11-25-2007, 11:05 PM
Pinned down in Nandigram, CRPF DIG slams state police
âWe have been here one week now. Our job should have been going out on house-to-house searches, seizing illegal arms and ammunition with which this place is brimming, arresting wanted criminals. I asked the SP two days ago to provide me a list of wanted criminals but I did not get it. I donât know why he is doing it. I have worked as an SP, I have never seen such behaviour,â Alok Raj, DIG, CRPF told The Indian Express.
âWe have been asked by the DGP, West Bengal, to shift our five camps from present locations. We have been asked to work in the areas of responsibility to be assigned by the East Midnapore SP,â he said.
After armed CPM cadres recaptured Nandigram from rival Bhumi Uchched Pratirodh Committee backed by the Trinamool Congress, the CRPF had been deployed in Nandigram, Gokulnagar, Rajaram Chowk, Khodambari-I and II.
CRPF DIG goes on leave as West Bengal Police refuses to co-operate
The CRPF, deployed to instill confidence among the people and restore normalcy in violence-hit Nandigram, has accused the West Bengal Police of non-cooperation, saying such an attitude would delay return of peace in the area.
Amid blame game, CRPF DIG Alok Raj, supervising the operations of the paramilitary force in trouble-torn area, has proceeded on leave alleging non-cooperation from the State Government.
<b>The CRPF had on Wednesday apprehended a local CPI(M) leader Anup Mondal and handed him over to the police. On Thursday, the CRPF apprehended another CPI(M) activist Krishna Ghorai from Brindaban Chowk and took him to the police station.
However, the local police did not register any case and set them free ostensibly under instructions from the State administration. </b>
"When we took Ghorai to the police station, we were told that Mondal had been released. When we asked why, the police said they had instructions from the higher up," Raj told an agency.
<b>Both Mondal and Ghorai had been apprehended on charges of intimidating people returning to their homes from the relief camps, the sources said, adding that several other cases of serious nature were also pending against Mondal.</b>
"If this goes on, peace cannot return. We are making all efforts to instill confidence, but the police should also work with us," the report quoted Raj as saying.
Sources said that despite repeated requests by the CRPF for a list of local miscreants and criminals, the police have not furnished it.
While the CRPF wants to shift its camps from local school and college buildings to enable classes to be held, the local administration is yet to identify alternative sites, the sources said.
In Kolkata, State Home Secretary PR Roy, when asked about the DIG's allegation he refused to comment.
"I don't know who has said what. He (Alok Raj) has gone on leave. He will resume duty after returning from leave," the report quoted Roy as saying.
He claimed both the CRPF and the State police were working jointly in Nandigram
CPI(M) is killing people like birds in Nandigram
<i>Activist Debojit Datta, who has played an active role in convening the BUPC, writes of Nandigram from behind the battlelines.</i>
Something worse than death stalks Nandigram today. Fear. Cold stifling dehumanising fear. It is impossible to say how many people have really died in the last seven days or how many have been raped. No one has accurate figures. No one can really tell whatâs happened on the ground.
Locals say about 500 people are missing after they were rounded up from Sonachura, Maheshpura and Nandigram by armed CPM cadres on motorcycles, some wielding AK 47s and SLRs, over 9 and 10 November. What we know for certain is that thousands of people have fled their homes and are stranded in refugee camps across Nandigram.
Just in BMT High School, Nandigram over 2,500 people have gathered. There is a winter chill in the air. Most people are lying on unprotected ground, surviving on one round of khichdi in the afternoon and some dried puffed rice at night. Most are from proud self-sufficient homes. To be on relief is itself a kind of humiliation.
To understand what is happening in Nandigram â and by extension in Bengal â one has to go back to the beginning. Popular resistance to the CPM first began when the government announced the Tata small car factory in Singur early last year and began forcible acquisition of land. There was firing, lathi-charge, deaths, police deployment. This fascist approach to the takeover of rich agricultural land for industrial purposes was new to Bengal. Many farmers and landless tillers opposed the project.
