How competitive faith politics is recasting Bengal’s 2026 poll battle

Political scientist Maidul Islam said this is a very new phenomenon in Bengal politics.“Leaders like Humayun Kabir and parties like the BJP and AIMIM are consciously trying to import Hindi heartland narratives into Bengal. Dates, symbols and mass religious performances — these are not accidental,” he told PTI.BJP state president Samik Bhattacharya said that when one side uses religious symbolism to consolidate its vote bank, “the other cannot be expected to remain silent”.“The politics of selective secularism will no longer work in Bengal. For decades, Hindu sentiments were pushed to the margins of the state’s political discourse. This is about to change,” he claimed.For decades, Bengal’s political mobilisation rested largely on class, language and welfare, with religion operating as a secondary identity marker. Even during earlier communal flare-ups, mainstream parties avoided sustained, competitive religious symbolism.However, Murshidabad, where Muslims form a numerical majority and memories of Partition displacement remain alive, has emerged as the epicentre, with mandir–masjid politics increasingly dominating public conversation.In Salt Lake, posters appeared announcing an Ayodhya-style Ram temple complex with a hospital, school and old-age home. The proposed foundation ceremony is slated for Ram Navami next year, signalling how religious symbolism is now being projected deep into spaces associated with governance and power.“When temple–mosque politics moves from border districts to planned urban centres, it signals ambition, not spontaneity,” political analyst Biswanath Chakraborty said, adding that it reflects an “attempt to normalise religious assertion as mainstream electoral language”.The Congress and the Left, reduced to the margins in Bengal, have warned of historical repetition.“We know where competitive communalism leads,” state Congress chief Subhankar Sarkar said, recalling the countrywide violence that followed the Babri demolition in the 1990s.Bengal is a border state born of Partition, its social fabric shaped by refugee influx, demographic churn and episodic violence. While it never fully followed the Hindi heartland’s template of sustained religious polarisation, the scars remain real and politically exploitable.“When economic distress dominates daily life, sudden mandir–masjid politics signals a deliberate narrative shift,” political scientist Subhomoy Moitra said.With the Assembly elections months away, Bengal appears headed into a season of competitive symbolism, where mosques and temples are no longer merely places of faith but strategic markers on a polarised political map.Whether this moment hardens into lasting division or recedes under electoral pragmatism may shape not just individual political fortunes but the future trajectory of Bengal’s political culture itself.



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