Opinion | Who Emboldened Mamata Banerjee to Crush Law and Order in Bengal?

Even if someone coughs or sneezes, the BJP runs to the courts, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said the other day. That does seem unfair. As an elected Chief Minister of the state, she should have a free hand when it comes to dealing with the coughs and sneezes of people at least. Except that she was not referring to actual coughs and sneezes here. This was supposed to be an analogy for at least eight people burned alive by political goons of her party in a village in Birbhum district.

What could have emboldened the Chief Minister of Bengal to become so brazen and insensitive towards the collapse of law and order in her state? And towards the suffering of people and the role of her party in perpetrating political violence? It could not just be the fact that she was elected with an overwhelming majority. A number of state governments in India enjoy similar majorities. In Uttar Pradesh for instance, the ruling BJP got re-elected only this month by showcasing its achievements in law and order.

So what protects Mamata Banerjee is a very particular kind of political immunity that is enjoyed by the state governments of West Bengal, Maharashtra, Kerala, Rajasthan and so on. The Chief Minister of West Bengal has faced no serious questioning of her disastrous record on law and order, endless political violence in her state, failure to attract investment, Covid management, or anything else. It is the same reason that people rarely talk about allegations of corruption in Maharashtra, crimes against women in Rajasthan, or the fact that Kerala ranks at the bottom of rankings in ease of doing business.

I like to call this a liberal privilege. In March of 2020, a leading publication produced a list of seven chief ministers who made “war with Covid-19 look easy.” These happened to be the chief ministers of Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Kerala, Punjab and Puducherry. At least one of the chief ministers was included for the supposed achievement that he put up banners of himself across the state and requested people to stay indoors. This is a liberal privilege, and I believe it makes us less secure. When opposition state governments believe that they can maintain their image with little or no effort, they tend to let the people down.

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It is always in bad taste to make such comparisons, but I am going to ask what if an incident like Birbhum had happened in Uttar Pradesh. Even at the risk of being accused of the terrible crime of whataboutery. Indeed, I refuse to judge incidents individually, in a vacuum. Instead, as a citizen, I am going to compare and contrast the performance of various state governments, political parties as well as the reactions of so-called civil society. It is crazy, I know.

So, what would have happened if an incident like Birbhum had happened in Uttar Pradesh? We would have seen a festival of “free speech” like no other. The spot would have become a pilgrimage site for politicians of every stripe, with saturation coverage in all forms of media. And all manner of activists, NGOs and civil society would have come along for the ride. There would be poets, artists and musicians giving voice to the suffering of the victims. So much so that sundry Youtubers and RTI activists would be scamming people right now, raising money online to bring out “ground reports.”

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You can also bet that the international media would have gotten involved. Perhaps even a tweet from Greta Thunberg, or even the United Nations itself. And India would have been downgraded on a whole bunch of made-up global indexes. And if the most undeserving in our society had any awards left by now, they would have made a show of returning the symbols of state patronage gathered in a previous era.

But because the incident happened in West Bengal, the matter was forgotten within a day. Frankly, I am amazed that even this little bit of outrage actually happened. So who emboldened Mamata Banerjee? These people. They created this entrenched system of privilege which makes her believe, with good reason, that anything goes. Even as she positions herself as a potential Prime Minister, her record on law and order, the economy, pandemic management, investment and infrastructure development, remains above question. As long as she is shrill in criticising the BJP, anything goes. Those are the rules of the game. Khela Hobe.

Does anyone remember Mamata Banerjee holding ‘court’ in Mumbai last year? Does anyone remember India’s much-vaunted civil society showing up at the event, bowing before her as if pledging their loyalty one by one? What if just one of those people had asked her what about the 38 percent of the electorate in Bengal that voted for BJP? Did these people deserve the reign of terror unleashed upon them because they happened to be on the losing side in an election? Did BJP workers deserve to be hunted down and killed?

Why are there so many crude bomb factories across the countryside in West Bengal? Why can’t the rural population live freely? Why do they have to live huddled together in homogeneous political communities, known as “party villages?” But the jet-setting upper-class socialites who arrived at Mamata’s Mumbai Durbar had no time for such questions. They fly around the world, with the halo of dissenters, basking in the glory of their own liberalism. Their social media timelines are a mix between alleging 1930s style Nazi repression in Uttar Pradesh and influencer tweets for the hottest new designers. At least one such celebrity dissenter featured in ads from a top luxury brand, with the caption that she is as passionate about their designer handbags as she is about fighting fascism. This is how much of a farce the dog and pony show of Indian liberalism has become. Why would this class of people care if some BJP worker is hanged from a tree somewhere in West Bengal?

Remember Trilochan Mahato. He was just eighteen years old when they got to him in his village in Purulia in West Bengal. They murdered him and hanged him from a tree. They wrote on his shirt that they had been looking for him since the day of the (Panchayat) elections. They had been looking for him, to give him his punishment for being a BJP worker. That was 2018. It was certainly not the first instance of political violence under the TMC government. It is just an incident that has remained with me. What if the TMC regime had received the blowback it deserved at the time?

But they did not, so the violence got more and more out of hand. During the 2021 Assembly elections, the TMC was even bolder. At her election rallies, the Chief Minister publicly warned BJP workers that they would be begging for their lives once the election was over and central forces were gone. We all know what happened after the votes were counted. Oh wait, the responsibility for that lies with the Election Commission because the state government had not been sworn into office till then. Because we know the state police goes strictly by the rule book, with no regard for the fact that the TMC would be back to dictating terms in less than one week.

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And now there is no opposition left, at least in Birbhum. Did you think the one-party state would bring public order? The Communists would carry out their purges in an orderly fashion. The TMC does not have that kind of discipline. Their cadres are now killing each other, in bloody turf wars over who gets to control Panchayat funds, proceeds from illegal sand and gravel mining and so on. No investment comes into Bengal from outside. Because who would invest in a state with no law and order and no infrastructure? But the passions run high and the turf wars are bloody, precisely because the stakes are so small. A year and a half ago, a truck carrying 39,000 detonators was seized in this same area around Birbhum. When you have crude bomb factories in every corner, people living in “party villages” and a Chief Minister who has liberal privilege, you get only one thing: violence.

I must mention here one excuse that is made for the TMC that I find particularly offensive. No, political violence is not part of the culture of Bengal. Did Rabindranath Thakur advocate for political violence against those you disagree with? I think not. Yes, Bengal has had a history of political violence. And the blame for that should go to the parties that have ruled Bengal since independence: the Congress, the Communists and now the TMC. So Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is not helpless, and she has no excuse. Back then it was Jyoti Basu and Buddhadeb Bhattacharya who were to blame, and she is to blame now.

But you won’t believe the kinds of people, most often those who advertise their proud Bengali linguistic and/or cultural identity who make this exact excuse for the current Chief Minister. I made this point the other day on television about blaming the Congress, the Communists and the TMC. At this, I was interrupted by an “independent” journalist on the panel. What about the violence done by freedom fighters from Bengal such as those of Anushilan Samiti and Jugantar, I was asked. Indeed, if Khudiram Bose could have thrown a crude bomb to fight the British, why can’t a TMC goon burn down a village in a mafia war over smuggling rights? No difference really.

I made this point the other day on television about blaming the Congress, the Communists and the TMC. At this, I was interrupted by an “independent” journalist on the panel. What about the violence done by freedom fighters from Bengal such as those of Anushilan Samiti and Jugantar, I was asked. Indeed, if Khudiram Bose could have thrown a crude bomb to fight the British, why can’t a TMC goon burn down a village in a mafia war over smuggling rights? No difference really.