As Mamata Banerjee completes her first six months in office, the people of West Bengal now have a fairly good idea of the shape of things to come. In a systematic reversal of her poll promises, Mamata Banerjee has now launched a full-scale repressive campaign in Jangalmahal. The joint operation which she claims had been effectively ‘suspended’ to ‘give peace a chance’ has been resumed in full swing. And this is accompanied by Mamata’s own version of ‘Salwa Judum’ complete with recruitment of ‘special police officers’ and a TMC-backed vigilante force in the name of ‘Bhairav Vahini’, a veritable TMC-style replica of the erstwhile CPI(M)-sponsored band of armed storm-troopers known notoriously as ‘harmad vahini’ in West Bengal.
If this looks like the standard format of Operation Greenhunt, the kind of tirade Mamata has launched against Maoists and their sympathisers, trying to whip up a veritable anti-communist witch-hunt, can only remind us of the McCarthy era in the US and Bengal’s own experience of fascist repression in the 1970s. She has described the Maoists as ‘mafia’ and as being more dangerous than terrorists. She and her lieutenants constantly refer to the Maoists as a foreign-backed threat, implicating almost all of India’s neighbours – China, Pakistan, Nepal, all included. And now she has gone to the extent of asking the people to keep tabs on whatever transpires at the Coffee House, Jadavpur University and Basanta Cabin, iconic centres of Kolkata’s cultural identity and Left discourse. Even those who speak in favour of Maoists will not be spared, she has said on record.
Having come to power by riding on the support of the ‘civil society’ and large sections of Bengal’s left-leaning cultural world, this is Mamata Banerjee’s way of paying off her debt! Before elections she had promised to release all political prisoners and settle the grievances of the people of Jangalmahal. Now she has shelved even the truncated list of political prisoners recommended for release by the committee reviewing the issue, and the interlocutors entrusted with the job of facilitating negotiations with the Maoists have been left with no other option but to offer to resign. But while she refuses to release political prisoners, she personally storms the police station in her neighbourhood to get her own ‘TMC boys’ released.
