The horrific face of Hindutva juggernaut
Reports from Kolkata the other day spoke of police revealing that a group of people vandalized a church and attacked priests and worshippers during the inauguration of a Christian church in West Bengal's South 24 Parganas district. When Bishop Subrata Chakraborty and a large number of priests and devotees arrived for the inauguration ceremony, about thirty-five attackers started the assault and vandalized the church and the cross. The attackers threatened that religious activities would not be allowed in the church premises. There was also a report a few weeks ago that a gang in West Medinipur district threatened and attacked three families who had converted to Christianity, forcing them to renounce their new faith.
Since the Suvendu Adhikari government came to power in West Bengal, there have been widespread reports of unprecedented physical attacks on religious minorities, destruction of places of worship, deportations from the state, and disruption of livelihoods. In May 2026, a factory fire in the Tapsia-Thinjal area of south Kolkata killed two people and injured three others. This was followed by a crackdown on buildings. There were allegations that in areas populated by Muslims, houses were demolished without prior notice. The Calcutta High Court granted an interim stay for the demolition operation. It also banned animal sacrifice in public places before Eid Al Adha and made official permission mandatory for the slaughterhouse and a fitness certificate for the animals. On top of this came Suvendu Adhikari’s threat that if anyone harmed a cow ‘there won’t be a worse man than me’, which forced Muslim traders to stop selling cattle. As an offshoot, this also affected the livelihood of Hindus who were involved in breeding cattle. The BJP first came to power in Bengal by removing millions of Muslims from the voter list and branding them as infiltrators from Bangladesh. The minority-baiting spree that began on the day of the announcement of results is still continuing.
In Assam, the 'Bengali Muslim' eradication campaign, which was launched much earlier by Himanta Biswa Sarma, continues unabated. The latest incident is the destruction of the houses of more than 700 Muslim families in Dhubri district. Although officials claim that the demolished houses were built on government land, families who were left homeless overnight, are producing evidence of long occupation there with receipts of land taxes paid from 1972 to 2016. Even the humanitarian considerations of resettling them elsewhere do not seem to bother the Himanta government. It was just two weeks ago that 1,100 Muslim families were evicted from Nagaon, Hojai and Golaghat districts. During the last ten years of BJP rule, 19,000 families have become homeless, most of them Muslim families. Along with this, there are constant calls to boycott Muslim shops and even autorickshaws.
Chief Ministers like Yogi Adityanath, Pushkar Dhami, Suvendu Adhikai, and Himanta Biswa Sarma, under the shadow of Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duo are continuing their concerted efforts to subject religious minorities to hellish torture to such an extent as to force them to leave the country. The Hindutva government, which has already brought the executive under its control, is now in an attempt to saffronize the judiciary too. The effort to end Muslim representation in the central cabinet and state councils has almost been completed. And the process of banning or blocking Christian religious activities on cooked up allegations of religious conversion is also ongoing in full swing. The FCRA (Foreign Contribution Regulation Act) which regulates foreign donations, is being implemented strictly with the sole aim of draining the financial resources of Christian and Muslim institutions. Not only that, the amendment bill introduced in Parliament also carries provisions for government agencies to take over all places of worship, educational institutions, and hospitals built with funds that were received fulfilling the conditions set earlier.
As the planned campaign of extremist Hindutva culture and the ruling elite hitting the nail on the coffin of secular democratic India continues unchecked, it is imperative that the people's protests against anti-Constitutional thrust and actions continue with great force. Otherwise, the unique identity of the Indian Republic as a 'Democratic Secular Socialist Republic' will be lost.