Rape As A Political Weapon- Looking Back At CPI(M)’s Worst Legacy In West Bengal
The 34 years long democratically elected Left front government is an enigma for most political pundits. A lot has been said and written about it. How can a regime presiding over the worst slide in every possible parameter for a province continue for so long?
Lot has been written about the steep economic decline, curb on political freedoms and rise of hooliganism in the garb of unionism. Yet, often overlooked is something which is only seen in the civil war infested countries of Africa rather than any civilized democracy- introduction, nurturing and normalizing of rape as a political weapon. The use of rape as a political weapon by the Left front goes back a long time. In the hinterlands, the “Hamrad Bahini” would routinely engage in debauchery and barbarism including gang rapes of political opponents, families and supporters of political opponents without even a single FIR reported against anyone.
So normalized was rape as a political weapon that even after the Left Front was defeated, rape threats were (and are) still commonly used without the batting of an eyelid. The national media shook when Tapas Pal, one of the most celebrated actors in Bengali cinema and an MP from Krishnanagar was caught on cam threatening rape of CPI(M) women, but for most of the residents of the state, it was almost something routine.
Tapas Paul’s rape threat an old political tool in Bengal
The legacy of the Left is being carried forward by the Trinamool Congress.
When Tapas Paul threatened his political rivals that he would get their women raped, the Trinamool Congress MP was only resorting to a well-entrenched political culture in West Bengal — to use rape and the threat of rape as a tool for vendetta. Largely a legacy of when the Left was in power and now being carried forward by the ruling Trinamool Congress’s supporters, political enmity has often degenerated into the worst forms of criminal acts against women.
…during the Left’s long stint in power, several of her party cadres were accused of such crimes. In fact, it was political infighting within the Left in Nadia district that resulted in the infamous “Dhantala rapes” in 2003. A marriage party bus was waylaid, at least six women were gangraped and the driver of the bus was killed. The incident happened when the Left was in power and investigations later showed that it was the result of an internal conflict between two senior CPM leaders in the area. The family of one of the CPM leaders was supposed to have been on the bus after a marriage reception late in the night. But the goons attacked the wrong bus while their target bus arrived a little later.
Just imagine this. You want to settle scores with a political contender and the best way you decide to do so is to rape his or her family members?
Or as a commoner you’re taking a routine bus journey until you’re stopped at the gunpoint, gang-raped by people with red flags covering their faces only to learn later that they “attacked the wrong bus”.
Another incident from the times when the Left front was steadily gaining prominence was the infamous Ashok Kumar night, where women have dragged out, raped, murdered and dropped in a pond, but was justified by Jyoti Basu who went on to rule West Bengal for 23 years as the CM as “rise of the proletariat”. Here’s the CPI mouthpiece “Frontier” deflecting on it.
The mass media finally took cognizance of the systematic problem during the Singur and Nandigram violence between the years 2006–2008. Of course, now it seems even that wasn’t without ulterior motives, according to leaked tapes of the US Consulate, the American deep-state believed a TMC government at Kolkata would be more friendly to America than a Left front one, so for the first time all peripheral soft-power arms were used and organizations like Amnesty rushed to both Singur and Nandigram to cover rape being used as a political weapon by armed cadres of the CPM.
Singur protests took a different life of their own when a charred body of 16-year-old Tapasi Malik was found. The autopsy revealed she had been raped before being murdered and her body burnt by cadres of the CPI(M). She had supported and played a small role in mobilizing support against land acquisition in Singur. The state government responded by quickly booking her brother and father in the “murder” case.
Singur girls brother and father suspects in planned murder
Eventually the CBI booked two CPI(M) functionaries for the barbaric crime.
Tapasi Malik, a resident of Singur, was found dead with her body badly charred just inside the Tata Motors small car factory on December 18, 2006. The Trinamool party had alleged that the CPM had raped, killed and then burnt the body of Tapasi. The CBI took up the case and arrested Debu Malik, a local CPM leader, on June 24, 2006. Suhid Dutta, the then CPM zonal committee secretary, was arrested four days later.
Verdict on Tapasi Malik murder case deferred again
http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/verdict-on-tapasi-malik-murder-case-deferred-again/380435/
In Nandigram, then a red-bastion, one of the safest seats for the CPI(M), the crimes were even gorier.
The site chosen was Nandigram, a Left stronghold. Soon after, the TMC began protests against the SEZ. On January 2, 2007, farmers and TMC men clashed with CPM cadres, leaving six dead.
