RG Kar protester is ‘shocked

Rimjhim Sinha has been an activist since 2016, first as a student at Kolkata’s Presidency University and then as part of the vibrant women’s movement in the city. But, by her own estimate, her activism never reached more than “100 or 150 people”.

So when lakhs of ordinary women across West Bengal and in other parts of the country responded to her call for raat dakhal, or reclaim the night, on August 14, 2024, Sinha was taken aback. To this day, the left-wing activist struggles to explain why her appeal resonated with so many people on that day.

For nearly a week before that, Kolkata had been rocked by the news of a brutal rape-and-murder case at the city’s famous RG Kar Medical College and Hospital. The victim, a trainee doctor, was working a night shift when the crime took place.

Sinha had asked women to reclaim the night in response to Sandip Ghosh, the former principal of RG Kar College, blaming the victim for being in the hospital’s seminar room late in the night. The public response to her call, the 30-year-old recalled, had filled the victim’s mother, Ratna Debnath, with “hope”.

“Later, she asked me to organise another raat dakhal and said she would join us,” Sinha remembered. But the activist, who now works with an organisation called Reclaim The Night, Free The Day, was not sure if another protest would receive a similar response.

Almost two years later, Debnath announced that she would contest the Assembly elections in West Bengal on a Bharatiya Janata Party ticket. The saffron party has fielded her from the Panihati seat.

Sinha, the young activist, was “hoping against hope” that Debnath would not join the BJP because she considers it to be an “anti-women” party. While her hopes now laid “shattered”, she told Scroll that the RG Kar protests were never about one victim. “It was about all women and marginalised gender communities,” she added.

Here are edited excerpts from the interview.

How do you look back on the RG Kar protests?

The Reclaim The Night movement did not support any party and the people involved in it did not want to be associated with a single flag. The most important part was that it was decentralised. It was not only in Jadavpur or Kolkata.

Different women who have never been part of any political parties called for protests in their own localities and managed it themselves. They wrote slogans, delivered speeches and talked about their experiences.

The national media was eager to know what was happening. I knew that some of them were part of the godi media – they did not believe in our politics. But I saw a shift while talking to them.

Usually, women anchors took our interviews. I could see them smiling while I was saying something. It made me hopeful. They were relating to what I was saying.

Two years on, are women in Bengal any safer than they were before?

I don’t think they are safer. But they are more opinionated and expressive. That is more important. I see that as the success of the movement.

You made efforts to ensure that no political party took over the movement back then. But the Bharatiya Janata Party seems to have done that now by fielding Ratna Debnath, the RG Kar victim’s mother, in the upcoming elections. How do you see that?

I have met Ratna Debnath at least two or three times. I thought she would go with the Communist Party of India (Marxist) because it had been helping her from the beginning.

I am shocked by her decision because I thought whatever happens, a woman would not side with the BJP. It is a party which garlands convicted rapists because it says they are Brahmins who cannot rape.

I have come to realise that after two years, we are standing exactly where we were. Even now, the RG Kar incident is the topic, and not the demands that were raised by the movement. That creates a feeling of hopelessness.

During the movement, we never asked the parents to come and talk. From the beginning, we were clear that justice for the RG Kar victim was very important. But Reclaim The Night was not only about her. It was about all women and marginalised gender communities.

In your view, is there something that the Left could have done differently to keep the victim’s mother on its side?

The biggest problem with our politics is that it takes a lot of time, hope, spirit and patience. When you have lost someone so dear to yourself, the hardest thing to do is wait. If she [Ratna Debnath] comes up to me and asks, ‘Could you give me justice?’ I am not in a position to say yes.

However, the CPI(M) had the resources to stand with her more firmly. They could have told her to keep her distance from Suvendu Adhikari, who represents a party which is completely anti-women.

On May the 4th, the crimes against all victims of the TMC’s #MahaJungleRaj will be avenged. pic.twitter.com/tsyUUW0SIg

Smaller organisations like ours were able to keep the BJP away from our platform. We could tell them to their faces that they were not welcome. The CPI(M) could have done the same.

