A Tale of Tragic Love Cracks Calcutta’s Mirror
SOMINI SENGUPTA
NYT, October 28, CALCUTTA
A HINDU-MUSLIM love affair. A rich, well-connected patriarch. A high-handed police inquiry. And finally, a dead man on the railroad tracks.
For over a month, Calcutta has been gripped by the story of Rizwanur Rahman and Priyanka Todi: he a young, striving Muslim, she a fabulously wealthy Hindu, both daring to marry despite her family’s archresistance and, in the end, paying a terrible price. On a Friday in September, barely a month into their marriage, the body of Mr. Rahman, 29, turned up on the railroad tracks, his head mangled almost beyond recognition; whether it was murder or suicide remains in dispute. Ms. Todi, 23, shut herself off from the media glare and has said nothing publicly since.
At the center of their short-lived union stood the city police. Over the course of the eight days they lived together in Mr. Rahman’s family home, police interrogated the couple no fewer than three times, apparently at the request of Ms. Todi’s family. The police chief at the time, Prasun Mukherjee, justified his officers’ intervention by saying, at a news conference, that he found resistance to the marriage by the bride’s family “natural.” The family, he added, according to local press reports, “reacted because Rizwanur’s social and financial status did not match theirs.”
The police swiftly labeled Mr. Rahman’s death a suicide — a verdict his family just as swiftly rejected.
This tale of love, defiance and death has dominated the public imagination of this city, and not only for its rich drama and intrigue. It seems also to have touched a raw nerve, sparking public outrage that the police were making the bedroom their business, and seeming to do so at the behest of the rich and mighty. The case has been particularly jarring to the psyche of a city that has long regarded itself as a place where Hindus and Muslims can live relatively peaceably.
The Telegraph, a Calcutta-based newspaper, concluded in a sardonic editorial that the police, rather than pursue robbers and murderers, had chosen to investigate a legally registered marriage. “They would make very good uncles,” the editorial said, adding, “the police seem to feel avuncular towards a particular economic class only.”
A candlelight vigil sprang up outside the prestigious St. Xavier’s College, the Christian missionary school from which Mr. Rahman graduated with an English honors degree. And for three weeks, students, families and ordinary people of all faiths flocked there every evening, signing giant banners and lighting up a narrow sidewalk with hundreds of small white candles. “Candles of conscience,” read a banner. “Why is Todi so cozy?” asked another, referring to the bride’s father, Ashok Todi, a prominent businessman and a men’s underwear baron.
“Calcutta has always taken pride in being different from other cities in India — we’ve been inclusive, the only metro that hasn’t voted along parochial lines, a bit rebellious and openly pro-underdog,” said Bonani Kakkar, founder of a citizens’ group that calls itself Public, an acronym for People United for Better Living in Calcutta. The group sent out mobile-phone text messages to draw crowds to the candlelight vigil. “Money didn’t make a difference in this city,” she said. “Today it does.”
The case has become potent political poison for the Communist Party politicians who have ruled West Bengal State for 30 years and who have long cast themselves as defenders of Muslim interests. Mr. Rahman was a young, educated Muslim with no known criminal record, and his mysterious death finally forced the party leadership to act. After weeks of public pressure, the police chief, Mr. Mukherjee, was transferred from his post. A court here ordered a fresh inquiry into Mr. Rahman’s death, by a federal agency called the Central Bureau of Investigation.
The saga of Rizwanur Rahman and Priyanka Todi can be read as a fable of modern aspirations encountering feudal traditions.
The couple represented a generation of young Indians eager to find their place in the new economy. Rukbanur Rahman, older brother of the groom, described the younger Mr. Rahman as bookish and strong-willed. He had defied his family early on by studying English literature; his father and older brother pressed him to study science, which is what most Indians still regard as a path to a safe career. His dreams of pursuing a graduate degree in English were cut short by the family’s limited financial means, and the younger Mr. Rahman found a job teaching graphic design at a private academy. Graphic design is a quintessential new economy pursuit that would have been virtually unheard of a generation ago.
At the design school, he met Ms. Todi. She was once a student in his class.
How their romance blossomed, and for how long, is not known. But one day in late August, an unusually nervous Rizwanur Rahman approached his brother and confessed to having secretly married. On Aug. 31, he brought his bride home to the Rahmans’ small, two-room apartment on a narrow alley in a working-class Muslim neighborhood.
His family knew it was a far cry from the upmarket suburban home where she grew up and they took note of how well she seemed to adjust. For a year, she told them, she had been living without air-conditioning in her room at home, as preparation for a new life with the Rahmans.
That new life lasted no more than a week. First, her father came to urge her to leave. Then the police summoned the couple to the headquarters of the “anti-rowdy” division. On one occasion, Rukbanur Rahman recalled, police officers threatened to chain-gang the entire Rahman family to the police station if the couple refused to come with them for questioning. No charges were filed against the couple. The police have declined to comment on the case because it is under investigation.
On Sept. 8, in circumstances that remain murky, the police persuaded Ms. Todi to go home to her parents, Mr. Rahman’s brother said, with a written assurance that she could return to her husband in a week.
She did not, and it left Mr. Rahman distraught. He spent nights at the homes of friends and relatives. He sought out an attorney. When his family suggested that he may have to give up hope of reuniting with Ms. Todi, he became furious. “ ‘She is my life,’ he said,” Rukbanur Rahman recalled. “He was deeply in love.”
Two weeks later, Rizwanur Rahman’s body was found on the railroad tracks in another part of town. Federal investigators are trying to determine whether it was a case of murder or suicide.
