Waving a big Catla fish in his hands, Sharadwat Mukherjee went door to door canvassing for votes before Thursday’s election to the state legislature in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal.Mukherjee is a candidate from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which rules nationally but has never come to power in the state, which has a greater population than Germany: more than 90 million people.When he folds his hands to greet voters, the Catla just swings with a hook in its mouth. The big question: Can the fish also swing the election’s outcome?Bengalis’ love for fish is legendary — on both sides of the border, in India and in Bangladesh. So much so that when a student-led uprising led to the ouster of then-Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, some of the protesters who broke into her residence after she fled were seen raiding her refrigerator and walking away with fish.But as West Bengal votes for its next government, fish has now leapt from kitchen slabs to the campaign trail, as leaders cosy up to voters in a variety of ways — and in some cases try to distance themselves from suspicions that their wins could hit the Bengali diet adversely. Trinamo …
