It has been more than a week since the cold-blooded murder of SFI leader Sudipto Gupta in Kolkata. Com. Sudipto was killed by Mamata Banerjee’s police while protesting for the restoration of democratic rights of the student community and for the holding of students’ union elections. Instead of ordering a judicial enquiry to bring out the full facts of the case so that the criminals behind this horrific crime can be punished, Mamata and her ministers have termed Com. Sudipto’s heinous murder a “petty and small” incident. Even as the police came up with the most bizarre explanations terming Com. Sudipto’s death an ‘accident’, the post-mortem report has nailed such lies, as it clearly indicates that Sudipto succumbed to multiple injuries sustained on his body, due to the heavy impact on the heart, lung and brain.
It was in this context that a joint protest by SFI and other progressive organisations like AIDWA, DYFI and CITU was held outside the Planning Commission on 9 April, when Mamata Banerjee was scheduled to have a meeting with Montek Singh Ahluwalia. The protest was an expression of the outrage reverberating across the democratic sections against the reign of terror unleashed by the authoritarian TMC Government in West Bengal. The protests were a strong message to the TMC government that this brazen assault on democracy will not be taken lying down and that the tide of protests will grow bigger by the day.
True to her Goebbelsian record, Mamata Banerjee has started peddling outrageous lies about the protests by concocting cock and bull stories. She has taken recourse to wild allegations that the protesters beat her up and even hit her with an iron rod. Only a paranoid authoritarian ruler – that Mamata has consistently been – can come up with such a downright bogus account. What the fabrication of the corporate media and the Trinamool Congress fails to mention is that from the moment the protests started, women comrades were cornered and targeted by the Delhi police. Uncouth and lewd comments were being passed constantly. Moreover, the protesters were assembled in front of the main gate, while Mamata and the West Bengal finance minister Amit Mitra were supposed to use the VIP gate. As Wednesday’s statement by the Delhi Police shows, they were indeed asked by the police to use the VIP gate, but these leaders, who callously brushed off the gruesome murder of Com. Sudipto as insignificant, deliberately chose to confront the angry protesters by walking into their midst. The defenders of the TMC regime has been deviously peddling a ridiculous exaggeration of the response of the women comrades to this premeditated confrontation by the leaders of a regime which has killed 93 Left activists after coming into power, without sparing even a word for the highhanded harassment and humiliation which our comrades were constantly subjected to.
The Trinamool Congress meanwhile has gone on a violent rampage against the Left and democratic forces in West Bengal. CPI(M) and SFI offices have been targeted in Habra, the CPI(M)'s district office in Siliguri has been vandalised, and a condolence meeting in Barrackpore for Sudipto Gupta was disrupted by TMC goons. Com. Abdur Rezzak Mollah, a veteran CPI(M) leader has been attacked with petrol bombs. Most deplorably, TMC goons attacked the office of the Ganatantrik Mahila Samity (the Bengal Wing of AIDWA) in South Dinajpur, dragged onto the streets its State Secretary, the senior communist and former parliamentarian Minati Ghosh and physically assaulted and verbally abused her. She has been hospitalised with serious injuries.
Outrageously, Trinamool goons who have no connection with the Presidency University barged into the campus of this premiere institution of higher learning, roughing up students and vandalising parts of the building. The century-old Baker Laboratory of the Physics Department, one of the most famous departments of the college, was vandalised. Celebrated scientist and Nobel laureate C V Raman has worked in this laboratory, set up in 1913 by Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose.
All these are part of a larger series of attacks on the left and democratic forces in West Bengal by the fascistic TMC under some hollow pretext or the other. Anybody raising any voice of criticism against the government has been branded a “Maoist”. Whether it be the case of the Jadavpur University professor who was arrested for forwarding an e-mail which took a dig at Mamata Banerjee, or that of the student who asked uncomfortable questions to the Chief Minister during a TV programme, or that of the farmer who was detained for voicing his grievances, the ruling dispensation’s absolute intolerance of criticism has reared its ugly head again and again. Well over 450 Left supporters have been murdered by the TMC and the CPI-Maoist since May 2009.
