West Bengal’s ‘politics over our bodies’ turns counter-productive for BJP

By IANS

KOLKATA: It was someday in the midst of 2007 that the motion in opposition to land acquisition for business began gaining momentum. Since that point the tradition of “politics over dead bodies” grew to become part of the political panorama of West Bengal.

At that point, the present ruling get together within the state, the Trinamool Congress, because the then principal opposition get together in West Bengal, nurtured the technique in opposition to the then chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee-led Left Front authorities. In the preliminary years because the principal opposition get together in West Bengal after 2011, the CPI(M) too made some makes an attempt to nurture this identical follow. And now the BJP because the principal opposition get together within the state is relying on the identical outdated follow as seen within the case of the mysterious dying of BJP youth chief, Arjun Chaurasia.

However, on this case the “politics over bodies” has backfired. The BJP tried laborious to determine the dying as homicide and even Union Home Minister Amit Shah, on April 6, 2022 made a public assertion declaring the dying as a homicide and demanding a Central Bureau of Investigation probe within the matter. However, the BJP had gone barely on the backfoot on the problem after the report of the autopsy performed by defence medical doctors on the Kolkata Command Hospital declared the rationale of dying as ante-mortem in nature which strengthened the Trinamool Congress’s suicide idea.

IANS talked to a piece of authorized brains, retired cops, psychologists and political observers on the professionals and cons of “politics over bodies”. All of them had solely the damaging factors to spotlight on this long-nurtured political technique in West Bengal.

According to retired Indian Police Service officer and former further director normal of the West Bengal police, Nazrul Islam, how fruitful would be the “politics over bodies,” for a specific get together will depend on the prevailing mass base of the get together.

“From 2007 till 2011 the politics over bodies helped the Trinamool Congress gain political mileage because at that point of time there was a pro-Trinamool sympathy wave and a parallel anti-Left anger wave in the state. But look at the current situation in West Bengal. Parallel court cases are going on in two incidents of mysterious death in West Bengal. The first is that of Anis Khan and the second is that of Arjun Chaurasia. But Anis was first with the CPI(M) and then with the Indian Secular Front, both lacking enough ground-level mass base in the state. So, politics over his death has not gained that momentum which the death of Arjun Chaurasia has, even though in the case of Khan’s death the murder charge allegations are directly against police personnel,” Islam stated.

Calcutta High Court felony lawyer Kaushik Gupta advised IANS that simply because the political events ought to behave responsibly in avoiding politics over our bodies so far as attainable, equally the state administration or slightly the police administration also needs to work inside the authorized periphery to foil any try on these strains.

“What have we seen on May 6, 2022. The police personnel had a tough time in recovering Arjun Chaurasia’s body as the BJP supporters constantly created obstacles. The police were successful in the third attempt to recover the body but after facing a lot of obstructions and even scuffles with the agitators. The Indian Penal Code prescribes severe penalties for those obstructing a government servant in performing his or her duty. I am sure that the police on that day were aware of that. But they did not apply that,” Gupta stated.

Psychologists really feel that this politics over our bodies is an expression of the ideological chapter and mediocrity within the political management. Speaking to IANS, Tirthankar Guha Thakurata, a college in Kolkata-based KPC Medical College & Hospital and a visiting college with Calcutta University’s Department of Psychology, stated that politics over our bodies is an especially straightforward path to get media protection and immediate recognition. “This happens when the political leadership suffers from mediocrity and lacks constructive and innovative ways of registering protest. It is not that the political leaders are not aware of the risks of this politics becoming counter-productive. Still, they resort to the same cliched strategy out of greed for quick media footage,” Guha Thakurata stated.

Political observer Dr Rajagopal Dhar Chakraborty stated that in a state like West Bengal, which is understood for political violence, it’s regular for ‘politics over our bodies’. “Incidents of caste violence or religious violence in West Bengal had been traditionally much lower compared to the cow-belt states. But the incidents of political violence compensate for that. So, the root of politics over bodies is in the long tradition of political violence. Until there is a marked improvement in the political atmosphere in the state, there will be no respite from this politics over bodies,” he stated.