On December 6, West Bengal legislator Humayun Kabir laid the foundation stone of the “Babri Masjid” in Beldanga in Murshidabad district. The event drew huge Muslim crowds who had got bricks and other donations for the construction of the mosque. The event was organised to commemorate the 33rd anniversary of the demolition of the ‘Babri Mosque’ in Ayodhya.
Kabir has often courted controversies and at times ended up embarrassing his party. He is like a ‘political vagabond’ who has spent time in the Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party and Trinamool Congress and is now negotiating an alliance with the Communist Party of India-Marxist, Congress and All-India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen of Asaduddin Owaisi.
He began his political career with the Congress and was elected to the West Bengal legislative assembly on a Congress ticket from Rejinagar segment in 2011 elections. He defected to the Trinamool Congress, which had won the election for the first time and was made a junior minister. He fell apart with the TMC and was expelled from the party in 2015 for six years.
He joined the BJP in 2018 and contested the parliamentary elections from Murshidabad during the 2019 General Elections, but lost to the TMC candidate. By 2021 West Bengal elections, as his expulsion period had come to an end, he returned to the TMC, contested from Bharatpur assembly segment and won. He again fell out with the TMC and was suspended from the party on December 4, two days before he went ahead with his programme of laying the foundation stone of the “Babri Mosque” in Beldanga.
Kabir may seem like a maverick who has flirted with all the political parties and contested elections on the ticket of all the three main parties in West Bengal, including the Congress, BJP and TMC. He has won on the Congress and TMC tickets but lost as a BJP candidate. He has now announced that he will soon be forming a new political party in West Bengal. It sounds more or less like the AIMIM of Owaisi and the All-India United Democratic Front in Assam.
The timing of his rebellion against the TMC is important. West Bengal is going for Assembly elections next year. The TMC will be trying its luck for the fourth time. It has continuously remained in power in West Bengal for three terms since 2011, when it uprooted the left government that was in power for over two decades.
The TMC draws its strength from the middle classes and almost the entire Muslim population of the state. West Bengal is among the very few states in the country with a substantial proportion of Muslim population. There are 27 per cent Muslims in the state with three districts having more than 50 per cent population. Murshidabad, from where Kabir comes, has the highest 66 per cent population.
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The BJP has been trying its desperate best since 2016 to defeat the TMC. The party has made deep inroads into the state but has not been able to storm Mamata Banerjee’s citadel. That is mainly because almost the entire Muslim population of the state goes along with her to defeat the BJP. So far the Muslim vote has mostly remained undivided in West Bengal and it has rallied around the TMC only knowing that only it can defeat the BJP.
The BJP appears to be banking on Kabir, who has touched the Muslim sentiments with his project of constructing the Babri Mosque in Beldanga in the Muslim dominated Murshidabad district. His act will help the BJP in two ways. First, it will definitely take away Muslim votes from the TMC. It remains to be seen how many Muslim votes he can attract. Any vote to Kabir’s party will be directly at the cost of the TMC. Weaker the TMC, stronger the BJP becomes.
Second, the construction of Babri Mosque will cause severe polarisation in the state. While the Muslims, irrespective of the numbers, will drift away from the TMC over Babri Mosque issue as the party has opposed its construction, same way the Hindus will feel more attracted towards the BJP as a perception has been created that the TMC is pro-Muslim and has been appeasing the community. Banerjee has in the past made no qualms about resorting to pro-Muslim symbolism like wearing white saree with “green border” or observing fast on some days during the Muslim holy month of Ramzan.
The BJP will be hoping Kabir to do the same thing, what Owaisi does or at least tries to do in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and Badruddin Ajmal does in Assam. While in Assam, Ajmal’s party All India United Democratic Front, cuts into the Muslim votes of the Congress, in UP and Bihar, Owaisi’s AIMIM is seen to be helping the BJP indirectly by cutting into the Muslim support base of the parties like the Samajwadi Party and Rashtriya Janata Dal, both competitors of the BJP.
But there is also a certain amount of risk for Kabir in West Bengal. Initially Ajmal drew huge Muslim support in Assam. While once it had won three Parliamentary seats in Assam, it was wiped out in 2024 General Elections following the perception that Ajmal was actually a BJP proxy. He lost from his stronghold of Dhubri by a huge margin of over ten lakh votes to the Congress.
Although Owaisi has also been facing similar accusations, his base in Hyderabad remains intact, as the BJP does not have much stakes there so far. In UP and Bihar his candidates have been getting substantial number of votes. In the recently concluded Bihar Assembly elections the AIMIM won five seats with four per cent overall vote share.
One thing is for sure that Kabir will make some dent into the Muslim support base of the TMC. Whether it will be substantial enough to cause major damage to the party will also need to be seen. Besides, it may lead to communal polarisation that will again be to the disadvantage of the ruling TMC, which is already faced with anti-incumbency of three terms.
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