Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rally in Durgapur on July 18 marked a strategic shift in the BJP’s political messaging in West Bengal, revealing a conscious departure from the party’s typical Ram-centric Hindutva narrative. For the first time at a major public rally, “Jai Ma Kali” and “Jai Ma Durga” replaced “Jai Shri Ram”—a move carefully calibrated to align with Bengal’s unique cultural and religious landscape.
This wasn’t a slip or a softening of stance—it was a deliberate recalibration. The stage décor resembled a Durga Puja pandal, and invitations to the rally conspicuously excluded references to Ram, underscoring a deeper effort to indigenise BJP’s Hindutva for Bengal. The BJP, which once tried to superimpose its Ayodhya template onto Bengal, is now acknowledging that Bengal’s religious and political sensibilities demand a different vocabulary.
This cultural retuning stems from electoral necessity. Despite high-decibel campaigns in 2019 and 2021, the BJP has failed to dethrone Mamata Banerjee’s TMC. In 2024, it lost six Lok Sabha seats in Bengal compared to 2019, bringing its total to 12. Alarmed, the BJP leadership seems to have realised that Hindi belt-style majoritarianism doesn’t sell in a state shaped by bhadralok liberalism, leftist traditions, and syncretic religiosity.
Here, Ram is not the central icon—Kali and Durga are. Ma Kali, especially, is not just a deity but a revolutionary, emotional, and maternal symbol in Bengal, central to the state’s cultural imagination—from Rani Rashmoni’s temple-building to Swami Vivekananda’s spiritual philosophy and Tagore’s poetry. Durga, meanwhile, symbolises civilisational pride and festive unity, cutting across communal lines. The BJP, in foregrounding these goddesses, is attempting to Bengalise its Hindutva, wrapping it in local aesthetics and idioms.
But this pivot is fraught with contradictions. While the top tier of BJP messaging becomes more “cultured” and locally attuned, its ground-level operations remain confrontational—organising Ram Navami rallies that often clash with law enforcement, and continuing to stir fear about Muslim migrants and border insecurity, especially in tribal and sensitive districts.
The duality is evident: one BJP speaks in Tagorean tones and invokes Swami Vivekananda; the other peddles Hindi-belt-style polarisation. This split-level strategy is risky but reflects the party’s struggle to expand beyond its hardcore base in Bengal.
Meanwhile, the TMC is not letting the BJP's rebranding go unchallenged. Abhishek Banerjee mocked the BJP’s makeover, saying, “First they insult Bengal, now they chant Kali and Durga. After 2026, they’ll say ‘Joi Bangla’ too.” His jibe wasn’t just rhetoric—it was a pointed reminder that the BJP is still perceived by many as a bohiragato (outsider) force, adapting out of compulsion, not conviction.
The TMC’s long-standing slogan "Joi Bangla" and its inclusive Durga Puja ethos—often involving Muslim artisans and joint festivities—make it hard for the BJP to frame the party as anti-Hindu. That narrative, potent in parts of northern India, hasn’t resonated the same way in Bengal.
In essence, the BJP’s “Durga turn” is not just about religion—it’s about cultural repositioning, image repair, and linguistic politics. Modi invoking Ma Kali and Ma Durga is as much a spiritual appeal as it is a symbolic surrender to the Bengali identity he once tried to override.
Whether this gamble pays off in 2026 depends on whether Bengalis buy into the BJP’s cultural reinvention—or see it as opportunistic appropriation. Either way, Bengal has forced the BJP to speak a different Hindutva dialect, proving once again that in Indian politics, culture is not easily colonised by ideology.
