Narendra Modi, the undisputed king of Gujarat and the BJP's prime ministerial candidate, took the toughest test of national acceptability in Bengal last week. But even a surprisingly large turnout on one of his party’s weakest grounds could not elicit a territorial roar. Instead, he solicited support for himself at the Centre, abandoning the party's battle for revival in the state.
Prem drives a radio cab. His family moved to Kolkata from Allahabad decades ago. Born and brought up in the city, he commands the authority of an insider whose Hindi is more accented than his Bengali. The day before Narendra Modi's Kolkata rally, we headed south from Dumdum airport and our conversation took the inevitable turn.
Negotiating the traffic on the eastern bypass road, Prem assured me there'd be a good crowd for Modi. All his friends were going because they had had enough of "Didi-party" (Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress) and they anyway wanted to "watch Modi talk".
Were any of them Bengalis or were they all migrants? "Locals, too. And what do you call people like me? I am not going anywhere. I belong here."
Unlike Prem, Nana does not have a vote in Bengal. He irons clothes by the roadside in a north Calcutta suburb. He said he would attend the rally in solidarity with "Modi-ji, the country's only leader". Besides, two busloads of supporters would come from his village in Bihar's Samastipur district. The local BJP leader herding the group spent just enough to keep everyone happy. "The cost of fuel and food, you know."
And cash? The "iron man" flashed a coy smile.
Hakim comes from a village near Odisha's Paradip. He stays with fellow waiters in the back quarters off Park Street. He is happy with the local Trinamool Congress (TMC) workers and does not think much of Modi. "Everybody promises big and delivers little. No reason why one should get too excited." He would anyway be on duty during the rally. None of his colleagues - mostly from Odisha and Jharkhand - were planning to attend either.
At Moulin Rouge, an old Park Street institution, a group of four young professionals did not even consider the question. "Who has time for rallies!" A middle-aged gentleman "into real estate" said he was curious but undecided. His companion in a sequined top yawned over a glass of vodka.
Nearby, a scrawny vendor who sells green coconuts in an office lane near Camac Street confided that he "had to attend Didi's rally" last week; he was glad nobody would force him this time. "Business suffers." One of his regulars cut in with a smirk. "Lions should stick to Gujarat. It takes a tiger to rule the country."
Such as? "Salman Khan! Ek tha tiger!" he guffawed.
The tiger-infested forests are long gone. Robert Clive got nearly 500 hectares cleared for Fort William's glacis in the 18th century. The resultant manmade grassland, traditionally known as garher math (the fort's ground) or maidan (open land), in the heart of Kolkata has been with the army since. It is said that several battalions could parade here in brigade formations.
This expanse has hosted Kolkata's biggest mass turnouts. Cultural events such as the feted book fair always took place at the 'green maidan'. But when political parties took their rallies to the same venue, they took their cue from the army and called it the Brigade Parade Ground (or just 'Brigade'). Such is Bengal's brand consciousness.
Tigers returned briefly to the Brigade in cages during the early years of the 20th century with Dr Bose's Great Bengal Circus, a swadeshi enterprise that impressed even Swami Vivekananda. Environmental concerns have made the ground out of bounds for fairs and exhibitions since 2007. But the army has agreed to continue the tradition of rallies being held here. After all, the Brigade's first political congregation, held against British atrocities in 1931, was presided over by Rabindranath Tagore.
Post-Independence, the Brigade has hosted premier Indian politicians. And last week, it was Narendra Modi's turn. But the lion of Gujarat had every reason to be cagey.
A Brigade rally is still the biggest statement of mass support in Bengal. But it can also expose the burly myths of popularity. Even after losing hundreds of acres to the Victoria Memorial, the race course, the zoo, the national library, five stadiums, numerous clubhouses and the fort itself, the ground can still accommodate about 20 lakh people. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee took the Brigade test barely a week before Modi. Her party machinery organized more than 10 lakh people.
With no MLA in the state Assembly and only rudimentary attempts at organization in a few pockets of influence, the BJP is not in any competition with the TMC. But anything less than a 50,000-strong attendance would have dented the image of Modi as the country's ultimate political crowd puller and claims of his pan-Indian appeal. The BJP state unit did all it could to flog the Modi message for the past month. But not many were willing to bet on the party yet.
