Early last week, politicians of the BJP and the CPI(M) were stopped by state authorities and policemen in West Bengal from trying to enter Kaliachak, which comprises three subdivisions of the district of Malda. This briefly became a big story in the Bengali media, before it was mysteriously hushed up. But not before it grabbed precious column inches in national newspapers. Later on Wednesday, the state government reportedly denied permission to Nitin Gadkari to address a rally in Malda, forcing the central minister to shift the rally elsewhere.

Kaliachak was rocked by violence on January 3 when vehicles were torched and a police station was ransacked by a crowd of furious Muslims. Atemple close by was unscathed.

Early Birds

Chief minister Mamata Banerjee says the politicians were prevented from entering the conflict zone to prevent partisan politics from poisoning what is essentially a law and order problem. She is only half-correct.

Malda is located in central West Bengal. Its eastern border is along Bangladesh. Its western border is shared with Jharkhand, earlier part of undivided Bihar. Given its proximity to Bangladesh, it could have become apressure-cooker of communal politics. Yet this never happened.

This was largely because of the veteran Congress politician Abu Barkat Ataur Ghani Khan Choudhury — Barkat-da — a man with a large heart. During the 1980s, when Barkat-da was railway minister in Congress governments headed by Indira and Rajiv Gandhi, he developed the area and heavily recruited his constituents as railway employees. Back then, it was ameans to escape poverty and obtain a dignified livelihood. For that reason, Barkat-da never lost a Lok Sabha election between 1980 and 2004.

Barkat-da died in 2006 but his family still retains its hold over Malda. But none has his towering personality. The TMC is trying to make inroads there. So is the BJP. The saffron party wants to increase its votes and seats there, if not have a shot at forming the government in Kolkata. Polls are due soon.

There is at least one reason to suspect the complicity of the RSS — the BJP’s parent organisation — in the Malda violence. This is Kamlesh Tiwari, a politician associated with the Hindu Mahasabha, who had allegedly posted some inflammatory comments on social media. This had its intended effect.

Soon, protests began across districts in Uttar Pradesh. By January 3, they had spread to Malda, leading to violence. Within a week, it spread to Purnea in Bihar. The violence didn’t arrive from Bangladesh, but from the west, from the Hindi heartland. Earlier last week, The Times of India quoted an unnamed ‘senior BJP leader’ saying, effectively, that West Bengal would not tolerate hard Hindutva, but a bit of soft communalism could pay off.

West Bengal will go to assembly polls around March-April this year. There is talk of a tactical alliance between the Left and the Congress. On Saturday, former West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee even appealed openly to the Congress leadership to join forces with the Left Front to take on the TMC. Going by their share of votes in 2011, the Left can notch up close to 40% of the total with the Congress adding another 9% to it. This is formidable. The TMC notched up its victory with only 39% of popular votes.

Taking Positions

Malda is a Congress stronghold even today. The TMC might be supreme in the state. But its grip — as defined by share of votes — is tenuous. A Left-Congress alliance can knock it out. The BJP, with a mere 4% vote share in 2011, has only one member in the assembly. But in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP quadrupled its votes to 17%. Not that it mattered much: its MPs went up from one to two, the equivalent of 15 or so assembly seats, if the same numbers hold.

Its gains came at the cost of the Left parties. The TMC and, surprisingly, the Congress held on to their share of votes. But if a Left-Congress alliance takes place, its vote share, based on even 2014 numbers, could be close to the TMC’s stagnant 39% share. Thus the scheduled descent of central BJP leaders in West Bengal this month: home minister Rajnath Singh on January 21 in Barasat and party president Amit Shah on January 25 in Howrah.

But for Mamata Banerjee, the Left-Congress alliance is a far bigger threat than the BJP. There never was a Modi wave in West Bengal, and the saffron party’s ability to function on the ground is limited.

Thus, Banerjee’s recent whirlwind Delhi diplomacy. During her visit, she made sure to meet and greet Congress president Sonia Gandhi, intending to damage the chances of a Left-Congress alliance in West Bengal with this show of proximity.

Hence, it also makes political sense for the TMC to allow the RSS or the Mahasabha to do a bit of mischief in Congress- or Left-dominated areas. It believes it can control such disturbances with state machinery.

But this cynicism could backfire. Despite the best intentions of ruling parties, mischief once unleashed is hard to contain. But history shows that repeatedly, politicians fail to comprehend this basic lesson.