Bengal is Bleeding: The Waqf War, Silent Leaders, and a Nation's Shame

 

It begins in the lanes of Canning — not with a gunshot, not even with a scream, but with whispers. Whispers that the mobs are coming. Whispers that the state is watching. Whispers that nobody will speak for them — the Hindus, whose only crime was living on land someone else now claims through faith and a law nobody voted for.

The fire that swallowed homes in Canning didn’t need a matchstick. It was lit by silence. That same old familiar silence that coats the lips of those in power when the victims don’t serve their electoral math.

 

Children dragged by their mothers, barefoot, running across muddy fields as their homes vanished behind flames. Shops gutted, temples defaced. An old man clutched his tricolor as if it could protect him. It couldn’t. His house was marked with green spray paint the day before — he knew what that meant. He thought maybe they'd spare an old man. They didn’t.

This isn’t fiction. This isn’t 2002. This is West Bengal in 2025.

And this is not about riots. This is about a regime that watched — some say it even fueled — the fire. About a law, cloaked in faith, weaponized by the powerful, blessed in silence by a political class that has forgotten its spine.

The Waqf Bill wasn’t just passed. It was dropped like a hammer on the already fractured skull of Bengal’s social fabric. Overnight, lands turned from ancestral to "disputed." Families who tilled for generations found notices nailed to their walls — this is now Waqf property. Protest, and you’re communal. Stay silent, and you’re homeless.

And the mobs? They didn’t wait for the courts.

They came with iron rods and slogans. Not for justice, but for conquest. If history is written by the victors, Bengal’s villages are now inked in betrayal.

But the most terrifying sight of all was not the flames. It was the silence of the so-called protectors of democracy. The "secular" guardians. The intellectuals who weep when the right wing sneezes — nowhere to be found. No hashtags. No late-night debates. No solidarity marches. No candles. Because the victims don’t fit the script.

Mamata Banerjee, the self-declared tigress of Bengal, roared into power promising to fight the Left’s tyranny. She now presides over a regime where Hindus are made refugees in their own land. Her response? A tweet. And a press conference where she blamed the BJP, the RSS, the CIA — anyone but her own government.

She didn’t visit the charred remains of Canning. Didn’t sit with the grieving mothers of Basirhat. Instead, she stood shoulder to shoulder with the very imams who said the Waqf Bill must stand — even if it burns Bengal.

Is it cowardice? Is it calculation? Or is it just contempt — for the majority that made her Chief Minister, and now lives in fear?

And it’s not just Bengal. It’s the same story of negligence echoing in corridors of Delhi. Where is the Parliament’s outrage? Where is the voice of conscience? When a single stone pelts a minority area, headlines scream. But when hundreds of Hindu homes burn, there’s only a passing mention on page six. It’s not news. It’s not trending. It’s not worth it.

How did we get here?

The answer lies in slow betrayal. In decades of using minorities as political pawns, turning appeasement into policy, and turning law into religion. The Waqf system was meant to be charitable. It is now a shadow state — owning land nobody remembers giving, controlling billions with no audits, answering to nobody but faith and fear.

And in Bengal, it has become a weapon.

Villages where temples once stood are now marked for acquisition. State documents vanish. Records mysteriously edited. And if you question it — prepare to be labeled a hate-monger, a fascist, a danger to secularism.

But in Assam, just across the border, another story is being written.

There, a man named Himanta Biswa Sarma didn’t choose silence. He chose confrontation — against illegal migration, against unchecked madrassas, against child marriages cloaked in cultural relativism. He shut down schools that taught hate, arrested clerics who ran parallel courts, and dared to say what most leaders whisper only in private.

And he was branded a bigot. A dictator. But Assam sleeps a little easier. Its temples haven’t been set on fire. Its festivals are not banned. Its daughters are not sold to old men across the border.

That’s leadership. Not perfect. But present.

In contrast, Bengal stands leaderless.

And don’t let the silence fool you — it is not peace. It is submission. It is fear painted over with political slogans and blood quietly wiped from school benches.

A 12-year-old boy in Bhangarh now carries a knife to school. Not because he wants to use it. Because his sister was pulled into an alley last week. The police came, took notes, then told his father: “Don’t push this. It's sensitive.”

Yes. Sensitive.

Like the demographics nobody wants to talk about. In 1951, Bengal had 19% Muslims. In 2011, 27%. By 2025, some districts already cross 35%. In border regions, Hindus are now the minority — not just numerically, but in voice, in law, and in fear.

This is not about Islam. It is about unchecked radicalism, political complicity, and the abandonment of secularism’s core promise — equal justice for all.

India was not built to privilege one religion’s law over another. The Constitution was not drafted to enable parallel states within the state. And Bengal — the land of Vivekananda, Tagore and Bose — was not meant to be ruled by mobs and muftis.

But that is what it is becoming.

And the rest of India must ask itself: If it can happen in Bengal, why not elsewhere? When majoritarianism wears a minority badge, who will speak? When laws serve faith, and faith overrules justice, who will protect the citizen?

This is no longer about Bengal alone. This is about the future of India. About whether we will remain a nation of laws — or become a loose federation of fearful enclaves, ruled by appeasement and abandoned by courage.

The time for cowardice has passed.

The time for polite silence is over.

Because if we don’t raise our voice for Bengal today, tomorrow it will be Bihar. Then Kerala. Then Uttar Pradesh. And soon, there will be no one left to speak.

It’s time to ask: Does Bengal deserve another Mamata? Or does it need a leader who believes in India — not in vote banks, not in slogans, but in justice?

The fire still burns in Canning. The ashes are still warm in Basirhat. The screams may have stopped. But the wound is festering.

And history is watching.