Debate on nuke deal shows polity’s division

RC Rajamani
The Statesman, 3 December

The high spot of parliament sittings last week was the discussion on the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal, an issue that paralysed proceedings for a good part of the monsoon session in July-August. After prolonged deliberations among different political parties it was finally agreed to have a short duration discussion that did not entail voting. This was much to the chagrin of the main Opposition BJP, which found in the issue an opportunity to attack the Congress and also embarrass its Left supporters. Had there been a discussion under a different rule entailing voting the Left would have found itself in a quandary. The Left, of course, would not like to be seen together with the saffron outfit, vote against the deal. The BJP would have then taunted the Left for its apparent Janus face on the issue.

The discussion held in the Lok Sabha went on clear party lines. The BJP-led NDA, AIADMK and the Left opposed the deal in its “present form” fearing “surrender” of India’s independent foreign policy to the United States. Seeking to clear the apparent smoke-screen over the country’s right to conduct nuclear tests in future, the prime minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, asserted that the deal did not bar India from carrying out nuclear tests in future.

Provoked by certain remarks by the leader of the opposition, Mr LK Advani, he said all that the government had done was only to reiterate what the BJP-led NDA government had done by committing itself to a unilateral moratorium on conducting nuclear tests. Mr Advani had expressed the fear that the terms of the 123 agreement with the USA would tie the hands of the government from conducting a nuclear test in future. He also made bold to say if the NDA got a fresh mandate then it would renegotiate the deal with the US and get the harmful provisions deleted. If it were not possible the deal would be rejected, he added. The Rajya Sabha will discuss the issue this week.

Mr Advani said the discussion should have been under Rule 184 to censure the government. He reminded that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had stated that a consensus in Parliament was a pre-condition in concluding the Nuclear Agreement. He criticised that the Left parties were playing a ‘flip-flop’ in opposing the deal because they wanted to avoid a fresh Parliamentary election.

Members, especially from Tamil Nadu, were agitated over reports of alleged harassment of ethnic Indians in Malaysia. The issue led to a brief, abrupt adjournment in the Lok Sabha. Being a diplomatic issue, government, however, responded with circumspection. Making a statement in both houses, external affairs minister Mr Pranab Mukherjee Said: “Government remains deeply solicitous for the welfare of people of Indian origin living abroad. As Members are aware, there is a large community of people of Indian origin in Malaysia who are citizens of that country. We have friendly relations with Malaysia and we are in touch with the Malaysian authorities in the related matter.”

The issue of the controversial Bangladesh writer Taslima Nasreen also caused frequent flutter in both houses as rival members sought to turn into a political battle. The BJP demanded a full-fledged discussion on the issue. Making another statement, Mr Mukherjee said that the writer would continue to get shelter in India but advised her to “refrain from activities that may hurt sentiments of the people” in India.

“Throughout history, India has never refused shelter to those who have come and sought our protection.” At the same time, he pointed out that those who have been granted shelter here have “always undertaken to eschew political activities in India or any action which may harm India’s relations with friendly countries.”

FIVE BLACK HOLES OF BENGAL - Episodes of shame from the past

RUDRANGSHU MUKHERJEE
The Telegraph, 2 December

Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear too much reality
— T.S. Eliot, “Burnt Norton’’

People have episodes in their history that they try to forget but cannot. These episodes are ineradicably etched in historical memory. Bengal too has such episodes. I am not going back in time to rake up Mir Jafar’s treachery at Plassey or other such incidents. I am looking at more recent history and trying to list a few incidents that have brought collective shame and disgrace to those who live in Bengal.

There are three happenings which I want to put out of the way because they were too big and too momentous to bear any retelling. I also think there will be very little difference of opinion about the choice of these three events and their terrible significance.

First, the great famine of 1943: the horror of which remains as a permanent trauma in the consciousness of all Bengalis. The fact that it was manmade only adds to the horror. It was perhaps the first time that Bengal’s modern intelligentsia saw the reality of poverty and death move from the villages of Bengal into Calcutta. The second one came three years later and has come to be called the great Calcutta killing: the Hindu-Muslim riots that began in Calcutta on August 16, 1946. An outcome of the Direct Action Day called by the Muslim League, the riots, lasting for nearly a week, saw an orgy of violence on the streets of Calcutta. Suddenly, the people of the city saw the face of collective communal violence. The third is the most recent: the violence in Nandigram. By this I do not refer to only the violence in November, but to the sequence of events that began in early 2007 and made the area into a war zone while the government of West Bengal, by design or otherwise, passively stood by. Even the CPI(M) and its supporters, while they will differ with their critics about the responsibility of the violence, will agree that Nandigram was not an episode of which West Bengal can be proud.

I want to move on now to five more events that are not so much written about, but will continue to rankle in the conscience of the people of West Bengal.

First, May 1, 1968: the foundation of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist). There was nothing wrong, of course, with the announcement of the formation of a new political party. It was what it signified and what it brought in its train that brings to mind those haunting lines of Yeats, “A terrible beauty is born.” It inaugurated the rule of terror in West Bengal and completely transformed public life in Calcutta and the districts. By rule of terror I refer, of course, to the killings carried out by the Naxalites and to the counter-insurgency measures that followed. The terror produced brutal killings on both sides, the Naxalites and the police. It also saw, in Baranagar and elsewhere, armed political cadre belonging to the Congress carrying out mass murders while the police looked the other way.

Second, at the end of January 1979, there took place a massacre of refugees from Bangladesh in an island in the Sunderbans called Marichjhampi. The Left Front had been about two years in power then, and it wanted to reclaim the island on which refugees had been settled. When the settlers resisted, the place was surrounded by the police, no food and drinking water were allowed to enter it, and then many of the refugees were shot as they tried to escape. The number of deaths is still unknown.

Third, on April 30, 1982 in broad daylight in Ballygunge about 18 Ananda Margis were burnt to death. What precipitated this act of brutality and who precipitated it remain a mystery even today. Reports at that time said that there had been rumours in the area about the kidnapping of small boys and the people of the locality suspected the Ananda Margis, who became victims of “popular anger”. The Ananda Margis were steadfast in their allegation that the CPI(M) was responsible for the act of savagery.

Fourth, the bewildering death of Rizwanur Rahman on September 21, 2007 and all that led to it. It might appear to be only the death of an unknown and ordinary young man, but the connivance of some police officers in the attempt to break up the marriage of two adults, the police officers’ defiance of the Constitution, the suspicion that money may have played a part in all this and the prolonged passivity of the government on the issue made it a cause célèbre.

Fifth, the hasty and undercover departure of Taslima Nasreen from Calcutta in the aftermath of the violence on November 21, 2007 and the CPI(M)’s shoddy complicity in her exit raised a big question mark about West Bengal’s commitment to secularism and freedom of speech. There was near-unanimity that it was a moment of disgrace for West Bengal.

