Bengal vs. BJP
The BJP is the richest political party in the world. They have the most organized election machinery, the most compliant media ecosystem, and a Prime Minister whose face can sell anything from salt to satellites. On paper, West Bengal should have fallen into their lap years ago.
Yet, every time the saffron wave crashes into the Bay of Bengal, it retreats.
People often ask me why the "Modi Magic" that sweeps through Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh suddenly evaporates when it crosses the Jharkhand border. The answer isn't just political; it’s cultural. The BJP has a Bengal problem because they fundamentally do not understand the Bengali DNA.
The Problem of the "Face"
The first issue is the alternative they offer. If not Mamata, then who?
For a long time, the BJP’s strategy has been to import leaders from the very party they claim to despise. Their biggest weapon in Bengal is Suvendu Adhikari, a former Trinamool man. We need to talk about his language. It isn't normal political banter. Adhikari recently made headlines for spewing what I can only describe as genocidal bile, proclaiming that India must teach Muslims a lesson just like Israel taught Gaza.
Think about that comparison. He isn't talking about policy; he is talking about annihilation.
But it gets worse. In a land that produced orators like Jyoti Basu and parliamentarians like Somnath Chatterjee, we now have a BJP leadership that speaks like street thugs. Suvendu Adhikari doesn't just stop at communal dog-whistling; he publicly refers to Bengal's police as "suorer bacha" and India's Leader of Opposition as "gandu", which are straight-up obscenities. To hear a man holding a constitutional post use such gutter language on a microphone to describe our protectors and national leader tells you everything you need to know about the intellectual bankruptcy of the state unit.
When a voter asks a tough question, instead of answering, he snaps back with insults about their father’s salary. This brand of arrogance might work in feudal pockets of the Hindi heartland, but in Bengal - a land that prides itself on intellectual debate and Bhadralok (gentlemanly) culture - this comes across as boorish and culturally offensive. The average Bengali, even a devout Hindu, looks at this lack of refinement and thinks, "This uncultured man wants to rule us?"
The Numbers Don't Lie
If you strip away the noise of the IT Cell, the data shows a party that might have already peaked.
In 2016, the BJP had 3 seats in the assembly. In 2021, they jumped to 77. That looks like massive growth, right? But to form a government, you need 147. They are not just a few steps away; they are miles away.
More tellingly, in the recent Lok Sabha elections, the BJP actually shrank. They went from 18 seats down to 12.
There is a growing feeling that the BJP has hit its ceiling in Bengal. They have consolidated the anti-Mamata vote, but they haven't been able to breach the fortress of the distinct Bengali cultural identity.
Tone Deaf to Bengali Identity
This brings me to the biggest hurdle: The BJP is seen as an outsider force trying to impose a North Indian definition of Hinduism on a state that practices its own distinct version of the faith.
The BJP hierarchy, led by Amit Shah, treats Bengal like a colony that needs to be "civilized." They come to Kolkata, mispronounce the names of our poets, and try to enforce a homogeneity that doesn't exist here.
Bengal is a land where "Jai Shri Ram" was never a political war cry until recently. It is the land of Maa Kali and Durga. Attempting to import a specific, aggressive brand of North Indian religious politics alienates the Bengali Hindu, who sees their religion as artistic, literary, and deeply personal.
Our festivals are not just religious rituals; they are cultural carnivals where the boundary between the believer and the atheist blurs over art, food, and music. Our Hinduism is Shakto (worship of the Goddess). It involves meat, fish, and fierce debate. It rejects the puritanical, vegetarian, Hindi-speaking mold of Hindutva that the RSS tries to export.
The biggest blunder is their confusion between "Bengali" and "Bangladeshi." In their eagerness to hunt down "infiltrators," the BJP’s rhetoric often bleeds into attacking the Bengali language and culture itself. When their internet trolls and uneducated cadres equate speaking Bengali or eating fish with being a "Bangladeshi," they insult the millions of Hindu Bengalis who fought and bled during the partition.
You cannot win Bengal by insulting Bengaliness. When the BJP tries to shame Bengal for its culture, they aren't fighting Mamata Banerjee; they are fighting history.
The "S.I.R." Conspiracy
While the BJP is busy making communal speeches, Mamata Banerjee is fighting a different war - one of administration and narrative.
Recently, she raised the alarm about the Election Commission's "Special Intensive Revision" (SIR). She pointed out a suspicious pattern: nearly 4 lakh more women than men were deleted from the voter lists.
While the Congress slept on this, Mamata turned it into a weapon. She framed it as "vote theft." She is telling the women of Bengal - her most loyal vote bank - that the central agencies are trying to erase their existence. Whether this is administrative error or malice is up for debate, but politically, Mamata is controlling the narrative. She paints the BJP not just as a political rival, but as a conspirator against the rights of the common Bengali.
The Final Frontier: Why the Desperation?
This begs the question: Why are the Prime Minister and the Home Minister spending so much energy on one state? Why do they return, election after election, despite the setbacks?
The answer lies in four strategic pillars:
- Expansion beyond the Hindi Belt: The BJP carries the heavy tag of being a "Hindi Heartland Party." To become a truly pan-Indian hegemon, it must conquer the East and the South. Bengal is the gateway to the East; without it, their claim to national dominance remains geographically incomplete.
- The Math for 2029: The BJP knows they have maxed out in the North and West. They have squeezed every drop of electoral juice from Gujarat, UP, and MP. To secure a comfortable majority in 2029, they need the 42 seats of Bengal to offset inevitable anti-incumbency losses in their strongholds.
- The Battle of Ideology: This is personal. Bengal represents an ideological thorn in the RSS's side. It is the one place where a regional identity has successfully held off the vision of a "One Nation, One Party" homogeny. The BJP wants to prove that their brand of Nationalism can dismantle the "Secular/Leftist" stronghold that Bengal has represented for decades.
- Breaking Regional Power: A win in Bengal would be a domino effect. It would send a signal to every regional party in India - from the DMK in Tamil Nadu to the SP in Uttar Pradesh - that no fortress is impregnable. Defeating Mamata is about breaking the spirit of regional resistance across India.
The battle for 2026 is going to be ugly. We will see more agencies like the ED and CBI being deployed. We will see more hate speech from the likes of Suvendu Adhikari, trying to turn neighbors against neighbors and calling opponents gandu on national television. We will see attempts to import the "Gaza model" of rhetoric into the peaceful villages of the Ganges delta.
But the BJP forgets one thing. You can buy MLAs, you can buy media time, and you can unleash agencies. But you cannot buy a culture. Until the BJP learns to respect Bengal for what it is - rather than what they want it to be - they will remain the invaders at the gate, loud, rich, and ultimately, rejected.