The following post-ed hints at 'got-up' of gang-rape at Nandigram by CPI(M) goons/hirelings, but ought to have followed the reports carefully. Inner vests of Radharani Ari, who coulddn't but revealed that she was raped on 14 March 2007 and in the 3rd week of April this year, by same persons, were not returned by the the docs of Seth Sukhlal Karnani Memorial Hospital. Evidence of rape was hushed up. Besides that, the article by Saonli Mitra in Dainik Statesman, after meeting the victim, seems authentic as Mitra does not belong to any party.
Sankar Ray
Cruelty of political competition
Kolkata calling: Shikha Mukerjee 28 Apr 08 (http://dailypioneer.com/indexn12.asp?main_variable=STATES&file_name=state12%2Etxt&counter_img=12)
Atrocity cannot become a convenient political weapon, for the violations that it describes cannot become cheap sensation inducing tricks. Yet another victim, yet another gang-rape, yet another political campaign hopeful of gaining mileage through befriending the victim of an atrocity in West Bengal's polarised politics is a measure of how low the State has sunk in terms of its sensibilities.
In the context of Nandigram, on the eve of the crucial Panchayat elections, the unveiling of a gang-rape is sensational. If the Trinamool Congress can be accused of using the oldest of prods to mobilise hatred of its enemy, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) within the electorate, it would be both immoral and unethical to excuse the deployment of rape as just one more of those things that are part of the regular repertoire of politics. If the CPI(M) is fiercely defensive in declaring the reported gang-rape a got-up story to boost the Trinamool Congress' image, the party cannot step away from the challenge of using the incident to tar its opponent.
The use of atrocity to score political points, especially an atrocity against a woman, is cruel. To rake up an earlier case to prove the falsification of fact by the Trinamool Congress is equally deplorable. By naming the victim, by putting the victims family on record is worse. But political parties seem to be doing so regardless of the ugliness of their actions.
The stakes, of winning in the panchayat elections, matter more than the niceties of behaviour. Having decided to fight alone, against an increasingly united Left coalition, the Trinamool Congress is determined to use anything and everything to tarnish the CPI(M)'s image. The CPI(M) is equally determined to trash the Trinamool Congress because it is greatly anxious about the outcome of the panchayat elections, in the post-Nandigram, post-Singur situation.
With the CPI(M) anxious to demonstrate that its popularity has not waned post Singur and post Nandigram, Banerjee anxious to gain some numbers to show that Trinamool Congress remains a force to reckon with and the Congress under the new leadership of Priya Ranjan Das Munsi, the 2008 panchayat elections will certainly be the most stressful of all such exercises, ever.
After the CPI(M)'s spectacular election results in 2006, the party's image has been seriously battered. The politically clumsy and insensitive handling of the land for industry issue, first in Singur and then in Nandigram, giving birth to the various "committees" to save peasant land holdings from forcible eviction/acquisition, has certainly shaken the CPI(M), which continues to fear that there may be a backlash. Till the panchayat elections are over, the votes are counted and the party can figure out whether its popularity is undiminished or destroyed, the campaign will be ugly and insensible.
The success of the bandh, in Kolkata, over price rise and the injuries to Mamata Banerjee during her visit of sympathy to the allegedly fraudulently described site of the gang-rape of Radharani Ardi, has only increased the CPI(M)'s nervousness. Coupled with the unfortunate death of CPI(M)'s east Midnapore party boss, Sudhir Giri, it has made the party more vulnerable than it already felt. The signals, transmitted through the elections to the local school boards in which the CPI(M) has suffered reverses in every district, has contributed to its rising tension.
While the Trinamool Congress cannot expect to seriously destabilise the CPI(M) in the forthcoming panchayat elections, it clearly hopes to make the ruling party uncomfortable, at least during the campaign. Banerjee's anxiety must be acute given the party's disastrous performance in Malda in the recent by election to the Khabra constituency. Having been catapulted into place as the State's leading opposition party through the ineptness of the CPI(M)'s leadership over Singur and Nandigram, Banerjee must be anxious to acquire sufficient numbers in the panchayat elections to giver herself a fresh lease of life. For her life does depend on rebuilding her image as a winner; she must win in the 2009 general election to remain in the political arena. Without numbers, without bases, without partners, the Trinamool Congress is fighting with its back to the wall. Sensation, therefore, seems to be a fair weapon.
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