Having made this list of five, let me now try and distinguish between the events and their impact. The Naxalite movement and its suppression produced a two-fold response. One was the outright condemnation of the police terror — the disregard for the rule of law, the faked encounter deaths and the not-so-tacit sanction given to Congress goons to kill. The other was a kind of romanticization of the Naxalites — in poetry, in plays, in films and other forms of art. An entire cult grew up around the Naxalites, and this cult ignored the terror the Naxalites had spread through their butchery, their destruction of libraries and laboratories in educational institutions, and the complete waste of a generation that the movement represented. It is now clear that despite the participation of many bright young men and women, the intellectual basis of the movement was shallow, if not non-existent. Beyond violence it had nothing. This celebration of violence by large sections of the Left intelligentsia is difficult to believe, coming as it does from a people that prides itself on its civilization and its learning. This is why the event is a big black blot on Bengal’s history.

The massacre at Marichjhampi and the burning of the Ananda Margis fall into a separate category. Not only did they represent an inconceivable brutality, but they were also remarkable for the muted response that they evoked from the society at large. There was no major hue and cry. No one went on a hunger strike. No major demonstrations took place. The intelligentsia that is crying genocide over Nandigram was not vocal in its condemnation of a Left government that killed refugees, and an administration that stood by to watch people being burnt in broad daylight. The two events have also made a quiet exit from public memory. Even members of the intelligentsia who walked in protest against Nandigram on November 14 did not dredge up the events of Marichjhampi despite some obvious parallels.

The responses to the death of Rizwanur Rahman, the departure of Taslima and, of course, Nandigram stand in sharp contrast to the situation described in the previous paragraph. In these three cases, the people of Calcutta — in Rizwanur’s case the ordinary city folk and in the other two the intelligentsia — raised their voice in protest to preserve West Bengal’s commitment to tolerance, secularism and democratic rights.

The contrast is significant because it points to an undertow of change occurring in Bengali urban society. Sections of it are being forced to drop its Left blinkers. Scholars writing on the 19th century have noted how the goal of social engineering eluded men like Vidyasagar because of the inadequacy of the civic-social forces of the time. That inadequacy has continued to haunt the history of Bengal. Are we seeing, at last, the emergence of a civil society that is conscious, self-reflective, responsible and open, a civil society not willing anymore to turn its face away from reality, even its own follies?

History’s dark patches perhaps hide sunlight. In the words of a contemporary writer, “We stand in darkness surrounded by light.”

Chidambaram for subsidy re-look

Press Trust of India, 2 December

New Delhi, Dec. 1: With government saddled with a huge subsidy burden, finance minister Mr P Chidambaram today favoured re-visiting the sops once in three to five years to weed out relief to non-deserving sectors.

“We must re-visit subsidies once in three years or five years to remove non-merit sectors and focus on only deserving sectors,” he said replying to a debate in the Rajya Sabha on the Bills seeking supplementary grants for a total of Rs 33,290 crore.

However, Mr Chidambaram insisted that subsidy on food, fertilisers and some fuels would continue. “It is nobody’s case that all subsidy will go. We are not reducing subsidy for PDS. The budgeted provision was higher than the previous year and we have not increased the issue price of PDS (ration),” he said.

Addressing the full Planning Commission meeting last month, Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh had expressed concern over the mounting subsidy bill exceeding Rs one lakh crore on food, fertilisers and petroleum.After Mr Chidambaram’s reply, the House returned the Appropriation Bills on supplementary grants already passed by the Lok Sabha.

Squarely blaming state governments for “corruption” in distribution of foodgrains through PDS, Mr Chidambaram said an expert committee had found that only 36.38 per cent of allocated foodgrains reached the poor and a chunk got lost in leakages through “ghost” ration cards.

“It is an extremely alarming record and it is shameful”, he said. Asserting there was no fault in the supply of foodgrains by the Centre, he said state governments were “solely” responsible for distribution of foodgrains.

The finance minister expected that the agriculture growth would be close to four per cent this year and said without improvement in the farm sector, it would not be possible to address the fundamental issue of rural poverty and rural income.
“If growth (in agriculture) remains between two and three per cent, disparity will become wider,” he said. Mr Chidambaram said the government had set a target of achieving four per cent agriculture growth in the eleventh plan for which a number of initiatives have been launched. Responding to members' concern over the benefits of growth not reaching the poor, he said the government aims to achieve the double digit growth by the eleventh plan period.

He said it was only through accelerated growth that the government has been able increase its revenue and allot more resources to states.

The dual danger

Sanjeeb Pandey
The Statesman, 2 December

I was in Kolkata on 14 February 2007, to attend a meeting of the Anti-Nuclear Forum organised against the proposed nuclear power plant at Haripur in East Midnapore. Not as much in the news as Singur and Nandigram, Haripur had also thrown up a challenge to the Left Front government. Officials from the Atomic Energy Commission were not allowed to visit the area for inspection by the local people.

Shyamali Mitra, an artist, who spoke at the meeting in Kolkata talked about the state having become fascist in West Bengal. It was a jolt to me. I could not visualise a Left party or government as fascist. So far, I had associated the idea of fascism only with Right-wing politics. But people in Kolkata were talking about a government with fascist tendencies. We were told that the proceedings of every citizens’ meeting was reported to the government. Punitive action was taken by the CPI-M cadres against anybody seen as acting against the interest of the party.

Trinamul Congress activists were facing oppression at the hands of CPI-M cadres. I returned from Kolkata with a feeling that my state UP or probably Bihar too, even with their highly publicised state of lawlessness, provide more democratic space for dissent than West Bengal. Not too long ago, Mulayam Singh Yadav’s police also lathicharged the farmers whose land was being taken away for a SEZ in Dadri where Reliance was supposed to set up a power plant. When Mulayam Singh faced bitter criticism for his anti-farmer stance, he decided to put things in cold storage. But the overconfident West Bengal government persisted with their project in Nandigram.

We saw a face of Left fascism as we had never expected to see. Even though only 14 people were killed on 14 March and about 30 went missing, which is much smaller compared to the figures of Gujarat after the Narendra Modi patronised violence in 2002, one cannot but help compare the two unfortunate incidents. Whereas in Gujarat the police turned a blind eye while the Hindutva brigade went on the rampage, killing and raping Muslim citizens, in West Bengal the police was directly used to fire upon people and CPI-M cadres were reportedly wearing police uniform and firing alongside. A CBI investigation had revealed some police helmets along with the CPI-M flag and literature at one place. Did we hear of any RSS or BJP worker wearing a police uniform and killing a Muslim in Gujarat?

The idea of fascism is associated with a group which has a sectarian thinking and doesn’t believe in democracy. It thinks of itself as superior to others. The Right-wing Hindutva group clearly fits the definition. It is unfortunate that they have used the freedom and flexibility offered by Indian democracy to capture political power through the backdoor.

Kalyan Singh, reneging on his promise given to the nation just before the Babari Masjid demolition, has also demonstrated that they have scant regard for the Constitution. Ideally, no party or group believing in sectarian ideology (catering to only one segment of the population at the cost of other) should be allowed to operate in a democracy. However, for the time being the Hindutva brigade gets to use emotional, nationalist and religious issues, which are potentially explosive, to further its politics.

The CPI-M, also by its actions, has increasingly begun to fit the description of a fascist force. They have come to believe in the infallibility of their ideology, so much so that they do not care about any other viewpoint. They did not feel the need to undertake a democratic consultative process with the people either in Singur or in Nandigram before deciding on the projects which were proposed there.

