According to a report published in the Statesman on 1 September, a young man, Kartic Bag committed suicide in Arambagh because he couldn’t bear the mental and physical torture inflicted by ruling party goons in the name of “settling” a property dispute. Naturally, there has been strong criticism in the media against the ruling party’s hooliganism and the rule of brute force that has been established in the countryside in West Bengal. A lot of talks is in the air about how the previous dispensation replaced the rule of law by the rule of the party and how the process continues unabated in Bengal, perhaps with more brazenness. But I think these critics are missing a fundamental point. Kartic Bag was handed over to the rogues by his own mother, who wanted a plot of land from him. It is impossible that the mother didn’t know the methods used by the ruling party to settle such disputes. Yet she – I believe – paid a fee to some panchayat members (read a bunch of goons) to beat up her own son so that she could own a piece of land. On the outside, it is a simple case where avarice got the better of a village woman. But the incident indicates a much deeper malady. The traditional values of honesty, concern for others, a sense of sharing and sacrifice, the values that survived even the brutal regimes of the East India Company and the British Crown, is in the process of being destroyed in Bengal today by the politicians elected by us. The colonial masters tried to suppress the populace from outside. But our own rulers, being much closer to the ground, have managed to nearly destroy the roots that hold the society together. And in a society that is bereft of values, where mothers employ thugs to torture their own sons for financial gains, it is natural that criminals will become MLAs, MPs, and ministers. We must protest the misdeeds of the government and the ruling party, but at best, it will lead to a change of government. There will be no real change until people change themselves. Kolkata / 03 September 2014
Posted on: Wed, 03 Sep 2014 06:26:48 +0000
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