The Bengal BJP had made a big display of marking Rabindranath Tagore’s death anniversary last year as Assembly polls loomed.
A year later, it’s been normal service — that is, “nothing at all”, in a state BJP secretary’s words — on Baishey Srabon, which fell on August 7 or 8 according to different almanacs.
Party insiders attributed the change in attitude to the crushing electoral defeat, with several of them warning that such sulky behaviour can be politically counterproductive.
“Last year, we suddenly started falling over ourselves to try and prove the BJP’s connect with Bengal, and created a lot of noise around events such as Baishey Srabon,” a state BJP insider said, asking not to be named.
“But giving up like this so soon after the electoral drubbing can only help Trinamul claim vindication of its charge that we were insincere in our professed love for Bengali culture.”
On Baishey Srabon last year (August 7, 2020), a BJP bullish about its chances in the Assembly elections had dived in enthusiastically to claim the legacy of Tagore as a way of establishing its pro-Bengal credentials.
State unit leaders had garlanded an image of the poet in front of the party headquarters, 6 Muralidhar Sen Lane, as part of an elaborate political programme.
BJP national president J.P. Nadda, who addressed his Bengal colleagues virtually from Delhi during the political event, too mentioned Tagore in his speech.
The programme, party sources had said, was an attempt to counter Mamata Banerjee’s unwavering narrative about the BJP being a party of the bohiragawto (outsider), beholden to the RSS vision of “Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan” and uncomprehending of Bengal’s complex ethos.
“If you remember, our women’s wing had organised a cultural programme virtually to observe Baishey Srabon last year. We had never done such things before. Last year was different, and it should have continued,” the state BJP secretary who spoke to this newspaper said.
“But this year, there has practically been no programme — nothing at all. The national leadership’s failure to understand Bengal and its people led to the crushing defeat. Abandoning the display of respect and love for Bengal now is not the way forward.”
On Sunday, even state BJP chief Dilip Ghosh’s social media handles — known to scrupulously acknowledge key occasions — were silent on Tagore.
Party MLA and leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari’s social media handles, however, did carry tributes to the poet.
A BJP source cited the pandemic restrictions to explain the absence of Tagore events, but quickly conceded that similar curbs had been in place last year too.
Sayantan Basu, state BJP general secretary, said the Bengal unit was busy with a slew of events to be held between August 9 and 16 and had therefore planned nothing for Baishey Srabon.
“It isn’t possible to organise a large-scale programme every year with the Covid-19 restrictions in place,” Basu said.
In the run-up to the Assembly elections, Nadda, home minister Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi had gone out of their way to claim familiarity with Bengal’s culture and history. Their efforts were often error-prone, and the poll results suggest the vast majority rejected their pitch.
Many state unit leaders believe that the right strategy now would be to keep focusing on Bengal even more — at least to be able to hold on to the party’s 18 Lok Sabha seats in the state when a general election is held three years from now.
