Mumbai/Nagpur: In April this year, days before Nandigram in West Bengal went to polls, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and the face of the party’s campaign in West Bengal, Suvendu Adhikari travelled to the constituency.Speaking to voters, he rattled off facts.Thirty thousand locals from Nandigram, he said, worked as migrant workers in different states of India. Then, he went on to spell out the Muslims among them.“There are over 30,000 migrant workers…in Gujarat, 1,100 Muslim men from Nandigram reside. In Odisha, 800 Muslim men reside. In Maharashtra, 3,300 Muslim young men reside. Whose government is in Odisha? Whose government in Maharashtra? Whose government in Gujarat?” he asked.Singling out Muslims, he issued a warning. “Don’t make a mistake! Mend your ways… so that there are no problems after May 4 (the day of counting). You can give threatening looks and say ‘Joy Bangla’, but I am writing down everything,” he was quoted by The Times Of India as saying. Adhikari ended up winning the seat by 9,665 votes.Such rhetoric by Adhikari isn’t an exception.Over the last two years, as the BJP tried to make deeper inroads into West Bengal, culminating in its historic win on May 4, Adhikari led from the front and emerged as the face of the party. It was little surprise, therefore, that Adhikari has been sworn in as the BJP’s first chief minister in the state.But an analysis of Adhikari’s public rhetoric, since he switched over to the BJP from the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in December 2020, shows a systematic pattern of targeting the state’s Muslim population – inciting hate against them, peddling conspiracy theories and advocating their social boycott.The Wire went through Adhikari’s publicly available statements and speeches between 2021 and 2026 by relying on news reports and his social media posts, and found a clear pattern of communally-charged and divisive remarks, explicitly backing violence against Muslims. The findings raise concerns over Adhikari’s elevation as the chief minister of a state which has the second largest proportion of Muslims in the country, at 27%, second only to Assam which has 34%.Adhikari has courted controversy for some of his remarks. In December last year, he called for India’s “100 crore Hindus” to teach a Gaza-like “lesson”, while on May 5, a day after he won the polls, he called Muslims “kattarwadi” and said he would work “for the Hindus of Nandigram” since, according to him, the entire Muslim vote went to the TMC. He did not reveal the source of this information, since the Election Commission of India (ECI) does not reveal religion-wise voting data.However, The Wire’s documentation shows that these remarks were a part of a pattern of rhetoric that Adhikari has maintained, in his quest to end the TMC’s dominance in the state.The Wire has reached out to the BJP’s chief spokesperson and media in-charge Anil Baluni through email for a response. The Wire also reached out to Adhikari through email for a response. This article will be updated when a response is received.Rebranding the image, reorienting the stateSuch rhetoric helped him rebrand himself in the BJP. After all, Adhikari had been the target of a sustained campaign by the BJP after he was caught in a 2016 sting operation allegedly accepting cash in exchange for favours to a fictitious company the journalist helming the sting, Mathew Samuel, had floated as a ruse. TMC leaders Firhad Hakim, Subrata Mukherjee, Madan Mitra and others were arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which was investigating the case. But Adhikari was never arrested.In 2016, in the run-up to the Bengal assembly elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi referred to the sting operation in a public meeting and said “the entire (TMC) leadership is in front of the camera seen taking a bribe”. Adhikari had also been named in the 2013 multi-million crore Saradha Chit Fund scam.However, immediately after Adhikari joined the BJP in December 2020, the BJP’s YouTube channel quietly deleted the sting operation videos showing the leaders allegedly accepting the bribes.West Bengal, despite its reputation of political violence, has enjoyed relative peaceful religious harmony.Data compiled by political scientist Ashutosh Varshney in his book Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India shows that between 1950 and 1995, Gujarat emerged as the deadliest state in the country in terms of deaths due to communal riots with over 1,600 deaths. Bengal saw just over 200 deaths in the same period.Parliamentary data showed that Bengal did not feature in the top five states by communal incidents between 2010 and 2014.However, the BJP’s rise in the state has been accompanied by a steady rise of communal incidents. In the 18 months after Adhikari jumped ship and joined the BJP in December 2020, the state saw a total of 65 instances of communal violence, according to data obtained under the Right to Information act by activist Biswanath Goswami. An analysis by political analyst Aparna Bhattacharya for The Wire showed that in 11 clash-linked or polarisation-heavy districts, North 24 Parganas, South 24 Parganas, Howrah, Hooghly, Murshidabad, Malda, Kolkata North, Kolkata South, Paschim Bardhaman, Bankura and Uttar Dinajpur, BJP rose from 28 seats in 2021 to 101 seats in 2026.Such mobilisation was often accompanied by Adhikari’s vitriolic campaigning.Adhikari’s rhetoric, often, includes using terms like Bangladeshis and Rohingyas as slurs and abuses. For instance, when faced with sloganeering TMC workers outside a polling booth on April 29, the day Bengal’s second phase of voting was held, Adhikari brushed them aside, and pointing to the media present, said, “They are all Bangladeshi Muslims…all Bangladeshi Muslims.” Similarly in July last year, when another TMC supporter Sheikh Modul raised slogans of ‘Jai Bangla’ in Adhikari’s presence during the latter’s ‘Kannya Surokha Jyatra’ (Daughter Safety Morcha), Adhikari got out of the car, raised slogans of ‘Jai Shri Ram’ and allegedly called Modul “a Rohingya”.Here are some instances of Adhikari’s communally-charged statements:1. ‘Sanatanis should not take these medicines, injections…might lead to birth control’In December last year, just days before the launch of a TMC healthcare outreach programme called ‘Sebaashray’ which offered free health check-ups, free medicines, as well as diagnostic tests, Adhikari warned people against accessing it, insisting it was meant to reduce the number of Hindus in Bengal.