A
Bridge Too Far
By Satya Sagar
12 June,2007
Combat
Law
The
afternoon wind whistles through the cluster of young Casurina trees
that dot the banks of the Talpati Khal, a canal that runs between the
Nandigram and Khejuri blocks of East Medinipur district of West Bengal.
Approaching from the village
of Sonachura, on the Nandigram side, you come upon the Bangabhera bridge,
a narrow cement and mortar structure that spans the muddy waters of
the canal.
The locals call this the ‘border’. Taking a closer look
it is not difficult to see the rationale behind this somewhat strange
sobriquet.
Ever since a virtual civil
war began in January this year, between the people of Nandigram and
state authorities over the latter’s attempts to take over farming
land for a chemical hub project, this bridge has become like an international
boundary dividing two hostile nations.
On the Khejuri side of the bridge fly a chorus of flags of the Communist
Party of India (Marxist) or CPI(M), which rules West Bengal, fluttering
ferociously, even menacingly for some. As far as the people of Nandigram
are concerned, this is ‘enemy’ territory, the launch pad
of regular raids and assaults by the police and the ruling party cadre.
On the other side, the road
is all dug up at the point where it meets the bridge—making passage
impossible for anything that moves on wheels. And, given the phenomenal
violence that has occurred over the past four months — particularly
the gory events of March 14, 2007 - no one dares to traverse this distance
by foot either.
“We have relatives
in Khejuri but we cannot predict what will happen to us if we go there
to meet them” says Suhasini Paik from Sonachura, an ageing small
farmer, who repeatedly asks our small team of two journalists and one
medical worker to stay back for the night to get an idea of the tension
in the area.
Every night, according to
her and other villagers, CPI(M) cadre from Khejuri come on to the bridge,
lob grenades and fire guns into the villages nearby forcing residents
to flee their houses and sleep out in the nearby shrub land. A day after
our visit in the third week of April, news media reported fresh violence
in the area — this time guns blazing from both sides of the canal.
The history
It was not always like this
though. Even just six months ago the two administrative blocks of Nandigram
one and two — like the entire surrounding area in East Medinipur
and nearby districts — were some of the strongest bastions of
the CPI (M), the main constituent of the Left Front government in the
state.
Lakshman Seth, member of
Parliament representing Nandigram, which falls under the Tamluk Lok
Sabha constituency, belongs to the CPI (M). Ilyas Mohammad, the member
of the legislative assembly, is from the Communist Party of India (CPI),
a Left Front partner. Besides, six out of seven panchayats that fall
within the area are controlled by the CPI(M).
Not just that, Nandigram has been a communist stronghold from even before
the time of Indian freedom from colonial rule, with the people of Nandigram
and Tamluk subdivisions forming their own ‘independent’
government in 1942, ousting the British administration from the area
for months.
Farmers from this area also
took part in the tebhaga movement in 1946 under the leadership of the
then undivided CPI. Nandigram villagers have a long record of fighting
the police and other state authorities, even violently if necessary,
to protect their rights. Over the last three decades however, they have
remained loyal to the ruling Left Front regime, voting repeatedly for
their candidates in all elections.
The Singur effect
All this changed last year
when rumours began to circulate in Nandigram that some of the mouzas
or villages and cultivation land in the area might be acquired by the
state government for setting up a Special Economic Zone (SEZ), the latest
brainchild of India’s economic liberalisers for attracting global
capital.
High on the minds of the villagers of Nandigram were events then underway
in Singur, 40 kms out of Kolkata, and the site of a small car factory
to be set up by the Tata group of companies. What they saw happening
there was the forcible takeover of around 1,000 acres of highly fertile
farming land by the Left Front government on behalf of one of India’s
largest corporate houses.
“We have relatives
in Khejuri but we cannot predict what will happen to us if we go there
to meet them”, says Suhasini Paik from Sonachura, an ageing small
farmer, who repeatedly asks our small team of two journalists and one
medical worker to stay back"
In Singur, while a section of absentee landowners had agreed to sell
their land to the state, a bulk of farmers and sharecroppers in the
area refused to acquiesce. In response, the state government occupied
and fenced the Singur land, imposing section 144 of the Indian penal
code to prohibit public protests — in other words using brute
force to oust farmers from their own land.
So when towards the end of 2006 state ministers and CPI(M) leaders started
talking publicly of setting up a huge chemical hub in Nandigram under
the Salim group, an Indonesian multinational, the local folk here started
getting agitated.
