On the face of it, the > violence unleashed in Malda on January 3 would appear to point to a dangerous escalation of a communal protest by an obscure group called the Anjuman Ahle Sunnatul Jamaat. The group had organised a rally to protest against remarks against Islam made by a Hindu right-wing leader in Uttar Pradesh nearly a month earlier — a mob burnt a Border Security Force (BSF) vehicle, then attacked and ransacked a police station and burnt vehicles in Kaliachak. However, a deeper inquiry suggests that the violence was the result of a law and order breakdown in the largely backward and under-developed district, which has been convulsed by agrarian distress, poverty and a political system thriving on patronage and crime. The mob had specifically targeted the police and the BSF after a crackdown on poppy cultivation and the circulation of fake currency notes, an illicit economic activity that is rampant in the area. It is clear from ground reports that the protest rally was used as a ruse to unleash violence against the police in the Kaliachak area, with crime records and poppy storage facilities being the primary targets for the looters and arsonists among the mob.
The subsequent > attempt by the Bharatiya Janata Party to give a communal colour to the violence is a sinister ploy to foment more trouble in an already troubled district. Malda has for long been a pocket borough of the Congress party. The family of the late A.B.A. Ghani Khan Chowdhury continues to wield influence and power through a client-patronage system. The Trinamool Congress had hitherto been unable to breach the Congress stronghold despite establishing hegemony in most other districts. The State government’s business-as-usual reaction to the breakdown in law and order in Malda is possibly on account of the Trinamool Congress’s expectations of deriving some electoral advantage from religious polarisation. Meanwhile, the BJP, which blatantly took recourse to dog-whistle politics in the Lok Sabha elections of 2014, managing a decent showing in West Bengal, has been unable to consolidate its position in the subsequent local body elections. With the increasing prospect of a Congress alliance with the Left Front — both the Congress and the CPI(M) leaderships in the State have signalled a preference for an electoral understanding for the coming Assembly elections — it is amply clear that tensions are being deliberately ramped up in order to polarise voters in Malda. This process is being helped by the Trinamool government’s lack of a will to curb criminality and increasing threats to law and order in West Bengal. Communal riots and deterioration of civic relations are products of cynical electoral strategies of communal and narrow-minded political outfits. It is to be hoped that the progressive social forces in Malda will work to resist the political machinations that are under way to create a communal conflagration. That they are the last hope is a searing indictment of the administration in West Bengal.
