In George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, Big Brother uses the “thought police” to prevent “thought crime”, or illegal thought. Any resemblance to the West Bengal government’s way of promoting what it calls “free thinking” is purely coincidental.
Almost a year ago, Mamata Banerjee had stormed into Writers’ Building in Kolkata, the seat of power in West Bengal, ending 34 years of Left rule. A crucial factor in her victory was the “paribartan Chai” (“We Want Change”) campaign against the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI(M), mounted by the intelligentsia — poets, artists, actors, writers, etc. Banerjee, they had hoped, would somehow get things moving and remove the inertia that had descended on the state. Eleven months on, their optimism has eroded. Some have gone to the extent of calling the Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress government “fascist”.
The paribartan Chai campaigners who have turned against Banerjee include educationist Sunanda Sanyal, theatre personality Koushik Sen, educationist Tarun Sanyal, rights activist Sujato Bhadra and, not to forget, rebel Trinamool Congress MP and singer Kabir Suman. Some like the Indian Statistical Institute professor Abhirup Sarkar (now the vice-chairman of the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation) have openly condemned the state government’s action on the now-infamous cartoon episode. Actor and film director Aparna Sen has been expressing solidarity through letters, while theatre personality Shaoli Mitra and painter Jogen Chowdhury have not been heard speaking in support of Banerjee in a while. Among those who are still with Banerjee, painter Shuvaprasanna and theatre personality Arpita Ghosh deserve special mention.
Writer and social activist Mahasweta Devi, who led the paribartan Chai campaign, was the first to express her disillusionment. Those first signs were visible towards the end of last year when the police denied the Association for Protection of Domestic Rights (APDR) permission to hold a protest rally against government action in Lalgarh at the Metro Channel in the central business district of Dalhousie. What really hurt the organisers was that APDR and Banerjee had fought on the same side in the Rizwanur Rahman case (of 2007), when a young computer graphics teacher had died under suspicious circumstances. Sunanda Sanyal can’t regret this enough: “There is no paribartan. Law and order is a shambles; Banerjee could not rise above petty politics to become everyone’s chief minister. This is autocracy, which is one step removed from fascism.”
The Marwari businessmen of Kolkata have been on tenterhooks ever since the promoters of AMRI hospital, which caught fire last December with massive loss of life, were thrown in jail. Privately, they say this was excessive action which was meant only to earn Banerjee brownie points with ordinary people. The intellectuals, by and large, kept a safe distance. But now they too are rethinking their support to Banerjee.
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That old saying, “What Bengal thinks today India thinks tomorrow,” may no longer hold good; but what Bengal’s intelligentsia thinks today the rest of Bengal thinks tomorrow. Those still siding with Banerjee know this well, and they are a worried lot. At Lalgarh, 170 km from Kolkata, Shuvaprasanna, who can be credited for scripting the paribartan Chai campaign, tried explaining to the dwindling gathering at a Banerjee rally earlier in the week that the government was “committed”, while some of the intellectuals were wavering. “Have patience in the government. Some people have joined the Left and are singing a different tune. Don’t fall for it.” The artist was referring to fellow paribartan Chai campaigners who have raised their voice against Banerjee and her style of governance.
A series of incidents — the Park Street rape which the chief minister thought was fabricated, the Katwa rape, labelled as a CPI(M) conspiracy, the arrest of Jadavpur University professor Ambikesh Mahapatra for forwarding a morphed picture of Banerjee in jest, and the arrest of acclaimed scientist Partha Sarathi Roy allegedly for protesting an eviction drive — all in quick succession, have widened the gulf between the intellectuals and Banerjee. “This is not the Mamata I knew,” says the dissident Suman. “All democratic principles — the freedom of speech and expression — are being stifled. She has not fulfilled even an iota of her pre-election promises; whether it’s release of political prisoners, withdrawal of joint forces from Lalgarh or repealing the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. The people of Bengal have been betrayed.” Banerjee is no longer in touch with Suman, and neither are her partymen. “I remember when we held the first rally at Nandigram, Banerjee was sitting next to me, clutching my arm,” he recalls. That was Banerjee, the Trinamool Congress MP.
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Banerjee’s fling with the media is proving to be shorter than expected. When some newspapers started taking a critical view of her, the government issued a circular that restricted state-aided libraries from subscribing to them. Most of those newspapers that are taken by the libraries are owned or led by Trinamool Congress MPs. This sifting, says the government, was done to promote “free thinking”. What followed was a furore — in the media as well as among the intelligentsia — which only prompted this stern response from Banerjee: “I have not yet said which newspapers people should read. I may soon do that.” Unhappy with the media coverage it has got so far, the state government is now planning to launch its own television channel and newspaper.
Banerjee’s critics point out that she was, after all, a creation of the media and so her uneasiness at not finding the media by her side is hardly surprising. During her media honeymoon, which lasted till a few months after the assembly elections, wherever she went the television cameras followed her. Banerjee made the most of this; whether it was her surprise visits to the emergency wards of government hospitals to highlight the crumbling infrastructure or simply a ride home from Writers’ Building — these adventures were all captured on camera like a 24x7 reality show. Those were the times when Banerjee was riding high on her success and everything was new. Less than a year on, Bengal’s bhadralok have suddenly woken up to a new reality, a new Banerjee.
The arbitrariness of Banerjee’s actions has not gone down well with them, be it the transfer of Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Damayanti Sen, who went against the chief minister’s “conspiracy theory” and cracked the Park Street rape case, or the recent diktat from a senior Trinamool Congress leader to boycott CPI(M) workers socially. “There is no place for such autocratic rules in a democracy. The way things are panning out, I feel so lost having brought about this change,” says Sunanda Sanyal.
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Autocracy or not, everyone in the Trinamool Congress knows that only their leader has the final say, or indeed has a say. “You may cry yourself hoarse, but only she is heard,” says Suman. This is hardly a revelation. Any journalist who has attended a Banerjee press conference knows that there is no space for any question that’s remotely uncomfortable: “You must be an agent of the CPI(M) or [lately] the Congress,” is the chief minister’s stock response. Her press conferences at Writers’ Building soon gave way to “press briefings”. This means, no questions.
A series of protest rallies in the aftermath of Mahapatra’s arrest have been held in Kolkata by the intellectuals; press conferences have been held on the streets and saw participation from the likes of Suman and Sunanda Sanyal. While some intellectuals have openly criticised the government, others are silent. “I don’t want to say anything on this,” is the only thing Abhirup Sarkar says when asked to evaluate the 11 months of the new government. “This issue is crucial and it has become so controversial, I don’t want to say anything,” says artist Jogen Chowdhury.
Banerjee, though, has given her own government 100 out of 100 for its performance. “I think the government is suffering from chronic infantilism,” scoffs Suman. But painter Shuvaprasanna stands steadfast. He sees a lot of positives in Banerjee’s government and is ready with a defence. “The fact that there is criticism shows that democracy is alive,” he says. “This atmosphere was not there in the Left regime.”
Many would disagree with him, but with the panchayat elections looming large, the question doing the rounds is, what bearing will the murmur in Kolkata’s intellectual circles have on rural Bengal? Well, two simple words, paribartan Chai, caught like wildfire one year ago. They reverberated through Bengal and through Singur. paribartan came to Singur much before it touched Kolkata.
Singur is at the crossroads again. For six years, the unwilling land-losers believed they would get their land back. Banerjee made them believe so. But the matter still awaits resolution. After all, there is an air of finality in what the leader says — much like Napoleon (the Stalin-like pig from Orwell’s Animal Farm) who decided for his comrades, lest they made mistakes.
