What The Opposition Must Learn From Mamata's Defeat

'If the Opposition associates itself too much with the minorities, then it becomes easy for the BJP to get Hindu consolidation votes.'

After trying its best to defeat the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal for over a decade, the Bharatiya Janata Party finally achieved that objective in the 2026 assembly elections.

The BJP, which won only three seats in West Bengal in 2016, won 206 seats, an absolute majority.

In 2021, despite a clamorous campaign, the party had won only 77 seats compared to the TMC which won 215 seats then.

So what changed in five years that led to the BJP victory?

Conversely, what mistakes did Mamata Banerjee commit that led to her downfall?

Did Mamata's Muslim appeasement politics fail her?

Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff posed these questions to political scientist Dr Sajjan Kumar. Dr Kumar, a Fellow at the Prime Ministers Museum & Library, is the Director at Praccis India, a research institution specialising in politics and policy.

What reasons do you attribute to the Trinamool Congress' defeat in West Bengal?

The biggest reason is that anti-incumbency was being built.

Mamata won in 2011 with a novelty factor as there was anti-incumbency against the Communist Party of India-Marxist/Left Front rule in Bengal.

In 2016, Mamata won because of the welfare schemes she had initiated for which she got a mandate from the public even though the CPI-M and Congress came together against her.

But in 2018 the TMC started setting a trend of hegemonic elections in Bengal which began with the panchayat election in the state. In 40 percent of places the TMC did not allow Opposition parties to file nominations. The crackdown resulted in CPI-M supporters shifting en masse to the BJP.

The atrocities committed on CPI-M workers made them realise that their party cannot save them from the wrath of TMC goons. Therefore, these CPI-M workers moved to the BJP.

Another thing the TMC started in Bengal was syndicate culture by which the local economy of the state was run only by the TMC. The control culture at local level politics of the CPI-M shifted to the TMC in a cruder manner. And by doing so, Mamata and TMC drifted away from their slogan 'Ma, Maati, Maanush (Mother, Land and People).'

How did she win the 2021 assembly elections?

The sentiment was against Mamata Banerjee in the 2021 elections too, but the BJP was not prepared to fight against her.

Secondly, at the last minute in the elections Mamata could convince voters that she is a native of Bengal and the BJP is an outsider party trying to capture Bengal. Her move of blaming the BJP as an outsider party did not work in the 2026 elections. There were other reasons too for her defeat.

Like?

The economic distress was too much in Bengal. The state which was known to give intellectuals and learned people to India went on to providing maids and servants to the rest of India. People were talking of a shortage of maids and domestic help in Delhi and Noida because of the Bengal elections.

Secondly, she started a welfare scheme in 2011, then increased it in 2016 and in 2021 she got the Lakshmir Bhandar scheme (giving Rs 1,500 to two crore economically weaker women) but then women voters had aspirations too.

This aspiration is a corrective measure that needs to be looked at by all political parties across India. By distributing freebies you cannot overlook aspirational politics or employment issues or the rural distress issues of voters.

Political parties cannot neutralise these issues by giving freebies to women.

The mandate that the BJP got in Bengal shows that a large chunk of women voted against the TMC.

Bengal's rural women believed in the politics of aspiration and the women based in cities voted against Mamata for the politics of aspiration and security. They rejected Mamata's politics of welfare.

They used to tell us before the elections, 'hum log kab tak bhaata jeevi rehenge? (how long will we continue to live on doles?)

Thirdly, in India a pattern is being established for Opposition parties that they cannot depend on consolidation of Muslim votes. If you get trapped in that image you will suffer in two ways. Your image is diverted from that of a welfare politician to a Muslim consolidation vote catcher politician. This leads to counter consolidation of Hindu voters.

This pattern, if you see, led to the limitation of Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh, Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar and Congress in Assam.

In West Bengal, there was economic distress and rural unemployment, but then demographic consolidation of Hindu and Muslim voters started happening on the ground.

Mamata's image among Hindu voters of Bengal became that she was winning only because of the consolidation of Muslim voters in Bengal.

This template is being seen (by Hindu voters) on a national scale. Kerala is the lone state where this template does not work. But then, in Kerala, 27 percent population is Muslim and 18 percent are Christians.

And for Opposition parties, if they get trapped in the minds of Hindu voters as a party for Muslims, then they are in trouble for sure.

The same thing happened with the SP, RJD, Congress in Assam and now Mamata's TMC. She followed the same line and lost power.

The Opposition has to rethink their strategy about this old model of politics which is about consolidated minority votes and this caste of Hindus or that caste of Hindus or add women voters to their vote bank thinking they will win the elections.

That era is over. They will have to re-imagine fighting elections with a new generation with new ideas.

80 percent of India is Hindu and the BJP wins on the strength of the Hindu vote, which leaves the Opposition parties no option but to go after the minority vote, isn't it?

If you go back to the year 2021, you will find out that the 'Jai Shri Ram' narrative was going on in the rural areas of Bengal. If you went to the Greater Kolkata region you would find that whether they loved Mamata or not, they did not agree with the BJP's politics. They felt it was not the right politics of Bengal.

This time, however, there was a change. When you met the bhadralok of Bengal they had formed their perception that the TMC's existence was due to the Muslim vote.

What I mean to say is that if the Opposition associates itself too much with the minorities, then it becomes easy for the BJP to get Hindu consolidation votes. This is the template.