The farmers subsequently sealed off the area, and till March 2007, no outsider was allowed into Nandigram. On March 12, 2007, Suvendu Adhikari, then leader of the Bhumi Uchchhed Protirodh Committee spearheading the protests, wrote a letter to the DGP requesting that no police operation be taken in Nandigram as Class 12 exams were on.
On March 14, police tried to enter Nandigram and ran into protests. When the mob couldn’t be controlled by lathi-charge and teargas shelling, police opened fire, leaving 14 dead.
While the official account claimed that the deaths and ensuing violence were due to a scuffle between the police and agitators, the truth is the police were accompanied by over 500 armed CPI(M) workers who wore police shirts on the top but otherwise were dressed in everyday outfits and slippers.
Over 50 women were raped by armed cadres of the CPI(M). 47 of them went to court, the cases are still pending for several of them, the Supreme Court has so far ordered compensation of 2 Lakh rupees for 3 of them.
The communist government of West Bengal government conspired with party workers accused of killing and raping villagers opposed to selling land for an industrial project, global human rights groups said on Tuesday.
Rights groups blame state government for Nandigram violence
https://www.reuters.com/article/idINIndia-31412820080115
India: Urgent Inquiry Needed Into Nandigram Violence
https://www.hrw.org/news/2008/01/15/india-urgent-inquiry-needed-nandigram-violence
Nandigram violence came to the forefront of debate even during the 2021 polls, as several women who now live on the fringes of society blamed the TMC government for promoting the very same officers under whom the carnage had taken place in 2007.
More than 42 people were killed, including 14 who died in the police firing on March 14, 2007, and over 40 women raped during the ten-month-long bloody battle in then-little- known agrarian town.
14 years on, justice still eludes Nandigram rape survivors
“Can jobs, money or doles compensate me for the honour I have lost? I want justice. I want to see them (perpetrators) in jail. I am hoping that if the BJP is voted to power, there will be fair play,” she said.
Showering praise on Adhikari, she said that it was the 50-year-old leader who stood by her, and many more like her through thick and thin. The residents of the discrete village, where at least 30 women had to endure sexual abuse during the unrest, are, nonetheless, sceptical that this could just be another election, before which the parties make tall promises only to end up delivering nothing.
Nandigram’s women still wait for justice
A report by Women against Sexual Violence and State Repression, a nationwide network of women’s groups, has documented the long-drawn struggle of these victims for compensation and justice. Laxmi Das* (40) and her daughter Radhika (22), as most of the victims, are treated as outcasts. Radhika was not allowed to return home after the rape, though her husband visits her occasionally. Laxmi is “clinically depressed and is still fighting for compensation. Some women (were) gang-raped twice, notes the report. Manasi Das and many others suffered bullet injuries. All face social stigma and ostracism.
With no support, Rani survives on a Rs. 1,500 dole from a local politician. “I often contemplate suicide,” she told the WSS team.
Imagine the plight of these women, gang-raped often multiple times, but now forced to live adjacent to their rapists?
“With the rapists at large and often inhabiting adjacent houses, these women live in constant fear … Their problem is that justice has not been done and it does not seem like that it would,” the report said. The nine-member WSS team, visited Nandigram four times but was unable to ascertain the status of the rape cases.
“It is not certain that cases of rape were filed at all,” they concluded. Only three of 16 rape survivors have received compensation of Rs. 2 lakh each.
The politicization of the police and support of armed cadres of CPI(M) in partial police uniform created a situation where even policemen sympathetic to the CPI(M) engaged in barbarism and violence, ironically something there were sent to prevent from happening.
SP admits rape by policemen at Nandigram | India News — Times of India
Between 1997–2006, there was a general sense of optimism. The CPI(M) had promoted Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, a relatively young figure and for the first time, someone who wasn’t from the rural hinterlands but rather was in the good books of Kolkata intellectuals and was an MLA from Jadavpur, someone who’d rightfully identified that the previous 20 years of Left front governance had had more misses than hits and strived for a radical change of thought- pushing for private investment and industrialization. IT hubs were set up, and in fact, between 2004- 2008, WB received over 5000 crores of FDI and featured among the top 3 states in India in terms of investments. It finally looked like Buddhadeb Bhattacharya would manage to turn around the state at last.
Now, full disclosure- I believe Singur and Nandigram factories would’ve really helped the state in the long term, however, the Left front returning to its old ways, grabbing land by force, terror and sexual violence finally broke all that.