It remains mysterious why, going against the proposed National Rehabilitation Policy which suggests that developmental projects should be initiated at places which will either cause no displacement or minimum possible displacement, projects were conceived in Singur and Nandigram which are agriculturally very fertile lands and would have resulted in very painful and large scale displacements. Although the Chief Minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has accepted the mistake of his government in Nandigram, we are still waiting for an apology from him, just like we are waiting for an apology from the US government for using nuclear bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and from the BJP for what it did in Gujarat. Only Sonia Gandhi has apologised for the Operation Bluestar.

Moreover, in Kerala, we saw how blatantly disregarding the opinion of their Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan, the CPI-M party decided to get the cabinet approval by ‘consensus’ for an ADB loan. The party seems to be losing its tolerance for democracy. This is why it is now betraying fascist tendencies.

The people of India now face the dual danger of fascism ~ one from the Right and another from the Left and they’ll have to confront both.

On 22 March Medha Patkar and 61 other activists belonging to Action-2007 ~ a forum against the anti-people policies of the government ~ went to the Planning Commission and were lathicharged and arrested. The Deputy Chairman, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, has sent a message to those who protested against the arrest of Medha Patkar, saying that these activists had arrived unannounced without a prior appointment and had forced their way into the Yojana Bhawan. They were first politely requested to disperse but they continued to create disturbance. The security personnel informed the local police and the police took action as they thought fit.

If Montek Singh Ahluwalia were to put himself in the position of people of Singur, Nandigram, Dadri or any of the places where development projects or SEZs are being imposed unannounced, he would face the same set of grievances against the government as he has expressed against Medha Patkar and the activists. And this is when the Yojana Bhawan is not even his permanent home and the activists were not taking away his land or causing a threat to his job.

The cold logic of development combined with the fascist attitude of governments is resulting in insensitivity towards the people, in whose name exist the political parties as well as the Planning Commission.

Unfortunately, much blood has flowed in Nandigram this year accompanied by rape and humiliation of many women. Members of families are separated, not knowing whether the separated ones are alive or dead.

At the last count ten to twelve thousand families are scattered, mostly living with their relatives, after the CPI-M activists armed to the teeth stormed Nandigram, accompanied by wanted criminals like Tapan Ghosh, Sukur Ali and Salim Laskar.

This time they did not even feel the need for taking the police along with them. The CPI-M) has regressed into a more fascist force and has displayed political arrogance not seen since the time when Indira Gandhi imposed the emergency. Important party functionaries do not like the interference of the High Court or the Governor in their attempts to terrorise the society into subjugation.

Muscle power

It was expected that after the decision to withdraw the SEZ, the Chief Minister would apologise for the March action. However, as it turns out now, he allowed his cadres to gain muscle power to retaliate with a vengeance. That he had lost both political and administrative control over Nandigram was something which had become a matter of prestige for his government and the party. But we must remember that Midnapore, along with Ballia in UP and Satara in Maharashtra, had responded to the call of ‘Quit India’ given in 1942 by the Congress convention in Mumbai. It had liberated itself from British rule. The British recaptured the three areas later.

As the CPM-led Left Front government had lost its credibility in the area and did not have the face to carry out a negotiated settlement of the dispute, it had to engineer a recapture in much the same way as the British would have done by bringing in an army.

But let us accept the fact that the CPI-M cadres who were forced to leave the area were the ones who had been threatening people to agree to give up their land for the proposed SEZ and were involved in beating, killing and raping the people of Nandigram.

Rather than trying to resolve the dispute by bringing the culprits to book, the Chief Minister supported the policy of paying back the ordinary villagers ‘in the same coin.’ It has been alleged that Maoists had infiltrated the area. And as proof, some arms and Maoist literature published in Telugu was shown to be confiscated.

The common sense question that comes to mind is: What relevance can Telugu literature, believed to have been published 20 years ago, have in West Bengal? There is no other proof of Maoist presence in the area. But the Chief Minister’s statement implies that violence was used in response to violence. Can a democratically-elected CM justify the use of violence by a non-state actor?

The fact of the matter is that violence was used on both occasions, March and November, by the CPI-M cadres. The violence unleashed by the Bhumi Uchched Pratirodh Committee, the organisation formed by villagers to resist the land takeover by the government, was in self defence. The CPI-M cadres had the backing of the government whereas the villagers associated with BUPC had to fend for themselves.

The police is believed to have looked the other way while the CPI-M cadres accompanied by the hooligans went on the rampage, in a manner reminiscent of Gujarat 2002.

The targeting of women by the CPI-M cadres is simply beyond comprehension. It is not clear what ‘coin was being paid back’ when women, some of them pregnant, were raped. Unofficial figures put the number of rape cases at more than 100. Even after the CRPF has entered the area, news about one or two rapes everyday continues to filter in.

Brinda Karat says that no rape has taken place in Nandigram. Either she is completely unaware of the ground realities or her transformation into an opportunist politician is complete. In a culturally more advanced state like West Bengal the indulgence of the CPI-M cadres, who are supposed to be sensitive, ideologically groomed and prepared to fight all manner of injustice, crimes against women has come as the most shocking aspect of the Nandigram violence. The All India Democratic Women’s Association, the women’s organisation associated with the party, will now fund it difficult to raise its voice against injustice to women.

Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee should resign taking moral responsibility for the manner in which women have been made victims by his party cadres. But that is not going to happen. Neither will the UPA government dismiss him.

Unholy alliance

The turn of the events has resulted in a very unholy alliance between the UPA and Left Front. The Congress has decided to ignore the incidents in Nandigram in exchange for the much sought after support of the CPI-M and its allies on the Indo-US Nuclear Deal.

Immediately after the Nandigram recapture the Left Front gave its approval to the UPA government to proceed with its negotiations with the IAEA. Thus the two political groups, for their respective vested interests, are completely jeopardising the people’s interest.

The West Bengal government has given rise to a constitutional crisis by subverting the democratic functioning of the state and virtually handing over of the state to its party cadres. It has also created a political crisis for the people of this country.

Post-Nandigram, the Left parties have been bracketed with parties that rely on criminalisation of politics to win elections and are fascist in their thinking. With the essential character of all parties, from the political spectrum of the Right to the Left, having become anti-people and anti-democratic what choice do the people have in this democracy? Is it the end of democracy as we know it? Or is the civil society’s protest in West Bengal, backed by large number of common people, intellectuals, artists, writers and social activists going to provide a solution?

Taslima and the Bengali literati

Bikas Basu
The Statesman, 2 December

It’s not difficult to see that West Bengal’s present Left Front government considers Taslima Nasreen’s hasty exit from Kolkata “a good riddance”. The government’s role in the affair, both overt and covert, though not unexpected, is worth analysing. To sum it up in one word, the reason why she had to go was ~ vote. It is a truth, acknowledged across the country, that to stay in power here one cannot ignore the minority votebank (27 per cent of the total electorate).

Another unpleasant but more or less uncontested truth is that the votebank in question is not as a whole as it used to be after Nandigram and the murky events surrounding the death of Rizwanur Rehman. So, the question of giving asylum to a writer who was a foreigner (so what if her humanism and secular stance are exemplary?) at the cost of losing precious votes does not arise.

