Why Bengal BJP’s New Chief Has Taken New Tone On Muslims, Samik Bhattacharya Pitches Inclusive Growth

11th July 2025 at 4:06 PM

1 minute read

Kolkata : Chants of Jai Shri Ram were the mainstay of the BJP as it fought to unseat the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal in the 2021 Assembly polls. However, the results of the polls in which it tried its best to consolidate Hindu votes weren’t to its liking. The new tone in its Bengal song was heralded by its new state chief, Samik Bhattacharya. A Rajya Sabha MP and old RSS hand, Bhattacharya, from his first speech itself, charted a new path for the party far from the politics of polarisation. “There is a conscious effort to divide Bengal on the basis of religion.

He said the BJP was working against the forces that shove stones in the hands of Muslim boys, adding, We want to replace the stones in their hands with pens. In that speech he reached out to the nationalist Muslims, asking them to work alongside the BJP to counter radicalisation. This was an outreach that wasn’t on expected lines, going by the party’s projection of Trinamool Congress and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee as pandering to Muslims as a vote bank. With Suvendu Adhikari in the campaign lead, the BJP had taken an aggressive campaign to consolidate Hindu votes in Bengal.

Bhattacharya’s promotion and the new strategy might seem running counter to the strategy of Adhikari, the leader of the opposition in Bengal Assembly, who aggressively painted Mamata and her Trinamool of minority appeasement. Not just Muslims, but Bhattacharya also reached out to Communists by mentioning Bharatiya Jana Sangh leader Syama Prasad Mookerjee and veteran Left leader Jyoti Basu in the same breath.