Nandigram-III:
Lessons
And Challenges
By
Dipankar Bhattacharya
26 November,
2007
Countercurrents.org
The year 2007 will be remembered
as the year when the CPI(M) completely unmasked itself in the mirror
of Nandigram. If January 2007 was re-enacted in March, November witnessed
a brutal replay of the atrocities perpetrated in March 2007. Each time
the operation has been more lethal and barbaric than the previous episode.
If in March, the massacre was perpetrated under the joint auspices of
the police force and armed marauders patronized by the party, in November
the CPI(M) chose to keep the police in the background letting the party’s
armed machinery be in exclusive charge of the entire operation. But
sure enough, on every occasion, the killings have been preceded by categorical
commands from some central leaders of the CPI(M).
The March
14-15 mayhem had followed in the wake of a televised threat issued by
CPI(M) Central Committee member and peasant association leader Benoy
Konar to make Nandigram a “living hell”. Likewise, the November
killings too were forewarned by none other than Brinda Karat, CPI(M)
Polit Bureau member and Rajya Sabha MP when she publicly advocated “Dumdum
dawai” (direct physical action) to silence Nandigram.
What cruel
jokes history can play! The expression “Dumdum dawai” had
gained popular currency in Bengal in the course of the food movement
of the 1960s when the Left-led masses administered this medicine of
physical action against hoarders and profiteers. Today once again, West
Bengal is in the throes of a powerful food movement, and this time the
movement is directed against the CPI(M)-led government and the nexus
of corrupt PDS dealers, panchayat functionaries, middlemen and government
officials that is almost invariably identified with and blessed by the
CPI(M). There is also another dimension to the “Dumdum dawai”
irony. Rural women have visibly been in the forefront of the Singur-Nandigram
resistance, and they have also had to bear the brunt of the barbaric
repression unleashed by the state-CPI(M) combine. The “Dumdum
dawai” advocated by the ‘firebrand’ women’s
leader of the CPI(M) has been duly delivered in the form of more abuse,
rapes and killings directed at the brave and fighting women of Nandigram.
A comparative
study of the post-incident statements of West Bengal Chief Minister
Buddhadeb Bhattacherjee will also be in order. After Nandigram-I, the
CM said it was wrong on the part of the Haldia Development Authority
to issue the notice announcing the impending acquisition of land. He
asked for the HDA land acquisition notice to be torn and consigned to
the waste-paper basket. Following Nandigram-II, he said the ‘incident’
was unfortunate and as Chief Minister he owned all moral responsibility
(without of course taking any concrete corrective step except withdrawing
the SEZ proposal). The same CM has now greeted Nandigram-III as a case
of tit-for-tat justice: “they have been paid back in their own
coin!”
The timing
of the operation is also worth noting. Nandigram-III happened at a time
when the whole of West Bengal was immersed in Kalipuja-Dipavali festivities.
The focus of the media had already shifted to other issues – Rizwanur’s
‘mysterious death’ in particular. As for the discourse concerning
Nandigram, debates had veered around the need for deployment of central
paramilitary forces with the State Government itself requesting the
Centre for CRPF battalions. In fact, while the operation was on, CRPF
jawans were already on their way to Nandigram, but the actual posting
was delayed by the district administration and the CPI(M) machinery
till “Operation Nandigrab” came to a temporary conclusion!
Meanwhile, activists and mediapersons trying to enter Nandigram also
got a taste of Brinda’s “Dumdum dawai” concoction.
The CPI(M)
may well believe that it has now conclusively won the battle of Nandigram.
With only a few months to go before the forthcoming panchayat elections,
it may reasonably calculate that it has now sufficiently galvanized
its ‘electoral machinery’. But there are indications galore
that it has already lost heavily in the larger war of Nandigram. Inside
West Bengal, the CPI(M)’s mass isolation has reached a new high
as demonstrated so visibly by the unprecedented scale and composition
of the November 14 dhikkar michhil (march of the people condemning the
CPI(M) and its government and congratulating the fighting people of
Singur and Nandigram). From the Governor and High Court and the NHRC
Chief to the media and intelligentsia to its own partners in the Left
Front – the CPI(M) now has to direct its barbs almost at everybody
except its own poor shadow in West Bengal.
In many ways,
the pattern of ossification and degeneration of the CPI(M) rule in West
Bengal resembles the East European syndrome. For an authentic and moving
description of the signs of degeneration of the ‘Left’ powerlords
of West Bengal, one does not have to go any farther than veteran Marxist
economist and writer Ashok Mitra. In one of his recent articles, Mitra
has even gone to the extent of comparing the ruling CPI(M) in Buddahadeb’s
dispensation to the anti-social dominated Congress of the 1970s in Siddhartha
Shankar Ray’s regime. The veteran Marxist is alarmed that this
degeneration may well pave the way for some sort of reactionary and
even fascist revival in West Bengal. Yet Mitra has no hope of a Left
and democratic resurgence in West Bengal and his only weapon against
the rotten present and a frightening future is an ‘appeal’
to the CPI(M) central leadership to read the writing on Kolkata walls.
At the other
end of this spectrum of disillusionment are activists and intellectuals
who either harbour fond hopes of ‘democratising’ and ‘radicalising’
Mamata Banerjee or see a resurgent civil society as the panacea for
all that ails Bengal.
We beg to
differ from both these approaches. While fully sharing the anguish of
Ashok Mitra and wholeheartedly welcoming the new-found activism of the
civil society, we firmly believe that the need of the hour is to reorient
the Left movement in the country along revolutionary lines. The CPI(M)
leaders who camouflage their capitulation to capital and capitalism
as ‘development-oriented class struggle’ and seek to justify
the serial massacres and continuous bloodletting in Nandigram in the
name of ‘peace, justice and democracy’ are doing an unpardonable
disservice to the entire Left and democratic camp in the country. The
Left movement therefore needs a bold new direction and a new leadership.
Indeed, from the fighting rural poor of West Bengal to the progressive
student community of JNU, the yearning for a radical alternative can
be felt everywhere. Let us do all we can to strengthen this alternative
direction and back it with an alternative framework of Left and democratic
unity.
[The author
is General Secretary of the CPI(ML)]
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