An Untreated Open Wound: Murshidabad ----- by ----- Utank Banerjee

 

What is unfolding in Murshidabad today is not a riot. It is not a spontaneous clash. It is, in its chilling precision and unflinching cruelty, a pogrom, directed against one community, one faith, one way of life. The planned attacks that erupted in Suti and Samserganj are not merely grim echoes of the 2021 post-poll horrors, they are their extension, played out with greater boldness and even lesser fear of consequences, as if the perpetrators had never left and the State had never learned.

Murshidabad bleeds once again. The sacred soil of Bengal, the land of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Sri Aurobindo, and Swami Vivekananda, stands desecrated not by foreign invaders, but by the betrayal of its own state machinery. A land that once lit the torch of renaissance and revolution now trembles under the shadow of organised terror, ideological radicalisation, and political complicity. The flames that engulf Hindu homes in Suti and Samserganj are not accidental sparks of communal tension, they are the orchestrated outcome of systemic appeasement, cynical vote-bank politics, and deliberate state paralysis.

This is not an isolated incident. It forms part of a clear and recurring pattern where Hindus are vilified, targeted, displaced, and ultimately silenced, while the State, under Mamata Banerjee, offers little more than indifference or, worse, silent endorsement.

The immediate trigger, ironically, lies far from local grievances. On April 2nd and 5th, the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha respectively passed the Waqf Amendment Bill. The amended law stipulates that Waqf properties shall now serve the underprivileged, backward Muslims, and orphans. It expands the jurisdiction of Waqf tribunals, empowers District Magistrates for stricter oversight, and most crucially, prevents Waqf claims on tribal lands. The law aims to end illegal encroachments carried out under the Waqf label, a problem seeded by Pandit Nehru’s political concessions that fragmented the Indian legal system. However, the Modi government’s attempt to reform this structure was quickly weaponised by vested interests.

In West Bengal, the Trinamool Congress chose to oppose the law outright, prioritising Muslim interests over national concerns. Mamata Banerjee, standing alongside hardline clerics at Netaji Indoor Stadium during Mahavir Jayanti, declared that the Waqf Law would not be implemented in Bengal. Even before the Bill was passed, TMC MP Kalyan Banerjee provocatively claimed that wherever Muslims prayed, the land became Waqf, suggesting that the BJP sought to seize Muslim properties.

The consequences of this dangerous rhetoric became apparent from April 8th onwards. Local Muslims blocked national highways across Murshidabad, from Jangipur to Dhulian, from Suti to Sajur Mor. What began as tyre burnings soon escalated into targeted assaults. Shops owned by Hindus were systematically attacked, looted, and torched. Vehicles were vandalised. Hindu temples were desecrated. The perpetrators, donning white skullcaps, lungis, and kurta-pajamas, paraded down the streets chanting "Naraye Takbeer, Allahu Akbar". Brick-pelting, arson, and communal intimidation followed. Shamsherganj bore the worst brunt.

When the police attempted to intervene, they were attacked with stones. Three police vehicles, an ambulance, and a government bus were set ablaze. Hindu neighbourhoods were not randomly caught in the crossfire; they were deliberately targeted. Houses were broken into after religious identification. Vehicles marked with saffron or Hindu iconography were singled out. Temples were vandalised with brutal precision.

In Shamsherganj's Zafarabad area, Islamist radicals continued looting Hindu households for three consecutive days. Victims reported that calls made to the local police station went unanswered. In many cases, savings meant for life-saving surgeries or weddings were looted. In one chilling case, artisans Harigobind Das and his son Chandan Das were brutally murdered, their bodies bearing deep wounds, resembling ritual slaughter.

The women, especially, have endured unspeakable horrors. Displaced Hindu women from Murshidabad have recounted nights spent without shelter, of fleeing mobs clutching newborns, of watching helplessly as their husbands were dragged away, their homes torched, their belongings looted. Many fled by boat across the Bhagirathi River to take refuge in makeshift camps in Malda, huddled near BSF checkposts. Food and water were scarce. One woman sobbed that they had not eaten for two days, their children starved, and when they tried to access drinking water, they discovered that poison had allegedly been mixed into the local water tank. Survivors in Vaishnavnagar described how Islamist mobs threatened to abduct Hindu women, telling them to "surrender their honour" if they wished to save their husbands and sons. Entire families left behind cattle, homes, land, and dignity, reduced to refugees in their own country. What the Bengali Hindus once heard of East Pakistan has today come alive in Murshidabad.

The State police, in an astonishing dereliction of duty, abandoned their posts. Law enforcement was left to the Border Security Force, which initially deployed five companies and later seventeen. Their route marches temporarily restored some order, yet attempts to encircle and attack even the BSF were made by the mobs. In Dhulian, Amar Singh, a Hindu furniture businessman, reported that ₹25 lakh worth of goods were looted, while Muslim-owned shops were left untouched.

And yet, even as this violence raged, the political class continued its cynical games. On April 10th, State Library Minister Siddiqullah Chowdhury led a massive protest against the Waqf law, declaring that districts would first be "tightened" before unleashing coordinated sit-ins across Kolkata. AIMIM leaders stoked fears of Hindus seizing Muslim graveyards and mosques, directly inciting communal violence across Bengal. Riots followed in Amdanga, Amtala, Hooghly, and Bhangar, with armed assaults on police stations, torched vehicles, and injured officers.

Despite all this, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her ministers maintained a careful, calculated silence. She inaugurated Kolkata’s Kalighat Skywalk on April 14th without even a perfunctory condemnation of the violence. Urban Development Minister Firhad Hakim, on the contrary, trivialised the mass displacement, remarking that "people have merely moved from one district to another" and that minorities were safe. No mention of the Hindu victims. No outrage over their plight. No justice.

Thus, it is no longer credible to view West Bengal as merely a failed State. It is a complicit one.

The time for euphemisms has passed. This is not a communal clash. This is a civilisational crisis. If left unchecked, it will not only destroy Bengal but corrode the very constitutional fabric of India. The Centre can no longer afford to remain a mute spectator. NRC implementation, border security reinforcement, dismantling of illegal Waqf networks, and strict regulation of religious encroachments have become existential necessities.

And to the Hindu community, let this moment be a wake-up call. For too long, Sanatan Dharma has tolerated, absorbed, and forgiven. That virtue has now been misread as weakness. Peace without protection is not virtue, it is vulnerability. Hindus must organise, mobilise, and reclaim their civil rights through lawful and resolute means.

Bengal is not waqf land. It is not a battlefield for ideological jihad. It is the sacred abode of Maa Durga. It is the birthplace of revolutionaries and the cradle of philosophical genius. Those who believe they can erase this heritage should remember that they are challenging a civilisation that has survived millennia.

This must not remain a lament carved in grief. It must rise as a clarion call across Bharat. The Hindus of this sacred land will not be reduced to refugees in their own homeland. They will rise, not in hatred, but with unwavering resolve. They will speak, not in desperation, but with the unbroken voice of a civilisation. And if the hour demands it, they will resist, not with vengeance, but with the strength of their righteous ancestry.

Let those who orchestrate such violence, and those who protect them under political cowardice or ideological disguise, remember: every action bears its karma. Every crime against Dharma meets its day of reckoning.

When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes Dharma.