A derogatory Facebook post about the Prophet Muhammad, allegedly posted on Friday, June 30, has sparked communal violence in Bengal. The affected areas are Baduria, Basirhat and surrounding towns and hamlets in the North 24 Parganas district, less than 100 km from the capital, Kolkata. Part of the story, such as the rumour that a schoolgoing 17-year-old wrote the offensive post and chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s claim that governor Keshari Nath Tripathi insulted her, are hard to believe.

What is indisputable, however, is that the ugly politics of faith has reared its head in Bengal after nearly 60 years. The blame for this lies at the doorstep of Banerjee, who knows that her landslide majorities in 2011 and 2016 were due to Muslims shifting their allegiance from the Left to Trinamool Congress.

Bengal’s Muslim population, according to the 2011census, is around 28 per cent, second only to Assam’s 34 per cent. Mamata’s ‘appeasement’ of Muslims — including job reservations and state funds for imams — has given the state BJP an opportunity to accuse her of being ‘anti-Hindu’. So, the chief minister is caught up in a whirlwind, attending Islamic festivals as well as Hindu ones, trying to project that she does not favour any particular faith.

This strategy of playing on religious affinities, we fear, will push Bengal down the slippery slope of communalism. The last time this happened was between the late 1920s and 1940s. The Hindu elite of Bengal were not keen to let democracy produce Muslim-dominated governments in an undivided Bengal.

After Independence, successive governments in Bengal, including those ruled by the Congress and the Left’s 34-year-old regime, avoided letting communal passions boil over. Perhaps the memory of the Great Calcutta Killings and the Noakhali riots of 1946 shaped their strategies.

Banerjee should focus on good administration, building social and physical infrastructure, instead of stoking fires that might destroy the social and political fabric of Bengal. Such a strategy would be politically counterproductive from a partisan point of view as well.