i write this posthumously, in June, over a month since April has passed, and i remember little of it besides the anxiety of the oncoming elections, to be held in the final weeks of the month.
To be honest, i knew the way the wind was blowing well before the state actually went to the polls, our fate had been decided in November last year, in the aftermath of the Special Intensive Review (S.I.R.) of the electoral rolls. This was the second phase of the S.I.R.; it had been held in Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
In the final tally, nearly 85 lakh (8.5 million) voters were erased from the electoral rolls of West Bengal, the deleted voters were disproportionately Muslims, Dalits, and Women. Disheartening, but unsurprising.
The Trinamool Congress, the party in power at the time, although entirely liberal, i.e. whole-hearted facilitators of the imperialist claws that rip Bengal's people to shreds every day, have been, for the most part secular in their approach to cultivating votes; they curry favour with capitalists regardless of religion, and suppress workers likewise. This does not preclude the existence of Hindu majoritarian violence against Muslims and Christians, nor violence by upper caste Hindus against Dalits (who are nominally included within the Hindu fold to constitute the aforementioned Hindu majority), it simply means that the T.M.C. does not officially sanction communal violence. They sanction plenty of other forms of violence, police violence being chief among them.
Regardless, an electorate composed of Hindus and Muslims in almost equal proportion spelled bad news for the Bharatiya Janata Party (B.J.P.), the Hindutva Fascist party which currently holds power in the center and in a worrying number of states. And so, they decided to even the odds by carrying out the S.I.R.
i don't remember much else from April besides the crackling pre-election atmosphere, major traffic jams as the B.J.P. and T.M.C. took to the streets in massive rallies, i remember going for walks later and later at night to avoid them and the mounting heat, summer had come. i remember tearing down B.J.P. posters pasted on public walls, ripping their flags off electric poles, and watching as people around me joined in. What a shame our small acts demostrated nothing more than a vague uneasiness for what we all knew was a foregone conclusion.