Within hours of Mamata Banerjee handsomely winning West Bengal a third time – though she lost her own election in Nandigram –  news started trickling in of violent clashes erupting in the state. The opposition BJP and the Left instantly slammed Mamata’s Trinamool Congress, accusing it of attacking their workers amid victory celebrations after the May 2 election results.

The saffron party alleged that four of its workers were killed by ruling party members and that over 4,000 houses were ransacked. The ruling party dismissed the allegations, calling them %u201Cfake%u201D and cooked up by the BJP; possibly some of those are but not all. However, several disturbing images, videos of burning houses, dead bodies, which are not essentially %u201Cfake%u201D, pose just one question for the chief minister%u2026 Can you rein in your cadre?

Is Mamata Banerjee%u2019s Trinamool repeating the Left Front%u2019s mistake?

This indecent show of power and the messaging of a “my way or the highway'” attitude reminds us of the incident that scarred the political history of Bengal five decades ago – the Sainbari horror, when a mother was fed rice smeared with her sons%u2019 blood. Even by West Bengal’s standards — it’s a state where political murders are not infrequent — this incident was earth shattering, making one think- can humans do this?

Cut to 1970, March 16. Place: Bardhaman district of West Bengal: Three brothers, supporters of the Indian National Congress that was dethroned by the Left, were attacked and two of them were hacked to death in front of their mother and sister, who were pleading for mercy. One of the brothers, according to a report, whose eyes were gouged out, was beheaded a year later by Left supporters. The horror did not end with the killing; their mother who tried to stop the killer was hit on the head and was later force fed the rice smeared in the blood of her sons by the attackers.

Also read: Khela Hobe to Khela Shesh: How Mamata Banerjee thumped the BJP

Swarnalata Jash, sister of the Sain brothers, was quoted by a website recalling the horror, %u201C%u2026flaming arrows were shot from all directions into our house%u2026 Then the attackers rushed into the burning house and speared Moloy and Pranab (two brothers) and then set them on fire%u2026 Even my elder brother (Naba Kumar) was later beheaded.%u201D

And all this for what? The reason for this brutal killing is believed to be the Sain brothers%u2019 reluctance to switch sides and shift their loyalty to the CPI-M. Nirupam Sen, a known figure of the CPI-M, who was later inducted as a member of the party%u2019s central committee, was alleged to have led this massacre.

Also read: Why the BJP failed in its Mission Bengal

The irony, however, is that Mamata Banerjee was part of that Congress then that fought against this political violence and it was she who was instrumental in uprooting what she called the brutal regime of the Left, which ruled the state for 34 years straight. And yet today she seems reluctant to take action against goons from within her party.

Is it a warning sign? Yes for both Mamata Banerjee and the state

It took the Left Front seven consecutive wins (between 1977 to 2011) to get into the “none-but-us” mode, and Mamata Banerjee with her third straight win is heading in that direction. If not checked now, either by the chief minister herself or the people, more Sainbari-killing-like incidents can%u2019t be ruled out.  

Also read: What’s next for Mamata Banerjee now that she has lost Nandigram

West Bengal, once the hub of cultural supremacy, literature and fine arts, has,  since independence, not grown much, primarily because Bengal invested its youth in reckless party-politics, while the progressive ones moved to more promising cities like Hyderabad and Bangalore which have progressed in leaps and bounds.

Well, guess it%u2019s time to sound warning bells!

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