RSS-affiliated groups expand presence in Bengal campuses after BJP’s election victory

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.

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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. ABVP leaders claimed the student body had a presence in only 96 colleges before the election results. In just over two weeks, they said that number has crossed 400, with informal networks springing up even before formal membership drives will begin on June 9. "Many students from various colleges and universities are in touch with us and want to join ABVP and open ABVP units in their colleges or universities.

But unlike TMCP, joining ABVP requires following proper procedure and scrutiny before induction," ABVP South Bengal secretary Nilkantha Bhattacharya told PTI. In many campuses, instead of immediately announcing committees, ABVP organisers have opened WhatsApp groups, creating digital spaces for interested students while screening potential entrants. Unlike the BJP, which has temporarily halted mass induction amid fears of an influx of opportunistic entrants from rival parties, RSS affiliates are expanding carefully but steadily, attempting to balance rapid growth with ideological filtration.

ABVP leaders privately admitted that many students now approaching them were until recently associated with the TMCP, the students' wing of the TMC, and in some places with SFI, the students' arm of the CPI(M). But they insisted that controversial figures accused of extortion, intimidation or involvement in admission rackets will not be accommodated. The Bharatiya Shikshan Mandal, primarily involved in education policy and intellectual discourse, has traditionally been less focused on numerical expansion.

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But its office-bearers argued that Bengal requires exceptional mobilisation because the state resisted implementation of the National Education Policy for years, despite many of its recommendations emerging from consultations involving 'shikshan mandal' thinkers. The ABRMS claimed its membership in Bengal, once below 10,000, may now cross one lakh as schoolteachers, college staff, and university employees increasingly seek association with groups perceived to be aligned with the new power structure.

"Our network already has a presence across most blocks and educational circles in the state, but the post-election momentum has dramatically accelerated recruitment in districts where Sangh affiliates earlier struggled to gain institutional legitimacy," state general secretary Bapi Pramanik told PTI. Political observers saw the development as part of a deeper ideological consolidation project accompanying the BJP's historic win in Bengal. For the Sangh, capturing administrative power was only one milestone. The more enduring battle, its strategists have long argued internally, lies inside classrooms, curriculum, teachers' associations and student consciousness.

That is why, even as the BJP leadership publicly speaks of governance and development, the Sangh ecosystem is quietly investing organisational energy into educational institutions, historically among the toughest arenas for Hindutva politics in Bengal. The immediate impact may remain organisational. But the longer-term implications could reshape the ideological character of Bengal's campuses in ways unseen since the Left's rise through colleges and universities in the 1960s and 1970s.

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Already, in several districts, teachers once reluctant to publicly associate with Sangh-linked bodies are attending closed-door orientation sessions, while students who previously avoided ABVP rallies for fear of political isolation are now volunteering to organise events themselves. Opposition parties dismissed the surge as a temporary byproduct of regime change and argued that institutional influence built over decades cannot be dismantled within weeks. Yet even critics privately conceded that the change in mood inside campuses is palpable.

For the RSS and its affiliates, Bengal's educational institutes are no longer merely hostile territory where survival itself was an achievement. After years of operating from the margins, they now sense a rare political opening to move from resistance to dominance within Bengal's academic space. Whether that transformation sustains itself beyond the post-election euphoria may determine if Bengal's next political generation continues to inherit the state's ideological traditions or gradually shifts towards a nationalist political culture.