Behind the events at Nandigram

Brinda Karat
The Hindu, 30 March

There is a larger political game plan being played out in West Bengal. The real agenda of the "resistance" is not protecting the interests of farmers and the rural poor or saving the land.

THE CHIEF Minister of West Bengal Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and the CPI(M) have expressed their deep distress and regret at the police firings and violence in Nandigram on March 14 and solidarity with the families of the victims and those injured. The case before the Calcutta High Court is posted for hearing in three weeks. Surprisingly the very NGOs that had rushed to the court for its intervention are now saying a judicial probe should be ordered. This is what the State government would have liked to do but could not because of the court orders on their petition.

Well wishers of the CPI(M) have advised introspection as to why a Nandigram occurred under a Left Front government headed by the party. They should be assured of that process, which is an intrinsic part of the party's functioning at all levels. Appropriate lessons are drawn from the collective experience of critically analysing the party's work and policies with a view to addressing and removing weaknesses, lapses, and gaps whenever and wherever they exist.

There is a larger political game plan being played out in West Bengal. The first question is what is the "Nandigram resistance," hyped up to be a "great popular peaceful upsurge," about? The Bhumi Ucched Pratirodh Committee (BUPC), a platform consisting of political parties from the BJP, the Congress, and the SUCI to various naxal outfits and NGOs, led by the Trinamool Congress was set up in Nandigram with the stated aim of preventing land acquisition. The Chief Minister made a categorical commitment in January that there would be no chemical hub and therefore no land acquisition without the consent of the people. Normally when there is a struggle on a specific demand, in this case against land being taken over, if the demand is accepted it is claimed as a victory and the agitation is called off. In the huge farmers struggle in Rajasthan where the CPI(M) played an important role, police firing and violence under the BJP government between 2004 and 2006 took the lives of 17 farmers including one woman. In the first phase after the BJP government was forced to agree to the demands concerning water sharing, the agitation was called off. Later when the Government reneged on its promise the agitation resumed. In Nandigram it is because the interests of farmers and the rural poor or the issue of saving the land is not the real agenda of the "resistance" that the opposition boycotted the scores of meetings called by the district administration and ignored the Chief Minister's statement.

The second claim that the "resistance" is peaceful and democratic is far from the truth. Less known, their stories and tragedies ignored by the national media, around 3,000 men, women, and children of around 12 villages of Nandigram have been forcibly driven out of their homes and have been living in camps outside the area since January 3 because they are known members or sympathisers of the CPI(M). Who are these people? Like the victims of the police action, they too are agricultural workers, marginal peasants, artisans, almost all of them from the Scheduled Castes. Shockingly and sickeningly, the numerous reports of historians, human rights activists, and commentators have not mentioned their trauma at all, not even as a footnote, but on the contrary have almost celebrated their plight as "peoples anger" against the CPI(M). Houses of CPI(M) members or sympathisers were identified in an organised way and attacked. In one day — on January 3 — 34 homes were burnt, 41 houses were broken into and household goods smashed, 47 houses were looted.

Sobita Sumanta is one of the many displaced women who have come to meet the various authorities in Kolkata. Her husband Shankar Samanta was an elected gram panchayat member. He was burnt alive on January 7 by a group of armed people because he opposed their false campaign. Kanika Mandal is also among the displaced. On January 3, her husband and two young sons were forced to flee from their home in Sonachura. She and her younger daughter Sunita, a Class 9 student, continued to live in the village under constant threat. On February 10 at around noon mother and daughter were working in the fields when Sunita returned early to the house. When Kanika came home she found her daughter killed. The medical report confirmed rape. Kakoli Giri was driven out of her village of Kalcharanpur along with her husband and children. On March 3 she went back to check on her belongings. She was surrounded by a group of men who gangraped her. Her son found her lying unconscious and somehow brought her back to the camp. The medical report has confirmed rape. Earlier a policeman was lynched and his body thrown into the river. In spite of the evidence, there are no arrests in these cases because neither the police nor the State Women's Commission can enter the area. It has been barricaded, roads, bridges and culverts have been broken up, and the criminals have found shelter in the "peaceful resistance."

In the five affected gram panchayats, all political activity against the BUPC is literally banned with the force of arms. An illustration is what happened to families who defied the warning of the BUPC and attended a rally organised by the CPI(M) in a neighbouring area on January 29. The following day, 14 of such families were driven out and are now in the camps.

There is a close coordination between the Trinamool Congress and the group of NGOs functioning under different platforms, but united in the BUPC. They have provided a cover of impartiality to the reactionary political forces operating. In fact, it is they who have more or less taken over the public face of the anti-CPI(M) campaign. An example is the one-sided highly exaggerated reports circulated by them, in particular their account of the violence against children. None of them mentions the fact, confirmed by tape-recorded conversations played on Bengali TV channels, of the utterly cynical plans to use not only women but children as shields on March 14. But wild allegations are made against the police and CPI(M) men that they "abducted children, killed them, school uniforms were found in bushes ... children were torn apart by their two legs." Even ordinary citizens hearing such a report, leave alone such internationally recognised individuals, would have considered it their bounden duty to file complaints of "children being torn apart." Yet not a single missing child report has been filed with the police. The reports also mention "mass rapes and gang rapes of women." All complaints of rape must be investigated; if true, exemplary punishment must be meted out to those guilty. But to exaggerate and concoct reports undermines the hard struggle by women's organisations to give extra weightage to the statements of women victims where medical evidence is not available. If women are used as tools in a politically motivated campaign as in Nandigram it undermines the credibility of the demand. West Bengal remembers the unfortunate case of Champala Sardar who was used by the Trinamool Congress in a fabricated case of rape against CPI(M) men at the time of the 1993 panchayat elections. She was cruelly paraded by Trinamool Congress leaders as a symbol of CPI(M) criminality. The case was found to be false and all the men were acquitted. Champala herself was abandoned soon after the elections were over.

The strategy of the Trinamool Congress-led campaign is to continuously provoke incidents of violence in the name of saving the interests of farmers, the openly stated goal being the panchayat elections scheduled for May 2008. On March 17, the Maoists wrote a letter to Mamta Banerjee extending support to her struggle, which stated "We were in Singur, we are in Nandigram and we will stay." This should not be dismissed as political rhetoric. Already there are reports that the sea route through the Bay of Bengal is being used by the Maoists to come into Nandigram. The geographical location is crucial for the spread of the Maoists "liberated" belt to the east, in which West Bengal is the barrier. The lack of any administration or police in the area facilitates such a move.

The implications of the campaign against the CPI(M) are not limited to West Bengal. Nationally, the CPI(M) role in defence of the working classes and the rural poor is crucial, putting forward a set of alternative policies, to the consternation of the neo-liberalisers. Its role in mobilising secular forces against the BJP is a hindrance in the hoped for comeback trail of the communal forces. Nor is it coincidental that senior U.S. officials held a meeting with a leader involved in the mobilisations of the minority community in Nandigram. The categorical position of the CPI(M) against the strategic partnership with the U.S. is reason enough for support to anti-CPI(M) platforms. A widespread campaign is necessary to explain the context of the Nandigram developments and to meet the highly motivated campaign against the CPI(M) and the government it heads in West Bengal.

(Brinda Karat, M.P., is a member of the Polit Bureau of the CPI[M]

Poor Brinda! The picture she is attempting to draw in this article is exactly what her colleagues in West Bengal along with a few of their acolytes are trying to establish in view of CPI(M)'s damage-control. In fact, the entire initiative of damage-control by CPI(M) shows that they are completely ousted from their ground by those they had attempted eliminate through 14 March operation.- IP