Violence in Singur: A must-read article by Kunal Chattopadhyay

Violence in Singur: Hardselling Capitalist Globalization in the nameof Left Alternative
Kunal Chattopadhyay
Several thousand police and paramilitary forces arenow roaming Singur and adjoining areas in Hooghlydistrict, West Bengal. On 2nd December, they firedtear gas and rubber bullets at villagers and a fewoutside supporters who had gone to the area.Television channels, so far strongly supportive of themoves of the Buddhadev Bhattacharjee government, nowfound themselves projecting a story totally atvariance with the words their newscasters were beingmade to utter. Even as the bourgeois media went onmouthing claims that locals (later changed toOutsiders) were attacking the police, what could beseen , for example on the Kolkata or the Tara Newschannels, or even in Star-Ananda, was the picture ofhalf a dozen hulking cops converging on individualhapless villagers, and brutally beating them up withtruncheons. One could also see the tear gas shellsbeing lobbed and the rubber bullets being fired, andhuge paddy dumps being set on fire. All the while, theChannels were seeking to divert attention by askingviewers to send sms on whether they condemned thebehaviour of the (right-wing opposition) TrinamoolCongress members' action in smashing up property inthe Vidhan Sabha (the State legislature, where TMCMLAs had gone berserk on 1st December).
Left wing Model of Development?To understand what was happening we need to go backand look at the model of development being pushed bythe Buddhadev Bhattacharjee government. WhenBhattacharjee replaced Jyoti Basu as Chief Minister,it was a signal to the Indian capitalist class as wellas capitalists from everywhere else, that a newattitude was being developed by the CPI(M). Singur isnot an isolated case. All over India, the process oftaking over peasants' land is going on. The SpecialEconomic Zone Bill says that the SEZs created bytaking over land will be like a foreign country. Thosewho invest capital in those areas will function underlaws different from the laws for the people throughoutthe country. In Kharagpur, West Bengal, the Tatas wantanother 1240 acre land. Total targeted land in WestBengal is nearly 1,00,000 acres. In Gujarat, it is theReliance group that is staking major claims. Farmersin Gujarat are fighting the Reliance group just asfarmers in West Bengal are fighting the Tatas. Inaddition there are transnational companies. The Salimgroup of Indonesia were feted a short while back bythe Left Front ministers. The group had a strong roleduring the coup in Indonesia that led to the murder ofsome half a million communists. But that is all oldhat, and seemingly the left ministers cannot bebothered by such sentimental issues when behaving likehardheaded businesspersons.
It is in this context that the government's plan forSingur must be seen. The story of the "industrialturn-around" of West Bengal begins with the electionresults earlier in 2006. The CPI(M) led Front had wona thumping victory, thanks to the first past the postsystem. With just over 50% votes, it had obtained 235seats, reducing all oppositions to such a minorproportion that as per legislative assembly rulesthere could not even be a formal leader of theopposition. As the CM was addressing a pressconference at the CPI(M) office, an aide brought in amessage, and the elated CM informed the press that theTatas wanted to build a car factory in West Bengal.Within a few days, a hush hush deal was struck. TheTatas asked for close to 1000 acres of primeagricultural land – nothing else would do for them.The government complied with such alacrity that onemight be pardoned for thinking that they were boundserfs of the Tatas. They did not consult the GramSabha or any other elected local bodies, though eventheir gurus at the World Bank go through the motionsof suggesting the need to consult with local bodies.Tata Motors want to launch a new car model by 2008,the one-lakh-rupee car. According to the Left Front,this is development, and cannot be opposed. It willput West Bengal in the industrial map of India.According to CPI(M) Politbureau member and West BengalState Party Secretary Biman Bose, those who areopposing the move are fronting for other big companieswho sell overpriced cars!
We need to look a little more closely at the entireprocess. The land that Tata wants is primeagricultural land. There is plenty of poor qualityland in West Bengal, for example in Purulia district,or elsewhere. Plenty of old industries are in crisisand their land could also have been converted. Butthis particular area has a good road connection, as itlinks up with the Delhi Road. That is the first realreason why Tata is pushing for this, and only thisarea. A second reason, likely to come up after adecade, will be argued below.
