Editor,
So Sandeshkhali remains the ‘pinnacle of wretchedness for any civilised society’. May we know what adjective or description has the BJP reserved for the dastardly Gujarat pogrom of 2002 where, apart from mass killings of innocents for months, innumerable women were also systematically gangraped and/or killed?
Far from registering a minimum protest against such butchering of humanity, many convicted gang rapists-cum-murderers were prematurely released with the occasion celebrated with garlands and sweets also.
Perhaps BJP leaders have not heard of a state named Manipur, where several hundreds are getting brutally killed and millions displaced since several months with the continuing mayhem resembling just no end. And the horror of horrors got representated by the parade of two Kuki women, stark naked, in broad daylight (thereafter gangraped and one of the duo also killed).
Do the pious leaders of BJP remember how their peers in Jammu division had marched on the streets (carrying the national flag) to demand release of alleged gang rapists cum murderers of the little girl of Kathua, brutally tortured within a temple for several days before her gruesome killing? Perhaps Kathua was not a ‘stain on civilised society’.
Isn’t it mysterious why the BJP leaders don’t utter a single word of condemnation when spine-chilling gangrape and/or murders/forced cremation of Dalit women happened in Hathras, Unnao, or Budaun? Do the saffron tears simply get dried up when horrible things happen in BJP-ruled states?
Surely the nation doesn’t get shocked when a BJP leader, who is accused of serious charges of sexual atrocities upon a large contingent of women wrestlers, continues to grace the Parliament. Far from asking him to resign, the justice-seeking non-violent wrestlers are relentlessly character assassinated by the saffron ecosystem and beaten up by the police.
If Sandeshkhali ‘tarnishes’ West Bengal and puts ‘humanity to shame’, isn’t it a wonder why the series of barbaric violence against women can never tarnish Gujarat-Uttar Pradesh-Manipur and shame humanity?
Though there lies no concrete proof of sexual atrocities in Sandeshkhali, still the culprits need to be awarded exemplary punishment if indeed such heinous acts have been committed. But how can BJP afford to open its mouth despite such a dark record of saffron states and leaders in this context? And the greatest scandal remains that Sandeshkali is also being exploited in terms of the thing which saffronites know best – blatant, rampant communalism and Islamophobia.
And far from defending Sandeshkhali, Mamata Banerjee has personally instructed the police to let the law take its own course, and this is the reason why the accused have got arrested. In contrast, BJP leaders maintain stunned silence whenever women get sexually assaulted in saffron states.
So, instead of trying to reap political dividend by exploiting communalism and alleged atrocities in West Bengal, the BJP should at first try to clean up its own backyard.
Kajal Chatterjee,
D-2/403,
Peerless Nagar, Kolkata