Why Bengali lives don't matter
Why Bengali lives don’t matter
Society is built upon mendacious edifices. Comfortable lies that we tell each other to be able to sleep at night. One of those lies is the notion that all human lives are equal. Well, they certainly are not.
The death of poorer people in the first COVID-19 wave, for example, barely got the airtime or oxygen of publicity that the second wave has garnered. And while one may be loath to admit it, the feeling of despondency was because those who were hit in the first wave can’t buy products and ergo hold no value as viewers of news channels. They couldn't rush to hospitals and clog up oxygen supplies. Nor did the government or courts felt the need to hold hearings 24/7 for their lives. The same rule of inherent inequality applies to political deaths of ilk.
The life of a Dalit man attacked by a Muslim mob will have far less value to newscasters than a Dalit man attacked by an upper-caste Hindu mob. The RSS worker in Kerala hacked to death by Communists won’t garner eyeballs. Similarly, the rape of an upper-class woman will garner more headlines than that of a poor Dalit woman, unless of course, it is particularly brutal or heinous like the Hathras rape-murder.
In the same vein, we barely recall the Dalit massacre of Marichjhapi under Jyoti Basu because it doesn’t fit the narrative of Hindutva violence against lower castes, despite the fact that it remains the biggest pogrom of Dalits in modern India.
Many moons ago, while listening to a podcast, I heard a popular website editor – who is perennially asking for donations to keep news free – unconsciously let slip that Bengali lives did not matter as much those near Delhi or in Uttar Pradesh to the national media. It was an honest bit of admission that shows us why the tyranny of distance exists in airwaves and we saw it played out post-election results.
While some – like the professor on NDTV or the Instagram influencer from Bandra – might find this a new phenomenon, post-poll violence in Bengal has been as ubiquitous as the post-credit scene in a Marvel movie, except instead of Nick Fury asking Tony Stark to join the Avengers, it involves members of rival parties being hacked to death. A bit like a Dothraki wedding. Or to paraphrase Ramadhir Singh: “Election hua hai. Koi mohorra thodi na mana rahein hain.”
In fact, even at the time of writing, attempts to downplay the violence was on in full swing despite the fact that those attacked included BJP, CPI(M), CPI(ML), and even TMC workers.
Prolific RTI activists, propagandists masquerading as strawmen fact-checkers and others went out of their way to suggest Bengal was not seeing a spate of violence even though several CPI(M), CPI(ML) and even Congress leaders had spoken about the violence.
NDTV, the doyen of liberal thought and ostensibly the last-standing institution of journalistic credibility, got a ‘political analyst’ to claim, ‘it has never happened before’. So far, 12 people have died in the post-poll violence.
It led to a remarkable sight where denizens of West Bengal, instead of East Bengal, were finding their way into Assam looking for safety, according to Himanta Biswa Sarma.
Yet the violence couldn’t just be shoved aside as BJP ‘propaganda’, simply because those who tweeted about the violence included former Rajya Sabha MP Sitaram Yechury, former JNUSU presidents Aishe Ghosh and Suchete De and the NSUI. It wasn’t so long ago when the proverbial shoe, well in this case machete, was in the other hand. But that’s how things roll in Bengal. Ironically, when Aishe Ghosh was the victim of violence by ABVP goons in JNU (where the hell is Komal Sharma?), Mamata Banerjee had condemned the violence.
The real irony is that it took the death of BJP workers for the Delhi media to wake up to political violence in West Bengal even though, many moons ago, communism’s Cromwell Jyoti Basu had defended it by stating that one couldn’t reply to bombs with rosogullas. Maybe those who were asking why the Bengal elections were held in 8 phases finally have an answer.
The only thing different about the modus vivendi this time is that fact that the brunt of the attack is against BJP workers which might force Delhi journalists – who cautiously decide what incident ought to get the oxygen of publicity – to cover the post-electoral violence. Indeed, if there was no social media, most of India probably would not have heard of it either.
The foot soldiers of an ostensibly ‘fascist’ populist being hacked doesn’t make good for a good story and goes against consensual received wisdom. Despite tweets from Congress leaders, Mr Gandhi was as silent as the PM at a press conference where he’s not asked about his favourite variety of mango. Mahajot? More like Maha what?
The BJP leadership was rather lukewarm in the beginning and it was only a fury of tweets from BJP supporters that appeared to have woken them from its stupor, even though the call for a nationwide dharna was met with mirth. Moving quickly into action mode, JP Nadda landed in Bengal. But by and large, the BJP were panned for their reaction.
The PM’s Twitter handle maintained a radio silence on Bengal, suggesting tweeting about the death of world’s longest serving bishop of a Syrian Christian church in Kerala took precedence over the attacks on party members in Bengal. It was a rare instance of the PM demarcating his party and constitutional roles.
The poor man’s Kumar Sanu even explained that he couldn’t go out to save his karyakartas because his car would be attacked. While being reluctant in the face of violence is an evolutionary tactic for survival, tweeting one’s own inability to counter said violence is quite a different level of inadequacy. Contrast this with Mamata Banerjee who had her skull cracked open by a CPI(M) goon but never backed away from a fight irrespective of the odds.
It’s almost an open secret that the saffron party had gotten muscle from UP-Bihar to augment its local cadre during the election and now that it’s over, the local workers are being systemically picked off, sometimes with the Khela Hobe anthem playing like a macabre death chant in the background.
However, the truth is there’s extraordinarily little even Amit Shah or Narendra Modi can do to stop this – barring calling President’s Rule. And if they do call for President’s rule, it will be met with vehement opposition given that Mamata clearly has the people’s mandate.
The sad truth is that post-poll violence is so ingrained in Bengal’s DNA, it’s unlikely that we will see a BLM-like (Bengali Lives Matter) movement.
Nor will it get wall-to-wall coverage in foreign publications like The Guardian, NYT, WaPo and their ilk simply because it doesn’t fit the narrative. Violence in an assembly poll is simply too common or banal when it’s not backed up by the idea of a civilizational evil. Bengali lives, in the grander scheme of things, don’t matter.
Even though every other journalist is Bengali, the true nature of the violence might be lost in the afterglow of the ‘idea of India being preserved’. While journalists of an older generation were proud card-carrying communists, the new generation consists of Buzzfeed Marxists whose hatred of BJP far outweighs any mooring of a political ideology.
All said and done, the editor in question was being honest. The value of Indian lives in India is measured by several parameters — proximity to Delhi, cause of death (was it COVID-19?), the earning capacity of the victim, the victim's religion, the political ideology of the victim, and the current narrative.
A few dead workers and their broken families are meaningless compared to the grand narrative of a woman destroying the Hindutva juggernaut. So, what if the said destroyer of Hindutva has startling similarities with Modi.
For reasons best known to them, Bengalis like to portray a utopian vision of their state to the world where every lad is either reading Tagore’s poems or watching Ray’s films or enjoying a Kolkata roll. Yet the fact that most of us have been displaced because of years of misrule show how hollow our vision is of the state.
It’s a land destroyed by tyrants, where bloodletting is the norm after every election. Beneath the veneer of cultural sophistication, it’s a land torn apart again and again by violence, which is deeply entrenched in Bengal’s pathos. And no regime change can quell the bloodlust or change the state’s inherent character. Irrespective of who’s in power.