nandigram reds part-1

my conscience will be pricking me till death if i kept mum on this current issue of nandigram.its so unfortunate that we live in this country that boasts tolerance and has such......ugliness to say the least.guys there are people dying,curfews imposed and peace murdured...still politics is all that matters.methinks the politicians have a conscience made of a substance tougher than silicon carbide.this will be a big blog but it is a big issue...and also i need your valuable comments and responses to thrive.


nandigram reds part-1

Amar naam, tomar naam—-Vietnam

“My name, your name, Vietnam”. Resonating across the streets of Calcutta and the villages of Bengal, this slogan of the late 60s and early 70s was as much a cry of solidarity for the Vietcong fighting the Americans as it was emblematic of the growing popularity of the philosophy of Communism among an entire generation, a political ideology that defined itself primarily by its support for the “little guy”, the downtrodden and the oppressed, as they fought the depredations of the West, evil corporations, landlords and the oppressive rule of the Congress. Tapping into this groundswell of Bengali idealistic passion, came to power a man who had positioned himself perfectly to ride the wave, branding himself as the “Sarboharar Neta” (the leader of those who have nothing).

A man by the name of Jyoti Basu, the leader of the CPIM.

Bengal was never the same again.

After nearly thirty years of Communist dominion in West Bengal, in what can only be called poetic irony, a word that rhymes with Vietnam has come to symbolize the political ideology of a new generation, that defines itself primarily by its support for the “little guy” as they fight the same set of enemies as before but with the oppressive rule of the Congress being now replaced by the oppressive rule of the CPIM.

That word is Nandigram —a human tragedy, an indictment of the extra-Constitutional authority of the democracy-crushing CPIM, and a political dagger in the hands of both the religious right and the “actual” Left to draw blood from their common enemy, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya

Will Bengal ever be the same again?


Nandigram—Nothing Neutral About It

Before we try to understand the significance of Nandigram, let us first try to get out of the way a common misconception. Nandigram is hardly about about resistance to the acquisition of land for SEZs—–the original notice by Haldia Development Authority was quickly withdrawn and as some video shows, (a person on being asked why they are continuing the struggle even after plans for the chemical hub have been officially abandoned says ” Why won’t they take the land. They still might. So we will continue with our agitation.”) it’s all about the struggle, the original cause be damned.

So then what is Nandigram?

A violent dog-fight for power being waged by the old guard (CPM’s Laxman Seth) on one side and the new Trinamool goombahs backed by the Maoists on the other, a conflict that had been simmering for quite a long time and only needed a spark to set alight.

For those of you who would like to believe that the Bhoomi Ucched Protirodh Committee is an organization of unarmed, peaceful Robin Hoodish peasants who have been resisting the “evil government” from encroaching on their land . You will see people repeating rumors of hundreds of deaths (a number even the Bhoomi Ucched people cannot back up with names and addresses), telling fantastic stories of village ponds red with blood being emptied of all water and “purified” overnight. You will also see images of policemen with their heads bashed in being taken away, unarmed protestors hurling stones at the police from a neat pile of bricks that seem to have spontaneously materialized out of nowhere, Panchayat offices vandalized, a rotting body of a policeman Sadhucharan Chaterjee being recovered from the river and the most harrowing of them all—the wife of CPM leader Shankar Samanta detailing how her husband was dragged out of his house, hacked into pieces and set afire (which might remind some of Ehsaan Jafri).

But while many tears may be shed for Ehsaan Jafri (and rightfully too), there is little sympathy for Shankar Samanta. Why? As this report by a group of Left intellectuals (a few from JNU) say, Shankar Samanta had killed innocent villagers and hence “had it coming.”(or more precisely his supposed crimes put the murder in perspective) Of course, some questions may be raised as to why the word of the villagers (people who murdered Shankar Samanta) are considered to be fact while the CPM’s description of Shankar Samanta as “very harmless man” is put in inverted commas. I personally am not saying that Shankar Samanta was innocent or was harmless by any definition (not that it justifies his being brutalized by a mob) but this kind of rather uneven treatment of two versions of the story indicate that these self-professed Left winging intellectuals were pre-disposed to be critical of the CPM. [The Leftist fact-finders do not seem too interested in the fate of Sunita Mondol, a class ten girl, mutiliated and raped and hung on a tree at a time when Bhoomi Ucched people had barricaded the village and driven out all CPM men] While this bias against the Left by Leftist intellectuals may on the face of it seem paradoxical, I shall subsequently try to explain why the CPM under Buddha is the “true Left’s” biggest nightmare.