There is nothing much to discuss on the issue of Nasreen vis-a-vis the state government. We are aware of the government’s political compulsions. It was because of these constraints that the state government was forced to ban Dwikhandito (Split), a volume of her autobiography. The ban had been set aside after a court ruling. As a minor writer who lives and works in this state, I feel for Nasreen.

After Nasreen was packed off to Rajasthan following mob outrage demanding her ouster and given temporary asylum, courtesy the Rajasthan government, Sunil Gangopadhyay, Bengal’s celebrity litterateur, told a TV channel: “Taslima is helpless”. How safe and naïve a comment to make in response to a development that signifies an existential crisis for writers! I would like to ask if the writers and intellectuals of this state have taken any effective step that would end the state of helplessness that an honest and intrepid writer like Nasreen is in.

The spontaneous participation of writers and intellectuals in the mahamichhil to protest against the massacre and rampage at Nandigram made an impact. At least, it made the rulers realise that lawlessness cannot prevail at all times and that justice will catch up. If the men who run this state were not so shameless, we would have a more civil administration by now.

The mockery of democracy in Nandigram warranted a protest rally as huge as it got. It’s a grave issue. One can, at least, hope that the crisis at Nandigram will, eventually, be resolved. The fundamentalist rage and attack on Nasreen is being sustained over the years. It is free speech that is under threat here, it has been made a victim of orthodox beliefs and prejudice. It’s a trend that has surfaced time and again, in different forms. A more sustained campaign against such misdirected fundamentalist anger was perhaps the need of the hour. But most of the intellectuals in West Bengal seem to have done their bit by giving television bytes. Does the well-thought-out silence and inaction on the part of her fellow writers surprise Nasreen? Probably not. When her book Dwikhandito banned, after the chief minister had supposedly talked it over with 40 intellectuals who endorsed the decision, Nasreen had probably sensed a class difference between herself and her fellow writers on this side of the border. She did not really belong to the charmed circle. (Immediately after she chose to set up home in Kolkata, I wrote to her that her dreams may soon come to nought. Dwikhandito was banned in the state soon afterwards.)

Not too many writers on this side of the border have the kind of honesty and courage that Nasreen has shown. A novel like Fera (The Return) ought to have been written by a writer who had experience of migrating from East Bengal to West. But, apparently, few of them have the honesty, courage and respect for truth, that Nasreen has. A lot of writing by present-day writers has been translated from Bengali to English and other European languages, but none had an impact across the world as big as Nasreen’s.

The reason was because these writers did not write with the kind of conviction that Nasreen did. I do not know of any writer in Bengali who has written anything as incisive and brilliant as Salman Rushdie’s The Prophet’s Hair. A super blend of fantasy and satire, the story is an artistic critique of religious bias and blind faith that unfolds in the few days between the imaginary disappearance and return of the Prophet’s lock from the Hazratbal shrine. It takes a gutsy writer to attempt the unsparing and powerful criticism of Islamic fundamentalism of Nasreen or Rushdie. No present-day writer in the Bengali language has dared so far.

The Bengali intelligentsia is practically rather insensitive when it comes to freedom of expression. In the span of a few years, Cuba was twice the focal theme country at the Kolkata Book Fair, the same country where books have to be approved by the government to be published. It didn’t seem to bother any of the litterateurs here. No one said a word. It’s a bit foolhardy to expect these writers to now stand by the exiled writer and make sure that she is brought back with appropriate security arrangements.

They seem content with paying lip service to her. Nasreen was perhaps mistaken here. She thought she was safe in a land where people spoke her own language. But this is a different Bengal, miles away from what Rabindranath Tagore called, “Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high.” Nasreen’s literary “friends” would rather follow what the poet Sankha Ghosh once mockingly called, “Line-ei chhilam Baba. (I am toeing your line, Boss.)”

Let me share an example. The last time Nasreen was physically attacked by the Islamic fundamentalists in Hyderabad, the poet Subodh Sarkar told a TV channel, “Taslima is free to live in India. But let her be shanto (calm) while she is here.” In other words, be a good girl while you are in India. Nasreen is determined not to give up being bad. She will keep writing what she believes is true. Let Sarkar continue to be “good”, “proper” and “politically correct” when he is writing, Nasreen is incapable of such correctness. The secular establishment, comprising secular snobs of West Bengal, are at a loss when it comes to Nasreen.
While the author, a relentless crusader of human rights, cutting across race and religion, feels a free discussion of Islam is warranted, even indispensable, her fellow intellectuals on this side of the border see it as taboo, or, as they would put it, “sensitive matter”. Their support towards Nasreen is not unconditional or at the cost of offending the Islamists.

During the time Nasreen had found asylum in Europe, she would often touch down on Kolkata just to breathe and feel the Bengali language. This was compensation for not being able to visit her home in Bangladesh. Like her Hindu heroine in Fera, there was no way she could set foot on her homeland. That’s when a heavyweight intellectual from West Bengal cautioned her, “Don’t come here so often.” Is the West Bengal government so weak that it cannot protect a writer from Islamic fundamentalists?

Immediately after Nasreen was hounded out of her country following the controversial Lajja (Shame), Annadashankar Roy, the revered thinker and writer, had told her, “Keep writing about women’s emancipation; that’s not against Islam”.

While she is writing on women’s issues, if Nasreen is constrained by not being able to say a word against Islam, who is she up against, after all? She has been vocal in running down the Hindu fundamentalist practices that warranted criticism but why must she draw back while critiquing Islamic fundamentalism?

It looks like Nasreen’s time in India is running out. And that undesirable eventuality ~ a whole-hearted humanist’s exit from a land which she wanted to adopt as her own ~ will be a matter of shame for us, Indians. Nobody except the politicians and intellectuals who want to play it safe are keen to see her go. Her harassment in this country is reprehensible. We should have honoured this brave and sensitive writer with a Deshikottama award, not shut the door on her face.

Evidently, the minds of Bengali intellectuals are not without fear any more, as Rabindranath Tagore had envisaged. Will they be able to hold their heads high ever again?

(The author is a writer of cultural essays and fiction.)

CPM’s parallel governance

D Bandhyopadhyay
The Statesman, 2 December

On 22 November, noted Bengali writer Taslima Nasreen was clandestinely and forcibly whisked away from her Rowdon Street residence by a possé of plainclothes policemen.
She was made to board a flight bound for Ahmedabad and Jaipur, reportedly under a false name. She was taken to Jaipur where she was not welcome by the Rajasthan government and had to be moved to a secret location in the National Capital Region. The mystery about her whereabouts deepened when the Rajasthan government said in a Press release that it was "left with no alternative but to have Nasreen as a guest of government of Rajasthan till such time the (Union) ministry of home affairs takes a final view of her stay and security". The Press release said that the West Bengal government “simply refused to countenance the idea” of having her back.

Mr Prasad Ranjan Ray, state home secretary, said: "Taslima Nasreen is a free person and as such won't come and go according to our dictates. It was only from the television channels that I came to know that she had left the city... We did not ask her to move out."

Apparently, the clandestine operation was conducted without his knowledge and sanction. It is clear that some nefarious actions were being done by some home department officials behind his back, without any legal sanction. This is an ominous sign. The state home secretary's statement stands negated not only by the Rajasthan government’s Press release but also the bill of Rs 10,000 preferred by the management of Hotel Shikha of Jaipur for the occupation of their five rooms by Nasreen (one room), besides police and security persons (four rooms) who flew with her from Kolkata to Jaipur or later joined the group at Jaipur. The policemen left the hotel with the writer without settling the bill, true to their tradition of enjoying "free lunch" anywhere and everywhere.

