In recent times, the closest that Kolkata came to in terms of witnessing Muslim-led rioting and violence was in November 2007 when fanatics, under the aegis of the All-India Minority Forum, resorted to arson, demanding the expulsion of Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen for “hurting the sentiments of Muslims” and “ridiculing Islam”.

The CPI(M)-led Left Front government called in 10 platoons of the army to quell the violence. Last year, Muslims went on the rampage after a derogatory comment against Prophet Mohammad was made by an Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha functionary.

Calcutta had its own share of Hindu-Muslim riots before the city was rechristened Kolkata. Regardless of the Left Front regime’s so-called egalitarianism and secularism, parts of Kolkata were convulsed in rioting, followed by police firing, which claimed the lives of at least nine persons in the aftermath of the demolition of the Babri mosque on 6 December 1992.

Sikhs were targeted by mobs after Indira Gandhi’s assassination on 31 October 1984. In the Great Calcutta killings of 16 August 1946, otherwise called ‘Direct Action Day’, when Hindus and Muslims took part in an orgy of killing that lasted a week, an estimated 4,000 people died.

Post-Partition Bengal and Hindu-Muslim relations gained a notoriety as far communal violence is concerned.