“Boitake noshto koro na, bhai (don’t destroy the book, brother)”.

You may have seen a video reel from West Bengal’s Barasat during this Durga Puja, in which an elderly man is pleading with a younger fellow to show some respect for the books he is flinging to the ground. It’s enduring literature (‘chirayata sahitya’), the older man says, but his plea falls on deaf ears. All the goon and his gang see is that it is a Left bookstall — enough to see red — and their instructions are clear.

In another incident at Nagerbazar, right-wing hoodlums allegedly linked to the BJP tore pages from books at a CPI(M) stall and threw them onto the road. The pattern was hard to miss, as underlined by organisations like the Association for Protection of Democratic Rights, which reported similar incidents in Jadavpur, Jorabagan, Entally, Kasba and Haridevpur. Unsurprisingly, the BJP–RSS have sought to distance themselves from the incidents.

Chief minister Suvendu Adhikari reportedly urged Durga Puja committees to not allot stalls to Left organisations that refer to the festival as ‘Sharodotsav’ (autumn festival) instead of ‘Durga Puja’. Soon after, CPI(M) supporters and Jadavpur University students formed a human chain at the nearby 8B bus stand to stop a municipal bulldozer from removing a stall. Garbage trucks were commandeered to carry away books!

Also Read: ‘They fear books’: Attacks on Left-wing stalls during Durga Puja condemned

On 15 October, the dispute reached the Calcutta High Court. Justice Saugata Bhattacharyya allowed a CPI(M) stall near the party’s Bongaon office, but a........

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