Wielding significant electoral influence, the Matua community in West Bengal, a religious group from the Namasudra caste, is a political force that both the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the BJP court. However, amid discord in the Scheduled Caste community’s “first family” and widespread concern about a voter verification drive in the state, a section of Matuas have turned to the Congress for help and met Leader of Opposition (LoP) Rahul Gandhi in Bihar last week during his yatra in the state.
“Some people from the Matua community met me in Murshidabad as they are getting disenchanted with both the ruling party in Bengal and the ruling party in Delhi,” former state Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury told The Indian Express. “Their understanding is that the core issue of Matuas is not being given due attention and both parties have treated them as an electoral tool. Now, they are thinking about supporting the Congress, inspired by the way Rahul Gandhi has been raising the issues against the Election Commission. They are apprehensive that their present status might endanger their enrollment in the voter list … I conveyed the message to Rahul ji and sent them to Patna. They met him, participated in the yatra, and placed their demands.”
The meeting between the 24-member Matua delegation and the LoP took place on August 23 in the town of Ekma in Saran district. “He cordially talked to us for about 15 minutes. He heard all our concerns and assured us he will continue to follow up with us in the future,” said a delegation member. The group, calling itself the West Bengal Matua Mahasangha, also clicked a photograph with Gandhi, holding a banner that read: “Rahul dada, come to Bengal .. SIR-e bipad, Congress-e nirapad (SIR is a danger, we are safe with the Congress).” While the Congress has a presence in some pockets of Bengal, it is largely a marginal force in the state at present, with one MP and no MLAs.
The Matua outreach comes at a time when the Thakur family, which leads the community, is in flux following a public fallout between Union Minister Shantanu Thakur and his BJP MLA-brother Subrata over organising camps to help community members get identity papers. Following Subrata’s meeting with their aunt and TMC Rajya Sabha MP Mamata Bala Thakur last month, Shantanu accused his brother of angling for a position in the state’s ruling party.
However, what has alarmed the BJP the most is that one of its local party workers, identified as Tapan Haldar, led the delegation to Bihar. The party registered its best electoral performance in the state in 2019 — winning 18 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats — because of the support of Matuas, who backed it over the promise of enacting the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, that would ease their way to citizenship. For the BJP, the path to power in Bengal lies in stitching together a pan-Hindu support base with Matuas at its core, and it cannot afford the emergence of a third alternative, no matter how weak.
The BJP has alleged that the Congress took the delegation to Bihar under false pretenses, and has also said it will serve Haldar with a show-cause notice. “They were told they were being escorted to an ashram in Patna. The Congress paid their fare and promised to give them money. It is desperate to gain a foothold among Matuas, but they will not succeed,” said Shantanu Thakur, who also heads the All India Matua Mahasangha. The BJP’s Bongaon district president, Bikash Ghosh, said Haldar would be asked to explain himself.
Dismissing the Union Minister’s allegations, Congress spokesperson Ketan Jaiswal, who accompanied the delegation to Bihar, said, “What Shantanu Thakur is claiming is baseless … Matuas are fed up with the BJP and TMC’s false promises. The BJP is panicking that Matua support might be shifting towards the Congress.”
Matua demand for citizenship
Matuas migrated to West Bengal from Bangladesh first during the Partition and then in a second wave during the 1971 war. Following social reformer Guruchand Thakur’s adage “Jei jatir dol nei, shei jatir bol nei (a community without a party/organisation is weak)”, they looked to join the political mainstream from the very beginning. Pramatha Ranjan Thakur — Guruchand Thakur’s grandson, and Shantanu and Subrata Thakur’s grandfather — was the junior tribal development minister in the 1962 B C Roy-led Congress government, and in 1967 was also elected to the Lok Sabha from Nabadwip on a Bangla Congress (a breakaway faction of the Congress) ticket.
While the Congress government oversaw the rehabilitation and resettlement of Matua refugees post-1971 in North 24 Parganas, Nadia, and other districts, they were essentially deemed “unrecognised refugees” and citizenship remained out of reach. Subsequently, during the Left rule, Matuas received ration cards and got enrolled in voter lists, but citizenship continued to remain elusive.
The Left’s indifference to the caste question and the predominantly bhadralok composition of its leadership led Matuas to move towards independently organising themselves under the umbrella of the Matua Mahasangha over the question of citizenship. This process sped up when the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government passed the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2003, which deemed anyone who had entered the country without valid papers after March 25, 1971, to be an illegal immigrant and ineligible for citizenship. The amended law also brought in the National Register of Citizens (NRC) framework.
As the Left hegemony crumbled in the years following the Singur and Nandigram, the TMC courted the Thakur family with electoral gains in mind. In the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, which signalled the start of the end of the CPI(M)’s three-decade rule, Matuas leaned towards the Mamata Banerjee-led party. Five years later, P R Thakur’s son Kapil Krishna Thakur was elected Bongaon MP on a TMC ticket, but following his death a few months later, the family faced its first big disagreement. It resulted in the split of the Thakur family between the TMC-supporting side, comprising Kapil Krishna’s wife Mamata Bala, and those who joined the BJP, including Kapil Krishna’s brother Manjul Krishna and nephews Shantanu and Subrata.
While the TMC helped Matuas get identity papers, including caste certificates, and provided political representation, the BJP’s promise of citizenship under CAA 2019 gave it the upper hand. The proposed nationwide NRC and now SIR, however, continue to cast a shadow on Matuas’ aspirations for citizenship and their politics.