A mass protest against the demolition of bookstalls during Durga Puja drew thousands of people in Kolkata on Saturday, with residents, students, academics and older citizens marching with books and demanding an end to what they described as an attack on reading and public expression.
The march began at the Vidyasagar statue at College Square and circled the square. Participants carried banners reading “Books versus Bulldozer” and held books by authors including Rabindranath Tagore, B.R. Ambedkar, Saratchandra Chattopadhyay, Satyajit Ray, Arundhati Roy and Umar Khalid.
The demonstrations followed attempts to demolish bookstalls associated with Left parties during the Puja period. Telegraph India reported that hundreds of people in Jadavpur stood in front of an earthmover to prevent the demolition of a stall. The standoff continued through the night.
The report also linked the confrontation to a night in which 19 visitors were killed in a stampede at a north Kolkata Puja pandal. While emergency conditions unfolded elsewhere in the city, police were reported to have deployed a bulldozer to dismantle a bookstall in Jadavpur, intensifying anger among those gathered to defend it.
The issue quickly moved beyond party affiliation. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) said it recorded unprecedented book sales, while residents who would not normally visit Left bookstalls during Durga Puja attended them in response to the demolition attempts. Participants said the protests brought together people across age, language and political backgrounds.
A Jadavpur University research scholar said the central concern was not the political identity of the stall’s organisers but the destruction of books and the state’s role in allowing it. Another student described the episode as unusual for Kolkata, a city known for its book culture and traditions of public debate and protest.
Retired bureaucrat Jawhar Sircar, 75, joined the march weeks after knee-replacement surgery. He said the destruction of bookstalls recalled attacks on books in Nazi Germany and argued that Bengal’s relationship with books had helped challenge orthodoxy and promote rationality.
Former Rabindra Bharati University vice-chancellor Pabitra Sarkar, 90, also attended the protest despite saying he could no longer walk. He described the demonstration as a defence of a regressive culture rather than an expression of party politics.
Political scientist Maidu Islam said the attacks violated citizens’ fundamental rights and condemned the violence against people attempting to protect the stalls. The report said the state’s new BJP government had sought to demolish the Left bookstalls, while senior leaders justified the action and lower-level functionaries allegedly carried out the campaign.
The protests have placed the management of temporary public spaces during major festivals under scrutiny. In this case, the dispute concerns not only political stalls but also the authority used to remove them, the treatment of cultural activity in public areas and the ability of citizens to challenge municipal or police action on the ground. The reported standoff in Jadavpur remains the latest flashpoint in the wider confrontation.
