ममता सरकार का अ-लोकतांत्रिक चेहरा

ममता बनर्जी के पश्चिम बंगाल में मुख्यमंत्री बनने के बाद लोकतांत्रिक अधिकारों पर हमले बढ़े हैं। प्रेस से लेकर जन-आंदोलनों तक ,सभी ओर ममता बनर्जी के बाहुबलियों के पुलिस की मौजूदगी में हमले हो रहे हैं। वहीं दूसरी ओर अभिव्यक्ति की आजादी पर भी हमले तेज हो गए हैं। कल तक ये हमले वामदलों और खासकर माकपा के खिलाफ थे लेकिन इनदिनों सामान्य नागरिकों और नागरिक अधिकार के लिए आंदोलन करने वालों पर शासकदल के बाहुबलियों के हमले हो रहे हैं। इसके खिलाफ आज वे ही लोग ममता बनर्जी के खिलाफ बोल रहे हैं जो कल तक उनको सत्तारूढ़ कराने में अग्रणी थे।

   ममता बनर्जी सरकार की लोकतंत्रविरोधी हरकतों के खिलाफ बुद्धिजीवियों का प्रतिवाद लगातार व्यापक शक्ल अख्तियार करता जा रहा है। वैज्ञानिक पार्थप्रतिम राय की रिहाई की मांग को लेकर विश्व विख्यात मानवाधिकार सेनानी नॉम चोम्स्की सहित 700 से ज्यादा वैज्ञानिकों-बुद्धिजीवियों -लेखकों ने ममता सरकार के जनविरोधी चरित्र की निंदा की है।इस बयान पर महाश्वेता देवी के भी हस्ताक्षर हैं। 

    हिंदी के प्रसिद्ध लेखक  मोहन श्रोत्रिय का मानना है यह फ़ासिज़्म की दस्तक है । वह तरह-तरह के रूपों में प्रकट होता/ हो सकता है फ़ासिज़्म. पहले के राजनेता व्यंग्य के आस्वाद की क्षमता भी रखते थे. समर्थ व्यंग्य तो शिक्षक और मार्गदर्शक की भूमिका अदा करता है. नाम लेकर कहिए कि ममता की यही नहीं, पिछले दिनों की अन्य हरक़तें फ़ासिज़्म के दायरे में आती हैं. दमन संभव हो न हो विश्वविद्यालय का शिक्षक इस जुर्म में गिरफ्तार तो हो ही गया. यह अकादमिक प्रश्न के रूप में पेश नहीं किया जाना चाहिए, इसकी घनघोर निंदा और भर्त्सना की जानी चाहिए.

टीएमसी सांसद और पूर्व रेलमंत्री दिनेश त्रिवेदी ने प्रोफेसर अंबिकेश महापात्र का पक्ष लेते हुए कहा कि कार्टून लोकतंत्र का अभिन्न हिस्सा हैं। रेल बजट में रेल किराया बढ़ाने को लेकर उठे विवाद के बाद इस्तीफा देने वाले त्रिवेदी ने कहा, 'मेरा मानना है कि कार्टून स्वस्थ लोकतंत्र का अभिन्न हिस्सा हैं।' 'कार्टून आपकी छवि को खराब नहीं कर सकते हैं। लोग आपकी छवि बनाते हैं और वही इसे नष्ट कर देते हैं।'

उल्लेखनीय है ममता बनर्जी सरकार के द्वारा जादवपुर विश्वविद्यालय के एक अध्यापक को व्यंग्य चित्र को ईमेल के जरिए भेजने और सोशल साइटस पर भेजने के कारण अकारण पकडकर बंद कर दिया गया। ममता बनर्जी सरकार ने सोशल नेटवर्क से प्राप्त कार्टून को सोशल नेटवर्क पर शेयर करने के आरोप में जादवपुर विश्वविद्यालय के एक शिक्षक को कल रात गिरफ्तार कर लिया। एकदिन बाद अलीपुर कोर्ट ने उस शिक्षक को 500 रूपये की जमानत पर छोड़ दिया। आश्चर्य की बात यह है कि उस व्यक्ति को थाने में निजी जमानत पर भी छोड़ा जा सकता था,लेकिन थानेदार ने शिक्षक को नहीं छोड़ा। बंगाल के बुद्धिजीवी इस, घटना से गंभीर रूप से मर्माहत हुए हैं। जादवपुर विश्वविद्यालय कैंपस तो प्रतिवाद के पोस्टरों से अटा पड़ा है।यदि बुद्धिजीवीवर्ग इस मामले पर चुप रहता है तो यह पश्चिम बंगाल और भारत के लिए दुर्भाग्यपूर्ण होगा। यह पश्चिम बंगाल के बुद्धिजीवियों का मुँह हमेशा के लिए बंद करने की बृहत्तर परिकल्पना का हिस्सा है।इस तरह की घटना हर स्तर पर प्र पश्चिम बंगाल में कायदे से बंगाली और गैर बंगाली बुद्धिजीवियों को मानवाधिकारों के संरक्षण के सवालों पर एकजुट होना चाहिए। संघर्ष से ही आत्मविश्वास आता है और सत्ता के भय से मुक्ति मिलती है।

