[Reader-list] Kunal Chattopadhyay to Tariq Ali on Nandigram

[shuddha at sarai.net]

Dear All, 

Some of you may have read the letter signed by Chomsky, Zinn and others,
prevaricating on Nandigram, primarily at the behest of Vijay Prashad.

I am posting below a response, addressed to Tariq Ali by Kunal
Chattopadhyay (he teaches history at Jadavpur University, Kolkata). Tariq
Ali and Kunal Chattopadhyay were both comrades in the Fourth International.

This informative post may be of interest to those following the continuing
debate on West Bengal

best 

Shuddha

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


An Open Letter to Tariq Ali
Posted on www.sanhati.com

By Kunal Chattopadhyay, Radicalblogger
http://kunal-radicalblogger.blogspot.com/

Dear Tariq,

When I was a very young radical, still a Maoist rather than a Trotskyist,
it was your name, rather than that of Ernest Mandel, or of anyone else,
that we came across, here in our part of India. There are still older
comrades in West Bengal, who talk about a certain period of Fourth
International history, in terms of “in those days of Tariq Ali”. This
is why, a statement, even though signed by Chomsky, Zinn and others, along
with the man who seems to have carried out the coup, a gentleman named
Vijay Prashad, becomes most painful because you are among the signatories.
As you once wrote in one of your wonderful books, about another comrade of
yours, ‘there was fire in his belly in those days’. Perhaps we have all
grown older, but some of us have refused to grow “wiser”.

I read, and re-read, with a growing sense of wonder, shame and above all
anger, “the statement that some of you have signed. If you are
uninformed, what gave you the authority to issue a pompous statement based
on that lack of information? I write to you, because I consider you a
comrade who has committed a mistake in signing this statement.

Right at the beginning, you write:

News travels to us that events in West Bengal have overtaken the optimism
that some of us have experienced during trips to the state. We are
concerned about the rancor that has divided the public space, created what
appear to be unbridgeable gaps between people who share similar values.

Who are these people who share similar values? Just what do you know about
the values shared by those in governmental authority in West Bengal? You,
and those others amongst you, who made trips here, met some of the
CPI(M)’s intellectuals, who put on a special face for foreign
delegations. But as someone who has known Marxism for longer than I have,
you know well that it is never possible to judge people solely by what they
say about themselves. When someone uses words like democracy, even
socialism, anti-imperialism, unless you know the context, unless you know
exactly what their political practice is, you cannot assume that they say
those words in the same way that you, or someone else does.

So let us begin by looking at values. Just a small example of values. When
the Singur –Nandigram issues began blowing up, Medha Patkar, who happens
to be one of India’s most respected social movement activists, someone
who has therefore been vilified by parties and governments across India,
extended her solidarity for the militant people. CPI(M) leaders took
umbrage. CPI(M) State Secretariat member (and Central Committee member)
Benoy Konar, in a speech, called on women to show Medha Patkar their
buttocks. When Medha tried to go to Nandigram, her car was blockaded, and
some people, supporters of the CPI(M), indeed followed Konar’s advice and
showed Medha their buttocks. I could quote dozens of newspaper and
television reports, but most clippings I have are in Bengali, so I give you
the url of Medha’s own report.

I dare you, or any of your co-signatories, with the exception of Mr. Vijay
Prashad, to come forward and assert that you share similar values as these
people.

I am sure, that once this open letter is circulated, it will also be
trivialized by the murders who are posing as leftists and persuading you to
sign on behalf of them. So let me say that this is not the only issue I am
talking about when we say values. I will be talking about political outlook
and values in other ways. But Tariq, in the most extreme days of the IMT
line, when talking about guerilla warfare, did you ever call on your
comrades to do unto political opponents, that which Benoy Konar suggested
and that which his followers obliged by doing?

If by values you mean left wing values, you would have to define more
precisely what sort of leftism you are talking about. CPI(M) leaders and
their government here in West Bengal are deeply wedded to a very
authoritarian form of bourgeois democracy. I will be able to mention only a
few cases below. But perhaps the clearest evidence is this – despite the
fact that in the period 1971-1977, the Congress in power used utmost
brutality, had people illegally arrested, tortured, many actually killed,
in three decades in power, the CPI(M) led government has failed to carry
though the prosecution of a single police officer of that era.

