On April 5, Nandan complex in the heart of the city became the venue of a protest which took on the Mamata Banerjee government for deciding for the people of the state which newspapers they should read in public libraries.
To drive the message home as hard as they could, members of Alternative Theatre Group staged a street play which depicted young men wearing newspapers being chased, attacked and finally falling dead on the street. The symbolism did not escape anybody: the victims represented the state’s attack on the press and the girls who sat weeping by their side were the helpless citizens.
Among those who participated in the protest, under civil society group Sanskriti Samannay, were painter Wasim Khan, novelist Samaresh Majumdar, theatre artist Ashok Mukherjee, actor Papiya Adhikari, film director Anindita Sarbadhikari and scores of college students. As they marched against the government’s decision, the protesters scribbled pointed questions on the pavement: “Roj din ki Holi hobe? (Will a bloody Holi be played every day?)”; “Okarone roktopath keno? (Why should there be useless violence?)”.
The protest was a grim reminder of a similar one held against the Left Front government only a year ago for its refusal to allow the staging of the play Pashu Khamar based on Animal Farm, George Orwell’s satire on communism. Only, then the protest was by the Trinamool Congress-led civil society.
If the test of democracy is the freedom to criticise, then the West Bengal government has scored a duck with its directive to public libraries not to buy newspaper other than the 13 dailies specified by it. This means that practically every major newspaper, including the highest circulated Ananda Bazaar Patrika, as also The Telegraph, Bartaman, Hindustan Times and a host of other dailies are no longer to be bought by public libraries. Besides the state central library and 12 state government libraries, West Bengal has 2,463 government-aided and seven government-sponsored libraries.
In its first notification, the government had allowed only eight vernaculars like SakalBela, Sangbad Pratidin, Dainik Statesman, Ekdin and Khabar 365 Din, Urdu dailies Akhbar-e-Mashriq and Azad Hind and the sole Hindi newspaper, Sanmarg, most of which are seen as being generally sympathetic towards the Trinamool Congress. But after a protest the government expanded the list to 13, including The Times of India and the Bengali Aajkaal. The circular instructed the libraries not to spend tax payers’ money on other newspapers as the government intended to “develop and spread free thinking among the members”.
Appalled at the move, Sarbadhikari says, “The circular is unacceptable and is an attack on humanity. That’s why so many people gathered to mark their protest against the government which had promised change for the good.”
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“The government must not restrict readers,” adds Sunil Gangopadhyay, novelist and chairman of the Sahitya Akademi. Libraries, he adds, were built over a period of time to educate and inform the masses. “Newspapers integrate the locals with a wider world,” he says and adds that censoring reading material this way is “certainly undemocratic”.
Banerjee’s media advisor, Ritabrata Bhattacharya, however, maintains that the directive comes as a measure to promote the relatively smaller dailies. “The government’s notification on the 13 dailies to be kept in public libraries is aimed at promoting news dailies devoid of any political colour,” says Bhattacharya. “In 1985, under the Left Front government, all public libraries were instructed to keep CPI (M) mouthpieces, GanaShakti and Peoples’ Democracy. The current government has not imposed its mouthpiece on any of the libraries,” he defends.
Many, however, view the government’s order as a fallout of the chief minister’s fury against criticism of her governance.
But her close aide, Shuvaprasanna, argues that people showed their faith the government and made it win with a landslide majority against the Left Front so that it would protect the rights of the numerical minority. “The government,” he adds, “is trying to support smaller vernacular newspapers (with circulation ranging from 300 to 1,000 copies) so that they survive the competition from bigger dailies.”