The Bengal mandate: From cadre raj to command governance

By A Representative 

Mumbai-based senior journalist Gajanan Khergamker, in his new collection The Bengal Mandate, examines the shifting political landscape of West Bengal following the possible fall of Mamata Banerjee and the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).  

Khergamker, who was in West Bangal during the elections, writes that Banerjee’s tenure was not “meant to be transient” but conceived as a corrective to the Left’s ideological fatigue. Her Trinamool Congress (TMC), he notes, became “less a party and more an extension of her political instinct.” The BJP’s sweep, therefore, raises a deeper question: “Has Bengal rejected Banerjee, or has it merely outgrown the political idiom she represented?”  

The essays trace Bengal’s political evolution from the Left’s cadre raj to Banerjee’s welfare-driven populism, and now to what Khergamker calls the BJP’s “command governance.” He highlights the friction between Bengal’s embedded local networks and the BJP’s centralised high-command model, observing that “a cadre system does not dissolve simply because the party flag changes. It mutates.”  

An essay scrutinises the role of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), describing it as an “enabling infrastructure rather than a decisive driver.” While critics argue its influence in Bengal is overstated, Khergamker suggests the Sangh provided organisational continuity where the BJP lacked historical depth.  

The book also addresses identity politics, asking whether Bengal has witnessed a “durable consolidation of Hindu identity, or is this merely a contingent alignment shaped by immediate political currents?” He cautions that the state’s plural cultural fabric may resist singular definitions, and that consolidation across communities risks intensifying polarisation.  

On the Left, Khergamker claims that the BJP’s rise “seals its political eclipse,” transforming it from a dominant ideological force into a peripheral presence. Yet he notes that conditions such as inequality and agrarian distress remain, leaving open the possibility of ideological recalibration.  

Finally, the essays explore federal dynamics, suggesting that BJP rule in both Kolkata and New Delhi may ease coordination but also risks perceptions of over-centralisation. “Policies crafted with national priorities in mind may not always align with Bengal’s specific socio-economic realities,” Khergamker warns.  

Taken together, The Bengal Mandate frames Bengal’s current moment not as closure but as transition. “History rarely offers clean conclusions,” Khergamker writes. “It prefers transitions that are messy, contested, and incomplete. Bengal, at this juncture, appears poised for precisely such a transition.”