In your statement, you present a euphemistic comment, saying that you are
concerned about the rancor that has divided the public space. The
“rancor” that you talk about is the result of a long period of
violation of civil liberties, of brutal repression of political opposition
and massive use of party cadres as thugs. The most respected civil
liberties organization in West Bengal , the Association for the Protection
of Democratic Rights, has recently been targeted by the chief minister, who
claimed that the APDR is a Maoist outfit. The crime of the APDR was that it
has consistently argued that everyone has political and civil rights, and
these cannot be circumscribed without threatening all of us.

Let me again give some illustration. Attacks on the Maoists, especially the
organizations CPI(ML) Peoples’ War, the Maoist Communist Centre, and
after they merged, the CPI(Maoist) have been massive. Anyone suspected of
being a Maoist has been arrested, even without real charges. And why is
someone suspected? In Medinipur district, an activist of the APDR was
arrested as a suspected Maoist, on the strength of material found in his
possession. Such material included a copy of George Thompson’s From Marx
to Mao-tse Tung. I still have a copy at home, and I am wondering when it
will be my turn to be arrested. In Kolkata, a man was arrested on suspicion
of being a Maoist, and he was so traumatized by police action, that he
committed suicide. (Ananda Bazar patrika, 9.7.2002). Four days after Ananda
Bazar Patrika wrote about this, the CPI(M) daily newspaper, Ganashakti,
reported that Benoy Konar told journalists, in reply to a question on
whether the police had overstepped the boundaries of human rights, that it
is difficult to determine the boundaries of human rights. In addition,
Konar treated the media to the homily that the baton of the police is used
as a repressive apparatus. (Ganashakti, 11.7,02). In 2002, the Chief
Minister said that the KLO in North Bengal or the Maoists elsewhere were
holding up development. So the priority for development was used to justify
violence on them. The Home Minister’s budget speech for 2002-2003 seeking
additional funds for the police highlighted the commitment of the state to
modernisation of the police for counter-insurgency; at a time when the
government’s debt burden had risen to 7500 billion rupees. (Amit
Bhattacharya, ‘Duhsomoy: Ganatantra, Manabadhikar O Paschimbanger
‘Sangbedanshil’ Sarkar’, in Bartaman Lokayatik, 2002-2003, Nos. 3-4
and 1-2, pp. 238-270 . See especially pp. 245-7; and also Ananda Bazar
Patrika, 7.8.2002) .

There has been a long, very long trail of state and party sponsored
violence. The APDR has regularly listed cases. Two comrades, members of the
Nari Nirjatan Pratirodh Mancha (Forum Against Oppression of Women,
Kolkata), Mira Roy and Soma Marik, have written a booklet, Women Under the
left Front rule: Expectations Betrayed, where violence on women have been
discussed extensively. Not all are cases of political violence. In many
cases, we have seen how rapists have been defended by leaders of the ruling
party. For example, in August 1991, a young woman had been arrested from a
hotel in Kanthi, where she had registered with a male friend. She was then
raped by the police. Virtually defending the police, Acting Chief Minister
Benoy Chowdhury told the West Bengal Assembly that she had registered under
an assumed name with a male friend. In other words, since she was a
presumably unmarried woman “gone bad” it was fair enough if the police
had a little fun with her. Values I share with them? No thanks.

Violence over Singur and Nandigram are not unrelated to the foregoing. At
one level, they reflect the culture of violence supported by the ruling
party. At another level, they reflect the submission to neo-liberal
globalization, even while a huge rhetoric is floated abroad for the
consumption of international left-wing intellectuals. After all, we boast
of an intellectual chief minister capable of quoting noted poets as part of
his political spiels. So he needs the endorsement of intellectuals.

You write, “We continue to trust that the people of Bengal will not allow
their differences on some issues to tear apart the important experiments
undertaken in the state (land reforms, local self-government).” Since the
signature is mostly of leftwing persons, and since in particular I am
writing to you, a well-known Marxist, I trust the signatories, and
especially you, know that there is no unified and homogeneous people. I am
sorry if I have to spell out such truisms. But in these days of triumph of
neo-liberalism, this kind of woolly-woolly, non-class language is being
resorted to, even by those whom I have always treated as charter members of
the class struggle camp. West Bengal is part of India, and India is a
bourgeois state with an economy where extremes coexist. From the latest in
Information Technology in Sector V of Salt Lake, it will take you just
about two and a half hours by car to get to Nandigram, where you have
plenty of poor peasants eking out a living much as their grandparents did.
Not that there has been no change, no development, but that has been
limited development in a backward capitalist economy. Since the current
conflicts seem minor to you, compared to the “important experiments”,
let us look at those experiments briefly. As I am not writing a treatise, I
do not intend to write for long pages, nor to provide extensive footnotes.
It is however necessary to question fundamentally the false claims of the
West Bengal Government, that you seem to have swallowed hook, line and
sinker.