So how did the state government act? Did it, in itsnew found faith in market economics, tell Ratan Tataand his minions to go and negotiate land price withthe peasants? Even that would have been detrimental tothe sharecroppers and agricultural labourers, ifdirect sale of land had simply ousted them. Butkeeping to the spurious logic of the free market, atleast this should have been done. Instead, the stategovernment used an act, the Land Acquisitions Act,which was originally devised in the colonial period,to take over the peasants' land. They were offered aprice worked out as the average of the previous threeyears' price, plus a 30% hike known as the solacium.The full details of the deal with Tata are not known,but from the little information that came out, itseems Tata will not even pay this much to thegovernment. According to Debabrata Bandyopadhyay,former Commissioner, Land Reforms, West Bengal, (andwho is, according to many people, the mainburueacratic impulse behind Operation Barga, theregistration of sharecroppers, the reform measure thata generation back had enabled the Left Front to gainsolid and unwavering rural support), the governmenthas in fact saddled the people of West Bengal with ahuge burden in order to bring in Tata Motors.The West Bengal government claims this investment willcreate many new jobs and be a major developmentalproject. What is the truth? Between 1980 and 1994,General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, the three top UScar manufacturers, cut down the total number of theirglobal employees from 7,50,000 to 3,75,000. Why shouldthe Tatas behave any differently? If they are reallygoing to sell cars at the rate of Rs. 1 lakh (US $2246), they will be cutting costs. They have nointention of running a loss making factory.
Another question is, why do they want nearly 1000acres of land? Maruti-Suzuki, a major car manufacturerin India, need 296 acres of land on which they produceover 600,000 cars per year. Moreover, we shouldremember that while Maruti builds the entire car inits factory, Tata will only assemble the car there. Sowhat is all this land needed for? It is likely, thatafter the hue and cry has died out, much of this landwould be reconverted to agricultural land, but run bythe Tatas as an agribusiness. Reliance in Gujarat isgoing in for marketing organic food. The HindustanMotors of the Birla Group, which had been given about750 acres of land in Konnagar half a century back,could use only 350 acres and has now sought permissionto reconvert the rest of the land. Moreover, plenty ofindustrial land was left, for example in the Durgapurindustrial area. So targeting high qualityagricultural land and insisting that nothing else willdo is bound to create this kind of doubt. Clearly, thetale of alternative, left wing model of developmentpeddled by Battacharjee, his industries ministerNirupom Sen, and his finance minister Ashim Dasgupta,is a murky tale indeed.
Media reports indicate that the land is being takenover by the West Bengal Industrial DevelopmentCorporation at a cost of Rs. 140 crores. The Tatashave informed the West Bengal Government that theywill compensate the government to the tune of 20 crorerupees after five years with a 0.01 per cent interest.The discounted value of the money in today's termswill be about 12 crore rupees. So the West Bengalgovernment is giving to the Tatas the sum of Rs. 128crore rupees (28749185 US dollars). This money willcome either from taxes, or from loans contracted bythe WBIDC, which again must be repaid through taxes orthrough cutting costs in social sectors like healthand education.
The most important issue of course is the story ofsacrifices. Ever since independence, when foreigncolonialism could no longer be blamed directly, peoplehave been asked to make sacrifices for the nation. Notvery surprising, though, that it is workers and poorpeasants, tribals and low caste people, who end upmaking the sacrifices, while the wealthy, thebourgeoisie, the urban middle and upper middle class,the upper castes, all end up with profits. For whom isBhattacharjee proposing this development? For Tata?For the shareholders of Tata's companies? What aboutthe ordinary people? The peasants are being given apaltry compensation. Even that is murky. In manycases, the land was sold to other people, by a smallnumber of landed elements who knew about the deal inadvance. But they still had the papers, so they wereidentified as owners deserving compensation. In many,even most cases, owners did not want to sell the land.They are aware that what skills they have are aspeasants. Cash compensation is no good to them forthey will not be able to use the cash in an effectiveway. Urbanisation of the area, inevitable if a factorycomes up, will raise the cost of living. Thelandowners are not going to become traders all atonce. As one of them quipped, if we all set up shops,in any case, who will buy?
