Despite West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s desperation, attempts to put a tight lid on the public outrage against the August 9 rape-murder of a young junior doctor in Kolkata’s premier government-run hospital have failed to yield any result. Instead, the strong-arm tactics and unleashing of police and ruling party hoodlums against the peacefully protesting doctors, students and ordinary citizens has only helped to fuel the public fury against her government. Tuesday’s rally in Kolkata by a students’ group, Chhatra Samaj, to seek justice for the brutally murdered doctor showed the extent to which the state government could go to suppress with the use of excessive force the expression of protest in a democratic polity. Herself a product of street protests against various acts of omission and commission of the Marxist governments in the state, Mamata pulled out all the stops to ensure that no protester could reach the vicinity of Nabanna, the seat of the state government. All entry points into the metropolis were virtually closed to normal traffic. Hours before the resumption of the protest march by the students’ group, the famous Howrah bridge wore a ghost look, shut down for normal traffic. For miles around the Nabanna focal point the entire area was turned into a police and para-military fortress. And yet, the determined and angry protesters clashed with the police at several points, attempting to break the barriers and run through to the state secretariat building. They did not have a designated leader. Nor did they require one, such being the universal outrage against the heinous crime — and the cowardly attempts by the government to deny the people the democratic to protest the gruesome atrocity.
Expectedly, the police high-handedness against the students’ protest on Tuesday made the BJP, which unsurprisingly has seized on the genuine outrage at the rape-murder of the doctor to target the TMC government for its failure on the law-and-order front, to give a 12-hour bandh call in Kolkata on the following day. For Wednesday too the West Bengal Junior Doctors’ Forum had called for a rally in support of their demand for ensuring the safety of women medical professionals and for an honest and efficient probe into the rape-murder of the junior doctor at the R G Kar Medical College and Hospital on August 9. The Kolkata police claimed that they were at the receiving end of the protesters’ brickbats, but by all accounts the lathi-charge, tear gas and water cannons at protesters trying to break police barricades was totally uncalled for. Having made it a prestige issue not to allow any protester near Nabanna, the police went to great lengths to chase away the protesting students with the use of excessive force. That the Governor C V Ananda Bose condemned in the strongest possible words the use of force to put down the protest did not still detract from the fact that his constitutional post demanded that he tick off the government quietly by summoning the chief minister to the Raj Bhavan instead of issuing a press statement.
Meanwhile, we can do no better than remind Mamata about her own homilies directed at the Modi government during the farmers’ protest in the national capital a few months ago. At the time, expounding on the farmers’ (now read students’) basic rights she had attacked the use of tear gas by the Delhi police to prevent them from reaching the Central Secretariat. Indeed, if Mamata were to read her own statement issued at the time of the farmers’ protest, she would realise how her own conduct as the chief minister of West Bengal on Tuesday to foil the Chhatra Samaj protest more than duplicated the attempt by the central government authorities at that time. The West Bengal authorities were guilty of using excessive force against the student protests far more than the central government’s use of relatively mild force to prevent farmers from creating chaos in the heart of New Delhi. The boot is certainly on the other foot now. And it shows that a long stint in power has transformed yesterday’s street fighter into a veritable authoritarian who would leave no stone unturned to suppress democratic right to protest and put a tight lid on the heartfelt anger and anguish at the barbaric rape and murder of the 31-year-old junior doctor at Kolkata’s premier hospital. In time not far away, her arrogance and authoritarianism will exact a huge price in political and electoral terms.