Look at both sides of the story, use common sense and come to a conclusion.

Which for me is that while the CPIMs were no Cinderellas, the Bhoomi Ucched people are not exactly Snow Whites either—as a matter of fact they have quiet a bit of blood on their angelic halos. They had created unrest by spreading rumors of sinister plans to grab land, even after the government had publicly dropped all plans for land acquisition. They had driven out, through violence, villagers who held political beliefs different from theirs. They had looted, killed and raped. They had set up an alternate authority in the barricaded villages where people could not enter until vetted by the local Trinamool toughs.

Against this backdrop, it is incumbent upon any government to take action to restore the rule of law. There were however many options open to the West Bengal government to do that within the framework of legality—including calling in the Army. However the government took none of these options—–simply because they were not interested in merely affirming the rule of law.

Instead, they were more concerned about meting out raw retribution for the atrocities that had been perpetrated on the CPIM cadre and to re-assert the hold of the Marxists on rural Bengal. This is why, a crack army of the worst of CPIM goons from every corner of the state, using human shields drawn from the local population, marched upon Nandigram in a commando-style operation before going on a rampage of pillage, murder and rape while the police, also keen to seek revenge, backed them up.

The icing on the cake was provided by Chief Minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya who justified this dastardly extra-constitutional act of wanton violence as the “tit” for the “tat”, “our boys” paying “their boys” back in the same coin, completely forgetting his responsibilities as the CM to be protecting everyone in the state.

Shameful. Utterly shameful.

Vir Sanghvi explains this as the traditional Communist mindset that makes no distinction between state and party. I would put it slightly differently— it was more about asserting one of the most basic premises of Left rule in Bengal: what the Party giveth the Party taketh away (many of the Bhoomi Ucched people being ex-CPIM)
 

To understand this a bit more, we need to look at why the CPIM has been politically impregnable in rural Bengal for more than thirty years.

CPIM’s stranglehold on rural power in Bengal stands upon several pillars. One of them is infiltration—-every government institution is staffed by Reds and anyone who is not Red is made irrelevant powerwise. The second is redistribution—-forcible acquisition of land/wealth from larger landlords and redistribution among cadres: a sure way of creating a large support base. The third is percolation—-letting the fruits of power percolate down the Red power structure (making a large number of people complicit in minor forms of corruption) whereas other parties tend to concentrate the benefits in the hands of the top brass, leaving the rank and file disgruntled. And the fourth is intimidation—in the cities it was through what Jatin Chakraborty, one-time best pal of Jyoti Basu and then sworn-enemy called “scientific rigging” and in the villages it was through acts of barbaric violence against anyone who tried to challenge the party; dead bodies turning up in ponds or in the paddy fields from time to time leaving villagers in no doubt as to who called the shots.

However as the years have gone by, a new generation of farmers have emerged, no longer having the same sense of obligation towards the CPIM that their fathers had. This has led to an erosion in the support base of the CPIM with many of the old strong hands graduating to the Trinamul Congress. With Buddha spelling out grand strategies of industrializing Bengal’s rural landscape, a palpable sense of fear of being displaced has taken root among the rural population, a fear that has been adroitly fanned by Trinamul and Naxalite elements to get farmers to take up arms.

A violent break out had become inevitable. And when mayhem, initially targeted at CPIM took place in Nandigram, it became imperative for the Party to assert its power over life and death if only to set an example, if only to show that their iron control over the red dominion is as unforgiving as it always has been, if only to prevent a domino effect all over the state.

What the CPIM did not bargain for was the massive public upheaval in Bengal and the tidal wave of opinion directed at Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, that found expression through SMS-s, online petitions, mass emailing-s, discussions on social networking sites and a silent walk through the heart of Calcutta attended by thousands of people. While the only silver lining from this whole episode may have been this show of conscience from the people of West Bengal, what has been amusing to observe is the outpouring of vitriol against Buddhadeb and the CPIM from the Left-leaning cultural leaders of the state—–one of the Left Front’s most trenchant support base.

This has wrongly been interpreted by many as an expression of disillusionment by the Bengali intelligentsia with Communists after the heinous events of Nandigram .

Nothing I feel could be further from the truth.