Those who have not lived in West Bengal for a while—at least a decade, if not more—will not understand the magnitude of what is happening there. The continuing protest by not only the doctors demanding justice for their raped and murdered colleague ‘Abhaya’ but also a diverse cross-section of society across the state is nothing short of cataclysmic. Residents of Bengal, including Kolkata, will vouch that such demonstrations have not happened in living memory.
If some people are refusing to understand and acknowledge this change, the fault is entirely theirs. Before August 2024, despite the depressingly common litany of rape-murder cases in the state and sotto voce complaints about rampant corruption, extortion and nepotism in all levels of administration, there had never been sustained apolitical demonstrations of dissatisfaction. But now, even the usually effete upper-middle-class bhadralok have been galvanised into action.
The weekend announcement by Jawhar Sircar, a prominent member of this class, that he intends to resign (though he has not done so as yet) from his Rajya Sabha seat and from politics itself—is proof of the fact that it is no longer acceptable in polite Kolkata circles to remain a ‘choti-chaata’—meaning chappal-licker. That is a marked departure from Mamata Banerjee’s apparent invincibility across all classes of society, though most of her votes came from a particular section.
Sircar, who accepted her offer of a seat in the Upper House from the Trinamool Congress after protesting for years that he was not after any office, had launched blistering attacks on the Modi government and its policies after he quit as CEO of Prasar Bharati in 2016, four months before his term was to end. His usefulness was manifest, as Banerjee had been steadily augmenting her band of trilingual defenders in Delhi, who had their supporters in Kolkata’s civil society too.
Their ability to turn selective facts and fabrications into byte-worthy morsels in English (mainly) for the ‘national’ media was well worth the expense of a few seats. Ordinary Bengali-medium TMC workers were hardly in a position anyway to quibble about the lack of grassroots connect of the Delhi brigade or their suitability over those who had been slaving to keep ‘Didi’ in power for years. Now one of that English-medium cohort has dared to bare his teeth at her.
The importance of that gesture—even if Sircar is yet to follow through on his threat to quit the seat—cannot be underestimated. What this means in semaphoric terms to the TMC rank and file, not to mention those bhadralok still sitting pusillanimously on the fence, will be known in the coming days but it is clear that the innate fear of crossing and defying Banerjee has dissipated. And fear has always been her prime tactic to keep the state under control during past crises.
That Kolkata is no longer a City of Bhoy (fear) is manifest in the streets with people gathering every day—even more in the evenings—to voice their demand for justice and generally vent their anger at not only the grave injustice done to the young doctor but all the injustices perpetuated every day by those who drew their power from proximity to the ruling party or, the CM herself. They are no longer scared of the goons had ‘kept the peace’ so effectively since 2011.
The video of an ‘additional security guard’ talking threateningly to the then principal of RG Kar—who took over briefly before the infamous Sandip Ghosh was reinstated and is now back once again after Ghosh’s second departure—struck a chord in a million hearts in Bengal. Because innumerable ordinary people have faced similar treatment from similar goons, all of whom would cite ‘Didi’, her nephew or one of her top lieutenants as their source of unlimited power.
On their part, the beleaguered state government and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee have tried every classic Kautilyan wile of Saam, Daan, Dand and Bhed—conciliation, bribery, punishment, and sowing discord—to nip this unexpected movement in the bud but it has had limited effect so far. The latest initiative of putting prohibitively expensive full-page ads in all major print media (paid for by the state exchequer) is clearly part of this time-tested strategy.
The CM first said she would ‘touch the feet of the doctors’ if that would persuade them to get back to work. That did not cut any ice. Then there were mass transfers of senior medical teaching staff who had taken part in the protest, but the orders were hastily withdrawn after public ire. A few days after that, pro-government social media handles warned that ‘people were suffering’ because of the doctors’ protests and would get angry soon. That implicit threat did not work either.
By then the writing on the wall was clear to all except the CM and her Delhi-oriented claque, who was still loyally posting weak justifications of Banerjee and her government’s confused and contradictory actions. Now Sircar’s weekend letter announcing his imminent resignation has caused a crack in that façade. That cohort will find it very tricky to denounce him now, especially as his letter is also peppered with his usual vitriolic accusations against the Modi government.
If the rest of the English-speaking, Delhi-centric TMC brigade turns on the oldest (in age) member of their cosy little club, it will not go down well in their civil society constituencies in the Capital and Kolkata, which, however miniscule, form the core of their social and political lives. More so as Sircar continues to be a vociferous Modi-hater. But letting him get away with his defiance of Didi—that too in the midst of her most serious crisis—has its own consequences.
Because that will be yet another indication to those thousands of ordinary people protesting, singing, chanting and venting on the streets of West Bengal sans any political banner even a month after the rape-murder of a young woman doctor, that they are really on the right track. As is the fact that neither muscular ministers nor pugnacious political goons have been able to drive the people back into the sort of meek compliance that had become the dismal norm in the state. True ‘Poriborton’—change.
The author is a freelance writer. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.