In West Bengal, justice shouldn’t mean vendetta

There is a categorical difference between accountability delivered through institutions — the police, the courts and independent investigations, following due procedure — and accountability performed on the streets

In the months since the BJP’s historic victory in West Bengal, an unsettling spectacle has become a recurring feature of public life. Arrested TMC leaders, including local strongmen such as Akash Singh and Jahangir Khan — the latter known for his proximity to senior TMC leader Abhishek Banerjee — have been marched through their former strongholds by police and paramilitary forces in restraints and made to perform public acts of penance. While the Calcutta High Court has expressed concern and sought a report from the government on the short shrift given to due process, investigating agencies have defended them as necessary for the reconstruction of alleged crimes. Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari has called it a return to the “rule of law”; a BJP MLA has described it as an expression of “true Ram Rajya”. The allegations against Khan and others are serious and deserve rigorous investigation and, where evidence permits, prosecution. But the strength of the rule of law lies not just in holding the guilty to account, but in doing so in a manner that preserves the distinction between justice and retribution.

This is particularly important in Bengal, where political violence has long survived changes of government. But the task of democratic governance is not merely to punish wrongdoing but to elevate public life above this instinct of retribution. There is a categorical difference between accountability delivered through institutions — the police, the courts and independent investigations, following due procedure — and accountability performed on the streets. The latter risks weakening the very legitimacy it claims to uphold, while allowing those accused of serious misconduct to recast themselves as the aggrieved.

The BJP’s mandate in the Assembly elections rested on a promise of change. Its victory reflected growing public fatigue with a political culture in which power too often travelled through muscle, patronage and impunity. But a secure government has no need to turn public humiliation into an instrument of punishment. It has the authority of a constitutional institution to undertake the patient ask of rebuilding trust and confidence in governance. To squander that opportunity would be to dishonour its promise to the people.