Late in the evening at the Press Club of Calcutta, the mood was dismissive.
"There will be little crowd and, eventually, less vote," a veteran casually blew smoke over his whiskey swirling in a tea glass. "They never had nor will have any serious presence here," another decreed. A young reporter mentioned "a whiff of change in mindset" but nobody took him seriously. Then an old friend of mine, whose political judgment I trust, asked the other question.
"Crowd or not, what will Modi say?"
A small turnout, said one, would make him humor Mamata. No, having nothing to lose, said another, he might lash out at her. Would a big crowd, wondered a third, embolden him to take on Mamata? But how big would be big enough for him? And even if taking on Mamata earned the BJP a handful of Bengal's 42 seats, did it make sense for Modi to forfeit the potential support of 30-plus TMC MPs in the bargain? Then again, if he did not capitalize on the supposed 'Modi wind' in Bengal, his party might perpetually remain an also-ran here.
The man himself seemed no less aware of the challenge. Modi had apparently asked for detailed (four pages, someone claimed) talking points from the Bengal BJP and subsequently sought clarifications on issues such as crimes against women. State leaders supposedly urged him to go hammer and tongs against the ruling TMC's administrative failures and policies of minority appeasement.
But would he go for broke in the garher math?
Before landing up at the Press Club I'd met, among others, one of the stalwarts of Bengali theatre, a critically acclaimed writer and a corporate executive. I cannot name them in this context. That in itself, pointed out the first two, showed what has gone terribly wrong with Bengal.
"There is no room for disagreement. Either you are with Mamata or you are with the CPI(M). And however strongly you feel against both, you cannot openly back the BJP without angering the two power centers, even though the Left itself is getting marginalized. In a certain sense, it is as bad as coming out in the open as a Maoist sympathizer," said the writer.
The playwright said it was Bengal's "progressive compulsion" that came in the way of backing Modi. "It is expected of the Bengali middle class to be anti-BJP. It's a liberal fad. Ironically, they are very communal and violent at heart. We talk of the 1984 Sikh killings or the 2002 Gujarat riots. Do we even dare count the number of organized political killings Bengal has suffered, from Marichjhapi toNetai?"
The "strictly-apolitical" company executive described "the Muslim appeasement policies" of both the TMC and the Left as atrocious. "Taslima (Nasreen) was thrown out. Then they announced doles for Imams, cycles for minority girls, minority-only hospitals and so on. Look at the figures: the percentage of crimes committed by minorities is much higher than the percentage of minorities in the population. The cops have obviously been told to go soft on them."
The reason, all three argued, is obvious. On an average, Indian elections see a 50 percent turnout. The winning candidate is usually home if she bags 40 percent of the votes cast. In effect, just 20 percent of the total electorate in a constituency can be decisive. And in Bengal, minorities constitute 26 percent of the population.
Little wonder then that Maulana Barkati, the imam of Tipu Sultan Mosque who had threatened Taslima Nasreen with dire consequences if she did not leave Kolkata, was one of the key speakers at Mamata's Brigade rally last week. "If Modi is considered vulgar, what about such blatant appeasement?" said the writer. "And given that much of the vaunted secularism of Bengal is merely a mask, there is every possibility of a surprise swing [toward the BJP]."
This probably also made Mamata and her party a little nervous.
Trains carrying BJP supporters from north Bengal were delayed for more than 12 hours. Bus owners were warned against ferrying crowds for Modi's rally. On D-day, rally-bound BJP supporters and their vehicles were attacked (and some eventually detained by the cops) in districts adjacent to Kolkata. Even cable connections were reportedly snapped in remote districts where people organized TV sets to watch Modi speak.
This, to stop a party that did not bag even 7 percent of the vote in the last Lok Sabha polls.
The oldest arterial road that connects south Kolkata to the center is the memorial preserve of one illustrious family. One of the city's top colleges sits on this road and runs in three shifts. The morning all-girls section is Jogamaya Devi College, named after the wife of Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee, one of India's foremost educators and the original "Tiger of Bengal" (Banglar bagh), after whom the day college was named. The evening section bears the name of their son Shyama Prasad Mukherjee.
