Changing Political Order

The sharpest flashpoints may include the implementation of UCC and OBC reservations. Through amendments to the state’s backward classes framework, the government has moved to remove several Muslim communities from the OBC list while significantly reducing the overall OBC quota. The BJP argues the previous system amounted to unconstitutional minority appeasement that deprived deserving Hindu backward classes of reservation benefits and the amendment duly followed the Calcutta HC directive.

For Adhikari, the move is as much political as administrative. It creates a narrative of historical correction while simultaneously weakening the minority-backed electoral coalition that powered successive Left Front and Trinamool Congress governments for decades.

The same political logic runs through proposals for the proposed UCC bill, anti-Love Jihad legislation and stricter action against illegal conversions and illegal animal slaughter. Each issue reinforces the BJP’s attempt to shift Bengal’s electoral conversation away from welfare politics towards questions of identity and civilisational assertion.

The Biggest Hindutva Gamble Yet

For decades, Bengal remained an exception to India’s larger political shift. The Left sustained power through class and land politics, Socialist-Communist ideas along with a strong cadre structure, while the Trinamool Congress blended appeasement-welfare with secular populism. Religious polarisation rarely became the defining axis of governance, though politically it was there.

Adhikari is seeking to overturn that decades-old societal pyramid.
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THe story has been published first in News 18. Views are Personal.