There is something deeply unsettling about a society that begins to anticipate violence as naturally as it anticipates election results. In West Bengal, elections are too often followed not by political reconciliation, but by the familiar choreography of intimidation: crude bombs exploding in narrow lanes, shuttered marketplaces, frightened families hiding indoors, and local party workers patrolling neighbourhoods like victorious militias. The latest cycle of post-poll violence in districts such as Sandeshkhali, Murshidabad, Birbhum, and North 24 Parganas once again revealed an uncomfortable truth about Bengal’s democratic culture: electoral victory in the state is rarely treated as a constitutional mandate alone. It is often interpreted as a territorial conquest.

That distinction matters. In mature democracies, elections settle disputes temporarily through ballots. In Bengal, elections frequently intensify disputes through demonstrations of street power. Political parties do not merely seek legitimacy at the polling booth; they seek dominance over local geography, economic access, and psychological space. The aftermath of voting becomes a struggle to establish who controls neighbourhoods, unions, welfare networks, educational institutions, and local patronage systems. Violence, therefore, is not accidental to the system. It has become embedded within the political logic of the state.

Perhaps the most troubling aspect is how ordinary this has begun to feel. Post-poll violence in Bengal no longer generates the national shock it deserves. Citizens discuss “sensitive booths” and “party areas” with exhausted familiarity. Political clashes are treated almost like seasonal storms—dangerous, regrettable, yet somehow expected. That normalisation represents a deeper democratic decay than the violence itself. When fear becomes routine, democracy slowly loses its moral meaning.

Yet Bengal’s crisis did not emerge in isolation. Its roots run deep through the state’s modern political history. The ideological turbulence of the late 1960s and 1970s, particularly during the rise of the Naxalite movement, transformed Bengal into a battlefield of revolutionary radicalism and state repression. Political assassinations, violent street confrontations, police crackdowns, and partisan revenge entered the bloodstream of public life. The infamous Sainbari Murders became one of the defining symbols of that era’s........

© The Nation