Some years back, when the PRC had just started its trek back to class
collaborationist politics, a comrade in the PRC named Franco Grisolia wrote
to two of us, asking for a note on the CPI(M) led government, as well as
CPI(M)’s support to the UPA at the center, because this model was being
held up by supporters of Bertinotti to justify their turn to the right. So
Soma Marik and I wrote a longish essay, The Left Front and the United
Progressive Alliance, one version of which was published in Italian, and
another version, in English, was put up in the website of our comrades of
Socialist Democracy, Irish supporters of the Fourth International.

Just one paragraph from that essay will reveal an interesting story: “The
key issue of land distribution, in fact, tells an interesting story. In
1967, and again in 1969, two short-lived United Front governments had been
formed. There had been a mass upsurge, and huge land seizures and
distribution. OF ALL the ceiling-surplus land vested with the state since
1953 (when the West Bengal Estate Acquisition Act was passed) and the year
2000, as much as 44 per cent of this land (6 lakh acres) was obtained in
the five-year period between 1967 and 1972, thanks to the energetic
initiatives of the two United Fronts; another 26% (3.5 lakh acres) had been
acquired earlier. In the last 20 years of Left Front rule only 1.53 lakh
acres were acquired, which amounts to almost a quarter of what was achieved
during the very short UF regime and almost a half of what was obtained
during the 14 years (1953-1967) of Congress rule.” The two United Front
governments saw an active left, and one moreover facing a serious challenge
from the emerging Maoist forces who eventually became the CPI (ML). Land
reform at that time was based on popular initiative, not bureaucratic
measures. The collapse of the governments clearly taught the CPI (M) a
lesson – to wit, do not rock the boat of the bourgeoisie and their
partners if you want a long stint.

As for the important local self government experiments that you talk about,
what, really, is significant? The three tier panchayat system has been in
operation in other provinces as well. Digvijay Singh, the Congress chief
minister of Madhya Pradesh, took measures to extend it to the level of the
individual village. Despite much talk about panchayats being organs of
self-rule of peasants, rich peasants and teachers formed the bulk. And
given the fact that the poorer classes seldom were able to let their
children finish secondary education, let alone college, teachers came from
rich peasant families, or from non-agricultural families. A survey in one
of the districts, Purulia, further showed that real help was received from
the government’s developmental projects by a significant part of the
rural rich, using their positions in the panchayats. (Prabir Bhattacharyya,
ed, Anva Artha 19: Bamfront Sarkar—Ekti Mulyayan, Calcutta, May 1985,
pp.11-14.)

You next write:

“We send our fullest solidarity to the peasants who have been forcibly
dispossessed. We understand that the government has promised not to build a
chemical hub in the area around Nandigram. We understand that those who had
been dispossessed by the violence are now being allowed back to their
homes, without recrimination. We understand that there is now talk of
reconciliation. This is what we favor.”

This paragraph was drafted by/ is based on arguments by someone who is a
dab hand at creating confusions that eventually aid exploiters, but is at
the same time able to pull the wool over the eyes of leftists who are a
little away from the scene. “We send our fullest solidarity to the
peasants who have been forcibly dispossessed.” Exactly which groups are
you talking about? Evidently not those of Singur, since the next sentence
clearly talks about Nandigram. In Singur, a colonial era law was used to
dispossess peasants, to hand over land to one of India’s major capitalist
concerns, the Tatas. Even if we accept, (as I do not, as I hope you still
do not), the logic of the “free market”, why should a supposedly
progressive government use a colonial law to dispossess peasants for the
benefit of a capitalist group that is so rich that it can bid for and win
in a battle to control a First World company? Why did the government not
tell the Tatas to go and negotiate directly with the peasants so that they
could get whatever benefits they were able to wrest? Moreover, perhaps your
informants forgot to tell you, that there were vast numbers of share
croppers, agricultural labourers, as well as people in various industries
and transportation sectors in and around Singur, for whom the rich
agricultural land of singur mattered. Thus, people in the potato industry
(for Singur grows potato) lost out. People transporting potato lost out.
Wage labourers lost out. And these, the proletarian sections, have received
what compensation? The answer, dear Tariq, is zilch.