What is this "dirty tricks department" of the West Bengal government? Is it a government within the government, without any accountability to anybody? From whom do the operatives of this shady organisation take their orders? To whom are they accountable? Do they take their directives for their activities from any political caucus outside the formal set-up of a government established by law? Is the government of West Bengal being run by gangsters in plainclothes? Is the West Bengal government following the technique of involuntary disappearance perfected by General Pinochet after toppling and killing President Salvador Allende in Chile?

These are some of the issues arising out of the Taslima Nasreen episode which the chief minister (also police minister) has to answer. All issues of good governance have been flouted with contempt by the party and its chief minister. Unless this nefarious organisation is exposed publicly and dismantled totally, life, liberty and property of every person in this state would be unsafe. We are living here in perilous times. Everyone has to understand this and lodge a protest against it individually and collectively. After all, this organisation is being run with taxpayers' money. We have a right to know what is going on and why?

The CPI-M as a party has been losing its grip on the traditional minority votebank. In all cases of mass murder and civil strife sponsored by the party beginning with Nanoor, through Chhoto Angaria, Keshpur, Garbeta and Nandigram to Rizwanur Rahman, many victims have been from the minority community. CPI-M’s fragile veneer of "secularism" has been shattered by its anti-minority actions and statements. In the Sachar Committee report, West Bengal has the honour of standing second from the bottom in regard to the state's effort regarding the welfare and wellbeing of Muslims after their 30 years' glorious rule. In the Rizwanur case, in the chief minister's first statement, he mentioned "a communal angle" where there was none.

Communalism was sought to be injected in a private love affair of two educated and civilised young people from different communities. People of Kolkata ~ Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Parsis and others ~ stood shoulder to shoulder and exposed the communalism of the chief minister and his party.

The CPI-M had been wooing fundamentalist groups among Muslims for a long time. The West Bengal government had proscribed Nasreen's book Dwikhandito on the grounds that it offended the sentiments of some Muslims. It was done on a public demand of some maulanas and on the basis of a report of an assistant commissioner of police of questionable literary competence. After a full hearing, Calcutta High Court set aside the order. But the party and its government did not show any remorse.

They started a fresh move to harass, tease and torment Nasreen to make her leave the country out of disgust. The Dainik Statesman reported on 23 November that several months before this episode, the then police commissioner of Calcutta, Mr Prasun Mukherjee, intimated the writer that she should leave the country. He stated that he was conveying the chief minister’s desire. Nasreen was told that she was a security risk for West Bengal and India. It was reported that Nasreen refused to leave as she was determined to pursue her literary career from Kolkata.

On 21 November, Kolkata witnessed an ugly outburst of frenzy on the issue of driving out Nasreen. The incident reminded people of my generation of the wild behaviour of the mob during the Great Calcutta killings of 16 August, 1946. In the recent flare-up, had the chief minister given firm orders, his own police force could have controlled the situation easily. But he would not allow his forces to soil their hands, lest his fundamentalist friends accused him of highhandedness. By calling the Army, he used a sledge hammer to crack a hazelnut. Mr Biman Bose's immediate reaction was that Nasreen be moved out if her continued stay in the state disturbed peace. More ominous was the statement of Mr HA Halim, Speaker, that Nasreen's stay in the city had created problems.

He advised that the West Bengal government send a report to the Central government. The Speaker had no business making such a statement. His untold intention was that since she was the cause of disturbance, her visa be renewed by the Centre. It is evident that the incident of 21 November was a move to endear the party to fundamentalist elements among Muslims and through their good offices, regain lost ground among them.
As for the legality of West Bengal government's action, regarding forcibly moving out Nasreen from Kolkata to Jaipur, the Criminal Procedure Code does not provide for any extradition. Some states have local goonda Acts that provide for such a procedure for undesirable persons. West Bengal does not have any such law. So legally, Nasreen could not have been moved out of her Kolkata residence to Jaipur and Delhi.

Had the continued presence of Nasreen caused any cognizable offence, she could have been arrested under Section 151, CrPC, to prevent occurrence of such offences. In that case, she had to be produced before a magistrate within 24 hours of her arrest. But the party and its government do not believe in the rule of law.

Section 362 of IPC defines abduction as: "Whoever by force compels, or by any deceitful means induces, any person to go from any place, is said to abduct that person." There are two ingredients of this offence: (i) Forceful compulsion or inducement by deceitful means, and (2) the object of such compulsion or inducement must be the going of a person from any place. In Nasreen's case, both the ingredients have been fulfilled. It is a case of abduction simpliciter.
Those who have abducted her have also committed, in addition, the offence of wrongful restraint by keeping her confined in the Rajasthan Guest House, Delhi.

Wrongful restraint is a continuing offence. Each additional day of restraint enhances the gravity of the offence. Since all these offenders have committed the offence at the behest of some state organ, the police in West Bengal would not take cognizance of these offences.

(The author is a former Revenue Secretary, Govt of India.)

Nandigram showing us the way

Hindol Bhattacharjee


It is not a matter of confusion now that CPM is not at all a Communist party, it has become a mass party and has every kind of notions of fascism which is being expressed in different incidents now. During the 30 years of ruling over the people of West Bengal, all their operations have come to a pinnacle where since their venture to invite the Multinational companies here following the GATT and Dunkle consignment on the patent rules, 1991, CPM has become a mass party whose main destination is to demolish the economy and conditions of our fellow citizens, villagers and on those poor people who are below the poverty line. It is to be noted that after the early nineties, this globalize economy has manifested a globalize culture, the main intention of which is only to destroy the structure of society, culture and economy of the third world.

The degeneration of Communist party is manufactured through different ways in this country. First of all we can site the example of the system of our constitution and parliamentary politics that deal with only the vote bank. In this perspective, CPM, the so-called mass communist party has little interest to establish the concept of class struggle. They are using the semi-colonial and semi-capitalist structure, not trying to change it, because of their destination to sustain in the parliamentary politics. Secondly we have already noted that a communist party like a party of a higher democratic country tries to strengthen their structure of pan-optic to maintain the madhouse of keeping people mum about any kind of political and economic affair. It is to be noted that everything in a third world country is being overdetermined and nothing we can measure up by a linear deduction. So fascism can be practised here with no sign of fascism. It was, indeed practised by different parties, mainly by BJP and CPM in their areas. We have faced the degenerated issues like Ram mandir Babri masjid etc. Besides we have also experienced the massacre happened in Gujarat. It was a direct religious fascism about which we have raised our voice.

