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When You Go to the Polling Booth, This Is What You Must Think About

21 32
05.04.2024

I remember May 2, 2021. The distant sound of the azaan rose above the Sunday silence in my sleepy neighbourhood. Allahu Akbar, God is Great. Somewhere close by, a pressure cooker whistle went off – lunch was being cooked. The sounds mingled, reassuring, everyday, warm, and I felt a peace wash over me. Perhaps they mingled every day and I had never noticed before. But this was no ordinary day. Bengal had just beaten back the Bharatiya Janata Party.

The run-up had been fearful. The crowds had cheered raucously when the woman chief minister was mocked by the prime minister with the at-once menacing and demeaning “Didi O Didi” taunt, and “Jai Shri Ram” was being chanted not to invoke the God but to instil fear. It was a signal to women and to the minorities to stay in their place.

Bengal is the land of Durga and of Kali, Saraswati and Lakshmi, it is where little girls are addressed as “Maa” by their grandfathers, where parents are happy to have one child even when that child is a daughter. Bengal is also where religious communities have lived in harmony. “Bada Din” is not just for Christians – the Calcuttans waiting patiently in the long queue outside Nahoum’s to buy cake and those carting small Christmas trees away from New Market belong to all faiths. Muslims observe the roza during Ramazan but Hindus also look forward to the Haleem served in restaurants at Iftar. Durga Puja, of course, brings everyone together in celebration.

Would the election rob us of all of this? Would the waves of hate rippling across the country swallow our state? The night of May 1 was sombre. But morning came, bringing relief and joy and the pride of a hard-earned victory.

If the BJP had thrown in its all, with the prime minister addressing rally after rally although the deadly second Covid wave had risen, so had Bengal. Mamata Banerjee had fought hard, as she does always. But this was a battle fought by the people. “No vote to BJP” was a citizens’ war cry. The protest anthem that missed nothing – CAA, farm distress, Pulwama, Rafale, the attack on education and history, the Babri verdict, the cacophony of lies, the refusal to hoist the Tricolour, the rising prices – came not from a political party but from individuals. While Sachin Tendulkar, Amitabh Bachchan........

© The Wire


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