West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who is at loggerheads with the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre over demonetisation and investigation of several TMC members of Parliament for numerous chit fund scams, has retaliated with threat of forced closure of 125 schools in the state with “saffron links”. 

Antagonism between the ruling TMC and BJP has escalated after the state government issued show cause notices on March 9 to 125 K-12 schools promoted and run by the Vivekananda Vidyavikash Parishad (VVP). VVP is the Bengal chapter of the Lucknow-based Vidya Bharati Akhil Bharatiya Shiksha Sansthan (VBABSS), an organisation affiliated with the Hindu revivalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). VVP’s website candidly states that its primary objective is to promote education for shaping a generation of “youths with a Hindu mindset”. 

The show cause notice issued by the state government’s education ministry directed the managements of the 125 schools to follow the syllabus of the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education (WBBSE). VBABSS-affiliated education trusts including VVP, Sharada Shishu Vidya Mandir and the Vidya Bharati Akhil Bharatiya Shiksha Sansthan run a network of 350 schools with an aggregate enrolment of 60,000 students in West Bengal. These schools have been instructed to submit their classes I-IV syllabuses to the school education department for scrutiny.

The BJP, which is steadily gaining ground in West Bengal and north-east India, has hit back with the state BJP unit president Dilip Ghosh advising the TMC government to monitor Muslim madrassas and Christian missionary rather than VBABSS schools. Meanwhile the Hindu Existence Forum, an RSS-affiliated organisation, has declared an intent to file a writ in the Calcutta high court charging the state government with discriminating against Hindu education trusts while favouring Christian and Muslim school managements. 

However, West Bengal’s education minister Partha Chatterjee says the state is examining the syllabuses of the 125 VVP-affiliated schools and will revoke their no-objection certificates (NoCs) if they aren’t following the WBBSE syllabus. “We will not allow spreading of religious intolerance under the guise of education. Of these 125 schools, 96 are running without NoCs and only ten are affiliated with WBBSE,” he alleges. 

With even opposition CPI (M) leader Manas Mukherjee saying he’s “worried about the rise of such schools in the state,” RSS spokesperson Jishnu Bose alleges that the TMC government is continuing the highly anti-Hindu policies of the CPI (M)-led Left Front government which ruined West Bengal’s academy during its prolonged rule (1977-2011). To substantiate this claim, Jishnu says the 2017-18 budget allocation for the ministry of minority affairs and madrassas is Rs.2,815 crore, substantially greater than for tribal welfare “and larger than the allocation for large-scale industries, textiles and IT put together”. This type of divisive, polarising rhetoric has won the BJP considerable ground in West Bengal which experienced a continuous flight of capital and deindustrialisation during Left Front rule resulting in a massive youth unemployment crisis in the state. 

On March 2, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) — the BJP’s students’ wing — staged a huge rally in the heart of Kolkata to protest against “anti-national sentiments” in Delhi University and West Bengal in general. In a city in which student politics has been dominated by the CPI(M)-affiliated Students Federation of India, Democratic Students’ Organisation and more recently the TMC’s Chhatra Parishad, this was an unthinkable show of BJP strength.

Most political commentators in Kolkata are in agreement that BJP-RSS hindutva ideology is striking deep roots in traditionally leftist West Bengal. With each passing month, there’s growing acceptance of the party’s hindutva message in Kolkata and the state’s district and block-level towns. 

Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)