Indian politicians are campaigning while holding fish. What is going on?

On a sticky morning in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata, Koustav Bagchi moves from door to door in a crisp white and red traditional attire, a fish in hand.

Drums thud behind him as supporters chant his name. A lawyer-turned-politician and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s candidate from Barrackpore in the upcoming West Bengal assembly elections, Bagchi is banking on the piscine prop to do the quiet work of persuasion.

There are no speeches about policy - just a visual cue: I am one of you.

A few kilometres away in Kolkata's port area, another BJP candidate, Rakesh Singh, stages a similar spectacle. Dressed for effect and flanked by party workers, he hoists a fish repeatedly as he moves through early-morning crowds, taking on the city's mayor Firhad Hakim in one of the state's high-profile contests.

In Bengal, fish is more than food - it is the bloodstream of the cuisine, woven into memory, ritual and everyday life, a marker of both identity and belonging.

Across West Bengal, that resonance is now being staged as political theatre, with candidates brandishing fish to quell a very specific anxiety.

In a country where food habits can be deeply political, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's BJP is often associated with a more assertive, sometimes moralised vegetarianism.

In the West Bengal election, fish has slipped from the plate into the centre of the campaign, recast as proof of cultural fidelity and a rebuttal to charges of intrusion.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee of the ruling Trinamool Congress, who is seeking a fourth consecutive term, has warned that the main opposition BJP "threatens Bengal's way" of life, invoking fish and rice as non-negotiable.

"The BJP will not allow you to eat fish. Nor will they allow you to eat meat or eggs," she told a campaign meeting recently.

The feisty 71-year-old leader took on the BJP in another meeting: "Bengal lives on fish and rice. You are telling Bengal people you can't have fish, you cannot have meat, you cannot have eggs - what will they eat then?"

The BJP has pushed back just as sharply, seeking to neutralise the charge while turning the attack around.

Smriti Irani, a BJP leader campaigning in Bengal, called the claim "a lie", insisting that "Bengal and fish and rice are a part of its culture which will never end".

Swapan Dasgupta, the party's candidate from Kolkata's Rashbehari seat, said Banerjee's charge was a distraction: "They are trying to divert public attention from their corruption with this false narrative that we will prohibit fish consumption. This is rubbish."

On the campaign trail, Modi himself has turned to fish as a political talking point, recasting it as a marker of governance failure.

A vegetarian, he accused Banerjee's government of failing to make Bengal self-reliant in fish.

"Even after 15 years in power, the Trinamool Congress has failed to provide you with even something as basic as fish. Even fish has to be sourced from outside the state," Modi said.

Banerjee hit back instantly, saying 80% of Bengal's fish needs are met locally.

"You [BJP] do not allow fish consumption in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, states that you govern, and organise attacks on fish shops in Delhi. Aren't you ashamed?" she told a campaign meeting.

Between cultural anxiety and economic critique, fish has become more than a staple; it is now shorthand for everything the rivals say is at stake.

India is the world's third-largest fish producer and second in aquaculture, yet ranks a low 129th globally in per capita fish consumption. But in West Bengal, fish isn't just food - it's near-universal.

A 2024 joint study by ICAR and WorldFish found that about 65.7% of people in West Bengal consume fish weekly.

It sits alongside eastern and southern states where more than 90% of people eat fish, even as India overall sees a steady rise in fish consumption, now reaching over 70% of the population, according to the report.

In Bengal, fish has always carried meanings far beyond the plate, and its political afterlife feels almost inevitable.

In his acclaimed Bengali novel Padma Nadir Majhi (The Boatman of the Padma), Manik Bandopadhyay turns fish into fate and survival along a restless river. In The Hungry Tide, novelist Amitav Ghosh binds it to ecology and precarity in the Sundarban delta on the Bay of Bengal

The prized hilsa fish, writes Samanth Subramanian in his book Following Fish, is so central that "if Bengali cuisine were Wimbledon, the hilsa would always play on Centre Court". To eat it properly - deboning it deftly in the mouth - is, in his telling, almost a rite of belonging.

In Bengal, fish also carries layers of meaning beyond food.

It signals geography (river systems like the Ganges River versus the Padma River), history (the legacy of Partition of India separating East and West Bengal), and class - who can afford prized varieties, who prepares them, and who has the cultural know-how to do so.

Even Bengal's fiercest football rivalry carries fish: fans of East Bengal FC - many with roots in what is now Bangladesh - are stereotypically partial to hilsa, while Mohun Bagan Super Giant supporters are said to favour prawns. It's a playful shorthand for deeper histories of migration, class and taste.

Sociologists believe it is possibly this dense symbolism that has made fish so politically useful. Parties aren't just invoking it; they are folding it into the choreography of the campaign to bait opponents.

For historian Jayanta Sengupta, fish is "inseparable from Bengali cuisine, shaped by geography and its long role as an affordable source of protein".

"As the BJP has, at times, been associated with a push toward vegetarian norms, Bengal's ruling party has folded food into a broader pitch around cultural pride," says Sengupta.

"Knowing the symbolic significance of fish, the BJP could not ignore the issue. That's how we see both sides countering each other's campaign over one of Bengal's favourite foods."

Last week, the BJP's state President Samik Bhattacharya offered journalists in Kolkata an invitation for results day on 4 May - when, he said, the party would welcome them with fried fish.

After the results, Bhattacharya said, the BJP would send "different kinds of small fish" to Banerjee's house and invite her party workers over for mach bhaat, Bengali for fish and rice.

The joke hinged on a quiet premise: that the BJP will be in a position to play host - and its rivals, to accept the invitation.

In an election shaped by identity, livelihoods and a fair amount of playful baiting, fish may not decide the result.

But it has already framed the contest - revealing how instinctively culture and politics bleed into each other on the campaign trail.

With additional reporting by Snigdhendu Bhattacharya in Kolkata