A small group of activists went to Writers’ Building, the seat of the Government of West Bengal, to protest against police laxity in Barasat. While no place in West Bengal now seems to the safe for women, Barasat has emerged as the ultimate. A young woman was raped and murdered. The people responded by showing a great deal of hostility to Jyotipriya Mullick, a minister in the TMC government. The responsibility for all this violence and lack of police action lies ultimately with the Chief Minister, who is also the Minister in Charge of the Home Department, which controls the police. So it was natural that the activists wanted to protest to the CM. They acted promptly. The young woman was brutally gang raped and murdered on Friday afternoon and her body was discovered the same evening. The news broke the next day, and on Sunday these activists decided on the text of a letter to the CM, and asked others to join them on Monday, the first working day, when they could expect to meet the CM. There were reasons why meeting the CM was doubly essential, these being the same reasons why Jyotipriya Mullick faced public fury. Of the five persons arrested under intense public pressure, the prime accused, Ansar Ali, has been identified as a Trinamul congress activist. Parenthetically, for the TMC, unlike a left party, it is always easy to disown a cadre, since there are few formal structures, primary unit membership records, and the like. The young woman had been taken to a godown and gang raped brutally, and murdered. Locals accused the police of knowing that the godown was being used for unlawful activities. Because the criminals were TMC people and people patronised by the TMC, so went the allegation, the police had been inactive. This was why the visit to the CM was even more necessary. The TMC is a party where only one voice matters in the end, and that is the voice of Mamata Banerjee. But Mamata Banerjee was not willing to meet them and accept their letter of protest. Just five women had gone, and it being Writers, the most they had with them were a few posters with which they proceeded to decorate themselves, so that people could see the protest. No violence. Nothing else. But you see, they had no prior appointment. So did the Chief Minister of West Bengal think that the rapists had made a prior appointment with the young woman? The issue is, of course, that the TMC has to depend on these people. In the Panchayat elections, the State Election Commission, and not merely the opposition parties, are constantly complaining of violation of rights. Well over 5000 TMC candidates appear to have won unopposed, because nobody else was permitted to file nomination papers. Such doings require: A. A great deal of violence, carried out by ruling party hooligans, and/or the threat of violence later, if immediate violence is not possible; along with police inaction. This is what is being claimed by the CPI(M), the Congress, and others. This is something you should believe in, if you accept rationalism. B. A total collapse of all opposition parties, to the extent that they cannot find a single person to contest in locality after locality. This is if you believe the myths of the TMC. Anubrata Mandal, the Birbhum district leader of the TMC, has already gone on record (and caught on tv footage) asking party cadres to not allow anyone from other parties to file nominations. This kind of democracy, by show of thugs, was of course known in West Bengal once before, in the early 1970s, when S. S. Ray taught the current leaders of Congress and TMC how to do that. If you need such thugs, then you must take into account their appetites. And therefore, what the CM of West Bengal has done is, she has asked her government, her bureaucracy, to stop providing data to the National Crime Records Bureau. And that too is why she will not meet activists who want to protest. There are those who will recall the CPI(M) suborning the bureaucracy, or the CPI(M) using a degree of violence on its opponents. They are the ones who must balance everything. For us, the issue is simple. Today, it is the TMC that is in government, not any other party. We fight for democracy. Today, it is the TMC and its government that is trying to subvert democratic rights in West Bengal. To condemn it is not equivalent to supporting the CPI(M). Those who pretend otherwise are either open or covert lackeys of the government, or people who have lost all faith in the possibility of ordinary people building an alternative. Let us join hands to build as huge a move against rape and killings in West Bengal as there was in Delhi. Let us join hands in defence of democratic rights. Let us also identify those fraudulent friends of democracy whose democratic credentials are only selectively taken out of the vault, when the party they love to hate is to be attacked, whoever that party is.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Jun 2013 17:25:53 +0000
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