RG Kar and the politics of justice

Is politics the only endgame for those seeking justice in a country where issues often get buried once the camera lens swivels to the latest viral story? It is an unsettling question, not least because many politicians thrive precisely by riding that difficult wave, aided undoubtedly by the short attention spans of both the media and the public. The RG Kar victim’s mother joining electoral politics to contest on a BJP ticket from Panihati in poll-bound West Bengal has once again pushed that question into the spotlight: Can genuine civic unrest really shift society in a meaningful way, or does change in a democracy finally have to pass through the rigours of electoral politics?

In a state known for its politically aware citizenry and equally for repeatedly giving prolonged mandates to the party in power, the RG Kar movement, which began after the unfortunate death of a doctor intern on August 9, 2024, in one of Kolkata’s premier government hospitals, offered a striking demonstration of the force of organic public protest. It brought together two streams of anger that do not always fuse so powerfully, a wider civil society, largely led by women who, under the ‘Reclaim the Night’ banner, organised a series of successful protests through the night across major centres of West Bengal, including Kolkata and the doctor community, which decided to cease work until its charter of demands was met. The doctors’ protest, initially spread across the country and later concentrated in West Bengal, lasted a record 42 days and ensured that several heads rolled, including that of Kolkata Police Commissioner Vineet Goyal. At one point, CM Mamata Banerjee even offered to resign to assuage the doctors, though they said they did not want any such step. The state government also passed the Aparajita Women and Child (West Bengal Criminal Laws Amendment) Bill less than a month after the heinous incident, amending the existing central laws, including prescribing the death penalty for rapists who leave victims dead or in a vegetative state.

Activists unhappy

The activists who played a pivotal role in building momentum during the protests are not amused by the victim’s mother joining politics. Debashish Haldar, one of the prominent junior doctors who emerged as a face of the movement, has dubbed it a blot on democracy. Rimjhim Sinha, widely hailed as one of the earliest activists who called for ‘Reclaim the Night’, has said that this decision is a ‘heartbreaking accident’, and has asked how a party ‘linked to Bilkis Bano, Unnao and the Kathua incident’ can offer justice for the RG Kar victim. The fact that the RG Kar victim’s mother chose the BJP, and even approached the party high command for a ticket, as she has claimed, has probably rankled many activists. While the movement morphed into a collective citizens’ movement, it was initially led by activists who perhaps do not align with the right-wing political ecosystem. To their credit, the Left parties did provide the initial force of resistance on that fateful night by stopping the hearse van that was taking the dead doctor for a prompt funeral. During the election campaign, though, the RG Kar victim’s mother, the BJP candidate, has claimed that the Left tried to politicise the incident to help the TMC, a claim that has been promptly refuted.

The TMC, though restrained, has gone with a stock reaction that the CBI has affirmed the work of Kolkata Police, which had arrested civic volunteer Sanjay Roy as the sole accused. Since the victim’s parents have questioned the CBI’s findings, and since the agency functions under the Central government run by the BJP, the TMC’s pointed question is, how can joining the saffron camp guarantee justice?

West Bengal, though, has had a long history of victims’ families and protesters taking the political plunge. CPI(M) has given a ticket in this election to Sabina Yasmin from Kaliganj, whose nine-year-old daughter Tamanna died when a bomb was allegedly hurled from a TMC victory rally after a by-election victory last year. Rukbanur Rahman, whose brother Rizwanur died under mysterious circumstances, with the probe allegedly diluted under political pressure, has been a three-time MLA from the TMC. Rekha Patra, the face of the Sandeshkhali agitation, has been fielded by the BJP in this election from Hingalganj, after contesting unsuccessfully in the Lok Sabha election in 2024. Tumpa Koyal, one of the most prominent faces of the protest following the Kamduni murder and gangrape incident in 2013, recently joined the BJP. So, as the trend suggests, protesters do get co-opted by political parties in many instances. In fact, the TMC’s biggest annual political rally on 21 July is about the unfortunate deaths of 13 Congress activists in 1993. So, at times, political martyrs also get co-opted.

