• This is about the danger that far left ideas pose to resident Bengalis. The challenge for the new BJP government is to finish Urban Naxalism in Bengal. If not done it could destroy the state and eventually spread nationwide.  

At the outset state that I lived in West Bengal (WB) all my life. My personal experience need not that of every resident of WB. However, I feel it is important to share what I experienced, in a post TMC scenario, for the benefit of youngsters.  

When I was growing up in West Bengal in the 1990s, I found our sacred Dharma being ridiculed by most people around me. They believed in a different religion whose deities were German, Russian, Vietnamese and Chinese. That they belonged to a new religion that required praising  Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Ludwig Engels was lost upon them. The houses of ‘comrades’ were filled with the framed photos of Lenin and Stalin. Sometimes they would be singing about Mao Tse-Tung and other time dancing praising Ho Chi Minh. 

Meanwhile, Hindu monks and nuns were burnt alive; religious rituals stopped and began one of the most successful programmes of brainwashing in India. They systematically and successfully produced a cadre which entered our education system and theatre too. And the rest controlled higher education.

During this period of our history, they destroyed the Faith of millions. Those who believed in Sanatana Dharma were mocked. This continues to this day. Hope it stops with the new government.  

In their defense they said that they allowed Durga Puja and researched about it. This is a half-truth. In reality, they transformed Durga Puja into a cultural event and researched Pujas as cultural artefacts. They dismissed all sacred Pujas and their rituals as myths.

Ironically, they did not have this same attitude towards Abrahamic religions.

Only Hinduism remains to this day, sheer madness for them in West Bengal.  Free speech and the freedom to practise our own religion died slow deaths in West Bengal. The few that went away and some here, at great personal cost, remained faithful to the religion of their ancestors.

Such that to this day some West Bengal’s universities refuse, to this day, to alter the syllabus in the humanities as per New Education Policy (NEP) guidelines. They preach a classless society but in reality, party cadres and their families lived well and had government jobs, while the ordinary public suffered. It is not without reason that George Orwell, wrote in Animal Farm that all while all pigs are equal, some were more equal. Orwell was a disillusioned communist. 

Post the Leftists came a dispensation of another type. They were liberal at first. Not without faults, but better in terms of religious freedom than what West Bengal had under the communists. Suddenly, and no one knows when, the average Hindu began to feel ashamed of being a Hindu. None could declare publicly that she was a Hindu. To be born a Hindu in West Bengal and to practise one’s Faith seemed unnatural. 

Like before, it was ok to be from one of the Abrahamic religions implying that one could be a devout follower of any religion other than Hinduism.

Then, devout Hindus were labelled right wing. Self-proclaimed intellectuals laughed at the idea of Sanatana Dharma. These same intellectuals praised Abrahamic religions 24 by 7.

The devout Hindu woke up from the nightmare of Marxism into the nightmare of Hinduphobia. Public schemes and reservations were for all others except Hindus. Our places of worship were taken away (give example). The administration became hostile to Hindu rituals and filing police cases became the new norm.

Anyone proclaiming their Faith in Sanatana Dharma was seen as a traitor by the new government. And urban Naxals slowly gained foothold in West Bengal’s cities, corrupting the youth with nihilism and fostered anger only at Hinduism. 

These far-leftists are still eroding the system from within our urban spaces. Our universities, colleges and even schools have become the hunting grounds of a worst sort of Marxism than before. These are Maoists and pose a direct threat to our nation and of course, West Bengal. They spread their ideology through online chat forums; syllabus manipulation and anti-Hindu rhetoric and have the power to deny Ph.D.s to those who do not agree with them.

Unless their intent is nipped in the bud now, they will destroy WB and the entire nation. While hating Hindus, they have great love for everything that is not Hindu. While they ridicule and laugh at the Hindu calendar as being unscientific, they bow down to the movements of the moon across the sky.

Many resident Bengalis pray that the new BJP government should ensure that our education is aligned with our roots. Indian Knowledge Systems means learning about our roots and not glorification of the past as is claimed. On this, I shall write later.

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The intent of this article is to share pain and insights and not get into the politics of it – Editor