Calcutta was taken hostage for hours on Wednesday afternoon as the ruling Left Front marched against the war in Iraq. In the picture (by Amit Dutta), a schoolboy looks out of a bus that got stuck in the rally flagged off by chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee himself.

The chief minister said he stood opposed to rally raj but then “the date September 1 was decided by Hitler, not me. That was when World War II started.… I cannot change history.”

Quite true. How can a history of decades of rallies be just wished away?

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