NYT, October 28, CALCUTTA
A HINDU-MUSLIM love affair. A rich, well-connected patriarch. A high-handed police inquiry. And finally, a dead man on the railroad tracks.
For over a month, Calcutta has been gripped by the story of Rizwanur Rahman and Priyanka Todi: he a young, striving Muslim, she a fabulously wealthy Hindu, both daring to marry despite her family’s archresistance and, in the end, paying a terrible price. On a Friday in September, barely a month into their marriage, the body of Mr. Rahman, 29, turned up on the railroad tracks, his head mangled almost beyond recognition; whether it was murder or suicide remains in dispute. Ms. Todi, 23, shut herself off from the media glare and has said nothing publicly since.
At the center of their short-lived union stood the city police. Over the course of the eight days they lived together in Mr. Rahman’s family home, police interrogated the couple no fewer than three times, apparently at the request of Ms. Todi’s family. The police chief at the time, Prasun Mukherjee, justified his officers’ intervention by saying, at a news conference, that he found resistance to the marriage by the bride’s family “natural.” The family, he added, according to local press reports, “reacted because Rizwanur’s social and financial status did not match theirs.”
The police swiftly labeled Mr. Rahman’s death a suicide — a verdict his family just as swiftly rejected.
This tale of love, defiance and death has dominated the public imagination of this city, and not only for its rich drama and intrigue. It seems also to have touched a raw nerve, sparking public outrage that the police were making the bedroom their business, and seeming to do so at the behest of the rich and mighty. The case has been particularly jarring to the psyche of a city that has long regarded itself as a place where Hindus and Muslims can live relatively peaceably.
The Telegraph, a Calcutta-based newspaper, concluded in a sardonic editorial that the police, rather than pursue robbers and murderers, had chosen to investigate a legally registered marriage. “They would make very good uncles,” the editorial said, adding, “the police seem to feel avuncular towards a particular economic class only.”
A candlelight vigil sprang up outside the prestigious St. Xavier’s College, the Christian missionary school from which Mr. Rahman graduated with an English honors degree. And for three weeks, students, families and ordinary people of all faiths flocked there every evening, signing giant banners and lighting up a narrow sidewalk with hundreds of small white candles. “Candles of conscience,” read a banner. “Why is Todi so cozy?” asked another, referring to the bride’s father, Ashok Todi, a prominent businessman and a men’s underwear baron.
“Calcutta has always taken pride in being different from other cities in India — we’ve been inclusive, the only metro that hasn’t voted along parochial lines, a bit rebellious and openly pro-underdog,” said Bonani Kakkar, founder of a citizens’ group that calls itself Public, an acronym for People United for Better Living in Calcutta. The group sent out mobile-phone text messages to draw crowds to the candlelight vigil. “Money didn’t make a difference in this city,” she said. “Today it does.”
The case has become potent political poison for the Communist Party politicians who have ruled West Bengal State for 30 years and who have long cast themselves as defenders of Muslim interests. Mr. Rahman was a young, educated Muslim with no known criminal record, and his mysterious death finally forced the party leadership to act. After weeks of public pressure, the police chief, Mr. Mukherjee, was transferred from his post. A court here ordered a fresh inquiry into Mr. Rahman’s death, by a federal agency called the Central Bureau of Investigation.
The saga of Rizwanur Rahman and Priyanka Todi can be read as a fable of modern aspirations encountering feudal traditions.
The couple represented a generation of young Indians eager to find their place in the new economy. Rukbanur Rahman, older brother of the groom, described the younger Mr. Rahman as bookish and strong-willed. He had defied his family early on by studying English literature; his father and older brother pressed him to study science, which is what most Indians still regard as a path to a safe career. His dreams of pursuing a graduate degree in English were cut short by the family’s limited financial means, and the younger Mr. Rahman found a job teaching graphic design at a private academy. Graphic design is a quintessential new economy pursuit that would have been virtually unheard of a generation ago.
At the design school, he met Ms. Todi. She was once a student in his class.
How their romance blossomed, and for how long, is not known. But one day in late August, an unusually nervous Rizwanur Rahman approached his brother and confessed to having secretly married. On Aug. 31, he brought his bride home to the Rahmans’ small, two-room apartment on a narrow alley in a working-class Muslim neighborhood.
His family knew it was a far cry from the upmarket suburban home where she grew up and they took note of how well she seemed to adjust. For a year, she told them, she had been living without air-conditioning in her room at home, as preparation for a new life with the Rahmans.
That new life lasted no more than a week. First, her father came to urge her to leave. Then the police summoned the couple to the headquarters of the “anti-rowdy” division. On one occasion, Rukbanur Rahman recalled, police officers threatened to chain-gang the entire Rahman family to the police station if the couple refused to come with them for questioning. No charges were filed against the couple. The police have declined to comment on the case because it is under investigation.
On Sept. 8, in circumstances that remain murky, the police persuaded Ms. Todi to go home to her parents, Mr. Rahman’s brother said, with a written assurance that she could return to her husband in a week.
She did not, and it left Mr. Rahman distraught. He spent nights at the homes of friends and relatives. He sought out an attorney. When his family suggested that he may have to give up hope of reuniting with Ms. Todi, he became furious. “ ‘She is my life,’ he said,” Rukbanur Rahman recalled. “He was deeply in love.”
Two weeks later, Rizwanur Rahman’s body was found on the railroad tracks in another part of town. Federal investigators are trying to determine whether it was a case of murder or suicide.
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