Stateless in West Bengal’s Matua heartland

It is a Sunday in May, 2026, and large crowds have gathered at Thakurbari, the spiritual home of the Matua community in North 24 Parganas, West Bengal. But most are not here to offer prayers at the temple. Instead, they are standing in long queues in the summer heat waiting to get documents that they hope will prove their citizenship.

These are the people whose names were deleted – part of the over 90 lakh deletions during the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. They were unable to vote in the state elections held in April, 2026.

In 15 Matua-dominated Assembly constituencies there were large-scale deletions of Hindu names.

A part of the crowd at Thakurbari is Lalita Dhali, here with her husband Kartik to procure a Hindu Card. The 43-year-old resident of Kabilashpur travelled here by scooty, a journey of roughly 30 kilometres. Her name has not made it to the final SIR list, but Kartik’s has.

Lalita’s grandfather and father had come to India in the 1950s but returned to Bangladesh in 1984. They came back to India again in a few years. “Or baba epar opar korto. Ke jane kon pare jonmechhe [Her father went back and forth. Who knows which side he was born in],” Kartik, 53, says.

The Matuas (listed as Scheduled Caste) are an anti-Brahmanical sect born in the late 19th century. They emerged during Harichand Thakur’s mobilisation of lower castes, primarily Namasudras in the eastern part of undivided Bengal. Namasudras are listed as Scheduled Caste in West Bengal. Many Matuas migrated to West Bengal in distress and do not possess documentation. “Namasudras were also the victims of religious persecution in East Pakistan/Bangladesh after Partition,” points out Ayan Guha. A Fellow at the University of Sussex, UK, Guha has worked extensively on the political dynamics of caste in West Bengal.

In Thakurbari, there is a constant flow of people like Lalita, who have come to make new documents or get their existing ones verified. Some have come to ask the cost of Hindu and Matua cards.

Lalita has paid Rs. 170 for the Hindu card and Rs. 500 for the Citizenship card. “Anek taka, na [It’s a lot of money, no]?” she asks and adds, “we also spent money on Xerox [photocopying].” People paid anywhere between Rs. 200 to 850 for various cards. In some cases, over Rs. 1,000 just to prove citizenship.

“We are all voters – my parents, brother, my three daughters. Lalita’s siblings… Only her name has been struck off," says Kartik, a migrant labourer who works at construction sites in Maharashtra.

The deletions have also sparked fear. “I see so many things on the phone [about people whose names have been struck off the rolls]. I am scared and anxious,” says Lalita, who will now try to apply for her citizenship through the Citizenship Amendment Act.

Rina’s (name changed) situation is especially precarious as her husband’s name has been struck off. “Ei deshe amar keu nei [I have nobody in this country],” this resident of Chikanpara in Gaighata block tells PARI. Her family, including her father, stepmother, and her siblings are in Bangladesh.

The 40-year-old says she was born a Namasudra in Bangladesh but does not know much about the lineage or the cultural norms of the Matua community. She arrived in India around 20 years ago. Originally from Patbali village in Faridpur district of Bangladesh, she made the journey with her son, who was one and a half years old at the time.

“My mother passed away when I was two and a half years old. My stepmother would not let me live in peace. My father married me off when I was 17, and my husband would torture me. Ami khub koshte din katachhilam [It was a very difficult time],” says Rina, standing in the courtyard of her bamboo house. In the two decades that she has been here, she has never visited home. The nearest border checkpoint is Bongaon, around 20 km from her current place of residence.

For about a decade, Rina stayed in Kalyani in Nadia district where she juggled many jobs – domestic worker, medical attendant and cook – to bring up her son. When she married for the second time and moved to Chikanpara, she got some identification documents made, but her name did not make it to the revised electoral rolls this year. At a hearing she went to, she says, “ek copy kore photo tullo khali [they only clicked one photo].” A visibly worried Rina asks, “how do I produce the documents of my parents who are still in Bangladesh?”

More than 27 lakh people in the state contested their deletion before tribunals but still could not vote.

Rina, who has an eight-year-old daughter from her second marriage, also worries about the future of her children. Her son has migrated to Mumbai where he works in a hotel. Her husband has a disability in one leg and works in a cake factory in Siliguri in north Bengal, and has already applied for citizenship via the CAA. Until recently, Rina was employed as a domestic worker in a near-by house, but now they depend on the combined income of her husband and son.

Located in the Gaighata (CD) block in the state’s North 24 Parganas district, Chikanpara has a mix of kutchha and pucca houses. Garlands packed in big plastic bags are a common sight in the village; most residents here are engaged in the task of making and selling them. Most of the young people, residents say, have migrated for work, leaving behind a predominantly elderly population.

A majority of the Matua residents here found their names ‘under adjudication’ after the SIR. For those whose names have been deleted from the rolls, the reason remains unclear, and the booth level officer (BLO) has no answers either.

Sitting outside his pucca house in Chikanpara, Amal Krishna Halder shoots off: “Amar vote nei toh ki hoyeche? Ami aaj achhi kaal nei [So what if I do not have a vote? I am here today, might be gone tomorrow].”

Amal arrived in India from Khulna, Bangladesh, in 1985. He was 28 and found work at construction sites in Kolkata and lived in Kanupur in the North 24 Parganas district. About eight months after arriving in West Bengal, Amal moved to Chikanpara and found work as an agricultural labourer.

Like many others from his community, Amal voted for the Mamata Banerjee-led All India Trinamool Congress in two previous elections. Over the years, different political parties have sought the patronage of the Matua Mahasangha matriarch Binapani Devi — also popularly called Boroma among the community members. Binapani Devi was the wife of P. R. Thakur, the grandson of Guruchand Thakur, who founded the Matua Mahasangha in the area. Binapani Devi passed away in 2019, and the split over political affiliations in the family became firmer.

Amal lost affection for Banerjee’s party when she mispronounced their other spiritual leader Guruchand Thakur as ‘Goru-chand’ at a public meeting in Maldah in 2023. “Amar thakur ke je goru bole, tar sathe ami nai, nai, nai [I will not support the one who calls my god a cow, no, no, no],” Amal says, shaking his head.

He is now vocal about his support for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and religiously attends their meetings in the constituency.

An accident in 2020, suffered while he was going to attend a BJP meeting in Bongaon, has made it impossible for Amal to find work. Saswati, his wife, makes and sells garlands at Kolkata’s Baghajatin market, earning Rs. 4,000 a month. Her name has been struck off the rolls as well. Amal has also appealed on behalf of his son, a migrant worker currently in Mumbai.

Amal says he has already been to Thakurbari with his Hindu and Matua cards to apply for citizenship through the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) which came into effect in 2019. It provides a path for religiously persecuted minorities in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh to get citizenship in India in cases where they came to this country before December 31, 2014.

The newly-elected MLA of this area, Subrata Thakur, is a direct descendent of spiritual leader Harichand Thakur. “Hindu der rokhha korte hobe [“We have to protect the Hindus],” the MLA from Gaighata says and reiterates that this includes all caste groups. He calls the CAA a ‘rokkha koboch” or shield for the Matuas. “That is why the Matuas have also voted for us in large numbers,” he explains.

The Trinamool Rajya Sabha MP Mamata Bala Thakur, though, told PARI that a large number of Matuas are living in fear and without clarity of what lies ahead. “People are running around to get different documents made. As we see the government opening detention camps, Matuas are scared about what awaits them.”