The ugly truth - A State Being Driven Towards Social Strife
Ravindra Kumar
The Statesman, 23 November
The Government of West Bengal and its Chief Minister can perhaps be excused for failing to anticipate that a protest organized by an occasionally strident but generally benign Muslim organization could turn violent, especially when the ostensible grouse was the continued presence of an author from across the border.
The Government of West Bengal cannot be excused for ignoring words of caution sounded by several persons, some of them of the highest eminence, including the Governor of West Bengal and a retired judge of the Supreme Court who until the other day was the repository of Marxist wisdom and the best known practitioner of judicial circumlocution. There were others, too, such as this writer, of far lesser consequence but no less earnest in the belief that the state was being driven towards social strife.
Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee ignored everyone who tried to show him the error of his ways; failed to assess why Mr Gopalkrishna Gandhi felt a sense of “cold horror”. His colleague in the Communist Party of India (Marxist), and the party’s state secretary, Mr Biman Bose, did worse by heaping scorn on those who offered constructive, but unpalatable advice.
Disastrous politics
Early last month, this writer had warned of the consequences of the Government’s disastrous policies: “But does Mr Bhattacharjee realize what he is doing? To the cause of administration? To the cause of stable, strife-free civil society? Indeed to the cause of his political party? To understand this, it is necessary to evaluate what this government has accomplished in the months since Mr Bhattacharjee’s party was returned to power in 2006... It has managed to alienate Muslims by a show of brute force in stifling opposition to plans for a chemical hub in Muslim-dominated Nandigram. It would require an incredibly naïve administrator to assume there would be no consequences of such actions in a state where one of four citizens is a Muslim. This, too, is a festering wound, for while plans for a chemical hub in Nandigram may have been shelved the trauma of having lived in fear will not dissipate in a hurry.”
In March, I had asked, “Who would have thought that the CPI(M) would face so much opposition to its programmes from its own allies, to the extent that some of them would even think about calibrating their support? Or that significant numbers of the state’s Muslims, hitherto considered a safe vote bank, would actually resist a Marxist administration in the manner that they have?”
That article eight months ago added: “Worse, his administration has been hopelessly ham-handed, even dishonest in dealing with crises. The rape and killing of a girl in Singur was brushed under the carpet; the suicide of a farmer was described as the outcome of family squabbles; the first wave in killings in Nandigram were attributed to Muslim fundamentalists, and the police action this week is sought to be justified as a necessary consequence of the administration imposing its will on the people. In the midst of all this, there has not been one gesture of humility, not one show of spontaneous humanitarian concern for those who died, not one piece of evidence to suggest that Mr Bhattacharjee is capable of owning up to a mistake.”
The Statesman, 23 November
The Government of West Bengal and its Chief Minister can perhaps be excused for failing to anticipate that a protest organized by an occasionally strident but generally benign Muslim organization could turn violent, especially when the ostensible grouse was the continued presence of an author from across the border.
The Government of West Bengal cannot be excused for ignoring words of caution sounded by several persons, some of them of the highest eminence, including the Governor of West Bengal and a retired judge of the Supreme Court who until the other day was the repository of Marxist wisdom and the best known practitioner of judicial circumlocution. There were others, too, such as this writer, of far lesser consequence but no less earnest in the belief that the state was being driven towards social strife.
Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee ignored everyone who tried to show him the error of his ways; failed to assess why Mr Gopalkrishna Gandhi felt a sense of “cold horror”. His colleague in the Communist Party of India (Marxist), and the party’s state secretary, Mr Biman Bose, did worse by heaping scorn on those who offered constructive, but unpalatable advice.
Disastrous politics
Early last month, this writer had warned of the consequences of the Government’s disastrous policies: “But does Mr Bhattacharjee realize what he is doing? To the cause of administration? To the cause of stable, strife-free civil society? Indeed to the cause of his political party? To understand this, it is necessary to evaluate what this government has accomplished in the months since Mr Bhattacharjee’s party was returned to power in 2006... It has managed to alienate Muslims by a show of brute force in stifling opposition to plans for a chemical hub in Muslim-dominated Nandigram. It would require an incredibly naïve administrator to assume there would be no consequences of such actions in a state where one of four citizens is a Muslim. This, too, is a festering wound, for while plans for a chemical hub in Nandigram may have been shelved the trauma of having lived in fear will not dissipate in a hurry.”
