Mirror mirror on the wall, which neta is the most anti-freespeech of ’em all? In the open season on muffling free speech in India, thatMamata Banerjee’s is one of the bigger silhouettes seen on that mirror oftengoes unnoticed. Yes, she calls people “Maoist” at the drop of a hat; yes, shehas people arrested for questioning her policies (the police chargesheetagainst farmer Shiladitya Chowdhury, arrested last year for questioning thechief minister over rising fertiliser price, was quietly submitted last month);yes, she also gets people arrested for circulating spoof images on email orfacebook mocking her; yes, she bans newspapers critical of her government frombeing accessed in public libraries and offices; yes, she bans books andwriters.
And yes, she has done them all in only a year and half sinceassuming office at Writers’ Building in Kolkata.
Strangely, though, the faces that come to mind whilediscussing issues like jackboot on a skeletal freedom of speech appearstrikingly similar to the likes of Narendra Modi, Bal Thackeray, his nephewRaj, sundry faceless central ministers and, well, Jayalalithaa in her lateststrong Amma avatar. Mamata Banerjee? She could well be everyone’s favouritewhining didi — slightly ill-tempered, irritable, austere, unpretentious, honestand unfussy for a politician, though one with a sharp tongue. But owner of agood heart and soul nevertheless.
While the likes of Taniya Bhardwaj (the Presidency Collegestudent dubbed “Maoist” by Mamata when she dared question the chief ministerduring a television show), Shiladitya Chowdhury, IPS officer Nazrul Islam andretired IAS officer Dipak Kumar Ghosh (both their books ‘banned’ by the WestBengal government for daring to itch to bitch against Banerjee and heradministration), among others, have been crying for attention for long, SalmanRushdie has given it some credence now.
"The simple fact is that chief minister Mamata Banerjeeordered the police to block my arrival," tweeted the novelist on January31. "I did not get "friendly advice" to stay away from Kolkata.I was told the police would put me on next plane out... The police gave my fullitinerary to the press and called Muslim leaders, clearly incitingprotests," he claimed on the micro-blogging site.
Rushdie was forced to cancel his trip to Kolkata on January30 to promote Deepa Mehta's film 'Midnight's Children' based on his novel.Banerjee, who had hit the headlines for ‘warning’ pro-separatist Gorkhalandactivists during her visit to Darjeeling earlier in the week, lay low. Therewas no confirmation or rejection from either her, or her usually vocal andvoluble ministers and party leaders as the news spread all through the day.
That’s precisely the signs probably misinterpreted by most —an unpretentious and unfussy, if slightly irascible, neta. But hardly. It couldwell be deemed an extremely cunning political mind at work — a game given awayslightly by her party leader Sultan Ahmed, who subsequently called theBritish-Indian novelist “Shaitan Rushdie”.
The bid to bar Rushdie was the “result of West Bengalelectoral politics”, with the panchayat polls in May in mind.
What’s worse, the whole jingbang in the state has beencowered to pulp by Banerjee and her taste for freedom to speak (or speak out).While all officials of the Kolkata book fair fell over themselves to refutereports that Rushdie had been invited to speak at the ongoing fair, both thewriter and Deepa Mehta stated in no unambiguous terms that the festivalorganisers had even sent him a flight ticket to make that dream appearance.
But then in Mamata’s Bengal, where industrialists are forcedto sing Rabindra sangeet and police are asked to deny a rape is a rape, whereevery questioning arch of an eyebrow is seen as conspiracy and probing glaredeemed sympathetic to Maoists or CPM, such is the tone, tune and tenor of theballad of the road these days, with deep apologies to Satyajit Ray. Time,perhaps, India got over the fascination with the Bengal CM’s austere rubberslippers, cloth jhola and simple sarees and saw the politician behind all that.
Shantanu Dutta is a senior editor with Governance Now. Based inDelhi, he dreams of Goa whenever he is in office and not working, which is aneveryday affair
