TMC Leader Says 4 Pakistan Will Be Created if India’s 30% Muslims Unite, Draws Flak

Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Sheikh Alam’s purported remarks that “four Pakistan” can be created if India’s “30% Muslims come together” drew flak from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday.

BJP leader Amit Malviya, who is the party’s co-incharge for West Bengal, tweeted a video that showed Alam purportedly making the controversial statements.

According to Malviya, Alam made the remarks at “Basa para, Nanoor” in Birbhum assembly constituency. “…He obviously owes his allegiance to (chief minister) Mamata Banerjee… Does she endorse this position?” Malviya asked in a tweet on Thursday. It accompanied Alam’s video.

“TMC leaders like Sheikh Alam have the audacity to dream of 4 Pakistan because of Mamata Banerjee’s brazen appeasement politics over the last 10 years. She reduced the majority community in WB to second grade citizens, where they had to seek court approval even for Durga visarjan!” he said in another tweet.

In the video, Alam could be heard saying: “We minorities are 30%. The rest is 70%. They (BJP) think they will come to power (in Bengal) with this 70%. They should be ashamed…if the 30% minorities unite…if India’s Muslims unite, four Pakistan can be created. Where will India’s 70% go?”

To be sure, Bengal’s Muslim population is a little over 27%, according to the Census in 2011, when the last such exercise happened. That Census said Muslims accounted for 14.2% of India’s population.

“I never meant we wanted to build Pakistan. All I said was if they threaten us Muslims, we too are powerful,” Alam told News18, stressing that he had been “misquoted”. TMC leaders did not immediately react to the issue.

The controversy, which came two days ahead of the first round of polling, is the latest to have surfaced in the politically charged atmosphere of the state that goes to elections in eight phases beginning March 27, and where the polarisation debate is taking the centre stage.

The BJP accuses chief minister Banerjee’s government of minority appeasement at the cost of others with analysts suggesting that the national party is trying to consolidate the Hindu vote — cutting across caste lines — to win Bengal. Banerjee, on the other hand, has tried to strike a chord with the larger Bengali identity encompassing all castes and religions, while calling the BJP a party of “outsiders”.

The BJP has successfully built its narrative, asking why Banerjee did not approve of the “Jai Shri Ram” chant. Banerjee has tried to handle the delicate issue politically, doing Chandipath (recital of mantras) ahead of her nomination filing for Nandigram in order to reach out to Hindus. But observers feel controversies such as the one featuring Alam could hurt the TMC.