The woke intellectuals of Bharat are a rare breed. They shed faux tears at all sorts of non-causes and at times, desperately scout social media for “issues” to stay in the limelight. Standing for the “rights” of the likes of Mahua Moitra is the pinnacle of feminism for them, and they look for a patriarchal conspiracy angle in an action taken against a Member of Parliament for violating Parliamentary norms and code of conduct and indulging in corruption. But the feminism concerns of the woke intellectual brigade are limited to the likes of Ms Moitra. When it comes to condemning horrific acts of sexual violence against women, the woke lobby is highly selective.
This is the story of Sandeshkhali violence in West Bengal. The gut-wrenching testimonies of the Hindu women of Sandeshkhali, initially circulated in the form of videos through social media, are now out in the public domain. The mainstream media has also started reporting widely on Sandeskhali. Yet, none of the woke intellectuals and the celebrity brigade have issued a word of condemnation in what could be seen as probably one of the most cold-blooded, systematically executed, and sustained systemic infliction of violence on women through active collision of the state.
Numerous Hindu women of Sandeshkhali have accused Shahajahan Sheikh, a prominent figure in the Trinamool Congress, and his supporters of sexually assaulting and raping them night after night over the past couple of years. According to women’s testimonies based on interviews given to various news channels that have gone viral on social media, the women are frequently and casually picked up from their homes at night and taken to the TMC office where they are violated by the goons. They are threatened that if they refuse to comply, their husbands will be killed. It’s not a random or a stary incident of sexual molestation but a sustained cycle of state-sanctioned systemic sexual abuse of these women, as narrated by the women.
Hundreds of women residents of Sandeshkhali reportedly demonstrated on the streets on the 8th of February with sticks, brooms, and farming tools, and blocked the roads. Their demand was the immediate arrest of TMC leader Sheikh Shahjahan and his two aides Uttam Sardar and Shiba Prasad Hazra.
The situation got even more tense on the 9th of February as angry villagers of Sandeshkhali, led by women, attacked the properties of Sheikh Shahjahan including a poultry farm owned by Shahjahan’s confidante and TMC leader Shibu Hazra. The locals accused the TMC leader of setting up an illegal poultry farm through land grabbing.
Another notable thing is that most of the women in question belong to the Scheduled Castes community. Yet, the “intellectual lobby” that’s supposedly always at the forefront when it comes to talking about the rights of disadvantaged groups is strangely silent. Why are they silent? Simply because West Bengal isn’t a BJP ruled state so to speak in these matters isn’t a part of their woke toolkit.
As per various media reports, not a single FIR has been registered against the perpetrators so far. The TMC spokespersons keep on saying that not a single woman has come forward with a formal complaint and that this is a conspiracy by the BJP to defame BJP. But the women have another story to tell. As per the women’s testimonies through various media reports, they are being asked for proof of rape and being told that since there is no evidence, an FIR cannot be registered. This is highly bizarre and unheard of. In a rape case, a FIR has to be registered based solely on women’s testimony. The process of proving the allegations begins only when the investigation begins and the trial starts in the court. But how can the police refuse to lodge an FIR based on lack of evidence? When so many women have given their testimonies in videos and many news channels of Bharat have interviewed these women and the accused is already a criminal figure with so many prior cases against him, how can the Wet Bengal Police not even register an FIR?
But now, with the issue all over the media, no matter how much the TMC tries to cover up the horrors and in the classic woke style, try to wash its hands off everything by calling it a “RSS conspiracy”, the matter has gone way out of TMC’s hands. As per latest news updates, at the time of writing this report, a delegation of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes which visited Sandeshkhali to probe the sexual abuse and rape charges levelled by these women, has submitted its report to President Droupadi Murmu. The NCSC delegation reportedly visited Sandeshkhali on Thursday. As per various media reports, the NCSC has recommended the imposition of President’s Rule in West Bengal in its report submitted to President Draupadi Murmu.
BJP has formed a 6-member delegation to probe the Sandeshkhali incident. However, the delegation constituted by BJP President JP Nadda was stopped from visiting Sandeshkhali where the women complainants have been protesting. As per various media reports, the National Commission for Women (NCW) in its fact-finding report said that it has gathered disturbing testimonies from women of widespread fear and systematic abuse by officers and members of the Trinamool Congress along with the police. A team from the NCW reportedly visited Sandeshkhali to assess the actions taken by local authorities given the allegations of sexual abuse, intimidation, and violence made by the village women against the associates of local TMC leaders.
NCW has also issued a condemnation from its X account in this regard.
Since the testimonies of the Hindu women of Sandeshkhali went viral on social media, the West Bengal government has been downplaying the allegations calling it a conspiracy of the BJP and the RSS. Instead of registering FIRs and acting on the complaints of these hapless women, the West Bengal government has repeatedly imposed Section 144 in Sandeshkhali, intimidating people and trying to silence women’s voices.
