On October 17, Saturday, even as 19 people were killed and several injured in a stampede at the Chorbagan Sarbojanin Durga Puja pandal in Kolkata, a different scene of chaos unfolded a few kilometres away at Jadavpur.
A bulldozer was brought in by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) and Kolkata Police to demolish bookstalls of Left parties set up near 8B bus stand of Jadavpur. While locals and Left workers, including CPI(M) and AISA activists, protested through the night to thwart the attempted demolition, the authorities succeeded in bringing down certain bookstalls and damaging others.
Left book stalls have come under threat both from Right-wing fanatics and the administration after chief minister Suvendu Adhikari issued a warning. “You consider Sanatan Dharma to be merely cultural. You do not say Durga Puja; You call it ‘Sharadotsab’. I will tell all Durga Puja committees that if these so-called communists come to set up stalls and do not write Durga Puja, do not allow a single stall,” Adhikari had announced earlier.
Alt News has already reported on alleged attacks on book stalls by BJP workers in several parts of the state.
Same Stalls Set Up For Years
Left organisations, including the CPI(M), AISA, SUCI(C) and Association for Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR), have historically set up bookstalls in and around the 8B bus stand area of Jadavpur. The CPI(M) has been setting up its bookstall there for over 40 years, while AISA’s stall has been set up for more than 10 years. The APDR has been setting up a bookstall for the past four to five years. This year, an RSS bookstall was set up right between the CPI(M) and AISA stalls.
Around 6 pm on Saturday, a joint team of Kolkata Police, Central Armed Police Force personnel and KMC arrived with a JCB earthmover to demolish the Left bookstalls. However, the RSS stall was left untouched.
According to the KMC personnel present at the spot, the Left stalls lacked the necessary permissions. Left parties, however, denied this allegation. Representatives of the Left parties argued that they had paid the required fees to the KMC to set up the stalls.
The administration, however, maintained that paying the fees did not necessarily mean that permission had been granted to set up the stalls. The Left parties, in turn, asked the authorities to show which documents they lacked, while also asking what documents the RSS stall possessed that made it legal. Their requests were repeatedly rejected, representatives told Alt News.
‘Authorities Passed the Buck’
“Police and the KMC workers were only passing the buck on each other. Police said the KMC had sought their help to demolish illegal structures. When confronted, KMC workers said that police had asked them to help demolish our stalls,” said DYFI Kolkata district committee member Sainik Sur.
“We asked police and KMC time and again to show the demolition order. But all they said was that there was immense pressure from higher levels to demolish all the Left stalls,” added Sur.
A similar claim was echoed by AISA state president Ritam Maji. “Police and the KMC made it very clear that the Left bookstalls were illegal, whereas the ‘Sanatani’ stall that came up this year for the first time was legal. We have paid the required fee to KMC and have the receipt of the same, yet they claimed that our stalls were illegal. When we asked them to show documents of the RSS-backed stall, to figure out what permissions we lacked, the police simply said that the top brass of the KMC had requested that the space be cleared,” said Maji.
Besides the earthmover, the administration had also brought a KMC dumper truck near the stalls, generally used to collect and dispose of garbage, allegedly to collect the debris from the stalls and the books, representatives of the Left said.
Hundreds Gather Around Bulldozer
After an APDR stall was partially demolished, nearly a hundred people — locals in the area and Left party workers — gathered near the bulldozer in the evening to prevent it from demolishing stalls. Armed with flags, books and posters, they formed human chains around the bookstalls, forcing the authorities to retreat. CPI(M) central committee member and former Jadavpur CPI(M) MLA Sujan Chakraborty also reached the spot to join the resistance.
Around 1 am on October 18, Sunday, personnel from Kolkata Police, CAPF and KMC workers started assembling near the bookstalls again. An hour later, they again started dismantling the APDR stall.
The SUCI(C) bookstall, set up near Gate 2 of Jadavpur University, was also demolished around this time. The area surrounding the stall was cordoned off by security personnel, and party workers could not prevent the demolition.
CPI(M) Kolkata district committee member Sudip Sengupta, who is in charge of the party’s bookstalls, documented the resistance against the demolition as scores of people stood in front of the JCB earthmover, through his Facebook Live.
After the SUCI(C) stall was brought down, the administration tried to demolish both the APDR and AISA stalls, which were interlocked in a single bamboo structure. Around 3 am, Left activists were again seen forming human chains around their stalls. A section of the activists sat inside the AISA stall as the police and central forces tried to demolish it, ultimately compelling police to retreat.
As the administration tried to bring down the APDR stall around 4:30 am, CPI(M), AISA and APDR workers tried to resist the advance in a unified manner. SFI general secretary Srijan Bhattacharya was seen resisting the administrative forces, who tried to tear down the bamboo scaffolding of the APDR stall.
Subsequently, individuals identifying themselves as KMC workers used machetes to cut the ropes of the APDR stall and bring down the structure, despite the efforts of protesters.
After the APDR stall was demolished, protesters formed a human barricade in front of the CPI(M) stall. Actress Ushasie Chakraborty was among the protesters who held the barricade.
As the standoff continued, CRPF personnel wielded the baton briefly, but it failed to scatter the crowd. Around 5 am, the forces left the spot.
Although the CPI(M) stall was mostly left untouched, the AISA stall suffered extensive damage. AISA activists tore down a section of the stall and rebuilt it on Sunday morning. SUCI(C) and APDR also rebuilt their stalls, and books were sold through Sunday.
“The police informed us that if we dismantled our stall for repairs, they would not allow us to rebuild it. However, we repaired it nonetheless and carried on with our programme,” said Maji.
Trinamool Congress MLA Kunal Ghosh visited the CPI(M) stall on Sunday evening. “I have visited the 8B stall quite a few times in the past. Maybe this time I might have skipped coming here. But after what happened last night, I feel it is my duty to come here and show solidarity,” said Ghosh, with CPI(M) leader Shatarup Ghosh standing by his side.
West Bengal Congress President Suvankar Sarkar also visited the CPI(M) stall on Sunday evening. So did CPI(M) state secretary Md Salim.
Chief Minister’s Warning
On September 10, Adhikari urged Durga Puja committees to deny the CPI(M) space for bookstalls if the party used the term “Sharodotsav”, or autumn festival, instead of Durga Puja. He alleged that the term was part of a concerted attempt to dilute the religious character of the festival and impose communist culture. He reiterated his stance two days later while inaugurating a Ganesh Puja pandal in Keshtopur, a northern suburb of Kolkata.
Following Adhikari’s warnings, on October 14, a division bench of the Calcutta High Court overturned the order of Justice Sougata Bhattacharya’s single bench and declined the CPI(M)’s plea to organise a bookstall in front of its party office in Bongaon in Jessore Road of North 24 Parganas district — a spot where a bookstall by the Hindu Jagran Manch had allegedly been set up.
