Suvendu Adhikari’s rise to the chief minister’s chair marks more than the fall of a 15-year government. It signals the collapse of an entire political grammar that had defined West Bengal since the Singur-Nandigram upheavals first brought Mamata Banerjee to power in 2011. The irony is stark. The same Nandigram movement that destroyed the Left Front and elevated Ms Banerjee also created the political figure who would eventually end her dominance. Mr Adhikari was not an outsider storming Bengal’s gates from Delhi. He emerged from the inner machinery of the Trinamool Congress itself.

He understood its district networks, its methods of mobilisation, its emotional vocabulary, and its dependence on local strongmen. The BJP’s Bengal victory therefore cannot be explained merely as a national wave imposed upon a resistant state. It was also an insider-led dismantling of the Trinamool system from within. That distinction matters because it changes the future of Bengal politics. For years, Bengal’s political culture rested on a regional identity framework.

Even when fiercely confrontational, Ms Mamata Banerjee projected herself as the defender of Bengali political autonomy against Delhi-centric power. The BJP has now replaced that framework with something fundamentally different: a politics........

© The Statesman