Opinion | Khela Hobe? How Mamata is Playing to Win

Not in living memory has such a scene unfolded before the eyes of Bengalis on Sunday: East Bengal and Mohun Bagan football club supporters facing lathi-wielding policemen outside Salt Lake Stadium, shoulder-to-shoulder; in fact, on each other’s shoulders. For those who know the legendary rivalry of the two big Kolkata clubs in football-mad Bengal, it was nothing short of extraordinary. The rape-murder of the young doctor has galvanised an entire state.

Across Bengal fans of both clubs conducted joint marches chanting “Justice for RG Kar”. Every Bengali worth her hilsa or chingri (the favoured seafood of each team) will realise this is truly unprecedented. Not in her worst nightmares, not in all the previous cases of rape and rape-murder—from Park Street to Kamduni, Madhyamgram to Sandeshkhali—that she managed to weather, would the Chief Minister have imagined that things would come to such a pass.

Images of men in fatigues chasing people down the main arterial road that skirts the eastern limit of the city and leads to the airport shocked those sitting down with their evening cuppa. Worse still, with a straight face senior police officials averred they had cancelled the match as they had “specific information” of a mob that would disrupt it. So, they knew about a mob about to disrupt a football match, but had no inkling about the one that attacked RG Kar!

For the benefit of the media, a police officer even played a tape of a melodramatic male voice talking calmly and succinctly about a “plan” to bring weapons to the Derby football match and fight with the police to create havoc! And that was reason enough to lathi-charge football fans! But an earlier viral recording of a female voice talking about what was happening behind the scenes at RG Kar before the rape-murder, was dismissed by them as a fake.

How a woman politician who rose to fame by being bloodied by police batons under the Communist regime in 1993 could let the same uniforms loose on football supporters in 2024 for merely deciding to voice their demand for justice for the victim at the match is inexplicable. The actions last Sunday—indeed ever since the protests against the rape-murder and demands for justice gathered momentum across Kolkata—smacks of police overreach.

It is almost as if Mamata Banerjee has decided to, as Mark Antony famously imagined in Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, “Cry Havoc! And let slip the dogs of war” in the hope that sustained intimidation would make the movement for justice lose steam and remind protesters who remained the real power in the state. The events of the past few days indicate that the ever-loyal Kolkata Police is determined to do its best to live up to her expectations.

That is why prohibitory orders, now called BNSS163 (2) have been imposed for a week to ensure no more than 5 people assemble in a wide swathe of northern Kolkata around RG Kar, to render gathering at the medical college illegal. And that is why sitting veteran Trinamool Rajya Sabha MP Sukhendu Sekhar Roy and former BJP MP Locket Chatterjee have been summoned to Lalbazar (Police HQ) for questioning over allegedly objectionable social media posts.

The message to the general population of Bengal is evident, even though the two leaders may eventually be let off with nothing more than an innocuous parley: if we can summon the big fish, what do you think can happen to you minnows if you try to stir the waters? Much like the mass transfer orders of faculty members of medical colleges in the state. The order has since been revoked, but there is no doubt that the intended threat will be understood by all concerned.

Meanwhile, Trinamool members, including several MPs are actually helping the police in their egregious mission to suppress dissent, actually pointing out ‘suspicious’ posts on social media to them, giving the excuse that these are disseminating fake news. Ironically, many of them are the very same MPs who regularly shout about intolerance of dissent by the BJP. Are they doing this because they genuinely believe it or, they too are intimidated?

Ever since a mob rampaged through the protesters at RG Kar Medical College on 14 August, vandalising not only several floors of the building but also the stage of the agitating doctors, the intent to intimidate has been evident. While there are suspicions that at least one section of that mob was given the specific task of destroying evidence, it also gave the protestors a taste of what they would be up against if they persisted in demanding answers from the state.

The CM had come up with the ludicrous counter charge that the mob was a Ram-Bam (Right and Left) conspiracy, offering no reason why they would want to destroy evidence that would ultimately benefit her beleaguered government. She clearly expected that Bengal’s people would accept her assertion with the same willingness that they did her previous bizarre utterances. But things are rather different this time. Even though she has not yet accepted it.

The movement has gained momentum and thus found new supporters. Even Tollywood actors and directors are finally venturing out to join the protestors, rather than meekly gathering around the CM. And that marks an important shift as it is an open secret that those who do not fall in line with the ruling party do not get any movies or serials, because its apparatchiks embedded in or co-opted from the industry, control the unions that run the industry.

Is there a last-days-of-Hasina-type feeling at 30B Harish Chatterjee St as that house’s denizens watch crowds marching across Kolkata, not to mention in towns around the state? The perceptible anger, the persistent demand for justice, the apolitical crowd, the disgust of civil society, the heavy-handedness of the police— the comparisons surely must be apparent. Luckily for her, a coup d’etat (which she had actually once alleged in 2016!) is not an option.

But there is a ray of hope for Banerjee. She can plan a comeback if justice for the victim remains confined to punishment for the only man in custody so far rather than netting others who may reveal that sinister goings-on at RG Kar had links higher up. What she does not want is for the Central Bureau of Investigation to unearth a nexus between the perpetrator(s), the party and the police, as many suspect already. Will the CBI prevail or the Kolkata Police?

When even East Bengal and Mohun Bagan come together, it is a whole new ballgame. Does the CM realise this yet?

The author is a freelance writer. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.