Why RG Kar Rape Victim's Mother Fighting Bengal Polls for BJP Has Raised a Row
Debnath’s ticket from Panihati would fit in neatly with the BJP’s peg of women’s safety, which it has somewhat successfully mobilised against the TMC.
Starting with alleged mass rapes in Sandeshkhali to the RG Kar issue, the party has managed to pitch the party under the leadership of Mamata Banerjee as a “party of rapists”. The narrative seems to have percolated down to certain sections of voters who were anyway leaning toward BJP or given to anti-incumbency.
Nevertheless, for the women involved closely with the movement, the developments have brought a sense of despair and irony. “We are feeling a strange paradox. Watching Abhaya’s mother join the BJP in the name of ‘women’s safety’ is so ironic that I don’t know how to accept this,” Kolkata-based martial artist Roudri Bagchi, who had also participated in the protests, tells The Quint.
Bagchi adds that she was not a “political” person before “Reclaim the Nights” protests, but the incident scared her enough to act. “What drove me to protest was the fact that if I didn’t, my state would soon become like BJP-ruled states, where rape is normalised, and the government becomes increasingly blase,” she says.
Madhubanti Mitra, an Assistant Professor at Kolkata’s Swami Vivekanda University, who was also closely associated with the movement, echoes these sentiments.
Indrani Chankrabarty, Professor, Head of Department (English Literature) Prabhu Jagadbandhu College, however, tells The Quint that the betrayal that the protesters have been feeling is not a comment on the victim’s mother.
“Humans have not been designed to be able to bear the kind of grief that she went through, and it is thus not my place to comment on her decisions. But it is a mistake to trust that the BJP, which garlands rapists and justifies victim-shaming in the states it rules, would bring justice or closure for victims of gender-based violence.”
Theatre artist and member of the protesting doctors body, West Bengal West Bengal Junior Doctors Front, Subhadeep Dey agreed that the mother could not be blamed for her choices. But what hurt more were her statements discrediting the movement.
“They said everybody had a secret motive to participate in this movement but in reality, we have seen people live on the streets for days. People with disabilities were sitting in dharnas on their wheelchairs, working professionals did their jobs in the morning and sat on the streets through the night. I don’t think they had any ulterior motives other than getting justice for that girl.”
A senior journalist who reports on politics in West Bengal, however, says (while requesting anonimity) that the ticket controversy and the larger issue of sexual violence may become an emotive plank for the Opposition, but it is unlikely to dent electoral results in Panihati or elsewhere.
The scribe points out that it would nevertheless be wrong to assume this issue on its own would convert any real votes for them. Those who endorse the BJP’s stance on rape usually tend to endorse the party’s other views as well, meaning they are already its voters.”
(With additional reporting inputs from Kolkata-based independent researcher Soumo Mondal.)
