He Makes India’s Flag, But Lost His Vote: The Story of Raju Halder - A Muslim Bengali

 In a modest neighbourhood on the outskirts of Howrah’s Santragachi, the colours of the Indian tricolour are impossible to miss. Saffron, white and green run across the walls of a small two storied house - bright, deliberate, almost defiant. The house, also known as Halder Bari - is famous in whole of muslim dominated Laskarpara. Ask anyone, they will guide you to the house that has its own significance - the home of Raju Halder, a 46-year-old flag maker. For Raju, the tricolour is not just a symbol. It is a way of life.

“I have grown up with this flag,” he says, his voice trembling. “Since childhood, this is all I have known.” Raju belongs to a family that has been making Indian national flags for generations. His father started the work decades ago. Today, Raju carries that legacy forward - carefully stitching together the fabric that represents the identity of a nation. “I learnt this from my father. This is our pride,” he says. 

Inside his home, that pride takes on a more personal form. Every wall is painted in the colours of the tricolour. Saffron. White. Green. It is not decoration - it is devotion. “I wanted to live inside the flag,” Raju says, attempting a faint smile. “As a child I never though that after decades, my this love for the tricolour will be used to testify somethings, as in this new India my patriotism as a Muslim will be put on trial”, he added. 

But today, that sense of belonging has been shaken. Raju Halder, an Indian citizen with a passport issued in 2018, has found his name missing from the voter list following the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise in West Bengal. “I have voted all my life,” he says. “Suddenly, they say my name is not there. Why? What mistake did I make? My mother’s name is there in the voter list. So she is an Indian and I as her son is a Rohingya?” he asked. There are no clear answers. His own name is there in the 2002 voter list, something that was initially used by Election Commission of India (ECI) to map voters through enumeration forms, until ‘logical discrepancies’ took over the scrutiny process. Raju has appeared before the hearing twice, handout out documents including the copy of a valid passport he holds. But ECI claimed that there was a mismatch between his name and his father’s name on their records. Interestingly the documents available with Raju show, there was no mismatch with his name and his father’s name on any of the government document - including the Aadhaar card. 

Raju is among lakhs of people in the state who have reportedly been deleted from electoral rolls during the SIR process. For many like him, the reasons remain unclear, and the process opaque. As he speaks, Raju struggles to hold himself together. At several points, he breaks down. “I make the flag of this country… and today, I have to prove that I belong here?” he asks, wiping away tears. The irony is stark. A man who spends his days crafting the symbol of India’s sovereignty now finds himself excluded from one of the most fundamental rights in a democracy - the right to vote. His neighbours know him. His work is known across the locality. His documents exist. And yet, his name does not.

“I never thought something like this could happen to me,” he says quietly.
Beyond the personal grief lies a larger question - about identity, documentation, and due process. For Raju Halder, however, the issue is painfully simple.

“I only want my name back,” he says. “I only want to vote.. If they remove me from the voter list today and then later send me to the detention camp then what would happen to my children”. Interestingly Raju’s another brother has his name cleared in the SIR scrutiny. He and Raju share the same father and same father’s name - yet one has been approved and other rejected. Standing inside his tricolour-painted home, surrounded by the very colours he has dedicated his life to, Raju’s voice fades into a silence that says more than words can. A silence filled with doubt. And a question that remains unanswered - what does it take to belong? In that neighbourhood, there were more than 200 people deleted - all muslims - almost at least one member of each family struck out while their other members have been approved by the ECI, for logic yet to be confirmed.