As I write this article, the election results of 2021 Assembly elections are declared and in the high voltage battle in the Indian state of West Bengal, India’s ruling party Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is defeated by a large margin by the state ruling party the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and after this, in post-election violence, many Hindu Bengali families are killed, uprooted, looted and their houses and businesses burnt down by the Muslim goons supported by the TMC.

While at this point many secular Hindus, including many of my friends are celebrating the defeat of the BJP, many Hindus who didn’t vote for BJP and is against them are also suffering from this Muslim carnage. Muslim goons didn’t spare them only because they are Hindus.

The situation of BJP now in Bengal is like the Men’s Rights Movement (MRM). The reason of BJP’s defeat as many analyses are showing is because of some Hindus voting against BJP but Muslims voting for TMC in unison. So, even though the Muslim voter percentage is less in Bengal, the consolidated voting makes TMC win in big margin.

Secular Hindus today openly abuse BJP and India’s Prime Minister Modi without any fear of consequences because almost never an action is taken against them. A similar attack on the WB Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee would, however, land them in jail. 

At this moment it feels that BJP has a lot of things to learn from the MRM. With most men being inherently feminists and bashing Men’s Rights in all possible way, the situation of MRM is also similar. Even some MRA leaders are inclined to give feminist narratives in interviews. BJP’s situation is like that – Hindus bashing BJP and calling their PM a fraud, while Muslims voting for TMC in unison.

So, it is important for BJP to learn a few tips from the MRM now, as we have been suffering this situation for a long time.

Showing Desperation

In 2021 election, BJP has shown extreme desperation to win. Their central leadership kept coming to Bengal every day and attended multiple rallies, road shows and meetings. This was done at a time when India was suffering from increasing Covid pandemic. So, the Prime Minister and the Home Minister of India were focussing their attention on Bengal rather than on the country.

Even I had to raise a question earlier whether they had any other work than addressing Bengal rallies? This desperation was visible in them and the more these leaders kept coming from outside Bengal, the more they proved that BJP was an ‘outside’ party, even though it was founded by a Bengali, Dr Shyamaprasad Mukherjee.

In MRM too, we have faced problems when we tried to show desperation to help male victims. This is why I am against proactively helping male victims that some MRAs have suggested. In fact, I have written earlier that why we should not proactively help male victims. This helps in one way. Males and their well-wishers understand the hardships ahead of them and appreciate the movement more. If everything is given to them easily, they don’t appreciate the help. That is why I have written the series – Warriors Needed.

Once the males identify the real issues facing males today, they automatically become rational thinkers and anti-feminists. This is the reason while during the Jasleen Kaur or Rohtak Sisters incidents, we have seen most of the society supporting criminal women, but in the recent Zomato Bangalore case, non-MRAs and women came forward in exposing the woman Hitesha Chandranee.

In fact, in the Hitesha case, MRAs contribution was very little to negligible. Initially, I had sent a couple of tweets within a couple of hours of the original claim by her and then the ordinary social media enthusiasts took it over. There were vloggers who came forward and made much more credible and popular videos that had forced her to go on backfoot and eventually delete her posts.

All this is possible today, because men have realized from their experience that there is hardly any help available for them and that they needed to stand for themselves.

In the political scenario, it is time for Hindus to realize the same. That is why, while BJP should still fight against the atrocities, they should also fall short of actions to expose the bias in the Mamata Govt. Hindus should realize on their own how they are persecuted. Already many Hindus understand the ills of Nehruvian secularism and call this as ‘sickularism’ but the majority of Bengali Hindus still don’t realize the danger ahead of them as experienced by Kashmiri Hindus or Bangladeshi or Pakistani Hindus.

When Hindus understand the danger on their own, like Indian males today, many Hindus will make better political choices or will force sickular political parties to behave better.

Creating the Narrative

Men’s Rights suffer heavily from creating meaningful and appropriate narratives in favour of men’s rights and the same is true for Hindus as well. You have heard about BJP-IT Cell, anyone supporting BJP on any matter is termed as belonging to the IT Cell. Even I am branded as the IT-Cell member often. But still creating a favourable narrative for Hindus is a distant dream. Sometimes I think allowing FDI in local media industry is the root of all these problems. They create and sustain all these anti-national agenda.

Recently, I have reviewed some books written to create a narrative for the Hindus but this is far less in number than we need.

The situation is same for Men’s Rights as well. You will see every day a good number of feminist article, research papers etc are created. Most of these are actually crap and I have exposed many of these ‘research’ findings in my Modern Feminism series. However, that attempt is very miniscule. Almost negligible compared to the monster we have in front of us. But my plan is to move the juggernaut little by little. With extreme dearth of MRM blogs, websites and writers this challenge is even more herculean task. Added to this is social and moral censorship of MRAs, which forces many MRAs to become equalists and slowly feminists. I have explained this in this article with reference to an interview.

But the challenge is more for men’s rights. I have started my journey in 2012. Just before the Nirbhaya case and the first challenge was to face that huge international event. Exposing feminist NGOs who were fighting for justice for Nirbhaya, was like branding myself as a potential rapist and a killer. I have got consistent death threat that time for trying to expose those NGOs but the society was nuts. I have seen MRAs organizing protests against Nirbhaya and participating in the hype.

Cut to 2021, when Hindu women (BJP supporters and non-BJP supporters as well) are raped and murdered in Bengal, I see the same people clearly silent and almost ignoring the events. Why is there so much difference in attitude? We understand how the leftist eco-system really works. The foreign funded feminist NGOs who were responsible to create ruckus in Delhi that time to change a lot of laws in the country, have achieved their goal and hence is silenced. Many were found to be involved in various other anti-India activities and are closed by the home ministry. Today, we find that even general people understand how these foreign funded NGOs work.

