May 4, 2026. Mark the date as the day democracy died in India. The people of Bengal have blood on their hands. Not for what happened after the results. That is Bengal’s political culture, as Mahua Moitra said. And, by the way, where are the central forces who were supposed to stay on well after the voting? Just because the rod and the rock are in the other hands now? Violence aside, we have larger issues to deal with. An issue, actually.
Democracy as we knew it has surrendered itself. My lovely little brain is buffering as it processes what just happened two days ago. Why did the good people of Bengal, the Bhadralok, change their hearts after 15 years of beating so loyally for Didi the Defiant? The results have broken so many hearts like mine.
Before the results, we could cry about SIR. The results were supposed to be a SIR-prize for the bigots. They brought us bigot poristhiti. Data suggests that even if you take all the deleted names as those of TMC voters, the BJP still wins. Give the seats where margins were smaller than the deleted voter numbers to the TMC, the BJP still wins. What sorcery is this?
Can you feel the knife twisting? We have been betrayed by everyone we trusted. The beautiful Bhadralok bhais and boudis of Behela, the chheles and meyes of Medinipur, the Muslims in the middle around Malda and Murshidabad.
They voted Humayun Kabir twice over. Some even voted Congress because Rahul Gandhi wanted Mamata removed from power. They took Rahul ji seriously when he said Mamata is as bad as Modi. People did not understand that he winked. Neither, apparently, did his party workers, but that is a grief for another day. Now Rahul ji too is in shock and has assured Mamata Didi of the full support of his one MLA. One man. One MLA. One nation.
We have been betrayed by the big Marwari business houses of Kolkata. They were the biggest financiers of TMC. They did not put their money where their vote… er… mouth is. Mouth is mukh, so they rallied for Mukhopadhyay and only bandied around Bandyopadhyay. A tale of two surnames and one enormous double-cross. Bhaipo had warned. Now Bhaipo is warned. Tables have turned.
The women who took Rs 1,500 every month are throwing colours at each other like it is Sindur Khela. Khela hobe keno? Is this the time for Ma’s immersion? We have been immersed in the sounds and sights of the average Bong boys reclaiming the streets from the good men of TMC. The post-poll violence ritual is proof that even the cut-money-addled adda dadas have begun sporting bhagwa gamchha as they drive motorcycles through New Market. The market is old but this, pardon me, is new.
The central forces descended on the state as if we were going to war, which we were, but we were going to war to win. We did not sign up for this war. This dance of democracy is ugly and chhotolok’s Chhau. But we must now think about the kind of democracy we have ended up with. All we wanted was a fourth term for Didi. All we got is a terminal case for democracy. People who did not have to bother walking to the booth were seen voting. This year the dead could not vote. Some living folks were also denied, due to SIR. But the polling percentage still went through the roof, and this Kaal Baisakhi took away the roof, the rafters, and our entire belief system with it.
The un-defeatable Didi was humbled at Bhabanipur by Suvendu Adhikari. Didi could not be defeated. Didi was. By the same man who defeated her the last time, in Nandigram. What rice does he eat? Whatever it is, somebody please stop importing it.
Some people say people were itching for change. For a change, they found an alternative. The BJP was not the alternative even the last time. So what changed in five years? This clearly means that if you work hard with singular focus to snatch power, you can do it. If democracy permits the hard work of a national party to crush a popular, secular, vernacular, ventricular, lenticular, and lovely local party, is this even democracy? And if democracy is not even democracy, what is it?
This is not BJP’s victory. This might be controversial, but I would stick my neck out and say this is the EC’s victory. The EC said this time the election would be unlike the last two. Free and fair. Well, congrats then! With companies of central forces and Singham-type observers, they won over the confidence of the people. By promising the forces would stay on after polling, the EC got voters to come out in large numbers and vote for whoever they wanted. The hoi polloi, who were asked to vote for our preferred party, went ahead and exercised their own choice. The nerve. This is how the EC achieved victory. One nation, one task, one ask.
