Deconstructing Telinipara Violence in West Bengal

While the public attention is focused on the spread of the coronavirus, Telinipara, a locality in the Bhadreswar town of Hooghly district in West Bengal, witnessed anti-Muslim communal violence.

Reportedly, a small inter-community squabble broke out on May 10, 2020, in the locality, which was resolved by police intervention. A Ground Report, carried in The Wire stated that “on the afternoon of...May 12, a big mob descended on the locality and large-scale targeted violence followed”. The fact-finding Report observed: “According to the police and locals, the violence which broke out in this part of Hooghly district 40 kms north of Kolkata was a planned, systematically executed attack targeting the neighbourhood’s Muslim residents”. (The Wire, May 16, 2020)

The fact that the Muslims were the targets of violence in this jute-mill town is evident in the field narrative of the visiting reporter, Himadri Ghosh:

“We then walked towards the Gondalpara mill from Dinemardanga junction, and found a series of Muslim-occupied homes with broken doors, melted television cables and burnt , exposed electric wires. Some of the houses’ roofs and walls had fallen as gas cylinders had burst inside these small houses...We were astonished to find Muslim-owned photocopying, grocery and meat shops were scorched, while two Hindu-owned grocery and tailor shops stood intact next to them”. (The Wire, ibid)

While the Muslims were the main victims of the Telinipara violence, a lot of fake news circulated on social media, planting a narrative that Hindus were in danger in Telinipara. A Wikinews page dated May 12, 2020, reportedly bore the title “2020 Telinipara Anti-Hindu Pogrom”. The Ground Report on Telinipara violence carried in The Wire further mentioned that an India Today fact-checking team found that images of unrelated violence in another country were passed off as purported anti-Hindu riots in Telinipara, and widely circulated on social media. ( ibid.)

The above documentation of anti-Muslim violence in Telinipara shows how brutal acts of ‘Hindu’ mobs against the minority community could be combined with the construction of a violent image of the Muslim community in the public mind, through strategic use of modern communication technology.