Bengal elections 2021: We tried to wean those swayed by BJP blitz – Telegraph India

Kasturi Basu, activist and documentary filmmaker, is one of the founders of the No Vote to BJP campaign. Over the past four months, the campaign has reached various districts of Bengal, organising meetings, performing skits, distributing pamphlets and putting up posters with one clarion call vote any party you want but the BJP.

Basu writes about her experience of the past four months on the beaten track with a slogan and zeitgeist of our times.

The warmest message came from Punjab as the poll results were being declared. A picture and a message of the indefatigable farmers at the Singhu border, distributing sweets and lighting candles to celebrate a resounding defeat of the BJP in the Assembly polls in Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

It held out a significant message for the No Vote To BJP campaign in Bengal, a peoples movement I have been part of for the past four months, along with hundreds of fellow citizens.

It carried a message of What is to be Done, particularly for the upcoming electoral battles in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana. It was also a message for the rest of India, which had been watching closely the bitterly contested Bengal polls where a fascist Centre with all its might had launched an arrogant bid for taking over Bengal, with a macho slogan Ebaar Bangla, Parle Samla!

For many of us, we saw our role in the No Vote to BJP campaign as an extension of our involvement in the fierce movement against the NRC-NPR-CAA matrix in Bengal. The crime against humanity thats the Assam NRC had shaken us from our stupor during the Modi 1.0 regime. Then, the passing of the CAA 2019, together with the already-draconian CAA 2003, and the declaration of the NPR process, pulled the last trigger.

Perhaps the Modi-Shah-RSS combine had not anticipated that their reckless moves would end up mobilising thousands of determined activists during the Modi 2.0 era to stand up decisively against the oppressive citizenship matrix.

As the regime in Delhi stayed arrogant about not budging from their citizenship restructuring project, at the core of my heart I felt that the Bengal polls were a kind of referendum on the matter. As much as they were a referendum against the farm bills, the labour code, the massive disinvestment of the public sector and the New Education Policy 2020.

So, we began the campaign and set out on a journey for four months. It was a first for me. No Vote to BJP Endorse anyone but throw out the fascists was our central slogan.

The slogan was intended to strike a chord with the people who were never loyal or traditional BJP supporters, but those who had been blown over by the blitz of the BJP campaign and voted for the party in 2019.

Through our campaign we tried to persuade, reason and talk to these fellow citizens, to wean them away from the influence of the BJP.

Our campaign toolkit included direct mass contact in 19 districts of Bengal, through a couple of hundred street corner meetings, district-wise mobile campaigns on tableaus, auto-rickshaws and totos, about a dozen rallies and some door-to-door campaigning. The red and white poster with BJP ke Ektio Vote Noy written over it was soon all over the place, along with other posters from the campaign, highlighting issues of life, dignity and livelihood reasons for rejecting the fascist party in the fray.

Often, in the dead of the night we would receive disapproving and even threatening phone calls from unknown numbers, asking us to discontinue the campaign. But mostly, it was people calling enthusiastically, wishing to join the campaign.

Our friends sometimes got heckled, attacked and stopped from campaigning by the BJP and RSS workers. I can recall instances in Raniganj, Ashoknagar, Bolpur and Murshidabad. Among the anti-BJP parties in the fray, the TMC was expectedly welcoming of our campaign, and so was a section of the CPM workers who have their ear to the ground.

Unfortunately, the CPM leadership remained cold and indifferent to it, with several of their most ardent supporters turning openly hostile to the campaign and attacking it virulently on social media. I think it was a mistake on their part which they may re-evaluate. The TMC turned out to be the biggest beneficiary of this, possibly as they stood the strongest chance to rout the BJP electorally.

As for our campaign, there is no stopping.

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Bengal elections 2021: We tried to wean those swayed by BJP blitz - Telegraph India