The day before Modi's rally, Calcutta was celebrating Saraswati Puja - the closest any Indian festival comes in spirit to Valentine's Day. Across the city, I drove by giggly young girls wrapped in visibly uncomfortable sarees and their equally nervous dates in traditional embroidered kurtas (nobody knows why Bengalis call it the 'Punjabi'). It was no different around the colleges named after the three Mukherjees, and nobody seemed to care about the hatred that certain ideological descendants of the Bharatiya Jan Sangh - founded by Shyama Prasad Mukherjee in 1951 - harbour towards Valentine's Day.
The Bharatiya Jan Sangh, set up as the political wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), eventually became the Janata Party, an anti-Indira Gandhi platform, in 1977. And following the dissolution of the Janata Party, the BJP was formed in 1980. Unsurprisingly, saffron stalwarts such as LK Advani have often rued the party's loss of influence in the land of its founding father, where Left ideologies struck deep roots in the 1960s and 70s.
The name remains, though. That arterial road through the oldest quarters of south Kolkata is split between Mukherjee senior and junior. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee road is the southern stretch that runs close to Mamata Banerjee's residence in Kalighat. On D-day, I followed three Tata 407 vehicles draped in lotus flags and packed with raucous BJP supporters on this road. As the traffic crawled, they called out to people to join them: "Bhoy nei, chole asun, niye jabo kole kore (Don't be afraid, hop in, we'll carry you there safely)."
SP Mukherjee would soon be invoked by every speaker at Brigade that afternoon. The crowd was sparse at noon but swelled in the hour before Modi's arrival at 2.40pm. I met a few cops who did not hide their excitement. "There are already one lakh people here. And see these scattered groups. When they move to the center, that'll be another 50,000." They were exaggerating, but this congregation was unlike any herded crowd.
A homeopath from the suburban town of Chakdah. A "professional" from Karnataka who had recently shifted to Kolkata. Four first-time voters from St Xavier's College. A "government servant" who had walked down from his office nearby. State BJP president Rahul Sinha would later tell me that for every two people they "organized", another arrived on his or her own. The balconies of the office buildings that overlook the maidan were also packed.
The BJP, of course, did its bit to make the crowd - between one and two lakh strong, by different estimates - seem bigger than it was. The stage, for instance, was facing the width and not the length of the rectangular ground. The party also set up stalls on both flanks of the barricaded space in front of the stage. Thus, there was less ground to cover to project a packed house.
But it was not the numbers but the energy of the crowd that would make Modi's day. People walked in alone and in small groups, in safari suits and in jeans - even the typical non-rally-goers who kept a few feet from the subalterns - and stood for hours under a blazing sun. Some crowded the ice-cream vendors, others bought postcard-size photos of Modi in cheap frames for Rs 20. They did not need any cue to cheer and they chanted Modi's name much like they would cry out Sachin's in a stadium.
From 1pm, the state BJP leaders and celebrities took turns on stage. But for SP Mukherjee, the crowd was told, all of Bengal would have gone to East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Mamata's minority report was read out. Music director Bappi Lahiri sang of his love for the party. Then national leader Shahnawaz Hussain upped the tempo by lashing out at both the TMC and the Left. "Only the glass has changed but it's still the same water." The crowd roared in approval.
Bengal's true saffron high was recorded in the 1991 polls, said state BJP chief Sinha, blaming the subsequent decline on the party's tie-up with Mamata. "The TMC reaped the benefit of all our good work. But there is no going back for us anymore. As the Left is declining fast, it is for the BJP to play the main opposition," he would tell me later at the humble party headquarters off Central Avenue. For the state unit, the moment was ripe and Modi a godsend.
As Hussain continued on stage, there was a rumble in the sky. The crowd cheered and waved with such excitement that Modi circled the ground twice in his helicopter. As it disappeared over the Victoria Memorial to land at an army helipad, people jostled for vantage points before the four giant screens set up at the corners. Overenthusiastic supporters in the front had been fighting over the few rows of chairs since noon and now threatened to bring down a barricade.
