From attacks on progressive bookstalls to the erosion of public safety, Bengal must confront the danger of turning a people's festival into an arena of ideological conflict.
West Bengal is witnessing a disturbing confrontation over the meaning of its public culture. The reported attacks on Left bookstalls during Durga Puja, the pressure on spaces associated with liberal and progressive thought, and the increasingly visible attempt to frame Bengal's cultural identity through a narrow religious-political lens raise questions that go far beyond party politics. They concern the freedom to think, the right to dissent and the character of a society that has long prided itself on its intellectual traditions.
This Durga Puja season has brought these questions into sharp focus. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) reported attacks on its bookstalls, allegedly by BJP supporters. The Indian Express carried these allegations and noted that BJP state president Samik Bhattacharya denied his party's involvement. Meanwhile, an attempt by Kolkata civic authorities to remove a CPM bookstall in Jadavpur generated further controversy over permissions and the exercise of administrative power. These incidents deserve scrutiny, not because any party should enjoy immunity from the law, but because the law must be applied consistently. When a bookstall becomes a battleground, we must ask what, precisely, has become so threatening about the act of selling books.
Durga Puja is undoubtedly a Hindu religious festival. In Bengal, however, it is also a vast social and cultural occasion that transcends religious observance. It brings together people of different communities, classes, generations and political persuasions. The neighbourhood pandal, the cultural programme, the art installation, the adda and the bookstall are all part of this larger experience. This social character is not incidental; it is one of the festival's defining features. Some participate through devotion, others through art, literature, community work or simply the pleasure of a shared celebration.
The concern, therefore, is not that Durga Puja should cease to be religious. It is that the festival's wider social character may be diminished when it is increasingly presented as a test of religious identity or political allegiance. Hindutva politics seeks to organise public life around a particular conception of Hindu identity, and critics argue that when this project enters community festivals, it can marginalise alternative understandings of culture and citizenship. Whether that interpretation holds in each case must be tested against evidence. But the underlying question matters: can a festival remain inclusive if cultural participation becomes a proxy for ideological conformity?
A bookstall selling Marxist, socialist, liberal or progressive literature is not merely a commercial enterprise. It is a space where ideas circulate and citizens encounter arguments that may challenge their beliefs. Books do not require the reader to agree with them. They require only that the reader be free to examine them. That is the essential principle of intellectual freedom.
The reported attacks have therefore raised a legitimate democratic concern. According to the Indian Express, the CPM alleged that its stalls were attacked in several places, while the BJP denied responsibility. In Jadavpur, the attempted removal of a CPM stall brought police deployment, municipal permissions and the question of equal treatment under the law into public debate. The distinction between an unauthorised structure and an act of political intimidation must be carefully established. Municipal authorities are entitled to enforce safety and licensing requirements, and no political organisation is exempt. But enforcement becomes a democratic concern when it appears inconsistent, selective or disproportionate.
If a bookstall lacks the required permission, the authorities should explain the legal grounds for its removal and apply the same standard to comparable stalls. If a stall has valid permissions, they should be respected unless lawfully withdrawn. If there is a threat of violence, the police should protect people exercising their lawful rights rather than leave them exposed. The principle is straightforward: the answer to a political book is another book, not a threat, and the answer to an argument is a counterargument, not the destruction of the space in which it is made.
The Calcutta High Court's proceedings on a CPM bookstall in Bongaon illustrate the complexity. On October 16, a division bench stayed an earlier order granting police protection to the stall and directed that stalls lacking permission, including those linked to other organisations, be removed. The court emphasised equality before the law. This means the question cannot be reduced to whether the administration should allow or prohibit a particular party's stall. What matters is whether permissions were properly obtained, whether the rules were applied consistently and whether those affected were given due process. An administration that applies neutral rules transparently strengthens public confidence; one whose actions appear selective invites suspicion. The right response is neither blanket exemption for political organisations nor arbitrary suppression, but transparent, proportionate and even-handed enforcement, together with protection against political intimidation.
The controversy also cannot be understood apart from wider concerns about the freedom of educational and cultural institutions to sustain independent thought. Universities, colleges, libraries, publishers and public bookstalls serve a vital democratic function. They are where competing interpretations of history, society, economics and politics can be debated, and their value lies in refusing to reduce every question to a single approved answer. When ideological hostility enters these spaces, the consequences extend beyond the immediate targets. Students may hesitate to join a debate, publishers may fear intimidation, and readers may find that literature associated with certain traditions becomes harder to access in public. Allegations of politically motivated attacks on such institutions deserve independent investigation. Responsibility must be established case by case, not inferred from ideological affiliation. But where a broader pattern of intimidation is substantiated, it should not be dismissed as a collection of unrelated local disputes. Democracy is not sustained by elections alone. It also depends on the everyday freedom to question authority, organise peacefully, read dissenting literature and disagree without fear.
Then came a tragedy that demands answers. On Saturday evening, October 17, a stampede at the Chorbagan Sarbojanin Durga Puja pandal in north Kolkata claimed 19 lives and injured many others, according to reports published on October 18. Heavy rain reportedly drove visitors towards an already crowded venue. Eyewitnesses spoke of inadequate crowd management, confusing announcements and too few security personnel. The police have begun investigating. The deaths demand accountability, not speculation, but they make one question unavoidable: are public authorities giving sufficient priority to the safety of ordinary citizens during a festival that draws enormous crowds?
Public safety cannot be subordinated to political prestige, administrative convenience or ideological confrontation. Every major gathering requires crowd-flow planning, clearly marked entry and exit routes, adequate police and volunteer deployment, emergency medical arrangements and effective communication when conditions change suddenly. If the investigation finds that these safeguards were neglected, those responsible must be held accountable, whatever their political connections or positions. The deaths of 19 people, including a child according to reports, cannot become another episode of political blame-trading. Their families deserve to know what happened, why the arrangements failed and what will be done to prevent a recurrence. An administration is judged not by its capacity to enforce authority, but by its ability to protect life.
Bengal's intellectual inheritance contains many competing traditions: religious reform, social criticism, anti-colonial struggle, rationalism, humanism, Marxism and other currents of thought. They have often disagreed sharply, yet their coexistence, rather than uniformity, has shaped the region's public life. Defending this inheritance does not require romanticising the past or overlooking the intolerance and political violence committed by different parties over the years. Nor does it require accepting every argument the Left or any other group puts forward. It requires defending a more fundamental principle: no political organisation has the right to decide which lawful ideas citizens may encounter in public.
The BJP and RSS should answer specific allegations of intimidation through evidence and due process, and their denials must be weighed fairly. Where responsibility is established, the law must take its course. The same standard must apply to the Left, the Trinamool Congress and every other political formation. The real test is whether democratic freedoms are protected even when the ideas being expressed are unpopular with those in power.
A bookstall should not have to become a site of confrontation. A university should not have to fear ideological policing. A community festival should not become a test of political loyalty. And a family visiting a pandal should not have to depend on luck for its safety. The answer lies in defending freedom of expression, insisting on equal treatment under the law and demanding a credible investigation into the failures that may have contributed to the Chorbagan tragedy.
A society confident in its traditions does not fear books. A democracy confident in its institutions does not fear dissent. And an administration conscious of its responsibilities does not lose sight of human life amid political confrontation. The measure of Bengal's future will not be how successfully one ideology silences another, but whether people can think freely, disagree peacefully and celebrate together without fear.
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*Contact: atanusingapore@gmail.com
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