West Bengal’s Durga Puja season has become the site of an escalating confrontation over who gets to occupy public spaces, whose ideas can circulate and who has the authority to define the state’s cultural identity. For decades, bookstalls run by Left parties have been a familiar feature of the festivities, offering political literature alongside the books, art and cultural activities that animate the festival. This year, however, stalls associated with the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM), the Communist Party of India (CPI), the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation and other Left organisations have faced reported attacks, vandalism, threats and attempts at removal across West Bengal. The controversy has unfolded amid Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari’s reported warning that Durga Puja committees should deny space to Left bookstalls that use the term Sharodotsav instead of explicitly referring to Durga Puja.
The confrontation reached a flashpoint in Jadavpur on Saturday night, October 17, when a team from the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, accompanied by police and central forces, arrived to demolish a CPM bookstall that the party says had the requisite permissions. Left supporters resisted the operation through the night, forcing the demolition team to retreat after hours of confrontation. The CPM subsequently approached the Calcutta High Court, which agreed to hear its petition on October 20, offering temporary relief to the stall.
The struggle to protect the right to know…
The BJP administration in Bengal has brought in bulldozers to demolish the CPI(M) bookstall in Jadavpur. Citizens of the area came out in resistance. https://t.co/1xSjkSW2lx
— Mayukh Biswas (@MayukhDuke) October 17, 2026
The immediate relief is welcome. But it also raises a more disturbing question: why did a dispute over a bookstall have to escalate into an overnight confrontation involving police, municipal authorities and political protesters before judicial intervention could offer a reprieve?
Book stalls run by Left parties have been vandalised, burnt and removed across the state during the festival. Left leaders blame BJP workers for the attacks, and accuse a section of the police of using a narrow Calcutta HC order to clear stalls statewide. 1/2 https://t.co/PgeODxuYd6
— The Wire (@thewire_in) October 18, 2026
CPI(M) West Bengal State Secretary Mohd Salim visited the bookstall in Jadavpur that the BJP administration had attempted to demolish. The full force of bulldozers, police, armed police personnel and BJP-RSS goons who had arrived to destroy the bookstall was forced to retreat in the face of people’s resistance.
— CPI (M) (@cpimspeak) October 19, 2026
The episode must be viewed against the backdrop of an earlier judicial order in the separate dispute over a CPM bookstall in Bongaon. The allegations raised in the petition was that the CPI(M) had been prevented from setting up its traditional bookstall while a stall belonging to the Hindu Jagran Manch was allowed to occupy the area. The Left party told the Court that it had been setting up bookstalls near Durga Puja pandals for decades, with its petition referring to a tradition extending over approximately 50 to 60 years. A single-judge bench had permitted the party to set up its stall within 100 metres of its intended location and had directed the authorities to examine whether a stall associated with the Hindu Jagran Manch had the necessary permission. On Friday, October 16, a division bench stayed that order after the state government challenged it, preventing the CPM stall from operating for the remaining days of Durga Puja, as reported by Bar and Bench.
The Bongaon proceedings and the Jadavpur confrontation are legally distinct. The division bench’s stay in Bongaon cannot simply be treated as an order authorising the demolition of the Jadavpur stall. Nor does the latest decision to hear the Jadavpur petition automatically establish that the court has issued a blanket injunction against every possible administrative action. Yet the distinction makes the question of legal authority more, not less, important. Any attempt to remove the Jadavpur stall must stand on its own lawful basis, rather than on an assumption that the separate Bongaon order settles the matter.
CPM state committee member Sudip Sengupta told The Telegraph that the Jadavpur stall had the requisite permissions from Kolkata Police, the Kolkata Municipal Corporation and the authorities concerned with its electricity supply. He alleged that officials arrived to remove it after the court had gone on vacation. These claims raise a straightforward question: if permissions had been granted, on what legal grounds were officials seeking to demolish the stall, and what procedure had been followed before attempting to do so?
The attempt to remove the stall was resisted on Saturday night, and police and central forces returned in greater numbers. Left supporters, including CPM leaders Sudip Sengupta and Srijan Bhattacharya, continued their resistance until the early hours of Sunday. Police reportedly attempted to demolish the structure several times, while the supporters responded with slogans and refused to disperse. The operation eventually ended without the Jadavpur stall being demolished, although stalls associated with the Socialist Unity Centre of India (Communist) (SUCI) and the Association for Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR) were reportedly dismantled.