They felt the car factory would dislodge them from secure agricultural homesteads and turn them into Class IV workers. Local anger and unrest was amplified by the intervention of the Trinamool Congress and SUCI. The government responded with brute force. Appalled by its high-handed approach and the absence of consensus, many activists and intellectuals got involved with the Singur struggle in solidarity. 56,000 factories are lying shut in Bengal. The state has almost 3.7 million acres of uncultivable land. Why not utilize that for industrial growth, people argued. Why take over fertile land?
At about this time, around July 2006, word began to spread of an impending chemical hub project in Nandigram. The proposed takeover of land straddled an astronomical 28,000 acres. A 100 villages. 38 mouzas. A land rich in rice, coconut, fish and betel leaf. A thriving economy. Unlike Singur, Nandigram has been a CPM bastion for over 35 years. Their assumption was that Nandigram would toe the line. But the unthinkable happened. The villagers broke rank.
Confronted by potential eviction, many like Maidur Hossainâs family, who have been staunch CPM supporters for decades, turned against the party. In early December, several activists like me conducted a survey of 600 families in Nandigram seeking peopleâs opinion on the impending project. Only 12 consented to sell their land.
In all my years of activism, I have never seen anything like Nandigram. The villagersâ resolve, unity and passion for their land have transformed my understanding. On January 2, 2007, the local CPM MP and strongman Lakshman Seth put up a summary notice announcing the acquisition of land.
On January 3, a peaceful deputation of villagers marched to the Gram Panchayat to enquire about the notice. They were brutally dispersed by the police. The events after that, right up to the massacre of March 14, are well known. Police brutality, attacks by CPM goons, and escalating public outcry on the one hand. And an unprecedented spontaneous resistance on the other. Villagers broke roads and cut off access. The Bhumi Ucched Protirodh Committee (BUPC), cutting across party lines, was formed. It was agreed that everyoneâs political identity would be subsumed by the larger common cause: the fight for land. Caught on the backfoot, the CPM government had to relocate the Salem Groupsâs chemical project elsewhere.
In the months that followed, however, tensions in Nandigram did not recede. The order to relocate the project was never given in writing and no one trusted the governmentâs word. As BUPC volunteers â including women -- continued to patrol their homes and land, CPM cadres, along with hired goons imported from outside, banked themselves in Khejuri -- separated from Nandigram by a narrow canal -- and continued their assault. They were determined to regain control of Nandigram. It had become too powerful a symbol. It had become a prestige issue. A turf battle. If Nandigram was not quelled, the contagion would spread elsewhere.
<b>CPM leaders like Benoy Konar, Lakshman Seth and Biman Bose have constantly exhorted their cadres: âMoro, na maro,â Seth has urged (âKill, or die yourself.â) âLift your saris and show Medha Patkar your backside,â Konar has taunted. âHave they been throwing rosogollas at us?â Bose has exhorted.</b> Consequently, the last few months have been riddled with sporadic kidnappings, rapes, bombings, and firing.
Drawn into a war-like situation, there has been some violence on both sides.
Then suddenly, over the last couple of months, the CPM ratched up the violence. With panchayat elections only a few months away, they opened a new battlefront in Block 2 of Nandigram: Satangabari, Ranichowk, Tankapura, Maheshpura. As Anuradha Talwar, president of the Khet Mazdoor Committee, says, âThey were determined to make an example of Nandigram. They wanted to tell the rest of Bengal, this is what happens if anyone revolts against us. Historically, this is the way all peasant rebellions have been crushed.â
From November 7 to 12, to use one of the villagerâs Abdul Qadirâs words, âThey killed people like birds.â Personally, I have never seen state machinery used in this fashion in a functioning democracy. On the 8th and 11th, around 38 of us activists, including Medha Patkar, sought police escort to enter Nandigram. Both times, the police turned its face away and stood inert as our cars were smashed and we were stalled for hours by rampaging CPM cadres.