It was time.
The crowd chanted itself hoarse as Modi ascended the stage. The man watched as the crowd lapped up state party chief Sinha's scathing attack on the ruling TMC. Next, it was BJP chief Rajnath Singh's turn. As he waxed eloquent about the illustrious sons of the soil and the "blessed womb of Bengal", a large section of the non-Bengali crowd sat listlessly. By the time Singh finished, many had already started to shuffle and disperse.
Even throughout Modi's 45-minute speech, people left the venue in hundreds. Maybe the long wait under the sun was taking its toll. Maybe rural Bengalis could not follow his Hindi. Maybe the speech itself lacked firepower. State BJP spokesperson Ritesh Tiwari later explained that traditionally, Brigade meetings had "a cut-off timing of 3.30pm" when a section of the crowd left to catch trains home. Modi's speech went on till 4pm.
And what did he speak about? Himself, of course. "Which way is the wind blowing?" His way, of course. "The country has already decided", of course, in his favour. "This will be unlike any other election since Independence," he said, "because the people, and not parties, are fighting this election." It was fascinating how unabashedly he wanted to turn the election into a personal referendum. If Indira was India once, now Modi is the people.
But this was no hunkaar (roar) rally like the one in Patna, where Modi took Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar apart. In Kolkata, he gave himself the modest brief of creating public awareness (jana chetana). In Patna, he had told people, "Mujhe pata hai aap kya sunna chahte ho (I know what you want to hear)." In Kolkata, he drew the loudest response early on in his speech by asking if people had got poriborton by voting for Mamata. But that was as far as he would go against his potential post-poll ally.
He blasted the Congress and the Left. He promised sonar bangla (a golden era for Bengal). He talked of Gujarat's development and the flourishing fortunes of minorities in his state. But instead of demanding votes for the BJP as an able contender in Bengal, he presented a deal conceding the state to the TMC while soliciting support for Delhi - "Donon haath mein laddoo," as he put it. Even when he congratulated Bengal for ousting the Left, he was addressing Mamata more than the Brigade crowd. He might as well have had a private meeting with the Trinamool chief.
BJP state chief Sinha liked this approach, apparently. "If he says everything, what will the rest of us say? Anyway, the TMC will be in power in the state till their term ends. So Modi-ji asked the people to elect him for Delhi and judge who does better for Bengal." But won't keeping the window ajar for a post-poll alliance hurt the BJP in the state? "We will have no truck with her and the BJP is hopeful of 12 Lok Sabha seats here," he said.
One of Sinha's senior colleagues, however, was more candid on condition of anonymity. "Given her minority liabilities, it is unlikely that Mamata will back Modi after polls, but he is keeping that option open. Would there be a major BJP revival, say 10 seats in Bengal, had he declared war against the TMC? There is an early sense of a swing but one can never tell. Of the two gambles, Modi opted for the one that suits his Delhi agenda rather than the one that could turn around the party here."
On stage, Modi tried to pull off one last trick. Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi had deprived Pranab Mukherjee twice of the prime ministership he deserved, he told the crowd, adding that a Mamata-Modi arrangement would work wonders for Bengal under "Pranab dada", the President. It was a far shot but it took the crowd, and headline writers, by surprise.
Before Modi's copter showed up, I'd met Debasish Chandra Majumdar, a lawyer who was the BJP candidate against Pranab Mukherjee in Jangipur in 2009 and had managed less than 22,000 votes to come third. For the rally, he had mobilized some 700 supporters from the Lalgola block. "Modi is my god," he told me. "I will watch him and pay my respects from a distance. He is all we need to boost our morale here."
By 4.05pm, the show was over. On his way back, an anxious Modi asked Sinha for some quick feedback from the local press. He could have asked the local party workers instead. I met quite a few Modi worshippers on my way out who could not quite swallow the "Didi-Modi-Dada" package their messiah had just tried to sell them.
"We are with Modi-ji all the way and ready to take the fight to the TMC camp this election. We expected him to do the same. Maybe the next time when he is here…" The Modi badges were still on their chest.
