'BJP Betrayed Us': Bengal's Matua Hindus Branded 'Infiltrators' After SIR Purge

(At The Quint, we continue to give voice to those who would otherwise go unheard. If you find value in our work, support us by becoming a member.)The words 'The Exile' are painted in bold English letters at the entrance of the Thakurbari temple in Thakurnagar, the "heartland" of the Matua community in West Bengal, located about 65 km from Kolkata."Exile is something all Matuas understand. We are all refugees from erstwhile East Pakistan, after all. It has been part of our identity. And it remains so, today more than ever, amid the SIR process which is turning udbastu (refugee) Matuas into onuprobeshkari (infiltrators)," says Mamatabala Thakur, Rajya Sabha MP from the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the Matua community's religious matriarch, as she points at the red letters. Located within the Gaighata Assembly constituency (SC) in North 24 Parganas district, Thakurnagar is home to the Matua community's oldest family, the Thakurs, who trace their lineage back to the radical reformist, anti-caste Hindu saint, Harichand Thakur, the founder of Matua dharma.With the constituency all set to vote in the second phase of West Bengal Assembly elections 2026 in the shadow of the complicated SIR—or Special Intensive Revision—of electoral rolls, questions over exile, identity, home, and belonging have once again become central to the community's discourse.In the exercise undertaken by the Election Commission of India (ECI) to ensure all eligible citizens are on the voter list, while "infiltrators" or illegal voters are weeded out, many Matua Hindus—incidentally voters of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in recent years—in Thakurnagar and throughout the Matua-dominated belts of West Bengal now find their names deleted or "under adjudication".27 Lakh Deleted: Bengal's Voter Purge is Clustered In Minority & TMC BastionsRoughly 30 km from Thakurbari, in Uttar Panchpota village in North 24 Parganas, Pronab Mondal has remained buried under a heap of documents and paperwork since 16 December last year, when the ECI published its first SIR list (ASDD or Absent, Shifted, Duplicate, Dead).Now, with the ECI's final supplementary lists released on Tuesday, 7 April, Mondal—the now 29-year-old who was born in West Bengal—remains "deleted"."My family migrated to West Bengal sometime in the 1980s from the Khulna district, mainly due to local religious persecution following the 1971 war. This area is full of families like ours."Pronab MondalYet, Mondal's name featured among the 155 persons whose names were deleted from the voter rolls in the ECI's final lists from booth nos 177 and 178 of Bagdah Assembly constituency (SC), a local booth level officer (BLO), requesting anonymity, confirmed."Across these two polling booths, the initial voter list totalled 1,900 names. Subsequently, 66 names were deleted, and 18 were added—resulting in a figure of 84. Following the adjudication process, 83 names were added and 72 were deleted—bringing the final count to 155," the BLO said.Bagdah will vote in the second phase of polling on 29 April. Mondal informs The Quint that he has filled Form 6 to register himself as a new voter, "but there have been no developments yet", and their BLO hasn't informed him anything either.Brandishing a file full of his own papers—birth certificate, ration card, voter ID, Aadhaar, PAN card, SC certificate, matriculation certificate, and a graduation certificate from Kalyani University, he adds:"I have all these papers... my life is mapped out in these documents. Yet, they have deleted me, my brother, and my father because my father was unmapped—his name was not on 2002 voter list. My sister and my mother were under adjudication... now they have been deleted, too. But my cousins have been tagged valid. How can members of the same extended family be both valid and invalid?""Even if I accept the loss of my voting right, will I get any official job or even be considered for equal pay in daily wage work without a valid voter card? We cannot perceive what the future will be like for us," Mondal, whose family recently built a two-storey house and is now burdened with debt, asks.The Matuas are a 'Namashudra' SC community, though not all Namashudra castes are Matuas. Once referred to as "Chandals", the Matuas as well as other Namashudra sects and SC/ST communities that lived further inland, away from the Bengal-Bangladesh borders, were severed from mainland India in post-Partition communal strife.Many Matuas still remain in Bangladesh."If you look at the history of migration from East Pakistan to West Bengal, in the first wave of migration or during the post-Partition period in the 1950s, the more resourceful, connected, upper caste Hindus primarily crossed over first and took up spaces in urban centres or cities. The lower castes came in later phases, and without the luxury of financial or social connections to make it to Kolkata or elsewhere, these communities settled down in border areas of Gaighata, Bongaon, and other regions," researcher Ashin Chakraborty tells The Quint.A majority of these late entrants became engaged in their traditional agrarian occupations, with later