Medha was dragged out of the car by her hair, my spectacles were smashed, and after we left, they burned the houses of those who had given us shelter in Kapashberia. The rule of law did not exist. Even the District Magistrate, Khalil Ahmed had no power. âDonât go in there. We will not be able to help you,â he said. Yet, in a surreal twist, the CPM had banners everywhere shouting, âWhy are you promoting terror in Nandigram? Give us an answer, Medha Patkar!â <b>Since the resistance began in Nandigram, the government has been floating the fantastic lie that the villagers of Nandigram are backed by Maoists. I know every constituent of the BUPC, and I know none of us are Maoists. It is a poor refuge to explain away the real truth of the movement in Nandigram.</b>
Fear can be a crippling thing though. Many villagers now do not want to speak of what they have seen or suffered because they are afraid of reprisal. As Anuradha Talwar puts it, âIt is like internal violence in a family. The wife will not speak up, because the husband will beat her again later.â Yet slowly, the stories are trickling in.
Stories like that of Nitaikaran, a 96 year old man who was beaten to death. Eleven of his family members, who had fled to the refugee camps, applied to the CPM functionary at Tekhali for permission to return to their home to cremate their father. Ten people are not needed, they were told. Let one go, we will take responsibility for the cremation.
Stories like that of the sisters Anwara Khatun and Ansuma Khatun, 16 and 18 years old, who were raped in Satangabari, along with their mother, Akhreja Biwi. Stories like that of Chandana Das who was molested at Kalicharanpura. Like that of Srikant Paik in Sonachura whose house was burnt and shop looted.
For the moment, the villagers of Nandigram seem to have been beaten into submission. All they demand is that they be allowed to return home in genuine safety, under CRPF security, in time to harvest their fields. But the lessons of Nandigram are not over yet. It has exposed the Left Front as nothing before: the Left has left the Left. Abdicated to fascism and a rabid economic programme.
This governmentâs craze for instant industrialization, its comfort levels with demolishing a whole class of people and turning them into servants, its disregard for environment, its pandering to corporates at any cost has already fractured its image as a pro-people government. The alternatives â Congress, TMC, SUCI â may be no better. But that cannot be a concern at the moment. As Gandhi said to the British: you leave first, then we will figure out who will govern us.
<i>Debojit Datta is a member of the Forum for Free Thinkers and the NAPM. He has played an active part in the constitution of the BUPC.</i>
<b>And quiet flows the Haldi⦠</b>
Source:The Week
<i>How the Marxist cadres and goons teamed up to 'liberate' Nandigram </i>
By Tathagata Bhattacharya/Nandigram
The Haldi river bordering Nandigram is quiet and in mourning. On November 5, six battalions of armed CPI(M) cadres surrounded Nandigram in East Midnapore. Their mission: to 'recapture' villages from the Bhumi Uchched Pratirodh Committee (BUPC)-a Trinamool Congress-led front against land acquisition for the proposed special economic zone (SEZ).
The cadres were armed with AK series rifles, INSAS rifles, SLRs, .303 guns and bombs. Three of the battalions were sourced from West Midnapore's Garbeta block, three to four hours from Nandigram, and were led by its <b>local committee secretary Sukur Ali.</b>
The other three battalions were from the West Midnapore's Chandrakona region, three hours from Nandigram, and were led by its <b>district committee member Tapan Ghosh. Both Sukur and Tapan are wanted by the CBI in a case relating to the burning alive of seven anti-CPI(M) activists in Chota Angaria.</b>
Each battalion had around 100 men, including dacoits and criminals from Bankura and South 24 Parganas. They were paid in advance for 'Operation Nandigram', and given a free hand to loot the villages, CPI(M) sources said. The 'operation' was reportedly finalised at a meeting between a member of Parliament, a state cabinet minister and zonal and local leaders in Khejuri, a CPI(M) stronghold, at the guest house of the Kolaghat thermal power plant.
The blitzkrieg began with the cadres spraying bullets on Nandigram's fringe villages of Satengabari, Jambari, Kanungochowk and Brindabanchowk. They torched and ransacked houses. Even cattle were not spared. Thousands of men, women and children fled to the block headquarters in Nandigram Block I.