What is unfolding is not simply a dispute over temporary structures during a religious festival. It is a confrontation over the right to disseminate political ideas without intimidation, the obligation of public authorities to act impartially and the danger of allowing cultural participation to become a test of ideological conformity.
When a bookstall becomes a political target
Jadavpur is not an isolated incident. Across West Bengal, Left parties have reported attacks, threats, vandalism and obstruction directed at their seasonal bookstalls during the weeks preceding Durga Puja. The Indian Express, reporting on the attacks on Left bookstalls, documented allegations by the CPM that its stalls had been targeted by BJP supporters. BJP state president Samik Bhattacharya denied his party’s involvement and called for complaints to be made to the authorities. The allegations must be investigated individually, and responsibility cannot be presumed merely from political affiliation. But the number and geographical spread of the reported incidents demand a serious response.
The Times of India has also reported that the CPM lodged at least 10 police complaints in Kolkata over alleged attacks, threats and attempts to prevent party-linked bookstalls from opening. The complaints reportedly included allegations of vandalism at stalls associated with the SUCI(C), the tearing of banners, the destruction of books and an assault in which a senior party member was injured. At Barasat, five CPM supporters were reported injured in an attack allegedly involving BJP supporters on Sunday. The police response and the outcome of investigations are crucial to establishing what occurred.
In Malda’s Chanchal, the CPM alleged that Bajrang Dal activists threatened its workers and forced the closure of a stall selling Marxist literature. Animesh Sinha, a CPM district secretariat member, said the party had submitted written intimation to the local police station and received an acknowledgement. A Bajrang Dal activist, by contrast, alleged that the party’s refusal to display an image of Goddess Durga amounted to disrespect towards Hinduism. That accusation exposes the troubling premise beneath the confrontation: that a political organisation selling books during a religious festival must demonstrate religious conformity to be permitted to participate.
A bookstall is not required to display a religious image to justify its existence. Nor should a political organisation have to affirm a particular religious identity before it can disseminate literature in a public setting. Unless a specific, lawful requirement applies, the demand that Marxist literature be accompanied by an image of a deity is not a neutral administrative condition. It is an ideological demand.
The controversy has also been fuelled by Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari’s reported September 10 warning that Durga Puja committees should not permit Left bookstalls that used the term Sharodotsav, or autumn festival, instead of explicitly referring to Durga Puja. As reported by The Telegraph, the warning called on committees to deny space to such stalls. The significance of the statement lies in the attempt to make access to a public cultural space conditional on the terminology used by a political organisation.
Durga Puja is a Hindu religious festival. Recognising that fact does not require reducing every public activity associated with it to a test of religious allegiance. Bengal’s Puja season has also become a major social and cultural occasion, with neighbourhoods hosting art, literature, performances, public gatherings and political discussion alongside religious observances. The presence of bookstalls selling Marxist, socialist, liberal and other literature is part of this wider cultural life.
The right to disseminate ideas cannot depend on whether those ideas are congenial to the political establishment or to the most vocal section of a crowd. Left parties have maintained a longstanding presence at Puja venues, with bookstalls selling political writing, literary works and other publications. As the Indian Express has reported, the present season has seen disputes over these stalls across the state. The CPM and other Left parties say they have traditionally informed the police and paid applicable civic fees; the authorities have disputed whether certain stalls possessed the necessary permissions, according to Alt News.
The administrative power to remove a stall is not the power to suppress an idea
The controversy brings the constitutional principles of freedom of expression, equality before the law and the rule of law into sharp focus. Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution protects freedom of speech and expression, subject to the reasonable restrictions permitted under Article 19(2). Article 19(1)(g), subject to Article 19(6), is also relevant to lawful commercial activity. The precise rights engaged will depend on the circumstances, including the nature of the site, the permissions required and the conduct of the authorities.
A political bookstall does not possess an unconditional right to occupy any public space. Municipal bodies can regulate public land, pedestrian access, electricity connections, safety and licensing. But the authority to regulate a public space is not an unrestricted authority to decide which political ideas may circulate within it.
Where a dispute concerns permissions, the authorities should identify the specific rule allegedly violated and provide a consistent, reviewable basis for their decision. Where a stall has valid permission, officials must explain the lawful grounds for any action that interferes with it. Where there is a threat of violence, the police must protect those exercising their lawful rights and investigate credible allegations of intimidation.
