[Reader-list] Ashok Mitra on Nandigram (from Sanhati.org)

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Dear all,

here is a text by Ashok Mitra, the former finance minister in the Left 
Front government of West Bengal. It appeared originally in Bengali in 
the Ananda Bazar Patrika. This is a translation by Debarshi Das posted 
on Sanhati.org. While I may have many disagreements with Ashok Mitra's 
politics, I have always admired his eccentric integrity.

I think this text will be of interest to people on the list as it 
represents the honesty that I wish we would see more of in people 
associated with the CPI(M) today, at least vis-a-vis Nandigram.

regards

Shuddha

----------------------

You are not what you were - Ashok Mitra after 14th November, 2007

By Ashok Mitra. Translated from Bengali by Debarshi Das, Sanhati.
The original article appeared in The Anandabazaar Patrika

Till death I would remain guilty to my conscience if I keep mum about 
the happenings of the last two weeks in West Bengal over Nandigram. One 
gets torn by pain too. Those against whom I am speaking have been my 
comrades at some time. The party whose leadership they are adorning has 
been the centre of my dreams and works for last sixty years.

Let me start with the governor. Those who remember Anantaprasad Sharma 
or Rajeshwar would readily admit that it’s a great fortune for this 
state and the State Government that they have someone as gentle, 
well-mannered, sympathetic, modest, erudite as Gopal Krishna Gandhi as 
the governor of the state. Let me also add he had consented to the post 
because of the interest shown by the central leadership of the ruling 
party. What has been his grave fault that the ruling party is so 
determined to declare even him as its enemy? Through a travesty of truth 
it is being said that governor has termed the return of those who were 
forced flee Nandigram to take shelter in Khejuri as illegitimate and 
unpardonable. He has not done so. He has condemned, in no uncertain 
terms, the way in which they have been brought back. By now the 
machination that went on behind the return is known to the world. The 
government had had enough scope to rehabilitate these devastated people 
in their own homes through political mediation or administrative 
arrangements during the last eleven months. The attempts through 
unilateral threatening, police action, indiscriminate firing had a 
tragic end. But there were still many avenues left to be explored. The 
government could have announced compensation for the family of dead and 
injured immediately after the idiotic incident of firing. Promises could 
have been made to take action against the police officers and personnel 
involved in the crime. Days passed, and the government did nothing. 
Announcement was made in the fashion of Vijay Tendulkar’s play’s title, 
“Shantata, court chalu ahe.” The senior most political leader of the 
state and the country had to take the initiative to call up Mamata 
Banerjee, sit and discuss with her a few conditions for resolution. The 
government was intimated of them. It did not proceed on them. On the 
initiative of the senior leader of Forward Bloc, Ashok Ghosh, an 
all-party meeting was convened. That also got stalled due to indirect 
pressure from the ruling party. In the meanwhile, as was inevitable, 
opposition parties started using the unstable situation of Nandigram to 
their own advantage. The flame of tension was kept burning by a variety 
of organisations of different colour and class. The discontented whining 
one hears from the ruling party over this has no rationale whatsoever. 
The responsibility of unspoken suffering of those who spent eleven 
months as homeless rests squarely upon the shoulders of the government.

It is better to look further into the past. Nandigram was not after all 
the first blood. Singur episode had happened before that. The Left Front 
Government does not like nationalised industries. They want to set up 
private industries in the state. Hence there are promises to acquire 
land on behalf of the national, international capitalists. That land 
would supposedly be used by capitalists to set up industries. Since 
there was declaration of industrialisation in the election manifesto, 
and since they have won 235 seats, it was readily assumed that there was 
no need for preparations. All of a sudden peasants were told: leave the 
land, the masters would set up industries here. If it had learned 
minimum lessons from the protests, clashes and the blood letting of 
Singur, the government would have been more careful in Nandigram. But 
that was not to be. It remained as arrogant as ever. Even the top 
leaders of the ruling party have been saying there was no existence of 
the opposition parties in Nandigram. The government itself provided them 
with the opportunity to grow. The loyal followers of the ruling party 
declared revolt and those who were not with them were driven out. The 
onus of this rests on the government as well.

For eleven months complete silence and inactivity were carefully 
maintained, no political or administrative alternative was explored. And 
suddenly a new plot was hatched. As has been repeatedly admitted by the 
home secretary, the police was instructed to remain inactive. 
Mercenaries were collected from across the state. Workers of the ruling 
party encircled Nandigram from all directions. Birds, bees, flies, 
journalists none was given the permission to penetrate the blockade. And 
then the light brigade of the ruling party charged in, beat the wayward 
militants of Nandigram to a pulp and into submission. Those who had fled 
returned. However the moment of their return saw a parallel and opposite 
incident. Houses were torched anew, those who were inside Nandigram were 
butchered in a massive celebration of revenge. Presently, the Nandigram 
sky is reverberating by the scream of the recent batch of refugees.

The governor must have been informed of the developments by the 
secretaries. Much concerned, he must have appealed to the honchos of the 
ministry to keep peace. But to no effect. The rampage is going on as we 
speak. And so is the blood bath. The governor has made a public 
statement condemning the incident. I don’t know if what he said, how he 
said it falls within the framework of the constitution. Those who have 
not forgotten the framework of humanism, however, will not have two 
minds about it.