The party that failed to cross two digits crossed 200. What kind of magic is this? Bengal was infamous for magic spells. Now everybody has learnt the trick.
The BJP managed only one seat in Tamil Nadu and a couple in Kerala. Just because Bengali is Devanagari-adjacent, they took advantage of the familiarity. Familiarity breeds contempt and failed attempts. In three attempts, the BJP cracked Bengal. This is a warning for Kerala, not Devanagari but Sanskrit-adjacent. Sanskrit, as we know, is the mother of us all, which makes this a very Oedipal situation. Tamil Nadu is a tough coconut to crack, but since they cracked Karnataka, they should not be taken lightly.
We are digressing. The point is democracy. In Tamil Nadu, people wanted a change and Vijay presented himself as the alternative. They chose Vijay. In Kerala, Malayalis were tired of the Red after two consecutive terms and craved change. The Congress was their alternative. They picked Congress. In Bengal, they yearned for change and BJP was the alternative. Look at the chutzpah of the otherwise tame Bengali: they grabbed it. Just like the Tamils and Malayalis did. The culture is going south, if you needed any proof.
The Bengalis we loved so dearly knew fully well that it is democracy only as long as the BJP is not the alternative. The correct method is to wait for a non-BJP alternative to emerge and then enjoy the fruits of democracy. But the aam Bengali loves the Malda aam. The Malda deceives. Malda does not go yellow or saffron when it ripens. It stays green. So an inexpert eye does not know whether it is ripe enough to pluck. We did not realise Bengal was ripe for the plucking. It was our space, our narrative, our tree. Now Amit Shah ran away and handed it to Narendra Modi. We do not know what fate our beloved Malda has in store. Thanks to Akshay Kumar, we know Modi ji sucks on it and slices it too. What if, god forbid, the Gujarati in him makes aamras. Ma go! Pulp fiction!
Pulp is all that remains. Is this the kind of democracy we want? Gradually, one party is mastering the art of winning and has been winning.
India is beginning to resemble a cricket match where one team turns up, bats, fields, collects the trophy, and heads home in time for dinner, while the other spends the afternoon debating whether cricket is the right sport for them. This is not a new tournament. The fixture has been the same for a while. Yet every season, a fresh chorus rises questioning the quality of the pitch, the neutrality of the umpires, and the fairness of the game.
Nobody asks why one side is so consistently unprepared and scattered. Questioning the opposition is so Godi. We would rather ask rhetorical questions to the government and win. Because we always win the drawing room debates. It’s cooler in there and there are drinks.
This is not a BJP story. This is an opposition story. Which raises an obvious question nobody in the political class seems interested in answering: why hold elections at all? If the contest is between an organisation that treats politics as a full-time business and a collection of parties that treat it as an interruption to their identity crises, what exactly is the voter being asked to choose between?
The BJP’s method is not spectacular. It is grinding, patient, and micro-level. It identifies which castes are movable and moves them. Just enough for the arithmetic. Not glamorous. Works. The problem is, we are humanities people, and we fight for humanity. Arithmetic is too cruel, too inhuman, and frankly beneath us.
People are now asking whether elections in India mean anything. The BJP’s prolific performance is cited as evidence of democratic decay. But a walkover is a result, not a verdict. Voters cannot choose what they are not offered. A credible alternative requires an organisation that functions between elections, candidates who reflect the constituency, and the discipline to stay on one issue until it lands rather than flitting to the next headline. The BJP has all three. The Congress, the leader of our pack, continues to oscillate between moments of mobilisation and prolonged spells of organisational inertia.
We are left, pun intended, with no option but to question the quality of Indian democracy. The election is not the problem. The preparation is. India does not have a democracy problem. It has an opposition problem. And we must not ask questions of the opposition, the way Godi media does. We should question democracy itself, which increasingly produces results we dislike. Damn!
(Kamlesh Singh, a columnist and satirist, is Tau of the popular Teen Taal podcast)
(Views expressed in the piece are those of the author)
