It was Kolkata’s own Tahrir Square moment, its own Shahbagh. Actually, let me revise that. I watched Tahrir Square very closely on TV. I saw Shahbagh with my own eyes, having had the opportunity to report on that movement in Dhaka. But Kolkata today is perhaps even more extraordinary. All of Kolkata today became the hallowed ground of the most astonishing peoples protest ever. In the 77 years of its Independence, I dare say India has not seen anything like it.With a grating, metallic screech, the nine-foot-high metal barricades were dragged aside this afternoon by policemen on the narrow BB Ganguly Street in central Kolkata. The road leads to Lalbazar, the headquarters of the Kolkata Police. Rising over the cacophony were the strains of We Shall Overcome, the American civil rights song, and the Bengali anthem of protest, Kazi Nazrul Islam’s Karar Oi Louho Kopat Bhang — break down the iron gates of prison. The singers, all junior doctors who had been camping at the location through rain, shine and a hot muggy night for last 22 hours, gathered to demand justice for their colleague, raped and murdered in their hospital while she was on duty on the night of August 9.In the hands of the junior doctors who marched slowly forward singing those songs, meaning every word in those powerful lyrics, were rajanigandhar malas — garlands of tuberose speckled with red roses.One doctor held aloft what must be the movement’s icon: a plastic replica of the human spine.
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