The worthies must hold their fire and strive to restore normal conditions at Baduria in West Bengal’s North 24-Parganas district, bordering Bangladesh.

It is a volatile region where tension rages beneath the tenor of normal life and violence a further inch beneath tension… as witnessed during the food riots in February 1966. Fifty years later, the circumstances are of course different. In the absence of details, the situation lends no scope for speculation over whether Mamata Banerjee might have been asked by the Governor to put in her papers.

Suffice it to register that she had her dander up over what  Keshari Nath Tripathi might have told her ~ “I feel like resigning. The Governor insulted me. He is behaving like a block president of the BJP”. Strong words indeed. Hoi-polloi has been kept guessing over what actually flowed through the ether when the Governor called up the Chief Minister in the wake of a communal flare-up in Basirhat sub-division.

Tripathi’s assertion that a “Governor cannot remain a mute spectator to the affairs of the state” carried faint echoes of Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi’s caveat to the ruling CPI-M in the immediate aftermath of the Nandigram firing (March 2007), except the two are quite markedly different. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee took it lying down; not so Mamata Banerjee. Raj Bhavan’s late evening press statement was intrinsically a trouble-shooting exercise, clothed with an enunciation of the responsibilities of the Governor ~ “The talks were confidential in nature and none is expected to disclose it.” Having said that, it makes the point ~ with an implicit message to Nabanna ~ “The Governor did say to the Chief Minister to ensure peace and law and order.

He is the guardian of all the citizens of the state. It is proper for the Governor to bring to the notice of the Chief Minister any serious grievance or any serious event”.

Sad to reflect that the communal flare-up has been overshadowed by the public spat at the helm of governance. The situation is dire, with the Centre mobilising 300 paramilitary personnel to the district. The immediate provocation in a communallysensitive region was a Facebook entry by a Class 12 student, criticising a local cleric. The Chief Minister is right when she asserts that the Facebook “account should have been blocked”, hastening to add that “it is not possible to block all accounts”.

Baduria showcases a lethal cocktail of social media and communal sensitivities, and both the state administration and Raj Bhavan must now be riveted to restoring a semblance of order.

Far from it, with ministers Partha Chatterjee and Subrata Mukherjee making the waters murkier still. While those who use the social media must of necessity be more discreet, it devolves on both groups to be restrained in their responses and not set fire to a police outpost, as happened on Tuesday.

The warning is as sincere as the appeal to the Governor and Chief Minister… to strive for peace. The kerfuffle must end.