An Analysis of Al Jazeera's Report on Fear and Faith in Modi's New West Bengal

Image: New York Times

By way of Al Jazeera's Ritwika Mitra, published May 25, 2026

Fear and Faith in Modi's New West Bengal: Less than a week before one of Islam's most significant celebrations, the Dhulagarh cattle market on the outskirts of Kolkata looked more like an abandoned lot than a trading hub. Over two hundred head of cattle stood tied to bamboo poles in the summer heat. The traders huddled under tin shade. The buyers never came.

That image — stark, economic, and quietly devastating — is the opening scene of Al Jazeera's report on how the BJP's first-ever election victory in West Bengal is reshaping daily life for the state's 25 million Muslims in the run-up to Eid al-Adha. What begins as a story about an empty cattle market quickly widens into something larger: a portrait of a community navigating fear, financial ruin, and a political order that arrived with speed and intent. It is affecting, important journalism — and with a few additions, it could have been even more complete.

For decades, West Bengal was different from much of the rest of India. Governed for long stretches by Marxists and centrist parties, it cultivated a reputation for pluralism. A 1950 law technically prohibited cattle slaughter without government certification, but successive administrations chose not to enforce it strictly. Kolkata's streets became famous for their beef and meat dishes, sold from roadside carts and in restaurants that drew customers across religious lines. The annual cattle trade ahead of Eid al-Adha was simply part of the seasonal economy — sellers were mostly Hindu, buyers mostly Muslim, and the arrangement worked.

That arrangement collapsed on May 6, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi's BJP swept West Bengal's state elections for the first time. Within a week of being sworn in, the new Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari ordered the strict enforcement of the 1950 law: cattle could only be slaughtered in certified municipal abattoirs, animals had to be over 14 years of age, and all required official documentation before a blade was raised. The message, for those in the trade, was unmistakable.

Prices collapsed almost immediately. Live cow prices fell from 400 rupees per kilogram to as low as 150. Muslim traders shuttered shops. Restaurants quietly removed beef from their menus — one Kolkata burger joint, The Burger Shop, posted on Instagram that their famous beef burgers were gone, writing that their burgers had no religion, but politics did. A vendor had been called to a police station and told to shut his business temporarily. The restaurant had no alternative supplier.

The human cost registered across religious lines. At Dhulagarh, Hindu sellers from distant districts — men who spend most of the year as construction labourers — had borrowed money at high interest rates to stock up for the festival season. For every unsold animal, they told the reporter, they were losing around 5,000 rupees. One Muslim trader, who goes by the name Sundor, had borrowed a million rupees against his mother's jewellery to purchase 25 cattle. By the time the reporter spoke to him, he had sold none. The previous year, he had sold nearly a hundred.

The BJP's response, as presented in the article, was brief — party spokesman Debjit Sarkar said the government was simply enforcing laws that had long been ignored. It is a position the report would have benefited from exploring further. The 1950 law is real, its disuse was always a political choice, and understanding why the new government prioritised its enforcement so immediately — and what it believes the outcome should look like — would have added an important dimension to an otherwise rich piece. A fuller account of the BJP's reasoning, even if ultimately unconvincing, would have strengthened the report's credibility with readers who do not already share its sympathies.

Legal expert Jayasimha Nuggehalli, a former member of the Animal Welfare Board of India, offered a sharper structural reading: that cattle slaughter laws in India are rarely about animal welfare in any comprehensive sense, and are more closely tied to questions of identity, trade, and rural livelihoods. It is a measured and well-sourced perspective that grounds the story in something beyond the immediate moment.

Beyond the market, the atmosphere described in the report extends into the streets. In Muslim neighbourhoods across the state, newly elected BJP legislators have reportedly told residents not to offer prayers in public spaces — a practice common across South Asia, where mosques often cannot accommodate all worshippers during major occasions. Markets in Mullick Bazaar and Park Circus, normally crowded with festive shoppers before Eid, were described as empty, with traders declining to give their names for fear of official reprisal.

The most forceful commentary comes from activist and writer Harsh Mander, who frames the BJP's agenda as the culmination of a century-long ideological project to deny Muslims equal citizenship in India. His words are powerful, and his perspective is important. The piece would have been even stronger had it paired his voice with an equally substantive response from the BJP or a Hindu nationalist scholar — not to create false balance, but to show the reader the full shape of the argument being contested. Strong journalism does not shy from sharp perspectives; it simply ensures those perspectives are tested.

What the article captures most powerfully, and what no amount of additional voices could diminish, is the texture of a political transition felt not in policy documents or parliamentary debates, but in empty market stalls, shuttered meat shops, and traders who will not give their names. The details of a loan taken against a mother's jewellery. The price collapsed from 400 rupees to 150. The burger shop had to pause its menu. These are the kinds of details that make the abstract concrete, and the reporter deserves credit for gathering them with care.

West Bengal has long been held up as proof that a different kind of Indian politics was possible. This report documents, with clarity and humanity, what it looks and feels like when that possibility is put under pressure. A little more space given to the other side of that argument would not have weakened the story. It would have made it harder to dismiss.

This is an analytical reading of a reported article by Ritwika Mitra, published by Al Jazeera on May 25, 2026. All factual claims are drawn from that report.