A new book asks whether Muslim voters in West Bengal prefer TMC despite anti-incumbency
· Scroll
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In the spring of 2021, as West Bengal braced itself for one of the most polarising assembly elections in recent history, I returned from Delhi to cast my vote. The pandemic was at its peak, and the city carried a palpable sense of unease – of both disease and politics. That unease surfaced most vividly in an unlikely place: the backseat of an Uber cab.
My driver that day was a middle-aged man named Rafiq Ali. His voice carried both exhaustion and conviction, as though he had repeated the same conversation many times. Curious about the atmosphere of the election, I asked him how he felt about the political climate in Bengal. His reply was blunt: “The BJP is trying to finish our community. If they come to power, they will send us to Bangladesh. We are scared of the CAA.”
The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), passed in 2019, had become one of the most contentious political issues in Bengal. I gently pointed out that the law did not, in principle, strip Indian Muslims of their citizenship. Yet Rafiq shook his head. “Today it is CAA. Tomorrow it will be NRC. After that, something else. All they want is to isolate us.”
For him, the legal...