BUPC activists wielding antiquated weapons, mostly muskets, fought back. The cadres ran out of ammunition, and were forced to withdraw momentarily. But fresh supplies arrived through the waterways, and the battle resumed. Soon BUPC activists ran out of ammunition. The cadres took twelve to thirteen villages in two days, bringing most of West Nandigram under their control.
<b>Opposition leader and Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee alleged that the cadres used the official launch of the district magistrate of South 24 Parganas to ferry arms and ammunition to their stronghold in Khejuri.</b> Earlier, West Bengal home secretary Prasad Ranjan Roy had commented, "Nandigram is a war zone and the attacks are happening from Khejuri." West Bengal Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi dubbed the 'capture' of villages "unlawful and undemocratic".
Fleeing villagers trooped from the strategic Tekhali bridge-which runs over the Talpati canal that divides Nandigram from Khejuri-to the block headquarters, as CPI(M) cadres took control of the main road connecting Gokulnagar and Adhikaripara to the block headquarters. On November 8, massive firing in Maheshpur and Amgachia villages left many injured. The police remained mute spectators, even as thousands of villagers shook the gates of the police station. "We don't have orders," was what the officer-in-charge reportedly said.
On November 10, around 30,000 unarmed BUPC activists took out two processions to regain control of their land and homes; while one procession, of people who had taken shelter in camps in the block headquarters, marched from Nandigram to Maheshpur, another moved from the Sonachura village bordering Khejuri in the same direction.
The two groups were to meet at a point and move to Tekhali bridge. On the way, cadres surrounded them and sprayed them with bullets. The official death toll was put at three, with 20 injured; but witnesses said the toll was higher.
"The CPI(M) men carried away the bodies on vans towards Khejuri. Even the injured were not spared. Over 500 people were marched off to Khejuri," said a processionist. The Khejuri police rescued about 350 men-some of them were by then badly beaten up-from various schools in Khejuri. Many others, including some young women, were missing. <b>In Satengabari village, a 40-year-old woman and her two daughters, aged 14 and 17, were raped. The woman was admitted to Tamluk hospital.</b>
In Egra, which is around an hour's drive from Nandigram, a crowd intercepted two vehicles carrying injured people from Nandigram in the evening. <b>The Egra police arrested at least eight CPI(M) cadres. While Sukur and Tapan were among those held, the police changed their names. However, when they were produced in court, they gave their real names when photographs were produced.</b>
The rampaging cadres took Sonachura, Garchakraberia and Osman Chak, Kendemari and Hosenpur-the centres of BUPC's resistance in Nandigram Block I. Thousands of villagers fled to the camps in the block headquarters. By evening of November 11, the 'occupation' was complete.
Further, armed CPI(M) mobs stopped Mamata Banerjee from reaching Nandigram. The village was 'out of bounds' for the media, as all entry points-through river and land-were blocked. Even the CRPF men were turned back on the night of November 12.
Reports came in from Nandigram that after Sukur and Tapan were captured while trying to ferry the injured, CPI(M) cadres had changed tactics-many of the dead and the half-dead were being burnt in the brick kilns of Khejuri. Reports of gangrapes, too, have been coming in.
Sparks, claims and dissenting voices marked the aftermath. CPI(M) state secretary Biman Bose called the Governor's remarks unconstitutional and questioned his intellectual credentials. "Peace has been restored" in Nandigram, he said, adding that it was a "new sunrise". Prominent CPI(M) and CITU leader Shyamal Chakrabarty said, "Nandigram is now a liberated zone, free of terror. What is needed now is development."
RSP minister Kshiti Goswami was ashamed. He told THE WEEK: "Only the communists are capable of something like this, especially those dictated by Stalinist ideology. I have sent a letter to the RSP secretary, asking the party to let me resign. I don't feel like being a member of this government."
The violence drew flak from civil society. On November 12, a spontaneous bandh paralysed normal life in the state. Nothing moved. Even software engineers were not complaining. Many boycotted the Kolkata International Film Festival-which, interestingly, featured quite a few films on state repression.
