Why are politics in West Bengal so violent?
The political stakes are even higher in the east Indian state than elsewhere in India
Last month police in the east Indian state of West Bengal took 11,000 people into “preventive detention”. They confiscated more than 20,000 licensed weapons, along with piles of ammunition and explosives. The election commission asked the central government in Delhi to deploy 80,000 paramilitary troops across India’s fourth-biggest state, home to more than 100m people.
This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline “Why are West Bengali politics so violent?”
From the July 22nd 2023 edition
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