Anatomy of Gendered Violence in West Bengal: Patriarchy, Power, and the Criminal State
G Subarna
IN the last one and half decades, West Bengal has borne witness to a chilling surge in gendered violence. From the shadowed alleys of Park Street to the sterile corridors of R G Kar Medical College and the rural tracts of Kaliganj, the state has turned into a stage for recurring, orchestrated attacks on women and people with marginalised gender and sexuality. These are not sporadic eruptions of criminality, rather together they form a normalised architecture of violence rooted in political patronage and patriarchal order. What was once a state celebrated for its progressive ideals and cultural renaissance is now mired in bureaucratic inertia and institutional betrayal, where the mechanisms of governance not only fail to prevent atrocities but often abet their continuation against women and people with marginalised gender and sexuality. Draped in the garb of populist welfare politics, the ruling party has overseen the synthesis of patriarchal conservatism, political gangsterism, and a hollowed-out judiciary into a consolidated regime of impunity.
From Suzette Jordan’s assault in Park Street to the gang rape of a student within the premises of Kasba Law College – the perpetrators may differ in identity and geography, but the underlying political anatomy remains disturbingly unchanged. The pattern of state complicity, legal evasion, and political shielding has been replicated with such frequency that it has ceased to be an exception – it has become the norm instead.
To meaningfully dissect this continuum, we need to understand how the neoliberal erosion of democratic institutions is entangled with the gendered exercise of power.
CHRONICLE OF BRUTALITY
The sexual assault of Suzette Jordan in 2012 did not merely represent the violation of an individual woman; it revealed a brutal political indifference that runs deep within the state’s power structure. When the chief minister chose to dismiss the assault as an invented narrative – 'a fabricated incident' – it reflected not only the regime’s misogyny but also its reluctance to hold powerful perpetrators accountable.
A year later, a college student returning home after an exam in Kamduni was abducted, gang-raped, and murdered. The villagers, largely consisting of daily-wage workers and landless labourers, erupted in protest. Women led the charge, openly defying Trinamool leaders who attempted to pacify the outrage. The aftermath followed a grimly predictable path: police crackdowns, political threats, media distortion, and finally, the quiet absorption of the resistance. A similar cycle unfolded in Madhyamgram, where a teenage gang-rape survivor was immolated after multiple attempts to seek justice. In Hanskhali, a minor girl was allegedly raped and murdered by the son of a prominent local Trinamool leader. Her body was burned overnight, without any medical examination – an act eerily reminiscent of feudal-era silencing, now executed under the cloak of democratic governance. In August 2024, a young woman doctor was sexually assaulted and killed during her hospital shift at R G Kar Medical College. Initially, the administration declared it a suicide. It was only after relentless agitation by the medical fraternity that a proper post-mortem was conducted. Even then, the cover-up machinery swung into motion – vital evidence was manipulated, the crime scene was sanitised, and the victim’s family was offered monetary compensation to keep silent. One civic volunteer with political links was arrested following massive public outcry, but other key suspects remain untouched, shielded by their party affiliations. Kasba Law College saw a student raped on campus. The main accused was a repeat offender and a former leader of the ruling party’s student wing. In Kaliganj, a school-going girl was bombed in daylight. Her 'guilt'? Her father had voted for the CPI(M) in the recent by-election. Her death was not just a murder, but a deliberate act of political terror, emblematic of a state where coercion, not consent, governs.
POLITICAL ECONOMY OF VIOLENCE & IMPUNITY
Understanding the epidemic of gendered violence in Bengal requires a deeper examination of the political economy it emanates from. In 2011, the TMC was carried forward by a fusion of corporate finance, chit-fund loot, Hindutva tolerance, and imperialist overtures. Once ensconced in power, it fostered a patronage economy driven by political brokers, contract mafias, and local thugs who became not fringe elements but central actors of governance. From natural resources like land, forests, and sandbanks, to public sector appointments and municipal contracts, every sector was subjected to extraction and monetisation. This extractivism was masked by a performance of welfarism that especially targeted women. Through schemes like Kanyashree and Lakshmir Bhandar, the regime tied impoverished women to the state, offering token cash transfers while demanding loyalty and silence. This gendered strategy of governance transformed women into instruments of electoral arithmetic, while worsening the very structures – domestic, cultural, and political – that oppress them.
