Congestion Ahead: Why Mamata Banerjee's Outrage Over 'Missionaries Of Charity' Issue May Not Get Trinamool The Opening It Wants In Goa

Christmas cheer was temporarily upturned earlier this week by a perturbing tweet from Mamata Banerjee, the Chief Minister of West Bengal. According to her, the Indian government had frozen all the bank accounts of the Missionaries of Charity (MoC) in India – an international Catholic religious congregation established in 1950 by Mother Teresa, and centered in Kolkata.

The situation, per Ms. Banerjee, was pitiably grave, with the MoC’s 22,000 employees and patients now being left without food or medicines. Then came the zinger: “While the law is paramount, humanitarian efforts must not be compromised”. Translation: there were some, selected organizations whose functioning could not countenance hindrance, no matter how high the law was. She offered no reasoning for her dictum.

Within minutes, every pronoun-touting secularist worth his, her, or gender-fluid salt, was frothing hydrophobically at such high-handed, majoritarian audacity. How dare a mere government freeze the bank accounts of a hallowed organization?

The answer arrived a few hours later, while the bile was still in full spate, from none other than Sister M. Prema, the head of the MoC. The government, her public statement read, had not frozen any of the MoC’s accounts; on the contrary, the MoC had only asked its Indian centers to not operate any of their accounts, until the outfit’s registration under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act had been renewed.

This was a follow up to a prompt clarification from the Union Ministry of Home Affairs an hour earlier, which made three important points. One, the MHA had not frozen any MoC accounts. Two, it was the MoC which had written to the State Bank of India, asking for its accounts to be frozen. And, three, the MoC requested this freeze because its FCRA renewal had been rejected by the MHA two days previously, for failing to meet required eligibility conditions.

And there the matter died an instantaneous death, even if our heroes and sheroes tried valiantly to delay the inevitable, by huffily asking how a government might dare reject the MoC’s FCRA renewal. The answer to that too became swiftly available: audit irregularities!

So, why would a provincial politician play such a dangerous game with blatant, religious overtones, exactly around the most important date of the Christian calendar? Everyone in the room raised their hands together: to propel her party’s expansion into Goa, where assembly elections are due soon.

Now, while such rank identity politics might reek of everything India has suffered for far too long, it is also the sad truth that there still remains a space for such moves. Mamata Banerjee, sensing that the Congress is crumbling into oblivion, probably believes that a little fear-mongering might just put her in profitable stead with those Christians of Goa, who continue to be swayed by the secularist narrative. The old saviour is finished; all hail the new one.

But what do the numbers say?

Goa has tiny constituencies, with just about thirty-odd thousand electors each. Also, the contests are predominantly multi-polar. That means tight fights are usually decided by less than a thousand votes, and the mandate is often split.

In 2017, the Congress came first with 17 seats out of 40, while the BJP lost eight to bag only 13. The balance ten seats were shared between independents and two local parties. Yet, in a famous midnight operation, the BJP managed to cobble together a majority with the local parties while the Congress slept.

Of these 40 seats, more than a quarter had a win margin of barely a thousand votes or less. Five of the Congress’s 17 wins were garnered with a vote share of less than 40 per cent, and the BJP didn’t even contest in two of their bigger wins.

Interestingly, and this is a point the West Bengal Chief Minister might take note of while honing her ambitions, where the BJP won, it invariably won big. And four of its losses were extremely narrow ones to the two local parties, both of whom it promptly tied up with after the elections.

A new factor in 2017 was the entry of the Aam Aadmi party (AAP). They didn’t win a single seat, but the data shows that they were more successful in queering the pitch for the Congress, rather than the BJP (naturally, since their principal thrust was for the non-BJP vote).

In Bicholim seat, the AAP actually polled more votes than the Congress, while the BJP won there with a 46 per cent vote share. In Cortalim, the AAP created an unbelievably-messy six-way affair (down from a less-messy five-way affair in 2012!), which the BJP still won with a mere 24 per cent vote share.

In spite of all this, the BJP’s vote share in 2017 was 32.5 per cent – down two per cent from 2012, while the Congress’s vote share went down from 31 per cent to 28. That means the vote share differential between the BJP and the Congress actually went up from 2012 to 2017.

Three inferences may then be derived: one, that a few thousand votes going this way or that could have altered the final seat tally dramatically; two, that it is easier for the BJP to win a seat than to lose it; and three, that the non-BJP vote is actually a lot smaller than analysts appreciate.

So, it is into this severely congested electoral space that Mamata Banerjee now seeks to make a grand entry, by whipping up communal passions. How will that play out?

The first thing Ms. Banerjee and her celebrity political advisors should learn is that 2022 is not 2017. Anyone chasing the identity vote today, through their usual mixture of hate, appeasement, and victimhood, will have to deal with an inevitable counter-consolidation strong enough to upend the wildest of political dreams.

Two, the more she positions herself as a defender of the Christian faith, the more she alienates other communities – both in Goa and in her home state; and not to mention the impact such a move would have on her national ambitions.

Three, using the Missionaries of Charity’s FCRA renewal as a political plank will only increase public interest in the outfit’s evangelical activities, and further fuel the ongoing national outcry against forced conversions.

Four, splitting the non-BJP vote further in an already-fractured electorate will only give the BJP a greater advantage, by reducing required win margins and vote shares, and worsen the Congress’s chances.

Five, such flagrant identity politics could actually induce the two local parties in Goa to ally more tactically with the BJP, since the national party has demonstrated a greater capacity to retain its robust vote base, even in the face of fringe desertions, vote erosion, and the absence of Manohar Parrikar. This, in turn, would wholly negate the entry of new parties into the fray.

And six, anyone with a moral bone should know that Christmas is a religious festival with deep spiritual foundations, not meant to be milked so unscrupulously for electoral gains.