NOTHING OFFICIAL ABOUT IT

 November 2007 

 I was sitting with a group of students when the phone vibrated and the news came. A scheduled protest by some minority organizations had gone violent. I rushed. I reached Park Circus walking a few kilometers as the traffic stood still. The scene was that of a battle field with cars burning, stones being pelted and the police chasing the protestors. What was the protest all about? We heard some minority organizations were to protest against the atrocities in Singur and Nandigram. It was supposed to be led by one of the minority leaders of the opposition party. We were clueless how it turned violent and gradually how Singur-Nandigram was being over shadowed with a demand for evicting author Taslima Nasrin out of the city. Everything got blurred in the face of rioting in central Kolkata. I was more curious to find out if my colleagues and, the obvious question that came to my mind, if our cars were safe. That was for the first time I saw army being called in the city of Kolkata. That was for the first time I saw how army was being defied. The men in uniform brandishing arms were flag-marching and hundreds of protestors, mostly young men, walked with them chanting slogans. The whole of Park Circus, Mullickbazar and Rippon Street sported a look of a battle field with army convoy passing through. The rioting didn’t stop till evening. The cars were again burnt, the stones were pelted and tear gas shells were hurled at the protestors. That part of Kolkata was shut down causing problems for school children, office goers and the public. Till late in the evening it was not clear what the protestors were demanding. The protests didn’t stop until a beacon-fitted car stopped in the locality and a smiling man from the car asked the protestors to calm down. The ‘issue’ was made clearer, after a while, by a left leader who claimed, ‘Taslima Nasrin should leave if she is not wanted.’ Taslima had to leave. She was whisked away to an undisclosed location in Jaipur. She never returned to the city she made her own. 

January 2013

Reports suggested author Salman Rushdie called off his visit to Kolkata, apparently under pressure from the government or the police. He was scheduled to address a press conference in a city hotel to promote the film ‘Midnight’s Children’, based on his novel. He was also supposed to be a surprise guest at an event in Kolkata Book Fair, the biggest literary fair in the city. But Salman was not coming. Why? The police apparently apprehended law and order problem with some minority organizations threatening to protest. They did protest without knowing the Jet Airways flight wasn’t carrying Rushdie to Kolkata that morning. More surprises were in store for us. Starting from the organizers of the Book Fair, Kolkata Literary Meet to the police and administration denied any knowledge of Rushdie’s proposed visit to the city. Some refused to comment and some claimed they didn’t have any such information. Only a few reacted.

Two days later when Salman claimed it was the Bengal chief minister and her police who prevented him from landing in Kolkata, a religious leader claimed he did make a call to the chief minister asking her not to allow the author to Kolkata and the CM obliged. An MP from the ruling party welcomed the ‘action of the government’. The government neither accepted nor denied such claims. No one reacted. There was nothing official about it after all.

I was a witness to both the incidents. The violent protests that forced Taslima Nasrin out of the city, eventually out of the country and the ‘silent unofficial’ plan that blocked Salman Rushdie’s way to Kolkata. Both were done apparently to appease the minorities. The policy of appeasement keeping the elections in mind was so strong that the opposition Left chose not to react, the administration or the CM didn’t have the courage to either accept or rebutt Salman Rushdie’s charges. We all watched the series of events silently as if nothing big has happened. After all Rushdie didn’t belong to Bengal or Bengalis.

Some have started to believe, with Rushdie not being allowed in Kolkata , that the cultural capital of the country has finally fallen from its grace. They are wrong. We haven’t lost the status in January 2013, not even in November 2007, may be before that when Taslima’s book was banned which was later lifted by the High Court. There were many such incidents that went unnoticed. Intolerance and this politics of appeasement have long ago breached the fort of culture we boast upon.

In last three decades the mediocrity of intellect was encouraged in such a way that, in majority of us, the thought-process works no longer. We accept these ‘small things’ casually and still love to take pride in our culture and pseudo liberal ideals. Democracy is limited to casting votes.

There is no hope that we can rediscover the lost intellect in near future, at least not under the present regime. We will keep our ideals under the carpet. There is nothing ‘official’ about it.