The Scent of Mahua, the Smell of Gunpowder and the Sound of Radicalisation

This book offers a longitudinal ethnographic account of political violence in West Bengal in the 21st century. Through immersive fieldwork across Junglemahal’s forests, provincial towns, and riot-torn districts, it reveals how violence has transformed from Maoist insurgency into an entrepreneurial enterprise of intimidation, illicit gain, and competitive communalism. Comparable to Germany in population and Austria in size, West Bengal has endured Partition, seen the world’s longest democratically elected Left regime, and one of India's highest rates of political murder. This book traces a disturbing evolution: from armed Maoist conflict to the rise of Hindutva and Islamic fundamentalism, where perpetrators become role models and illegality is normalized. Bridging macro analysis with ethnographic detail, the book exposes the agencies, operations, and everyday negotiations that sustain cultures of violence. It challenges binaries of state versus communal violence, pre-election versus post-election violence by showing their entanglement. It shows the agency of ordinary people within precarious structures of a messy state with inclusive and normalised illegalities. The volume will be of interest to scholars and researchers of politics, especially political violence, ethnography and South Asian studies.