While we are aware of the character of the corporate media and whose interests it serves, it is extremely unfortunate that DSF – an outfit which claims itself to be a left student organisation – has taken it upon itself to parrot the lies peddled by Mamata Banerjee. DSF has shamelessly chosen to denigrate the protest and the protesters by throwing abuses and calling names. It has made farcical claims of CPI(M) leadership trying to “hijack” the protests over Com. Sudipto’s custodial death. Only those with a particularly jaundiced vision can hurl such accusations at an organisation for protesting it’s own comrade’s murder.
The student community will see through the hoax of the moral preaching of the DSF, which has gone on to term the protests as ‘infantile rowdy’ behaviour by picking on one unfortunate incident while mentioning the repression unleashed by the TMC in Bengal only in passing (DSF press statement, 9 April 2013), thereby mocking the genuine outrage of the protesters at the terror let loose by the TMC and its government. How different is the DSF’s argument from the logic given by the ruling classes in order to brand and delegitimise every dissent and protest? Furthermore, the DSF has also taken recourse to white lies such as the protesters being ‘non-students carrying placards of student organisations’. Those who joined the protest by SFI, DYFI, AIDWA and CITU obviously included students, youth, workers and women, including working class women. What can one say if the ‘decent sensibilities’ of the DSF are hurt by seeing working class women and men protesting alongside students against grave assaults on democracy? To call protesting working class women a bunch of rowdies is a shameless surrender by the DSF to a crass bourgeois belief in sanitised protests and protesters within the norms of ruling class ‘decency’. Without bothering to verify the facts of the matter, this bourgeois outfit has instead joined the bandwagon of Left-bashing. By choosing to attack the Left instead of rallying forces with it at a time when Left activists and sympathisers are being relentlessly attacked in Bengal, the DSF has shown that in the ultimate analysis, they stand with the thugs of Mamata Banerjee; they have shown what a sham their calls for “left unity” are.
The DSF’s position that attacks taking place in West Bengal since Wednesday are merely the repercussion of the heckling by SFI activists not only highlights their own political bankruptcy, but (whether consciously or not) actively assists in concealing the fascistic character of the TMC. We appeal to the student community to condemn the terror unleashed by the Trinamool Congress in Bengal and to rally behind the left and democratic forces in the fight for democratic rights.
Sd/-
Deepanjan K, Joint Secretary, SFI JNU Unit
Viswanathan V, Joint Secretary, SFI JNU Unit
It was in this context that a joint protest by SFI and other progressive organisations like AIDWA, DYFI and CITU was held outside the Planning Commission on 9 April, when Mamata Banerjee was scheduled to have a meeting with Montek Singh Ahluwalia. The protest was an expression of the outrage reverberating across the democratic sections against the reign of terror unleashed by the authoritarian TMC Government in West Bengal. The protests were a strong message to the TMC government that this brazen assault on democracy will not be taken lying down and that the tide of protests will grow bigger by the day.
True to her Goebbelsian record, Mamata Banerjee has started peddling outrageous lies about the protests by concocting cock and bull stories. She has taken recourse to wild allegations that the protesters beat her up and even hit her with an iron rod. Only a paranoid authoritarian ruler – that Mamata has consistently been – can come up with such a downright bogus account. What the fabrication of the corporate media and the Trinamool Congress fails to mention is that from the moment the protests started, women comrades were cornered and targeted by the Delhi police. Uncouth and lewd comments were being passed constantly. Moreover, the protesters were assembled in front of the main gate, while Mamata and the West Bengal finance minister Amit Mitra were supposed to use the VIP gate. As Wednesday’s statement by the Delhi Police shows, they were indeed asked by the police to use the VIP gate, but these leaders, who callously brushed off the gruesome murder of Com. Sudipto as insignificant, deliberately chose to confront the angry protesters by walking into their midst. The defenders of the TMC regime has been deviously peddling a ridiculous exaggeration of the response of the women comrades to this premeditated confrontation by the leaders of a regime which has killed 93 Left activists after coming into power, without sparing even a word for the highhanded harassment and humiliation which our comrades were constantly subjected to.
