At least now, we are not a nation that conducts an impartial investigation to find out the root cause of violent riots in society. There are many instances in our country’s journey where riots killed innocent citizens and left deep scars in the people’s hearts.
West Bengal Violence in 2023 is one such deep scar on society that might need lots of effort to heal, not to forget that political violence is not new in the state where people are targetted, and killed, only because they are from rival parties, and have different ideologies. On June 9th 2023 violence erupted soon to eliminate each other after the panchayat raj election dates are announced in West Bengal.
Who will question ruling TMC government leaders over violence happening in the state they are governing?
One has to do a deeper analysis or investigation to understand the root causes behind this violent behaviour of society. This political violence is not limited to India; it is seen across the world from the days of Hitler in Germany to Trump’s rule in the United States of America. However, people there don’t completely accept the ideology of fighting and losing lives for political bosses. They speak up no matter who is the other person.
Australian PM was told by a citizen in his country to get down the lawn. Can we in India speak like that?
There are many reasons for violent behaviour in our society. When political leaders speak and act irresponsibly, meet-out unfair treatment, and make politically charged emotional statements, when political leaders don’t show leadership skills, but instead incite people, then we see political violence happening in India.
Rigging of ballots and killing opponents is seen during the 2023 West Bengal political violence
When a political party gets itself involved in appeasement politics, appeasing a section, or religion of people and ignoring other sections of people, it naturally creates hatred between people and violence erupts. No one should feel their religion or their beliefs are attacked, and when a political party or a government is unable to safeguard a section of people, but instead create an atmosphere of fear. In West Bengal the hatred between different political parties is deep and people are on the receiving end. Many families lost their breadwinners, fighting for political parties.
Emotional statements during a political rally are always must be taken with a pinch of salt. However, when leaders speak on issues that have the possibility of creating unrest between two communities or religions, then it must be outrightly condemned by the media and civil society. But now, with the media behaving unbiasedly way, not writing on behalf of people, but speaking or writing for political party bosses, then there is no room for people to speak, except for platforms like Twitter, where people are still allowed to speak their minds.
Responsible leadership is needed where the leader will only address people’s problems and try to improve their livelihood and improve brotherhood between different religions. But, when leadership fails where it promotes enmity then all of us need to condemn it.
Indian citizens mustn’t be the scapegoat for political parties’ wins. We must speak about our problems. We must speak about our family problems. We must speak about our society’s problems. Political parties will take care of their wins or losses, we mustn’t fight for them. They must earn our vote, not win it by deceiving us, creating differences.