generations taking to daily wage work to make a living.They also procured local documents such as ration cards, PAN cards, and even voter IDs, making them citizens of a kind. And yet, not all have citizenship documents, the legal requisite for being labelled an Indian citizen. This can be attributed to the changes in India's citizenship laws over the years that govern who is and who isn't a citizen.Chakraborty, along with lead researcher Dr Sabir Ahmed, is part of Kolkata-based SABAR Institute that has been mining SIR data for ethno-socio-political insights. As per their findings, while critics raised alarm about deletion of Muslims from voter rolls as part of the BJP's "Hindu Rashtra" project, it was indeed all vulnerable communities, including marginalised caste or class Hindus like the Matuas, and women, that have been disproportionately affected by the SIR.The findings, published in a study titled The Hidden Algorithms of Exclusion, noted that in the first phase of SIR, the unmapped (ASDD) lists primarily affected marginalised Hindu communities and were not correlated with high Muslim demographics.The highest rates of unmapped voters (10-14.5 percent) were found in SC-reserved constituencies like Gaighata and Bagdah. This largely affected the Matua community and Namashudras. The reasons for the high rates of deletion were given as voters being labeled "permanently shifted" or "dead." "These are not really dead or relocated people but mainly those without proper mapping or documents to prove they are legally here."Ashin ChakrabortyIncidentally, Muslim-dominated belts like Malda and Murshidabad had the highest number of mapped voters in the first list, as Muslims were well-tallied in the 2002 voter list."It kind of highlighted the fallacy of the SIR—that it would weed out illegal infiltrators from Bangladesh, mainly Muslims—as the people who migrated from Bangladesh to India after Partition were not Muslims, but majorly Hindus."Sabir AhmedFollowing the initially released unmapped list came the "logical discrepancies" phase, one of the more controversial parts of the SIR process in Bengal. Ahmed notes that this move was brought in to further act as a "surgical tool for exclusion, disproportionately targeting Muslims far beyond their population share"."Now, the lists in Malda-Murshidabad changed with many Muslim names coming under adjudication due to various technical issues," Ahmed explains.In Hindu-dominated belts, however, it was again the vulnerable castes and communities that increasingly came "under adjudication" or were "deleted" altogether, including those who had previously been mapped. For the Matuas, who had so far been assured that "no Hindu name will be cut from the voter list", the numbers were not reflecting well.Are Indian Muslims' Voting Rights Under Attack? 3 Aspects to ThisHridoy Mondal from Ashoknagar in Habra Assembly constituency's ward no 22, whose name had been "under adjudication" in the first list, has now been deleted in the final supplementary list. Not just his but the names of about 200 people in his ward—that had been "under adjudication" after the second list—have since been deleted. Only five voters remain eligible to vote in his ward, he states. Hridoy, who runs an electronics business, has filed an appeal under ECINET, but has not got a response yet.Also a Matua like most in his neighbourhood, Hridoy's family migrated to Bengal in the 2000s. But unlike the communities in the border villages, Hridoy's family lived in a working class, semi-urban, more politicised region."My father does not have a voter card, so when our names came 'under adjudication' in December, he applied for citizenship under the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 (CAA)... Some local BJP leaders said it would prevent our names from getting removed under the SIR," Hridoy says.The CAA was, in fact, specifically passed keeping in mind Hindu communities like the Matuas.But Hridoy's father got rejected as his documents did not add up per the requirements of the CAA. According to reports, the number of pending CAA applications in West Bengal is at 50,000. Others applying for citizenship under the CAA tell The Quint that the process is even more complicated than the SIR. Gour Majumdar from Bagdah, who has applied under the CAA, says the process requires migration certificates, proof of residence from the country of origin such as land deeds, and other papers."Most of us don't have these as not all came through official channels or would want to reveal their past," Majumdar tells The Quint. "Second, even when one does apply, the date of hearing never gets listed. I had applied online before the first list was released in December."Four members of his household, including his sons and himself, have lost their vote since the application, and "still no hearing," he says.Beyond voting rights, the community has other tangible concerns like the government benefits through various state and Central schemes."If our names are not on the voter list, will we remain beneficiaries of the state's offerings?"Hridoy Mondal'We're Not Bangladeshi': How SIR in Bengal is Taking on a Communal ColourAt least 20 Assembly segments in North 24 Parganas and the adjacent Nadia