By the time Modi tweeted "thank you, Kolkata", it was time for a beer at an old Park street pub across the road from the ground. The familiar doorman said he'd watched it all on TV at the bar. "Waise dabang nahin the (he was not his usual assertive self)."
If it does take a tiger to rule the country, the Gujarat lion did not even try to earn his stripes at Kolkata maidan.
Negotiating the traffic on the eastern bypass road, Prem assured me there'd be a good crowd for Modi. All his friends were going because they had had enough of "Didi-party" (Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress) and they anyway wanted to "watch Modi talk".
Were any of them Bengalis or were they all migrants? "Locals, too. And what do you call people like me? I am not going anywhere. I belong here."
Unlike Prem, Nana does not have a vote in Bengal. He irons clothes by the roadside in a north Calcutta suburb. He said he would attend the rally in solidarity with "Modi-ji, the country's only leader". Besides, two busloads of supporters would come from his village in Bihar's Samastipur district. The local BJP leader herding the group spent just enough to keep everyone happy. "The cost of fuel and food, you know."
And cash? The "iron man" flashed a coy smile.
Hakim comes from a village near Odisha's Paradip. He stays with fellow waiters in the back quarters off Park Street. He is happy with the local Trinamool Congress (TMC) workers and does not think much of Modi. "Everybody promises big and delivers little. No reason why one should get too excited." He would anyway be on duty during the rally. None of his colleagues - mostly from Odisha and Jharkhand - were planning to attend either.
At Moulin Rouge, an old Park Street institution, a group of four young professionals did not even consider the question. "Who has time for rallies!" A middle-aged gentleman "into real estate" said he was curious but undecided. His companion in a sequined top yawned over a glass of vodka.
Nearby, a scrawny vendor who sells green coconuts in an office lane near Camac Street confided that he "had to attend Didi's rally" last week; he was glad nobody would force him this time. "Business suffers." One of his regulars cut in with a smirk. "Lions should stick to Gujarat. It takes a tiger to rule the country."
Such as? "Salman Khan! Ek tha tiger!" he guffawed.
* * *
The tiger-infested forests are long gone. Robert Clive got nearly 500 hectares cleared for Fort William's glacis in the 18th century. The resultant manmade grassland, traditionally known as garher math (the fort's ground) or maidan (open land), in the heart of Kolkata has been with the army since. It is said that several battalions could parade here in brigade formations.
This expanse has hosted Kolkata's biggest mass turnouts. Cultural events such as the feted book fair always took place at the 'green maidan'. But when political parties took their rallies to the same venue, they took their cue from the army and called it the Brigade Parade Ground (or just 'Brigade'). Such is Bengal's brand consciousness.
Tigers returned briefly to the Brigade in cages during the early years of the 20th century with Dr Bose's Great Bengal Circus, a swadeshi enterprise that impressed even Swami Vivekananda. Environmental concerns have made the ground out of bounds for fairs and exhibitions since 2007. But the army has agreed to continue the tradition of rallies being held here. After all, the Brigade's first political congregation, held against British atrocities in 1931, was presided over by Rabindranath Tagore.
Post-Independence, the Brigade has hosted premier Indian politicians. And last week, it was Narendra Modi's turn. But the lion of Gujarat had every reason to be cagey.
A Brigade rally is still the biggest statement of mass support in Bengal. But it can also expose the burly myths of popularity. Even after losing hundreds of acres to the Victoria Memorial, the race course, the zoo, the national library, five stadiums, numerous clubhouses and the fort itself, the ground can still accommodate about 20 lakh people. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee took the Brigade test barely a week before Modi. Her party machinery organized more than 10 lakh people.
With no MLA in the state Assembly and only rudimentary attempts at organization in a few pockets of influence, the BJP is not in any competition with the TMC. But anything less than a 50,000-strong attendance would have dented the image of Modi as the country's ultimate political crowd puller and claims of his pan-Indian appeal. The BJP state unit did all it could to flog the Modi message for the past month. But not many were willing to bet on the party yet.
Late in the evening at the Press Club of Calcutta, the mood was dismissive.
