradiation. BJP and Trinamool Congress, which are two sides of the same coin, are never concerned for the issues of the masses and hence for them it is natural that they will try to exploit the religious sentiments,” said Tanmay Bhattacharya, CPI(M) legislator.

A senior Congress leader, who did not wish to be named, said that although like their allies Left Front, Congress does not practice and propagate atheism, but Congress never mixes up religion and politics. “Although we are not atheists like our Marxist friends, we are truly secular and we never bring religion in politics,” he said.