But we should not forget that in a comparative progressive state, like West Bengal. The practice of fascism is easier. This fascism is more dangerous as it remains under the coat of progressiveness. Different areas, different states, different locations have faced these fascism either directly or indirectly. Mr. Budhyadeb Bhattacharjee about the matter of nandigram is enacting. It was a pre-initiated incident which has a direct link with making a chemical hub there and for that reason they tried their operations there, lied, attacked people in the disguise of police and killed more than hundreds of people there, raped more than hundreds, burnt houses, molested but the war by the people of Nandigram has proved that everything can be opposed by a unite people and they were successful to fight back. Afterwards the cadres and central and state committee of CPM with the help of their fascism and state terrorism continued terrors and after 30 th November without any disguise of police fore, the cadres attacked nandigram and burnt more than 500 houses, damaged hospitals, killed patients, raped again a lot, captured people, damaged ambulances and killed and killed like butchers there with the help of modernized automated ammunitions, hiring hooligans and forces of their own party from different areas, states. Tapon and Shukur and Selim are the instances. For the reason of this massacre they are manufacturing the ideas that there were several Maoists but it is a half truth and people of third stream politics though went their but it was hard for them to fight like this. To make protest the artists, painters, poets, singers, writers and commonplace people have made a big rally on 14 th of November at Kolkata where people participated spontaneously and it has shown a new genre of political movement here with the help of Civil Society Movement. But afterwards like a classical fascist party CPM continued to attack on the media and some of them made statements to destroy all the media. They have even crossed the decency of maintaining democratic rights.

To demean the civil society movement and to break the movement CPM along with some brute fundamentalists connected the movement with Taslima Nasrin issue and due to their anarchy Taslima was given the verdict by the state secretary of CPM, Mr. Biman Bose to quit Bengal. This proves that religious fascism is utilizing the political fascism and political fascism is utilizing the religious fascism. How can we say that this is the characteristics of a Communist Party!

Mr. Budhyadeb Bhattacharjee and sons are continuing their limitless fascist statements and from individual to individual they are attacking, terrifying people to stop the entire protesting attitude. The people who are keeping CDs of the massacre at nandigram and on Chemical Hub are being threatened and even are being killed. An instance is Ajay Bagdi of Murshidabad, who for keeping CDs on these matters has been killed by the W.B Police force. This is continuing. They are trying to demean the movements taking place against these fascism and the persons like Medha Patkor, Joy Goswami, Kobir Suman, Prosun Bhowmik, Hindol Bhattacharjee among which excluding Medha all of them are poets of this age.

Budhyadeb Bhattacharjee is only a part of the system, but a fascist is a fascist. The whole system is originating in a fascist way. This is not a communist party and now the civil society movement can only show us the way of how to move.

Not being deviated by the conventionalist way we should introspect that what is the root behind this fascism after a long days of what our country is facing brutally. The BJP, led by Narendra Modi and CPM, led by Budhyadeb Bhattacharjee and Biman Bose are the reflections of this fascism. It is a clear but notorious sign that if we still remain silent about this and deviate from our new risen civil society movement, then a more dangerous fascism will make our democracy a phase of our dream. To strengthen our democracy in a newer form, we should continue our movement, more intelligently in this age of manufacturing consent beside managing relief for restitutes and people suffered due to the massacre.

We are arranging theoretical sessions and interactive sessions on different issues and if you are interested to take part please contact at:

Prosun Bhowmik,9830015598
Hindol Bhattacharjee 9830751535
Biswanath Dasgupta 9433517114
Torsha Bannerji 9830063848

A new East Asian focus on India

P.S. Suryanarayana
The Hindu, 26 November

The atmospherics of the East Asia Summit last week propelled India to the regional centre stage again.

Is India really central to the East Asia Summit (EAS) — an exclusive regional forum which is expected to play a key role in shaping the next big theatre in world politics? Surely, the latest EAS meeting in Singapore, which brought India and China, as also Japan, into sharp focus, was not designed to provide clues to such a long-term proposition. However, the atmospherics of the third annual summit of the EAS last week propelled India to the centre stage of Greater Ea st Asia in several ways.

The larger geopolitical region covers all the 10 countries of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, India, Australia, and New Zealand. The United States, for long the dominant military power in this wider region, is not a member of the two-year-old EAS, which remains wary of letting the Americans on to its diversified but rather very Asian stage.

Interestingly, it was in an overarching cultural setting that the importance of being India in Greater East Asia was dramatically illustrated. The occasion was the dedication of an exhibition, titled “On the Nalanda Trail,” as an EAS project. The exhibition — tracing the trail of Buddhism in India, China, and Southeast Asia — is being organised by Singapore at the Asian Civilisations Museum in the City-State. The unusual show is aimed at promoting the establishment of an international university, through a multilateral treaty, at the old Nalanda site in India. The proposed university will offer a number of courses, including peace and security studies.

India’s centrality to the current process of inter-state engagement in Greater East Asia was best put across by EAS Chairman and Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. At a reception hosted by him for the EAS leaders, Mr. Lee said: “The ancient university in Nalanda was not just devoted to Buddhist studies. It was also a first-class educational institution and the most global university of its time. ... The new Nalanda (university) should strive to perform a role consistent with this original ethos and vision. It should be a great intellectual centre, an icon of the (current) Asian renaissance. ... It should also be a centre of civilisational dialogue and inter-faith understanding as the original Nalanda once was. In this way, the (EAS) Nalanda project can be an inspiration for the future of Asia.”

Piloting the EAS and other ASEAN-related summits with diplomatic skill, clear from the way he warded off a Myanmar-related crisis that could have affected these events, Mr. Lee saw India’s relevance to planet-issues as well.

The East Asia Summit is the only pan-regional platform, as different from sub-regional groups, where India and China share the high table. Significantly, China had earlier joined Japan, the global eco-guru, and the U.S., a reluctant “leader” on green issues, in issuing a declaration on climate change. The occasion was the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum’s summit in Sydney in September. The APEC had then endorsed a set of “aspirational goals” as non-binding commitments to reduce the worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases. So, a general expectation ahead of last week’s EAS meeting was that India, not an APEC member, could perhaps now be brought into this emerging circle of key state-players as eco-friendly protagonists of economic growth.

Greenhouse gas emissions

What happened at the EAS was a different story though. Japan, taking off from its earlier platform of “Cool Earth 50,” now proposed a new package of measures to ensure “a sustainable East Asia.” The idea was that Japan could help its other East Asian partners in adopting eco-friendly but growth-protective technologies to ensure the reduction of worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases by half by 2050. Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda’s EAS partners did not reject his offer. However, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said India would be willing to place a “cap” on greenhouse gas emissions at a level equivalent only to the “cap” that the developed bloc might be ready to apply to itself. And, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao made common cause with Dr. Singh in emphasising how growth would remain a priority for both their countries and how they could consider eco-targets only within the ambit of priorities. In the event, while the APEC consensus was not repudiated, the EAS could not create any fresh consensus that might have covered India as yet another example for the U.S. to follow.

If Mr. Wen and Dr. Singh were able to advance the cause of the developing countries, through their mutually reinforcing presentations at the EAS meeting, there was a political reason too for their bonhomie. Shortly before the EAS convened, they met for the first time after a political crisis rocked New Delhi over India’s civil nuclear energy deal with the U.S. Even as that crisis spiralled, it was seen in the U.S.-friendly circles in East Asia as a new reality check for assessing, over time, India’s credibility as a serious negotiator in sensitive matters. Against this background, it is understood, on good authority, that Mr. Wen was willing to consider cooperation with India on matters relating to peaceful uses of atomic energy within an overall framework of non-proliferation. Later, the Indian side even went public with a formulation that Mr. Wen was “forthcoming and supportive of international civil nuclear energy cooperation with India.”

