The Panchayat Pradhan of Diamond Harbour police district’s Bishnupur village in West Bengal, Mujibar Sheikh, was not worried. The incumbent chief of the village administration and the Trinamool Gram Panchayat candidate for the rural polls, which was conducted on July 8, Mujibar Sheikh believed that he had tried to do his best in the past five years and he felt that if villagers were happy with his work, they would vote for him.

“The people will decide whether they want me back or not,” he said in an interview with The Statesman the day after the polls were conducted. “Here the candidates of other political parties too participated in the contest and we have no enmity with one another other than political differences,” he said. 

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Indeed, Bishnupur village is an example of how peaceful the polling process can be. It is situated in one of the fourteen districts which did not register any cases of violence during an election that witnessed bloodshed and death even if they were limited to a few districts.

“The villagers are generally peace-loving people,” he said when asked to comment on how his village remained violence-free. “They do not like trouble. All they want is to exercise their right to vote so that they can elect a representative who they think will be good for them. Violence is about trying to force oneself into that position which ought to be decided by the people. This is not done.” He is speaking in Bengali, of course and the words he uses are “Jor korey toh kerey naoa jayna.” (You cannot forcefully snatch power.) It has to be given to you by the people. Those are the rules of democracy. 

A villager himself, as are all the other representatives who run the local, rural government, Mujibar Sheikh says that one of the most important messages that he wants to send others from his village is to “Try to live harmoniously with each other.” The residents agree that that is a motto that they follow without wearing it on their sleeves. “It comes naturally to us to be friendly with our neighbors irrespective of what their religion is or their caste,” says Rupa, a homemaker. “We participate in each other’s festivities too,” says Rabeya, sitting next to each other on a bench, outside a village store. The community camaraderie is reflected in the three choices of candidates of the Trinamool. If Mujibar Sheikh is the Gram Panchayat candidate, Shreya Chakraborty is the candidate for Panchayat Samity and Shachi Nashkar is the candidate for Zilla Parishad.  

The Panchayat chief points out that the Opposition parties too had filed their nominations without trouble or fear. The BJP candidate contesting the Gram Panchayat, Bina Manna, smiles when she sees her name scribbled across the brick walls of the houses in her village in bold, bright colors, pink, orange, red, blue. CPIM’s Hamida Mondal’s name too is painted onto the walls but true to the colors of her party, it is only in red. 

A walk through the village during the polls, is in fact, a colorful experience. Glowing golden-green in the sunlight after spells of fresh seasonal rain, the walls of its houses are a burst of colors with graffiti. Green, red, saffron flags, posters and banners representing the different political parties hang from the branches of trees or overhead lines. 

This is perhaps how it should be in a democracy. Here there is no green of envy. Here there is no red of bloodshed.