“Never Forgive, Never Forget”: Mapping Bengal’s Post-Poll Hate Surge 

For 79 years, West Bengal kept Hindu nationalism at arm’s length. On May 4, 2026, that wall broke — and what followed online was not just celebration but the activation of a hate infrastructure decades in the making. This report maps how online rhetoric and on-ground tensions are feeding into each other. 

On May 4, 2026, after an unbroken 79 years of keeping the ‘Hindu right’ out of their political domain, West Bengal elected a BJP government to lead the state with a thumping majority of 207 out of 294 seats. From the mass deletion of voters after the Special Intensive Revision to the decades of ideological groundwork laid by the RSS, the BJP’s electoral success is analysed with a range of reasons.

The BJP’s electoral wins have often been fuelled by massive hate campaigns, both online and offline, across India. Bengal was no different. For years, from the Prime Minister to state-level leaders, the minority community in the state has been labelled as ‘infiltrators’, with open declarations that their votes were neither sought nor needed. This time, after the victory, something unnerving is unfolding.

The BJP has allegedly unleashed a violent crackdown on TMC (Trinamool Congress) machinery and other anti-BJP elements on the ground, while calls for ‘vengeance’ against decades of misrule and ‘injustices meted out to Hindus’ are intensifying online. 

The alarming part is that both are feeding into each other. This report attempts to map the seemingly organised hate campaign unfolding particularly on X since the May 4 victory. Old incidents are being reignited to urge people to ‘never forgive and forget’, while incidents with no evidence or verified trajectories are being communalised. The narratives heavily celebrate ‘reclaiming’ the lost Hindu glory of the state. 

‘Vengeance’ as a rallying cry

After the victory, the reopening of a Durga temple in the Asansol Uttar constituency was facilitated by the BJP’s newly elected MLA Krishnendu Mukherjee, who had promised to keep the temple open throughout the year if he won. Reports say that the temple remains largely closed for most of the year due to local disputes and administrative restrictions, and opens only twice a year for the special occasions of Durga Puja and Lakshmi Puja. By evening, when the BJP secured all nine Assembly seats in Paschim Bardhaman district, under which Asansol falls, a large crowd had gathered to witness the reopening.

Right-wing social media users did not take it lightly. Feeds erupted with celebrations of the event, with users offering different perspectives in their captions. On May 5, a user named Incognito posted a video on X showing people celebrating in front of the temple. His caption read, “We didn’t want anything from Modi. We just wanted our Dharma, and the Mandir is open now. Mamata Banerjee and her goons literally closed Mandirs and stopped Hindus from praying in her bid to appease Muslims. People of Bengal are celebrating like they have defeated a Muslim invader”.

The post had garnered more than 35,000 views and 4,300 likes as of May 6. Most of the comments were communally charged, with some remarking that this was the ‘end of the Mughal empire’ in the state. 

Another post shared a video of the celebrations. In the caption, it claimed that the temple was closed due to the ‘appeasement of the jihadi community’. This post had more than 1. 5 lakh views, along with 14,000 likes and 3,000 reposts as of May 6. One of the communally polarising comments read, “Just 20 metres away on the right side and 100 metres away on the left side from it there are Muslim hotels which sell beef. Kindly close all beef hotels in Asansol”. Another said, “Those who threatened or killed Hindus will be executed one by one. Revenge will be taken”.

In another instance of invoking ‘revenge’, an account called ‘Telangana Mata’ posted a photo of a family allegedly killed in Murshidabad,West Bengal, in 2019. The caption read, ‘RSS worker and primary school teacher Bandhu Prakash Pal, along with his pregnant wife and child, were killed in cold blood in West Bengal. Never forget. Never forgive’. The comments saw hostile calls for the annihilation of the minority community and for avenging the ‘barbaric murder’. One user tagged BJP Bengal’s official account and wrote, ‘Just clean West Bengal—either bulldoze their houses or do encounters. All criminals should be punished, and the Yogi ji model should be followed’.

Though the BJP and the then- West Bengal Governor, Jagdeep Dhankhar, had said that the victim was an RSS worker, Bandhu Prakash Pal’s family had denied that he had any political affiliation. The police investigation had pointed to a financial dispute. The incident had also gone viral earlier in 2025 with communally charged narratives alleging that Rohingya Muslims had killed the victim. According to reports, the accused arrested by the police was also a Hindu.

The derogatory attacks on Mamata

The Hindu reports that the TMC was involved in 64% of the poll violence over the past decade, followed by the BJP with 27.14%.