Five villages of Singur, namely Gopalnagar, Beraberi,Bajemelia, Khaser Bheri and Singher Bheri, areaffected. While peasants here are not rich farmers,nor are they absolutely poor. Net income of the ownerof 1 acre of land is about Rs. 1,00,000. So for 1000acres the net income is around Rs. 100 million (US$2246030). The gross income is even more, about Rs.250 million (US$ 5615075). Apart from the peasants orlandowners (in some cases the owners are absentee),there are the share-croppers and agriculturallabourers. All told, some 7/8 thousand people areemployed, and their total income, Rs 250 million, wasbeing added to the GDP of West Bengal. This seven toeight thousand is based on economic calculationssuggesting that for around 5000/6000 peasants therewill be an added 1200 or so share-croppers and about1000 agricultural labourers. And how many workers willthe Tatas employ? Despite the Right to InformationAct, in West Bengal all real information is firmlyhidden. The West Bengal Government has refused todivulge these figures to organisations who have soughtthem. But one such organisation estimates it will bearound 250 employees. If their average monthly incomeis pegged at Rs. 50,000 the total wage bill will be150 million rupees (This average takes in the highsalaries of the managerial cadre). Then there will bethe profits of the shareholders and the concern, whichafter all is the main reason for this investment.Clearly, this is a model of development that willintensify disparities.
If Fraud does not Work, Use Force:Initially, the government went into raptures about thebenefits to the province. Somehow, though, thepeasants did not respond. And so, pressure on thembegan to mount. Apprehensive of losing their solesafeguard to life, the farmers got together to launcha resistance movement under the banner of 'KrishijamiRaksha Samiti' (Association for the Protection ofAgricultural Land). From the very beginning, womenhave been in the forefront of the movement. Inrecollection of a famous song of the tebhaga movement,the greatest peasants' movement in Bengal in thetwentieth century, with 'life and honour as stakes,'they began to 'hone the scythe.'[1] The stategovernment, hardly bothered about the plight of thefarmers, remained stubborn, repeatedly reiteratingthat the Tata factory would come up on that piece ofland. If the slogan of the alleged Rambhaktas (the RSSand its allied outfits) was 'Mandir wahin banayenge"(the temple will be built just at that spot), theslogan of West Bengal's alleged bam (left) CM was"factory wahin banayenge". On 25 September, there wasa massive attack. In a pre-planned move, a reign ofterror was unleashed on thousands of peacefulprotesters at the Block Development Officer's officein Singur. It was the first day cheques were beinghanded over to those who had agreed to hand over theland for compensation, and the demonstration was aform of pressure on them as well. By the afternoon,several cases were detected in which those who hadalready sold off their land to others, but themutation process was not complete, were being givencheques, denying the present legal owner. Protestingsuch illegal deeds by government officials, thedemonstrators sat on a dharna at the BDO office, evengheraoing the District Magistrate for a brief period.At this point, Mamata Banerjee, leader and Supremo ofthe Trinamool congress, arrived and joined the dharna.A little after midnight, a black-out was created, andunder the cover of darkness, a huge police force,according to the victims well lubricated with alcohol,attacked and brutally beat up the protestors, men,women and children. Ms. Banerjee was also manhandled,and her sari torn. She was then bundled off toCalcutta by force, and had to be admitted to ahospital.
Hundreds were severely injured in the police assaultand 72 put behind bars. Women with small children werearrested under the Arms Act and/or charged withattempt to murder. Payel Bag, atwo-and-a-half- year-old, spent four days in prison,along with two pre-teen boys. 26-year-old RajkumarBhul became the first martyr of the Singur struggleafter he collapsed with severe internal haemorrhagefrom police beating. Bhul's mother, in an open letterto the Chief Minister, squarely blamed him for herson's death. According to Sumit Chowdhury, one of themost commited "outsider" activists, who has beenwriting and organising solidarity, when he went toSingur two days later as part of a fact finding team,and also during subsequent trips, "the hapless andangry women in the villages – some with broken arms,bandaged eyes and scars here and there – said that thepolicemen were drunk, cursed in the filthiestlanguage, kicked and molested them".