âWe have been here one week now. Our job should have been going out on house-to-house searches, seizing illegal arms and ammunition with which this place is brimming, arresting wanted criminals. I asked the SP two days ago to provide me a list of wanted criminals but I did not get it. I donât know why he is doing it. I have worked as an SP, I have never seen such behaviour,â Alok Raj, DIG, CRPF told The Indian Express.
âWe have been asked by the DGP, West Bengal, to shift our five camps from present locations. We have been asked to work in the areas of responsibility to be assigned by the East Midnapore SP,â he said.
After armed CPM cadres recaptured Nandigram from rival Bhumi Uchched Pratirodh Committee backed by the Trinamool Congress, the CRPF had been deployed in Nandigram, Gokulnagar, Rajaram Chowk, Khodambari-I and II.
CRPF DIG goes on leave as West Bengal Police refuses to co-operate
The CRPF, deployed to instill confidence among the people and restore normalcy in violence-hit Nandigram, has accused the West Bengal Police of non-cooperation, saying such an attitude would delay return of peace in the area.
Amid blame game, CRPF DIG Alok Raj, supervising the operations of the paramilitary force in trouble-torn area, has proceeded on leave alleging non-cooperation from the State Government.
<b>The CRPF had on Wednesday apprehended a local CPI(M) leader Anup Mondal and handed him over to the police. On Thursday, the CRPF apprehended another CPI(M) activist Krishna Ghorai from Brindaban Chowk and took him to the police station.
However, the local police did not register any case and set them free ostensibly under instructions from the State administration. </b>
"When we took Ghorai to the police station, we were told that Mondal had been released. When we asked why, the police said they had instructions from the higher up," Raj told an agency.
<b>Both Mondal and Ghorai had been apprehended on charges of intimidating people returning to their homes from the relief camps, the sources said, adding that several other cases of serious nature were also pending against Mondal.</b>
"If this goes on, peace cannot return. We are making all efforts to instill confidence, but the police should also work with us," the report quoted Raj as saying.
Sources said that despite repeated requests by the CRPF for a list of local miscreants and criminals, the police have not furnished it.
While the CRPF wants to shift its camps from local school and college buildings to enable classes to be held, the local administration is yet to identify alternative sites, the sources said.
In Kolkata, State Home Secretary PR Roy, when asked about the DIG's allegation he refused to comment.
"I don't know who has said what. He (Alok Raj) has gone on leave. He will resume duty after returning from leave," the report quoted Roy as saying.
He claimed both the CRPF and the State police were working jointly in Nandigram
CPI(M) is killing people like birds in Nandigram
<i>Activist Debojit Datta, who has played an active role in convening the BUPC, writes of Nandigram from behind the battlelines.</i>
Something worse than death stalks Nandigram today. Fear. Cold stifling dehumanising fear. It is impossible to say how many people have really died in the last seven days or how many have been raped. No one has accurate figures. No one can really tell whatâs happened on the ground.
Locals say about 500 people are missing after they were rounded up from Sonachura, Maheshpura and Nandigram by armed CPM cadres on motorcycles, some wielding AK 47s and SLRs, over 9 and 10 November. What we know for certain is that thousands of people have fled their homes and are stranded in refugee camps across Nandigram.
Just in BMT High School, Nandigram over 2,500 people have gathered. There is a winter chill in the air. Most people are lying on unprotected ground, surviving on one round of khichdi in the afternoon and some dried puffed rice at night. Most are from proud self-sufficient homes. To be on relief is itself a kind of humiliation.
To understand what is happening in Nandigram â and by extension in Bengal â one has to go back to the beginning. Popular resistance to the CPM first began when the government announced the Tata small car factory in Singur early last year and began forcible acquisition of land. There was firing, lathi-charge, deaths, police deployment. This fascist approach to the takeover of rich agricultural land for industrial purposes was new to Bengal. Many farmers and landless tillers opposed the project.