As the BJP gains power, its online campaign appears to focus on ‘avenging’ the violence. Mamata Banerjee is the most viciously targeted, with AI-generated images and other derogatory forms of humiliation. 

In an AI-generated image widely circulated since May 4, Mamata Banerjee is depicted as being slain by a violent goddess Kali. The imagery of the goddess is violent, with her tongue sticking out, the ‘slayer of Mahishasura’ as in Hindu mythology. Here, Mamata—or TMC rule—becomes synonymous with ‘unrighteousness’, something the world needs to be purged of.

Veteran cultural critic Ashis Nandy theorised in one of his studies that Hindu identity had been formed chiefly through violence. He also argued that Hindutva nationalism functions structurally like an exorcism ritual: it requires the presence of a demon to expel. This ritual was essentially devised by V. D Savarkar, the most prominent ideologue of Hindutva. 

This ‘exorcism ritual’ is exactly what paved the way for ideas and portrayals like the one mentioned above, where anti-BJP elements are seen as ‘demons’ to be expelled.

Videos where BJP workers are seen parading a doppelganger of Mamata Banerjee tied with a rope and kicked while chanting ‘Jai Shri Ram’ are also being circulated online. Excerpts from her old speeches are being circulated with captions that say her ‘Muslim appeasement has come to an end’. Visuals of men dressed in white clothes, mimicking Mamata in derogatory ways on public roads, have also gone viral in the last two days.

How emotionally charged narratives turn communal

Another set of trending posts referred to the victory of Ratna Debnath, mother of the 31-year-old postgraduate trainee doctor at RG Kar Medical College who was raped and murdered in 2024. Ratna won from the Panihati constituency on a BJP ticket. It is being framed as a ‘justice wave in Bengal’, as the BJP alleges that she was denied justice under Mamata’s rule.

At the same time, some comments question why the survivor or the mother of the victim in the Hathras and Unnao rape cases were not given tickets, framing this as evidence of hypocrisy on the BJP’s part. 

A slew of top-level BJP leaders across the country have faced sexual misconduct allegations in the years since the party came to power.

Another video circulating since May 4 shows a girl in what appears to be a small village forcefully throwing down a TMC flag in anger. A group of children can be seen with her. The caption reads, “Leave aside the adults—even children in Bengal are openly expressing their anger towards the TMC today”. One user commented, ‘‘How much Hindus suffered in Begum’s jihadi rule! This is making me cry with joy😭”.

Another account, Tathvam-asi, a frequent peddler of Hindutva-related misinformation on X, shared a post which, as of May 6, has garnered about two lakh views. The post urges the BJP to ‘please fortify our borders. Bring NRC, CAA, or do whatever you wish. But please throw out the illegal immigrants from our country and never let them enter our sacred motherland again. India is for Indians. It is not for Bangladeshi radicals. There can’t be any excuses now’. The post has gained around 20,000 likes.

A user calls for the re-release of The Kashmir Files in West Bengal in another post, saying it is time for the ‘truth’ to be told again. The Kashmir Files is a 2022 film directed by Vivek Agnihotri, and has been widely criticised as a Hindutva propaganda film.

Violence, online and offline

Suvendu Adhikari, who defeated Mamata Banerjee in the Bhabanipur constituency and is a frontrunner for the Chief Minister’s post in Bengal, told journalists in February 2025, “I am proud that we defeated the government with Hindu votes and not with Muslim votes. This government is a Muslim government, a Mollah’s government.” In March, during an Assembly session, he said, “We will not only defeat Mamata Banerjee, but also throw out the Muslim MLAs of her party.” Even after the win, Adhikari said that the entire muslim vote went to TMC, and that he will work for hindus.

The Bengal faction of the BJP, with the support of their national counterparts, has tapped into overt communal rhetoric, both online and offline, even before the polls.

Bellingcat, an investigative journalism group that specialises in fact-checking and open-source intelligence (OSINT), found in its analysis that 194 out of a total of 499 social media posts shared on official BJP accounts in Bengal and Assam met the United Nations definition of hate speech. They also noted in their report that Bengali-origin Muslims are often stereotyped as ‘illegal immigrants’, although members of the community have lived in India since the late 1800s. 

The communal project launched in Bengal now seems to have borne fruit , and the violence and ‘vengeance’ have followed in its wake. Uncontrolled political violence is already gripping Bengal. What awaits the state—which had managed to keep Hindutva leadership at bay for decades—remains to be seen in the days ahead.