So let us pass on to Nandigram. There, your statement is extraordinarily
damaging. If it had come from comparable intellectuals in India, I would
have used stronger language. I suppose that ignorance lets you partially
off the hook. What is sad is that you think it perfectly legitimate to
issue a statement even though you are ignorant about the details.

There have been two charges of being dispossessed. On 6th January, 2007,
CPI(M) thugs attacked peasants, and the retaliatory violence drove out a
number of them. A further lot left of their own, fearful of the situation.
They all stayed in a place called Khejuri. The CVPI(M) has claimed high
figures – sometimes mentioning 1500, sometimes 3000. No independent
investigation has proved this. Several of us went to Nandigram after the
CPI(M) attack of 14 March, when 14 persons, at least, were murdered, and at
least four women were raped. At that time, our investigations suggested
that the total number of CPI(M) supporters forced to leave Nandigram were
around 300. The APDR twice sent teams to Khejuri, and suggested a figure of
around 350. Out of these, some 35 had clearly been identified by peasants
in Nandigram as active elements in the so-called cadre force of CPI(M) ,
i.e., the gun toting criminals who eventually carried out the November
attacks to “reconquer” Nandigram. Now, in the first days, tens of
thousands fled. Over the last few days they have trickled back, after
having pledged loyalty to the CPI(M). So there is no recrimination,
provided you have the 100% support for the CPI(M).

You write that you understand that the government has promised not to build
a chemical hub around Nandigram. This specific reference comes as a
surprise. Because it is actually once again a case of your walking into a
trap. First, the chemical hub, and a number of similar proposals, are all
of the same type – calls to build SEZs. If SEZs are built, who will they
benefit? They will not follow even India’s far from excellent labour
laws. Secondly, the chemical hub, wherever built, is going to be an
environmental disaster. Finally, and most crucially, the West Bengal
government never formally promised not to build the chemical hub in
Nandigram. What they said was that it will not be built in Nandigram if the
people do not want it. Now, after the CPI(M) conquest,( for that is what it
was, it was not even the state apparatus going in, but armed forces of the
major party of the Left Front), what if people are compelled to say that
yes, they do want the chemical hub? Let me remind you, that the CPI(M) is
among the world’s largest surviving parties of Stalinist origin, and
while the Moscow tie is long gone, the Moscow style has been retained —
but in the service of capitalism. Today’s (21st November) newspapers
already carry a news about how peasants have been forced to give written
apologies to the CPI(M) in order to go and work in their fields.

You talk of reconciliation. Between whom do you wish for reconciliation?
Now that the CPI(M) has actually conquered the territory by force, would a
humble acquiescence, given the inability to do anything else, be treated as
reconciliation? Perhaps a little more detail about who the cadres were and
how they fought the peasants would come in handy. Cadres — local
criminals mostly involved in robbery cases — for the operation were drawn
from Chandrakona and Garbeta zonal committees. Also, cadres were sent from
Narayangarh and Keshiary areas. Another group of around 250 armed CPM
supporters and criminals came from the villages of Punishol at Onda and
Rajpur, Taldangra in Bankura.

Sources said criminals were given money in advance and given a free-hand to
bring whatever they could from the empty homes once the operation is
complete. Sources said one such group that has returned to Onda came with
motorcycles.

The Bankura group reached Nandigram after travelling by train and then
road. The group boarded trains and allegedly got off at Balichak, four
stations after Kharagpur, and then headed towards Nandigram via Khejuri in
the guise of daily wage earners. They take the same disguise when they go
to Bihar and Jharkhand to collect arms, sources said.

Most of these people are suspected to be running arms smuggling rackets.
The arms used in the recapture operation are believed to have been supplied
from these suppliers.

Another cache of arms came from Purulia where party workers had received
arms to combat Maoists. It is also suspected that the arms gone missing
after the Purulia arms drop are with CPM supporters and were smuggled to
Nandigram.

