TMC betrays its fear of losing Muslim support

With the Indian Secular Front (ISF) on one side and the Bharatiya Janata Party on the other, the Trinamool Congress is caught between a rock and a hard place

In West Bengal, for decades now, it is common for political demonstrations to turn violent, leading to clashes between the police and the protesters, for vehicles to be vandalised during such events, and for people to get injured. What is not common is the police slapping ‘attempt to murder’ charges on an elected representative from the state to keep them behind bars for weeks.

That is what the West Bengal Police did with Nausad Siddique, the chairman of Indian Secular Front (ISF) and MLA from Bhangar. He is the ISF’s only MLA and the only non-Trinamool Congress (TMC) Muslim MLA in the 294-seat assembly. On March 4 he walked out of jail after the Calcutta High Court said there was no evidence against Siddique. He spent 42 days in jail.

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Siddique, along with half a dozen of the ISF’s state committee members, was arrested on January 21 during a protest in Kolkata to press for the arrest of Bhangar-based TMC leaders who were allegedly involved in attacking and intimidating ISF supporters. Earlier that day, Siddique’s vehicle, too, came under attack while he was visiting Bhangar. In Kolkata, a clash broke out as the police came to lift the blockade.

Siddique was booked in four separate cases filed at three different police stations, involving 19 IPC sections. Three of the four cases involved the charge of attempt to murder, leading to repeated rejection of Siddique’s bail plea at the district courts.

While granting him bail in all four cases, the judges wrote that the State was unable to prove that Siddique assaulted any police personnel, damaged public property, or indulged in inciting the crowd to do the same.

If so, why did the Mamata Banerjee-led government take this harsh step against the ISF? This could be because the TMC has been worried about the ISF (which launched in January 2021) gaining support in Muslim-dominated areas adjoining Kolkata: South 24-Parganas (35.5 percent), North 24-Parganas (25.8 percent), Hooghly (15.77 percent), and Howrah (15.25 percent).

In the 2021 assembly elections, the ISF contested in a seat-sharing agreement with the Left and the Congress. With heightened fear among Muslims over the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC), the TMC swept all Muslim-dominated areas, Bhangar being the only exception.

Since then, the government has looked through the Bhangar MLA — Siddique was not invited to all-party meetings and did not find a place in any of the 41 standing committees in the assembly until he expressed his grievances in public. While the government was busy ignoring Siddique, he was busy building the party.

What became a sort of turning point were the public rallies the ISF had organised ahead of its foundation day in January. Siddique’s rallies in Diamond Harbour, Bhangar, Baruipur, Basanti, among other places saw huge crowds turning up — and this caught the ruling TMC’s attention. His message at these rallies was that the TMC was fooling Muslims in the name of protecting them from Hindutva politics, and urged the crowds to teach the TMC a lesson in the panchayat elections.

Siddique’s accusations put the TMC in a tight spot, because was it to highlight its policies and actions that have benefited the minority community, it would give the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) a chance to brand Banerjee as a ‘Muslim appeaser’. Since the BJP’s rise in 2019, the TMC has been careful not to give the BJP political ammunition against it. So careful has the TMC been that in its report card ahead of the 2021 assembly elections, the government made no mention of what it did for the Muslims. Also, the number of TMC’s Muslim candidates came down from 53 in 2016 to 42 in 2021.

While it must be seen whether Siddique’s arrest will backfire on the TMC, it has put the ruling party on the backfoot. The Bhangar MLA received a hero’s welcome upon being released on March 4. Another reason to celebrate was that the same day the TMC had lost the bypolls to the Sagardighi. Sagardighi in Murshidabad district in central West Bengal is a TMC stronghold which the Left-backed Congress candidate won. Apart from the TMC-related corruption cases, Siddique’s arrest was a campaign issue here.

(Snigdhendu Bhattacharya is a journalist)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.