They felt the car factory would dislodge them from secure agricultural homesteads and turn them into Class IV workers. Local anger and unrest was amplified by the intervention of the Trinamool Congress and SUCI. The government responded with brute force. Appalled by its high-handed approach and the absence of consensus, many activists and intellectuals got involved with the Singur struggle in solidarity. 56,000 factories are lying shut in Bengal. The state has almost 3.7 million acres of uncultivable land. Why not utilize that for industrial growth, people argued. Why take over fertile land?
At about this time, around July 2006, word began to spread of an impending chemical hub project in Nandigram. The proposed takeover of land straddled an astronomical 28,000 acres. A 100 villages. 38 mouzas. A land rich in rice, coconut, fish and betel leaf. A thriving economy. Unlike Singur, Nandigram has been a CPM bastion for over 35 years. Their assumption was that Nandigram would toe the line. But the unthinkable happened. The villagers broke rank.
Confronted by potential eviction, many like Maidur Hossainâs family, who have been staunch CPM supporters for decades, turned against the party. In early December, several activists like me conducted a survey of 600 families in Nandigram seeking peopleâs opinion on the impending project. Only 12 consented to sell their land.
In all my years of activism, I have never seen anything like Nandigram. The villagersâ resolve, unity and passion for their land have transformed my understanding. On January 2, 2007, the local CPM MP and strongman Lakshman Seth put up a summary notice announcing the acquisition of land.
On January 3, a peaceful deputation of villagers marched to the Gram Panchayat to enquire about the notice. They were brutally dispersed by the police. The events after that, right up to the massacre of March 14, are well known. Police brutality, attacks by CPM goons, and escalating public outcry on the one hand. And an unprecedented spontaneous resistance on the other. Villagers broke roads and cut off access. The Bhumi Ucched Protirodh Committee (BUPC), cutting across party lines, was formed. It was agreed that everyoneâs political identity would be subsumed by the larger common cause: the fight for land. Caught on the backfoot, the CPM government had to relocate the Salem Groupsâs chemical project elsewhere.
In the months that followed, however, tensions in Nandigram did not recede. The order to relocate the project was never given in writing and no one trusted the governmentâs word. As BUPC volunteers â including women -- continued to patrol their homes and land, CPM cadres, along with hired goons imported from outside, banked themselves in Khejuri -- separated from Nandigram by a narrow canal -- and continued their assault. They were determined to regain control of Nandigram. It had become too powerful a symbol. It had become a prestige issue. A turf battle. If Nandigram was not quelled, the contagion would spread elsewhere.
<b>CPM leaders like Benoy Konar, Lakshman Seth and Biman Bose have constantly exhorted their cadres: âMoro, na maro,â Seth has urged (âKill, or die yourself.â) âLift your saris and show Medha Patkar your backside,â Konar has taunted. âHave they been throwing rosogollas at us?â Bose has exhorted.</b> Consequently, the last few months have been riddled with sporadic kidnappings, rapes, bombings, and firing.
Drawn into a war-like situation, there has been some violence on both sides.
Then suddenly, over the last couple of months, the CPM ratched up the violence. With panchayat elections only a few months away, they opened a new battlefront in Block 2 of Nandigram: Satangabari, Ranichowk, Tankapura, Maheshpura. As Anuradha Talwar, president of the Khet Mazdoor Committee, says, âThey were determined to make an example of Nandigram. They wanted to tell the rest of Bengal, this is what happens if anyone revolts against us. Historically, this is the way all peasant rebellions have been crushed.â
From November 7 to 12, to use one of the villagerâs Abdul Qadirâs words, âThey killed people like birds.â Personally, I have never seen state machinery used in this fashion in a functioning democracy. On the 8th and 11th, around 38 of us activists, including Medha Patkar, sought police escort to enter Nandigram. Both times, the police turned its face away and stood inert as our cars were smashed and we were stalled for hours by rampaging CPM cadres.