This China-India meeting and the coincidental commencement of talks between New Delhi and the International Atomic Energy Agency set the stage for the EAS deliberations. And, Mr. Lee’s commendation of India and China for their “eloquent presentations” on their shared concerns about economic growth as “a priority” virtually put India back on the East Asian stage as a serious player.

Chikungunya: Where did the virus really come from?

N. Gopal Raj
The Hindu, 27 November

The disease is believed to have originated in Africa where forest-dwelling mosquitoes circulate the virus among wild non-human primates.

In the space of two years, chikungunya has gone from being a disease known principally to medical specialists to becoming a much-dreaded pestilence that, even if it doesn’t kill, leaves sufferers often enduring months of crippling pain.

Starting in early 2005, this disease, which is caused by a virus spread by mosquitoes, swept through the islands of Comoros, Mayotte, Seychelles, Reunion and Mauritius that lie in the south-western Indian Ocean, not far from the coast of Africa. The epidemic continued into 2006.

From late 2005 onwards, hospitals in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra found themselves swamped with patients complaining of fever and joint pain, which turned out to be chikungunya. Large numbers of people fell victim to the virus in these States during 2006, and the disease spread to other parts of the country as well. The statistics on the website of the Union Government’s National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme show that some 1.4 million people in the country may have contracted the disease in 2006.

From Kerala to Italy

Kerala continued to reel from the disease this year as well, and cases of chikungunya have been reported from West Bengal and Orissa too. A few months ago, Italy discovered, to its alarm, that a returning resident, who picked up the infection in Kerala, set off a chain of transmission with local mosquitoes in two neighbouring villages in the north-east of the country. There are now fears that viral transmission could resume when mosquito numbers increase again in the spring of 2008. As a result, chikungunya might spread further in Italy and perhaps to other parts of Europe as well.

Chikungunya is believed to have originated in Africa where forest-dwelling mosquitoes circulate the virus among wild non-human primates. “In South Africa, chikungunya is transmitted between African Grey Vervet monkeys and also between baboons by mosquitoes belonging to the Aedes furcifer/cordellieri complex,” according to Peter Jupp, a medical entomologist formerly with the country’s National Institute for Viology (NIV) and National Institute of Communicable Diseases. “The same mosquitoes feed on man and infect him when he is present in the same areas where the monkey-mosquito cycle is occurring,” he told this correspondent in an e-mail. However, the virus was not thought to be endemic in South Africa itself, but could be entering the country from neighbouring Zimbabwe and Mozambique, he added.

The chikungunya virus was first isolated from the blood serum of a patient during a dengue-like epidemic that broke out in Tanzania in 1953. Since then, many outbreaks of the disease have been documented in Africa, South Asia and South-East Asia.

In India, the first recorded outbreak happened in Kolkata in 1963, followed by epidemics along the the east coast and elsewhere during 1964 and 1965. Nearly four lakh cases were reported in Chennai alone in 1964. Then there was an outbreak in the small town of Barsi in Maharashtra in 1973.

“After that [the Barsi outbreak], there was silence,” remarked Vidya Arankalle, senior deputy director of the NIV in Pune, in the course of a talk she gave during the recent annual meeting of the Indian Academy of Sciences in Thiruvananthapuram. In view of the long absence of chikungunya epidemics, it was postulated that the virus had disappeared from India and South-East Asia, she observed in a paper published along her colleagues in the Journal of General Virology earlier this year.

The virus then re-emerged with a bang. “The scope of the 2005-2007 outbreaks is certainly of unprecedented magnitude,” noted Ann Powers and Christopher Logue of the Division of Vector-Borne Infectious Diseases of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in a review paper published this year.

Using the latest tools at their disposal, including the ability to sequence and scrutinise the viral genes, scientists are trying to understand how the strain that set off the 2005-2007 outbreaks might have emerged and what makes this virus so virulent.

Based on their genetic similarities, chikungunya viral strains fall into three groups. Two of these groups are primarily Africa-based: the strains of the West African type form one cluster while those from East, Central and South Africa (ECSA) form a separate one. The third group comprises of strains found in Asia.

A team of French scientists sequenced almost the entire genome of six viral samples and partially sequenced a single gene of another 127 viral samples from the Indian Ocean island outbreaks. The study published last year by Isabelle Shuffenecker and fellow scientists at the Institut Pasteur in France in collaboration with clinicians and virologists showed that the same strain had caused those outbreaks and that it belonged to the ECSA grouping.

“Although, to our knowledge, no outbreak was reported recently in East Africa, this scenario is compatible with the human population exchanges between East Africa and Comoros [island], where the outbreak is believed to have started,” observed the scientists in their PLoS Medicine paper. But the possibility of the epidemic strain having been produced by the evolution of a hitherto animal virus could not be excluded, they added.

When NIV scientists sequenced viruses involved in outbreaks in five Indian States during 2006, they discovered that these too belonged to the ECSA group. Hitherto, the viral strains that caused previous outbreaks of chikungunya in the country had been of the Asian type. Moreover, the 99.9 per cent genome sequence similarity between the strains found in the Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean and in India “implies circulation of the same strains in both countries,” concluded the NIV scientists in their journal paper. “It also indicates a possibility of spread of the current strain from Indian Ocean islands to India, leading to an explosive epidemic of the ECSA genotype and not the Asian genotype that circulated earlier,” they added.

But there is another possible origin for the epidemic strain. In 2000, the chikungunya virus had been isolated from a mosquito found in the town of Yawat in Maharastra, although no cases were reported among humans at the time. “This strain has suddenly become very important for us,” remarked Dr. Arankalle in her talk at Thiruvananthapuram. When the genome of this virus was sequenced, it too was found to belong to the ECSA group and not the Asian variety. “That means we had the African genotype in India before ... the epidemic came in 2005,” she pointed out.

So might the Yawat strain have continued to circulate quietly in India since 2000, accumulating mutations till finally it turned into a form that spread with devastating rapidity and virulence among humans?

NIV scientists have been re-analysing their samples going back to 2001, taken from patients with dengue-like symptoms but who tested negative for dengue. They found that sporadic cases of chikungunya had indeed occurred in India between 2001 and 2004. “Right now what we are trying to do is to get [the] virus out of these cases,” said Dr. Arankalle in Thiruvananthapuram. “If we can get [the] virus from one of these cases, then we will be able to sort out as to why the Yawat virus did not produce the disease and what happened subsequently till 2005 when we had such a bad epidemic.”

However, in a brief piece published in the New England Journal of Medicine this year, Sylvain Brisse, Isabelle Iteman and Dr. Schuffenecker of the Institut Pasteur took the view that the strain that caused the outbreak in India was not the same as the one responsible for the disease on the Indian Ocean islands. Their analysis was based on comparing the genetic sequences among different strains for the viral gene that codes for one particular protein (E1). They also argued against “a direct link” between the Yawat strain and the strain implicated in the 2005-2006 Indian outbreak. But the fact that the Indian and Indian Ocean isolates shared two changes in their E1 gene sequence indicated a common ancestry for both, they stated.

