The Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU) in collaboration with Garuda Prakashan will release the book “Political Killings in Mamta’s Bengal” written by Shubham Tiwari and Shivam Raghuwanshi today at 4 PM in Conference Centre, North Campus, University of Delhi .
The transformation of a state famed for its bhadralok (a unique Bengali concept of gentlemen) to one gaining infamy for deaths, violence and crimes, West Bengal has come a long way. Turning the Aristotelian proposition of man being a political animal by nature on its head, the bourgeoisie-proletariat of Bengal politics injected politics into the society and culture of Bengal and manufactured internecine quarrels seeking to establish their stranglehold. Pushing innocent refugees running away from Islamic oppression into the deltaic waters, feeding a mother rice soaked with the blood of her own son, killing hapless saffron-clad renunciates and murdering citizens protesting against illegal land grab—Marichhjhapi, Sainbari, Ananda Margi deaths, Singur, Nandigram, to name a few, are amongst many gory incidents which have coloured the blood-splattered communist regime incarnadine. The communists erected their citadel on deaths, murders, rapes, arson, loot, threats, oppression and of course, ‘scientific rigging’.
With the sun setting over the communist regime in West Bengal, the land of Tagore plunged further into the abyss of evils associated with the Left. The regime of the Trinamool Congress (TMC), a political party reigning over West Bengal for the past decade, has unleashed political violence with impunity without any reprisal from the law enforcement mechanism. The citizens have been faced with a ‘police state’. Constitutional guarantees of life, freedom and liberty have been consigned to oblivion.
From felling promising youngsters Rajesh and Tapas by police bullets while protesting unarmed against imposition of Urdu teachers when they wanted teachers in their mother tongue in Daribhit, to taking the life of an elected Member of the Legislative Assembly (Debendra Nath Roy), to gagging Safiqul Islam of Arambagh TV who was exposing the misdeeds of the ruling TMC and enforcing a blackout of Calcutta News which was pulled off air by MSOs, when it was highlighting the mishandling of the pandemic, to a TMC Member of Parliament—Tapas Pal—threatening to let loose his men upon the women of the household of opposition workers to rape them into submission, to the Chief Minister dismissing the Park Street rape incident as a petty and concocted, to the ruling party workers siphoning more than a thousand crores handed out by the Centre as aid for Amphan (cyclone)-affected families forcing the High Court at Calcutta to direct a CAG audit, to issuing a fatwa against immersion of Durga deities during Dashami/ Dussehra on account of Muharram (subsequently set aside by the Calcutta High Court), to the deaths of innocents in custody, to several genocidal attempts by jihadi elements through the killings in Deganga, Naliakhali, Baduria- Basirhat, Chandannagore, Kaliachak riots et al—West Bengal has ricocheted back to the Dark Ages.
Fruits of violence and rapine have remained the staple of Bengal ruling-party politics for around half-a-century. The political subjugation of the administration has been complete and voices of dissent have been eradicated with panache by the State. The oppression reached a nadir, afflicting the populace with the Stockholm syndrome or a variant thereof. The oppressor was portrayed as the messiah and the gullible Bengali submitted to such propaganda, while initially opposing well-meaning interventions from various quarters.
This calculated intention introduced by the communists and perfected by the TMC can be theorised as: To inflict enough pain on those who do not ‘fall in line’ in the populace and those who resist political subjugation and overwhelm their life, liberty and interests, so that they are either forced or induced to concede and get the population to kowtow to the political masters.
The political class in Bengal over the last five decades or so has devalued the worth of human life, so much so that we have remained mute spectators to barbaric, horrendous killings, which have not so much disturbed possibly an iota of siesta of the average Bengali. While shedding crocodile tears over some reporting concerning Gaza or the US-Mexico border, Bengal and its press failed in its duty of covering deaths closer home, or better still, at home. Motivated, oblique crass politics has manufactured a veritable cocktail of Muslim appeasement, doles, rent-seeking, mafia-raj, fabricated schisms, Bengali sub-nationalism, and muscle power as the recipe for the ‘Peacock Throne of Bengal’. While the unstinted faith of the Bengali was mistaken as the cocktail reaping dividends, Bengal slipped back in time.
Such bloody politics has transmogrified the Bengali into the wolf to another Bengali—be it the neighbourhood developer threatening the old couple or the menacing politician meaning harm or the average Joe engaged in the cottage industry of arms. The bhadralok has lost his honour, the writer his words, the poet his rhyme, the politician his values, men their valour, the learned their education—Bengal its soul. Bengal—which is crowned by the mighty Himalayas and whose lotus feet are washed by the rich waters of the Bay of Bengal, needs her glory restored, her abundance returned and her respect back. Bengal cannot fail; she should not fail.
I’m sure the supine Bengal shall rise from the ashes of bloodied chaos, oppression and violence like the proverbial phoenix to be the lodestar in the firmament of our great Nation, while the golden words of Gokhale ring across the galaxies.
The writer is an advocate in Calcutta High Court.
(This is an excerpt from the book “Political Killings in Mamata’s Bengal by Shubham Tiwari and Shivam Raghuwanshi”. Excerpted with permission from Garuda Prakashan.)