Barely a couple of days back, none of the mainstream media seemed interested in covering the story of Sandeshkhali violence. It was only when the West Bengal BJP Chief Sukanta Majumdar was hospitalized after being mishandled by the West Bengal Police that the incident came to limelight. Even now, the mainstream media, even though accurately reporting on the updates, is downplaying the seriousness of the Sandeshkhali horrors by not emphasizing fully the nature of the allegations made by women. Most of the news reports casually say that the women of Sandeshkhali have accused Trinamool Congress Leader Shajahan Sheikh and his supporters of engaging in “land grab and sexual assault” conveniently omitting the specifics that the women have accused the whole TMC machinery of running a sustained sexual abuse operation by forcefully taking them away from their homes repeatedly over years to local TMC offices where they would be repeatedly raped and violated. This is certainly a lot more heinous than what the media reports depict it to be.
Abhijit Majumdar, a journalist and editor-in chief of earshot.in has been tracking the events in Sandeshkhli through his X handle. Through his posts, one can get a holistic perspective on the Sandeshkhali violence including a lot of stuff that the mainstream media is not saying openly. “Mamata govt has let TMC goon Sheikh Shahjahan abscond. Cops are arresting protestors instead of criminals who abducted and raped mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, for days. By defending the indefensible, Sagarika Ghose is further humiliating women of Sandeshkhali”, he says in his X post.
The video testimonies of Sandeshkhali residents that have surfaced on social media are horrifying. A recent article published in OpIndia gives a detailed account of these testimonies. “While speaking to TV9 Bangla, residents of Sandeshkhali recounted how TMC goons led by Shibu Hazra and Uttam Sardar grabbed their land. One woman informed that the Block Development Officer (BDO) and the local police are working hands-in-gloves with the party cadre”, says the article.
The article further details how one woman told TV 9 Bangla in an interview that TMC goons were destroying the lives of impressionable youth by luring them into political activities and giving them all sorts of dangerous incentives including liquor and weapons, asking them to harass people and destroy houses on the instructions of the Trinamool Congress.
According to another testimony, as narrated by the article, the police accompanied the workers of Trinamool Congress and harassed the women of Sandeshkhali protesting against the party goons Uttam Sardar, Sheikh Shahjahan, and Shibo Prasad Hazra. As per one woman’s testimony, “Police came to hour house at 3 a.m. They abused my husband and tried to molest me. They even broke my Pola ( red bangle married Bengali Hindu women wear). The police threw away my daughter. Policemen were so drunk that they were unable to stand”. All these video testimonies have been widely circulated on social media. The testimonies are in Bengali, so OpIndia has translated some of the testimonies in this article.
The testimonies reveal a horrific tale of not just repeated sexual abuse and assault of Sandeshkhali women but an entire cycle of violence perpetuated by TMC goons in which their whole family is implicated. As per the women’s testimonies, their husbands are threatened using extremely foul language, dragged out of the house at any hour, beaten up, abused, etc. Some of the stuff being narrated is so gross and disturbing that one can’t even write it down.
It’s beyond shocking that despite so many testimonies of Sandeshkhali women doing the rounds of social media and news channels, not a single “celebrity” or “intellectual” has come out in support of these women, or at least making a statement asking the West Bengal government to be compassionate and let these women file an FIR and let the law take its due course. The barrage of woke activists who feel for every cause from the Israel-Gaza conflict, Russia-Ukraine war to the plight of women wrestlers when they had made sexual harassment allegations against MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh observe stoic silence when it comes to condemning heinous atrocities reportedly committed on scores of hapless village women of West Bengal.
It seems very soon, many of the woke intellectuals will go beyond silence and following the line of TMC, start calling this a BJP-RSS conspiracy and discredit the voices of women of Sandeshkhali. How convenient it is for the woke lobby to display double standards shamelessly? Seems they are a pro at exercising such hypocrisy. They vent their lungs out shedding tears and holding candlelight marches at every conceivable cause and when it comes to a genuine issue involving a section of disadvantaged women of Bharat, they choose to remain silent because it doesn’t fit their political narrative. All of a sudden, women’s testimonies become suspect as if the onus of proving rape charges should be on the woman concerned and not on the accused to prove themselves innocent.
The woke lobby’s cold and apathetic response to the Sandeshkhali incident is also a great disservice to feminism. The woke lobby pretends to be the champion of women’s rights and issues but when it comes to raising their voice against the issue of collusion of state machinery for furthering the systematic exploitation and abuse of women from disadvantaged backgrounds in the Bharatiya state of West Bengal, they duck their heads under the sand.
