How fish became the unlikely weapon in West Bengal’s fiercest election battle

West Bengal’s 2026 assembly elections have turned fish into a political flashpoint. BJP candidates campaign with fish in hand, while Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee warns voters that a BJP win means the end of Bengal’s beloved fish-and-rice culture.

A fish, a hook, and 90 million voters

Picture this. A BJP candidate walks through a Kolkata neighbourhood, a large Catla fish dangling from his hand, its mouth hooked, swinging left and right as he folds his palms to greet residents. Sharadwat Mukherjee is not a fisherman. He is a politician and this fish is his campaign prop.

It was, by any measure, one of the more memorable images of India’s 2026 election season. But in West Bengal, where culture runs deeper than any campaign slogan, this moment was far more calculated than it appeared.

West Bengal votes in two phases April 23 and April 29 to fill 294 seats in the state legislative assembly. Nearly 68 million registered voters decide who governs India’s fourth-largest state by population, a territory of over 90 million people which is more than the entire population of Germany. Results arrive on May 4.

At its heart, this election is a cultural war. And the BJP, India’s ruling party nationally, is fighting on ground it has never successfully claimed.

Why food defines this election more than policy does

Bengal and fish share a bond that stretches back centuries. Positioned along the Bay of Bengal and crisscrossed by rivers and streams, the state has always had fish as its most naturally abundant food source. It appears in Hindu wedding rituals, in Muslim festive meals, and in the daily lunch thali of ordinary Bengalis regardless of caste, class, or religion. A 2024 WorldFish study found that close to 65 percent of West Bengal’s population eats fish every week.

This cultural reality crossed borders dramatically last year. When a student-led uprising in neighbouring Bangladesh forced then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to flee, protesters who broke into her official residence were seen leaving with fish from her refrigerator. Even in the middle of a political revolution, the Bengali instinct for fish held firm.

In West Bengal’s 2026 election, that same instinct has been pulled squarely onto the campaign trail.

How Mamata Banerjee turned a plate of fish into a political strategy

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, seeking her fourth consecutive term in power, has run a deeply identity-driven campaign. Her central argument is simple and deliberately alarming: a BJP government in Bengal would “ban fish, meat, and even eggs.” She has made this warning at rallies across the state, positioning the BJP as cultural strangers who do not understand and would ultimately threaten the Bengali way of life.

The BJP has rejected these allegations. But Banerjee’s strategy is grounded in observable political reality. BJP-ruled state governments across northern India have imposed bans or restrictions on meat sales at various points. Vigilante mobs have attacked and killed Muslims in BJP-governed states on accusations of transporting beef. These are documented facts that Banerjee has consistently amplified for a Bengali audience.

The result is a powerful, emotionally resonant campaign message. Vote BJP, Banerjee argues, and the fish on your plate disappears next.

The BJP scrambles to look like it belongs

The pressure worked. In the days before polling opened, BJP leadership actively searched for a senior party figure willing to eat fish on camera a public-relations exercise designed to counter Banerjee’s framing. They found one in Anurag Thakur, a sitting member of parliament from Himachal Pradesh, who ate fish publicly on Tuesday. The optics were awkward. A Himachal Pradesh MP eating fish in West Bengal, days before a vote, to prove a party’s cultural credentials reads less like confidence and more like damage control.

The BJP has built its political dominance across much of India on an identity rooted in Hindu nationalism, cultural conservatism, and, in many northern states, a strong association with vegetarianism. That identity has extraordinary electoral power in the Hindi heartland. In Bengal, it travels poorly.

Both fish and meat are consumed widely across Bengali communities regardless of whether voters are Hindu or Muslim, upper-caste or lower-caste. The BJP’s religious and dietary branding, which resonates in Uttar Pradesh or Madhya Pradesh, lands differently in a state where the culture of food is profoundly shared.

The electoral landscape: more than just fish

The fish narrative, while colourful, sits alongside more structural concerns in this election. The revision of West Bengal’s voter rolls which removed a total of 9.1 million names before polling has drawn sharp criticism from opposition parties and civil society groups who argue it disproportionately targeted minority voters. Around 2.7 million people have formally challenged their removal from the electoral register.

The BJP has never governed West Bengal. Despite strong performances in the 2019 general elections and a competitive showing in the 2021 state elections, the party has consistently fallen short against the TMC. Banerjee, a firebrand regional leader who has occasionally been discussed as a potential national-level opposition figure, has successfully resisted the BJP’s advance in the state for over a decade.

The BJP’s fish-wielding campaign strategy this time reflects both its genuine desire to close this cultural gap and its ongoing struggle to do so convincingly.

What this tells us about Indian democracy in 2026

The fish episode is, on one level, political theatre. On another, it is a window into how Indian democracy now works. Identity of linguistic, cultural, culinary, religious has become the primary terrain of electoral competition. Policy debates follow. Cultural belonging leads.

In that contest, Mamata Banerjee holds a structural advantage. The BJP, for all its national strength, continues to campaign in Bengal as an outsider sending candidates with fish in hand to signal belonging, while the party’s own political culture in other states signals the opposite.

Whether West Bengal’s voters reward Banerjee’s fourth-term bid or decide it is time for change becomes clear on May 4. What is already clear is this: in the 2026 Bengal election, a fish swam further into Indian democracy than anyone predicted.