A little politics

I am posting this several days after this happened. After the strike, everything went back to normal. There were no more transportation disruptions, people went back to life as usual. We were fine and able to travel safely. I will still follow the politics though and update if there is more interesting news. Now, onto the post …

We are watching the news right now and seeing several buses on fire. In Kolkata. We’re in Kolkata right now. Apparently there are some major politics at play here at the moment. I’m still trying to find out all of the details, but so far, this is what I’ve gather:

-One of the local leaders - Falguni Mukherjee - of the currently leading political party, CPI-M (Community Party India-Marxist) was murdered last month, the CPI-M blamed their rival party Congress
-There has been political unrest since then, strikes and protests in the street, etc
-In retaliation to the murder, local CPI-M members attacked local Congress members in the district where the murder took place, this included burning some of their houses
-14 of the Congress legislators traveled there to give aid to those whose houses were burned
-While they were there (Wednesday of this week), they were attacked, 8 of them were injured
-Congress party claims it was the CPI-M party who attacked them
-The ruling CPI-M party denies that they led or had anything to do with the attack
-Congress and another party walked out of the legislative session on Thursday
-Congress also called for a strike in that district and surrounding areas on Thursday
-During the strike one of the Congress members was allegedly killed
-They called for a 12 hour strike on Friday for almost all of West Bengal (I heard something like 17 out of the 19 districts), including the city of Kolkata

Apparently everything will be shut down tomorrow and no one will be able to get anywhere. It’s mainly a transportation strike – meaning they will be blocking the streets and rails – so literally no one will be able to get anywhere.

We have been warned by the people at Jadavpur University that we’re working with as well as the people running the guest house we’re staying at to not venture outside tomorrow. That’s enough warning for us to listen to. Besides we have plenty of work to do.

Supposedly this will all be calmed down by this weekend. Hopefully that is the case because we will be traveling on Sunday evening by ourselves to Murshidabad. I am sure it will be fine, and if it’s not we’ll be told and taken care of.

It’s just kind of crazy. There is so much violence and it seems to be just a constant back and forth. And in between is everyone who needs to get to work or go the hospital or to the store. So far it sounds like a lot of blaming going around in a big circle. It has been hard to even piece together what I have been able to so far. But no matter what the exact facts are, people on both sides are getting hurt and that is just awful and sad, and everyone else is being caught up and affected by this as well. It’s kind of amazing to watch.