The Trinamool Congress meanwhile has gone on a violent rampage against the Left and democratic forces in West Bengal. CPI(M) and SFI offices have been targeted in Habra, the CPI(M)'s district office in Siliguri has been vandalised, and a condolence meeting in Barrackpore for Sudipto Gupta was disrupted by TMC goons. Com. Abdur Rezzak Mollah, a veteran CPI(M) leader has been attacked with petrol bombs. Most deplorably, TMC goons attacked the office of the Ganatantrik Mahila Samity (the Bengal Wing of AIDWA) in South Dinajpur, dragged onto the streets its State Secretary, the senior communist and former parliamentarian Minati Ghosh and physically assaulted and verbally abused her. She has been hospitalised with serious injuries.
Outrageously, Trinamool goons who have no connection with the Presidency University barged into the campus of this premiere institution of higher learning, roughing up students and vandalising parts of the building. The century-old Baker Laboratory of the Physics Department, one of the most famous departments of the college, was vandalised. Celebrated scientist and Nobel laureate C V Raman has worked in this laboratory, set up in 1913 by Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose.
All these are part of a larger series of attacks on the left and democratic forces in West Bengal by the fascistic TMC under some hollow pretext or the other. Anybody raising any voice of criticism against the government has been branded a “Maoist”. Whether it be the case of the Jadavpur University professor who was arrested for forwarding an e-mail which took a dig at Mamata Banerjee, or that of the student who asked uncomfortable questions to the Chief Minister during a TV programme, or that of the farmer who was detained for voicing his grievances, the ruling dispensation’s absolute intolerance of criticism has reared its ugly head again and again. Well over 450 Left supporters have been murdered by the TMC and the CPI-Maoist since May 2009.
While we are aware of the character of the corporate media and whose interests it serves, it is extremely unfortunate that DSF – an outfit which claims itself to be a left student organisation – has taken it upon itself to parrot the lies peddled by Mamata Banerjee. DSF has shamelessly chosen to denigrate the protest and the protesters by throwing abuses and calling names. It has made farcical claims of CPI(M) leadership trying to “hijack” the protests over Com. Sudipto’s custodial death. Only those with a particularly jaundiced vision can hurl such accusations at an organisation for protesting it’s own comrade’s murder.
The student community will see through the hoax of the moral preaching of the DSF, which has gone on to term the protests as ‘infantile rowdy’ behaviour by picking on one unfortunate incident while mentioning the repression unleashed by the TMC in Bengal only in passing (DSF press statement, 9 April 2013), thereby mocking the genuine outrage of the protesters at the terror let loose by the TMC and its government. How different is the DSF’s argument from the logic given by the ruling classes in order to brand and delegitimise every dissent and protest? Furthermore, the DSF has also taken recourse to white lies such as the protesters being ‘non-students carrying placards of student organisations’. Those who joined the protest by SFI, DYFI, AIDWA and CITU obviously included students, youth, workers and women, including working class women. What can one say if the ‘decent sensibilities’ of the DSF are hurt by seeing working class women and men protesting alongside students against grave assaults on democracy? To call protesting working class women a bunch of rowdies is a shameless surrender by the DSF to a crass bourgeois belief in sanitised protests and protesters within the norms of ruling class ‘decency’. Without bothering to verify the facts of the matter, this bourgeois outfit has instead joined the bandwagon of Left-bashing. By choosing to attack the Left instead of rallying forces with it at a time when Left activists and sympathisers are being relentlessly attacked in Bengal, the DSF has shown that in the ultimate analysis, they stand with the thugs of Mamata Banerjee; they have shown what a sham their calls for “left unity” are.
The DSF’s position that attacks taking place in West Bengal since Wednesday are merely the repercussion of the heckling by SFI activists not only highlights their own political bankruptcy, but (whether consciously or not) actively assists in concealing the fascistic character of the TMC. We appeal to the student community to condemn the terror unleashed by the Trinamool Congress in Bengal and to rally behind the left and democratic forces in the fight for democratic rights.
Sd/-
Deepanjan K, Joint Secretary, SFI JNU Unit
Viswanathan V, Joint Secretary, SFI JNU Unit
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