In March, I had asked, “Who would have thought that the CPI(M) would face so much opposition to its programmes from its own allies, to the extent that some of them would even think about calibrating their support? Or that significant numbers of the state’s Muslims, hitherto considered a safe vote bank, would actually resist a Marxist administration in the manner that they have?”
That article eight months ago added: “Worse, his administration has been hopelessly ham-handed, even dishonest in dealing with crises. The rape and killing of a girl in Singur was brushed under the carpet; the suicide of a farmer was described as the outcome of family squabbles; the first wave in killings in Nandigram were attributed to Muslim fundamentalists, and the police action this week is sought to be justified as a necessary consequence of the administration imposing its will on the people. In the midst of all this, there has not been one gesture of humility, not one show of spontaneous humanitarian concern for those who died, not one piece of evidence to suggest that Mr Bhattacharjee is capable of owning up to a mistake.”
It is inarguably in the poorest taste to repeat oneself, or to suggest in the midst of tragedy that I told you so. The protest on Wednesday may well have been aimed at Taslima Nasreen but it was staged ~ or from a Marxist perspective, hijacked ~ by people seething over the violence in Nandigram and the conduct of Mr Bhattacharjee’s administration in the days following the death of Rizwanur Rehman. More than anything else, it was the reaction of people who felt they had been taken for granted, for far too long.
In the Rizwan case and with Nandigram, the High Court had to intervene, and on both occasions, the Left Front was seen as accepting judicial pronouncements less than gracefully. Indeed, some leaders had the gall to suggest that the court’s orders ~ on petitions from ordinary, affected people ~ were an interference with the powers of the executive! In the face of such monumental arrogance, how could Mr Bhattacharjee, Mr Bose and Mr Benoy Konar not have expected people to erupt some day? It was bound to happen, and it did.
The CPI-M prides itself on its meetings and its conclaves. Do the party’s leaders now realize that these meetings are now little more than platforms for powerful leaders to mouth pre-settled positions, and are not the interactive sessions they would have us believe they are? If these meetings, in the party’s headquarters in New Delhi and in Alimuddin Street, were truly interactive sessions someone would have told Mr Bhattacharjee he was playing with fire. The party general secretary would have had him on the mat, and given him the dressing down he so clearly deserves.
Instead a handful of leaders, representing a confluence of vested interests, kept getting into huddles and kept saying the same or similar things ~ the Maoists are responsible, the reactionary Right is responsible, the Governor should join the Trinamul Congress, the media ought to have been shut down and the judiciary is crossing all bounds.
Maoists? In Communist-ruled West Bengal, thirty years after the silent revolution of the proletariat? If indeed there are Maoists advocating armed struggle in this egalitarian paradise of Mr Jyoti Basu and Mr Bhattacharjee, Marxism must have failed. Yet, it requires an especially compromised intellect to blame the Maoists over and over again for every failure of administration.
But perhaps the greatest tragedy for West Bengal is that the ruling party in the state is an intrinsic part of the coalition ruling at the Centre. Dependent on the Left's support, the Centre has failed to play the role it is expected to when the administration in the state has blundered. Such a role need not necessarily involve the invocation of Articles 355 or 356, but could even be a reprimand ~ gentle or severe as the circumstances may warrant ~ from the Prime Minister or Home Minister.
Problem to crisis
Instead, we have had at various times, and as the state regressed from problem to crisis, the Prime Minister first praising the Chief Minister and then, in the face of overwhelming evidence of incompetence, only mildly rebuking him. We have had the Home Minister waffle on in the Lok Sabha and the Information and Broadcasting minister indulge in the most palpable kind of fence-sitting. In the matter of West Bengal, Dr Manmohan Singh has shown himself to be a weakling, indeed an embarrassment, although it must be said in fairness to him that he has yet to receive his cue from Mrs Sonia Gandhi.
For whatever reason, the state government did react to the problems in central Kolkata on Wednesday. It called the Army out, and this is not the time to ponder if such alacrity was prompted by the desire to distance its police from any possible action against Muslims, or whether the reaction was excessive. The important thing is that violence has not spread. However, the Army will return to its barracks, and West Bengal will have to confront once again the ugly scar the Marxist administration has left on the psyche of its people. That is the ugly truth we have to live with.
The writer is Editor, The Statesman.
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