Hours-Long Brawl Between Hindu Nationalists and Police Paralyzes Kolkata, India

A massive brawl erupted in the city of Kolkata, India, on Tuesday, as thousands of Hindu nationalist demonstrators clashed with 6,500 riot police.

Eight current and former members of India’s governing BJP party were injured in the battle, which was waged with sticks, iron rods, and hurled chunks of pavement in addition to fisticuffs.

Kolkata is the capital of India’s West Bengal state, known to many foreigners by its British name “Calcutta,” although the name was officially changed to the Indian pronunciation and spelling in 2001.

Since 2011, West Bengal has been a political stronghold for a major opposition party called the All India Trinamool Congress, usually referred to as simply the Trinamool Congress or TMC. The party styles itself as a populist movement — the name “trinamool” literally translates to “grassroots.”

TMC is embroiled in a corruption scandal. BJP angrily accused TMC of using its tight grip on power in West Bengal to thwart investigations, while TMC denounced the investigations as “politically motivated.”

On Tuesday, BJP supporters in West Bengal massed for a “March to Nabanna” rally — a march on government offices to demand justice in the corruption scandal. BJP hired trains to bring in more supporters to the state capital. As the size of the rally swelled, more police were deployed across Kolkata to contain it.

Violence broke out when police moved to take some of the BJP demonstrators arriving by train into preventive custody. Some police actions meant to block BJP supporters from boarding trains and buses bound for Kolkata also turned into scuffles, especially after some BJP politicians attempted to join the rally and were blocked by police.

Despite these efforts to control the size of the rally, it grew to immense proportions and swarmed over barricades constructed to protect government buildings and key intersections in Kolkata. The police responded with tear gas and water cannons.

Four people were arrested on Wednesday for setting a police vehicle on fire and assaulting police officers in the ensuing melee. One of the officers reportedly assaulted was an assistant commissioner of the Kolkata police, who was chased by a mob of protesters and beaten with sticks. A police spokesman said on Wednesday the commissioner has been hospitalized with multiple fractures, and his assailants have been charged with attempted murder.

Thousands of other arrests were made. Several BJP leaders were detained, including Sukanta Majumdar, chief of the BJP in West Bengal.

National BJP officials responded to the police action with outrage, accusing TMC of cracking down on dissent in the “lawless” and “bankrupt” state of West Bengal as though it were the government of North Korea.

“Everyone got to see how the partisan police tried scuttling a Leader of Opposition’s democratic right to protest outside Nabanna. I was manhandled by a woman constable, people saw that too,” BJP member Suvendu Adhikari complained from the scene of the rally on Tuesday as he was loaded into a police van. 

Another senior BJP leader, a woman named Meena Devi Purohit, was handled roughly by male police officers in a video posted to Twitter. India’s National Commission for Women on Wednesday demanded an explanation from the Kolkata police commissioner and demanded disciplinary action for the officers who appeared in the video.

“Our activists are being framed and false charges slapped against them,” declared BJP national vice president Dilip Ghosh.

TMC lawmaker Mahua Moitra responded to Ghosh by threatening to “send bulldozers to the homes of BJP workers who destroyed public property,” a sarcastic reference to BJP’s policy of leveling Muslim neighborhoods after riots.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, leader of the TMC, argued on Wednesday that police could have used much more force against “violent” BJP demonstrators, but they exercised “maximum” restraint instead.

The High Court in Kolkata on Wednesday ordered West Bengal authorities to formally respond to BJP’s allegations of abusive police tactics by September 19. BJP claims 363 party members were injured during clashes with police and 35 of them have been hospitalized, with three in “critical” condition.