In such a landscape, violence against women is not an anomaly, but a feature. It functions as an enforcement mechanism in a system where disorder is orchestrated from the top, justice is privatised, and women’s bodies are turned into terrain upon which the battles of masculinity, caste, and political dominance are fought. The state, far from being a neutral arbiter, is both the architect and protector of this patriarchal violence.
Patriarchy may be ancient, but its fusion with neoliberalism has birthed a new form of violence. Under Trinamool rule, governance has mutated into a profit-seeking enterprise. Public services are gutted. In the operational logic of Bengal’s political economy, female bodies are not just targets, they are instruments and battlegrounds of control. Sexual violence, molestation, verbal abuse, and psychological coercion have become standard weapons in the arsenal of political power. These are used not only to violate individual autonomy but to deliver collective warnings to dissenters and oppositional communities. Survivors are overwhelmingly from the marginalised – dalits, Muslims, working poor – while the perpetrators often sit atop the bureaucratic, political, and criminal apparatus. Inequality demands violence to sustain itself.
Police forces, far from being impartial enforcers of the law, now act as loyal foot soldiers of the ruling party’s coercive apparatus. Their actions – ranging from deliberate refusal to register FIRs, to threatening complainants, tampering with forensic data, delaying post-mortems, and even criminalising protestors – demonstrate a systematic use of state institutions for political suppression.
Whenever a particular case draws media glare or causes a political stir, the state engages in symbolic, theatrical responses. But these performative actions are invariably followed by blame-shifting, character assassination of the victims, and bureaucratic obfuscation.
This is not administrative failure. This is how the system is designed to function.
Media, once a check on state excesses, has become largely complicit. Corporate-owned outlets either bury reports or transform them into shallow outrage devoid of political substance. When stories did emerge, they focused on law-and-order, stripping away the gendered and political contexts. The spectacle replaces substance.
While pockets of resistance remain, such as in the Abhaya movement, social media has filled the void. Yet even that is under attack. Feminist activists face trolling, legal intimidation, and digital surveillance, often orchestrated by the ruling party.
RESISTANCE THAT REFUSES SILENCE
But, once an advanced outpost of democracy, West Bengal’s legacy is not one of silent endurance. In Kamduni, rural women led rallies. In Madhyamgram and Barasat, students blocked roads. At R G Kar, doctors launched hunger strikes, cease-works and massive rallies. Even in Kaliganj, the victim’s family resisted hush money and threats. These movements are not anomalies – they are the dialectical response to oppression, nurtured by Bengal’s rich history of class struggle. Still, spontaneous revolt must evolve into conscious resistance. As Lenin warned, without political organisation, even the fiercest protest can be diverted or crushed. We must move beyond NGO-ised feminism and elite liberalism to build cadre-based feminist structures grounded in class warfare. Justice must not be confined to the courtroom – it must mean breaking the nexus of patriarchy, capitalism, and state power.
The BJP, though vocally critical, lacks credibility. Its own complicity in Hathras, Manipur, and Unnao betrays its opportunism. Its concern for women’s rights is selective and communalised.
The Left, despite organisational setbacks, has been more principled. After the R G Kar incident, Left parties mobilised swiftly.
Beyond the realm of laws and policies, the ruling party is embedding misogyny within Bengali culture. Cultural media, especially serials and films, reinforce misogynist narratives. The TMC celebrates token women leaders picked from the silver screen, but punishes dissenting voices.
As Gramsci taught us, cultural hegemony secures dominance through consent, not just force. Dismantling patriarchy, therefore, requires a counter-hegemonic cultural revolution.
In the current conjuncture, the state actively produces forgetfulness. Media narratives are carefully curated to erase memory, judicial delays convert pain into resignation, and cultural institutions become complicit in silence. In this context, memory itself becomes a radical act. To remember is to resist. To name the dead, to refuse their erasure – these are not merely sentimental gestures. They are political weapons. This is especially vital in Bengal, where the ruling party’s media-engineered spectacles of 'development' and 'governance' have been used to overwrite the screams of the violated. When the opposition is co-opted, the courts compromised, and the police politicised – then neutrality is complicity, silence is endorsement, and forgetting is betrayal. In such a scenario, memory and mobilisation become the only means of justice.
