Kolkata: The citizens’ protest over the rape and murder of a junior doctor in Kolkata’s state-run R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital and the suspected cover-up initiatives by the hospital and police authorities have pushed West Bengal’s Mamata Banerjee government onto uneasy turfs.
It has, at the same time, revealed a political vacuum. The core movement of the junior doctors and the solidarity movements around it — in Kolkata and the towns in the districts — are mostly happening under apolitical banners.
There is large-scale public participation in these protest rallies — starting with the August 14 event called ‘Reclaim the Night’. The large participation of women and youths reflect genuine anger and frustration at the state government over the rot in the public health administration that the incident revealed.
Junior and senior doctors, who have been agitating for five weeks, have alleged a widespread ‘threat culture’ in the health administration, with a section of doctors enjoying political backing becoming too powerful to call all the shots — from exams to appointments and postings — and forcing juniors to be involved in illegal, immoral and corrupt practices.
At the same time, the ‘apolitical’ character of the protests has been its main currency. The participants — whether the junior doctors or people hitting the streets in solidarity — are resisting politicisation attempts by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)), the two main Opposition parties.
“In the true sense, the people of West Bengal are currently suffering from an acute lack of political leadership,” said Soumen Sarkar, an assistant professor of Chemistry at a government college in northern West Bengal.
Human rights activist Ranjit Sur of the Association for Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR), the state’s largest human rights organisation, echoed Sarkar. “It is evident from the nature of the protests that people are looking for an alternative. Their spontaneous participation and insistence on the absence of political banners and slogans reflect the public dissatisfaction with all political forces,” Sur said.
He added that while the Trinamool Congress (TMC) government has lost the trust of a large number of people due to the attempted cover-up of the rape and murder, the protesters are also wary of the prospect by BJP gaining from the protests and are still not comfortable with the CPI(M). “Protests without political banners are drawing more crowds than those with political banners,” Sur said.
Also read: A Non-Political Movement Is Uncharted Territory for Mamata Banerjee
In Kolkata, on two separate occasions, junior doctors, their student friends, and sympathisers greeted senior BJP leaders with ‘Go Back’ slogans the moment they arrived at the protest venue to express solidarity. Judge-turned-BJP MP Abhijit Gangopadhyay and legislator Agnimitra Paul had to go back.
After Paul faced ‘Go Back’ slogans, the Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the state assembly Suvendu Adhikari, alleged that it was not the protesting junior doctors but “Jadavpur (university) elements who drink alcohol, smoke ganja and charas and use heroin all night were behind this sloganeering.”
“Junior doctors are not associated with them. I have identified a few such elements. I have enquired from junior doctors. They have told me those who raised go-back slogans are not part of their protests. Protesters and the people need to be cautious about these (Jadavpur) elements,” Adhikari said, sitting next to Paul, former Rajya Sabha member Swapan Dasgupta and former Meghalaya and Tripura governor Tathagata Roy.
By Jadavpur elements, he refers to leftwing student activists.
However, the junior doctors soon hit back at Adhikari. “Right from the beginning, we have opposed those who wanted to use our movement for political purposes. Adhikari is trying to tarnish our movement by attributing the sloganeering to depraved outsiders. We want to make it clear to him and everyone else that anyone trying to use our movement will face the same response.”
In Sreerampore town of Hooghly district, about 30 km north of Kolkata, a protest gathering at Battala area in the first week of September witnessed an impressive crowd. At one end of the gathering, a group of men shouted Bharat Mata Ki Jai a few times, to which some others objected, referring it as ‘BJP-RSS slogan’. At another place in the same gathering, two CPI(M) activists who had brought out their party flag were forced to furl them.
In Chinsurah town about 15 km north of Sreerampore, at a protest march called by alumni associations of different schools and colleges, objections were raised the moment some Left supporters raised the ‘Mamata Banerjee nipat jak (Down with Mamata Banerjee)’ slogan. However, in no case did the Left supporters try to argue, as per people present there.
In most of these solidarity movements happening in towns and the suburbs over the past couple of weeks, the BJP has a rather negligible role.
