Dr. ANIRBAN GANGULY
The Trinamool Congress regime in West Bengal led by Mamata Banerjee is exuding increasingly fascistic traits, the latest being the attacks orchestrated by the TMC against BJP workers in the state. Throughout the evening of 3rd January, TMC workers went on a rampage across Kolkata, attacked the state BJP office, intimidated workers, battered and bled them. BJP leader Krisha Bhattacharya’s house in Uttarpara was bombed late at night, Ms. Bhattacharya herself abused and molested and hospitalised.
The green signal for this state wide political violence against political opponents came from Mamata Banerjee herself after she abused Prime Minister Modi, BJP president Amit Shah and called the Central government a dispensation of goons and hoodlums. Banerjee should have rather applied the yard stick to the political lumpens that she has patronised since 2011 and those others who joined her, forsaking the communist gravy train. Throughout 4th January, TMC workers, lumpens and self-styled leaders went on a rampage across the state, set flame to BJP offices, ransacking houses of BJP supporters, exuding an extreme intolerance to the tradition of political difference.
No intellectual in Bengal, no writer or thinker has come forward to condemn this atmosphere of political intolerance prevalent in the state. They have either been cowered into silence or have been co-opted by the TMC eco-system. All those who had written and spoken on intolerance, in the recent past, especially those, from Bengal, who had sent a multi-signatured propaganda laden letter to the president of India, are strangely silent when Mamata Banerjee’s hired and patronised cadres are now on a rampage in the state.
Physical intimidation of political opponents is a tactics that Mamata Banerjee has internalised and mastered from the communists. During her long years of agitational politics against the Left Front, Banerjee herself was often physically assaulted, on coming to power she has continued the tradition, and the brunt of her irrational ire is now – rather since May 2014 – directed against BJP workers. The day Prime Minister Modi’s cabinet was taking oath in the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Mamata unleashed her “harmad” forces on BJP workers and supporters. She sees the BJP as her principal opposition because the BJP and the wider nationalist intelligentsia are the only forces capable of opposition her brand of politics which is essentially pushing forward the agenda of separatism and of jihadism and encouraging forces that are rabidly against and inimical to India’s unity and integrity. The blasts in Burdwan, the pogroms in Kaliachak and Dhulagarh are manifestations of that agenda of breaking India.
Between them the Narada, Saradha and Rose Valley scams have not only robbed poor agents and people but have also killed hundreds of ordinary people who died of shock or resorted to suicide. Most of the members of the top TMC leadership, a number of those intellectuals who had supported Mamata Banerjee are also involved in these scams; only time and investigation will reveal their names and complicity. Interestingly, each time one of her leaders is called for questioning by central investigation agency, Banerjee asks them to go in like “heroes” because, “they have not done anything wrong” and each time incriminating evidences, that are hard to refute, are revealed further adding fuel to her maniacal ire.
Mamata Banerjee’s call for “Poriborton”, is in reality a false cry, the system that she set up after ousting the communists is as corroded as the communist one was, as fascistic as the communist one was and as violent as the communist one was, nothing has changed except the names and flags. While comrades adopted a certain amount of sophistication and subtlety in their perpetration of terror and violence, Mamata Banerjee’s rule perpetrates a crass violation of political and of human rights.
The space for democratic dissent in West Bengal is shrinking by the hour, fascism is at its peak, violence is the order of the day and human life has become cheap. What is now required is a spirited temper of resistance, of a tough and uncompromising determination to resist Mamata Banerjee’s intolerance and that of her anti-democratic machinery in the state, lest the state sinks deeper into swamp of fascism and of anarchy.
(The writer is a columnist.)