In regards to the northern India, west Bengal is a different ball game. Here the masses are much more politically motivated rather than religion or cast wise. In this particular state the political polarization is much more evident and stubborn(if not totally) than religion/caste/group etc. The politics based on caste/religion does not work here as the mass give their mandate seeing the party symbol rather than the candidate....they prefer the candidate belonging to other religions/caste than their own but nominated by the party they support over the other candidates of their own religion. I have seen this tendency both in village and cities.
Now about the Muslim community, they are almost 20% of the entire population in wb...so they are a major deciding factor in power game....so both the leftist and TMC adopt a policy of appeasing them in the name of secularism, bjp being weak in both political and organization basis, doesn't follow the way, rather tried to make a religious polarization to gather Hindu votes...which I think would not work that effectively like in other states.
Due to extreme political polarization, there is often political unrest and vandalism occurs between the rivals...the leftist during their tenure of 34 years used antisocials as political weapon to dominate and intimidate the people (they made rigging an art). TMC learned the lesson quickly and is using the same antisocials even more efficiently...add to that Himalayan corruption in both the tenure....but still, no religious unrest have not been noticed so far.
Evidently, the situation is getting changed...specifically in the two Muslim majority district of Malda and Mursidabad (but not in the Muslim majority area of South 24 parganas or east Midnapore)...there is sudden uprising of group of radicalized people who are continuously spreading venoms...though they are not likely to achieve their goals due to the basic nature of the whole population...the situation must be watched carefully.