Do you think there is a pattern to this? Time and again, we see the CPI(M) take the lead in organising protests in Bengal. But when push comes to shove, the BJP gains from them.

A lot of the CPI(M) vote has gone directly to the BJP. It cannot be a coincidence. The CPI(M) has always been a very regimented party. I think there is a set-up [between the CPI(M) and the BJP]. There is some sort of strategic alliance.

They do not plan their protests in a way that would keep the BJP completely out. They just want the Trinamool Congress out of power. Ever since I have gained consciousness, I have seen the CPI(M) being more vocal about the Trinamool than the BJP.

They are more focussed on a woman leader who is winning elections than what the BJP is doing. In their press conferences, they are more aggressive when they are talking about the Trinamool than when they are talking about the BJP. Why?

The Trinamool does not even have an ideology. When it came to power in 2011, it was because of the anti-incumbency against the CPI(M). 2026 is about the anti-incumbency against the Trinamool. It is just that we don’t have an alternative.

I don’t think we can try the BJP. It’s like we have been poisoned and we are asking for cyanide. We are going to die. We don’t get to see what happens in the future if BJP comes in.

Mamata Banerjee is one of the two women chief ministers in India right now. She is the only one running a big state. How do you see her politics?

I see her as a woman who has power. She does not think she needs to be progressive, believe in feminism or answer to anyone. She knows how Bengalis see her. Even though what she wears costs a lot, it looks like she is representing the working class.

I have heard this from a lot of women who work as domestic workers or in factories. They see Mamata Banerjee as their representative. She does not represent feminist politics, but autocratic politics led by a woman.

She definitely has political understanding and charisma. She is not a very good orator, but someone who has not had the opportunity to be educated relates with her.

And how do you see her policies for women?

Mamata Banerjee depends on women as a vote bank. She wants women to be beneficiaries of her welfare schemes, not opinionated souls who talk about their rights. If that was not the case, ASHA workers would not have had to wait for an entire day to talk about raising their salaries.

Rs 1,500 [what Bengali women get under the Lakshmir Bhandar scheme] is not sufficient at all. The Trinamool projects these schemes as empowerment, but they don’t even go back and study what the schemes are doing. The Kanyashree amount of Rs 25,000 is given for pursuing higher studies, but a lot of women are married off with that money.

The way she [Banerjee] treated the Reclaim The Night movement is also an example of how she sees women. She sat at least three times with the doctors because they had a more organised presence, but not us women.

So what choice do women have in these elections?

The biggest heartbreak is that because of the special intensive revision, many women have lost their voting rights. My mother’s name was deleted even though my father served in the central government for 37 years. He is a live pensioner.

When I saw my mother’s name get deleted, I understood that she never had an identity of her own. After everything she has tried to achieve in her life with education, marriage, the way she brought me up, she could not save herself from this.

If someone coming from such a privileged position cannot get her name included, I wonder what other women must be going through. Many women who might have expressed their opinion in these elections will not be able to cast their vote. The power of women’s opinions has been destroyed.

And what is at stake for those women who will be able to vote in these elections?

The biggest thing at stake is keeping BJP out of Bengal. We Bengali women do not subscribe to the politics of the BJP. We have always been taught to not accept anything at face value. The most important thing right now is to prove to the BJP that even if they try to win Bengal by hook or by crook, they will still lose.

We women are becoming more apprehensive of our safety because of how much ground the BJP has gained in Bengal. We are seeing more Jai Shri Ram flags and more angry Hanuman stickers on cars and motorbikes. It makes us anxious because we associate the idea of an alpha male with those things.

It is very frightening. I have seen how women in north Indian states are forced to live their lives. I don’t want to live like that.

If the BJP does come to power, do you think the RG Kar protests will have played a part in that?

I don’t think so. Every time a people’s movement like this has surfaced, some or the other party has benefited from it. Does that mean we are not supposed to voice our opinions? I don’t see it like that. Reclaim The Night talked about things that are polar opposite to the BJP. We managed to keep them away. That was our biggest success.

Source: Scroll
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