Message of Sandeshkhali

Sandeshkhali has earned the meaning of its name, having sent out a crucial Sandesha to the rest of Bharat – to open our eyes to the reality of  West Bengal.

Ground facts from this eastern State may appear incredible and far-fetched to people residing in other parts of Bharat, but the volley of protests rising up from the rural lands of West Bengal is a cry for justice, a cry for relief from decades of oppression and humiliation. Nothing ever happens beyond causality and Bengal incidents too are no exception. And Truth has uncanny ways of coming to light.

From the time the soul-shaking news of the women’s fate in Sandeshkhali broke out, I have been saying that Sandeshkhali is no isolated incident and Sheikh Shahjahan is no exception. Different parts of West Bengal have different ‘Shahjahans’ who are oppressing women sexually.

The protests that have erupted at Sandeshkhali have found an echo in other areas as well. Sexual exploitation of poor women at the hands of TMC leaders is rampant in West Bengal.

A woman from Dinhata, a constituency in North Bengal represented by Udyan Guha, another close aide of West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, also shared similar experiences in a video posted by a local channel.

TMC’s Patashpur MLA Uttam Barik too is known to have brazenly flaunted his despicable act of molesting a woman at a government event by sharing a photo on social media.

The Pattern

When did I first note that such things were happening to Bengal women? It was while working on the huge data of post-poll violence in 2021 as I wrote a book in Bengali. The violence displayed a particular religious pattern. An eminent journalist of national repute called me when post-poll violence 2021 was going on. I told him about my observation. He asked, how to decipher reliably that there’s a religious pattern to the violence? “Are they raising the known slogans?” he asked. I said, “The slogans may not be the ones they shouted on Direct Action Day or in Noakhali or in Kashmir, but what they are doing is the same thing.”

West Bengal has come out with its own unique slogan. “Khela Hobe” is the latest Bengal cry before attacking women, objectifying their sexuality. A latest incident re-established the sense behind “Khela Hobe”. After the Sandeshkhali horror came to light, West Bengal Irrigation Minister Partha Bhowmik visited the place on February 14. Without even meeting the complainant women, he addressed a public rally and softly floated in hissing sound (as if sending a signal) the question to the crowd: “Khela Hobe?” And the crowd went awkwardly jubilant, as if the signal had reached.

Demographic Jihad

Some people are saying Sandeshkhali is witnessing a repeat show of Noakhali. However, in Noakhali, the enemy attacked directly with arms and weapons to perpetrate a genocide. As they did in August 1946 in Calcutta too. But Sandeshkhali is a different strategy altogether, though the endgame is the same. This time, no physical genocide, just turning Hindus into ‘Dhimmis’ (the word refers to non-Muslims living in Muslim lands, under Islamic laws ), devastating them from within, subjugating their morale. Sexual attack on women is such an attack which will demoralise Hindus forever – which means they will either stay as Dhimmis at ‘their’ disposal or leave the place. Just a different version of “Raliv Galiv Tsaliv” (the threatening cries Kashmiri Hindus were subjected to before they were forced out of Kashmir in the late nineties). Objective is the same, the mechanism different.

Not that the Sandeshkhali perpetrators didn’t wield weapons at their target groups. Rather, one of the numerous allegations against Sheikh Shahjahan is that “he comes with outsiders and guns such as AK-47 to terrorise the people”. At the same time, his modus operandi against Hindu women of Sandeshkhali appears similar to a great extent to the path of sexual enslavement of women as practiced in Syria. This also perhaps explains why the Government of West Bengal banned The Kerala Story movie in West Bengal – because they didn’t want oppressed women of West Bengal to realise exactly what was being done to them.

The criminals are not really expecting the sexually oppressed Hindus to indefinitely stay there in such a humiliating, demoralising situation. The expectation is that they’ll either leave the place or convert. The mission is simple – change West Bengal’s religious demography from within and capture the undivided Bengal as per the original agenda of the Muslim League before Partition. This also explains the TMC-style political murders in West Bengal. During the CPM regime, people were killed and their corpses disposed of in such a way that people suddenly went untraceable. However, the TMC’s reign displays the dead bodies by hanging them from trees, structural rods, electric towers etc. The sole objective appears to be to send out the message of terror – whosoever resists the demography-altering tactics will be eliminated summarily. The resulting fear psychosis is the predominant cause why most Hindu of West Bengal remain silent on such atrocities.

If the humiliated Hindus leave Sandeshkhali, infiltrators are waiting to step in from Bangladesh, a few kilometres away from Sandeshkhali, to capture their land and properties. Sheikh Shahjahan and his aides won’t require even 24 hours to bring them in and gradually prepare their Indian documents like EPIC, PAN, Aadhaar, Passport etc. This appears to be the true objective behind all such mechanisms not only in Sandeshkhali but all along the West Bengal-Bangladesh border.