"There will be little crowd and, eventually, less vote," a veteran casually blew smoke over his whiskey swirling in a tea glass. "They never had nor will have any serious presence here," another decreed. A young reporter mentioned "a whiff of change in mindset" but nobody took him seriously. Then an old friend of mine, whose political judgment I trust, asked the other question.
"Crowd or not, what will Modi say?"
A small turnout, said one, would make him humor Mamata. No, having nothing to lose, said another, he might lash out at her. Would a big crowd, wondered a third, embolden him to take on Mamata? But how big would be big enough for him? And even if taking on Mamata earned the BJP a handful of Bengal's 42 seats, did it make sense for Modi to forfeit the potential support of 30-plus TMC MPs in the bargain? Then again, if he did not capitalize on the supposed 'Modi wind' in Bengal, his party might perpetually remain an also-ran here.
The man himself seemed no less aware of the challenge. Modi had apparently asked for detailed (four pages, someone claimed) talking points from the Bengal BJP and subsequently sought clarifications on issues such as crimes against women. State leaders supposedly urged him to go hammer and tongs against the ruling TMC's administrative failures and policies of minority appeasement.
But would he go for broke in the garher math?
* * *
Before landing up at the Press Club I'd met, among others, one of the stalwarts of Bengali theatre, a critically acclaimed writer and a corporate executive. I cannot name them in this context. That in itself, pointed out the first two, showed what has gone terribly wrong with Bengal.
"There is no room for disagreement. Either you are with Mamata or you are with the CPI(M). And however strongly you feel against both, you cannot openly back the BJP without angering the two power centers, even though the Left itself is getting marginalized. In a certain sense, it is as bad as coming out in the open as a Maoist sympathizer," said the writer.
The playwright said it was Bengal's "progressive compulsion" that came in the way of backing Modi. "It is expected of the Bengali middle class to be anti-BJP. It's a liberal fad. Ironically, they are very communal and violent at heart. We talk of the 1984 Sikh killings or the 2002 Gujarat riots. Do we even dare count the number of organized political killings Bengal has suffered, from Marichjhapi toNetai?"
The "strictly-apolitical" company executive described "the Muslim appeasement policies" of both the TMC and the Left as atrocious. "Taslima (Nasreen) was thrown out. Then they announced doles for Imams, cycles for minority girls, minority-only hospitals and so on. Look at the figures: the percentage of crimes committed by minorities is much higher than the percentage of minorities in the population. The cops have obviously been told to go soft on them."
The reason, all three argued, is obvious. On an average, Indian elections see a 50 percent turnout. The winning candidate is usually home if she bags 40 percent of the votes cast. In effect, just 20 percent of the total electorate in a constituency can be decisive. And in Bengal, minorities constitute 26 percent of the population.
Little wonder then that Maulana Barkati, the imam of Tipu Sultan Mosque who had threatened Taslima Nasreen with dire consequences if she did not leave Kolkata, was one of the key speakers at Mamata's Brigade rally last week. "If Modi is considered vulgar, what about such blatant appeasement?" said the writer. "And given that much of the vaunted secularism of Bengal is merely a mask, there is every possibility of a surprise swing [toward the BJP]."
This probably also made Mamata and her party a little nervous.
Trains carrying BJP supporters from north Bengal were delayed for more than 12 hours. Bus owners were warned against ferrying crowds for Modi's rally. On D-day, rally-bound BJP supporters and their vehicles were attacked (and some eventually detained by the cops) in districts adjacent to Kolkata. Even cable connections were reportedly snapped in remote districts where people organized TV sets to watch Modi speak.
This, to stop a party that did not bag even 7 percent of the vote in the last Lok Sabha polls.
* * *
The oldest arterial road that connects south Kolkata to the center is the memorial preserve of one illustrious family. One of the city's top colleges sits on this road and runs in three shifts. The morning all-girls section is Jogamaya Devi College, named after the wife of Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee, one of India's foremost educators and the original "Tiger of Bengal" (Banglar bagh), after whom the day college was named. The evening section bears the name of their son Shyama Prasad Mukherjee.
