From 50 Years Ago: West Bengal: Politics of Mass Murder

West Bengal: Politics of Mass Murder

Since the Prime Minister’s appointment of Siddhartha Shankar Ray as Union Minister in charge of West Bengal affairs, the Calcutta air has been thick with condemnations of “the politics of violence and murder”. One of Ray’s major concerns has been to organise repeated meetings of political parties to discuss the problem of violence. The first meeting was held on July 7. Eighteen parties, which were represented in the dissolved State Assembly, participated. The next meeting was held on July 19. The number of participants rose to 28 to include all parties which had contested the Assembly elections. The next round, with all the 28 faithfuls in attendance, was held on July 30. This time the parties even managed to adopt a resolution unanimously condemning “murder and terror from whatever quarter’’ and calling upon all parties to “jointly oppose and resist all murder and terror”.