Geo-Strategy

Sandeshkhali’s peculiarity primarily lies in its geography, that has emerged as the real reason behind the undue might of Sheikh Shahjahan. Khali or Khal means ‘canal’. Sandeshkhali is located south of the North 24 Parganas district on the Ganga Delta where River Ganga merges into the Bay of Bengal and deposits all the silt she carried all the way from the Himalayas to the sea. Sandeshkhali, Jeliakhali, Naliakhali – all such Khalis are small pieces of lands made up of such deltaic silt and heavily supplied with numerous tiny distributaries of River Ganga. In the deltaic region, the river divides and sub-divides into innumerable canals and creeks. With Bangladesh located literally a stone’s throw away, Bangladeshis and Rohingyas may come any moment sailing down the khalis, creeks and step into these places to share the resources of Bharat. Shahjahan allegedly helps such infiltrators come in, in lieu of money.

Sandeshkhali is located in between the rivers Dansa and Kalindi, both distributaries of the Ganga. Along the river stream, the distance between Sandeshkhali and Khulna town is only around 300 meters with Sandeshkhali located on one side of river Dansa and Khulna town on the other. As per the map, the West Bengal-Bangladesh border at Khulna, the Radcliffe Line, is around six kilometres from Sandeshkhali, while a part of the Khulna town falls within West Bengal. This is the prime reason why Sandeshkhali has turned into a point of infiltration. Khulna being on both sides of Bangladesh border, Bangladeshis don’t hesitate to enter the West Bengal part of Khulna too.

Bangladeshis enter easily with the help of Shahjahan’s trafficking and protection. People say Shahjahan himself is a Bangladeshi who entered Sandeshkhali in the first decade of this century during the CPM regime claiming that some Moslem Sheikh (a CPM leader) was his Mama. There’s no clarity whether Moslem was really his Mama or a Mama of convenience for the purpose of infiltration. Neither is it clear whether Moslem too once infiltrated from Bangladesh during CPM rule or not.

Sandeshkhali and other such Khalis are places where one just needs to cross the river Dansa or Kalindi to step into Bharat. A large number of Janjatiya Hindus staying here too once came from Bangladesh fleeing religious persecution in the Islamic land.

Shahjahan, the Human Trafficker

Shahjahan helps infiltrators for money, a trade that has gradually turned him into the ‘protector of the realm’. He reportedly even went to Myanmar to bring in Rohingyas.

It must be said that the infiltration industry of West Bengal started with impunity during the rule of the CPM, with whom Shahjahan started his ‘career’. Shahjahan built his crime empire predominantly out of infiltrator-trafficking charges. Gradually he expanded his control over the entire area and allegedly engaged in various other smuggling businesses such as fake currency, gold and arms smuggling and other border crimes. To dominate the locals, Shahjahan allegedly settled Rohingyas at some distance. These Rohingyas arrive at Sandeshkhali whenever necessary to terrorise the locals.

Late into the night, boats sail around Sandeshkhali if the locals are disobedient to Shahjahan and his accomplices. The sound of the whispering air blowing over the streams of the delta, sends out a clear signal to the locals that Shahjahan’s army has arrived.

This is the Shahjahan who fled the raid of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on January 5, 2024 and attacked the ED officials with the help of the same brigade he uses to terrorise locals.

Role of the Police

With Shahjahan in hiding, the long-oppressed women mustered the courage to come out in protest against his atrocities. Several women have accused Shahjahan and his gang of heckling them in front of the State Police. After seven BJP karyakartas were brutally murdered post 2019 Lok Sabha election, their family members too raised similar allegations in front of the media that Shahjahan’s gang came along with the policemen of Nazat Police Station. Why did the police remain inactive in all such cases? And why did they accompany the criminals?

The women have also alleged that the police did not register FIRs based on their complaints against Shahjahan and his followers, but rather sent them back to the accused persons themselves to settle the score.

The truth of Sandeshkhali has emerged owing to the tremendous courage of the women victims. It has also helped raise many pertinent questions about Ground Zero @West Bengal.

• Why, in spite of countless allegations against Sheikh Shahjahan, the State Police has not taken any action against him?
• Is the Police afraid of Sheikh Shahjahan? Or they are beneficiaries of the power criminal?
• Did Shahjahan subjugate the local police too? If so, then why is the top administration of West Bengal silent and inactive about it? Is there collusion at the higher-level too?
• Shahjahan and his team are known to carry arms such as AK-47. Such allegations were raised in 2019 as well as. From where did he procure such arms? Did the State Police investigate?
• Sheikh Shahjahan is an accused in the murder of seven BJP karyakartas post 2019 elections. But a month later, Sarberia Agarhati Gram Panchayat, of which Shahjahan was the pradhan, received an award of being ‘the best child-friendly Panchayat of the State’ given by the Government of India on the recommendation of West Bengal Government. Why did the WB Government recommend a Gram Panchayat whose Pradhan was accused of seven murders? At present, there are allegations against the same “child-friendly Panchayat” of grabbing the playgrounds of children, stopping football tournament there and forcing parents not to send children to school.
• The infiltration industry has a huge lucrative monetary value. How is it running with such impunity under the eyes of the West Bengal administration? What action has been taken to address the problem?

The day the powers-that-be start looking for answers to these crucial questions, the women victims of Sandeshkhali can hope for justice, finally. n