For Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, the situation in Sandeshkhali may well evoke a sense of deja vu. It also has a lesson she needs to heed. In 2006-7, the CPM government in West Bengal was as domineering, if not more, as the Trinamool Congress government is today. The protests, then, Banerjee leading from the front, against land acquisition for the Tata Motors factory in Singur and the SEZ in Nandigram — and the excesses of the party and state response to it — had marked the beginning of the end for “bam”, the Left, in Bengal. In her third term as CM, Bam has been replaced by the Syndicate, a government-TMC-business nexus, and the same politics of violence and whataboutery continues to undermine the rule of law in the state.
Protests broke out in Sandeshkhali in North 24 Parganas district earlier this month with villagers demanding the arrest of TMC strongman Shahjahan Sheikh, zila parishad member Shivprasad Hazra and Uttam Sardar, TMC region president of Sandeshkhali panchayat — Hazra was arrested on Saturday. The protesters, many of them women, have accused the three men of land grabbing and sexual assault. Violence ensued with clashes between those allegedly backed by the TMC and BJP.
Sheikh is already absconding from the Enforcement Directorate: A group of his loyalists had attacked the ED team last month when it came to search his home. The government’s initial reaction was disturbing. The ruling party insisted that the protesters had been “brainwashed” by the CPM and BJP and issued prohibitory orders under Section 144 of the CrPC, subsequently overturned by the Calcutta High Court, which has also taken cognisance of the sexual assault allegations. Unfortunately, the BJP has tried to communalise the issue, while the CPM is holding protests of its own.
With the state police forming a “special team” to look into the allegations, it remains to be seen whether further arrests are made and how the law takes its course. But the government’s larger response has touched off apprehensions of a politicisation of the case. CM Banerjee has accused the BJP-RSS of “fomenting trouble” and riots in the area — her allegations ignore the structural issue of which Sandeshkhali seems but a symptom. The government and police must have a monopoly on violence — in Bengal, vital ground has been ceded to the Syndicate. Figures like Shahjahan Sheikh are seemingly beyond the law because they are the lynchpins, at the local level, of this warped system. The first step for the government must be to act — and be seen to act — against those within its own ranks who are undermining the rule of law.
