May 05, 2026 10:57 am IST

Opinion | What Our 'Liberals' Really Need To Understand About Bengal's Voters

When it comes to Bengal, 'liberal' standards tend to quickly bend. Principles are replaced by poetry. Accountability by abstraction. Cases that would provoke nationwide outrage elsewhere are treated with caution, sometimes even scepticism.

Shiv Aroor Shiv Aroor Managing Editor and Senior Anchor, NDTV 24x7

Shiv Aroor Managing Editor and Senior Anchor, NDTV 24x7

There's a major 'Liberal' meltdown over the Bengal election result playing out on social media. Normally, it's nothing more than internet popcorn. But this time it's particularly sumptuous.

The reaction, for starters, lays bare, with almost theatrical clarity, that the moral universe so loudly invoked by the supposed 'liberal' class in television studios, on the steps of Parliament, and in op-ed pages has a hard geographical boundary. At the borders of Bengal, liberal principles do not merely bend under pressure, but literally evaporate. The same voices that sermonise about constitutional morality, institutional integrity and social justice everywhere else suddenly discover an entirely different vocabulary when Bengal is the subject. Outrage suddenly transforms into hesitation, certainty becomes nuance. And accountability dissolves into a fog of cultural defensiveness.

That's why, from actors to comics to commentators sympathetic to Bengal's ousted ruling party, the hypocrisy has been so sudden and so stark. 

Conditional Liberalism

Next comes the question of state power. When governments at the centre and other states are accused (rightly in many instances) of weaponising institutions, the language is........

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