Bengal stood out like a sore thumb on Sunday: unlike other states in the country, only a few immersions of Devi Durga murtis took place on this day. Because Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had so decreed , and despite the Calcutta High Court revoking Banerjee’s order, not many in Bengal dared to defy her.

Banerjee had, in late August, passed a diktat that since the tenth and the most important day of the Islamic month of Muharram fell on 1 October, no immersions would take place from 6 pm on 30 September (Dashami) till morning of 2 October. That order was struck down by the Calcutta High Court on 21 September, which also castigated the state government for passing such an order.

But Banerjee found a way to skirt the court order. The court had asked the government to permit immersions “after assessing the situation”. This was interpreted by the state government as being allowed to decide on whether to permit immersions or not. The state government said that Durga Puja organisers would have to seek police permission to immerse the murtis on 1 October and permission would be granted “after assessing the situation”.

“Depending on circumstances and situation, wherever found fit, permission will be granted and wherever there are problems permission will not be granted,” Bengal Home Secretary Atri Bhattacharya announced after a high-level meeting chaired by Banerjee after the adverse High Court order.

Quite expectedly, not a single Durga Puja committee sought permission till the expiry of the deadline for seeking such a permission on 29 September. Some murtis worshipped in private homes were immersed on 30 September, but the organisers of all the community pujas decided against incurring Banerjee’s displeasure and deferred the immersions. Usually, most of the murtis are immersed the day after Dashami.

Not Just About Immersions

But this is not just about immersions. That not a single organiser of the 60,000-odd community Durga Pujas all over the state could muster the courage to do what they have been doing through the years – immersing the murtis as per custom the day after Dashami – speaks volumes about the sense of fear and foreboding that has enveloped the state.

Banerjee, through various acts ever since she took over as Chief Minister in 2011, has made it clear that she brooks no defiance from anyone. She has also amply demonstrated that tolerance is not one of her virtues. And those who invoke her displeasure have a heavy price to pay.

The manner in which a Jadavpur University professor was arrested and thrown in prison for circulating a cartoon poking fun at Banerjee in April 2012 sent a chilling message to the people of Bengal that she is not be messed around with. Even poking fun at Banerjee, or sharing jokes and cartoons that portray her in a less than estimable light became taboo.

The arrest of a poor farmer who dared to ask Banerjee what her government was doing to control the price of fertilisers at a public rally in August 2012 also sent out the strong signal that no one could even question the mercurial Mamata. She had angrily branded the farmer a ‘Maoist’ for posing that query to her.

Earlier the same year, in May, Banerjee angrily walked out of a TV show being held at Kolkata’s Town Hall when a Presidency University student asked her a question about the state’s law and order situation. Banerjee branded that student a ‘Maoist’ as well.

Her refusal to take uncomfortable questions and her branding of those asking such questions as ‘Maoists’, the jailing of the Jadavpur University professor, and many other such acts established her as an intolerant person with a strong dictatorial streak who will brook no dissent and will not be made fun of.

The Decline Started Long Ago

But Bengal’s transformation into a police state started about five decades ago when the then chief minister Siddhartha Shankar Ray set the police to hunt down Naxalites from the late 1960s. Midnight raids, custodial torture and deaths, disappearance of suspects and grave violations of human rights became the norm and an overwhelming sense of fear and insecurity gripped the state.

Though the tough and extra-legal measures did succeed in crushing the Naxalite movement in Bengal, the genie of state repression that Ray had let out was quite impossible to put back in the bottle. Then came the Emergency (Ray was its primary proponent) and more repression followed. And with the Marxists coming to power in 1977, terror, intolerance, suppression of dissent, hounding and crushing of opposition and snuffing out contrarian views became part of state policy.

The Marxists were especially brutal and ensured everyone, starting from the bureaucracy, the academia, the police force, the intelligentsia and the general citizenry, fell in line. The state became all-powerful and its tentacles went deep into the body politic of the state. Political opposition was crushed and those in the academia, the bureaucracy and other professions who dared defy the Marxists or voice their dissent were hounded out of the state and even murdered. Instilling fear in the minds of the people in order to ensure their compliance became the norm.

Banerjee has inherited this repressive state mechanism and she has fallen for the temptation to use it to establish her complete dominance in Bengal. Her word is the law in Bengal and no defiance is tolerated. That is why no one dared to immerse Devi Durga murtis on Sunday.