West Bengal is at the cusp of a change. Ms Mamata Banerjee and her party have failed the people who pinned their hope on her as opposed to the brutal rule of the aging Left on the one side and the hatemongering BJP on the other. If the news and social media show us the writings on the wall, in 2026, a new government will come to power in Bengal. At least should!
We must try to understand what has been happening in Bengal. Here is an article by a leading public intellectual who has held his head high through the murky currents of Bengal politics, Kaushik Sen. The original was published in Ananda Bazar Patrika on 3 August 2022.
Translated into English by Kaushik Chatterjee
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A convention was held on the 2nd floor of Calcutta Information Centre in 1990. It was organised by the Left Front Government. All the intellectuals of the times had converged there. The then Information Minister, Shri Buddhadev Bhattacharya, was also present. It was necessary to convene such a meeting at a time, when, thanks to a few serial events that rocked West Bengal, the credibility of the Left Front Govt had been considerably shaken in the perception of the people at large. It is now on records, that, quite surprisingly, all the intellectuals present on that day, barring a few exceptions, strongly and concertedly denied any sense of frustration or misgivings majorly troubling the society; rather, they felt, it was after all, the product of an orchestrated anti-left propaganda, of the vanquished crying hoarse or even that of a bourgeois mentality gone paranoid. We come to know that, among others, even Utpal Dutta, with a clear voice and firm conviction, held on to the ground of the majority.
The poet Sankha Ghose
was also present in that meeting. He read out from a small chit of paper.
Everyone must have listened to him carefully but didn’t quite feel the urge to
dwell upon the deeper anxieties voiced by the poet seriously enough.
The enthusiastic
readers can easily retrieve the exact contents of the page from where the poet
had read aloud in that intellectual-studded convention, organised by the Left
Front Government on 11th September, 1990. All I can say is that all
those grim forewarnings which the poet had prophesied in his pithy but insightful
write, were the subject of intense discourse and deliberation, following the
electoral eclipse of the Left Front Government in 2011—disconnect with the masses,
induction within the party of persons of dubious credentials, corruption,
criminalisation, etc. The seeds of decay were all there for the people to take
note of. But a large majority of them couldn’t or didn’t quite like to.
I am pretty sure if
one goes through its contents today, there wouldn’t be any line of distinction
between the parties that have been in governance in Bengal. You could easily
swap the label of ‘Left Front Government’ with that of ‘TMC Government’ in that
piece of paper. The issues of ‘dangerous laxity or irresponsiveness’, which the
poet highlighted then, to have led to a series of ignominious incidents thereafter,
were no accidents or conspiracies. They were not then and are not now either.
It would be
impossible for the reigning TMC government of West Bengal to write off the
instance of naked corruption and embezzlement of funds which has recently come
to light, as a non-event or even treat it as conspiratorial. It is not possible
for one Partha Chatterjee to commit such a ghastly crime single-handedly. The
tentacles of the evil are enmeshed within the nooks and corners of the
organisation itself.
The month of July of
2022 will either be remembered or consigned to one of the most inglorious
episodes of the socio-political-economic history of West Bengal. The relentless
agitation of those aspiring for the teaching posts of Classes IX to XII for more than 500 odd days now, shall too be
etched in the pages of history. A whole new set of questions and agitational
dynamics would be scripted on the tales of dogged defiance they showed amidst sufferance
of so much deprivation and misery. It is time we understood how this heinous
crime had affected us all, beyond those who have been directly harmed by it.
While complementing the perfectly professional and thoroughbred role performed
by the Officers of Enforcement Directorate (ED) in unearthing crores of rupees from
the different flats of the accused, it may be a sobering reminder at this
stage, that barring, of course, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), none of the
mainstream political parties of India are currently breathing free, thanks to
the extraordinary clout and sweeping powers commanded by ED. The recent Supreme
Court rulings may also add on the anxieties of the principal opposition parties
in this regard, for everyone knows how
BJP can effectively weaponise the ED in bringing the entire Opposition to an
uneasy standstill. And it is in this context, that the TMC, through this murky
Partha Chatterjee episode, had significantly blunted the anti-BJP,
ultra-Hindutwa campaign being taken up at the national stage. The recent events
have only helped the party in power to get a firmer political foothold in the
map of India; the same party, which operating through the smokescreen of
whataboutery and subterfuge, has no qualms in defying the constitutional norms,
openly threatening to decimate the minority community with bulldozing of their
home and property, through a process of selective targeting.
‘No Vote to BJP’ was the
key slogan rallying which most of us openly mobilised ourselves in the last
Assembly Elections. Without casting any disrespect on the TMC leadership or
their foot soldiers who made a robust electoral show in the last Assembly
elections, it may be averred that this inglorious event in the Bengal political
chapter is a frontal betrayal of whatever bit of resistance that the apolitical
segment of the societal space was trying to organise, in its own way, against
the destructive and totalitarian regime of the BJP.
It is to be noted
that TMC had cast their chessboard very astutely and expediently, both within
the realm of the Parliamentary politics and outside of it, after a thorough
calculation of their political payoffs. They had welcomed with open arms all of
those discredited and defeated BJP leaders who had spewed communal venom. It is
true that the issue of admittance or otherwise of any persons within a political
formation is well within the prerogative of concerned political entity; and yet
the 2021 Assembly elections in Bengal assumed a different dimension altogether.
Most of us didn’t quite perceive it as a mere allocation of seats among
different political dispensations. A large section of the citizenry, casting
off the colours of political partisanship, had come out in the open and had in
their own way, scripted verses, play-acted, composed songs, made intense
parleys in both urban and rural locales, unitedly against a dominant political
ideology which loved spewing communal hatred. The corruption that has come to
the fore is a frontal assault on the generous faith that inspired such a great
endeavour. Mere expulsion of Partha
Chatterjee cannot absolve the party of its moral responsibility.
People in this
country now flaunt their masculinity in openly valorising Nathuram Godse. In
the current year, in the ‘International Press Freedom index’, India is placed
among the trailing 30 countries among the 180 contesting nations. The Modi Government
had appropriated every means possible to curtail media and press freedom. Even
more than its political contenders, the Bharatiya Janata Party seems to be
deeply wary of the enlightened citizenry. Most of the alternate political
dispensations are in a pitiable shape at this stage... some are suffering from
organisational weaknesses, others are rudderless in absence of a decisive
leadership, some have turned maniacal in the rush for political power and the rest
of them, which raised a semblance of hope in the initial days, are so deeply
mired in corruption, that unless some ground-breaking, far-reaching changes are
made, it would indeed be difficult to believe that that they would be able to sustain
a formidable and credible challenge against the communal forces.
In the realms of parliamentary democracy, it is the underlying urge of every political order worth its name to cling to power as long as possible. The TMC had scripted massive triumphs in the last three Assembly elections. And yet, in the last few elections, be they the assembly/parliamentary by-elections, Panchayat or the municipal, its relentless efforts to keep its political adversaries in check through an open display of muscle power, had raised serious misgivings and sent shivers down the line. And we have the well entrenched memories of how, thanks to the courageous and formidable resistance shown by the current Chief Minister, the entire political architecture of the Left Front and the CPI(M) came crashing from the height of its political brazenness to a nadir of nothingness. No political dispensation has been able to sustain itself in the long run merely scoring on its numerical strength. If the people lose faith, no material or muscular power can ever redeem a political party. TMC too is no exception. History always has a tough call to take. <>
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You can
read the original Bangla article here:
https://mepaper.anandabazar.com/imageview_64859_5412792_4_71_03-08-2022_4_i_1_sf.html
