The Praful Bidwai Column
The Nandigram carnage
The campaign of armed violence unleashed by Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) cadres in Nandigram in West Bengal marks one of the darkest chapters in the history of the Indian Left.
The campaign involved meticulous planning, state complicity, brutality and sexual assault. It has tarnished the Left's image as the most principled component of India's political spectrum, which represents the poor and upholds constitutionalism, public decency, and peaceful conflict resolution.
The March firing, which killed 14, showed that the CPM can unleash, for entirely sectarian reasons, violence against working people -- from whom it derives its very rationale.
The episode was rooted in the CPM's decision to "capture" two of Nandigram's three blocks, over which it had lost control early this year after it tried to impose a Special Economic Zone on the people. The 25,000-acre SEZ was to be created by forcibly acquiring land for Indonesia's Salim group -- a front for the super-corrupt dictator Gen Suharto.
The SEZ was abandoned because of grassroots resistance, led by the Bhumi Ucched Pratirodh Committee (BUPC), formed among others by CPM-rival Trianmool Congress.
Nandigram's public defied land acquisition. But the CPM threatened to "make life hell" for them. It wouldn't countenance not being Nandigram's sole representative. It started intimidating and evicting ordinary people, turning thousands into refugees.
There was some BUCP counter-violence, but it paled beside the state-assisted attacks by the powerful ruling party. Up to 200 CPM supporters had to be housed in refugee camps -- a circumstance the party cynically used to justify more violence. But the number uprooted by its cadres ran into several thousands.
On March 14, CPM cadres attacked several villages and indulged in arson, looting and rape. Independent inquiries by citizens' groups and scholars with Left-wing credentials established that pro-CPM thugs led the planned punitive attacks. Some donned fake police uniforms, but wore slippers. The cover-up, too, was planned, including doctoring of medical records.
A People's Tribunal on Nandigram, consisting of a retired High Court chief justice, a reputed columnist, and social activists, recorded 39 oral and 135 written depositions. Its chilling conclusions show tight police-CPM collusion in beating and killing SEZ opponents. The motive was to "teach them a lesson" and re-establish the party's supremacy.
The March attempt failed. But Nandigram's people were collectively punished through a state-imposed economic blockade. No CPM leader visited them to offer relief or compensation. Their intimidation continued for months
Last fortnight, to pre-empt impending Central Reserve Police intervention, the CPM launched its second bid to "capture" Nandigram, turning it into what Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi called a "war zone." The attackers, trained in the use of firearms, were mobilised from four districts to target 13 villages.
A multi-pronged offensive was launched on November 5-8 after ensuring that the police were withdrawn. On November 10, attackers pushed BUPC supporters into CPM stronghold Khejuri, taking 600 "prisoner." The final assault the next day used the prisoners as a "human shield" to "liberate" the entire area
A particularly disgraceful part of the operation was sexual violence. Another was the treatment of political adversaries as alien enemy population. Even more egregious was the state machinery's complete subordination to party interests.
The CPM politburo has rationalised this as retaliation against those trying to "dislodge us forcefully," and claimed that Maoists had penetrated the area. That argument is neither convincing nor remotely democratic. Even if opponents had "dislodged" the party's cadres, it's for the state, not the party, to remedy the situation.
Paying opponents back "in the same coin," as Chief Minister Bhattacharjee rationalised it, can only generate counter-violence, while flagrantly breaching constitutional norms.
Even assuming that Maoists were involved -- a charge without hard evidence, which sounds like Saddam's "weapons of mass destruction" -- that can't justify a military attack on ordinary people.
It's odd that the CPM, which acknowledges that the Maoists represent popular grievances (but use unacceptable methods), uncritically quotes the National Security Adviser to say they're India's "greatest internal security threat."
Nandigram exposes the West Bengal CPM's criminalisation, corruption, pro-rich policies, reliance on muscle power, and contempt towards allies -- the Communist Party of India, Forward Bloc and Revolutionary Socialist Party. The three now say the CPM alone bears "responsibility" for the violence and for ignoring their reconciliation pleas.
This is a dire warning. The warning will become truly effective if these parties withdraw from the Council of Ministers (not the Left Front). Such a drastic step alone can trigger rethinking within the CPM on policies, organisational methods, and relations with fraternal parties.
Without such rethinking, the CPM won't change. Nor will the Left Front retain its popular base. Opinion polls suggest that the Front's electoral support is shifting away from the poor. Its rule isn't marked by healthy social indices.
West Bengal's official Human Development Report makes dismal reading. The state has more school dropouts than Bihar. It has registered the worst work performance under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act -- a mere 14 person-days per family, vis-à-vis the national average of 43 (against the promised 100 days a year).
According to the National Sample Survey, "the percentage of rural households not getting enough food every day in some months of the year" is even higher in West Bengal (10.6 percent) than in Orissa (4.8).
No wonder India's worst recent food riots have occurred in West Bengal -- when starving people raided the godowns of dishonest ration-shop owners, who are CPM members. This is a huge change from the 1960s' grassroots Food Movement, which built up the Left.
Sleaze in West Bengal's public life was also highlighted by the mysterious death of Rizwanur Rehman, married to the daughter of a Hindu businessman close to the CPM, and the harassment of intellectuals and artistes protesting the Nandigram carnage.
Course correction has become imperative for the West Bengal Left. Without this, it will lose its moral capital, political stature and bargaining power -- as is happening on the nuclear deal. Worse, it could go into a historic decline.
Praful Bidwai is an eminent Indian columnist.
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