The problem does not involve Singur and Nandigram alone. It is much more 
deep and serious. The repetition of mistakes has become a habit. Just 
consider this for a minute. It has only been a year and a half since the 
Left Front has won a massive mandate; and what examples of arrogance and 
stupidity during this brief span! Come what may, we shall have control 
over every nook and corner of the state. The cricket board will get its 
chief elected to our dictates. If our candidate loses we would say, 
“evil power has won, we will chase him out.” Not only the ordinary 
people, economic thinkers have offered diverse views over land 
acquisition in Singur and Nandigram. These different opinion holders are 
nothing but bookworms, what do they know about running a government! 
Consequently prominent economist and party comrade of the stature of 
Prabhat Patnaik is hounded. We are an all-knowing government: from 
cricket, poetry, theatre, films to the magic of land acquisition – we 
know everything. Neither should anyone lecture us on the pros and cons 
of the nuclear deal, for we have won 235 seats. Jyoti Basu won more 
seats in 1987; he was not heard to mouth such hubris.

Not only hubris, add inaptitude to it. Decades have passed shouting 
hoarse about universal education, and still West Bengal is behind so 
many states. Money is flowing in from the centre for employment 
generation schemes, there is zero administrative initiative, the hungry 
and the unemployed go hungry and unemployed. The centre has arrangement 
for wheat and rice; these are not even lifted so that they could be sent 
to the middle and lower class through the ration system. There are 
uncountable errors and omissions in the list of people living below the 
poverty line. The shortcomings in the state over empowering the 
minorities have been detailed in the Sachar Committee report.

Take the incident surrounding the death of Rizwanur Rahman. If the 
police chief of Kolkata along with his cohorts were removed the very 
evening in which he let his social philosophy known at a press 
conference and if the investigation were handed over to the Central 
Bureau of Investigation, public rage would not have assumed such ominous 
proportions. Instead we witnessed an extraordinary serial exhibition of 
a strange paralysis. Examples go on mounting.

Three decades ago when the Left Front government took the oath of office 
it was not to sit at Writers’ building and indulge in empty talks. But 
to be one with the people, listening to it and after realising the 
advice of the people with due humility to design government programmes 
to implement it. Improvisation of the Panchayat system was precisely for 
this purpose. Yet all this have somehow become stagnant. Though 
panchayats are elected democratically they are in a sorry state today. 
The little money that reaches them is not properly utilised, plenty of 
it disappears into dark tunnels.

It is not possible therefore to avoid the unpleasant truth anymore. One 
can borrow S. D. Burman’s song to describe what the Communist Party of 
India (Marxist) was in this state a few decades ago, “you are not what 
you were.” 90% of its members have joined after 1977, 70% after 1991. 
They do not know the history of sacrifices of the party. To them 
ideological commitment to revolution and socialism is simply a fading 
folktale. As the new ideology is development, many of them are 
associated with the party in the search for personal development. They 
have come to take, not to give. They are learning different tricks so as 
to appropriate various privileges by aligning with the governing party. 
One efficient way to bag privileges is to flatter the masters. The party 
has turned into a wide open field of flatterers and court jesters. 
Moreover, there has been a rising dominance of ‘anti-socials’. For 
different reasons, every political party has to lend patronage to 
‘anti-socials’, they remain in the background and are called into duty 
at urgent times. In the seventies these anti-socials had reached the top 
rung of Congress party. I fear same fate is awaiting the communist party.

Many of the old people, long time and still party members, who have been 
through numerous sacrifices and are idealists, are a disheartened, 
disillusioned lot today. But any organised protest will face party 
disciplinary action, what will be their support in the twilight of life 
if the party throws them out?

I feel sorry for Mr. Jyoti Basu. Of the four ministerial colleagues who 
took the oath as members of the first Left Front government with him on 
21st June, 1977, only I am still alive. His current state of an 
imprisoned Shah Jahan saddens the heart deeply. State leadership does 
not heed the little advice he tries to offer from time to time. If his 
talks are a tad uncomfortable for the party they are not published in 
the party organs. Every Friday after the meeting of the party 
secretaries he comes down stairs and is made to say different things; 
what he says today may completely be the opposite of what he had said 
the last time.

But my real concern lies elsewhere. Mamata Banerjee is the safest 
insurance for the current ruling party. Urban, rural masses may have 
become discontented with the Left Front, but whenever they imagine 
Mamata Banerjee’s ascent to power, the sheer terror of that possibility 
has made them vote for the Left Front. But if it comes to a situation 
that the hubris and ineptitude of leaders of the Left Front government 
frustrate them so much that they begin to think there is no difference 
really, it’s all tweedledum and tweedledee, that will be a real 
disaster. For notice the behaviour, patronage, programme, mode of 
action, speech of Mamata Banerjee – she personifies fascism. My ardent 
appeal to the central leadership of the party which I still love to 
think to be mine, please think it over, you shiver at the terror of 
Maoism, will that shivering compel you to throw West Bengal into the 
gutter of fascism?