The subsequent responses not only of the government,not only of one or two individuals, but of the entireCPI(M) was damning. Prakash Karat, the GeneralSecretary of the CPI(M), who has never set foot inSingur, announced from the CPI(M) headquarters inDelhi that Singur has one-crop land, that the farmersare queuing up for cash, and that the demonstratorswere anti-development hoodlums. Evidently, theprotests against land takeover for SEZs and similarissues are reserved for provinces where the CPI(M) isnot a major partner in the government. Equallyevidently, when Prakash Karat wrote his introductionto a recent publication entitled The Left andEnvironmentalism, he should have entered a caveat thatall his pious utterances do not apply to West Bengaland his comrade Buddhadev Bhattacharjee.On the night of the violence, Buddhadev Bhattacharjeehad his alibi. He and other party top brass were inDelhi. But the alibi is thin. The same day, he alsomet the Tata top management. The next day, there was areport about a community package promised by the Tatasfor Singur. But examined carefully, it was mostlyverbiage. One needs to remember that the massiveinvestment of the in Orissa and Jharkhand, two ofEastern India's poorest provinces (though very rich inminerals and forest resources), has not led to anypositive development in the conditions of poorpeasants, tribals, and others. On returning toCalcutta, the CM posed as injured Christ, stating,"forgive them for they know not what they do". After ahuge outcry, two days later he was forced to say thatpolice action had been "unwarranted". But no singlepoliceman is known to have been punished.At a meeting called by the Chief Minister, even anumber of Left Front partners criticised the way thefactory was coming up, but at the end of the meetingthe government announced that the Tata Motors factorywould come up on Singur at any cost. On 9th October,the opposition parties, both right and left, called atwelve hour bandh (general strike including totalstoppage of public activities). The CPI(M) threatenedto unleash its cadres.[2] But if anything, this threatmade people fearful and stay indoors.From this point, terror became the order of the day.Any 'outsider', unless a staunch supporter of the CPI(M) come to campaign for handing over the land to thegovernment, was treated as a member of one of theMaoist groups.[3]
Terror was of different kinds. Nirupom Sen, theindustries minister, warned the locals that alldevelopmental work in Singur would be halted if landwas not handed over. One minister even termedopposition to the project as 'anti-national' . As aresult of this unrelenting government pressure, someland transfer began. There was an added dimension tothe handing over. As we noted earlier, some people hadactually sold the land to others, but the mutation hadnot been done. So they took advantage of this to claimcompensation.
The struggle continued nonetheless, and thereforeterror took on more concrete shapes. Several of thedeep tube-wells of the area, essential for regularirrigation of the fields, were vandalised at night.And this happened despite the massive (already, atthat point, several hundred) policemen and womenposted in the region. From early November, agitationand terror both stepped up, with the governmentthreatening to take over the land and hand it over tothe Tatas at any cost by December. Women played amilitant role, resisting all threats andblandishments.
One of the regular refrains of the government and theCPI(M) was that the real owner have acceptedcompensation, it is outsiders who are causing trouble.We will discuss the issue of "outsiders" later. Herewe should note that indeed, the lead in the strugglewas taken, not by well to do peasants, but by sharecroppers, agricultural labourers, and the smallerowners. This is the rural mix which fought six decadesback, in the tebhaga uprising.[4] This was the basewhich gave the left its decisive majority even in theoccasional periods in the last three decades when inthe cities the Left was on the defensive. So it wasinevitable that the Left Front, notably the CPI(M),would not be willing to accept that this base will nowspeak in its own voice. Yet that was inevitable. Thetebhaga movement had been so massively successfulbecause the authentic voice of the rural poor had beenwell represented by the undivided CPI and the AllIndia Kisan Sabha. By the present decade, the AIKS wasa bureaucratised carcass living on the memory of pastglories. Present day leaders of the AIKS have not evenseen the tebhaga. The younger among them becameleaders after the Left Front was already in power. Sofor them the role of the peasant organisation is tocollect money, collect votes, and on occasion collectlots of people in trucks and take them to Calcutta forcentral rallies. The apparently impressiveanti-imperialist demonstrations, and so on, organisedby the CPI(M) conceal a reality where massorganisations act as transmission belts of a highcommand, herding people in different ways. And soresentment and opposition grows. In Singur, the directattack on livelihood turned the sullen resentment intoorganised politics, as the Krishijami Raksha Samitibrought together most of this rural poor, albeit in asmall area. This challenge could never be allowed togrow. The Left Front has always been sensitive to theemergence of left wing oppositions and alternativesfrom within the working class and poor peasantry. Itis aware that it has little to fear if the right wingis even fully mobilised. As long as there is noserious left wing alternative, it can expect to getfairly close to half the votes every time, andtherefore get a majority in the first-past-the postsystem. Mamata Banerjee was the only right-wing leaderto recognise this, and therefore to develop a populistpolitical style. But lacking a solid trade union andrural poor implantation, she has never, even at hermost creditworthy performance proved to be a match forthe CPI(M).
