The political air in West Bengal is thick with anxiety, driven by the rollout of the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. Although it is framed as a simple administrative cleanup, its mandate to cross-reference voter details against the 2002 rolls has made it the de facto ground zero for the rollout of the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 (CAA).

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Bengal had possibly hoped that the promise of citizenship through the CAA would cement its hold over the vast Hindu refugee vote bank. Their caste-aligned support base is often seen as signalling the rise of caste politics in Bengal, when it is more about pursuing a politics over memory that encourages communal sentiment, and has less to do with caste per se.

Therefore, while the BJP projects the 'Hindu Khatre Mein Hai' narrative to gain momentum in Bengal, the SIR has made it clear that Hindu refugees are now the most vulnerable, turning the focus more onto them than any other group. The fear generated by the exercise, coupled with recent cultural missteps, is rapidly eroding the party's political prospects in Bengal.

In fact, instead of assuring its support base, the SIR is devolving into a profound political miscalculation for the BJP, creating instability within the very community it was designed to empower.

The Matua backlash: a vote bank dissolves due to fear

The core of the BJP's vote-share-expansion strategy in Bengal, especially in districts like North and South 24 Parganas and Nadia, hinges, to a certain extent, on the Matua community – a large Scheduled Caste refugee group that migrated to Bengal from Bangladesh over decades.

They were a large audience for the promise held out by the BJP via the CAA, but now, because of the requirement under the SIR for each voter to prove their link to the 2002 electoral rolls, it has transformed their hope into collective panic. The panic has been further exacerbated by BJP leader Shantanu Thakur's effort to issue "Hindu identity cards", which only demonstrated the extreme precarity of the community as it confronts the SIR process.

Also read: Verification or Disenfranchisement? People in Bengal, Tamil Nadu Struggle With SIR

For the thousands of Matuas who entered West Bengal after 2002, proving they existed on the 2002 electoral rolls is formally impossible. If these Matuas apply for citizenship under the CAA, they must first acknowledge that they are foreigners who entered India due to religious persecution in their home country. This declaration carries the immediate psychological burden of being branded a non-citizen, risking the temporary loss of not just their voting rights but also government entitlements, which will only add to the uncertainties shrouding their future.

Furthermore, since they are bound to lack the documents required to bridge the gap to the 2002 rolls, their names are, in any case, highly likely to be deleted from the voter lists during the SIR process.

The outcome is a community – the demographic cornerstone of the BJP’s Bengal dreams – plunged into fear and uncertainty. The narrative of 'mass disenfranchisement', relentlessly pushed by the Trinamool Congress (TMC), has gained traction because the Matuas now see the process as taking away their existing rights before granting them new, uncertain ones.

This wave of panic is not just a humanitarian issue; it is a direct political haemorrhage, resulting from a profound sense of alienation that is self-defeating for the party that sponsored the guarantee of citizenship.

The Matuas are now realising that the CAA is not a benevolent grant but a cumbersome documentation process, leading to a mass erosion of trust in the BJP’s intentions and promises.

Debunking the migration myth: why Muslims remain unaffected

The foundational pillar of the pro-SIR rhetoric is the implicit threat that the exercise will unearth hordes of Muslim “infiltrators”. But the very same exercise, conducted barely months ago in Bihar, could not show much evidence to support this rhetoric.

The political propaganda surrounding the issue of "infiltration" has long sought to portray the rising Muslim population of West Bengal as a demographic threat. Neither the rise, nor the infiltration logic have, so far, been substantiated with demographic data – and scholars have shown it is most likely to be nothing but propaganda.

The overwhelming majority of Muslims in West Bengal are native to the region, with most having settled here since before Partition. Crucially, available census data refutes the claims of disproportionate migration and exponential growth rates in the Muslim population.

Consequently, the Bengali Muslim population is largely unaffected by the bureaucratic fear currently paralysing the Matua community. They are settled citizens with deep historical roots and the documentation they possess is, for the most part, robust.

Thus the SIR, while causing genuine distress among Hindu refugees, has failed utterly as a political tool to scare the minority community into silence or compliance. Instead, the persistent and aggressive targeting of the Muslims through veiled threats has only solidified their political unity behind the Opposition – essentially cementing their status as a stable and reliable vote bank for the ruling TMC.

Unintended consequence: trouble for TMC?

While the political focus remains on the Matua community’s fate, the administrative objective of the SIR is also to intensively clean up the electoral rolls. The mandate is more or less clear: to remove "dead voters, multiple voters and ghost voters".

Also read: The Rate of Exclusion For Muslims Higher in Election Commission's Final Bihar Voter Roll

While this would work for democratic integrity, it would also introduce a silent but significant complication for the ruling TMC. Over the decades of their holding political control in Bengal, the electoral rolls in many parts of the state have not been properly updated. It has resulted in inflating voter numbers through the presence of multiple entries – a single voter registered more than once.

The SIR, if conducted properly, can potentially trim such excess fat from the rolls. This could disrupt the capacity for certain forms of vote maximisation, often used during elections. Eliminating these dead or duplicate voters, therefore, can become "troublesome" for the party with a strong election management mechanism on the ground – part of which depends on loosely managed voter lists.

Two cultural self-goals

Beyond the citizenship quagmire, the BJP’s prospects have also been damaged by two recent cultural-political incidents that strike at the heart of Bengali identity.

First, the BJP's controversial attack on a Congress leader for singing Rabindranath Tagore's 'Amar Sonar Bangla' in Assam. This song, central to Bengali identity, resonates strongly in West Bengal and in Bangladesh, where it is not only the national anthem but a powerful anti-Partition protest song.

Framing Tagore's composition as anti-national or mocking it with Islamophobic undertones has created outrage, which the TMC has strategically used.

Tagore, as the cultural icon and moral compass of Bengal, is integral to the formation of Bengali identity. The attack on Tagore – who wrote the national anthems of both countries – was instantly viewed as an attack on Bengali pride and history itself.

Then, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's push to commemorate the 150th anniversary of 'Vande Mataram' is also politically fraught in Bengal. He highlighted that "significant verses of Vande Mataram were separated" in 1937, suggesting that this sowed the seeds of Partition. This narrative is also a politically fraught topic in Bengal due to its divisive historical context.

Also read: Calling Tagore an ‘Outsider’ in Shantiniketan Is Playing With Dangerous Identity Politics

Here, too, as Semanti Ghosh argues in an impactful article, Tagore's role is central to understanding the cultural dynamics at play. What is more, while honouring Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay is laudable, the deeply divisive narrative and the uncalled for comparison between Tagore and Bankim is a highly sensitive and divisive historical point in modern politics.

Hence, well before the 2026 Bengal assembly election, there is already a confluence of three factors – the alienation of Hindu Matua voters by the SIR, the culture war waged against Rabindranath Tagore and the divisive narrative around 'Vande Mataram', suggesting a problematic future for the BJP in Bengal.

The BJP’s national strategy to conduct the SIR – accompanied by the scrutiny of documentation and the cultural overreach – is inherently ill-suited to the cultural sensibilities and demographic realities of West Bengal.

Suman Nath is a political anthropologist and teaches in Government General Degree College, Keshiary, Paschim Medinipur, West Bengal.

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