West Bengal's Durga Puja celebrations have become the stage for an unexpected political confrontation, as attacks on bookstalls set up by Left parties near the festival pandals have drawn rare public condemnation from a senior Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh functionary and a state cabinet minister.
Jishnu Basu, the RSS's Purba Kshetra Prachar Pramukh for the eastern zone, and Bengal Finance Minister Swapan Dasgupta have both come out openly against the vandalism of the stalls, even as Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari continued to target the Left parties over the same issue.
Basu posted a video on Sunday in which he said those "intoxicated with the arrogance of power" were damaging Hindu philosophy and could not call themselves Hindus. He criticised the use of the police to remove some of the stalls, saying that only in cases of illegality should the police take action, and that otherwise the CPI(M), CPI and SUCI (Communist) should be allowed to have their bookstalls.
"The RSS never supports such vandalism and destruction of books. We condemn such acts of cowardice. All people have the right to express views," Basu said. "Those behaving in this manner today, intoxicated by the arrogance of power, denying others the right to express their ideologies and preventing them from setting up bookstalls or vandalising their stalls, have failed to understand India."
Basu also told reporters that the attacks, coming five months after the BJP came to power in Bengal, had dismayed segments of the public, particularly members of the educated middle class. "We have not been able to identify these people. We don't know who sent them," he said, referring to viral videos of the attacks uploaded from various parts of Kolkata and the districts.
Dasgupta spoke to a Bengali news channel on Monday evening, saying the attacks had left him "hanging my head (in shame)". In a separate interview with ABP Ananda, he elaborated: "I have been witnessing such stalls for 30-40 years. Not that they draw a lot of attention. But they set up stalls anyway. I do not support the hooliganism around book stalls in any way."
The finance minister said he had been a staunch critic of the Left all his life and continued to be so, but that this did not mean anyone could stop the Left parties from displaying or selling their books. "Who are these vandals?" he asked, questioning who was behind the alleged attacks and whether anyone had authorised such acts in the name of the BJP. He urged his party and the state government to ensure that such incidents did not recur.
The controversy traces back to remarks made by Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari in the Assembly last month. Adhikari had asked Puja committees not to allow CPM bookstalls outside their pandals if they displayed the word "Sharodotsab" instead of "Durga Puja" — a reference to the Left's use of a term that translates roughly to "autumn festival" rather than the religious name of the festival.
Since then, puja bookstalls of parties such as the CPM, CPI, CPIML and SUCI have faced vandal attacks from alleged supporters of the BJP and the Sangh Parivar at large, according to the Left parties. One of the attacks — on the CPM's bookstall in Jadavpur — involved bulldozers sent by the police, but was foiled by nightlong resistance from Left supporters and members of the general public.
The CPM has alleged that at least 100 of its bookstalls across Bengal have been attacked, with 30 to 35 completely vandalised. The party had set up more than 600 bookstalls during this year's Durga Puja, around 100 more than last year, making the festival season a major annual outreach exercise for its literature and publications.
Attacks have been reported from Jadavpur, Rashbehari, Nagerbazar, Dhakuria and Shibpur in Kolkata, as well as in Howrah and other districts. In some cases, the stalls were allegedly set on fire or demolished, while in others the police themselves removed the stalls, citing a lack of permission.
What makes the condemnation from Basu and Dasgupta significant is that it exposes differences within the state's new ruling establishment over Adhikari's line on the stalls. The BJP-RSS believes the attacks have dismayed segments of the public, particularly the educated middle class that has traditionally engaged with Left literature at the festival stalls, even without being sympathetic to the Left's politics.
CPI(M) central committee member Sujan Chakraborty, however, dismissed the criticism from Basu and Dasgupta. "Jishnu Basu and Swapan Dasgupta are trying to be naive. These acts of vandalism started under the patronage of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Chief minister Suvendu Adhikari said in the assembly that he would not allow these book stalls unless we met his conditions," Chakraborty said.
Adhikari himself showed no sign of backing down. Continuing to target the Left parties, he said: "Everyone should be cautious of those whose forefathers are from China. There are the ones who are trying to create anarchy in the country."
The bookstalls have been a fixture of Durga Puja in Bengal for decades. During the festival, political parties — not only the Left but others too — set up temporary stalls outside the pandals to sell their publications, from party journals and pamphlets to books on Marxist literature. For the Left, which has been out of power in the state for over a decade, the stalls are one of the few large-scale public interfaces they still maintain with the masses.
This year's Durga Puja has been particularly fraught for the state government. The festival season also saw a stampede in Kolkata that killed 19 people, leading to the posting of nine senior IPS officers on Durga Puja duty, and the opposition has been uniting over both the stampede response and the Left bookstall issue.
The controversy raises a larger question about the limits of political expression at public festivals. Basu framed the issue in philosophical terms, arguing that the ethos of Hindutva allows people to express differing opinions and warning that attacks on bookstalls could damage the ideology of those responsible. Dasgupta framed it as a matter of democratic decency — ideological differences with the CPI(M), in his view, cannot justify preventing the sale of its books.
Whether the condemnation from within the BJP's own ranks translates into action on the ground remains to be seen. The Left parties have demanded that the state government identify and act against the vandals, and that the police stop removing stalls without legal justification. For now, the puja bookstalls — a decades-old tradition of festival-time political outreach — have become the latest flashpoint in West Bengal's left-right battle.
(Reporting based on The Telegraph India, The Hindu, Hindustan Times and The New Indian Express.)