Every time a single trade union, or a single ruralarea, has shown autonomy, the CPI(M) has thrown moreforces in the field to smash it, than it has fordefeating its right wing opponents. Early in the LeftFront period, electricity workers had a couple of leftwing, but non-Left Front Unions – the Workers' Unionand the Technical Workers Union, in a number ofplants. Repeated violence, repeated attacks on theworkers, arrests, were used indiscriminately to smashthe unions. In the 1990s, the struggle of the KanoriaJute Mills took on epic proportions, as did theregime's attempts to malign the struggle. So inretrospect, it was not, or should not have beensurprising, that despite (or because of) its Leftcredential, this regime was more aggressive to thepeasant struggle than almost any other regime inIndia.
Since this may sound a bit of a hyperbole, let us takea concrete, very right wing example, to make ourpoint. Medha Patkar has already made the point. A lotof people thought Medha was indulging in shock tacticswhen she said the Left Front is worse than the Gujaratgovernment.[ 5] But this is the picture if we restrictourselves to the attitude to peasants andindustrialisation, and the violence on them. Patkarargued that even in Gujarat, she had not beenrestricted in her movements as much as in West Bengal.We should add, that by now the virus is spreading.First, she was debarred from Singur as an "outsider"fomenting trouble. Now, when she went to PresidencyCollege, Calcutta, to speak at the invitation ofstudents there, SFI thugs beat up students of theIndependent consolidation, and the college authoritiesshut the gates on her face. She then climbed on top ofthe gates and spoke. But we can also go beyond whatshe said to add another point. In Gujarat, thegovernment made a commitment that it would provideland for land to all the people ousted due to theSardar Sarovar Dam. The Narmada Bachao Andolan arguedthat it cannot be done. Indeed, proper land-for-landrehabilitation has not proved possible even for thosewho have been properly identified. As I saw in twotrips earlier this year, village communities have beensplit up, with one village resettled in 8-10 newsites. People have been given plots for cultivation,but not enough grazing land and open fields necessaryfor their survival. Often there are conflicts with theoriginal inhabitants. Sometimes, after people weresettled, this new land was partially taken away inorder to build the canal network that would carry thewaters from the dam to the target areas. Sorehabilitation has received much flak. But if we lookat the entire process, we find two waves of campaigns.We find a fairly long period, so that people could getsome information and try and seek redress. Pro-dam butpro-rehabilitation NGOs, such as Arch-Vahini and itsactivists like Anil Patel, waged one type of campaign.They sought a compromise, and the whole concept ofland-for-land rehabilitation came because of suchinterventions. When the NBA, led by Patkar and others,criticises the rehabilitation and resettlementschemes, it is because they see the land-for-landproposal as inadequate in theory and fraudulent inpractice. They see it breaking up the community,creating much social disorder, and all for the benefitof small elite groups. Whether they are right aboutthe dam benefiting only small groups is of course muchdebated. But we have sought to show that the pictureis much more open and shut in the case of West Bengal.The peasants, share-croppers and agriculturallabourers are being pushed out of land. They are notgetting any alternative land. Many are not getting anyrehabilitation at all. It is our experience, fromMadhya Pradesh, were the government has used cashcompensation rather than land-for-land rehabilitationwhenever possible, that peasants, unaccustomed tolarge sums of money, sent it on consumer goods, onbuilding big houses, and so on. At the end of arelatively short period, many of them had neither landnor money. Of course, if we extrapolate from this andargue that in all respects the West Bengal governmentis worse, we would be in error. But Patkar has notmade such a sweeping generalisation, nor are we.Perhaps confirmation of a different kind came in thenewspapers recently. On 5th December, Ananda BazarPatrika reported that there were differences withinthe BJP. Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi had toldhis party that it is opportunistic of them to try toexploit Buddhadev Bhattacharjee' s recent difficulties,and they should support him over the issue of landacquisition.
