Hundreds of people from Calcutta and neighbouring districts joined a rally in the heart of the city to condemn the lives lost in the CISF firing in Sitalkuchi in Cooch Behar on Saturday.

The “attempt to legitimise the killings” by BJP leaders was as heinous as the killings, said participants in the rally that started at College Street and culminated at Shyambazar.

“This (Sitalkuchi) is a trailer of the asol paribartan (real change) that the BJP wants to herald in Bengal. As if the killings were not enough, now there is an attempt to justify the firing by using words like ‘polarisation’ and ‘self-defence’,” Malay Tewari, one of the organisers, said at the start of the rally.

The rally drew students, teachers, doctors, activists and senior citizens. Hundreds of flags with pictures of Rabindranath Tagore, B.R. Ambedkar, Bhagat Singh and Pritilata Waddedar fluttered under the canopy of trees as the rally went along Bidhan Sarani.

(Left) “The BJP is scared of dissent and does not realise that the history of a civilisation is the history of dissent,” said Debashis Dutta, a retired bank employee, at the rally; (Right) Sharannyo Banerjee and Pallavi Mondal, researchers at the Institute of Development Studies, at the rally on Monday. Pictures by Bishwarup Dutta

Debashis Dutta, 65, a retired bank employee, was walking at the centre of the rally. “Khomotaye modomotto hoye esob korchhe (Drunk on power, they are doing these things),” he said of the Narendra Modi regime.

“They have influenced every level of the administration, including central institutions. These are obvious traits of fascism,” said Dutta, a resident of Taltala.

Dutta is not part of the “No Vote to BJP” campaign, which organised the rally. But he is a regular at Indian Coffee House on College Street, where a group of BJP supporters had allegedly torn and defiled posters of the “No Vote to BJP” campaign.

Taltala falls under the Chowringhee Assembly constituency, which votes on April 29.

Like Dutta, many participants in Monday’s rally were not part of any political party or campaign. But they took to the streets because the Sitalkuchi killings had instilled “fear and rage” in them.

Many of them said the BJP’s desperate bid to use the killings to polarise society showed that the party was growing “increasingly desperate” in Bengal.

Filmmaker Aniket Chattopadhyay addresses the rally at Shyambazar. Picture by Bishwarup Dutta

Sharannyo Banerjee, who has just completed his MPhil in sociology from the Institute of Development Studies in Salt Lake, had learnt about the rally from social media.

“No BJP leader is questioning the role of the CISF. They are trying to normalise the brutality. Some of them are exploiting the killings to polarise society. This is not a stray incident but a sign of things to come if the BJP is voted to power in Bengal,” said Banerjee, who lives in Beleghata, which votes on April 29.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah have tried to shift the blame for the Sitalkuchi deaths on chief minister Mamata Banerjee, claiming that her allegedly inflammatory speech against central forces had triggered the incident.

On Sunday, BJP Bengal president Dilip Ghosh threatened a “repeat of Sitalkuchi everywhere” if “naughty boys” did not mend their ways.

Banners that minced no words were the highlight of the rally. “We don’t want the festival of bulletocracy (gulitantra),” said one banner. The word “utsav (festival)” was spelt as “utshav”. In Bengali, shav means corpse.

Many people from Howrah and Hooghly joined Monday’s march.

Baidyanath Singh, a zari worker from Uluberia in Howrah, was one of them. Singh used to work in Rajasthan but lost his job after the Covid pandemic broke out.

He has since been doing odd jobs to run his family. “Livelihood is a problem. On top of that, voters are being killed by men in uniform,” he rued.

The rally went along Bidhan Sarani and Bhupen Bose Avenue, which are lined with hundreds of shops on both sides. The traders were spotted listening intently to speakers near the Shyambazar five-point intersection, where the rally culminated.

Filmmaker Aniket Chattopadhyay, who is part of the “No Vote to BJP” campaign, said the BJP leaders’ justification of the “Sitalkuchi killings reminded people of General Dyer (the British officer responsible for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919)”.

Kasturi Basu, a convener of the campaign, reminded the audience that the central forces “got salaries from taxes” paid by citizens. “How dare they train their guns on voters? The BJP is scared. The BJP has sensed a big defeat in Bengal and that is why the party is resorting to fear mongering,” she said.