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 and other gods failed, leading artistes in Bengal had shown the courage to push back and say: “You have gone too far, you have tested the last ounce of our patience, we will not hear one more word from you, we know what is best for us and we will think for ourselves.”
Nijeder Mawta Nijeder Gaan had brought hope even in the fear-filled days leading up to polling when you heard the words drifting from a loudspeaker at an election meeting far away, then another and another. Whose meetings those were I did not know. They might have been the Left or the Congress or Trinamool. But the emphatic “Ami onnyo kothao jaabo naa, ami ei deshe tei thakbo (I won’t go anywhere else, I will remain in this country)” brought tears to the eyes every single time.
Now, the sound of the azaan rising above the silence of a Sunday noon brought inexplicable relief. Allahu Akbar. God is Great. There is something soothing about the sound of prayer, even when it is a prayer you don’t know. It tells you of a belief that there is a power – a shakti – above all of us, a power that will ensure that good prevails, a power that will take care of us all.
Just as there is something heart-warming about the sounds and smells emanating from the kitchen. The clank of utensils being washed, the aroma of hot chapatis on the tawa or rice bubbling in a pot, the whistle of the pressure cooker – each of these holds the promise of sustenance.
Now these two sounds crossed paths. We had survived. Bengal would remain free to pray as it wanted and to eat what it wanted.
Three years on, it is time for battle all over again and this time the fight for survival extends beyond Bengal, it is for the promise of justice, equality, freedom and fraternity in the sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic of India.
When you go to the polling booth, think of the agony of Kashmir and Manipur and farmers and women wrestlers, of migrant workers battered by the world’s most stringent lockdown, of the bodies of Corona victims that washed up in the Ganga, of the desperate search for oxygen and hospital beds, of 80 crore out of 140 crore citizens being forced to live on free rations while one Adani has seen his net worth grow from $3.1 billion in 2013 to $81 billion in 2024 (according to Forbes), of petrol at Rs 100 a litre, of the rupee at Rs 83 to a dollar, of the lack of jobs, of leaked question papers, of people kicked for praying and lynched for eating, and of the Pulwama soldiers whose deaths were used to canvass votes and who were then forgotten – five years have passed but no one knows why they were forced to travel by bus instead of air, where the RDX came from or who was to blame for the intelligence lapse that cost 40 lives.
Think of India’s slide in the world’s democracy index, of the media that bows before the government instead of asking questions of it, of student leader Umar Khalid who has not got bail for two years although the court says bail must be the rule, of Professor G.N. Saibaba who spent a decade of his life in jail, was not allowed to see his dying mother and was then found innocent, of journalists Siddique Kappan and Prabir Purakayastha, of Father Stan Swamy. Think of Bilkis Bano whose rapists were freed and garlanded. Think of Hathras and Kathua. Think of Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh and Ajay Mishra Teni, and why they remain so powerful.
Think also of the chowkidar’s promise to fight corruption, the demonetisation that forced us all to queue up for hours and days to access our own savings in banks allegedly so that black money would be eradicated, and of the electoral bonds through which the BJP then took thousands of crores of rupees as “donation” from companies that were raided by law enforcement agencies, companies that were handed lucrative government contracts and companies that paid more than they had earned. Think if this is not extortion, bribery and money-laundering. Remember that the government-owned State Bank of India tried its very best to hide this data from us citizens.
Think of the “washing machine” and ask if the way to fight corruption is to embrace the corrupt and give them high positions. Ajit Pawar, Ashok Chavan, Suvendu Adhikari, Praful Patel, Narayan Rane, Gali Janardhan Reddy – the list of leaders denounced as corrupt when they were in the Opposition but given a clean chit as soon as they sided with the BJP can go on and on. Think of “Operation Lotus” and ask if it is not frightening that so many elected state governments have been toppled that there is now a name for this toppling process. Pay attention when the finance minister says that the doors of the BJP are open to everyone, including someone who has nine CBI cases against him.
Think of the freeze on the accounts of the main Opposition party just before the election. Understand that when the ruling party has its coffers overflowing with cash grabbed through electoral bonds and the main Opposition party is not allowed to spend even the little money that it has, you are the biggest loser. One party can bombard you with non-stop advertising, can fly in its leaders to campaign, can reward influencers on social media, and splurge at the grassroots where workers go door to door and ensure that voters reach the booths. The other does not have the means to get its message across. It is your right to make an informed choice that has been frozen.
Think of the arrest of Opposition chief ministers, of the toppling of state government after state government that you have elected, of the mysterious resignation of the election commissioner on poll-eve, of the stubborn refusal of the Election Commission to match the VVPAT slips with the electronic voting machine results (if the EVMs are not being manipulated, why is the EC refusing to prove that by matching the results with the paper trail?), and of the brazen attempt by a poll official to steal the Chandigarh mayor’s election and hand it to the BJP.
Think of what all this means for you as a voter. If the vote you cast is not safe, what is your worth? Remember, you count only as long as your vote counts. It is through the vote alone that we can hold governments to account and ensure that the promise made to us on January 26, 1950, is honoured. The promise of a country where we are all equal – rich or poor, man or woman, Hindu or Muslim, Dalit or Brahmin – and where the government must ensure social, economic and political justice, protect our liberty of thought, expression, faith and belief, and promote fraternity.
Think hard before you vote. So that on June 4, 2024, you can look yourself in the eye and say you did what you could to save your country. When it is a fight of the people and for the people, it has to be fought and won by the people. As it was in Bengal in the summer of 2021.
Harshita Kalyan is a Calcutta-based journalist.
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