Results for: Communal Polarization

The Matuas of Bengal are back in the national spotlight due to the Citizenship (Amendment) Rules, 2024, and their significance as a vote bank. The politics around their votes is complex, involving issues of citizenship, communal polarization, political deification of Matua icons, and factionalism within the Thakur family. The citizenship question remains unresolved, with confusion and fear among the community about the application process and potential disenfranchisement. Communal polarization has also been used to mobilize Matua votes, with the BJP strategically categorizing migrants as either infiltrators or refugees based on their religious identities. Political leaders are also strategically deifying Matua icons like Harichand and Guruchand Thakur, using their names, images, and teachings for electoral success. Finally, factionalism within the Thakur family, the heirs of Harichand, is transforming Matua politics, with the BJP and TMC factions using them to reach out to voters.

The BJP’s use of communal polarization to enhance electoral prospects, including its leaders’ dissemination of such rhetoric, should come as no surprise. The more intriguing question, intellectually and politically, revolves around the circumstances under which such tactics will backfire on the BJP. A brief examination of the history of Indian politics provides insights into this matter. The BJP’s political ideology is predicated on the notion that all Hindus, who constitute an overwhelming majority in India, will naturally gravitate toward the party, as it represents their vision of a civilized nation. Such an idea gained electoral traction when the BJP leveraged the Ram Temple movement in the late 1980s to emerge as India’s primary opposition party. While encountering setbacks in 2004 and 2009, the BJP has not only regained its momentum post-2014 but also ascended to unprecedented heights. The party’s emergence as the national political leader coincides with the political marginalization of the Congress. The Congress’s inability to implement creative destruction within its leadership to accommodate the growing democratic aspirations of the marginalized, as electoral democracy began to take root in India, marked the beginning of its challenges. Economic problems in a supply-constrained economy further fueled public discontent. By the late 1960s, the Congress faced rebellions, often more rooted in factions than ideology, in various states.