Arvind Kejriwal defeated the BJP three times, but the BJP never used the Hindu versus Muslim argument against Kejriwal because it was different politics being played. Though they lost, nobody said AAP was a Muslim party.

There were allegations against other Opposition parties by the BJP, like 'Maulana Mulayam' or in Assam where Congress leader Gaurav Gogoi lost the election. He is an Ahom and had won the Lok Sabha seat earlier.

When you meet people in Assam they will tell you they are not happy with the BJP because they feel it is a corporate favouring party, but they add a line, 'Congress is a Miyan Muslim party'. These people don't love the BJP and don't want to vote for them but then they vote for the BJP because the Congress in their eyes is perceived to be a Miyan Muslim party.

Given the BJP's control of the Hindu vote, what option is there for the Opposition parties?

In right wing politics, the RSS (the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the BJP's parent organisation) has finished all its opponents, be it the Hindu Mahasabha or the Swantantra Party or the Ram Rajya Parishad party.

As a (Hindu) voter I may not like to vote for a cultural right wing party, but when Rahul Gandhi comes with a statement that he will do an economic survey and keep a watch on '90:10' wealth distribution ('90:10' wealth distribution theme as part of Rahul Gandhi's argument for a nationwide caste census and social justice. He argued that roughly 90% of India's population including scheduled castes, scheduled trobes, OBCs, minorities, and poor has negligible participation in top-level governance, corporate ownership and media, while a small elite holds most of the nation's wealth.) so even if I don't want to vote for the BJP I will vote for them with a grudge or with enthusiasm as there is no other option to vote.

Right now, we all are seeing the Bengal elections through a Hindu versus Muslim prism but then, if you dig deeper and check areas like Bardhaman, Hooghly and other places these were the ones which have a huge production of potatoes. They are number one in the production of potatoes in India.

Everyone was stating that the condition of potato farmers is bad because they did not get the right price for their potatoes even after a bumper harvest.

The rural distress then complements Hindu-Muslim politics. Rural Hindu farmers are frustrated with their economic condition and they justify their vote to the BJP because within their hearts they feels that the TMC is the reason for the economic distress.

If the Opposition parties want to win the elections they have to rework their language and their reachout.

In Delhi the BJP got 43 lakh votes and AAP got 41 lakh votes. Nobody says Kejriwal is pro-Muslim or makes such accusations against him even though there is a huge chunk of Muslims in Delhi.

Secular parties try to become rehunama (leaders) of Muslims. Secular parties are losing because they are competing with the likes of Asaduddin Owaisi and Humayun Kabir.

Does it mean goodbye to secularism forever after the Bengal elections?

When mobilisation takes place during elections, communal elements surely creep in. It is very easy to ask votes in the name of religion.

In India when you talk of secularism we talk of inclusion and exclusion which takes place at two levels. When it comes to government economic schemes then there is no differentiation against Muslims. Be it the Pradhan Mantri Aawas Yojana, Ujwala scheme or any other government schemes.

But on the cultural level the Muslim community is targeted to mobilise Hindu (voters).

Now there are two challenges for Opposition parties. Do they have any economic language to take on the BJP? If you leave aside South India, the rest of India associates the BJP with aspirational politics. And here the Congress is talking of the revival of the socialism way of life.

The new generation, when they are aspirational, they do get upset with the BJP for sure but don't see any hope or appeal in other political parties.

If you see, the fight to get Muslim votes in secular parties is reaching another level.

If you recall the 2017 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, Mayawati used to say her party has given seats to 100 Muslim candidates out of 400 seats and Akhilesh Yadav has given fewer tickets to Muslims.

On the other hand Akhilesh used to recall how in 1992-1993 the Samajwadi Party protected Muslims during the Babri Masjid-Ramjanambhoomi movement.

The BJP smartly did sabhas of Dalits; the Dalit community felt it was clear Maywati and Akhilesh were only talking about Muslim votes. The competition for Muslim votes leads these parties to win only in those places where Muslims are in a majority. In other words, secular parties have started competing with Owaisi's party.

They start competing with each other stating they are better champions of the minority community, which then leads to counter consolidation of Hindu votes for the BJP.

What is left of the Opposition in India? It looks like the BJP will not lose elections for the next 40 years.

RSS ideologue Govindacharyaji once told me the philosophy of kaalkhand (era). He said one political discourse runs for 25 years in India in spite of all its shortcomings because there is a bias in society for that political discourse. It engulfs one political generation and after that the generation changes and only then the old ideological belief breaks down.

Govindacharya believed that from 1952 to 1977 Pandit Nehru, Indira Gandhi and the secularism discourse ran in India. That was broken in the 1977 elections.

After which in 1989, another political discourse of coalition politics started which ran for 25 years till 2014.

After 2014 another political discourse started.

And when we feel that there is nothing left in the system except despair as the ruling party will continue to rule forever, forgetting very well that once upon a time other parties ruled in some other era.

Unfortunately, we see the politics of the future through the prism that we live in today.

When you get news from Tamil Nadu that actor Vijay won without any mass movement against the ruling DMK you feel there is a possibility of things changing.

Nobody gave more freebies in India than the DMK did in Tamil Nadu. There was no anti-incumbency against Chief Minister M K Stalin and yet Vijay's TVK won.

The reason is that the new generation in Tamil Nadu wanted change and Vijay spoke their language.

People vote for the ruling party many times when they don't see any hope in Opposition parties. And Vijay gave that hope to the people of Tamil Nadu for change.