By PTI
KOLKATA: Barely three weeks after the BJP’s emphatic victory in West Bengal, the ideological churn inside the state’s educational institutes has begun unfolding with remarkable speed, as organisations affiliated to the RSS move aggressively to expand their footprint across campuses, staff rooms and academic networks long dominated by the Left and the TMC.
From college canteens in north Bengal to university departments in Kolkata, a quiet but unmistakable realignment is underway.
The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), which spent decades as a marginal force in Bengal’s student politics, is suddenly finding itself flooded with membership requests, WhatsApp enquiries and invitations to form campus units.
Among teachers, professors and non-teaching staff, the Bharatiya Shikshan Mandal and the Akhil Bharatiya Rashtriya Shaikshik Mahasangh (ABRSM) are also reporting an unprecedented spike in outreach after the May 4 election results altered Bengal’s ideological and political landscape for the first time in nearly half a century.
For years, the RSS ecosystem believed Bengal’s educational institutes were structurally hostile terrain where Left influence survived long after its electoral decline and where the TMC eventually built its own patronage networks through student unions, recruitment channels and campus-level control.
The BJP’s victory has finally broken what one Sangh organiser described as the “psychological resistance barrier”.
“It is from the land of Bengal where nationalism, which is Hindu nationalism, and ‘Vande Mataram’ (song) originated. For several decades, there was an effort to ensure that we forget our history, culture and roots. Now Bengal has decided to go back to its roots,” senior RSS leader Jishnu Basu told PTI, articulating the broader ideological confidence sweeping through Sangh circles after the election outcome.
This story was originally published in newindianexpress.com. Read the full story here.
