Kolkata: With Durga Puja at full pitch on Saptami—the seventh day of the festival on Saturday, more than two dozen unidentified men arrived at a bamboo-framed CPI(M) bookstall in Kolkata’s Jadavpur with two dumpers and a JCB excavator to demolish the structure, a fixture in the area every puja for the past 49 years. Kolkata Police and the Municipal Corporation came with them.
Rangan Ghosh, a 36-year-old CPI(M) member of the Jadavpur committee and a volunteer at the bookstall called his comrades and asked them to form a human chain around the stall that they planned to run from 13 to 22 October.
“They kept asking Kolkata Police to demolish our book stall or move aside so that they can demolish the book stall themselves,” Ghosh recalled. “When they saw ordinary people who had come for pandal hopping joining us, they left.”
Books have now become another vehicle in the state’s sharpening ideological battle. This is the first Durga Puja since the BJP came to power in West Bengal. The Left alleges its bookstalls were attacked across the city during the festivities—from Ballygunge, Tollygunge, Jadavpur in the south to Hooghly and Howrah across the Ganga, and even in Cooch Behar and West Midnapore. The CPI(M) has filed 10 complaints in Kolkata, and Ghosh and his team have even gone to court. But the Calcutta High Court rejected the plea Wednesday saying while they had asked for permission, it was never granted by the Kolkata police or municipal authorities.
A Hindu outfit says it drove one Left stall out of its ward, and a Puja pandal there carries the theme “Annihilation of the Left”. Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari, in the state Assembly on 10 September, had asked Puja committees to bar communist stalls that call the festival “Sharodotsav” or Autumn festival, a common Bengali name for the season.
The stalls are a Left institution older than the Left’s time in power. The party began setting them up along Puja routes in the 1950s, selling socialist literature, biographies, Marxist classics and progressive writing at low prices to crowds, turning puja footfall into an opportunity for political outreach.
Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya, former Rajya Sabha member from the Communist Party of India (CPI) recalls buying books from the stalls since the 1970s.
“It has always been a part of Bengali culture. For Durga Puja, Bengalis preserve their money to buy clothes, ornaments but also books,” said Bhattacharya. “Books have been an inherent part of Bengali community and culture. I have never seen that the book stalls were vandalised even during TMC rule.”
The vandalised bookstalls—from College Street’s ‘boi para (book neighbourhood)’ in the north to the Jadavpur University’s 8B bus stand in the south—carry the memory of a political culture in which they doubled as public commons, a civic space where cheap books were sold, ideas were exchanged and arguments could stretch for hours over tea and adda.
They grew out of a longer tradition in which print carried politics in Bengal. Pamphlets and journals spread anti-colonial ideas, and the Left drew on that culture through the Progressive Writers’ Association, the Indian People’s Theatre Association, founded pre-independence, and Marxist publishing houses such as National Book Agency.
“Book stalls have been a part of Left culture. Whenever there is a mass gathering, there is always a book stall. The idea is to make books easily accessible to the people so that they read, enlighten themselves and then criticise,” said Bhattacharya.
The Left then governed West Bengal for 34 years, from 1977 to 2011, and the stalls stood beside the pandals throughout. A party that staunchly professed its atheist ideals ran a book trade at the doorstep of the state’s biggest festival, and Bengal accepted it as part of the season.
The BJP, naturally, has kept its distance from the attacks given the cultural significance of books in Bengal.
“It is not right to put any book on the floor. Those who have been associated with BJP for long have not been involved in this. Only those who were forced to leave CPI(M) to join TMC and want to associate themselves with us now are engaged in this,” state party chief Samik Bhattacharya said in a statement and vowed to take action against the accused.
We do not support or endorse destroying CPI(M) book stalls. It is not right to put any book on the floor. Those who have been associated with BJP for long have not been involved in this. Only those who were forced to leave CPI(M) to join TMC and want to associate themselves with… pic.twitter.com/ut4q9czgIc
— BJP West Bengal (@BJP4Bengal) October 19, 2026
Most of the vandals went unidentified and police complaints have yielded no arrests. But in Ward 56, a Hindu outfit has taken credit.
Where it all began
The trouble began in Tangra’s Kamardanga in the heart of the city. Ahead of the Puja, the Shri Ram Savbhiman Parishad (SRSP) put up posters in the area declaring that Left parties would not be allowed to set up bookstalls near pandals.
Ward 56’s pandal had the theme “Sanatan Hindu Rashtriya and Vaam Vadh”, which translates to “Annihilation of the Left”. Bengali posters calling for the destruction of the Left greeted visitors at the entrance. Inside, an idol of ‘Bharat Mata’ held a flag.
Suraj Singh, founder of the SRSP and a member of the ward’s puja committee, claims no pandal has carried such an anti-Left theme before.
“The theme reflects the anger against the Left and their disrespect of Hindu religion. When they don’t believe in god and call themselves atheists, why do they use Durga Puja to set up their book stalls?” asked Singh. “That’s why we have put up posters not only here but across Kolkata saying that no Left organisation including CPI(M) will be allowed to install a stall during Durga Puja.”
So, when SUCI, another Marxist-Leninist party, came to set up a stall near the pandal, a confrontation forced its members to leave.
“They first tried to set it up near a cycle repair shop. The owner pleaded with them to move. That’s when we stepped in, following which they had to leave,” said Singh. “They returned later, saying they would open a stall at a party’s worker’s house but locals objected and they had to leave again,” Singh said.
Singh, whose ancestors are from Bihar, says he has more than 60 FIRs against him for “helping Hindus.” A former president of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morch (BJYM), North Kolkata district, and a Swayamsewak of the RSS, his social media posts include calls to “Save Hindus of Bangladesh” and claims that “West Bengal is only the homeland of Hindus.”
