Bolpur:

in Birbhum keep flocking under the BJP’s umbrella, defying the party’s grand polarisation plank in West Bengal.

Only a few days ago, about 200 Muslims from Sainthia led by a former panchayat pradhan took up the saffron flag. This explains why BJP’s Birbhum Lok Sabha poll candidate, Dudhkumar Mandal, took time off his busy campaign schedule and paid a visit to the Patharchapri mazar, raising eyebrows among the Hindu brigade.

According to residents, Birbhum BJP’s Muslim connect isn’t a recent phenomenon. In fact, BJP’s first casualty in the run-up to 2014 Lok Sabha polls was a Muslim from Ilambazar called Sk Rahim. Villages that rose against the administration soon after were all minority-dominated hamlets under Panrui and Makhra blocks, 15km from Tagore’s Santiniketan.

The BJP victim in the 2018 rural polls in Suri too was a Muslim, called Dildar Sheikh. All five injured in a clash between Trinamool and BJP in Mohammadbazar only four days ago were Muslims.

Keeping in mind BJP politics with Birbhum characteristics, Dudhkumar Mandal has been touring areas with a heavy Muslim presence such as Nalhati, Murarai and Khayrasole. This has made Birbhum residents wonder about the unusual local occurence.

Mandal views it as a phenomenon arising out of compulsions that go beyond religious identities. “There has been a divide between the haves and have-nots among rural poor. A few beneficiaries of government goodies — houses, toilets — are with the ruling party (Trinamool). There is a vast majority who haven’t got their due. This has created the divide,” he said.

Sainthia’s former TMC councillor Santanu Ray saw a personal angle to the phenomenon. “People in villages join a party seeing its leader. I have worked among them for years since I was with Trinamool. So when I switched to BJP, these people didn’t lose faith in me. I told them that Muslims are safe in BJP-run states. They have started believing it now,” he said.

Trinamool leader Abhijit Sinha, however, refused to take cognisance of any such phenomenon.