The reputation of West Bengal as an arena of political turbulence dates back to the beginning of the 20th century and the movement against British rule. However, this picture of unending choppiness persisted with Independence. In 1948, a fringe communist group pursuing a crazy policy of insurrection threw a British manager of an engineering company into the boiler; and in 1953, there was widespread destruction of government property and public transport after the British-owned tramways raised fares by one paisa. An exasperated Jawaharlal Nehru, who imagined Bengalis to be in a state of exaggerated emotionalism, described Calcutta — then the second-most important Indian city after Bombay — as a “city of processions”.
Although the redoubtable Bidhan Chandra Roy just about managed to stave off an image collapse with his blend of charm and firmness, the jagged edges began to be visible by the time the communist parties organised the violent food movement in 1966. From there, it was a steady downhill slide all the way into the present century. Jyoti Basu had a larger-than-life image outside Bengal and some disoriented souls even regarded him as a potential prime minister of India. In his home state, however, he presided over almost three decades of a slide into national irrelevance. Under Mamata Banerjee, the decline hasn’t plateaued and the celebration of violence, sloth and indolence has been complemented by a spectacular rise in political corruption. Since economic growth is virtually non-existent, corruption has invariably entered areas that were hitherto outside the scope of venality.
To this has been added an overwhelming sense of despondency and hopelessness among the social and cultural elite of the state — the indigenous business elite had more or less become extinct by the 1980s when Rajiv Gandhi pronounced Calcutta a “dying city”. Those with a sense of the past may find some contemporary relevance in what Nirad C. Chaudhuri wrote about the impact of the Government of India Act of 1935 (and the Communal Award that preceded it) on the Hindu bhadralok elite of united Bengal: “The starkly obvious feature was that… Bengali Hindus were permanently debarred from exercising any political power in their province… except through the charity of the Muslims which was not likely to be bestowed… they were reduced to a permanent statutory minority, disenfranchised as to power, although given the franchise to elect members to the legislature.”
Since 2019, the party of Mamata Banerjee won all the Lok Sabha and assembly elections in West Bengal despite its failure to win a plurality of Hindu votes.
To locate the turbulence in West Bengal since early August, centred on the brutal rape and murder of a junior doctor in Kolkata’s R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital, to an overall Bengali Hindu sense of disenfranchisement may seem far-fetched to many. However, disengaging from the identification with political parties that is an inescapable feature of the Bengal landscape, some features of the agitation stand out.
First, it is all too apparent that the colleagues of the murdered junior doctor did not expect the truth about what really happened that fateful night to emerge as a result of any investigation headed by either the administration of R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital or the local police. From the very outset, all the pointers suggested that the erstwhile, politically well-connected principal and the top echelons of the Kolkata Police were colluding to prevent the whole truth from emerging. This included the clumsy attempts to browbeat the parents of the deceased into accepting a ridiculous story of suicide. In short, there was a complete absence of confidence in the two agencies of the state the medical staff were likely to encounter in such a situation — the state health department and the Kolkata Police. It is an additional complication that both departments come under ministerial portfolios held by the chief minister.
Secondly, the sense of disenfranchisement felt by the stakeholders of R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital seamlessly extended to the middle classes of the state. Their pent-up concerns over women’s safety, the unconcern (sometimes bordering on criminalisation) of the local police and the political high-handedness found expression in the midnight vigils on August 14/15. Since then, there have been spontaneous demonstrations of varying sizes organised by neighbourhood groups and other concerned citizens that may or may not have involved political parties. In a state where citizens have often felt intimidated into looking the other way and tacitly acquiescing in political wrongdoing (including electoral malpractices), these big and small assertions of citizens’ power on the streets suggest a mental breakthrough.
Finally, the brazenness of the political and administrative establishments to these emotional explosions warrants an explanation. It can hardly be the case that a deft politician with an instinctive feel of the popular mood can risk being portrayed as the epitome of insensitivity. However, she has taken the risk, preferring administrative rigidity to political flexibility. Part of the reason could be a belief that the Bengali Hindu middle classes lack natural bonds of community solidarity and will be unable to sustain a movement for long. Then there is the depth of collusion with corruption in different spheres that the political class attached to the Trinamool Congress seems unable to extricate itself from. And, finally, there is the belief of the ruling dispensation in the state that the presence of the Bharatiya Janata Party as the principal Opposition force that is indirectly nurturing the students' movement and citizens' initiatives will have a countervailing impact. This essentially means that the significant Muslim minority on whose support the Trinamool Congress is disproportionately dependent will keep their powder dry and shun joining in the street protests. So far, this has indeed been the case — and more so with the communist parties abandoning their oppositional role.
In political terms, West Bengal could be on the cusp of another electoral earthquake that could lead to the end of the Trinamool Congress’s domination. However, to address the larger issue of social decline will necessitate a more enlightened form of political intervention, something that the existing political class hasn’t yet cottoned on to. The issue isn’t merely one of political change, but Bengal’s overall material and moral decline.