Battleground Bengal: The Political Future of a Fiercely Contested State

Long considered a bastion of the Left, the state of West Bengal has been politically dominated by the Trinamool Congress (TMC) for more than a decade, to the extent that the opposition parties here have been reduced to electoral irrelevance. But over the last few years, the TMC has been faced with a new challenger: the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has slowly made inroads into the state’s political arena, winning seventy-seven seats in the 2021 assembly election, a significant jump from its 2016 tally of three assembly seats.Does this mean that the end is near for the TMC as the BJP prepares for a historic wipeout, reminiscent of the Left’s decimation in 2011? Or will Mamata Banerjee manage to hold her own by utilizing her grassroots presence and still-formidable public appeal? In Battleground Bengal, author and scholar Sayantan Ghosh attempts to answer these questions, and to gauge the anxiety and excitement in the build-up to the 2026 assembly election in the state.Through archival documents, electoral data, interviews with political leaders and experts, and years of field reporting, Ghosh presents a critique of the contemporary political scene―from Mamata’s welfare-oriented populism to the BJP’s organizational crises―and looks back at the state’s recent history for clues about its possible future. In the final analysis, Battleground Bengal reveals how identity, patronage and fear continue to shape Bengal’s politics, regardless of who is at the helm.