ममता सरकार के द्वारा जादवपुर विश्वविद्यालय के एक प्रोफेसर के नेट पर प्रदर्शित कार्टून पर पुलिस एक्शन पर ट्विटर पर प्रतिवादी ट्विट तेजी से आ रहे हैं। तकरीबन सभी बड़े समाचारपत्रों और चैनलों ने विवादित कार्टून दिखाया है। ममता सरकार को अपने कानून की रक्षा के लिए इन सबके खिलाफ केस करने का साहस दिखाना चाहिए।असल में, एक शिक्षक को आतंकित करके राज्य सरकार भय पैदा करना चाहती है।

    कायदे से पश्चिम बंगाल में नागरिक समाज को मानवाधिकारों की रक्षा के लिए बृहत्तर आंदोलन संगठित करना चाहिए, क्योंकि सरकार के हमले तेजी से बढ़ रहे हैं और वामदलों को अपने पूर्वाग्रह त्याग करके नागरिक समाज के साथ मिलकर आम जनता की रक्षा के लिए मैदान में आना चाहिए।

    राजनीतिक श्लेष या व्यंग्य लोकतंत्र की धुरी है। सत्यजित राय के व्यंग्य और आर.के. लक्ष्मण के व्यंग्य ने लोकतंत्र को समृद्ध किया है। भारत की सत्ता ने इन दोनों को महान सम्मानजनक पदवियों से सम्मानित किया है। सवाल यह है कि क्या राजनीतिक व्यंग्य का दमन संभव है ?क्या व्यंग्य को साइबर क्राइम में रखा जा सकता है?

    पश्चिम बंगाल की आयरनी यह है कि यहां पर चुनावों में दीवारों पर व्यंग्य चित्र बड़ी संख्या में बनाए जाते हैं और प्रत्येक पार्टी के चित्रकार अपनी कलात्मक क्षमता का प्रदर्शन करते हैं। आश्चर्य की बात है कि एक शिक्षक को नेट के जरिए व्यंग्य चित्र संप्रेषित करने के कारण पुलिस घर से उठाकर ले गयी। स्वयं ममता बनर्जी का दल माकपा पर हमले के लिए व्यंग्यचित्रों का इस्तेमाल करता रहा है। आज वही ममता व्यंग्य चित्रों से डर रही हैं और व्यंग्यचित्र लिखने वालों को निशाना बना रही है।व्यंग्य से तानाशाह और फंडामेंटलिस्ट डरते हैं। व्यंग्य तो लोकतंत्र का ईंधन है। 16 अप्रैल 2012 को कोलकाता सीआईडी विभाग ने फेसबुक और हूहल से विवादास्पद कार्टून पेस्ट करने वाले का आईपी पता मांगा है और उस कार्टून को इंटरनेट और सोशलसाइट से हटाने की मांग की है।

नियमानुसार फेसबुक और गूगल को विवादास्पद कार्टून लगाने वाले यूजर का आई पता नहीं बताना चाहिए। यह सीधे यूजर की प्राइवेसी का हनन है।उल्लेखनीय है गूगल ने चीन में वहां की सरकार द्वारा अपने विरोधियों के आईपी पते मांगे थे जिसे गूगल ने नहीं दिया था। फलतःउसे धंधे से हाथ धोना पड़ा,जबकि अन्य इंटरनेट सेवाप्रदाता कंपनियों माइक्रोसॉफ्ट.याहू आदि ने आईपी पते दे दिए थे। इसके कारण चीन सरकार ने प्रतिवादी नागरिकों की गिरफ्तारियां कीं और उत्पीडित किया। तकरीबन वही हालात पश्चिम बंगाल में बनाने की कोशिश की जा रही है और इसका प्रतिवाद किया जाना चाहिए।

