Malda is tense, but is it communal? Ground reality suggests otherwise

The market is bustling with activity. Shopkeepers are busy interacting and bargaining with customers as cars keep honking in the background. Security forces patrol the streets ahead of the polling. Merely, three and a half months ago, this locality had been engulfed in violence and turbulence. Today, however, the spectacle in Malda has “business as usual” written all over it.

A closer look, though, indicates that normalcy had returned the very evening after the unrest erupted on the morning of January 3. “I opened my shop at around five in the evening,” says Dipal Sinha, who runs a medical store right across the Kaliachak Police Station, which was burnt by the hostile mob. “The attack was confined to the police station.”

Immediately after the incident, reports on social media suggested a communal riot in West Bengal’s Malda district, which goes to polls on Sunday. The episode had pitted the Muslims against Hindus. However, shopkeepers in close proximity to the police station say no human being was targeted or no shop was vandalised. “We have never experienced communal tension and neither have I been at the receiving end of minority persecution,” says 67-year-old Sinha, who has lived right behind his shop all his life. “My relations with my Muslim neighbours are extremely pleasant. In fact, when I was wondering whether I should open my shop in the evening, my Muslim friends asked me to go ahead without any hesitation.”

What was the attack about?

An obscure group, Anjuman Ahle Sunnatul Jamaat, organised a rally protesting a derogatory remark about Prophet Mohammad made by Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha leader Kamlesh Tiwari a month ago. Five times the amount of people turned up at the Kaliachak market than what was expected. Shortly, the rally proceeded towards the police station. “The whole lane was packed,” says Sinha.

It did not take time for the matters to escalate and the mob set afire a Border Security Force (BSF) vehicle, then attacked and ransacked the police station. “If the attack was communal, what is the sense behind the police station being the lone target?” questions Sina-ul-Haq, who has been reporting from Malda for local newspaper Uttar Banga Samvad for years. “The rally was intentionally hijacked by some of the anti-social elements in Malda.”

Merely a day or so before the attack, the police had raided substantial poppy fields and arrested more than hundred cultivators. Peculiarly, the attempt to burn down the police station was limited to the section where the records and files of the drug mafia had been kept. “It was a clear cut effort to destroy the evidence that would have landed some of the major law breakers of the district in jail,” says Haq.

An overwhelmingly Muslim dominated district, Malda is grossly backward and underdeveloped, clouded by agrarian distress, poverty and illicit activities. Poppy cultivation, circulation of fake currency notes is rampant here.

In Baisnabnagar village of Malda, located 7-8 kilometers from the Bangladesh border, miles of farmlands spread out like a trackless desert. A tranquil serene village enveloped in greenery is one of the many bordering villages indulging in poppy cultivation. Samar Mandal, an agricultural labourer, says it is cultivated at the centre of the farmland with rice or wheat guarding its borders. “It is rampant,” he says. “The more you move towards the interiors, the more acute it gets.” Mandal, clad in a sullied checked shirt, lungi and a handkerchief wrapped around his forehead, says he has come across it many a time while fetching fodder from the farmlands for his livestock.

The rampant illicit activities have been used to target the religion, but when the population is overwhelmingly Muslim, the involvement of Muslims in these activities is obvious, says Haq. “A few Hindus are in the poppy business as well,” adds Mandal.  

The poppy season arrives in January and concludes towards March end. The mafias running the poppy business rent the farmlands for three months. Once cultivated, the poppy is processed and then exported to various parts of the country and abroad, especially Bangladesh. Behind every 1.5-2 acres, the poppy earns profits worth Rs 4 lakh. Unfortunately, Malda has, in recent times, become a hub.

Locals say those involved in poppy are, by and large, the same strongmen indulging in the circulation of fake currency notes. The raids conducted by police in these poppy fields would have, in all likelihood, implicated them. What happened on January 3 was a major law and order breakdown, which is not unusual in Malda.

Reason behind the communal colour

While the ones trying, at times successfully, to paint the incident communal in order to galvanise Hindu sentiments nationwide were right-wingers, the polarisation also benefits the ruling TMC government.

Malda has been a bastion of the Congress for a long time, largely due to the much revered leader Ghani Khan Chowdhury. He passed away eight years ago but his legacy continues to wield influence over the electorate. The TMC has hitherto not been able to breach the loyal Congress vote, and with the Congress now tying up with the Left, their chances have boosted considerably.

The TMC government’s indifferent response towards the law and order situation in Malda is interpreted by journalists and observers here as an attempt to garner more votes through religious polarisation, since the move to go out of the way and coax Madrasas does not seem to be cutting any ice. “Grants to Madrasas will not influence voting in Malda,” says Tajbul Hussain, a headmaster at a Madrasa in Malda. “The major issues over here are law and order and security.”

The polarisation is not working in TMC’s favour either. In most of the 12 constituencies of Malda district, the Congress-Left alliance appears to be enjoying the upper hand. Moreover, when arch rivals generally join hands, the alliance is essentially a handiwork of the top brass while the ordinary cadres find the amalgamation uncomfortable. However, at a local booth in Malda, the ease of the workers of Congress and Left towards each other was telling.

The BJP, on the other hand, appears to have gained from painting Malda communal. The party, which failed to make inroads in Malda even during the Modi wave of 2014, seems to be a serious contender in the Baisnabnagar constituency which has a significant Hindu vote bank. Swadhin Sarkar, BJP’s candidate from the constituency, says he is the frontrunner to clinch Baisnabnagar. “I do not know how BJP would do elsewhere in Malda, but I shall win this one comfortably,” he says.

Back in Kaliachak, the police station has been renovated in no time. The police quarter is back on its feet and the security personnel have moved back in. The freshly painted white walls and reconstruction of the infrastructure do not indicate that the site was brutally attacked not long ago. Neither does the electorate’s demeanour while talking about it.