A State Of Fear: Tracing Decades Of Political Violence In West Bengal

(MENAFN- IANS) New Delhi, June 1 (IANS) West Bengal's Congress leaders once used to term the Left Front as“Harmad” – a distorted version of the Spanish and Portuguese word“Armada”, which defines a fleet of warships.

Fleets were said to have frequently raided the coastal regions of southern and southeastern Bengal in the 16th and 17th centuries. Over time, local people corrupted the word Armada into Harmad to describe plunderers. The term gained national attention centuries later, amidst clashes between the then-ruling Left Front and Opposition groups, where opposing factions frequently accused each other of using a“Harmad Bahini”, or militia.

A senior Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader had once – tracing the etymology of the word – in turn pointed to the earlier Congress regime's“oppression” and“thuggery” in the state. He had pointed out how the then government had come down heavily on the Opposition, especially in the 1960s and 70s.

It's a different issue that the same leader was a strong votary of a“tactical understanding” at the“state level” with Congress against the then ruling Trinamool Congress. However, it was the same Congress that had helped prop Mamata Banerjee to power in 2011, removing the Left Front government.

West Bengal is no stranger to attacks and intimidation. The turbulent 1960s and 70s witnessed the fierce Naxalite movement. Beginning 1967, it left the state in disarray. Rampant killing of“class enemies” – landlords, police constables, and political opponents – prompted brutal state crackdown. The movement rapidly degenerated into an urban“cult of the bomb”, where symbolic destruction of statues and assassination of political opponents became routine.

Meanwhile, CPI(M) role was alleged behind the gruesome Sainbari killings of March 1970, where three Sain brothers, ardent Congress supporters in Bardhaman district, were hacked to death and beheaded. When the Left Front came to power in 1977, violence became a tool for political control. The Marichjhapi massacre of around 40,000 Bengali Hindu Dalit refugees from Bangladesh in 1979 is alleged to have marked a founding moment of Left Front violence. In 34 years of Left Front rule, its principal component, CPI(M), is held responsible for establishing dominance through targeted violence.

On July 21, 1993, Kolkata Police, on Left Front Government orders, fired on a protest march of Youth Congress workers led by Mamata Banerjee, demanding photo voter ID cards. Thirteen people were killed, and several were injured in the resultant stampede. CPI(M) cadres and local leaders were alleged to have killed 11 landless Muslim labourers in Nanoor, Birbhum, simply because they were opposition supporters resisting land encroachment.

Similar incidents were later reported, among others, from Chhoto Angaria and Netai villages of Midnapore. Later, during protests against forced land acquisition for the Tata Nano in Singur, 18-year-old Tapasi Malik, an activist, was raped and burnt to death, allegedly by CPI(M) leaders. In Nandigram, 14 unarmed protesters opposing land acquisition for a chemical hub were gunned down by policemen who, some claimed, were CPI(M) cadres.

Meanwhile, between 2008 and 2011, Maoist insurgency in the Junglemahal area targeted Left cadres, killing more than 100 CPI(M) workers. Available reports suggest an average of 20 political killings annually from 1999 to 2016, with violence surging after the 2019 elections.

Under Trinamool, the same instrumental violence allegedly continued since 2011, where the 2013 and 2018 panchayat polls saw structured violence, with the ruling party bagging several rural bodies without contest. The 2021 Assembly election was among the bloodiest in recent history, where 300 violent events and 58 deaths were reported. Then the 2023 West Bengal local elections again witnessed violence, with at least 11 killed and dozens injured during the panchayat poll day on July 8, 2023.

Going by reports, since the May 2026 Assembly election, at least four individuals have died in clashes across West Bengal. While the Trinamool claimed two of its workers were beaten to death, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) reported two members killed. Most gruesome and daring was perhaps the murder of Chandranath Rath, aide to Suvendu Adhikari, now Chief Minister of West Bengal.

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