Birbhum Arson: Bengal’s History Of Gore Exposes State’s Underbelly Of Poverty And Political Patronage

The ghastly deaths of nine people in Bengal’s Birbhum district Monday night is yet another incident in a long and bloody list of violence that has blighted the state for the past six decades. Violence, especially political violence, has been an integral part of Bengal’s social and political landscape since the early 1960s that marked the political ascendancy of the communists.

But it is poverty, and the state’s flailing economy, that is responsible for the recurrent violence in Bengal. An overpopulated state that offers very limited sources of meagre and subsistence-level incomes to a vast majority of its population, especially in the rural areas, the fight for a miniscule slice of the small pie is intense.

And that fight in Bengal has been very violent and gory ever since the communists started marking their presence in the state. With their advocacy of brutal ‘class struggle’ and the ‘annihilation of class enemies’ that is sanctioned in their ‘holy’ texts, the communists birthed the culture of political violence that the state has been in the grip of since the 1960s.

The communists, by advocating and leading militant and irresponsible trade unionism, drove capital out of Bengal and turned the state into an industrial graveyard. The disastrous economic policies they pursued after coming to power in the state in 1977 drove the state into the red.

The impact of the financial ruin that they brought upon the state was felt the most in Bengal’s vast rural hinterland. With land holdings getting fractured and smaller with every passing generation, farming was reduced to a subsistence-level livelihood on which the entire rural populace depended.

A complete absence of employment opportunities in even the urban or semi-urban areas forced the deprived masses to stick to farming that yielded progressively declining returns. Though the communists executed land reforms and re-distributed ceiling-surplus land to landless farm labourers under Operation Barga, the benefits of that quickly petered out because the communists failed to carry forward the reforms and modernise the farm sector.

At the same time, the communists established a vice-like grip on power through complete domination of all institutions like the gram panchayats and panchayat samitis. And also through the politicisation of the police, local administration and other institutions like schools and colleges, government healthcare facilities etc.

Only the party faithful or cronies and sycophants of local communist netas or apparatchik were appointed as teachers, doctors, policemen and government officials and they would, naturally, implement the diktats of their benefactors.

Bengal’s economic ruination and the meagre livelihood opportunities triggered an intense competition for sustenance, especially in the rural areas. This competition, which offered the ruling communists a great opportunity to tighten their grip on the masses, was also violent at times. And, mostly, that violence was perpetrated at the instance of the communists whose texts sanctified gore.

An intense fight came to prevail over the meagre resources and livelihood opportunities that were available. For instance, a farmer looking to supplement his scant earnings from agriculture by plying a rickshaw or a cart, or setting up a small food kiosk, would need to seek permission and blessings and bribe the local communist boss in his village.

The local party boss--often the local committee secretary or ‘LCS’--became a powerful and feared man whose writ ran large over the village. He became the final arbiter of people’s destinies.

And, thus, the battle for political power at the local levels also intensified. The post of the LCS, or that of the panchayat pradhan and deputy pradhan, became highly coveted ones because such persons could not only wield a lot of influence and power, but also make considerable sums of money.

The Trinamool, which came to power in Bengal in 2011, has walked down the same path as the communists. While Mamata Banerjee has driven the state deeper into the red with her disastrous economic policies, the earnings of people, especially in the rural areas, has dwindled even more.

And, thus, the fight for the even smaller economic pie available now has become much fiercer. The Trinamool has consolidated its hold on power in the rural areas with much more viciousness and determination than the communists.

While the communists were a highly disciplined lot, the same cannot be said about the Trinamool. A strict code of conduct and discipline kept inner party rivalries and feuds within the ranks of the communists well under control. But the Trinamool being an undisciplined party is now wracked by such rivalries and feuds.

So much so that party chief Mamata Banerjee has, in all party meetings in recent times, been issuing stern messages against factionalism, rivalries and feuds within her party. But the lure of power and lucre, especially in the poverty stricken rural areas, is too intense for the party chief’s exhortations to have much effect.

Bhadu Sheikh, whose murder on Monday evening triggered the barbarous attack on a hamlet housing his political rivals after a couple of hours that left eight people (mostly women and children) dead, was a Trinamool functionary and the deputy pradhan of Barshal gram panchayat.

Sheikh, a resident of Bogtui Paschimpara in Rampurhat subdivision of Birbhum district bordering Jharkhand, was killed by a group of ten to twelve people who went to his hamlet on bikes and hurled countrymade bombs at him. The murder angered Sheikh’s neighbours and loyalists in Bogtui Paschimpara and they assumed that the killing was sanctioned by his political rivals within the Trinamool living in the neighbouring hamlet of Bogtui Purbapara.

Apprehending retaliation from followers of the murdered Trinamool neta, the menfolk of Bogtui Purbapara fled their homes. When the mob from the slain neta’s hamlet descended on Bogtui Purbapara a couple of hours later, they did not find any men there. And in anger, they locked the tiny mud dwellings there from outside, poured kerosene and petrol on their thatched roofs and set them afire.

By the time fire tenders arrived on the scene close to midnight, many of the huts had been reduced to ashes. Seven bodies were recovered from the embers and of the three who were badly burnt but still alive, one died on the way to the hospital.

Bhadu Sheikh’s rise to prominence in the local unit of the Trinamool had caused a lot of heartburn among some old-timers in the party who viewed him as an upstart. Bhadu’s brother, Babar, was also a Trinamool functionary and became a victim of inner-party feud--he was also killed--a year ago.

As deputy pradhan of the local gram panchayat, Bhadu Sheikh was in a position to dispense many favours. He also had access to considerable funds meant for disbursal to beneficiaries of the plethora of welfare schemes and funds meant for development works like construction of roads, community halls, healthcare facilities and school etc.

Since he displaced a number of old-timers to attain a position of power and pelf, Bhadu Sheikh naturally angered a lot of people and made powerful enemies. While a fair probe by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) hastily constituted by chief minister Mamata Banerjee may net the murderers and their sponsors, it would be safe to assume that Bhadu Sheikh’s rivals within the Trinamool were behind his murder. That is what local newspapers have also reported.

Monday night’s grisly murders in Birbhum are, thus, one episode in the continuing dark drama of violence that Bengal has been helplessly witnessing for more than sixty years now. This bloodshed will not end. Not until the state’s economy improves, more jobs are available, agriculture turns profitable and, most importantly, the stranglehold of politicians on the lives and livelihoods of the masses is prised off. But that looks like an impossible tall order in present-day Bengal.