[Reader-list] Forwarding Sudhanva Deshpande's mail...

[Subasri Krishnan]

  Hi,
   
  Sudhanva Deshpande asked me to post this on the Reader List as he's not a member. Attached below is the mail he has written to Shuddha.
   
  Subasri
   
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  Dear Shuddhabrata,

Some friends were kind enough to forward your response to my ZNet commentary, which you posted on the Sarai list. I found then that the response is also posted on Kafila. Your eloquence overwhelms me. I am not, however, similarly blessed. I will keep my response short, and limit it to the two points of fact that you dispute.

The number of dead. I said that 14 died on March 14, and, as many on the Left have said, this was 14 too many. I have faced police brutality a number of times while protesting, and I am no fan of it. I am perfectly willing to believe that the number exceeds 14. All I am asking for is: where are the lists of those dead or missing? Masum supplied to the Asian Human Rights Commission a list of 11 dead, and there were fears that the number would be higher. For seven-and-a-half-months, from March 14 to end of October, Nandigram was out of bounds for CPI (M) supporters. Surely, this was enough time to figure out who was missing. As I wrote in my commentary, the one list submitted to the court turned out to be a fraud. If you have come across any other list, please do let me know. Sanhati doesn't have a list, by the way, so don't bother with that.

As an aside, a Bengali paper today published an interview with a "corpse." This man, by the way, is Kanai Sheth, alleged to have been killed on November 9. He is also, by the way, the father of Khokon Sheth, the main accused in the killing of Shankar Samanta, the elected panchayat member from Nandigram, who was hacked and burnt on January 7. Old man Kanai, by the way, was not interviewed in a hideout, but in his own house, where he returned after the violence abated. He was, by the way, hiding in a CPI (M)-run camp all the while, which is why the BUPC activists couldn't trace him and presumed him murdered, especially given his relationship to the main accused in the killing of an elected representative. Oh, but the interview appeared in Ganashakti, so I am sure it is utter fabrication.

Then, the notice. What did I say? That the notice was meant to clarify rumours about land acquisition, and that the notice itself was not a land acquisition notice. As you well know, the proposal of the chemical hub was not new. The location was not finalized. There was speculation, there were rumours – about how much land would be acquired, which blocks would come under acquisition, whether it will all be done at one go, and so on. The notice was meant to clarify how much land would come under acquisition. The second notice was a further clarification on the first one, to say that the acquisition would be in phases, and to tell the public exactly which blocks were to be covered.

In any case, as the Chief Minister pointed out, the Haldia Development Authority had overstepped its jurisdiction in issuing the notice. But suppose, for argument's sake, that it had not overstepped its jurisdiction. Is a notice that informs the public of an intention to acquire land the same as a notice that actually acquires the land? Surely not. Even you would understand this. A research proposal is merely that, a proposal. A Ph.D. thesis is something else.

Did I say in my commentary that the notice(s) denied the proposed land acquisition? No. You simply attribute it to me. The simplest argument to demolish is one that was never made.

Your other, more recent post, the one about Prabhat Patnaik, Irfan Habib, Vivan Sundaram et al., was also forwarded to me, this time by another friend, with the question, "Why is he so abusive?" I corrected her by pointing out that there was in fact no abuse in your post, though the prose tends toward purple. Given your long record of struggle and sacrifice for the poor and dispossessed, you are understandably angry with individuals who have nothing to show on that front. People with fancy institutional affiliations do not abuse. Abuse is what a poor cycle rickshaw wallah gets from guys who drive big imported cars. I am told it leads to a testosterone surge and makes them feel manly.

You have never made a secret of your intense hatred for the Left. I only urge you to lace your purple prose with the occasional nod at verifiable facts.

Best,

Sudhanva

PS: Reptiles – Phylum Reptilia – are a class of vertebrates, and they do have backbones, I am afraid. And a species is not the same as a phylum either. And to deride reptiles because they do not, like the species Homo sapiens, have a conscience – oh dear, this is not very humble, is it. 




'You can only understand your life backwards. But you have to live it forwards' 


       
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