Unlike the rest of India, caste has played a relatively minor role in West Bengal politics till now.
However, this seems to be changing fast.
During the ongoing campaign for the 2021 Assembly both the Trinamool and the Bharatiya Janata Party have made promises to expand the Other Backward Classes category of reservations.
However, uniquely in Bengal, politics around the OBC quota has a communal underpinning to it. The BJP for some years now alleged that Bengali Muslims have gained disproportionately from OBC reservations.
On Tuesday, for example, BJP President JP Nadda speaking at a rally in Bengal started off his OBC pitch by first attacking Muslim “appeasement”. “The biggest example of appeasement [in Bengal] are OBC reservations,” he said. “To the OBC list were also added minorities – and in large numbers.”
He continued, promising a larger Hindu pie in the OBC list: “It is due to the votebank politics of appeasement that backward castes from our Hindu…