He campaigns actively in Kolkata against what he perceives as “anti-Hindu” activities and representations. Last year, he protested against a restaurant for putting up hoardings of the goddess Durga with a plate of biryani before her. The restaurant, Aayat, had to remove the hoarding.
His organisation, SRSP, has been active for a decade but never in the spotlight.
“We have organised Ram Navami and other Hindu festivals in Bengal when calling oneself religious and a Hindu was a crime,” he said.
The chief minister had set the tone quite publicly. In September, Adhikari told the Assembly that “a section of professors, who are so-called Leftists, are attacking ‘Sanatanis’. They are selectively targeting the saffron colour.” He asked Puja committees to bar communist stalls that write “Sharodotsav” instead of “Durga Puja” at the stalls they set up.
This Durga Puja also saw RSS workers and Hindu outfits volunteering openly to handle Puja. At several pandals, like in Ward number 56, Bengali songs were replaced by Hindi songs like high energy “Jai Hanuman” beat songs. The police volunteers were seen wearing saffron t-shirts and caps.
“RSS and Hindu organisations have always helped people even when they were not in power. They have always stood by the Hindus but the ordinary residents of Bengal don’t know what the Left has done to them. We are here to undo that,” said Singh.
West Bengal Finance Minister Swapan Dasgupta, a veteran BJP leader, also criticised the vandalism on Monday, saying he was ashamed of such incidents.
“I don’t know who they are. But I must ask, how dare they? This is not acceptable. If one incident happens, one can say it was a stray incident but I saw this has happened in three-four areas. I have ideological differences with the Left but I can’t destroy their book stall or display of books,” said Dasgupta.
The masked men at midnight
It was past midnight on Sunday, when 73-year-old Sadhana Dasgupta received a phone call. The book stall that she had been supervising in Tollygunge for the last 26 years had been destroyed. Eyewitnesses told her that masked men, armed with sticks, came on a motorbike and vandalised it.
“I was shocked. When I went in the morning, I saw bamboo sticks broken and party flags scattered. It enraged me. It was not about the political party but books,” said Dasgupta.
But she didn’t lose hope. She and her comrades spread books on two tables and ran the stall in the open. The remains of the old stall lay crumpled nearby. Dasgupta has put posters over the pile of broken bamboo.
“Why did you break a bookstall in the middle of the night?” one poster asks. Another reads, “Shame! Shame!”
“They want to break our spirit. But opening a book stall is not a crime. And if they are doing the right thing, they should do it in the broad daylight without masks,” she said.
Not too far away in Dhakuria, the Left took out a march after another bookstall was vandalised near a pandal.
“The more you attack, the larger our marches will grow,” they thundered.
Sales rose after the attack at Dasgupta’s stall. She said they sold about Rs 5,000 of books a day before and now sells about Rs 7,000. Dasgupta says that it’s not only atheists who buy books from their stalls but also those who want to expand their worldview.
“We have all the books from Aurobindo to Shakespeare. The idea is for people to read and decide for themselves. We even have our comrades who attend Durga Puja and offer bhog,” said Dasgupta.
One customer, S Roy, came with his daughter, who bought half a dozen books, all in Bengali.
“We have come here to buy books in solidarity. We have seen Dasgupta setting up bookstalls here. They don’t force anyone to buy nor do they advertise,” Roy said. “I don’t belong to any political party. But destroying books is personal for a Bengali. Books have played a big role in shaping us. We bow to Saraswati Maa.”
Now, an RSS bookstall
The CPI(M) bookstall near the 8B bus stand is not new. Rangan Ghosh says it has been setting up the stall at the same spot, close to Jadavpur University—a longstanding hub of Left politics—for nearly five decades.
But this Durga Puja, a new bookstall appeared just metres away. A poster at its entrance read, “Maharishi Aurobindo Akhand Bharat”, calling itself as a collective stall run by Hindutva organisations.
It displayed Communist Atankwad, Srimad Bhagavat for Students and a magazine by Organiser magazine marking 100 years of the RSS. But the stall had no customers. Inside, a man sat on a chair, unwilling to reveal his name.
“This is an RSS bookstall,” he said.
Elsewhere, posters asking ‘proud Bengalis’ to remember their ‘Sanatani heritage’ with calls of ‘boycott Marx and Lenin’ also popped up.
The attempt to vandalise CPI(M) bookstall came four days after Biman Bose, chairman of the Left Front Committee, inaugurated it. Ghosh says the stall did not get an electrical connection despite informing the police in writing, paying municipal corporation tax and obtaining a CESC connection for power. They had paid the security deposit as well, but the permission, the High Court says, was never granted. Before the court hearing, Ghosh had claimed all permissions had been obtained.
“We took all the permission a month before. Like we have done in the past years. Yet this time, we had to buy our own meter for electricity connection and despite permission when the police and authorities came they questioned us,” said Ghosh.
Ghosh and his comrades blocked the demolition twice.
At the bookstall, discussions are now rife about the scramble to save the stall when the vandals arrived. Sudip Ghosh, who is now in charge of the stall, regularly posts videos on Instagram and Facebook, showing how the stall continues to function smoothly.
Here too, a day after the demolition attempt, sales surged. On Tuesday, people queued to walk through the stall.
Ghosh says the stall recorded Rs 6 lakh in sales in two days, against Rs 1 lakh in the previous four.
“People saw the men, the police and municipal corporation officials come to remove the stall. That prompted more people to come and buy books,” Ghosh said. “I would like to thank the vigilantes and Hindu outfits. Because of them, our book sales have increased.”
(Edited by Stela Dey)