One would have expected this from some medieval corner of Pakistan that’s under the reign of the Taliban or the Daesh. But no, this is West Bengal under the chief ministership of Mamata Banerjee who often dons the hijab and bends over backwards to please venom-spewing Salafi mullahs. In the six years she has been in power in Bengal, the state has come under the firm grip of Islamists who have started dictating the agenda in many fields. Thus, the word “ramdhanu” (rainbow) gets changed to “rongdhanu” in school textbooks since the original name (of the rainbow) starts with “Ram”. Schoolchildren are taught to call their paternal uncles “chacha”, not the Bengali “kaku”, and their paternal aunts “fufi-amma” instead of the Bengali “pishi”. The Islamisation of school textbooks in Bengal is firmly on its way as dictated by hardline Islamists.

The Politics Behind It

The reason for Bengal slipping into the grip of hardline Islamists is political. Since the late 1950s, Muslims have, more or less, voted en bloc for any party that promised them security and privileges. The Congress, which ruled the state till the late 1970s, not only wooed them, but also looked the other way when illegal Muslim migrants from neighbouring Bangladesh started flooding the border districts of Bengal. Congress politicians offered them political patronage, protection and citizenship in return for their votes. The Left, which ruled (or misruled) Bengal for 34 years from 1977, actively continued with this policy to hold on to power. Mamata Banerjee has now perfected this policy because she has come to realise that without the Muslim vote, she would not be able to hold on to power in the state. It is the Muslims, who voted almost en masse for Mamata in the 2011 and 2016 Assembly polls, who are responsible for her impressive victories.

Mamata believes that in order to keep her crucial Muslim electorate happy, she has to humour the hardline mullahs who exercise near-total control over the mostly poor and illiterate Muslims in Bengal. That assessment is true. Over the decades, maulanas belonging to the Deobandi school of Islam have taught and preached the orthodox and bigoted version of Islam in madrassas and mosques in Bengal. Slowly, the syncretic and tolerant Sufi Islam that Bengali Muslims used to adhere to gave way to puritanical Islam. The Tablighi Jamaat, an offshoot of the revivalist Deobandi movement (which started as a result of the failed bid in 1857 to drive the British out of India and re-establish Mughal rule in this country), complemented the efforts of the hardline maulanas (all of them Urdu-speaking and hailing from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar) by preaching the puritanical form of Islam to Muslims in Bengal.

What also played a major role in radicalisation of the Muslims in Bengal was the huge inflow of money from the Gulf states (which follow the totally intolerant and regressive Salafi version of Islam) to fund mosques and madrassas. The Deobandi maulanas very soon metamorphosed into Salafis and started preaching hate and intolerance to the Muslim masses. The spread of Salafi Islam, which is very political in nature, soon resulted in political awakening among the Muslims who realised the need to vote en masse for any politician or party that would safeguard their interests. This “safeguarding” meant allowing illegal Muslim migrants from Bangladesh to settle down in Bengal (on mostly government land), providing them with the requisite citizenship documents and turning a blind eye to their misdeeds and criminal activities.