Mitra, speaking at a public meeting in Kamarhati constituency on Sunday, said, “We can retaliate with double the force than the attackers.”
Kolkata: TMC leader Madan Mitra has courted controversy by claiming that those involved in violence and attacks on police during BJP’s recent march to the West Bengal secretariat can be “taught a lesson in just 10 minutes”.
Mitra, however, added that the Trinamool Congress is not in favour of such an action in retaliation to BJP’s “disruptive policies”.
The former state minister’s comments come close on the heels of TMC general secretary and MP Abhishek Banerjee’s remark that “if I was there, I would have shot the violent protesters in the head”.
Mitra, speaking at a public meeting in Kamarhati constituency on Sunday, said, “If there is an instruction from the party, it won’t take more than 10 minutes to thrash those who were involved in hooliganism and vandalism (during BJP’s Nabanna Abhijan’ on September 14). We can retaliate with double the force than the attackers.”
The maverick MLA also said TMC has emphasised it wants development, not violence. “It speaks the language of love and compassion, not vandalism.”
Senior BJP leader Rahul Sinha hit back, saying TMC leaders are increasingly making “dangerous comments”, and they have lost the support of people.
Over 20 people have been arrested in specific cases of assault on police officers, and destruction of government property in Kolkata and Howrah during the rally.
The saffron camp has maintained that none of their workers were involved in violence at the march.
BJP has been loud in its claim that one of the victims is an RSS member even in the face of the police’s insistence that there is no evidence to link his political affiliation to the murder.
New Delhi: The tragic murder of a 35-year-old primary school teacher and his family has set off a political battle in West Bengal, with the fledgling Bharatiya Janata Party choosing to corner the Trinamool Congress government on the incident.
Bondhu Gopal Pal, his wife and eight-year-old son were found to have been murdered at their residence on Wednesday in Jiaganj area of Murshidabad district.
Since then, the Sangh parivar has hyped the incident of triple murder as a case of political violence. According to ANI, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s Bengal secretary Jishnu Basu said that Pal was “also an RSS [cadre] and was recently associated with a ‘weekly milan’.”
He said that a fact-finding team of the RSS visited Jiaganj and that the police had assured him of quick action.
He held the state government responsible for “a poor law and order situation” in the state.
West Bengal: A teacher, his wife and child were murdered by unidentified miscreants in West Bengal’s Murshidabad district yesterday. As per RSS West Bengal secretary Jishnu Basu, he was also an RSS worker and was recently associated with a ‘weekly milan’.
The Sangh parivar advanced its campaign despite the fact that the district police categorically said on Wednesday that the murders were committed by “unidentified miscreants” and it was difficult to confirm the facts about the case at this stage.
PTI quoted a police official saying that police recovered the bodies lying in a pool of blood from their residence.
The official said that Pal’s neighbours informed police after they found his family absent in the Dussehra celebrations. “After locals did not see them at the puja pandal on Vijayadashami, they visited their Pal house, only to find the door bolted from inside,” the official said.
Yet the Sangh parivar remains unrelenting in its efforts to run an organised campaign to attack the state government.
At the national level, BJP’s national spokesperson Sambit Patra hit out at “liberals” and eminent citizens who recently wrote a letter to prime minister Narendra Modi, requesting him to take action against incidents of communal lynchings.
“Warning:Gruesome video. This has shaken my conscience …a RSS worker Sh Bandhu Prakash Pal,his eight months pregnant wife & his kid were brutally slaughtered in West Bengal’s Murshidabad; Not a word by the liberals; Not a letter by 59 liberals to Mamata. Nauseating Selectivism,” he wrote while posting a video featuring the dead bodies of the three victims,” Patra tweeted.
The Wire has chosen not to share the video here because of its gory content and sensitive nature.
West Bengal governor Jagdeep Dhankar also reacted to the murder and in doing so, contributed to the Sangh parivar’s political agenda. “I am in deep pain. My heart is bleeding. What was in Murshidabad, a brutal murder took place, putting humanity to shame. A teacher, his pregnant wife and eight-year-old child were killed in a barbaric manner and there has been no response from the state machinery so far. This is a very, very serious reflection of the situation we are living in. I would urge the authority for a quick and real investigation,” he said.
The RSS mouthpiece Organiser has also attacked the state government for “deteriorating law and order” and questioned liberals for allegedly remaining mute. It also demanded a CBI investigation in the case.
However, Tanmoy Sarkar, additional superintendent of police of Murshidabad, told the press on Thursday that it appeared that the murderers may have known Pal and his family from earlier.
“We have inspected the scene of the crime and it appears that the perpetrators of the crime were known to the victim as there was little or no resistance,” Sarkar said. He said that it was also possible that the victims were poisoned before being attacked.
He also said that the police have recovered a note, written possibly by Pal’s wife, which suggested that Pal may have landed himself in a financial dispute. “Pal and his family stayed in Sagardighi area of Murshidabad around one and a half years ago. He shifted to Jiaganj after he borrowed some money from people and got into some trouble over it,” Sarkar said, adding that Pal had also ventured into a few small businesses, along with taking up teaching.
