The owl of Minerva, it has famously been said, spreads its wings only after dusk. Wisdom is always post facto. After Wednesday’s orgy of violence in a particular locality of Calcutta, it is now possible to look at the incident and perhaps draw some lessons from it. The evidence that is trickling in seems to suggest that this was no spontaneous outburst but something that was preconceived and planned. The angry crowd that drew police personnel into the lanes and then attacked them knew exactly what it was doing. Significantly, there was no looting and plunder, a common feature of mob violence. The attackers made the police their principal target. Subsequent investigations will, hopefully, unravel the nature of the planning and reveal the names of the organizers. But whoever they may have been, they successfully tapped into a reservoir of discontent shared by large sections of a religious minority. It would be a grievous error to underestimate this aspect. All studies, including the findings of the Sachar committee report, suggest that Muslims in West Bengal are backward in most spheres in comparison to their brethren in some other states. Its record on Muslims is one of the big, black marks in the report card of the Left Front. Wednesday’s violence was only a symptom of a very profound malady. The state government, while it goes about its duty of restoring law and order in the affected parts of the city, must bear in mind the nature of the disease and the ways to address it. Treating only the symptom will not prevent the recurrence of violence.

There is another important lesson that the state government needs to learn. It was evident that when the government of West Bengal chooses to act decisively and fast, it can not only do so but also do so with remarkable effect. The government wasted little or no time to seek the help of the army and this had an immediate and beneficial impact on the situation. This only raises the question about the refusal or the failure of the government to send the army to Nandigram as soon as that area began to become what the home secretary of the state called a “war zone”. Such a decision could have saved the state an enormous amount of political turmoil and a loss of face. If the government deserved a sharp rap on the knuckles for its incompetence in rural West Bengal, it merits a pat on the back for its handling of the situation in Calcutta.