Culture of Bengal - violence?

The longest poll season in the largest working democracy came to an end and the nation heaved a sigh of relief. The tempo and temperature started coming down. One vocal and articulate leader from the potentially victorious party, paid a back handed tribute to the departing prime minister, some people unblocked some others on the Facebook and I came to watch a news channel after a month or so.

While I avoided all the cacophony and vitriolic debates that dominated these channels, I did not miss out the essential information regarding this very important national process, thanks to some selective reading of newspapers and few websites. And one thing disturbed me the most.

Over the long and antsy period of a month and five days of Lok Sabha election, there was only one state from where news of electoral violence flowed in continuously. Before the elections, the infamous riots happened in Muzaffarnagar. While everyone poltically discerning enough, knows that it was orchestrated clearly with the election in the view, it was not around the voting process and it had more the tag of a communal riot, than a political skirmish. A comparatively marginalised Bodo faction massacred Bangla speaking Muslims in Assam, which again was less about the Lok Sabha election than the age old ethnic and migrant strife peculiar to Assam. And then, after the polls were over, the tinderbox of Meerut had a few unfortunate sparks around a water tank. Lastly prennially sensitive Hyderabad witnessed a burnt religious flag and tragic loss of few lives this evening, two days after the voting has stopped.

But across all five phases of the longest election season ever, violence seemed to be the order of the day in my home state, West Bengal. Not the usual Bihar or Uttar Pradesh, but West Bengal. All varieties of it.  Intimidation, heckling, rigging, booth capture, mob attacks, group and finally on the last day a bomb was hurled in Posta, in the city of Kolkata and three lives lost elsewhere in the state. SHAME!!

The history of political violence in Bengal, perhaps goes back to an incident that did not take place in present day Bengal, but in a town which was part of what was the undivided large province of Bengal, and is now part of Bihar. On the evening of April 30, 1908, Khudiram Bose, along with his senior accomplice, Prafulla Chaki, hurled, what was probably the first bomb, during the violent independent struggle of India.  The seed of militant struggle for independence was sown that day and continued with the likes of the trio of Benoy, Badal and Dinesh, Surya Sen of the famous Chattagram Armoury raid, Bagha Jatin and the mysterious master of disguise, Rasbehari Bose. Now, that strife was against the colonial occupier of the land, the British oppressors. It was covered with patriotic glory, sacrifice and not small amount of romanticism.

Then came communism. Formed in the twenties, Marxist movement in India had strong foundational links to Bengal and the armed struggle for independence. M N Roy and Abani Mukherjee, two of the founders of Communist Party of India were from Bengal and were deeply involved in violent anti-British struggle. Post independence, first signs of people's movement emerged - both from the mills and the farmlands. Oppressed by the erstwhile colonial rulers, and then forgotten by the new rulers, capitalists and landowners of their own ilk, farmers and mill workers sought their redemption in the ideology of Karl Marx, which always had an association with violence. In 1967, in a village of North Bengal named Naxalbari, police fired on a posse of protesting tribal farmers. The movement had the backing of a breakway faction of the CPI(M), which itself was a splinter of erstwhile undivided Communist Party of India (CPI). CPIM, or CPM, was very strong in West Bengal and had already replaced CPI in the region. Led by Charu Majumdar and Kanu Sanyal, this movement soon captivated the minds of the educated youth and spread as a violent ideological struggle all. Naxalbari movement thus became post independent India’s first armed insurgency, having wide presence in Bengal. The provincial Government also retaliated with its might and human rights were soon relegated to oblivion. Violence engulfed West Bengal in the late sixties and early seventies.

Meanwhile, as a continuation of the pre independence scenario, mainstream communists continued to be persecuted, although by now they had entered the parliamentary process. The engagement between communists and the government and other parties remained very acrimonious and physical violence became a tool to settle disputes and territorial issues. In 1970, came one of the darkest days in the political history of Bengal, a blot which has still not faded totally and has been exhumed recently. In the communist dominated agrarian town of Bardhaman, a family of Congress sympathizers was slaughtered by a large number of cadres of CPM, in the middle of the night. The gruesome details of the massacre ringed all across the state. But it also became the lingua franca of Bengal politics.

In 1977, the Marxists came to power, and stayed there for over three decades.  Soon violence and intimidation became the standard implement of the ruling forces. Equipped with the well oiled and widely spread cadre network, CPM and its allies, took control of all aspects of the province. The separation between party and administration were totally obliterated and the party became arbiter of all disputes and conflicts – political, social and even familial. Economic situation deteriorated, gradually but in a sure and secular trend.  This translated into despair and soon anger became the prevalent emotion in both private and public discourse, and in group or bilateral engagement. A minor vehicular incident involving a private car and a lesser vehicle or a pedestrian on any street of Kolkata, would invariably degenerate into a mass outrage against the private vehicle as it epitomized prosperity.  Battles between neighborhood soccer teams would see swords being pulled out and blood being spilled and even lost lives. This is still the urban or the semi urban story. In the villages and small towns, total reigns of terror loomed large. Hooligans, backed by political patronage, aggrandized economic benefits, intimidated communities, violated women at large and killed at will. While the leaders at the top looked away, these elements delivered election after election, and this went on, as if never to cease.

In 2011, after decades of strife, Mamata Banerjee and her party finally broke down the left hegemony and came to power amidst slogan and hopes of change, “poriborton”.  Some people who had ears to the ground, had already foreseen this. As they say, when a ship sinks, it’s the rats who abandon it the earliest. Similarly, people who are cognizant of grassroot politics and polity of Bengal, witnessed the changing colours of the lumpen elements, on whose misdeeds rode the CPM juggernaut.  By the time the new government formed, the new party in power, which was anyway very akin in ideology (if it had any) and style to the one they conquered, acquired all these elements.  For a while, the Trinamool leader talked of how there will be no violence or vengeance. But a violent culture which has evolved and emerged over almost half a century is not easy to be done away with, especially if the leadership is not sincere about eradicating it altogether.  Thus sporadic violence continued and showed its ugly face during the Lok Sabha elections. In the backdrop of the longest and perhaps one of the most peaceful parliamentary elections, West Bengal stood out like the proverbial sore thumb with its wide spread incidents of violence.

But it is gone now. On the aftermath of it, lie a centrally decimated Congress, an almost extinct CPM and regionally supreme Trinamool. The leadership of each of these parties has to introspect and act, if they sincerely wish to completely exterminate the language and use of violence and redeem some esteem for the state.  The central leadership should ponder if it is worth maintaining a base, simply based on one strongman, Adhir Choudhury, whose past and present is marked with use of force.  CPM, if at all they would like to remain relevant, should first repent and regret the total subversion of the state machinery and institutions that they did, and did it with force and violence, and make public and corrective actions. And finally the victor should publicly condemn all use of force, bring all perpetrators, including from its own ranks to justice and spread a language which is civil and rational and not angry, rabble rousing, uncouth and inciting.