दि टेलीग्राफ में 15अप्रैल 2012 को लेखक रूचिर जोशी ने लिखा-

THE MORAL MINEFIELD - Thirty-four years in thirty-four weeks

The Thin Edge: Ruchir Joshi

I am writing this letter to you on my own computer and sending it out for publication via my own email. I am not, and have never been, a member of any political party, of any communist party anywhere including the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI(M). I am a citizen of India, of West Bengal, of Calcutta, and I live in the constituency you formerly represented as an MP — South Calcutta. I have also never been a supporter of yours or of your party, though I was certainly among the millions who celebrated after the election results last year. All of us were celebrating the end of the long, incompetent, corrupt, oppressive rule by the Left Front, even though I’m certain some millions of us were anxious as to what your tenure in power would bring. But we had believed in the hope of paribartan. I think we, the sceptical West Bengali millions, were hoping that you would lead a better, cleaner, fairer government than the disgraced, departing Left Front. In the euphoria of the election results it was impossible to imagine that you could do worse than Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s government. I myself made a resolution that I would not write anything critical of you or your administration for at least one year. It was only fair, given the huge mess you were inheriting, a mess that was not only administrative and financial but also, centrally, moral. The Left had so completely dismantled and thrown away all decency and humanity in matters of State that you could trace the roots of all their other failures to this institutionalized immorality; surely you had to be given a fair chance to begin to clean up this overflowing sewer? Sadly, despite my best efforts, I’m going to fall short of my promise by exactly one month. I am now forced to write to you openly in this column. Madam, in only eleven months you have proved yourself to be a grotesquely disastrous chief minister. Before taking on any of the other challenges, your primary challenge was the moral one: to stem the corrosion of morality and honesty in public service. The Left had subverted the state police into becoming their armed peons, you were supposed to counter that by bringing back genuine independence of the police and security forces. The Left had overseen the gang-rape and assaults on women from Bantola and Birati to Nandigram, you were supposed to do the opposite, especially as you yourself were one of the women their goondas had grievously assaulted. The Left had ruthlessly attacked anyone who criticized them, using State machinery to silence and sideline dissent, you were supposed to ensure that democracy and freedom of speech were once again protected, and yes, precisely, even at a cost to yourself and your party. Instead, we can now see that you yourself were already deeply corroded by those years of Left rule. Instead of being the chief surgeon who could excise and help cure the corruptions of absolute power, you yourself were terminally infected by the Baam Front rot, by their poisonous paranoia, by their vengeful megalomania. You and your administration have achieved what we thought was impossible in such a short time: you have actually increased misery and sadness inside the state, even as you’ve turned Bengal into the laughing stock of the rest of India. If, under the Left Front, the rest of India used to pity us and snigger at us, now the country is just laughing at us, belly-laughter mixed with open contempt. If the communists spent the last fourteen years of their rule doing nothing other than clinging on to power by whatever means, fair or foul, it was after they had tried to actually do something for the people for the first twenty years, even if they were wrong-headed, even if they were incompetent and without any genuine vision, even as their too-long reign began to inject acid into their souls and spines. What we did not foresee, what is truly terrifying, is that you seem to have scrunched that trajectory of thirty-four years into thirty-four weeks. Madam, perhaps it might be time for you to resign and go. Had someone in your administration, whoever was in charge of fire safety, taken responsibility and resigned after the AMRI fire, it may not have come to this. Had you fought your own rising paranoia and kept from commenting after the Park Street rape, it may not have come to this. Had you realized that you had not only offended the modesty of a rape victim but the collective conscience of Bengal and unreservedly apologized to the woman, it may not have come to this. Had you not transferred the police officer who proved that rape, you could have perhaps escaped this situation. Had you kept from compounding your mistake by similar irresponsible and callous comments about other assaults on women, or on the murders in Burdwan, it may have been different now. Had you not treated every bit of tragic news as only a lens through which to gaze lovingly and protectively at yourself, you may still have kept some credibility. Had you avoided attacking newspapers and TV channels that were critical of you, you would have been left with some democratic honour. Had you not pushed out your own minister from the door of the runaway train of your rule, there would have been no mild photo-cartoon sent to 25 of the 90 million people you rule and no criminal over-reaction from your party goondas and your paaltu police. As it is, you now oblige us to remember that adage about history repeating itself, first as tragedy and then as a farce: if the Left Front was the tragedy, you — and since there is no one but you in your Trinamul, you, solely — are the macabre farce. Madam, one of the most bizarrely funny things you’ve kept repeating during your election campaign and afterwards is how you want to turn Calcutta into London. Well, perhaps it’s high time we imported some aspects of London culture. For instance, let me tell you how the last four British prime ministers have been portrayed in cartoons in London newspapers: John Major, always wearing his underpants outside his trousers; Tony Blair, as a one-eyed monster, sometimes as a one-eyed poodle trotting after George W. Bush; Gordon Brown, as a square, financial thug and bouncer; David Cameron, repeatedly, as an empty, blown-up condom. Along with these, they have also repeatedly had George Bush as a rampant, psychopathic chimpanzee, (once actually wiping his bottom with the UN logo), they’ve had Nicolas Sarkozy as all sorts of ferret-like animals, Berlusconi as a lecherous octopus and, recently, Angela Merkel as a dominatrix in skimpy black leather costume and fishnet stockings, wielding a financial whip over the exposed backsides of other European leaders. Besides this, one of the most widely read British satirical magazines, Private Eye, almost always has actual photographs of leaders and royalty with fictional speech bubbles coming out of their mouths, saying the most outrageous things. Let me tell you, no one has ever sued about these portrayals, no one is beaten up, no one is arrested, no one even lodges a written protest. Madam, as one who had set such high hopes in you, I might be speaking for millions like myself: you need to resign and go, leaving us at the beginning of this Bangla new year to recover the best we can. May I suggest that after you resign, you plan a short or long visit to London? You will find they actually do dynamic new things to the city, like the huge Crossrail construction that’s now in progress, but that no one, neither premier nor mayor, can unilaterally decide to paint the city a bilious blue. You will also find they take rape and assault very seriously over there, and cartoons very lightly indeed. As you take in the reality of this culture and the courage of this freedom of speech, may I hope that you will begin to realize why you never deserved — forget being a world or national leader — but why you never actually deserved to be in charge of a state such as Bengal for even thirty-four days?