districts in South Bengal are known for significant Matua presence. Other analysts put the Matua influence as a valid electoral factor in at least 45 of Bengal's 294 seats. In previous interviews, the All India Matua Mahasangha, the statutory body of the Matuas, has put the number of Matuas in West Bengal to be exceeding 10 million.A key component of West Bengal's SC votebank, Matua votes have increasingly shifted to the BJP in recent elections. While the BJP's promise of citizenship gave the shift a phillip, at the heart of it is a feud within the "first family" of the Matua community, the Thakurs, who lead the Matua Mahasangha.Analyst Sibaji Pratim Basu points out that in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, with the Communist Party [CPI(M)] allying with the Congress, a large chunk of the Left voters among the Matuas shifted to the BJP, encouraged by promises of citizenship. The shift played a key role in the BJP getting a bigger slice of the polling pie in Bengal in non-Muslim belts. While the BJP had 10.3 percent vote share in the 2016 Assembly elections, winning three out of 294 seats, the 2019 Lok Sabha election saw a 40.6 percent vote share for the BJP, with the party winning 18 out of 42 Lok Sabha seats, attributed largely to the "Modi wave". "The BJP managed to revive a dormant memory, or create one, of communal angst among the Matuas, many of whom had come to India to escape religious persecution of some form," local journalist and founder of EastPost, Soumo Mondal, tells The Quint. Why RG Kar Rape Victim's Mother Fighting Bengal Polls for BJP Has Raised a RowIn the 2021 Assembly polls, the numbers in support of the BJP had somewhat dwindled as compared to the 2019 Lok Sabha, with the TMC, winning with 215 seats and forming government. But it still managed 77 seats, with an almost 38 percent vote share.The party maintained a 39 percent and above vote share in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, though it lost six seats from 2019's tally of 18. Mamatabala, who lost the Bongaon seat to the BJP in 2019, points out that it was the other non-Matua SC, and non-SC Hindu voters in the Matua belts, who contributed to the BJP retaining the seats post 2019, and that the Matua vote has been shifting, even if large sections did continue to vote for the saffron party. Now, the 2026 polls will be a litmus test for the BJP's SC-Hindu outreach in the state."The community started to see that the BJP was only dangling citizenship as a carrot in front of our eyes. People are realising now that it's a sham," Santosh Adhikary, a Matua community leader from the independent political outfit Guruchand Sena Dal, tells The Quint.He adds that while his family has the migration certificates and citizenship documents aquired over the years, his youngest son's and daughter's names have come "under adjudication"."I have written to local members of the election body about the issue. And my son's name has been removed from adjudication. But my daughter's remains. I run a recognised political outfit for Matuas, and thus, carry some heft in society. I don't think poor or marginalised Matua voters can pull such favours as the process does not seem to be uniform for all."Santosh AdhikaryHe adds that his party has also fielded candidates in this election independently, because the community needs to come out of the "TMC-BJP binary" and stand as a united force in itself. "But the issue of citizenship continues to hold people back. Many still feel the BJP will give them citizenship and save the day," he posits.TMC MP Mamatabala Thakur nevertheless reminds that the question of citizenship is a trick to begin with."We are an avarna community, and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes are the indigenous people of India. It has taken us centuries to be considered as equal citizens and wards of the State. By taking away our right to vote and questioning our citizenship, the government is sending us back into slavery," Thakur tells The Quint.As per the ECI’s final supplementary list, 45.22 percent of the 60,06,675 names "under adjudication" have been “deleted”. In the first district-wise data on deletions shared by the election body, the Matua-dominated Nadia district has the most number of deleted voters, at 77.86 percent.Other Matua-populated districts like Hooghly, Purba and Pashchim Bardhaman, and North 24 Parganas have seen high voter deletions as well. On 7 April, the electoral rolls for specific Assembly constituencies going to early polls were frozen by the Supreme Court after the nomination deadline, which can limit the ability to make immediate changes to voter rolls. Since most SC/Matua-dominated seasts are voting in the second phase, the voters in these seats still have some time to appeal their SIR status. But for many, the trial seems unending—and the result uncertain. Bengal Polls: BJP's 'Catla Fish' Push to Woo Non-Veg Voters Reeks of Hypocrisy

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'BJP Betrayed Us': Bengal's Matua Hindus Branded 'Infiltrators' After SIR Purge

Many Matua Hindus—incidentally voters of the BJP in recent years—now find their names deleted from the voter list.

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