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Ballot, Bullet and Blood
A documented account of the targeted violence against opposition supporters in West Bengal following the 2021 Assembly elections.
Overview
When the West Bengal Assembly election results came in May 2021, the violence that followed was not random. Offices were burned. Opposition workers and their families were targeted. Women were raped, maimed, and killed. The law-enforcement machinery, by widespread account, looked the other way. Shivam Raghuwanshi and Shubham Tiwari spent months documenting what happened — case by case, name by name, location by location.
Ballot, Bullet and Blood is the result: a catalogue of post-poll violence that the authors argue amounts to state-sponsored displacement, carried out with communal undercurrents against the primary opposition constituency. The book has drawn endorsement from a Supreme Court advocate, a senior RSS official, and journalists covering the state, each of whom describes the research as painstaking and the documentation as evidence that belongs before human rights bodies — several of whose proceedings the cases are already part of.
For anyone trying to understand how electoral violence operates when the machinery meant to stop it stands aside, this is primary source material.
"Post Poll violence in Bengal is heart-rending and condemnable. It's a dangerous precedent for our democracy. This is against the tradition of co-existence in India. It should not be viewed just as a problem of law & order restricted to Bengal, it's a national threat. People of the country must take it seriously and compel the constitutional apparatus to cure this menace. I think authors have discharged their national duty in this effort of bringing out the truth of Bengal." Sunil Ambekar, Akhil Bharatiya Prachar Pramukh, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh "This book is an excellent effort by Shubham Tiwari and Shivam Raghuvanshi to catalogue the atrocities and to inaugurate to the wider reading audience and the world, the undercurrents including communal ones which were the motivating factors of the carnage. Congratulations to them! More truth and power to Shubham and Shivam in this endeavor." Vikramjit Banerjee, Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India "This book is the product of painstaking work undertaken by Shivam and Shubam capturing the internal displacement of Hindus caused by State-sponsored genocide in the State of Paschim Banga, the birthplace of Hindu Nationalism. One sincerely hopes that this book is read widely by Hindus first so that they are awakened from the deep and fatal slumber they are in. I also hope more and more young Hindus contribute to the cause of Hindu survival through scholarly and rigorous work." J Sai Deepak, Advocate, Supreme Court of India "Shubham Tiwari and Shivam Raghuwanshi's book 'Ballot, Bullet and Blood' captures the latest chapter in the state's tumultuous journey, the 2021 post-Assembly election violence...The cases are in court and before human rights bodies, and the well-researched book takes one through an unfortunate but crucial journey of knowledge." Abhijit Majumder Journalist
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