In this year’s West Bengal Assembly election, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee found herself confronting almost the entire machinery of India’s central state, except the navy and air force. This was no ordinary election; it took on the character of a war. An unequal war. And in that asymmetry, Mamata and her party were left disoriented. With this election, it is evident that West Bengal’s politics has entered a new phase.

For the first time since India’s independence, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) appears within reach of forming a government in the state. Exit polls from the night of 29 April, which had already projected a BJP surge, have not been proven wrong. A party that failed to win even a single seat in the 2011 Assembly election has now crossed the threshold of 150 seats within 15 years. For South Asia’s political landscape, the rise of the saffron camp makes 4 May a historic marker of the rightward shift.

Some observers suggest that Bengali identity has been politically marginalised in northern India. This raises a sharper question: why did “Bengal” not stand firmly behind its “daughter”? Was it due to the failures of the Trinamool Congress, or the BJP’s sophisticated electoral engineering? These debates are now unfolding. Meanwhile, the election results have also generated unease across the border in Bangladesh.