Inside the world’s largest democracy, the people of West Bengal have been experiencing ruthless dictatorship almost for five decades. People voted against the autocratic communist regime in 2011 by executing their voting right and brought Mamata Banerjee in power. Unfortunately, the latter betrayed the people by following footsteps of the erstwhile communists and continue to oppress people’s voice.
Due to the representation of distorted history in school textbooks, most of the people of West Bengal are not aware of the consequences of the partition at the end of India’s freedom struggle. The Hindus in the undivided Bengal experienced rampant genocide in 1946 under the Chief Minister of undivided Bengal namely Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, who is known as the mastermind of “The Greater Kolkata Killing”.
To save the Hindu Bengali community, Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee snatched West Bengal from the grasp of Muslim League. After 74 years of that incident, we have seen a poster in social media to pay tribute to Suhrawardy on his death anniversary. Instead of verifying the originality of that poster or any sort of clarification of the creator of that poster, police administration arrested common people who condemned that original post. This one incident is enough to indicate where we are heading to!
TMC leaders set up a new trend of attacking the Prime Minister or Home Minister of the country or any BJP leaders from another state as outsiders but the CM had no problem to hold hand with leaders of other regional political parties to form third front alliance during 2019 General election. Even common people like us, the NRI Bengalis were labelled as expats by TMC MP. This is sad but true that many prominent signs of fascism are prominently visible in naked eye under the dictatorship of Mamata Banerjee.
Until now, 138 alleged political murders took place in the state. People have been found hanged till death in public places with folded knees touching the ground and shamelessly, the state police did not have the guts to declare it as murder. Recently a worker of the BJP party was shot near the police station. In the past few days, two were brutally beaten to death while they reached out to people as a part of BJP’s poll campaign.
The convoy of the national President of the BJP was attacked by the goons in front of the police. The State Government did not even allow to protest in democratic way and used all power to oppress the voice of common people when they came out to the street.
Secondly, since the beginning. the Trinamool government has not left any stone unturned to appease the minority vote bank. The Hindu community had to go to court to take permission to immerse “Maa Durga” idols while the government allowed minority communities to carry on their festival on the same day.
Even during the lockdown due to covid, the government did not have the guts to restrict the religious rituals of minorities. Strangely, during the phase wise opening, the government purposely left Friday from lockdown to allow people from the minority community to gather for their religious rituals. Several riots have been taken place in different areas of West Bengal and the government maintained absolute silence to keep their vote bank safe.
In addition, most of TV media maintains silence against the TMC sponsored hooliganism or the false claims of the ministers of the state. Media persons like Sanmay Banerjee, Shafikul Islam were sent to jail for raising their voice against such anarchism.
Furthermore, corruption became an inseparable partner of the TMC government. Many scams are currently under investigation. Also, job prospects look equally dire within the state. As soon as Mamata Banerjee came to power, she stopped SEZ and took a stand against FDI. Neither industrialization has taken place, nor is there any focus on infrastructure development. The last hope which people had was government service. Now with the rampant corruption, that has also become a distant not so feasible dream for most.
It has been widely reported that family persons of state ministers and leaders of TMC were waived off from emergency Covid duty and they also held high post in many places which they do not deserve. The honorable Kolkata High Court recently cancelled the recruitment panel of WB School Service Commission after 6 years of legal battle which vouches as an example of the level of corruption.
It is needless to say that there is no law and order in the state. Continuous oppression of the freedom of religion of Hindu community, extreme appeasement of minority community and opposition towards the Citizenship Amendment Act makes it necessary to ask if the TMC wants to make West Bengal a second Bangladesh? The Hindu Bengali community has gone through devastating battle of existence twice in the recent past and if the TMC party continues to remain in power, we might have to fight our third battle.
Over the past decade, the state government doubled the debt of the state without trying to set up infrastructure development for industrialization. As the 2021 Bidhan Sabha election is coming, it becomes necessary for us not to get trapped by the false promises of this corrupt TMC government, rather to elect the right government to save our future generations.
Note: The article was authored by Rudra Prasanna Banerjee, Research Scholar, Canada.