दैनिक हिन्दू (14 अप्रैल 2012) ने सम्पादकीय में लिखा

bonfire of free speech

There is an oppressive climate of intolerance towards dissent and free speech in West Bengal today. In an act of crude censorship, the government recently removed several newspapers from over 2,480 public libraries that it runs, aids or sponsors. Now, the police have arrested two people, including a professor from Jadavpur University, for allegedly defaming Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee through a cartoon they posted on a social networking site. These are blatant acts of authoritarianism that mock at constitutional values and freedoms and deserve to be condemned. The decision to purge the public library system of most mass circulation Bengali dailies and English language newspapers reflects a deep-seated contempt for democratic values. This has been done, ironically, under the guise of developing free thinking among readers. But the Chief Minister has only to read the Library Bill of Rights of the American Library Association to understand how far removed her government's views are from civilised practice. “Materials should not be excluded because of the origin, background, or views of those contributing to their creation,” the charter states, affirming the right of readers to have access to all shades of opinion. Specifically, nothing should be excluded because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval. What makes the decision of the West Bengal government particularly offensive is its calculated approach to suppressing ideas and information.

If democracy is to flourish, the public library system must be insulated from censorship. The Centre should strengthen the role of libraries and make their collections mandatorily inclusive. India's public libraries must be governed by a specific freedom charter that spells out their rights and those of readers. This can be done by making it mandatory for libraries to consult the community they serve through public hearings, and acquire publications based on local demand. Such principles are universal, and even titles that are not available at a given moment can be specially requested by readers. The repressive orders in West Bengal are aimed at chilling independent thought. School textbooks have been rewritten to remove the philosophy of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels because Ms. Banerjee has so decreed. And now, citizens are being arrested for merely lampooning leaders. State governments invariably pursue the goal of control of the media, and their favourite tool is grant or denial of government advertisements to bring about self-censorship. But in West Bengal, an era of a more direct assault on free speech seems to have begun. It needs a strong response from democratic forces.