Ram Navami in West Bengal: Clashes in Murshidabad, harmony gestures in Nandigram

Kolkata: A heated exchange between two groups over the Ram Navami celebration escalated into violence in Murshidabad, even as the Muslims offered water and fruits to the Hindus, who joined the Bharatiya Janata Party’s de facto chief ministerial candidate, Suvendu Adhikari, in a procession at Nandigram in poll-bound West Bengal on Friday.

A large number of personnel of the police and the central paramilitary forces, including the Rapid Action Force, were deployed in the Jangipur and Raghunathganj areas of Murshidabad after two groups of miscreants pelted stones at each other and vandalised and set ablaze roadside shops.

The violence in Murshidabad took place a day before Union Home Minister Amit Shah would release the BJP’s “chargesheet” against the state’s Trinamool Congress government, led by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, to add momentum to the saffron party’s poll campaign in the state, which would go to polls in two phases on April 23 and 29.

“Normalcy has been restored, but we are deploying additional security personnel to prevent recurrence of such violent incidents,” Deputy Inspector General of Police Ajit Sing Yadav said, adding: “We are trying to identify the culprits from the CCTV footage. No one will be spared.”

The trouble started when a Ram Navami procession was heading towards Mackenzie Park in Raghunathganj. An argument over loud music being played on amplifiers during the procession escalated tension between the two groups. Later, an argument over the removal of a saffron flag hoisted on the occasion led to a clash.

“This is an insult to the sacred saffron flag, an affront to Sanatan Dharma, and a direct, deliberate attempt to hurt the sentiments of Sanatanis,” Adhikari, the Leader of Opposition in the state assembly, posted on X. “Is it a crime to hoist the sacred saffron flag of Sanatanis on the holy occasion of Ram Navami in West Bengal?”

He alleged that Sanatanis (Hindus) in West Bengal were repeatedly facing humiliation in their own state as a consequence of the appeasement policy of Banerjee and her TMC.

The BJP has been accusing the TMC of pursuing a policy of appeasing only the Muslims, often hurting the interests of the Hindus.

The BJP and other offshoots of the Sangh Parivar on Thursday and Friday raised the Hindutva pitch in West Bengal, with grandiose celebrations of Ram Navami across the poll-bound state. Adhikari led a procession in his home constituency, Nandigram, on Friday, when some Muslims greeted him and other Hindus participating in the procession with water and fruits. “The educated Muslim youths are with the BJP, because they want employment, which the TMC government failed to provide in the last 15 years,” he said.

Adhikari had on Thursday led a Ram Navami procession in Bhabanipur, where he would take on Banerjee in addition to contesting in Nandigram.

The ruling TMC, which resorted to soft-Hindutva to counter the BJP’s aggressive polarisation bid, was not ready to let the saffron party have a field day on the occasion of Ram Navami and deployed its leaders and workers to take out processions in several places.