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Beneath the high-pitched electoral contest being witnessed between the ruling Trinamool Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) before the upcoming West Bengal assembly elections, lie serious concerns which have far-reaching impact on the state’s population, including those involving the disenfranchisement of 27 lakh voters – especially Muslims – from the state’s electoral rolls, the continuing phenomenon of political violence and the plight of the poor and working class population, to which subsequent governments in the state have turned a blind eye.

What has led West Bengal to the current juncture? To understand, one has to examine the history of the state’s tumultuous political arc since independence, wherein each time an existing system crumbled, its vestiges latched on to the new rulers, till they too were swept away by another tide of change.

Literature remains a powerful mechanism to chronicle journeys stretching across decades, and the fact that numerous works in Bengali literature have been influenced by politics, these stories serve as apt examples for charting the trajectory of the state where the personal and political are inextricably linked.

One such epic work in Bengali literature is the Animesh quartet, four books – Uttoradhikar (1979), Kalbela (1983), Kalpurush (1989) and Mousholkal (2013) – written by renowned Bengali writer Samaresh Majumdar.

The four books take the reader along a journey spanning seventy years, through the many contours of the uneven political milieu of West Bengal as we see the state through the eyes of labourers, politicians, the educated but unemployed youth and the musclemen who help regimes consolidate power over the years.

Majumdar’s ingenuity lies in his ability to tell the reader about the larger picture through his portrayal of flawed, yet oddly endearing people whom we encounter everyday, characters whom we see waiting in queues to fill water buckets in slums with open drains, or standing over the footrest of a crowded public bus on their way to work.

The continuing phenomenon of tea garden workers’ plight

In Uttoradhikar, the first book of the series, Majumdar tells us the plight of tea garden workers in Swargochera, a small tea estate nestled in the........

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