West Bengal is locked in a loop of one horror story after another

Too much is changing in West Bengal too quickly. Where have these bahubalis sprung from? They used to be under the thumb of political leaders. Now, they seem to be calling the shots.

Screengrab from a 2021 video in which TMC leader Jayant ‘Giant’ Singh’ (wearing a white headband) and his aides could be seen beating a man | Video from X

If the video from Chopra in West Bengal, showing a goon — let’s call them what they are: Bahubali — nicknamed JCB (after the bulldozer) thrashing a couple involved in an extramarital affair made you sick, be prepared to throw up if you chance upon this week’s viral video from the state which has another Bahubali, Jayant Singh, dispensing his brand of “justice” to a young man in Ariadaha near Kolkata. His nickname, by the way, is Giant, a corruption of Jayant.

The March 2021 video, according to police, shows a long-haired victim hogtied and suspended in the air, his spine unnaturally curved like in a bow-pose yogasana. Jayant and his henchmen mercilessly rain down blows with long, stout wooden canes, while the victim’s high-pitched screams— initially mistaken for a girl’s until police clarified — pierce the air.

This is just one of many videos featuring Jayant that have crawled out of the woodwork recently, following his gang’s attack on a young man in Ariadaha late one night last week. When the victim’s mother intervened, she was beaten up, too, and both ended up in the hospital.

Today, leaders of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) – the MP and MLA representing Jayant’s area — are scrambling to distance themselves from him. Yet, it is common knowledge, with plenty of videos as evidence, that this goon operated under the protection of party leaders, much like Shahjahan of Sandeshkhali, whom Mamata Banerjee once defended. Even Chopra MLA Hamidul Rahaman initially defended JCB. However, Jayant’s viral videos have led top TMC leaders like MP Sougata Roy and MLA Madan Mitra to vehemently disown him.

Once a local milkman, Jayant Singh is now the local don, becoming their very own Frankenstein.

A failed strategy

Mamata Banerjee could have played it cool. After all, we all know that all political parties in India have their own bahubalis for all kinds of situations. Mamata’s predecessor, the Left Front, had their own army. Majid Master of Shashan, the ‘harmads’ of Nandigram and Singur and Lalgarh, and Tapan Ghosh and Sukur Ali of Chhoto Angaria spelt their own brand of terror. During Congress rule, Hemen Mondal of Gauribari in north Kolkata was a terror whose wings were finally clipped in 1984.

What Mamata could have done is yanked up the police and made it do its job to show justice was being done. She should have chastised the political leaders to be more discreet. Instead, she blamed everybody else for the mess, even accusing some local media of using old footage to malign the TMC just before Wednesday’s four Assembly by-elections in the state. She went as far as labelling certain local TV channels as ‘Godi media’, a term usually reserved for pro-BJP national channels headquartered in Noida.

That’s no strategy, surely, to reassure a population increasingly suffering from a sinking feeling that West Bengal is descending into a dystopian state with no one to fix the problem. Critics voicing such concerns are quickly labelled ‘Godi media’ or BJP stooges and have Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh or Unnao rape or the Hathras stampede thrown at them in a vituperative exercise of whataboutery.

Of course, non-Godi and non-BJP voices who are ready to call a spade a spade are few and far between, mostly browbeaten into silence by a rude majority of the TMC in the state Assembly. Civil society has been quiet for years, and opposition parties in the state — BJP, Congress, and the Left — lack direction or purpose, which means they cut no ice with ordinary people and certainly not the TMC. It’s only when issues gain national attention and are weaponised by the BJP’s national leadership that the TMC bothers to react, as Mamata did on Thursday while heading to Mumbai for the Ambani wedding.

A downward spiral

Just too much is changing in West Bengal too quickly, and very little for the better. Where have these bahubalis sprung from? In the past, they were under the thumb of political leaders. Today, they seem to be calling the shots. Over the last three days, both MP Sougata Roy and MLA Madan Mitra have complained to the police about receiving calls from Giant’s associates, who are apparently threatening them with dire consequences if they didn’t get Giant out of jail at once.

In the past, the bahubalis from Kolkata and other towns would be the benign ‘parar dadas’ who shepherded the famed para clubs that were friendly neighbourhood communities that raised funds for Durga Puja, helped anyone in medical need, organised local football matches, and held art competitions for children on Republic Day. Many of these clubs have turned into dens of goons, gamblers and extortionists, patronised by politicians and thus untouchable by the police.

Maybe I am wrong. Maybe I am watching too much Bengali Godi media. Maybe I should go for a drive and get some fresh air. For, as I wallowed in the chain of distressing events over the last fortnight – mob violence, lynchings, the Chopra thrashing, and now Ariadaha — I noticed an X handle waxing eloquent about Infosys for starting operations in Newtown, Kolkata, and another giving a peek into a shiny LTMindtree campus. I don’t know the people behind these posts. I imagine they are young, optimistic minds who want to talk about new job openings, new infrastructure, new roads, new hospitals, new art galleries, new cinema halls, new schools and new colleges in their state.

Sadly, though, the state seems locked in a loop of one horror story after another, perennial election-related violence, and now an epidemic of bahubalis straight out of bad Hindi movies.

West Bengal deserves much better.

Monideepa Banerjie is a senior journalist based in Kolkata. She tweets @Monideepa62. Views are personal.

(Edited by Prashant)