We need to understand that BJP has been successful in shaping various social media narratives much better than MRAs ever did, still their loss shows they couldn’t reach the ground level. If the verdict clears anything, that is WB people don’t believe that BJP can save Hindus or Hindus are threatened in Bengal.

So, BJP needs to create this narrative, write more books in Bengali, make more documentaries and do every possible thing to reach people. MRM couldn’t do all these. Because even though men may understand the importance of men’s rights more compared to what they did in 2012, they still are not bothered to actively work on it. Because fighting against feminism is like fighting against their own female (and other males as well) family members. So, we see that even though families are breaking, men are accused in fake cases, they are forced to commit suicide, we still believe there are good women and many MRAs and MR leaders are also getting married.

The challenge is, however, not so much for BJP or Hindus. It’s not a fight with their own family members and hence easily achievable for them. But a ruler can’t be biased. An ideal ruler should treat everyone the same way and that is what BJP is trying to do. What regional parties like TMC can afford to do, a national party like BJP can’t. So, BJP can’t officially create this Hindu narrative but they can obviously try various indirect routes to sponsor creation of these.

A ruler can’t be biased and BJP is trying to do only that. Still not getting support from Muslims and Hindus as well.

Ground Level Presence

MRAs have been suffering for their absence in the ground level work for a long time. As MRAs could not create an acceptable narrative for a long time and as MRAs themselves are having contradictions in ideologies they lose interest and leave MRM fast.

While this had been a long-term challenge for MRM, this should not be a challenge for a party wanting to rule a state and this is not easy. In 2019, we thought BJP has strengthened their on-ground presence. Before 2021 election, as BJP’s strategist and India’s Home Minister Amit Shah was repeatedly saying that they would get 200+ seats (in reality they got 76) in Bengal, we thought they have really improved their position. But still, paying the local clubs, arranging fairs, and giving freebies helped TMC in Bengal.

The problem is, even BJP promised these freebies in their election manifesto. They promised free education KG to PG for women and also free bus rides for women. Well, it had angered me a lot and I wanted to write as well but refrained. The party that has protested Arvind Kejriwal’s Delhi Govt’s scheme of giving free bus rides to women, tried to implement the same in Bengal. A clear hypocrisy. All these promises had alerted me during their campaign, however, the confidence in the eyes of Amit Shah when he said BJP would get 200+ seats in Bengal, also fooled me. I started thinking that they had really improved their ground level presence, and finally this was the key factor in their defeat.

No, MRM has not succeeded in developing ground level presence but even the failures of some people can be great lessons to others.

Fighting Internal Bias

MRAs have been fighting against this internal bias for a long time. Men by birth are feminists. Even all MR leaders were feminists earlier. We have transformed into MRAs and then never changed over. Some of us who didn’t care about social media followers, likes and shares; we continued to be MRAs without trying the ‘equalist’ narrative. Many MRAs, however, fell short of enough conviction to continue only as MRAs so they have become ‘equalists’ or occasional feminists. The urge is very strong and so is the bias. How do you justify your social position to the opposite sex who you don’t hate, but want to mate with? Oops, that is a big challenge. And that is possible only when we break feminism and feminists.

How do you justify your social position to the opposite sex who you don’t hate but want to mate with?

BJP or any Hindu party for that matter needs to fight this internal bias in Hindus who want to believe that they are living peacefully and there is no threat to their existence even when we have examples from Bangladesh, Pakistan and our own Kashmir. We have not tried this earlier but need to desperately do it now.

The best example I can give is from my own life. Remaining a staunch MRA so far, was possible because I continued to study about feminism and different social matters. So, I can give enough logical explanation for men’s rights without being an ‘equalist’. Today, this blog is trying to build this narrative and helping people and MRAs fight this internal bias.

This is like a virus. You can say-like Coronavirus. You sow the seed in the minds of people and make them think right. They may not like you in the first instance, but they will eventually change their actions. Since this is a gradual change and not a sudden one, we need to be patient. In my initial years of activism, I was however, used to be desperate. But was only to be disappointed. Hindus will take time as well.

Leadership

It is important that BJP understands their position on leadership as well. The way we have seen movie artists and separated leaders from other parties including TMC joining the BJP and becoming BJP electoral candidates, was a concern for many. If BJP really wanted to strengthen their position in the state, they should not have taken these people randomly and given poll tickets. MRAs do not accepted these people easily.

Whenever we tried to do this, we have paid heavy price for that. A documentary filmmaker, who is known better as an MRA compared to any of us continuously posts feminist stuff in her timeline. She ruined MR narrative completely. We tried to endorse celebrities like Pooja Bedi, but once she also claimed to be an equalist. When this happens, we distort the MR value. We confuse people with the MR message. MRM today is paying a heavy price for these actions.

Almost all known MR leaders in India are females today. The MR concept is botched up. And the leadership ruined it. BJP can’t afford to do that same mistake.  

Conclusion

It is important for BJP to understand that the change they want to happen in Bengal is not easy. Bengalis think they are intellectuals and knows politics a lot. Bengalis always discuss politics in tea shops and in their small gatherings. BJP is still promoting themselves as the ‘outsider’ party. The more their central leadership comes to Bengal for promotion, the more they become ‘outsiders’. So, no matter what the ‘outsiders’ say, people are not likely to accept that. BJP needs to become the insider now. They need to improve their local presence and stop hiring anyone and everyone as a leader. What the MRM could not do, the problems MRM had suffered, can surely be good lessons for BJP as well because the core issues of both are the same.

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