November 30 – December 2 and the aftermath:On 30th December, Mamata Banerjee and her supporterswere prevented from going to Singur, because Section144 of the Criminal Procedure Code, disallowing anycongregation of five or more persons, had been clampedin that entire area. Angry, and losing her head as sheis often accustomed to doing, Ms. Banerjee told hersupporters to turn their motor cavalcade back anddrive straight to the West Bengal LegislativeAssembly. From late afternoon, TV channels had a fieldday. No sports, no cartoon channel could compete withthe live show, and then the re-runs, of MLAs smashingfurniture, and generally wrecking havoc. Then shecalled for a Bengal bandh on 1st December. In view ofthe massive publicity given to the antics of herparty, the bandh was a partial failure, even in areasthought to be her stronghold. South Calcutta, herpersonal fief, alone saw a near complete shut down. Anemboldened Bhattacharyya moved in for the kill. On 2ndDecember, several thousand police started stormingSingur. According to Samir Saha, reporting in theBengali Dainik Statesman, ordinary police, RapidAction Force and State Armed Police all togethernumbered 20,000. Even the pro-CPI(M) Kolkata TVchannel reported at least 6000 police. From the first,they seemed to have been instructed to go on theoffensive. A wide area was surrounded, and then teargas firing began at random. The next task was to findout the aggrieved peasants. For the police, it was ofcourse difficult to know who was an aggrieved peasantand who a party loyalist. So this task had been givento party cadres. As Ganashakti, the CPI(M) daily,admitted on 4th December, in many cases localsthemselves were identifying and fighting theopposition. Only, they were not fighting alone. Theywere moving as agents of the police, identifyingspecific houses.
There was of course some resistance. And theresistance acted as proof that the police attack wasright and proper. But if paddy stacks are set on fire,if even tomorrow's food, let alone next year's, issnatched away thereby, who would not resist? Sopeasants, already pledged to resist till the end, didstrike back. The fight was utterly uneven. Stones,knives, perhaps a few crude home-made bombs (if at allwe are to give credence to this part of the policestory) were hurled. According to the Chief Minister,the violence was entirely the work of outsiders,anti-socials, SUCI and Naxalites.[6] CPI(M) StateSecretaiat member and long time trade union leaderShyamal Chakraborty asserted, "The police wereattacked first. The police showed great restraint. Ifthey had not tackled in this manner they themselveswould have been beaten up."[7]
From the paddy fields, reporter Ashish Ghosh could seethe 'anti-socials' being dragged into police camps.They included lungi-clad aged peasants, as well asyoung rural women. Near the highway, Ghosh could see adifferent scene. The Superintendent of Policesmilingly reporting to the Inspector General, "Sir, wehave already arrested fifty. By tonight we will set upcamp at Beraberi.", and the IG responding, "in threemore days we will complete the operation". Sittingnext to the police was the CPI(M) Panchayat PradhanDibakar Das. Food packets were being brought from acar for the high officers and their cadre friends.Meanwhile ripe paddy was being trampled underfoot orset on fire, one scene even the most pro-governmentchannel could not avoid shoeing, since in one casethat was also a major battle field which the channelswere keen to sow, since it "proved' their claim thatit was all the work of outsiders.
The Outsider:For the last two months, the 'outsider' has been amajor target of CPI(M) propaganda, especially outsideSingur. On 4th December, Ganashakti wrote, onlyoutsiders are resisting the government at Singur.Ephemera are always bolder. So a poster put up by theStudents' Federation of India, the student wing of theCPI(M), asserted that urban people dressed as peasantshad done all the mischief. In other words, even if yousee peasants being beaten up on TV, don't worry, theywere all urban Naxalites playing at revolution inSingur. Ganashakti of course charged Medha Patkar too,with being an outsider. A CPI(M) leader, evidentlymore illiterate than the average, asked why she didnot agitate in Gujarat against land take over, and whyshe came to West Bengal. Medha, typical of her trackrecord, managed to get to Singur despite the thousandsof cops and plenty of party cadres keeping a watch onoutsiders. This of course suggested she had a lot oflocal sympathisers and insider help. But of course, werule out such a possibility a priori. And so,Ganashakti also had a big story about how many routesthere are to Singur, and why the police failed to stopNaxalites and Medha Patkar from entering the village.Medha confronted the police, and for her pains she,Association for the Protection of Democratic Rightsactivist Amitadyuti Kumar, and Sumit Chowdhury werearrested, dragged to a car and thrown out. She wasthen taken to a State Government Guest House inCalcutta, seemingly because someone higher up hadrealised that a faux pas had been committed. But sherefused to be a guest of the State Government. Afterspending the entire night in the police van, fromwhich she refused to budge, she gave the police aslipand went off to Chandernagore, where the seventyarrested people had been kept.