Why the RG Kar protest felt different

In that sense, the RG Kar protest was markedly different. What began as an isolated case soon became a rallying point for raising a voice against systemic apathy and for articulating a larger cry for women’s safety and empowerment. It truly became a citizens’ protest without any overt political inclination. Sure, individual political ambition may have existed at the margins, but for the larger mass of people who walked through the thoroughfares screaming ‘We Want Justice’, what they had in mind was perhaps much larger than political binaries.

What stood out to this commentator during the protest march was a sense of collective catharsis with people hoping that somewhere, something would change. During the long sit-in doctors’ protest, good samaritans crowdfunded to bring food, water and other essentials. Many of them were retired doctors and professionals who were moved by the groundswell of emotion. The protest marches drew people from all walks of life, cutting across social and economic strata. They were primarily urban in character, but there was significant representation from mofussil centres as well. The number of people, especially men, who came with their children was striking. Normally, kids below 10 are shielded by families from the murkier realities of society. But here were people marching with their young ones with a collective call to ensure that ‘no Abhaya gets treated like this ever’. The anger was palpable against the political class, against the perceived omissions and commissions of the authorities in handling the incident, and against the hurried cremation of the doctor’s body. In fact, Abhaya’s family has alleged that then Panihati MLA Nirmal Ghosh was instrumental in getting the body cremated by jumping the queue, despite their demand for a second autopsy. Nirmal was even grilled by the CBI in this matter, though the MLA maintained that only established norms were followed. Incidentally, Nirmal’s son Tirthankar Ghosh is the ruling TMC’s candidate from Panihati. The Left has pitted Kalatan Dasgupta, who was one of the prominent faces of the RG Kar protest movement.

Can mobilisations be apolitical?

The real question is not whether activism and politics are two separate worlds that occasionally touch. Political science would suggest they are rarely fully separate to begin with. Charles Tilly and Sidney Tarrow, among the most influential scholars of social movements, treated protest not as something outside politics but as a form of ‘contentious politics’, collective claim-making directed at those in power. Jack Goldstone captured the same idea neatly when he described the boundary between institutionalised and non-institutionalised politics as ‘fuzzy and permeable’.

That is why such mobilisations are rarely apolitical and, at best, are non-partisan in their early phase. Protesters may be deeply distrustful of political parties and leaders. But they are not outside politics. The moment a protest asks for accountability from elected representatives and state institutions, it enters political territory. The RG Kar protests, for those who walked the streets, may have felt apolitical, but they were unmistakably political in the deeper sense of the term.

Tarrow’s broader work on political opportunity helps explain why movements often change tactics as the surrounding political environment shifts. Regina Bateson’s recent work on victims who become activists adds a more human dimension that political participation can become a way of turning private grief into public meaning. Seen that way, a victim’s family entering politics may reflect a harsh recognition that moral force without institutional leverage can move millions and still struggle to endure.

Not an isolated phenomenon

This is not unique to Bengal or even India. In the United States, Black Lives Matter did not become a political party, and many of its organisers were deeply wary of party capture. Yet after George Floyd’s murder, the protests quickly moved into arguments about police reform, city budgets, prosecutors, local ballots and the national election climate. Globally, even when movements refuse electoral absorption, formal politics still rushes in to appropriate their language, symbols and agenda.

Closer home, the anti-corruption movement of 2011 was built on the energy of protest and public disgust with the political class. Yet it eventually split on the direction it should take and led to the birth of the Aam Aadmi Party in 2012. That episode shows how deciding the next phase of a successful protest is always a tactical call.

Word of caution

Scholars of institutionalisation note that once movements enter formal politics, they risk losing autonomy. Co-optation is always a danger because, once a cause becomes electorally useful, parties may preserve its symbolism while blunting its edge. That is why activists so often recoil when one of their own crosses over. They fear that the system may have finally managed to erode the credibility of their protests once and for all.

And yet the opposite danger is equally real. Movements that remain forever outside politics can become morally resonant but moribund. The enduring question, then, is whether protesters, once they enter the arena of power, can carry with them the moral clarity that made people march in the first place.

For that is what made the RG Kar movement matter. Not merely that it produced faces, slogans or candidates, but that for a brief moment it made ordinary citizens believe that public grief could still force power to answer. Whether electoral politics extends that promise or hollows it out is something that time will answer.

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