Twist in the tale

There is, however, a further twist in the tale. E. Sreekumar and his team at the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology in Thiruvananthapuram have been examining viral samples from chikungunya cases in Kerala during 2006 and 2007. They found that the E1 gene sequence of four viral samples from Kerala this year showed an extraordinary level of resemblence to that of the Reunion Island strain. One possibility was that the virus circulating in the State had mutated, observed Dr. Sreekumar. The alternative explanation would be that a strain that originated in the Indian Ocean islands had a hand in this year’s epidemic in the State. “We need to do more analysis to answer that question,” he told The Hindu.

Maharashtra ’s head-in-the-sand syndrome

P. Sainath
The Hindu, November 27

Vilasrao Deshmukh clearly believes he has been merciful towards those committing the ‘crime’ of suicide. Thanks to his government’s generosity, close to 32,000 farmers who have taken their lives in his State since 1995 have gone scot-free.

“Committing suicide is an offence under the Indian Penal Code. But did we book any farmer for this offence? Have you reported that?” — Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh on farm suicides in Vidharbha.

That is the Chief Minister’s response to media questions on the ongoing farm suicides in Vidharbha. He has gone on record with that statement in an interview. (The Hindustan Times, October 31.) Leave aside for the moment this incorrect reading of the law. Mr. Deshmukh clearly believes he has been merciful towards those committing the ‘crime’ of suicide. Thanks to his government’s generosity, close to 32,000 farmers in his State wh o have taken their lives since 1995 go scot-free. Imagine what would happen should he decide to book them for their ‘crime.’ For the record, on average, one farmer committed suicide every three hours in Maharashtra between 1997 and 2005. Since 2002, that has worsened to one such suicide every two-and-a-quarter hours. Those numbers emerge from official data. This could be the State’s worst tragedy in living memory.

Of course, the question arises: who would he punish if he decides to enforce what he believes is the law? And how would he do so? Would their ashes be disinterred from wherever to face the consequences of their actions? Would the awful majesty of the law be visited upon their survivors to teach them never to stray from the path of righteous conduct? Or — more likely — would his government set up yet another commission to look into the matter?

Under Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code, attempting suicide is a crime. A suicide effort that succeeds places the victim beyond Mr. Deshmukh’s reach anyway. Beyond anything for that matter. As one of India’s foremost legal minds says: “the odd thing about suicide in India is that failing to commit it is a crime. One who succeeds in it is obviously beyond punishment. But the one who fails in his attempt to commit it could be in trouble. You could then be booked for ‘attempted suicide,’ an offence punishable by fine and even imprisonment.”

Abetment to suicide (Section 306) is also a crime. One that places Mr. Deshmukh’s government in the dock if we persist with this logic of ‘punishment.’ His Ministry has been widely criticised on the farm suicides in this State. Many point to the rash of suicides that occurred soon after the government withdrew the ‘advance bonus’ of Rs.500 per quintal of cotton in 2005. A move that tanked cotton prices and brought disaster to lakhs of farmers in the State.

Worse, his is a government which came to power that very year on a promise of giving cotton farmers a price of Rs.2700 a quintal. At the time, they were getting a mere Rs.2200 a quintal. A sum the government conceded was quite uneconomical. Further, neither the State nor the Central government took any steps at all to counter the distortion of global cotton prices. Prices crashed as both the United States and the European Union piled on subsidies worth billions of dollars to boost their cotton sectors.

To top it all, the Deshmukh government withdrew the ‘advance bonus’ soon after coming to power. That brought the price down to just over Rs.1700 a quintal. And the Centre did not raise import duties on cotton despite desperate pleas for such an action. This allowed the large scale dumping of U.S. cotton on this country, further crushing the farmers here. No, Section 306 is not something Mr. Deshmukh’s government would want to look into too closely.

But to be fair to Mr. Deshmukh, he is neither unique nor alone in this mindset. There is something wrong with a society where suicide data are put together by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). The idea is in-built: suicide is a crime. From that flows Mr. Deshmukh’s simple notion of punishment. But he did not author the idea. He simply took it to unknown levels of insensitivity. With this statement, the Chief Minister outdid his previous effort when he made remarks about Vidharbha’s farmers that caused a furore. Remarks that suggested that they were both lazy and less than honest. Of course, he soon rallied to say he had been “quoted out of context.” (The Hindu, September 15, 2007). So maybe he will do so this time, too.

But he has certainly got the law out of context. What does Section 309 of the IPC really say? It states that “whoever attempts to commit suicide and does any act towards the commission of such an offence shall be punished with simple imprisonment for a term which may extend to one year or with a fine or with both.”

Fact: even the British Raj seems never to have used Section 309 against Mahatma Gandhi or other fasting leaders. And they had the excuse to do so when faced with, for instance, fasts unto death. This surely had less to do with humane behaviour than the hope that leaders like Gandhi would succeed in their fast unto death and rid the empire of a menace. Still the fact is: they did not resort to Section 309.

Mr. Deshmukh’s words suggest that he is holding himself back with much effort. If governments do start enforcing Section 309, the damage would be huge. For every farm suicide that occurs, there are a fairly large number of attempts that fail. Mostly, the police do not press the issue too hard. Even they see the ill logic of oppressing someone in misery who tries, but fails, to take his or her own life. (Such pressures have in a few cases, triggered a second — successful — attempt at suicide.) Following the ‘punishment’ logic would make life a living hell for those already in despair.


Decriminalising attempted suicide


For decades, social and legal workers and activists have struggled to decriminalise attempted suicide. One of them is Dr. Lakshmi Vijay Kumar, a consultant with the World Health Organisation on suicide research and prevention. As she puts it: “It’s a crazy law. One which only a handful of nations still retain. Most others have withdrawn it years ago. Apart from us, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Singapore seem to still have this kind of law. Sri Lanka too did but withdrew it in 1998. It’s a law that punishes those most in need of help. A move to repeal it went through the Rajya Sabha in 1974. The bill was also introduced in the Lok Sabha but that house was dissolved before it could see it through.” The Section was even struck down by a Supreme Court ruling in 1994. However, it was later reinstated by a full bench.

As we write, the Maharashtra Assembly is in session. In the tiny Assembly session ahead, the question of farm suicides is sure to crop up. Why is Maharashtra, with more dollar billionaires and millionaires than any other State in the country, home to the largest number of farmers’ suicides in India? Why is it that farm suicides in this State trebled between 1995 and 2005? Why did they go up so massively in a State where suicides amongst non-farmers fell marginally in the same period?

All the data on farm suicides carried in The Hindu (Nov.12-15) are from the National Crime Records Bureau, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. They are not the data of this newspaper. Nor of Professor K. Nagaraj of the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS) who authored the study reported in the paper. They are government data. So if Mr. Deshmukh’s outfit has different numbers for the State Assembly, it could be in danger of committing contempt of the house.

Maybe someone in the house will raise other questions too. Queries that go, as they should, way beyond the suicides. The suicides are, after all, a tragic window to a much larger agrarian crisis. They are a symptom of massive rural distress, not the process. A consequence of misery, not its cause. How many more commissions will the government appoint to tell itself what it wants to hear? When will it address the problems of price, credit and input costs, for instance? When will it, if at all, reflect on the role of cash crops in the crisis? When will it push Delhi to set up a Centre-State price stabilisation fund? When will it dig its head out of the sand?