A key issue within the Bharatiya Janata Celebration’s breakthrough victory in West Bengal was the RSS’s quieter, extra methodical method. The RSS’s efforts within the state over a decade, particularly within the final two years, laid the muse for its victory.
Hindu identification politics has a historical past of greater than 100 years in Bengal, however the RSS and the Bharatiya Janata Celebration’s predecessor, the Bharatiya Janata Celebration (BJS), failed to determine a presence within the state after independence. The BJS received 9 seats and 12.57% of the vote within the 1951 elections, however subsequently fell off the electoral map. The lengthy drought lastly resulted in 2014, when the BJP received its first parliamentary seat in a by-poll. Since then, it has steadily gained energy, successful three seats in 2016, 77 seats in 2021, and 207 seats on this election.
RSS leaders say the turning level within the election marketing campaign got here when it grew to become clear that the Sangh might win the combat in opposition to the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in 2021. Over the previous two years, the Sangh has mobilized 2,000 full-time staff drawn from the celebration cadre and senior management from different states to fill gaps within the BJP’s grassroots equipment. These staff (all bills borne by the Celebration) got a single process: to function at a supralocal stage, amongst villages, aggregations of city settlements, and particular communities and social segments. The Sangh’s position was to create the social and psychological circumstances that paved the best way for the political success of the BJP.
After the Bharatiya Janata Celebration’s setback within the 2024 parliamentary elections, when JP Nadda appeared to counsel in an interview with The Indian Specific that the celebration not wanted the RSS, and a scarcity of coordination between the Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata Celebration was extensively criticized internally, the RSS doubled down and sharpened its technique.
Two veteran strategists had been on the helm of the Sangh’s operations in Kolkata. One is Sir Sarkaryawa Ramdutt Chakradhar, who has been stationed within the state for the previous six years, and Ram Chandra Pandey of Ghosh Pramukh, who has been based mostly within the state for 9 years.
“There have been fixed changes. Bharatiya Janata Celebration staff had been on the forefront of the political wrestle and our staff had been going door to door to steer folks to vote fearlessly,” stated a senior official of the RSS’s central Bengal wing. The organizational construction of the RSS within the state is split into North, Central and South Bengal areas.
The two,000 staff from out of state labored in shifts and had a minimal three-month dedication. Over 150 cadres, together with MLAs and election administration veterans from different states, additionally camped within the state for nearly two years. These leaders served as heads of parliamentary districts, and their duties expanded past conventional campaigning.
“In some locations, even RSS-BJP staff had been feeling scared and in some locations complained that they had been being threatened by TMC folks. Some staff had been so scared that they stopped working, however we satisfied them to not fear. We prevented clashes with TMC staff and satisfied them to concentrate on door-to-door canvassing,” the chief stated.
These staff, positioned throughout castes, communities, girls, scholar teams, lecturers {and professional} networks, organized intimate gatherings of 15 to twenty folks, armed with fastidiously crafted speaking factors on Bengali delight, girls’s security, unemployment, and emotive points such because the R.G. Khar Medical School rape-murder case and group division.
public opinion ballot paperwork
Other than the bottom forces, the BJP-RSS additionally made appointments that in the end bore fruit. Within the 2016 elections, the duo of Bhupendra Yadav and Kailash Vijayvargiya got here to energy.
By 2021, the celebration has fielded joint normal secretary Shiv Prakash and nationwide secretary Arvind Menon. Prakash has invested practically 5 years into laying the groundwork for RSS type. Sunil Bansal, the present BJP normal secretary in command of Bengal, has refined the mannequin set by his predecessor. The Bharatiya Janata Celebration chief from Uttar Pradesh, who has spent the previous six months in Bengal, pressured that Bansal and the celebration operated precisely on information on this election.
“Findings present that every one 294 Congressional District Representatives from different states got a 20-25 web page folder with their seats listed. It contained particulars and contacts of key leaders of varied political events, their weaknesses and strengths, and so forth. One other folder given to them halfway via the marketing campaign contained 20-25 pages detailing every part about every sales space,” he stated. he stated.
The paperwork, produced by a polling agency that has been working with the Bharatiya Janata Celebration since 2016 and coordinated by Bansal, surprised even native leaders. “We had been in an meeting constituency and had all the required information. Native leaders and staff had been typically stunned by our data and understanding of ground-level intelligence and leaders of different political events. The checklist even included who among the many TMC leaders in our area had been loosely related and might be approached to work for us,” the UP chief stated.
“TMC gave me the chance.”
Sangh leaders stated that the RSS and the BJP might develop due to the TMC.
“If there was no TMC authorities, the BJP’s victory in West Bengal wouldn’t have been potential. With the rise and consolidation of the TMC, our actions within the state grew and beneath Mamata Banerjee’s authorities, communal divisions within the state elevated resulting from her insurance policies of Islamic appeasement. Earlier than 2011, there have been only a few Bengali pracharaks. Similar to in Punjab, the place we had only a few Sikh pracharaks, we now have a protracted checklist of Bengali pracharaks, together with these from West Bengal in addition to those that communicate Bangla,” stated a senior pracharak from Kolkata who was posted throughout the state through the election interval.
“Through the Left period, it was troublesome to polarize alongside communal strains. Through the TMC period, it grew to become very straightforward,” one other RSS official stated candidly.
Insiders identified how the Sangh had expanded through the TMC period and claimed that over 1,500 shakhas (each day coaching by the RSS) at the moment are working throughout the state on daily basis. In case you additionally think about weekly and month-to-month gatherings, the footprint turns into a lot bigger.
“Over time, we felt that some form of hatred in opposition to the TMC and its leaders was rising amongst Bengali Hindus. We discovered that many ladies we had been approaching had been hostile to Mamata Banerjee,” stated one other state-level RSS chief.
Nevertheless, holding Shaka proved troublesome. “There are few states the place holding each day shakhas is as troublesome as ours,” stated an RSS official. TMC-controlled native governments incessantly sealed venues, closed bogs, and disrupted rallies, a sample that was broader than the Left’s resistance to the RSS in Kerala. Sangh insiders stated these assaults had been significantly extreme in southern Bengal.
“We realized that Bengali Hindus had been quickly changing into uncomfortable with Mamata Banerjee’s management and insurance policies. It was the Samajwadi Celebration regime, particularly the 2012-17 authorities regime, that gave us area to combine in UP,” defined Pracharak, a West Bengal native who at the moment works for a national-level RSS affiliate.
Vidya Bharati, the training arm of the RSS, runs round 300 Sharda Shishu Enamel faculties within the state, educating 1.5 million college students and using round 3,000 lecturers. In response to pracharaks related to the training sector, these establishments confronted repeated lawsuits, raids and revocation of recognition.
“Our faculties had been raided many times and RSS actions weren’t allowed. Each time they (TMC) discovered that conferences or camps had been being held in faculties, raids had been carried out and accreditation was canceled. One of many three faculties affiliated with CBSE obtained the necessary no-objection certificates solely after a authorized battle,” Pracharak stated.
In February 2001, 5 swayamsevaks had been attacked in a distant village in South 24 Parganas district. 4 of them died within the assault. The only survivor, Bikarno Naskar, contested and received the Gosaba (SC) seat in 2026 as an MLA of the Bharatiya Janata Celebration. Naskar’s story, in a way, encapsulates the journey the Sangh needed to undertake in a political terrain hostile to its development, through which the social circumstances that will have enabled its development didn’t exist. Till now.
