Opinion | Two Rival Imagination Of Identity: Bangla Versus Hindutva

Updated: May 03, 2026 14:41 pm IST Published On May 03, 2026 14:37 pm IST Last Updated On May 03, 2026 14:41 pm IST

Published On May 03, 2026 14:37 pm IST

Last Updated On May 03, 2026 14:41 pm IST

It is more than an election. It is a dispute over the grammar of belonging - who gets to be "us," and what "us" is allowed to mean when power is at stake. In West Bengal, the coming count does not merely decide seats in an assembly; it tests two rival imaginations of identity, both confident, both mobilizing, both speaking in the language of moral rightness. One imagines the region as a Bengali home. The other imagines the nation's spiritual centre as a Hindu home. Between them lies the fragile hinge of everyday life: jobs, safety, dignity, and the right to be counted as a full citizen.

Consider how history hides inside the smallest gestures - how a slogan can become a mood, how a crowd can feel like weather. Here, too, the "mood" has formed. The central conflict of the election can be summarized almost like a thesis statement: Bengali identity versus Hindutva identity. And yet it is never only ideology. It's also memory, and grievance, and a carefully shaped sense of who is inside the room - and who is being ushered out. 

Trinamool pitches Bengali identity 

The Trinamool Congress pitched a Bengali identity not as an abstract cultural badge but as a claim to sovereignty over the meaning of citizenship. Their Bengali slogan - "Jato karo Hamla, Ebar jitbe Bangla" ("However much you attack, this time Bangla will win") - sounds like defiance, but it does something subtler: it turns politics into resistance. It suggests that identity is under assault, and that the only way to survive is to vote as if Bengali-ness were not a festival but a lifeline.

In that pitch, Trinamool organized its campaign around a set of deliberate pillars - "two M's" and an attempt to turn procedure into grievance. The two M's are Mahila (women) and Muslim. These were not merely demographic notes; they were framed as moral responsibilities and guarantees. And then there was SIR, pushed as the main agenda - not just as an administrative matter, but as an........

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