The earlier Bongaon proceedings underscore the importance of that standard. On Thursday, October 15, Justice Saugata Bhattacharya directed the Superintendent of Police of Bongaon Police District and the Inspector-in-Charge of Bongaon police station to ensure public order and deploy adequate security so that the CPI(M) could erect its bookstall and sell books during the Durga Puja festivities. The permission extends to a location within a 100-metre radius of the party office, which is situated near the pandal. The police have also been directed to prevent others from disrupting the party’s activities and to submit a compliance report at the next hearing on November 23. According to the report of LiveLaw, Justice Bhattacharya observed that the dissemination of different political thoughts and ideologies was welcome in a democracy, making it “fruitful, deep-rooted and mature”. The subsequent division-bench stay changed the position in that litigation.
The reported attacks expose the danger of allowing private political groups to police cultural participation. A demand that a bookstall close because its literature is Marxist, or because it does not display a particular religious image, is not a substitute for lawful regulation.
The historical warning
The history of Hitler’s Germany offers a sobering warning about the consequences of allowing political repression to become normalised. The comparison should not be used to claim that every contemporary confrontation is equivalent to Nazism, nor to suggest that West Bengal is already living under a Nazi dictatorship. The historical circumstances are different. What merits attention is a specific and documented feature of the Nazi seizure of power: the systematic targeting of political opponents, particularly communists, followed by the dismantling of constitutional protections and the destruction of political pluralism.
When the bulldozers sent by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation to demolish book stalls set up by the CPI(M) were turned back by people’s resistance, the BJP took a leaf out of the Nazi playbook and sent in armed police personnel, along with BJP-RSS goons, to smash the book stalls. The priorities of the BJP government are evident when it deploys a huge police force to destroy books, while 19 people, including a child, lost their lives in Chorbagan due to the lack of adequate police arrangements to control crowds and ensure public safety.
— CPI (M) (@cpimspeak) October 18, 2026
On February 27, 1933, the German parliament, the Reichstag, was set on fire. The Nazi leadership exploited the incident by portraying it as evidence of a communist conspiracy, although the claim that the fire represented a planned communist uprising was false. The following day, President Paul von Hindenburg issued the Reichstag Fire Decree, which suspended important constitutional protections, including safeguards for freedom of speech, the press and assembly. It enabled the arrest and detention of political opponents, the suppression of publications and the removal of restraints on police powers. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum documents the decree as a decisive step in the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship. The assault on communists was not an incidental consequence of this process. It was central to it.
Following the decree, communist deputies were arrested or prevented from participating freely in political life. On March 23, 1933, the Nazi government secured passage of the Enabling Act, which allowed Hitler’s cabinet to legislate without parliamentary consent, including in ways that violated the existing constitutional order. The Nazi leadership used intimidation and persecution to secure the measure, preventing all 81 Communist deputies and 26 Social Democratic deputies from taking their seats. The Act became the cornerstone of Hitler’s dictatorship, as documented by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
The destruction of German democracy did not begin with the persecution of every group that would subsequently be targeted by the Nazi state at the same time or in the same way. It involved a progressive dismantling of opposition, civil liberties and institutional restraints. Communists were among the first and most prominent political targets. Their suppression helped create the conditions in which the Nazis could move against other political opponents, independent organisations and, ultimately, entire communities.
There is a difference between a government disagreeing with communists and a political environment in which communist literature is treated as something that should not be allowed to circulate. There is a difference between enforcing a neutral municipal rule and using administrative machinery in circumstances that raise credible questions about selective treatment. There is a difference between a religious community celebrating its traditions and insisting that participation in the surrounding public culture requires ideological or religious conformity. Those differences must be preserved precisely because history demonstrates what can happen when they are erased.
Bengal’s intellectual history has been shaped by competing and sometimes conflicting traditions: religious reform, anti-colonial movements, rationalism, humanism, Marxism, social criticism and a wide range of literary and political currents. A society does not demonstrate confidence in its religious or cultural traditions by suppressing literature that challenges them. A festival does not become more meaningful by excluding citizens whose political beliefs differ from those of its organisers. And a democracy does not become stronger by allowing the loudest group to determine which voices can be heard.
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