A section of Bengal’s civil society, including well-known faces from the city’s art and culture fraternity, has issued an open statement condemning the recent communal skirmishes over Ram Navami processions in Howrah, Dalkhola and Rishra.
The statement, signed by 13 cultural luminaries and a human rights activist, also holds the state administration responsible for its alleged failure to prevent such clashes.
“As citizens, we are afraid and concerned about the politics of extreme religious polarisation that is taking place in the state over the last six days centring around Ram Navami celebrations. We vehemently protest against these incidents,” the statement reads.
“At the same time, we want to remind (the administration) of administrative responsibilities. It is the duty of the police and the administration to protect the lives and properties of the common people. We fiercely condemn the inactiveness of the police in discharging that duty,” it says.
The signatories are film and theatre personalities Aparna Sen, Kaushik Sen, Anirban Bhattacharya, Reshmi Sen, Riddhi Sen, Surajit Banerjee, Surangana Banerjee, Suman Mukherjee and Sujan Mukherjee; singers Srikanta Acharya, Anindya Chatterjee and Anupam Roy; and activist Bolan Ganguly.
“We demand the intervention of the administration’s highest levels to stop this violent politics of polarisation,” the statement concluded.
Many signatories, including Aparna and Kaushik, allied with chief minister Mamata Banerjee during the Singur and Nadigram movements. In recent times, Aparna and Kaushik have been critical of Trinamul.
In 2019, a tweet from Aparna attempted to remind Mamata that she was everyone’s chief minister, irrespective of political inclinations, in the backdrop of the murder of an RSS supporter, his pregnant wife and child. Last year, after former minister Partha Chatterjee’s arrest, Aparna posted a critical tweet again.
Kaushik criticised the arrest of filmmaker Kamaleshwar Mukherjee for protesting the ransack by alleged Trinamul workers of a Marxist book stall set up by the CPM last year during Durga Puja.