“We don’t know if these medicines have tablets that can lead to birth control,” Adhikari said. “You should be careful. I would urge sanatanis not to take injections at these camps. Don’t go for any blood tests at these camps. If you need to get blood tests done, I will help you.”“They want the Hindu population to deplete. They want Hindus to become a minority community, as it happened in Bangladesh,” Adhikari reportedly said.2. ‘Completely separate these jihadi fundamentalists here…every Hindu home must have a flag’A month later, Adhikari, continuing with peddling fears of an existential risk to Hindus, was caught on camera, responding to questions of development with hate.When villagers, in an undated video at an unknown location in the state, asked him to repair a broken road, Adhikari said the Hindu villagers first had to “remain alive and survive”.He, then, is seen encouraging a segregation between Hindus and Muslims. “Every Hindu household must put up a flag… Every Hindu home will raise the flag. Completely separate out these jihadi fundamentalists here. Put up loudspeakers and blow horns across the entire village… Distribute conch shells,” he says, reportedly.3. Felicitates three men who assaulted Muslim street vendorsIn December last year, at least three Muslim vendors were assaulted by a group of men at a Gita chanting event organised in Kolkata’s Brigade Parade ground by a group of monks and Hindutva outfits. The three Muslim vendors were assaulted, their food items thrown away, and they were accused of being Bangladeshis by the mob, who said they were selling non-vegetarian food. One of the organisers later clarified that there was no restriction on selling non-vegetarian food items. The violence drew widespread outrage, including on social media.Adhikari, however, chose to felicitate three men who were part of the mob that assaulted the vendors and disclosed that his legal team had helped the three men secure bail. “I am a legislator, leader of the Opposition, a BJP member – all that comes later. First, I am a Hindu. If my Hindu brothers and sisters are in trouble, my primary duty is to protect my ‘dharma’,” he had said, defending his action.4. ‘Stop sabka saath sabka vikas…jo hamare saath hum unke saath’Weeks after the results of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls saw the BJP suffer a setback in the state, its seat tally dipping from 18 to 12, Adhikari – also the Bengal assembly leader of opposition – sought to blame the lack of Muslim support for the party for the debacle.“”I had spoken about nationalist Muslims and you too had said ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas‘ (development for all). But I will not say this anymore. Instead, we will now say, ‘Jo Hamare Saath, Hum Unke Saath‘ (We are with those who support us). Stop this ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas‘.”Adhikari, in the same speech, also said that the party’s minority wing, the Minority Morcha, needed to be disbanded.Facing flak, Adhikari then tried to walk back on his remarks and said they were taken “out of context”.5. ‘100 crore Hindus…must teach a Gaza-like lesson’Days after a Hindu garment worker in Bangladesh, Dipu Das, was lynched by a mob after he was accused of blasphemy and insulting the Prophet, Adhikari and other BJP leaders joined a protest outside the Bangladesh deputy high commission in Kolkata, last December.Standing outside the consulate, Adhikari referenced the Israeli military campaign and genocide in Gaza to demand a similar “lesson” be taught.“A lesson must be taught. Like Israel did in Gaza, India’s 100 crore Hindus – —the government is working towards the welfare of Hindus. A lesson must be taught like India did to Pakistan during Operation Sindoor,” he said.Adhikari met the Bangladeshi deputy high commissioner and said the delegation had demanded that the ‘killing of and atrocities against Hindus (in Bangladesh) be stopped. “Or else, India’s 100 crore Hindus will do the work of teaching a lesson,” he was quoted saying.6. ‘Avoid Muslim-majority areas…if you want to go to J&K, go to Jammu’Weeks after the Pahalgam terror attack in April last year, when terrorists killed 25 tourists and one Kashmiri local in the Baisaran valley in Kashmir’s Pahalgam, Adhikari asked Bengalis to boycott tourism of “Muslim-majority areas”.“Don’t go to Muslim-majority areas,” Adhikari reportedly said at a public interaction. “If you want to visit Kashmir, go to Jammu. Otherwise, go to Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Odisha – there are plenty of places. In Pahalgam, they asked tourists their religion before killing them,” he said, as justification.His comments had come days after J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah met then Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee with an appeal to encourage Bengalis to travel to the state.7. ‘Hindus have only India…Hindus must unite to save our religion’In December last year, he visited Malda district in central Bengal – which has over 51% Muslim population – and brazenly sought ‘Hindu unity’, pitching it to be a battle of survival for the religion. “People of other religions have several countries of their own. Hindus have only India. Hindus must unite to save our religion. We suffered during partition in 1947 and were marginalized in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh,” he said at a rally..8. ‘Hindu bachao…we have to save the Hindus’Last year year, after three people were killed in Bengal’s eastern border district of Murshidabad when a protest by Muslim groups against the Waqf (Amendment) act passed by the Parliament turned violent, Adhikari, instead of appealing for peace in the state, organised a ‘Hindu Bachao Rally’ in December. “The slogan is ‘Hindu Bachao’, we have to save the Hindus of Bengal,” he was quoted as saying at the rally.Kunal Purohit is an independent journalist.Aashna Ajmera is an intern at The Wire.