The day before Modi's rally, Calcutta was celebrating Saraswati Puja - the closest any Indian festival comes in spirit to Valentine's Day. Across the city, I drove by giggly young girls wrapped in visibly uncomfortable sarees and their equally nervous dates in traditional embroidered kurtas (nobody knows why Bengalis call it the 'Punjabi'). It was no different around the colleges named after the three Mukherjees, and nobody seemed to care about the hatred that certain ideological descendants of the Bharatiya Jan Sangh - founded by Shyama Prasad Mukherjee in 1951 - harbour towards Valentine's Day.
The Bharatiya Jan Sangh, set up as the political wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), eventually became the Janata Party, an anti-Indira Gandhi platform, in 1977. And following the dissolution of the Janata Party, the BJP was formed in 1980. Unsurprisingly, saffron stalwarts such as LK Advani have often rued the party's loss of influence in the land of its founding father, where Left ideologies struck deep roots in the 1960s and 70s.
The name remains, though. That arterial road through the oldest quarters of south Kolkata is split between Mukherjee senior and junior. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee road is the southern stretch that runs close to Mamata Banerjee's residence in Kalighat. On D-day, I followed three Tata 407 vehicles draped in lotus flags and packed with raucous BJP supporters on this road. As the traffic crawled, they called out to people to join them: "Bhoy nei, chole asun, niye jabo kole kore (Don't be afraid, hop in, we'll carry you there safely)."
SP Mukherjee would soon be invoked by every speaker at Brigade that afternoon. The crowd was sparse at noon but swelled in the hour before Modi's arrival at 2.40pm. I met a few cops who did not hide their excitement. "There are already one lakh people here. And see these scattered groups. When they move to the center, that'll be another 50,000." They were exaggerating, but this congregation was unlike any herded crowd.
A homeopath from the suburban town of Chakdah. A "professional" from Karnataka who had recently shifted to Kolkata. Four first-time voters from St Xavier's College. A "government servant" who had walked down from his office nearby. State BJP president Rahul Sinha would later tell me that for every two people they "organized", another arrived on his or her own. The balconies of the office buildings that overlook the maidan were also packed.
The BJP, of course, did its bit to make the crowd - between one and two lakh strong, by different estimates - seem bigger than it was. The stage, for instance, was facing the width and not the length of the rectangular ground. The party also set up stalls on both flanks of the barricaded space in front of the stage. Thus, there was less ground to cover to project a packed house.
But it was not the numbers but the energy of the crowd that would make Modi's day. People walked in alone and in small groups, in safari suits and in jeans - even the typical non-rally-goers who kept a few feet from the subalterns - and stood for hours under a blazing sun. Some crowded the ice-cream vendors, others bought postcard-size photos of Modi in cheap frames for Rs 20. They did not need any cue to cheer and they chanted Modi's name much like they would cry out Sachin's in a stadium.
From 1pm, the state BJP leaders and celebrities took turns on stage. But for SP Mukherjee, the crowd was told, all of Bengal would have gone to East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Mamata's minority report was read out. Music director Bappi Lahiri sang of his love for the party. Then national leader Shahnawaz Hussain upped the tempo by lashing out at both the TMC and the Left. "Only the glass has changed but it's still the same water." The crowd roared in approval.
Bengal's true saffron high was recorded in the 1991 polls, said state BJP chief Sinha, blaming the subsequent decline on the party's tie-up with Mamata. "The TMC reaped the benefit of all our good work. But there is no going back for us anymore. As the Left is declining fast, it is for the BJP to play the main opposition," he would tell me later at the humble party headquarters off Central Avenue. For the state unit, the moment was ripe and Modi a godsend.
As Hussain continued on stage, there was a rumble in the sky. The crowd cheered and waved with such excitement that Modi circled the ground twice in his helicopter. As it disappeared over the Victoria Memorial to land at an army helipad, people jostled for vantage points before the four giant screens set up at the corners. Overenthusiastic supporters in the front had been fighting over the few rows of chairs since noon and now threatened to bring down a barricade.
It was time.
* * *
The crowd chanted itself hoarse as Modi ascended the stage. The man watched as the crowd lapped up state party chief Sinha's scathing attack on the ruling TMC. Next, it was BJP chief Rajnath Singh's turn. As he waxed eloquent about the illustrious sons of the soil and the "blessed womb of Bengal", a large section of the non-Bengali crowd sat listlessly. By the time Singh finished, many had already started to shuffle and disperse.