At a public meeting in Nandigram
market on December 29, 2006, the CPI(M) member of Parliament, Lakshman
Seth, urged farmers to pave the way for development and industrialisation
in Nandigram by giving up their lands in return for monetary compensation.
Seth, who is also the chairman of the Haldia Development Authority,
in his speech, named the villages that would have to make way for the
chemical hub. The total area to be acquired was a whopping 14,500 acres
to set up the SEZ that would include a mega chemical and petrochemical
hub and a shipyard.
Though, according to CPI(M) leaders, no final decision has yet been
taken about the exact location of the projects, an informal notice for
public information regarding likely location of this project was circulated
by the Haldia Development Authority to all blocks and Gram Panchayat
offices of the area.
This announcement, however,
was enough to aggravate tension in the area as resentment grew among
villagers at not being consulted on the issue and at the thought of
being kicked out of their ancestral lands. “If we leave our land
we will become beggars in the cities,” says Jayanti, another resident
of Sonchura, explaining the strong sentiments behind the local resistance.
On January 3, 2007, villagers clashed with a police patrol that was
surveying the Nandigram area. According to the CPI(M), the police had
to be called in after members of the opposition Trinamool Congress ransacked
the office of the local panchayat pradhan. Four people were injured
in the police lathicharge and gunfire that ensued while one police jeep
was set on fire by an angry mob.
On January 5, 2007, several opposition party groups that had already
been working in the area — ranging from the Trinamool Congress
to the Socialist Unity Centre of India and the Santosh Rana faction
of the CPI(Marxist-Leninist Liberation) decided to join hands to form
the Bhumi Uchchhed Protirodh Committee (BUPC) loosely translated as
‘committee for resistance to eviction from homeland’.
According to locals, the
response to this political consolidation of opposition forces got a
swift response from the ruling CPI(M). In the early morning on January
7, villagers alleged, CPI(M) cadres, armed with sticks, knives and guns
attacked Nandigram, crossing the Bangabhera bridge from Khejuri. The
official CPI(M) version is that it is the BUPC members who started the
fight by attacking their people camped in Khejuri.
Whoever started the fight,
in the process three people from Nandigram — Bharat Mandal, Shekh
Salim and Biswajit Maiti (just 12 years old) — died of bullet
injuries. In retaliation, enraged villagers lynched Shankar Samanta,
a local landlord accused of giving shelter to what they called CPI(M)
goons and also taking part in the firings after which they ransacked
and burnt down his palatial house close to the bridge.
Every night, according to
her and other villagers, CPI(M) cadre from Khejuri come on to the bridge,
lob grenades and fire guns into the villages nearby forcing residents
to flee their houses and sleep out in the nearby shrub land
It was following this incident
that the locals decided to dig a trench on the road connecting the Bangabhera
bridge to Nandigram and block the road further with tree-trunks, boulders
and bricks.
Civil war unfolds
In the weeks and months after
the violence of early January, the Bangabhera bridge and adjoining areas
became a war zone with almost daily attacks by CPI(M) cadre who had
gathered in Khejuri, villagers said. These cadres included some of those
who had left the Nandigram area, along with their families, due to threats
from those opposed to the acquisition of land for the chemical hub project.
In response, Nandigram villagers
blockaded all entry points into their area making it a no-go zone for
the state officials, particularly police. There are reports that some
arms and ammunition also found its way into the hands of locals to be
used against what has been termed as the superior firepower of the CPI(M)
cadre, who, after all, also had the backing of state authorities.
Nandigram villagers blockaded
all entry points...There are reports that some arms and ammunition also
found its way into the hands of locals to be used against the 'superior
firepower' of the CPI (M) cadre
Surrounded as they were by
the sea on one side and the CPI(M) on the other three sides, life got
tough for Nandigram residents. They had not been able to carry on with
their normal agricultural work for all these months. Those who had to
go out of the area to work in nearby towns, like the busy industrial
port of Haldia would often reportedly be pulled out of buses they were
in and manhandled by the CPI(M) cadres. According to reports in the
Bengali media, often they would be asked to get down and walk back home.
Doublespeak
While all this was going
on, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee announced at
several public meetings that the proposed chemical hub would not be
set up at Nandigram if villagers did not want it there. However, the
original notification issued by the Haldia Development Authority, outlining
the land to be acquired for the SEZ, was never withdrawn or officially
annulled.
