Murshidabad / Kolkata, India —
Sadre Alam went to war for India. Suprabuddha Sen’s grandfather illustrated its first constitution. For decades, both men exercised their rights enshrined in that document to vote in the world’s largest democracy.
Days before polls opened in crucial state elections in April, they found out that their right had been taken away from them. There was little or no explanation.
Alam, 62, opens a thick maroon binder that holds the 30 or so documents he says he took to local officials to try and convince them of his right to vote: his grandfather’s land deeds from the 1920s; evidence his parents had voted decades ago; his army discharge certificate. To no…