Kolkata: Three years after he was dropped as Bharatiya Janata Party’s West Bengal vice-president, Chandra Kumar Bose has resigned from the party saying his “inclusive ideology” doesn’t match with the party.
In his resignation letter to BJP’s national president J.P. Nadda, Bose said the party needed to concentrate on “not just the Bengali-Hindu voters but also the Muslim voters of the state who have a swing”.
The letter, which ThePrint accessed, is also marked to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah.
The grandnephew of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, who had joined the BJP in 2016, was dropped as the vice president of the party’s Bengal unit in 2020 following his criticism of the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act.
“I had put forward a detailed proposal suggesting a Bengal Strategy to reach out to the people of Bengal. My proposals were ignored,” Bose said in the letter. “Given these unfortunate circumstances, it has become impossible for me to continue in all conscience as a member of the BJP”.
Bose told ThePrint that when he had joined the BJP, he was promised of being given opportunities to propagate ideas of Netaji and his brother Sarat Chandra Bose, but that did not happen. “My ideology and the party ideology don’t match. Netaji and Sarat Chandra fought against divisive politics. They stood for secularism and inclusivity,” he said.
On its part, the BJP maintains that Bose’s resignation will not have much impact on the party.
BJP spokesperson Samik Bhattacharya implied that Bose wasn’t very active in the party. “In times of Chandrayaan, you are talking of Chandra Bose. When he was with the party, now his absence will be official,” Bhattacharya told ThePrint.
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‘Failed to feel the pulse of the people’
Bose’s joining in 2016 was seen as a major boost for the BJP, especially given Netaji’s popularity in West Bengal. That year, Bose fought and lost against Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee from Bhawanipore in the state election.
In 2019, he lost the Dakshin Kolkata parliamentary seat to Trinamool Congress’s Mala Roy.
Ever since he was dropped from the BJP’s vice-presidential post in 2020, Bose has largely kept a low-profile. He didn’t get a ticket to fight the hotly-contested 2021 assembly election.
In his letter, the leader said he had suggested a strategy after the BJP lost the election to the TMC but it was never put into effect.
“I suggest BJP practices an inclusive ideology to embrace all communities and different strata of society. TMC’s appeasement politics cannot be countered by polarisation. BJP must penetrate into the intellectual and middle class Bengali voters’ segment to achieve the desired result,” he wrote to the BJP president.
The BJP, he said, couldn’t win any assembly seat in and around Kolkata, “as we failed to feel the pulse of the people and gauge their attitude”.
“In the assembly by-election, BJP could not even retain the security deposit in 3 seats and lost all the 4 seats by a huge margin.”
Highlighting PM Modi’s “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas, Sabka Prayaas” tagline, Bose said the West Bengal BJP needs a “dignified, cultured and honest leader who would have universal acceptance among the Bengali and other communities”.
“Such a leader confidently would motivate the existing leaders and karyakartas throughout the State, to increase the booth-level organisation for effective connectivity with the critical voters,” the letter said.
He also suggested that the party should project a leader who could invoke the inclusive ideology of national icons like Swami Vivekananda, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Syamaprasad Mookerjee, and Chittaranjan Das.
As a solution, Bose said he had suggested a sector-wise “policy document”, specific to West Bengal, to be prepared stating the development projects that the BJP will initiate. But despite the efforts, he claimed, his suggestions remained on paper.
Significantly, Bose has frequently praised West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee — in an interview with The Statesman in July, for instance, he said the TMC supremo knew West Bengal well and understood the challenges the people in the state faced.
Bose did not comment when ThePrint asked what he plans to do next.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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