In fact behind the talk of
reconciliation and dialogue with the villagers, it appears now that
the local MP Lakshman Seth and his men were preparing for a massive
assault on Nandigram with two objectives. First was to clear opposition
to acquisition of land and pave way for the Salim Group of Indonesia
to commence work on the chemical hub. The second goal, keeping with
the CPI(M)’s long history of crushing dissent of any kind —
within and outside the party — was to teach the recalcitrant people
of Nandigram a ‘lesson’ they would never forget.
While it is not the first
time the party has used sheer muscle power to browbeat its opponents,
the price it may end up paying for its display of hubris on March 14,
2007 in Nandigram may end up far higher than anything in the past.
There is no other word to
describe what happened in Nandigram on March 14, 2007 except as a massacre
— the true scale of which will never really be known.
On one side were thousands
of unarmed Nandigram folk — mostly women and children —
gathered in the early hours of morning near the Bangabhera bridge to
peacefully block any attempts by the state forces to invade their villages.
Ranged against them was a
police contingent of at least two thousand along with several hundred
armed cadre of the CPI(M) — some of them allegedly dressed in
ill-fitting police uniforms.
Though the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), on orders of from
the Calcutta High Court, has prepared a report on what really happened
on that day, no one knows when, or if at all, the report will be made
public. Establishing the truth about the events of March 14 are crucial
to firstly bring all the culprits responsible for rape and murder to
justice and secondly to restore peace in the area — which is now
in the throes of a little civil war of its own. To date, no compensation
has been announced for the victims by the government nor has any minister
or senior administrator even bothered to visit the place.
Given below are excerpts
from a report based on the testimonies of 62 patients and about 200
villagers met by a fact-finding team sent to Nandigram on March 15 and
16 by the Association for Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR) and
Paschim Banga Khet Mazdoor Samity (PBKMS).
The event
"People were aware that
there would be an attempt by the police and party goons to re-enter
the area as a first step towards taking over their land. They decided
to offer peaceful resistance by organising a Gouranga puja (incidentally
Gouranga is a god that protects those who worship him). They also planned
a Koran recitation ceremony.
Once this programme me was
known, people flocked to the spots where the puja was being held. At
Bangabhera, the puja was in a trench that had been cut in the road earlier.
About 5,000-6,000 people were present, of whom 3,000 were women and
about 400-500 children. The mob was unarmed as they were in a religious
ceremony.
The women and children decided
to stand in front as the people assumed that the police would not be
violent with women and children. A large police force with firearms
and tear gas arrived in vehicles and buses on the Khejuri side of the
Talpati Khal in the morning. They were accompanied by many armed CPI(M)
goons.
At Bangabhera Bridge, they
first filled up a large trench near the bridge. None opposed this. They
then began advancing across the bridge. There seems to have been no
prior warning. A few report that Anup Mondal of the CPI(M) was using
a hand mike, but most heard nothing and were not forewarned about the
police action.
Without any proper warning
the police began throwing tear gas shells. This blinded the crowd and
created confusion and panic. During this period, the police and the
goons began firing and advanced while spraying bullets.
While the firing continued
for about 15 minutes, the violence followed for the next hour-and-a-half
or so. There are many complaints of horrific and deliberate violence
during this phase and afterwards.
Women were taken away and
allegedly raped. Women who tried to hide or wash their burning eyes
in the pond were forced to come out and then beaten up again. Houses
and shops were looted. Instead of using least force necessary, the policy
seem to have been of using maximum force to instil fear and terror in
people and to break their spirits. Fourteen persons from amongst those
who were resisting the attacks were also arrested. Grievous false offences
have been filed against them.
Death toll
According to official statement,
14 persons died due to police firing. Out of them, nine bodies were
not identified till March 16, 2007.
According to all the 200
or more villagers we met and the patients admitted in Tamluk Hospital
and Nandigram Hospital, more than 100 persons had died in the firing.
They alleged that most of the bodies were taken away by the police and
CPI(M) goons by trucks towards Khejuri or buried under the newly repaired
road at Bangabhera.
Violence against
women
The violence that erupted
in Nandigram on March 14 found the police and CPI(M) cadres specifically
targeting women. Of the 62 testimonies that we gathered in the hospital
and from other victims outside, 30 are from women. In the injured list
at Nandigram BPHC, out of 69 persons 39 were women. Interviews with
scores of villagers and their testimonies brought home one point —
that specific and systematic violence was used against the women to
humiliate them and to break the backbone of their resistance.
Women who were beaten up
complained of the abusive language used that they could not repeat.
The lathicharge was more aimed at the breasts, stomach and genital regions
of their body. Male police took it onto themselves to lathicharge the
women though there were women police around.