Their first protest programme, the march to Nabanna (state secretariat), was called under the banner of Chhatrasamaj but agitators soon clarified that they had nothing to do with this event. The Sangh Parivar later organised another rally in north Kolkata under the banner of Vivek Jagran Yatra, in which actor-turned-BJP leader Mithun Chakraborty participated.
The CPI(M) is occasionally organising rallies with its flags, banners and slogans but is playing a key role in organising bannerless protests in the urban and peri-urban pockets.
From south Bengal towns like Uttarpara, Serampore, Chandannagar and Chinsurah in Hooghly district and Howrah and Ulubearia in Howrah district to Cooch Behar, Haldibari, Mathabhanga and Mekhliganj in northern Bengal’s Cooch Behar district, the CPI(M) and other Leftist organisations are the main driving force behind the protest gatherings.
According to civil society members in different parts of the state, activists of CPI(M)’s mass organisations like the All Bengal Teachers’ Association, Indian People’s Theatre Association, Democratic Women’s Association and West Bengal Democratic Writers Artists Association are the main force behind the protests in suburban towns. They mostly maintain the apolitical character with the absence of party flags, banners and slogans.
Besides, activists of smaller Left parties and groups of civil society and rights-based organisations like the Socialist Unity Centre of India (SUCI), CPI(ML)(Liberation) and Association for Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR) are also playing a role in organising such protests.
The presence of these groups, as well as a large number of people who are not directly associated with political activism, are resisting the politicisation efforts.
Such groups played a key role in the fall of the Left Front government in 2011 through a four-year-long struggle. Now, these groups are up against the TMC, though they are also ensuring that the ‘apolitical’ nature of the citizens’ protests is maintained.
However, according to a senior CPI(M) leader, they themselves are focussed on maintaining the ‘non-party nature’ of the protests.
The crowds in such protests also include some TMC supporters, who say they agree with the demand for justice for Tilottama, the name people have given to the 31-year-old rape and murder victim.
“Leftist teachers are playing the most important role in organising protest marches in the towns in the districts. Besides, many inactive members of the CPI(M)’s cultural wings have become active,” said a senior police officer in Hooghly district.
In some towns, organisations belonging to the Sangh Parivar are also initiating rallies without banners but they are fewer in number, the officer said. A journalist in Cooch Behar and another in Nadia district echoed him.
Also read: Justice, a Gender Audit, Mamata’s Resignation: Who Is Asking for What in the R.G. Kar Protests
However, the agitations have remained mostly confined to the state’s urban and pre-urban areas. This is one of the reasons that some are considering this as a reflection of the urban disenchantment noticed in the 2024 Lok Sabha election. Of the 121 urban bodies across the state, the BJP was ahead in 69, the TMC in 51 and the Congress in two.
The party took note of the poor show in urban areas and, as among people’s confidence-gaining measures, the Banerjee government launched a drive against the encroachment of pavements by hawkers.
The root of the disenchantment might be deeper than encroachments. “Jobs are among the biggest issues behind the anger among the urban youth,” concedes a TMC corporator from Naihati town in North 24-Parganas district.
“If the government has failed to generate jobs suitable for the middle-class youth, the lack of government appointments and the alleged large-scale corruption in government jobs have aggravated the frustration,” he said, requesting anonymity. “The total mishandling of the R.G. Kar episode has triggered an outburst of that growing frustration.”
Women, on the other hand, became concerned with the question of safety, especially as the incident happened in a supposedly safe place — a government hospital — and the administration appeared keener on cover-up than prompt action.
Political scientist Zaad Mahmood, an associate professor at the Presidency University in Kolkata said one of the most important outcomes of the protests is the revival of the civil society movement. “Civil society movements had ceased to exist in Bengal since TMC’s ascent to power in 2011. Now, a new civil society movement is shaping the civil society afresh,” he said.
Mahmood pointed out that the pre-2011 civil society movements that helped the toppling of the Left Front government were dominated by Kolkata-centric art and cultural world celebrities. In contrast, the new movement has greater participation of doctors and teachers and grassroots-level cultural activists.
“In the pre-2011 mass protests, people gathered at the call of civil society personalities. This time, celebrities are coming to protest venues to mark their presence and express solidarity,” Mahmood said, adding that the political outcome of the protests remains unpredictable at present.
