Newsmaker | Oxford scholar, anti-CAA voice: TMC tasks historian with breaching Congress bastion in Bengal

Among the first-time candidates that the Trinamool Congress (TMC) has fielded for the Lok Sabha elections is 42-year-old academic and former journalist Shahnawaz Ali Raihan who faces the tough task of helping the party win a seat that the Congress’s Abu Hasem Khan Choudhury, the brother of former Union Minister A B A Ghani Khan Choudhury, has held since 2009.

The candidature of Raihan has triggered a war of words between the TMC and the BJP as he was part of a group that protested against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC) in front of the Indian High Commission in London around 2019-’20. The Union government on Monday notified CAA rules to operationalise the amended citizenship law, which received Parliament’s approval in December 2019.

Raihan is a historian pursuing his DPhil at Oxford University’s St Antony’s College since 2018 under the supervision of noted historian Faisal Devji. His research topic is “Between Marx and Muhammed. Muslims and Communism in Bengal”. Raihan told The Indian Express that he had always been vociferous against the BJP’s “divisive policies and politics”. “Now I have decided to contest (the Lok Sabha elections) as the BJP has been infusing the politics of division in my home area of Malda. So far, I have been highlighting their divisive agenda through my writings and speeches,” he said.

Raihan is from the Mothabari area of Kaliachak-II block of Malda district and graduated from Calcutta University with a journalism degree and completed his Master’s degree in Mass Communication from Rabindra Bharati University. He pursued higher education at the Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi, during which he came into contact with the Students Islamic