Barely five months after the BJP took power in West Bengal, Kolkata’s streets are no longer safe for Muslims who simply walk home from class. On September 24, three Aliah University theology students Ashik Billa, Hasanur Zaman and Muazzim Hossain were blocked near GD Hospital, slapped, beaten until their clothes tore, and branded “jihadis” and “jangi” by two men who scanned their beards and topis before attacking. One bled from the cheek. They filed a police complaint; the humiliation has not stopped.
This is not an isolated street brawl. Since May, minority communities have reported a sharp rise in targeted violence. Association for Protection of Civil Rights documentation and local reports describe post-poll attacks on Muslim homes, shops and cattle markets across Cooch Behar, North 24 Parganas, Howrah, Murshidabad and Kolkata itself. Parallel assaults on Christian families in Paschim Medinipur beatings, torn clothes, forced “ghar wapsi” rituals and threats of sexual assault on a minor have been linked by victims to Bajrang Dal-linked groups. Police action remains slow or selective. When Aliah students were attacked in the heart of the city, the message was clear: identity is now a trigger.
Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari’s government has answered with communal rhetoric rather than protection. References to “Friday people,” “Jamatis” and “Islamists” while defending arrests of protesters, combined with silence or denial when minority victims approach police stations, have created an environment in which mobs feel licensed. The same administration that promised development has allowed vigilante groups to operate with impunity, turning everyday movement into a risk calculation for Muslims.
Kolkata once prided itself on cosmopolitan restraint. That claim now rings hollow. When university students can be publicly thrashed and called terrorists for walking to the station, and when families face multi-day sieges for their faith, the state has abandoned its basic duty. The peak of humiliation is not a single viral video; it is the normalisation of fear. Unless the Adhikari government moves from slogans to swift, even-handed prosecutions, West Bengal risks becoming another laboratory of majoritarian violence under the national BJP’s umbrella. Muslims in Kolkata are already paying the price.
