Mamata Banerjee cannot be blamed alone. The Muslim appeasement was pushed in West Bengal because the religious community themselves encouraged it. This was the same story in Assam under Tarun Gogoi. And aggrieved Hindus united. This is called Reverse Polarisation - a sophisticated term.
In other words, from the Hindu perspective - it was a fight against Jehadi politics.
There is another phenomenon. Most 'pro-Muslim' parties today -- are headed by Hindus - Mamata Banerjee, Akhilesh Yadav, Tejaswai Yadav and Malikarjun Karge and Rahul Gandhi.
In general sense, either in Assam or West Bengal, the Muslims seem to be caught between caution and calculation.
In Assam, there are now 24 opposition MLAs and they include as many as 22 Muslims. In West Bengal out of 293 newly elected MLAs (polling in one seat was countermanded), 40 are Muslims.
Among them, 34 belong to Trinamool Congress. That makes 45 per cent of TMC tally. So if Congress is new Muslim League in Assam; the TMC gets that prize quite easily in West Bengal.
In other words, the Modi-Shah duo has done one thing -- the Muslims today "matter even less" to the BJP than they did in 2019.
In West Bengal and Assam - the Lotus party won two-thirds of seats in both the states and mind you, it did not win even a single Muslim candidate.
Analyst Tarapod Guha in Durgapur says, "The split in Muslim votes and the landslide win of the BJP have made things murkier. We have a nightmarish experience as West Bengal has emerged as the fourth Indian state after Jammu and Kashmir, Assam and Uttar Pradesh; where the perceived veto power of Muslims have vanished".
In Uttar Pradesh and Assam, the BJP has been returning to power repeatedly because the split in Muslim electorate continues. In fact, in Assam (close to Bengal); the BJP scored a hat-trick winning as many as 82 seats in the 126-member assembly.
The polarisation of Indian voters between the Congress and the BJP also stands exposed in Assam. The Congress of Rahul Gandhi won 19 seats in Assam and to the surprise of many 18 of them are Muslims.
In West Bengal two Congress MLAs elected this are Muslims. Even the CPI-M MLA is a Muslim.
Mohammed Kamruzzaman, general secretary of the All Bengal Minority Youth Federation sums up the paradox about West Bengal mandate and remembers Raj Dharma.
"Earlier, we had Mamata Banerjee, and now Suvendu Adhikari has come through a democratic mandate. We expect the government to uphold 'rajdharma' and ensure equal treatment for all citizens," he said.
It may sound idealist. Muslims in general either in Assam and Bengal seldom punished any 'fundamentalist Muslim leader'.
They also rewarded pro-Muslim leaders such as Mamata Banerjee in Bengal and leaders like Akhilesh Yadav in UP and the RJD as a political party in Bihar. The sentiment reflects the shifting mood within Bengal's Muslim electorate, after an election that fractured political assumptions built over the past decade. For years, Muslim voters had largely consolidated behind the TMC.
In the 2021 polls, that consolidation acted as a firewall against the saffron surge. This election unfolded differently. In districts such as Murshidabad, Malda, Uttar Dinajpur and parts of South 24 Parganas, the minority vote no longer moved uniformly behind the TMC.
Sections drifted towards the Congress and the Left, while local outfits such as Humayun Kabir's AJUP and the ISF cut into the ruling party's base.
In Murshidabad, where Muslims form nearly two-thirds of the population, the TMC's tally crashed from
20 seats in 2021 to nine in 2026.
The BJP climbed from two seats to nine.
Similar shifts surfaced in Malda and Uttar Dinajpur. The number of Muslim MLAs has dipped only marginally from 44 to 40,
but the TMC's dominance among them has weakened sharply.
Six Muslim legislators now belong to parties outside both the TMC and BJP.
Political observers believe the shift was driven by several factors. There was fatigue among sections of minority voters over symbolic politics and local factionalism within the TMC.
The Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls also became a major undercurrent.
Nearly 91 lakh names were deleted statewide. While there is no official religious break-up, opposition parties estimate that a substantial portion of those removed were Muslims concentrated in districts that traditionally favour the TMC.
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| Upper Assam failed Congress in a big way |
Meanwhile, there has also been a conscious attempt by several Muslim organisations to avoid immediate confrontation and instead publicly articulate expectations from the new government.
Maulana Shafique Qasmi, imam of Kolkata's Nakhoda Masjid, said ideological differences should not prevent an elected government from functioning for every community.
"For the government of the day, everyone should be equal," he said.
Md Yahya, chairman of the West Bengal Imam Association, said the community hoped the BJP's slogan of 'Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas' would be implemented "in letter and spirit".
"We hope people can live without fear and in harmony," he said. For Bengal's Muslims, the moment is less about ideological conversion than political recalibration.
As Bengal enters an unfamiliar political phase under its first BJP government, much of the community appears prepared neither for open confrontation nor unquestioning acceptance. For now, the state's Muslims seem to be caught between caution and calculation.
The present Lok Sabha has 24 Muslims MPs. This comes around 4.2 per cent. In the 16th Lok Sabha, - there were 22 Muslims. The number jumped to 27 in the 17th Lok Sabha.
Compared to this in 1980 -- 49 were Muslims and in 1984 - Muslims won 45 seats.
One big difference is unlike the Modi regime - Muslims always found cabinet berths and even good constitutional positions. During UPA regime, the Left parties backed Hamid Ansari as Vice President and he continued in office for 10 years between 2007 and 2017.
Today, there is no Muslim chief minister and there is only one Governor in Bihar Lt Gen Syed Ata Hasnain (Retd.)
ends
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