Medha was dragged out of the car by her hair, my spectacles were smashed, and after we left, they burned the houses of those who had given us shelter in Kapashberia. The rule of law did not exist. Even the District Magistrate, Khalil Ahmed had no power. âDonât go in there. We will not be able to help you,â he said. Yet, in a surreal twist, the CPM had banners everywhere shouting, âWhy are you promoting terror in Nandigram? Give us an answer, Medha Patkar!â <b>Since the resistance began in Nandigram, the government has been floating the fantastic lie that the villagers of Nandigram are backed by Maoists. I know every constituent of the BUPC, and I know none of us are Maoists. It is a poor refuge to explain away the real truth of the movement in Nandigram.</b>
Fear can be a crippling thing though. Many villagers now do not want to speak of what they have seen or suffered because they are afraid of reprisal. As Anuradha Talwar puts it, âIt is like internal violence in a family. The wife will not speak up, because the husband will beat her again later.â Yet slowly, the stories are trickling in.
Stories like that of Nitaikaran, a 96 year old man who was beaten to death. Eleven of his family members, who had fled to the refugee camps, applied to the CPM functionary at Tekhali for permission to return to their home to cremate their father. Ten people are not needed, they were told. Let one go, we will take responsibility for the cremation.
Stories like that of the sisters Anwara Khatun and Ansuma Khatun, 16 and 18 years old, who were raped in Satangabari, along with their mother, Akhreja Biwi. Stories like that of Chandana Das who was molested at Kalicharanpura. Like that of Srikant Paik in Sonachura whose house was burnt and shop looted.
For the moment, the villagers of Nandigram seem to have been beaten into submission. All they demand is that they be allowed to return home in genuine safety, under CRPF security, in time to harvest their fields. But the lessons of Nandigram are not over yet. It has exposed the Left Front as nothing before: the Left has left the Left. Abdicated to fascism and a rabid economic programme.
This governmentâs craze for instant industrialization, its comfort levels with demolishing a whole class of people and turning them into servants, its disregard for environment, its pandering to corporates at any cost has already fractured its image as a pro-people government. The alternatives â Congress, TMC, SUCI â may be no better. But that cannot be a concern at the moment. As Gandhi said to the British: you leave first, then we will figure out who will govern us.
<i>Debojit Datta is a member of the Forum for Free Thinkers and the NAPM. He has played an active part in the constitution of the BUPC.</i>
<b>And quiet flows the Haldi⦠</b>
Source:The Week
<i>How the Marxist cadres and goons teamed up to 'liberate' Nandigram </i>
By Tathagata Bhattacharya/Nandigram
The Haldi river bordering Nandigram is quiet and in mourning. On November 5, six battalions of armed CPI(M) cadres surrounded Nandigram in East Midnapore. Their mission: to 'recapture' villages from the Bhumi Uchched Pratirodh Committee (BUPC)-a Trinamool Congress-led front against land acquisition for the proposed special economic zone (SEZ).
The cadres were armed with AK series rifles, INSAS rifles, SLRs, .303 guns and bombs. Three of the battalions were sourced from West Midnapore's Garbeta block, three to four hours from Nandigram, and were led by its <b>local committee secretary Sukur Ali.</b>
The other three battalions were from the West Midnapore's Chandrakona region, three hours from Nandigram, and were led by its <b>district committee member Tapan Ghosh. Both Sukur and Tapan are wanted by the CBI in a case relating to the burning alive of seven anti-CPI(M) activists in Chota Angaria.</b>
Each battalion had around 100 men, including dacoits and criminals from Bankura and South 24 Parganas. They were paid in advance for 'Operation Nandigram', and given a free hand to loot the villages, CPI(M) sources said. The 'operation' was reportedly finalised at a meeting between a member of Parliament, a state cabinet minister and zonal and local leaders in Khejuri, a CPI(M) stronghold, at the guest house of the Kolaghat thermal power plant.
The blitzkrieg began with the cadres spraying bullets on Nandigram's fringe villages of Satengabari, Jambari, Kanungochowk and Brindabanchowk. They torched and ransacked houses. Even cattle were not spared. Thousands of men, women and children fled to the block headquarters in Nandigram Block I.
