Muslim doctor, Hindu aide spread message of peace Basirhat violence tells us the battle for Bengal will be bloody
Patients coming out of doctor Kaseed Ali’s chamber in violence-hit Trimohini area of Basirhat town are carrying, apart from the medical prescription, advice on communal harmony.
Ali and his compounder Deboprasad Boiragi have been working together for nearly 35 years. Ali has made it a point to tell each of his patients that Boiragi has been no less than a family member and any loss to him would have been a personal loss to the Ali family. “Over the past five days, I was always tense about his family’s security. I told the local leaders from my community to ensure his safety. Fortunately, since I have been practising here for the past 45 years, the leaders took my advice seriously and Debu’s family is safe,” Ali said.
“Debu has been associated with me for the past 35 years and I find no difference between him and my two sons. I consider Debu’s wife my daughter-in-law and his children as my own grandchildren,” Ali says.
Boiragi said a doctor’s chamber is the right place to spread the message of communal harmony.
“We are telling everyone how our professional engagement led to emotional bonding between two families. This was normal for Basirhat. It is not that patients are unaware of these facts. But it is time we remind each other of the true character and traditions of Basirhat,” Boiragi said.
Close to his chamber is a medicine shop run by Benoy Krishna Pal, who was horrified by the violence at Trimohini. He even planned on leaving the town with his family, until a Muslim friend, Gazi, asked him not to.
However, Gazi refused to take any credit. “I did not do anything special to be thanked for. Anybody would have done the same to save a childhood friend. We are like brothers,” he said. of West Bengal has been witnessing over the past few days is therefore not without context. Assembly elections in the state are still a few years away, but Bengal is one frontier that the BJP hopes to breach to expand its footprint in parts of the country it was mostly non-existent.
Parliamentary elections scheduled for 2019 provide the party with a perfect opportunity to prove its growing prowess and polarisation of voters on religious lines can certainly help its cause.
The political battle lines are, therefore, drawn in West Bengal and Basirhat is simply a collateral damage, though not entirely unintended. Religious fault lines have run deep in the state with 27% Muslim population. It has grown deeper since Mamata Banerjee took over as the chief minister. The Muslims are her impregnable vote bank and she has allowed the perception to grow that she cares for them. Her initiatives to give stipends to Imams and promote madarsas among other things have helped her political capital grow.
It has, however, left sections of Hindus to nurse a feeling of victimhood, leaving the chief minister somewhat vulnerable. Political rivals see in the situation a chance to vitiate the mood further and win over voters to their side. Lost in the slugfest is who started it all. Since October 2016, West Bengal has witnessed 11 communal flare-ups with Basirhat being the latest but almost certainly not the last. The political contest is heating up and so is the fight between religious hotheads with an eye on votes. The battle for Bengal will be bloody.
India-born former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta, who served a two-year prison term on insider trading charges, has admitted he made “errors and misjudgements” and apologised for letting his friends and fellow IIT associates down.
In one of his first public comments on his conviction after completing his prison term in March last year, Gupta told an IIT alumni meet in California he regrets that five years of his life were taken away from him and he hopes to tell his side of the story “in due course” once his appeal is decided upon.
“While I continue to fight the injustice in my case, I have to candidly admit that I made errors and misjudgements and for that I take full responsibility,” Gupta said, addressing the second annual IIT Bay Area Leadership Conference held in Santa Clara last month. The event was hosted by the 11,000-member strong IIT Bay Area Alumni Association and attended by top executives and entrepreneurs who had graduated from the prestigious Indian engineering institution.
Gupta, an IIT Delhi and Harvard Business School alumnus, expressed regret for failing to be a role model to the scores of young people in leading institutions he was associated with, including IIT, Harvard, Indian School of Business, McKinsey and Gates Foundation.
“They made me who I am and I was also fortunate enough to play a leadership role that shaped many of these institutions but most importantly I aspired to be a role model for many of the young people who were part of these institutions, who looked up to me.
“One of my greatest regrets is I did let them down. I want to apologise to all of you at IIT alumni that I really did not live up to the highest standards you would have rightly expected me to do. I genuinely ask for your forgiveness and understanding,” Gupta said. PTI
GUPTA, AN IIT DELHI AND HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL ALUMNUS, EXPRESSED REGRET FOR FAILING TO BE A ROLE MODEL TO SCORES OF YOUNG PEOPLE