Bengal: ‘Justice for RG Kar’ Theme Resonates in Over 1,200 Progressive Book Stalls During Puja Season

Kolkata: Progressive book stalls set up by the Left parties during Durga Puja season in Kolkata this year saw the ‘Justice for RG Kar’ movement resonating across the board.

This year, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) set up over 1,200 book stalls across West Bengal, which were also used as outposts not only to spread progressive literature but also to spread the demand of the doctors’ movement for a fair trial of the RG Kar Hospital rape-murder case of a junior doctor within the hospital premises on August 9.

In Kolkata, CPI(M) set up over 200 book stalls have been set up like every year, with more than 109 stalls located at the heart of the city and the rest in the Kolkata Metropolitan, sources in the party said.  Besides, CPI(M), other Left parties that set up stalls include CPI(ML) Liberation, Socialist Unity Centre of India, Revolutionary Socialist Party, Forward Bloc, and Communist Party of India.

Following the Left-induced culture of setting up progressive literature stalls during the Autumn festival season, even rightist and centrist parties in the state, namely Congress, Trinamool Congress (TMC) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), too, have started setting up book stalls, although few in number and mainly concentrated in urban areas.

"While the book stalls started by TMC are packed with over 40 book titles and drawings by party supremo and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, BJP's book stalls focus on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Shyamaprasad Mookerjee, while Congress stalls have books on Nehru and Gandhian philosophy.

However, progressive book stalls boast a wide range of titles, from ideological books to classics to children's books and even books on science and technology.

“It is this rational approach and its positioning as a rationality-based knowledge centre that makes these makeshift progressive knowledge stalls the most favoured destination, even during the autumn festival," said Sudip Sengupta, a CPI(M) leader and organiser of the biggest book stall at Jadavpore 8B. 

He told Newsclick that this year, carry bags, badges and other insignia in book stalls carry the demand for ‘Justice for RG Kar’ victim, named Tilottama.  In some stalls, programmes were held on the stage named after Tilottama.

Sengupta said progressive literature stalls were also serving as outposts for spreading communal harmony and amity against any religion or language-based violence. "This is an added responsibility for all of us who will be keeping guard against any untoward incident in our respective localities during the festival days," he added.

Two of the oldest book stalls, situated in Park Street and Jadavpur, have also been opened this year. The latter had recorded sales of over Rs 5 lakh earlier.

"This year, despite economic depression, we are getting a good response, as we have changed our policy of keeping books with high denominations. Instead, we have focused on lower-denomination informative books. Books on combatting RSS, on Kashmir, on Shyamaprasad Mookerjee's divisive role, and eminent historian Sukumari Bhattacharya's book Revisiting the Myth of Ram are selling like hotcakes," he added.

It may be recalled that over 2,000 progressive book stalls used to be set up during the autumn festival before 2011 (when Left Front was ruling), and at one point in 2013, the number had dwindled to nearly 600 due to “large-scale terror” by the ruling party (TMC). Book stalls were vandalised multiple times by ruling TMC men. However, each time they were vandalised, they were reopened.

Senior journalist Aniruddha Chakraborty, Director of National Book Agency (NBA), the largest progressive book house in the state, which was initiated by communist doyen "Kakababu," said, “This year, even Left activists belonging to terror-stricken Goghat, Khanakul, Purshura, Arambag, Naranghat of Hooghly district, will be sharing the joy of setting up Marxist literature stalls, as scores of stalls are coming up in the terror hotbeds of West Bengal."

He said the star attraction this year has been former Chief Minister, late Buddhadeb Bhattacharya's Bengali book, 'Swarger Niche Mahabishringkhala' (Pandemonium Under Heaven), rewritten from a write-up by him that appeared in CPI(M)’s periodical Deshhitoishee in 1983.

From climate change to books on traditional folk-based philosophy pioneered by eminent philosopher Debiprasad Chattopadhya, and a number of publications brought out this year on martyr Bhagat Singh and the translation of E M S Namboodiripad’s Ebook on Adi Sankaracharya, published last year, are much in demand this year, too, he added.

NewsClick’s jailed editor (now on bail) Prabir Purkayastha's book, Knowledge as Commons is also much in demand.

A book edited by former Students federation of India state secretary Srijan Bhattacharya on the chronology of the RG Kar movement is also much in demand. Over 2,000 copies of the book were sold even before the festive season began, he added.

"One thing can be said with certainty, that the huge response that progressive literature is getting in the state is directly proportional to the deepening crisis in the state and in the country," Chakraborty said. 

“Another positive aspect this year is we are getting orders from as far as Jammu and Kashmir. We have launched our website and ecommerce platform www.nba.in  from where all the titles are being sold,” Chakraborty said.

"Despite the recession, going by the interest in setting up these stalls, it can be easily said that progressive book sales might record a multi-fold increase. In this internet age too, progressive books ranging from authors Maxim Gorky, Ivan Turgenev to Rabindranath Tagore and Leo Tolstoy have been selling like hotcakes, which shows the hunger for knowledge and study resources among readers. They find progressive books as a reference to deal with the present difficult situation in the state and the country," he added.

The religious hue of the autumn festival rests on gods and goddesses, especially Durga Puja. However, since 1952, the Communist Party has been at the forefront of setting up book stalls in the vicinity of different pandals where large gatherings take place, seeing it as an opportunity to spread rationalist and progressive ideas throughout West Bengal.