If Medha Patkar was one outsider, the "Naxalites" wereanother category. As the CM told the media on the 3rd,there had been students of Jadavpur Univeristy. Thiswas a coded signal. Jadavpur University, rated inrecent times by the UGC as one of India's top five,has an ill-reputation because all its teachers are nothousebroken partisans of the CPI(M), and even more,because the Faculty of Engineering and TechnologyStudents' Union has been under the uninterruptedcontrol, since 1977, of the Democratic Students Front,a non-party far left association which has allowed inevery shade of radical left, Maoist, Trotskyist, andother. As late as 2005, JU engineering students hadbeen beaten up by the police in order to break apeaceful hunger strike. So when Bhattacharjee said JUstudents, he implied radical left, militant, and"mal-adjusted" . Yet how many JU students did theyfind? Out of the around seventy arrested, there is onestudent of JU, currently in a hospital, with a brokenhand.
Another arrested "outsider" is Swapna Banerjee. Afifty year old school teacher, Banerjee is a member ofthe Nari Nirjatan Pratirodh Mancha. Women'sinvolvement in the struggles led to her being closelyinvolved in the area for several months. Immediately,The Telegraph, on 3rd December, invented a story thatshe was the main ultra-left figure in organising andfomenting trouble.[8] Between the police, the ChiefMinister, and the inventive staff of The Telegraph,local resistance was wiped off the map. Becharam Mannabecame a non-person, as did 81 year old Saraswati, whogave an interview to Soma Marik a few days earlier andpromised to continue fighting till the end.[9]But there is another, even more crucial aspect of theinvention of the outsider. On one hand, we are toldthat even the nation is too small a unit. We are askedto accept globalisation as the inevitable goal. On theother hand, in every battle where we try to organiseresistance, we are told we are outsiders, or that wehave outsiders amongst us. Medha Patkar is of coursethe great outsider in India. She has been branded anoutsider in Gujarat, in Madhya Pradesh, and now inWest Bengal. In Gujarat, the regional language papersare always attacking her, arguing that as an outsidershe has no business talking about the Sardar SarovarDam on the Narmada, which is supposedly the sole hopefor Saurashtra and Kutch. In Madhya Pradesh, I wasasked why Medha Patkar is sniping at the MPgovernment, and not at others. And for the last fewdays, the CPI(M) and the media that has, in theinterests of big capital, placed itself entirely atthe disposal of the CPI(M) for the moment, argued thatas an outsider, Patkar has no business in West Bengal.In flagrant violation of law, she was stoppedrepeatedly from going to Singur, even when she was notviolating Section 144 of the CrPC. She was kept lockedup, along with Anuradha Talwar of the SramajeebiMahila Samity, at Dankuni on the night of 4thDecember, and told on the 5th that she could goanywhere else but Singur. Yet, she had not beenformally arrested, so she could not be served anexternment order. In other words, what was being doneto her was sheer hooliganism, even if done by men inuniforms, backed by a Chief Minister.
What was unique was not the charge, "outsiders". Thisis a necessary salami tactics applied by rulers. Theywould like each fight to be an isolated one. They canbring 20,000 police from all over West Bengal, but thepeasants of Singur have to be alone. For they know, atthe present level of class struggle probably betterthan the toiling people, that in solidarity and unityalone lie chances of victory.
What was unique was something else. This was the factthat a so-called Communist Party is doing thepropaganda. After all, exactly who built this party?What was its founding ideology? Were Muzaffar Ahmed,S.A. Dange, themselves factory workers? How many acresof land did Muhammad Abdullah Rasul or BankimMukherjee cultivate? Did not Somnath Lahiri say, thatthey were often called the "strike-babus" , becausethey would rush to any mill where a strike had brokenout, in the hope of making contact with militantworkers. And even if we forget those heroic pioneersof the early twentieth century, and concentrate on theprosaic present day leaders, Shyamal Chakraborty isstill hailed as a Centre of Indian Trades Unionleader. When did he last, if ever, work in a factory?Is it not a fact that Brinda Karat and Sitaram Yechuryrepresent West Bengal in the Upper House ofParliament? If the CPI(M) is going to turn regionalchauvinist at this date, should it not start byinquiring about how that could happen? We for our partbelieve that the Leninist party building conceptclearly rejects this particular notion of "insider"and "outsider". We are even prepared to concede thatwithin the parliamentary framework, even a CPI(M),which is certainly not a Leninist party, can sendKarat to parliament from wherever they are sure of asafe seat. The question is, why then the chauvinisticwitch-hunt unleashed on Medha Patkar? What this showsis, behind the mask of regionalism and localism is theclass position. And it forces everyone to startrethinking the nature of the CPI(M). How many milesmust a party walk right, till it ceases to be a partof the left?
