In Chandannagar, Some Liberté, Little Egalité, and No Fraternité

Even a small town like Chandannagar in Hooghly district has its share of communal politics, reports Chandan Nandy.

The clock tower opposite The Strand on the Hooghly river in Chandannagar offers a glimpse of the facade behind which is the subdivisional jail – euphemistically called a correctional centre. (Photo: Chandan Nandy/The Quint)

The Strand in Chandannagar, on the banks of the Hooghly river, at once offers a rich and varied tableau of the historic and the present. On the road alongside The Strand stand French colonial-era buildings with colonnaded facades and plaques celebrating liberté, egalité and fraternité – the swansong of the 1789 French Revolution.

One such building, a single-storey mansion with its paint chipped off, has long been functioning as the Chandannagar police station. Adjoining the police station is the jail, next to which is another 18th century structure that houses the sub-divisional officer’s office.

A portion of The Strand on the Hooghly inChandannangar in Hooghly district, West Bengal. (Photo: Chandan Nandy/ The Quint)

At one end of The Strand, lined by aging banyan trees on one side and ornate street lamps on the other, is the lone jetty that disgorges hundreds of people into mechanised launches that ferry them across the river. A ladies’ toilet, which, for four years, has been turned into a warehouse for stockpiling alcohol, stands on one side of the jetty.

Next to the toilet-turned-illicit-liquor-dump, barely 100 metres from the police station, two men command a satta centre and a few more laze inside the Trinamool Congress office. Close by is a Kali temple and an ashram where hari kirtan is sung in the evenings.

The Chandannagar police station on the left and the subdivisional jail with the clock tower on The Strand. (Photo: Chandan Nandy/The Quint)

Unable to bear the sweltering heat inside the police station, some policemen walk lazily up and down the shaded strand, while a few lounge and chat away, sitting on wrought-iron-and-wooden seats, soaking in the late morning cool breeze blowing in from the placid but shimmering river.

Nearby, a bevy of bored women with gaudy clothes, sweat dripping down their painted faces and flashing fake smiles, tempt prospective customers.

Two policemen from the Chandannagar police station chat in the blissful shade of a banyan tree on The Strand. (Photo: Chandan Nandy/The Quint)

Communalisation of Local Politics

Amidst such fraternité, Mohammad Shamim, Drohnarayan Singh and Sanjay Agarwal were busy discussing the “communal tension” that was sparked on 17 April, shattering the peace in Chandannagar – formerly Chandernagore – before normalcy was restored once curfew was imposed on a part of the town.

“The Hindus were hell bent on taking out a Hanuman akhara. The Muslims were as adamant, if not more, to prevent its passage through their area,” Shamim, who is unemployed, said, quickly adding that “it was the handiwork of Trinamool Congress agent provocateurs seeking to whip up tension before the polls.” Chandannagar, as all of Hooghly district, goes to the polls on 30 April.

Sanjay Agarwal (left), Mohammad Shamim (centre) and Drohnarayan Singh (right) on The Strand, Chandannagar. (Photo: Chandan Nandy/ The Quint)

The communal tension did not spiral into all-out violence, said Shamim, who was born in Chandannagar after his parents migrated here from Faizabad in UP, adding that he estimates the bhaiyya log from UP constitute 60 percent of the migrant population in Chandannagar.

“Woh Ashok Kumar Shaw (a migrant from UP and the former TMC MLA) budmaash hai,” said Singh, who owns a khatal (buffalo pen) outside the town limits, wringing his fists in frustration at the communalisation of local politics in recent times. Shaw’s reputation of corrupt practices has forced the TMC to field Indranil Sen, a Kolkata-based singer and producer of Bengali films.

Singh, who originally hails from Gorakhpur in UP and describes himself as an “Ayodhya-wasi”, has spent nearly all his life in Chandannagar. Today, he is appalled by the “low” politics in Bengal in general and his adopted town in particular. “Yeh Shaw sahi aadmi nahin hai. Usne apna jeb bhara hai, (This fellow Shaw is not a good person. He has only made himself rich),” Singh said in lilting sing-song Gorakhpuri.

A plaque in honour of a French colonial police commissioner of Chandannagar, who was killed by “foreign terrorists” on 10 March 1933. (Photo: Chandan Nandy/The Quint)

Unemployment Spurred by Trade Unionism

Sitting next to Shamim, Agarwal said he has nothing much to do these days. “I spend most mornings here (The Strand). I had a steady job in a factory in Liluah, near Howrah. The factory manufactured sundry plastic items. But three months ago the factory owner said he no longer required my services on the ground that he would shut down his establishment. A few others were also retrenched,” Agarwal, worry writ large on his face, said.

The closure of factories on either side of the railway tracks between Howrah and Hooghly is not a new phenomenon. Spurred by inflexible left politics and militant trade unionism at the height of the CPI (M)’s 34-year-long rule, factories along this stretch shut down one after the other, leaving behind armies of unemployed.

A view of The Strand on the Hooghly in Chandannagar. (Photo: Chandan Nandy/ The Quint)

What remains today are hollow shells of factories that hummed with work and workers in the 70s. Even the khatals that came up along the rail tracks have vanished. The walls of the factories are sites of political graffiti. The grime-smeared inner walls of the grim local trains – some painted green and others white-and-blue – are plastered with posters that advertise Swapan Da the tutor, potent sex-enhancing treatment for “happy conjugal life”, bank jobs that don’t exist, and “accurate” life-predictions by “renowned” astrologers.

The jobless took to hawking sundry items on the train – chanachur, cheap lozenges, handkerchiefs, wallets, ballpoint pens, poisons that kill cockroaches and rodents, Bengali almanacs, fruits. You name it. Some even sing on trains to make ends meet.

The Hooghly river in Chandannagar. (Photo: Chandan Nandy/The Quint)

Every day, the suburban trains spill thousands of people onto the sprawling platforms of Howarh station. And every evening, the same trains transport back to Kolkata’s suburbia the very thousands, their shoulders drooping and eyes reflecting hopelessness.

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