[Reader-list] Nandigram-Time for an Alternative Left in Bengal-Aditya Nigam

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Dear All,

The sad reality of CPI(M) style thuggery in West Bengal has attracted
some attention on this list over the past few months. The news from
Nandigram, as recent posts from Peter Griffin, Tapas Ray and others has
shown continues to be disturbing. I am enclosing below, a text by Aditya
Nigam that was recently posted on www.kafila.org that many on this list
may find of interest.

best

Shuddha
----------------------------

Time for Alternative Left Platform in W Bengal
Aditya Nigam

The CPM mask is off. Beneath it you can see the face of the totalitarian
face of the Biman Boses, Benoy Konars and Brinda Karats. Much more is to
come in coming days but one thing seems to be becoming clearer with each
passing day: it will be wrong now on, to count the CPM as a Left wing
force (at least in West Bengal). Unless we are able to shed this
misleading idea, we are likely to misread the situation in the state
completely.

The situation in Nandigram is developing rapidly. The area has been
‘liberated’ - which is to say brought under CPM control. Nobody,
including journalists and political and civil rights activitsts can
enter the area. All you have are marauding criminal gangs of AK 47 (and
other assorted weapon) wielding ‘cadres’. They roam about with the red
flag and have no compunction in attacking the likes of Medha Patkar and
Anuradha Talwar, punching them in the face and tearing at their clothes.
This is a political style and culture that we have so far only
associated with the fascist right. We have seen glimpses of it in the
recent past in the state but now it has assumed a generalized form. And
while the armed gangs are at work in Nandigram, the state’s police has
started targetting protestors in Kolkata.

Thus, even as Medha Patkar’s hunger strike continued in Kolkata, a march
of artistes and intellectuals was stopped as they were walking towards
Nandan, the venue of the Kolkata Film Festival. Forty of these
intellectuals were arrested under section 151, (apprehension of breach
of peace). The situation has reached such a pass, that the LF government
is finding it difficult to even face such simple and harmless shows of
protest by artistes and intellectuals; after all nobody including the
CPM can really believe that these artistes posed any threat to ‘law and
order’ or ‘peace’. In fact, for the first time in its history, three
important Left Front partners, the RSP, Forward Bloc and the CPI, have
come out openly against the CPM, holding it alone responsible for the
violence.
The time has indeed come for them to now quit the LF and help in the
formation of an alternative Left platform in the state. For, this might
be the beginning of the end of LF rule in the state - and if the entire
discontent against the CPM is not to be mobilized under a Trinamool
Congress type opposition, then it is imperative that efforts be stepped
up to present and alternative, democratic Left opposition.

But in the meantime, it is necessary to ask, what exactly is happening
in Nandigram? The story that has been dished out over the past nine
months - repeated with nauseating regularity by the illiterates in the
televisual media - that it is a CPM-Trinamool Congress turf war, is, to
say the least, completely off the mark. More, it is deliberately
misleading. It is a line that suits the CPM ruling circles no doubt, but
it is also something that the news media, drunk on its globalization
potion, likes to believe. It like to believe that if only there were no
political parties, everything would be hunky dory for the neo-liberal
globalizers. It is only ‘politics’ which is holding back the rapid pace
of India’s development. ‘Politics’ (which should, as far as the
globalization-drunk media lingo is concerned, be read as ‘democracy’) is
the the real road block. And here, Buddhadeb’s type of Left-wing
capitalism was something they would have rather liked to see. It has
unfortunately gone beyond all limits, even for the media to defend.

Let us be clear about one thing: Buddhadeb’s and CPM’s socalled
‘assurances’ that the SEZ and the chemical hub will not be built in
Nandigram, that its project has been abandoned, do not mean anything
anymore. In the first place nobody trusts him or his party anymore. More
importantly, the issue is not whether the SEZ will be made; it is a
battle for suzerainty being conducted by the CPM. It is not that CPM
supporters could not have returned to their homes in the last few
months. But the CPM wanted to come back as rulers, with the area fully
under their control. That is where the problem lies. Since large
sections of the population have ceased to trust the government and the
CPM, the people of the area are suspicious of its intent. The posture of
innocence often struck by CPM leaders and supporters that “after all we
have said that there will be no chemical hub” is disingenuous, to say
the least.

Let us therefore, also be clear about another thing: There is popular
discontent in the region and the people have turned to the only
available anti-CPM (anti- establishment) forces in the area, which
include the Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Hind, the TMC and the Maoists. Just as
popular discontent in the state had once turned to the CPM against the
ruling Congress, it is now turning against it. Then, in the sixties,
during the food movement and later the land struggles, the CPM also made
alliances in the United Front with parties like the Bangla Congress and
other assorted groups. In other places, the CPM has made common cause
with the Jana Sangh/ BJP (the anti-Emergency struggle, the 1989
elections etc). [In Kerala, even without any mass struggle, the CPM has
long had alliances (often legitimately) with the Muslim League.] So, for
it to suddenly take this holier-than-thou attitude and dub the Nandigram
struggle as a ‘Trinamool- Maoist’-combine-led ‘disturbance’ is not only
dishonest, it in fact speaks of a fundamental change in the party’s role
and self-perception. From a party of struggle, it has become a party of
order and government.

And while this completely illegal and unconstitutional violence is
perpetrated on the hapless people of Nandigram, the CPM state leadership
and the Polit Bureau have found fault with governor Gopal Gandhi for
‘overstepping his constitutional limits’. Interesting, to say the least.
Let the CPM know, that for an increasingly large number of people in the
state, it is Gandhi who is becoming the voice of sanity. It is to him
that former Chief Justice Krishna Iyer appealed; it is to him that all
intellectuals and concerned citizens elsewhere in India
are appealing. It is also to Gandhi that the intellectuals in the state
are looking up to for restoring constitutional order. Blinded by its
arrogance of power, the CPM refuses to see the writing on the wall - but
for how long. Now power, however despotic has lasted for ever. How can
this one?