[Reader-list] nandi gram: lessons and challenges (from m.l.)

[TaraPrakash]

Nandigram-III: Lessons and Challenges

CPIML, Editorial from Liberation, December 2007

The year 2007 will be remembered as the year when the CPI(M) completely 
unmasked itself in the mirror of Nandigram. If January 2007 was re-enacted 
in March,
November witnessed a brutal replay of the atrocities perpetrated in March 
2007. Each time the operation has been more lethal and barbaric than the 
previous
episode. If in March, the massacre was perpetrated under the joint auspices 
of the police force and armed marauders patronized by the party, in November
the CPI(M) chose to keep the police in the background letting the party's 
armed machinery be in exclusive charge of the entire operation. But sure 
enough,
on every occasion, the killings have been preceded by categorical commands 
from some central leaders of the CPI(M).

The March 14-15 mayhem had followed in the wake of a televised threat issued 
by CPI(M) Central Committee member and peasant association leader Benoy 
Konar
to make Nandigram a "living hell". Likewise, the November killings too were 
forewarned by none other than Brinda Karat, CPI(M) Polit Bureau member and
Rajya Sabha MP when she publicly advocated "Dumdum dawai" (direct physical 
action) to silence Nandigram.

What cruel jokes history can play! The expression "Dumdum dawai" had gained 
popular currency in Bengal in the course of the food movement of the 1960s 
when
the Left-led masses administered this medicine of physical action against 
hoarders and profiteers. Today once again, West Bengal is in the throes of a
powerful food movement, and this time the movement is directed against the 
CPI(M)-led government and the nexus of corrupt PDS dealers, panchayat 
functionaries,
middlemen and government officials that is almost invariably identified with 
and blessed by the CPI(M). There is also another dimension to the "Dumdum
dawai" irony. Rural women have visibly been in the forefront of the 
Singur-Nandigram resistance, and they have also had to bear the brunt of the 
barbaric
repression unleashed by the state-CPI(M) combine. The "Dumdum dawai" 
advocated by the 'firebrand' women's leader of the CPI(M) has been duly 
delivered
in the form of more abuse, rapes and killings directed at the brave and 
fighting women of Nandigram.

A comparative study of the post-incident statements of West Bengal Chief 
Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee will also be in order. After Nandigram-I, 
the
CM said it was wrong on the part of the Haldia Development Authority to 
issue the notice announcing the impending acquisition of land. He asked for 
the
HDA land acquisition notice to be torn and consigned to the waste-paper 
basket. Following Nandigram-II, he said the 'incident' was unfortunate and 
as Chief
Minister he owned all moral responsibility (without of course taking any 
concrete corrective step except withdrawing the SEZ proposal). The same CM 
has
now greeted Nandigram-III as a case of tit-for-tat justice: "they have been 
paid back in their own coin!"

The timing of the operation is also worth noting. Nandigram-III happened at 
a time when the whole of West Bengal was immersed in Kalipuja-Dipavali 
festivities.
The focus of the media had already shifted to other issues – Rizwanur's 
'mysterious death' in particular. As for the discourse concerning Nandigram, 
debates
had veered around the need for deployment of central paramilitary forces 
with the State Government itself requesting the Centre for CRPF battalions. 
In
fact, while the operation was on, CRPF jawans were already on their way to 
Nandigram, but the actual posting was delayed by the district administration
and the CPI(M) machinery till "Operation Nandigrab" came to a temporary 
conclusion! Meanwhile, activists and mediapersons trying to enter Nandigram 
also
got a taste of Brinda's "Dumdum dawai" concoction.

The CPI(M) may well believe that it has now conclusively won the battle of 
Nandigram. With only a few months to go before the forthcoming panchayat 
elections,
it may reasonably calculate that it has now sufficiently galvanized its 
'electoral machinery'. But there are indications galore that it has already 
lost
heavily in the larger war of Nandigram. Inside West Bengal, the CPI(M)'s 
mass isolation has reached a new high as demonstrated so visibly by the 
unprecedented
scale and composition of the November 14 dhikkar michhil (march of the 
people condemning the CPI(M) and its government and congratulating the 
fighting
people of Singur and Nandigram). From the Governor and High Court to the 
media and intelligentsia to its own partners in the Left Front – the CPI(M) 
now
has to direct its barbs almost at everybody except its own poor shadow in 
West Bengal.

In many ways, the pattern of ossification and degeneration of the CPI(M) 
rule in West Bengal resembles the East European syndrome. For an authentic 
and
moving description of the signs of degeneration of the 'Left' powerlords of 
West Bengal, one does not have to go any farther than veteran Marxist 
economist
and writer Ashok Mitra. In one of his recent articles, Mitra has even gone 
to the extent of comparing the ruling CPI(M) in Buddahadeb's dispensation to
the anti-social dominated Congress of the 1970s in Siddhartha Shankar Ray's 
regime. The veteran Marxist is alarmed that this degeneration may well pave
the way for some sort of reactionary and even fascist revival in West 
Bengal. Yet Mitra has no hope of a Left and democratic resurgence in West 
Bengal
and his only weapon against the rotten present and a frightening future is 
an 'appeal' to the CPI(M) central leadership to read the writing on Kolkata
walls.

At the other end of this spectrum of disillusionment are activists and 
intellectuals who either harbour fond hopes of 'democratising' and 
'radicalising'
Mamata Banerjee or see a resurgent civil society as the panacea for all that 
ails Bengal.

We beg to differ from both these approaches. While fully sharing the anguish 
of Ashok Mitra and wholeheartedly welcoming the new-found activism of the 
civil
society, we firmly believe that the need of the hour is to reorient the Left 
movement in the country along revolutionary lines. The CPI(M) leaders who
camouflage their capitulation to capital and capitalism as 
'development-oriented class struggle' and seek to justify the serial 
massacres and continuous
bloodletting in Nandigram in the name of 'peace, justice and democracy' are 
doing an unpardonable disservice to the entire Left and democratic camp in
the country. The Left movement therefore needs a bold new direction and a 
new leadership. Indeed, from the fighting rural poor of West Bengal to the 
progressive
student community of JNU, the yearning for a radical alternative can be felt 
everywhere. Let us do all we can to strengthen this alternative direction
and back it with an alternative framework of Left and democratic unity.