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In over three decades of Left Front rule, CPM workers came to dominate nearly every aspect of social and political life, and the political Opposition was all too often dealt with violently. In the crime at Rampurhat, West Bengal, both the victims and the alleged perpetrators are reportedly associated with the state’s ruling party, the Trinamool Congress. Bhadu Sheikh, deputy pradhan, was murdered in Botugi village, and in the hours after Sheikh’s murder, a group of people set ablaze houses of the suspects’ relatives, killing eight people — all of them belonging to the minority community, and including women and children. The Bengal police has said that Sheikh’s murder did not have a political angle, but the killings appear to be part of a larger dismal pattern in the state: In West Bengal, the electoral dominance of the TMC in rural areas has been accompanied by violence, factionalism and a deterioration of the rule of law, in many ways mimicking and deepening the political culture that became entrenched during Left rule. For Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, fresh from the glow of her comprehensive victory over the BJP in the state last year, the killings are a call to take urgent steps to bring an end to the political culture of violence and impunity in Bengal.
In over three decades of Left Front rule, CPM workers came to dominate nearly every aspect of social and political life, and the political Opposition was all too often dealt with violently. Banerjee’s party appears to have only strengthened this way of doing politics. “Syndicate” culture — initially limited to certain construction projects in urban Bengal — has become a catch-all phrase that denotes the entrenched nexus between politics, corruption, organised crime such as extortion and distribution of political patronage. The lack of a cadre-based Opposition in rural areas means that personal and business rivalries find expression as violent factional conflicts. In this setting, the police apparatus appears to take its cue from the political masters: In Rampurhat, for example, questions are justifiably being asked about the absence of police forces in areas where arson and violence took place after Sheikh’s murder. Given that it is the Party that controls and circumscribes all factions and facets, it is from its leadership that the process of reform must also begin.
Speaking in the aftermath of the killings, Banerjee said that “… the possibility of a larger political conspiracy to malign the image of the State cannot be ruled out and the investigation will make all-out efforts to unearth all those who are behind the occurrence of the incident”. That sounds suspiciously like spectre-mongering. The police must bring the perpetrators to book, no matter what their political loyalties. And the TMC must make a beginning towards dismantling the Syndicate culture, to purge the violence from the state’s body politic that continues to take a toll on its men, women and children. In her third term, with an impressive mandate, touted as a leader who could play a leading role in the national Opposition space, CM Banerjee has the political capital to rescue her state by unambiguously upholding the rule of law.
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