By Soroor Ahmed, TwoCircles.net,
So it took 34 long years for the Muslim leadership to realize that the Left Front government in West Bengal neglected the community and left them in lurch. In case of Bihar they came to this conclusion after 15 years of Lalu-Rabri Raj. Or is it that it is reflection of something else?
After all in West Bengal there was a secular alternative in the form of Congress and Trinamool Congress with Mamata Banerjee as the leader. Then why is it that the Muslims stood solidly behind the Communists and woke up so late? True before 2001 Assembly election Mamata’s outfit became a constituent of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance, therefore, became an untouchable for Muslims for a brief period.
A government hostel for Muslim girls in Park Circus area of Kolkata
But then she snapped ties before the 2001 Assembly election and fought in alliance with the Congress. After the defeat she again went back to NDA fold.
Even in 1996 Mamata was a force to reckon with though she was still in Congress, yet the Muslims, in general, did not prefer her. In 2006 she did not join hands with the Congress and fought alone only to be decisively beaten.
So once again why Muslims in general supported the Left if it did nothing and that too when there was a secular alternative? After all they form over one-fourth of the state’s population and would have seriously affected the outcome had they switched sides in the past.
At the very outset it needs to be made clear that the Communists have a different ideology where religions and even castes do not make any sense. They call for class struggle and if Hindus, Muslims, Christians or Sikhs have been voting for them they were aware of this fact.
What is ironical is that when, in the last few years, the Left started realizing the fact that Muslims are a different identity who need to be taken special care of in the state and took several measures for their development––may be a lip service in the eyes of many––the community leadership, be it in West Bengal or even outside, started becoming critical and the mass started dissociating themselves.
So one needs to trace the factors which really led to this disenchantment of Muslims from the Left.
May be Muslims, like other communities, are thinking that for the first time Mamata has become winnable, therefore, they started throwing their lot behind her. The incumbency factor is loaded too heavily against the Left and no government can go on winning election after election for so long without interruption.
So if there are complaints against the Left it is quite natural. There is no doubt that the Left Front is paying the price of some political blunders it committed in 34 years of its rule. Bengal is always known for political violence and lumpenization. Left, after coming to power, made further contribution to it. The hold of party machinery is so strong that very often it causes suffocation. The presence of cadres is palpable everywhere, be at mohalla or village, temple and mosque committee, football or cricket club, Durga Puja Samiti etc. The party is even supposed to solve the family disputes. Two decades after the fall of Moscow the Communists seem to have learnt little. If it would be losing the election it would be because of these reasons and not something else as many others are trying to project.
The corporate-media lobby would propagate that the Left is on way out because it paid little attention to industrialization––in fact, it hastened the pace of de-industrialization. The truth is somewhat otherwise. The Left may be voted out this time after resounding victory in 2006 because it started espousing the cause of the corporate bosses––Nandigram and Singur are two examples. If Muslims, like other communities, are getting alienated it is because of this re-industrialization of a different kind. After all Muslims were, to much extent, affected by the land acquisition policy in these two places and thus were upset.
But it should not be forgotten that Muslims were one of the beneficiaries of Operation Barga of 1980s, therefore, like others always voted for the Left. Besides, its stand on communalism was much more clear than that of Congress.
The rural economy of Muslims showed some improvement. However, gradually the land size started shrinking because of the doubling of families in three decades. As West Bengal could not re-industrialize itself the job opportunities too got reduced.
It would not be appropriate to allege that the Left deliberately adopted any policy to keep the Muslims backward. It is because of its faulty policy, geographical location of Bengal and Centre’s indifference that the state started lagging behind in several sectors.
Many economists and journalists started putting all the blames on the Left-backed trade unions for the closure of many industries. What they missed is that Mumbai and Gujarat too faced such problems of industrial sickness in 1970s with trade union leaders like Datta Samant and George Fernandes calling the shot. If jute mills got closed in Howrah, many textile mills got sick in Mumbai and Ahmedabbad.
But the states on the western coast got an opportunity to revive in 1980s and 1990s after the oil boom in Middle East. West Bengal, too far in the east of India, was not going to be benefited by this global economy. In the marine age ports in West Maharashtra and South Gujarat were bound to attract huge investment even from European and American companies.
It would be unjust to put all the blames on the Left for the failure to re-industrialize. The Centre made no such efforts too. Besides, unlike Gujaratis, the Bengalese lack entrepreneur culture and are least interested in bringing back investment to their state. In contrast Gujaratis, living in Europe and North America, pumped billions into their state. So Gujarat, though politically not stable through 1980s and 1990s, managed to invite investment.
What is strange is that while highlighting the failure of West Bengal some Muslim intellectuals end up equating it with Gujarat and that too with the data of 2001 and not the latest one.
For example Abusaleh Shariff, the Chief Economist of the National Council of Applied Economic Research, and a Member of the Sachar Committee, while presenting a paper a few weeks back claimed that the situation of Muslims in West Bengal is worse than in Gujarat.
What is new in it and why blame only the Left for it? After all Muslims in West Bengal have been kept backward deliberately by British since the Battle of Plassey in 1757. They had to suffer further due to partition. Comparing this with Gujarat, where Muslims traders have a long history, is unjustified.
The Memons, the Bohras and the Khojas businessmen can be found everywhere in the world. Even in Kolkata their presence in palpable, in business in comparison to the Bengali Muslims. Even they run educational institutions here. In fact Muslims of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh are in much larger number in business than the original Muslim inhabitants of Bengal.
It was a Muslim of Gujarat, Abdullah, who took Gandhiji to South Africa.
So Muslims of West Bengal had always been lagging behind in job and in field of education. It would have been better to compare their status between 1977, when the Left came to power, and now, rather than with Gujarat.
The opposition Congress and Trinamool Congress are using Sachar Committee report to show the West Bengal government in poor light so far the condition of Muslims is concerned. But Sachar is full of half-Sachs (truth) and is not a Gospel truth. It talks more about figures and seldom takes into account the historical, political, sociological and geographical factors.
Once again the data used in the Sachar report is mostly of 2001 Census and thus do not give a clear picture of Muslims, whose status has improved in some sectors in the last one decade.
The irony is that the Muslim political and intellectual leaders do not have their own independent view and rely on the perception created by the media. The comparison of Gujarat with West Bengal has given many in the media to state that look Narendra Modi has done much than any Communist chief minister. The truth is that the figures stated by them are of 2001, the year when Modi became the chief minister. So the credit does not go to him.
Criticizing secular parties for their non-performance, be it in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Bengal or anywhere else is one thing but equating them with the state, which has adopted a unique policy of exclusion of Muslims, different. Muslims need to understand this difference.