On 18 October, the Trinamool Congress Mamata faction went to Girish Park police station to submit a memorandum in response to the stampede. Deputations from the CPI(M) and Congress also filed separate memorandums. Political parties staged protests as senior leaders demanded accountability and transparency regarding crowd management and alleged administrative negligence.
Bengal watchers did not miss the significance of the social media posts that followed. Seeing the TMC’s Kunal Ghosh, the CPI(M)’s Shatarup Ghosh and Congress spokesperson Suman Roy Chaudhuri helping each other under fluttering party flags is radically different from what the people are used to. The two Ghoshes are usually seen demolishing each other on TV debates!
The message of cross-party camaraderie did not end here. The same evening, Kunal Ghosh was welcomed by Shatarup and other CPI(M) leaders when he showed up at the CPI(M) bookstall at Jadavpur, also targeted for demolition.
“Our politics may be different,” Ghosh later told the media, “but we have known each other for a long time. I read Marxist literature, I keep publications from the SUCI, and the CPM. This stall offers not just Left literature but also good books from other genres.”
Events in Delhi recently brought leaders like Mamata Banerjee, M.A. Baby, Rahul Gandhi and Dipankar Bhattacharya together over the SIR and the crackdown on students, rekindling the buzz around the resurrection of INDIA bloc. Is this camaraderie percolating down to operational levels, creating conditions for a one-on-one contest against the BJP?
Yesterday’s foes becoming tomorrow’s bedfellows will be portentous for the BJP in Bengal.
Sourabh Sen is a Kolkata-based independent writer and commentator on politics, human rights and foreign affairs. More of his writing here
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