At 9 pm on Wednesday, men, women, and others, old and young, switched off the lights in their homes and joined a candlelight vigil at Karunamoyee in Kolkata’s Salt Lake to demand justice for ‘Abhaya’—the 31-year-old doctor who was raped and murdered on August 9 in a state-run hospital in the city. As I stood there, a question slid into my mind: What would you do if you found yourself today in Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s hawai chappals?
In between slogans of “we want justice” and “justice for RG Kar”, and vigorous renditions of “We Shall Overcome” in English, Hindi and Bengali, I asked the protestors at the vigil this question.
Many had a one-word answer: resign.
But there were more considered replies, too, reflecting the shock and horror of the young doctor’s rape and murder, as well as the disillusionment and disenchantment that’s descended upon a section of people in West Bengal after the unravelling of the RG Kar incident.
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‘I’d say sorry’
Had they been in Mamata’s position, most people at the vigil wanted to do what she hadn’t.
“If I had a clear conscience, I would have put the might of my administration to solve the case,” said a 35-year-old woman, who said she was visiting her hometown Kolkata from Delhi, where she works. “It feels like Mamata Banerjee has something to hide. And everybody has caught on to it.”
A senior citizen bhadralok professed he’d start with an apology.
“I would say sorry,” he said. “Sorry for failing to handle the situation correctly when the incident came to light.”
Mamata “must admit at least one mistake,” he added— “giving the principal of RG Kar Medical College and Hospital the equivalent post of principal at another equally prestigious medical college in Kolkata.”
The CBI has now arrested this principal, Sandip Ghosh, in a corruption case that the agency is investigating simultaneously with the rape and murder of the doctor.
“Was that [Ghosh’s transfer] a mistake or was it a planned attempt to shield this man?” asked a woman in her 40s, joining the conversation. “This Ghosh was making money from all his corrupt deals. He must have given a cut to some leader of the ruling party so he could continue doing this dakati (dacoity). The Chief Minister must have known. Why did she suspend him only after the CBI arrested him?”
Mamata Banerjee is also the state’s health minister, and Ghosh was a government doctor. The attempt to shield him, instead of acting against him for failing to even file a police complaint after the rape and murder, and the quiet burial of earlier complaints of corruption against him, could not have happened without Mamata’s knowledge.
Ashok Mukhopadhyay, a public relations professional of 50 years and now an author, was at the vigil with his wife. I had met him in the course of work before.
“What would you do, Sir, if you were in Mamata Banerjee’s shoes?” I asked
“I would not have allowed the situation to come to this pass,” was his vehement reply. “She came to power on the wave of the people’s will. But she has now lost contact with the people’s will.”
He also gave his take from a public relations perspective.
“Her party and government’s crisis communication has been a total disaster,” he said. “Some golden rules of communicating in a crisis are—act immediately, be transparent, be believable, and put one person in charge of communicating. Mamata failed each and every checkbox. Perhaps she failed because corruption in her party and in her government are very real.”
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Winning hearts, losing spine
Adding fat to the fire blazing against Mamata today are memories of her rise to power—of the agitations for justice at Nandigram and Singur against the Left government in the state, of the promise that Mamata held out for real ‘paribartan’ (change).
Bengal set its heart and hopes on Mamata for real change, for the better. She was placed on a tall pedestal and her 10-armed likeness installed in Durga Puja pandals.
Therefore, for a section of Bengal’s populace, the disappointment with her today is that much deeper. They are spilling into public spaces and protesting with a vigour never seen before.
You could argue this is an urban middle-class phenomenon. You could argue the protests will fizzle out soon, and that Durga Puja, due in a month, will mellow things. And you could be right.
Mukhopadhay, the PR professional, could be right when he delivered his parting shot to me: “Yes, people are angry with Mamata. But the situation in West Bengal is such, if there is an election tomorrow, there is no alternative and I will vote for a lamp post but never for the BJP.”
That, too, is probably accurate.
But, as BB King put it in that once-favourite song of mine, The Thrill is Gone.
The mercurial, hot headed, rebellious, passionate Mamata of the years before she became Chief Minister is gone. She is now just another politician, wrapped in the inevitable chains of power and parivar, doing what all politicians do: whatever it takes, hook or crook, to stay in power.
But she should look out for one thing: the plastic replica of a miniature spine, the kind that sits on the table of most orthopaedic doctors in India. It has now become the symbol of the upheaval over RG Kar. Among the hundreds who marched to the Kolkata Police headquarters on Tuesday, one doctor carried it in his hands like a flag. It was given as a present to the police commissioner.
In that plastic spine, there’s a message for the chief minister, too. A saying, once quoted by Alexei Navalny, the late Russian dissident, sums it up. When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty. RG Kar has triggered resistance.
Monideepa Banerjie is a senior journalist based in Kolkata. She tweets @Monideepa62. Views are personal.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)