Even throughout Modi's 45-minute speech, people left the venue in hundreds. Maybe the long wait under the sun was taking its toll. Maybe rural Bengalis could not follow his Hindi. Maybe the speech itself lacked firepower. State BJP spokesperson Ritesh Tiwari later explained that traditionally, Brigade meetings had "a cut-off timing of 3.30pm" when a section of the crowd left to catch trains home. Modi's speech went on till 4pm.
And what did he speak about? Himself, of course. "Which way is the wind blowing?" His way, of course. "The country has already decided", of course, in his favour. "This will be unlike any other election since Independence," he said, "because the people, and not parties, are fighting this election." It was fascinating how unabashedly he wanted to turn the election into a personal referendum. If Indira was India once, now Modi is the people.
But this was no hunkaar (roar) rally like the one in Patna, where Modi took Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar apart. In Kolkata, he gave himself the modest brief of creating public awareness (jana chetana). In Patna, he had told people, "Mujhe pata hai aap kya sunna chahte ho (I know what you want to hear)." In Kolkata, he drew the loudest response early on in his speech by asking if people had got poriborton by voting for Mamata. But that was as far as he would go against his potential post-poll ally.
He blasted the Congress and the Left. He promised sonar bangla (a golden era for Bengal). He talked of Gujarat's development and the flourishing fortunes of minorities in his state. But instead of demanding votes for the BJP as an able contender in Bengal, he presented a deal conceding the state to the TMC while soliciting support for Delhi - "Donon haath mein laddoo," as he put it. Even when he congratulated Bengal for ousting the Left, he was addressing Mamata more than the Brigade crowd. He might as well have had a private meeting with the Trinamool chief.
BJP state chief Sinha liked this approach, apparently. "If he says everything, what will the rest of us say? Anyway, the TMC will be in power in the state till their term ends. So Modi-ji asked the people to elect him for Delhi and judge who does better for Bengal." But won't keeping the window ajar for a post-poll alliance hurt the BJP in the state? "We will have no truck with her and the BJP is hopeful of 12 Lok Sabha seats here," he said.
One of Sinha's senior colleagues, however, was more candid on condition of anonymity. "Given her minority liabilities, it is unlikely that Mamata will back Modi after polls, but he is keeping that option open. Would there be a major BJP revival, say 10 seats in Bengal, had he declared war against the TMC? There is an early sense of a swing but one can never tell. Of the two gambles, Modi opted for the one that suits his Delhi agenda rather than the one that could turn around the party here."
On stage, Modi tried to pull off one last trick. Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi had deprived Pranab Mukherjee twice of the prime ministership he deserved, he told the crowd, adding that a Mamata-Modi arrangement would work wonders for Bengal under "Pranab dada", the President. It was a far shot but it took the crowd, and headline writers, by surprise.
Before Modi's copter showed up, I'd met Debasish Chandra Majumdar, a lawyer who was the BJP candidate against Pranab Mukherjee in Jangipur in 2009 and had managed less than 22,000 votes to come third. For the rally, he had mobilized some 700 supporters from the Lalgola block. "Modi is my god," he told me. "I will watch him and pay my respects from a distance. He is all we need to boost our morale here."
By 4.05pm, the show was over. On his way back, an anxious Modi asked Sinha for some quick feedback from the local press. He could have asked the local party workers instead. I met quite a few Modi worshippers on my way out who could not quite swallow the "Didi-Modi-Dada" package their messiah had just tried to sell them.
"We are with Modi-ji all the way and ready to take the fight to the TMC camp this election. We expected him to do the same. Maybe the next time when he is here…" The Modi badges were still on their chest.
By the time Modi tweeted "thank you, Kolkata", it was time for a beer at an old Park street pub across the road from the ground. The familiar doorman said he'd watched it all on TV at the bar. "Waise dabang nahin the (he was not his usual assertive self)."
If it does take a tiger to rule the country, the Gujarat lion did not even try to earn his stripes at Kolkata maidan.
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