West Bengal | Playing with fire

The authorities of religion the BJP and the TMC are practising successful Bengal successful the run-up to the 2026 polls, bodes sick for its communal fabric. The unit successful Murshidabad implicit the Waqf instrumentality is conscionable a trailer.

Inflaming passions: BJP workers protestation the communal unit successful Murshidabad astatine a rally successful Kolkata, Apr. 13(Photo: ANI)

Nowhere did the ripples of discontent implicit the precocious passed Waqf Amendment Act dispersed arsenic viciously arsenic they did successful West Bengal. The unrest was peculiarly aggravated successful the Muslim-majority districts of Murshidabad and Malda, arsenic good arsenic successful Bhangor, successful South 24 Parganas. What began arsenic elemental protests soon escalated into a convulsive conflagration connected April 11–12, erstwhile again exposing the heavy communal responsibility lines that tally done the state. Three radical died, much than 200 arrests were made, and paramilitary forces were deployed. The situation is simply a grim reminder of Bengal’s shifting governmental landscape, wherever the 2 starring parties—the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the main Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)—are striving to outdo each different successful their bid to country the Hindu vote, creating discontent among the state’s ample Muslim population, a twelvemonth earlier the 2026 assembly election.