Women who were not even participating in the puja but standing around
were caught in the fire round and beaten mercilessly.
Apart from the lathicharge
and firing the police and the CPI(M) cadres resorted to various forms
of sexual violence which included ripping clothes of women and leaving
them naked lying in the open. Girls were pushed forcefully into vans
and cars and driven away.
When we met the nursing staff at Nandigram Block Hospital we enquired
if any women had been raped. A nurse denied this. However, other people
in the hospital informed one of our women team members about two patients
who had been raped. It is only after this that these cases at our initiative
were registered as rape cases.
Violence against
children
Along with women, children
who were present in huge numbers to participate and witness the puja
also faced the brunt of the police firing and lathicharge. Scores of
people have alleged that children were torn apart, hurled into ponds
and killed. Many people have testified to children being shot at and
killed.
Of the 38 missing, 11 are
children. In addition to this we received a few other reports of children
who were missing/killed.
Police camps have now been
set up in four educational institutions affecting education in the area.
These schools are as follows:
Sitananda College, Nandigram
GK Shiksha Niketan, Gokulnagar
Gokulnagar Gobinda Jew Shiksha Niketan, Gokulnagar
KCA Milan Mandir, Sonachura
The education of about 2500-3000
students have been affected in this process.
Wall to gladden Wall Street
The East Germans had their Berlin Wall, the Israelis have their infamous
apartheid wall to keep out Palestinians and now the Indian state of
West Bengal has one too — in the district of Singur — to
keep farmers out of their own land.
Within just a year after
the ruling Left Front government forcibly acquired nearly 1,000 acres
of fertile, agricultural land to hand over to the Tata group for a car
manufacturing plant, a four meter high wall has come up to prevent its
original owners from ‘raiding’ the land for cultivation.
A contingent of several hundred heavily armed policemen, some of them
atop high watch towers, guard the property on a 24x7 basis while company
excavators dig the land to prepare the foundation for the new factory.
Once upon a time, Mahadeb
Das, a small farmer in the area would have been fawning over his four
bighas of land and ‘counting potatoes’ — a product
for which Singur is particularly famous all over the state. Today, however,
he sits idly in a nearby local youth club office staring at the wall
and its uniformed bodyguards — biding his moment.
“As soon as the police
leave the place we will bring down the wall and the factory. We will
start planting our crops again,” he says with a calm confidence.
Other youth sitting near him nod in agreement at the idea.
It seems to be a somewhat
foolish, though touching, statement to make given that he and other
farmers like him are ranged against not just the might of the state
government and the Tata corporate empire but also the formidable cadre-based
organisation of the ruling CPI(M). The ‘red-brigades’ of
the ruling party are fast acquiring a reputation for intimidating all
those opposed to the unabashedly corporate-led industrialisation agenda
in the state.
Complicating the battle for
Mahadeb and others is also the fact that around 30 percent of the land
owners, mostly absentee landlords living in Kolkota, have consented
to sell their land.
The Left Front government has claimed in public statements that of the
997 acres required, it has received consent letters from landowners
for 952 acres.
However, an affidavit filed
in response to an order of the Kolkata High Court by the West Bengal
government on 27 March this year says that compensation cheques have
been collected for just 650 acres till date, which amounts to around
67 percent. Further, around 20 per cent of these seem to have retracted
after the takeover, under the colonial-era Land Acquisition Act of 1894,
that became a fait accompli amidst fear of retribution by the state
and ruling party bosses.
According to Mahadeb, it
is not just the small farmers living in the area but large numbers of
agricultural labour, many of them migrants, whose livelihood will be
severely affected by the state-organised land grab operation. The promise
made by the government of training the local youth to obtain jobs in
the new car factory, he says, is a pipe-dream as the company itself
has not given any guarantee of jobs to local people.
Though the battle between
farmers and state authorities in Singur has not been as fierce as that
in Nandigram, there is no doubt that this is going to be a site of more
struggles in the near and even distant future. Once the Tata car factory
is set up – it is only a matter of time before other private corporations
make a beeline for taking over more agricultural land in the area —
a recipe for complete disaster in one of West Bengal’s richest
farming areas.
“This is a revolution that comes straight from our hearts. We
understand the value of land as a fixed asset and as the only source
of survival our families can depend upon,” says Mahadeb. To understand
his point of view will require the breaking of all the corporate-sponsored
walls that seem to have sprung up in the minds of Bengal’s Marxists-turned-merchant
ruling elite.
The writer is a Delhi based journalist and documentary film-maker
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