Indian Politics Has Changed Forever After West Bengal Verdict
Mahesh Jethmalani
Yesterday I was told that no INDI alliance members are picking up phone calls from Mamata Banerjee. Unthinkable a few months back. But that is just a precursor of things to unfold.
The West Bengal result is not just an election result. It is an ideological earthquake whose aftershocks will be felt across Indian politics for the next decade.
BJP winning Bengal is not merely about defeating Mamata or ending TMC’s long rule. It is about something far larger: the complete mainstreaming of Hindu consciousness as the central grammar of Indian politics.
For decades, India was told that Hindu assertion is dangerous, Sanatan pride is communal, temple politics is regressive, and the only acceptable politics is the so-called secular politics of appeasement, minority vetoes, selective outrage, and Hindu guilt.
Bengal has punctured that entire ecosystem.
A state that was once presented as the intellectual fortress of anti-Hindutva politics has now delivered a verdict that says the Indian voter is no longer apologetic about civilisational identity. The voter is no longer willing to accept that Hindu self-respect must be suppressed in the name of secularism.
And almost immediately, look at what is happening in Tamil Nadu.
DMK, one of the loudest political vehicles of anti-Sanatan rhetoric, has collapsed. DMK leaders are now openly saying the INDIA bloc is gone. This is not just an alliance breakdown. This is the beginning of the ideological disintegration of the entire anti-BJP front.
The INDI alliance was never an alliance of ideas. It was an alliance of fear.
Fear of Modi.
Fear of BJP.
Fear of RSS.
Fear of a Hindu voter who had stopped being silent.
Fear of a Bharat that was no longer willing to be lectured by dynasts, Dravidian elites, Left intellectuals and drawing-room secularists.
That fear held them together for some time. But fear cannot become a national vision.
Mamata had nothing in common with the Left except hatred for BJP. DMK had nothing in common with Congress except convenience. Congress had nothing in common with regional parties except a desperate need to look relevant. The entire structure was built on the negative energy of stopping someone, not on the positive energy of building something.
Now that structure is cracking.
And what will collapse with it is the old layer of so-called secular politics in India.
Because let us be blunt: there is no organic mass politics left in India that can win by abusing Sanatan Dharma, mocking Hindu rituals, insulting temples, and then suddenly wearing a sacred thread before elections. That era is ending.
The next 100 years of Indian politics will be about who can sound more rooted, more civilisational, more culturally confident, and more openly Hindu-conscious.
Every party will now try to become some version of a Hindu-first party.
Some will do it clumsily. Some will do it cosmetically. Some will visit temples. Some will quote scriptures. Some will discover festivals. Some will suddenly remember that their grandmother was deeply spiritual. Some will pretend they never insulted Sanatan in the first place.
But here is the problem for all of them.
That ideological space is already occupied.
RSS and BJP did not enter Hindu politics as an election-season costume. They were formed on this very premise and they built this space over decades through cadre, discipline, sacrifice, ideological clarity, temple movements, cultural work, social outreach, and the courage to take positions when those positions were mocked by the establishment.
You cannot spend 50 years abusing Hindu politics and then expect to become its owner in one election cycle.
That is why it may take a hundred years for any political party to credibly ask for votes in that space against BJP. Because credibility in civilisational politics cannot be manufactured overnight.
Look at Shiv Sena.
Balasaheb Thackeray had created a natural Hindu political instinct in Maharashtra. It was raw, direct, emotional and unmistakably rooted. Uddhav Thackeray traded that inheritance for anti-BJP respectability and killed the very space his father had built.
That is the warning for every party now.
You cannot outsource your ideological spine. You cannot borrow Hindu identity for campaign season and return to secular hypocrisy after results.
Bengal has shown the future. Tamil Nadu has shown the fracture. The panic is imminent.
The so-called secular consensus is dying.
The new Indian politics will be Hindu-conscious, nationally assertive, civilisationally rooted and unapologetic.
Those who understood this early are already leading.
Those who mocked it will now spend decades trying to imitate it.
And those who built their entire politics on abusing Sanatan will discover that India forgives many things, but it does not forget civilisational insult.
Mahesh Jethmalani
@JethmalaniM
Senior Advocate (Supreme Court of India)