On the night of August 26, Shubhajit Ruidas, a 25-year-old from Howrah in Bengal, sneaked out of his home.
Word was that the police were picking up members of the Paschim Banga Chhatra Samaj, of which Ruidas was the coordinator. “The police were after us,” he said.
Days before, the student body had called for a protest march to the West Bengal state secretariat to protest against the murder and rape of a junior doctor in a Kolkata government hospital.
The state capital, Kolkata, has been roiled by protests by women and doctors since August 9, when the young doctor was discovered murdered in a seminar room in the hospital. Howrah, where Ruidas lives, is 40-odd km from Kolkata.
Little was known about the Paschim Banga Chhatra Samaj other than that it had been set up amid the gathering anger against the Mamata Banerjee government over its alleged attempts to cover up the crime. Even now, the Chhatra Samaj is not registered as an organisation nor does it run out of an office, one of its convenors told Scroll.
For a student body with little apparent organisational presence, the protest on August 27 was an impressive one, with a couple of thousands attending.
Ruidas was among those leading the march that began in Santragachi. “We were demanding Mamata Banerjee’s resignation over the rape-murder case as she is both the health and home minister,” he said. “She is trying to save the accused.”
Until then, the protests by women and medical students against the rape and murder at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata had been largely peaceful.
The rally, headed to Nabanna, the secretariat, quickly turned violent.
Protesters fought pitched battles with the police in Howrah and Kolkata, leaving several police officers injured.
The state government cracked down. About 200 people, who participated in the rally, were arrested. This included three key conveners of the organisation – Sayan Lahiri, Prabir Das and Subhankar Halder. All three are now out on bail.
The protest stood out for another reason – while the doctors’-led protests demanding justice for the 31-year-old doctor have been determinedly non-political, there do not appear to be many degrees of separation between the Paschim Banga Chhatra Samaj and the Bharatiya Janata Party or the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.
“Before the rally, we got to know that the organisers were somehow related to the BJP or the RSS or are active members of those organisations,” Aniket Kar, one of the coordinators of the West Bengal Junior Doctors’ Front, which has led the agitation demanding justice for the crime against the doctor, told Scroll. “Political parties want to use the protests to further their own agenda but they don’t want justice. We will not allow them to hijack it.”
The leaders of Chhatra Samaj have reiterated that they are not backed by the Bharatiya Janata Party, that they are “apolitical”.
Links to RSS?
The beginnings of the Chhatra Samaj were on social media, Lahiri, the convenor of the organisation, told Scroll.
“It was a call on social media from YouTubers, to demand justice and full accountability from the chief minister, ” he said. “The person who posted this asked me to carry forward the movement. The three of us – Subhankar, Prabir and I – met the press on August 23. Four days later, we organised the march.”
Ruidas and Lahiri said the organisation has 2,000-odd members, though they still do not have any office or formal presence.
According to Ruidas, the member from Howrah, the idea of creating such a front was inspired by the widespread student-led protests that unseated Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh. “We saw everyone was fighting separately, unlike the students in Bangladesh. We wanted to unite the students to lead the protest,” he said.
At the press conference on August 23, Subhankar Halder, one of the convenors of the organisation, told reporters that he was a “proud member” of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.
Lahiri told Scroll that in 2021 he was a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Kolkata unit, just as he had joined the Trinamool Congress earlier when he was in college. “Currently I am not with any political party,” he said.
However, he added that he is “associated with the VHP and the Bajrang Dal, just as a general member.”
Ruidas admitted that the outfit does have RSS members. “The main reason to be an RSS worker is to discipline oneself. It is the biggest organisation in the country. So, our members could be from the RSS. We don’t have any issue with it.”
He added: “There are attempts to malign our movement by giving it a political color.”
Legal aid from BJP
A day after the march, and the police action on the protestors heading to Nabanna, the BJP announced a statewide bandh to protest against the “incessant lathicharge and use of brute force, tear gas and water cannons on the agitators marching peacefully.”
BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari not only reiterated his party’s full support to the arrested leaders on social media, but also said they would pay the cost of legal proceedings to release them.
When asked if the BJP had a role in the Nabanna protest, chief spokesperson Samik Bhattacharya told Scroll: “If you get a juice full toss, what do you do? We have to play it. You have to step out and hit the ball over the boundary.”
‘Mamata’s resignation not our demand’
The agitating junior doctors have pointed out that their list of demands does not include the resignation of the chief minister.
“If you are asking for her resignation, you are asking Narendra Modi to form a government,” said a doctor, who is one of the conveners of the West Bengal Junior Doctors Front, a newly formed pan-state forum. “That’s not our motive....our motive is only to press for demands which can be fullfiled by the health department and the CBI.”
The doctors who are part of the forum said that their protests were spontaneous.
One doctor said that many of the physicians have left-liberal leanings, though they are not members of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which ruled West Bengal for several decades till it was ousted by the Trinamool Congress. “You can’t sustain a protest without an ideology and coordinated planning,” he said.
He said that several left-leaning leaders have helped them organise. “The Bangladesh events have had an influence, as we share that language and culture.”
An opportunity
Observers said the BJP senses an opportunity in the nearly-month long protests, which have pushed the Mamata Banerjee government on the back foot. “That is why they wanted to create a law-and-order situation,” a Kolkata-based journalist said.
A junior doctor told Scroll that as BJP does not have a support base among civil society organisations, they formed this “so-called student” outfit in order to create “chaos” and hijack the protest to put pressure on Mamata Banerjee. “The rally was a desperate attempt by the BJP.”
What stops them from capitalising on the anger against the Trinamool Congress is the Bharatiya Janata Party-led state governments’ unenviable track record in handling crime against women, observers said.
The rally organised by Chhatra Samaj may not have swung public opinion towards the party either. “The August 27 violent clashes helped the state government and the Trinamool Congress as they shifted the focus to how the police were being attacked,” said the journalist.
The Chhatra Samaj is yet to resume its protests after the release of its leaders.
“We will continue to protest,” Ruidas told Scroll. “For the time being, our main focus is on the demand for the resignation of the chief minister but we will take up the cause of corruption in the near future.”