The coal mafia from Burdwan is also believed to have played a key role in
the operation. The money from the mafia is believed to have supplied funds
for the operation, helped in procuring ammunition and hire vehicles that
carried the armed men to the interior areas as the attack progressed.

In your final paragraph, written in bold type in the version I received,
you write:

“The balance of forces in the world is such that it would be impetuous to
split the left. We are faced with a world power that has demolished one
state (Iraq) and is now threatening another (Iran). This is not the time
for division when the basis of division no longer appears to exist.”

So here we get the motivation that led you to write the letter. You do not
wish for a split in the left in the face of resurgent US imperialism. Let
me go back several years. As you are aware, the Fourth International had
been great supporters of the Nicaraguan Revolution, and we, here in
locally, tried our best to campaign for Nicaragua. At one stage, when
Halima Lopez Sarkar was appointed the Nicaraguan ambassador to India, the
CPI(M) decided to take up the campaign for Nicaragua. Of c ourse, with
their incomparably bigger force, they could do much more. But when I had a
talk with a Sandinista comrade who came here, he accused us of being
sectarian to the CPI(M). I pointed out that our problem was simple – the
CPI(M) would not even let us do any united front work while retaining our
independent political stance. So even if we accept, as you obviously do,
that the CPI(M) is a legitimate part of the left, how would we be able to
avoid a split? In emails where what passes for debates, CPI(M) supporters
are not only abusive towards us, but even to RSP or forward Bloc, partners
of the CPI(M) in the Left Front who have been critical about Nandigram as
well as the CPI(M)’s sudden volte face over the Nuclear Deal.

Yet you are confident, that it is we who are impetuously causing the split.
Tariq, the split is decades old. The CPI(M)’s idea of political hegemony
is simple – bash everyone on the left till they genuflect before you. But
according to you and your fellow signatories, the basis of divisions no
longer appears to exist. If by this you mean that Nandigram’s resistance
has been smashed, that armed terrorists of the CPI(M) have silenced the
peasants, you are of course right. The basis however exists, because we
have been unable to accept what was done.

Your argument, that in the face of the US, we must not fight the CPI(M),
can be extended to every tin pot dictator who takes a formal anti-US stand.
Meanwhile, the CPI(M) led government constantly strives to welcome
multinationals, it fights tooth and nail in defence of globalization. In
lieu of several more pages of details, I offer you the URL of Sanhati
(Solidarity), an anti-globalization website. Here you will find plenty of
discussions about the Left front government and globalization.

Nonetheless, you will say, what about the Left and its ability to influence
the Government of India, or its ability to bring out millions in
demonstrations? Once more, even accepting your premise that when you say
CPI(M) you still say Left (would you make the same concession for the right
wing of the old Italian CP?) , why can we not oppose the CPI(M) on other
issues? Or are you saying, that in the face of the US war threat, all class
questions inside India disappear? Are you saying that those who are in
government and are implementing World Bank-IMF dictated economic policies
are such valiant fighters against imperialism that we must accept the
loving pats they give us, even through their guns? Would demobilizing
militant fighters be then the best road to militant anti-imperialism? I
never learnt that from Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg or Mandel.

Long years of defeat and retreat have made many of us cautious. I agree
that the power of US imperialism is greater than it was. But I firmly
believe that we can best contribute to the anti-imperialist struggles by
consistent anti-capitalism at the point of our existence. When I joined the
Trotskyist movement, nearly three decades back, this was clear to me. This
was clear to me even before that, when I understood the meaning of Che’s
call to create two, three, many Vietnams. And yes, on 14th November,
despite attempts to turn the protest demonstration into an “apolitical”
show by some high profile figures, there were banners and posters, like the
one that said, Nandigram is Bengal’s Vietnam, or the poster where Marx
says, “Not in My name.” Don’t, please, call for a cession of the
struggles of toilers in Marx’s name, and don’t claim that bourgeois
reformism, like some land distribution, some registration of sharecroppers,
or panchayat elections, make West Bengal a planet apart. Stand by those who
have been murdered, and their comrades, and don’t call for a
reconciliation between defenders of the ruling class who use sophisticated
Marxist sounding jargon, and the crude, unsophisticated, but militant
fighters who resist them.

With comradely greetings

Kunal Chattopadhyay

Professor of History
Jadavpur University
Fourth Internationalist since 1980