He said there were no indications to suggest that the murders were political in nature. He added that it would be premature to say anything convincing about the motive behind the murders as the investigation is still in a primary stage. Urging people not to spread misinformation, he said that evidence collected from the crime scene is still being investigated.
Despite this uncertainty, top BJP leaders like Sambit Patra and party supporters have attempted to turn the incident into a case of political violence. BJP’s Bengal unit president Dilip Ghosh too visited Jiaganj on Thursday.
Only the Murshidabad (South) BJP vice president Humayun Kabir distanced himself from the party’s campaign. He said Pal was indeed an RSS member but insisted that his political identity had no connection with the murder.
The saffron party’s campaign has come at a time when it has just ended its outreach programme in Bengal. It had asked its leaders and cadres to reach out to as many people as possible during the five-day long Durga Puja and spread the party’s ideology and policies.
India Today reported that “the saffron party this time had set up more than 10,000 stalls outside puja pandals to display books on its ideology” and on making people aware of the National Register of Citizens and the Citizenship Amendment Bill.
Political violence is a common phenomenon in the state. However, unlike this case of triple murder, most of these incidents play out in the open.
For instance, a 38- year-old BJP worker was shot at the South 24 Parganas on Thursday. Sheikh Farid and Raju Kurmi, both TMC leaders, were also attacked fired at in the North 24 Parganas. Kurmi died as a result while Farid is critically injured.
A similar incident was also reported in East Midnapore district where a TMC leader, Kurban Sheikh, was killed.
The Vishwa Hindu Parishad has circulated a video of a puja pandal in Kolkata that displays the symbols of all religions and now a complaint has been filed against the organisers claiming they have ‘hit the sentiments’ of Hindus.
New Delhi: In April 2018, nearly six months after the annual Pujo was celebrated at the Durga temple attached to the revered Dhakeshwari Mandir in old Dhaka, my heart was gladdened on spotting a string of words written in Bengali on a hoarding which must have been put up during the four-day festivities.
The words said: Dharma jar jar; utsav sabar.
It essentially meant, religion can be different but festivities are for all.
The underlining meaning of the words were: Bengalis – Hindus or Muslims – come together to celebrate Pujo.
And if you happen to be in Bangladesh during the first week of April, you would happily add to the list Poila Boishak too – easily a bigger festival than Eid in that country, where Hindus and Muslims once again come together as Bengalis.
Now, cut to a set of news report that has sprung out of Kolkata, the Bengali heartland in India, on October 6, the day of Maha Ashtami. The reports are around the pujo theme of a pandal in Beliaghata area of the capital city of West Bengal.
These reports said that the pujo samiti played a recording of ‘Azaan’ at the site, leading one local lawyer, Santanu Singha, to lodge a police complaint against 10 people including some organisers “for disturbing peace” and “hit (hitting) the sentiments of the Hindu religion”.
According to the Indian Express, Singha’s complaint to the local police said, “These persons have been categorically involved in disturbing the peace and tranquillity in the State of West Bengal by allowing to run Azaan in the Durga Puja Pandal which has come to my knowledge by the video forwarded to me by Vishwa Hindu Parishad. The said video categorically show(s) that Azaan is being played in the Durga Puja Pandal and as such it has hit the sentiments of the Hindu religion and against the rules of the Society. The said persons have intentionally played AZAAN in the sacred Durga Puja Pandal and therefore with deliberate intent has wounded religious feelings.”
What Parimal Dey, the secretary of the Beliaghata 33 pally club, the organisers of the pujo, highlighted as the theme of this year’s festivities seemed very much in tandem with what I had spotted in old Dhaka. Dey said, following the tradition of having a theme for each pujo festivities in Kolkata, they too picked one. “Our theme is amra ek, eka noye (We are together, not alone)”. In other words, “Dharma jar jar; utsav sabar”.
He said the issue “is being politicised unnecessarily.”
“To demonstrate the theme, we have used models of church, temple and mosque and have used their symbols. Our purpose is to show that humanity is above all religion,” he underlined.
To create a better understanding among people, Dey and group also played a video to depict all the three religions. He told the newspaper, “Some people have conveniently ignored the Hinduism and Christian-related messages and are creating controversy over a message in Urdu. It is not true and completely fake that Azaan is being played during Maa Durga Puja.”
The local police have been quoted in news reports saying that no FIR has yet been lodged in response to the complaint. The forces are also reportedly keeping a close watch on social media uploads and messages on the issue to avoid it from turning into a communal flashpoint.
Having pocketed 18 of the 42 seats of Bengal in the last general elections, the BJP and the supporters of the Sangh parivar forces are understandably on a high in the state. More and more, the political fight between the BJP and the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) seems to be turning into a tussle between Bengal’s communal Partition history and pan Bengali linguistic and cultural identity.
The October 6 incident, however trivial it may be, only highlights it.
