I just got off the phone to my in-laws who have been telling me the low-down on how Bengali Hindus are turning their religious festival, Durga Puja (the equivalent of Christmas), into a mass protest against the war.
As a joke, people are sending white powder in envelopes to each other - politicians have been inundated. Instead of the traditional burning of an effigy of Hindu demons to vanquish evil, they are burning effigies of Bush and Blair. And in the streets people are gathering together and mocking their government's support to the West, shouting 'Jaya jaya Vajpayee, jaya jaya anthrax', which translates as 'victory to Vajpayee (the right-wing fundamentalist prime minister), victory to anthrax'.
Although opinion polls show Indian support for the war is around 70 per cent, West Bengal (once the seat of the British empire in India) is one of only two communist states in India and has traditionally opposed the capitalist West and its imperialist aspirations.