BUPC activists wielding antiquated weapons, mostly muskets, fought back. The cadres ran out of ammunition, and were forced to withdraw momentarily. But fresh supplies arrived through the waterways, and the battle resumed. Soon BUPC activists ran out of ammunition. The cadres took twelve to thirteen villages in two days, bringing most of West Nandigram under their control.
<b>Opposition leader and Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee alleged that the cadres used the official launch of the district magistrate of South 24 Parganas to ferry arms and ammunition to their stronghold in Khejuri.</b> Earlier, West Bengal home secretary Prasad Ranjan Roy had commented, "Nandigram is a war zone and the attacks are happening from Khejuri." West Bengal Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi dubbed the 'capture' of villages "unlawful and undemocratic".
Fleeing villagers trooped from the strategic Tekhali bridge-which runs over the Talpati canal that divides Nandigram from Khejuri-to the block headquarters, as CPI(M) cadres took control of the main road connecting Gokulnagar and Adhikaripara to the block headquarters. On November 8, massive firing in Maheshpur and Amgachia villages left many injured. The police remained mute spectators, even as thousands of villagers shook the gates of the police station. "We don't have orders," was what the officer-in-charge reportedly said.
On November 10, around 30,000 unarmed BUPC activists took out two processions to regain control of their land and homes; while one procession, of people who had taken shelter in camps in the block headquarters, marched from Nandigram to Maheshpur, another moved from the Sonachura village bordering Khejuri in the same direction.
The two groups were to meet at a point and move to Tekhali bridge. On the way, cadres surrounded them and sprayed them with bullets. The official death toll was put at three, with 20 injured; but witnesses said the toll was higher.
"The CPI(M) men carried away the bodies on vans towards Khejuri. Even the injured were not spared. Over 500 people were marched off to Khejuri," said a processionist. The Khejuri police rescued about 350 men-some of them were by then badly beaten up-from various schools in Khejuri. Many others, including some young women, were missing. <b>In Satengabari village, a 40-year-old woman and her two daughters, aged 14 and 17, were raped. The woman was admitted to Tamluk hospital.</b>
In Egra, which is around an hour's drive from Nandigram, a crowd intercepted two vehicles carrying injured people from Nandigram in the evening. <b>The Egra police arrested at least eight CPI(M) cadres. While Sukur and Tapan were among those held, the police changed their names. However, when they were produced in court, they gave their real names when photographs were produced.</b>
The rampaging cadres took Sonachura, Garchakraberia and Osman Chak, Kendemari and Hosenpur-the centres of BUPC's resistance in Nandigram Block I. Thousands of villagers fled to the camps in the block headquarters. By evening of November 11, the 'occupation' was complete.
Further, armed CPI(M) mobs stopped Mamata Banerjee from reaching Nandigram. The village was 'out of bounds' for the media, as all entry points-through river and land-were blocked. Even the CRPF men were turned back on the night of November 12.
Reports came in from Nandigram that after Sukur and Tapan were captured while trying to ferry the injured, CPI(M) cadres had changed tactics-many of the dead and the half-dead were being burnt in the brick kilns of Khejuri. Reports of gangrapes, too, have been coming in.
Sparks, claims and dissenting voices marked the aftermath. CPI(M) state secretary Biman Bose called the Governor's remarks unconstitutional and questioned his intellectual credentials. "Peace has been restored" in Nandigram, he said, adding that it was a "new sunrise". Prominent CPI(M) and CITU leader Shyamal Chakrabarty said, "Nandigram is now a liberated zone, free of terror. What is needed now is development."
RSP minister Kshiti Goswami was ashamed. He told THE WEEK: "Only the communists are capable of something like this, especially those dictated by Stalinist ideology. I have sent a letter to the RSP secretary, asking the party to let me resign. I don't feel like being a member of this government."
The violence drew flak from civil society. On November 12, a spontaneous bandh paralysed normal life in the state. Nothing moved. Even software engineers were not complaining. Many boycotted the Kolkata International Film Festival-which, interestingly, featured quite a few films on state repression.