After 2nd December:The struggle is difficult after 2nd December. Theorganisation of resistance has been crushed for themoment by stationing 20,000 police. Arrests have meantthat energies have gone into court cases; money has togo for putting up bail bonds. But the struggle is notover. On 5th December, a few small parties, the SUCI,and two of the CPI(ML) groups called a bandh. Despiteall bluster, TV channels could only prove that roadswere empty, buses plied empty, and the Chamber ofCommerce expressed unhappiness at the losses incurred(surely the losses were due to the success, not thefailure of the bandh). On 8th December, a march toSingur, called by two CPI(ML) groups, was brutallybeaten up by the police. Hundreds were injured. Trueto form, Ananda Bazar Patrika reported only theviolence unleashed also on a few journalists.Some other developments are worth noting. For decades,the Left Front has had the pretence of being a"cultured" political force, as opposed to the"uncouth", "uncivilised" politics of the Congress andthe Trinamool Congress (these choice epithets areoften used by CPI(M) leaders). Long years in power hasenabled the CPI(M) to use a patronage network and getplenty of intellectuals, not the most straight-backedof all beings, to line up with it and paint it inglowing terms. But the violence resulted incondemnations pouring in from many intellectuals andartistes of Bengal. Mahasweta Devi, internationallyreputed author, issued a short, blunt statement: "Thisis a war. Ask yourself, on which side are you? Let warmeet war." Well known leftist poet Sankho Ghosh, aTagore scholar of great repute, condemned the attackson the peasants and committed himself to organisedprotest mvements. Artist Ramananda Bandyopadhyaycondemned the arrest of Medha Patkar and questionedwhy, if India is a democracy, she did not have theright to go to Singur. Statements came from singersPratul Mukhopadhyay and Srikanata Acharya, poets likeNirendranath Chakraborty and Mallika Sengupta, authorslike Sanjib Chattopadhyay, film director HaranathChakraborty, academics like Esha De of CalcuttaUniversity, Avee Dutta-Majumdar of Saha Institute ofNuclear Physics, around thirty teachers of Jadavpuruniversity who took part in a silent demonstration inthe University campus, and others. The students ofEngineering Faculty in Jadavpur University boycottedthe first day of their end-of-semester examination asa mark of protest. On 8th December, Medha Patkar spokeat both Presidency College, Calcutta, and JadavpurUniversity, at the invitation of students. A number ofonline petitions have also been launched, while twoprotest letters have been sent to the Governor of WestBengal, the Chairperson of the National Human RightsCommission and the National Commission for Women,signed by human rights and womens' organisation, NGOs,and networks as well as by leftwing groups. Well knownacademics who are also activists, like Achin Vanaikand Professor Vibhuti Patel, also signed them.Arundhati Roy, Mainstream Editor Sumit Chakravarty,were among those who protested in Delhi, in front ofthe CPI(M) office.
Yet an organised force like the CPI(M), backed by thebulk of the media, which is not even reportingprotests in any even handed manner, will certainly tryto turn all these into a three-day wonder, urgingpeople to move on to other things. The leadingnewspaper in West Bengal, Ananda Bazar Patrika, andits English counterpart, The Telegraph, have taken thelead in this. Reporting the massive violence, TheTelegraph sought to play it down, to trivialize it, byusing tennis match rhetoric about post-police action,it was "advantage Mamata". It pontificated editoriallythat in a democracy, street demonstrations werepursued by parties that do not have faith in thedemocratic system. And then it went on to cite asexample Lal Krishna Advani's notorious "ratha yatra"of 1989, which had stirred up communal riots in 43towns. As though that had been a street demonstration,and as though that could be used to justify theillegal externment of Medha Patkar.
The Singur land has been taken over, but the story isjust beginning. The West Bengal government proposes togive vaster stretches of land, for example to theSalim Group of Indonesia, again from peasants. Itproposes to take over land to build a nuclear powerplant. And even for Singur, there is at the least theneed to fight for a proper rehabilitation for thegreat many who have got nothing or next to nothing,for a land-for-land resettlement. International andnational solidarity is needed, particularly becauseStalinists all over the world today still point to theLeft Front as a shining example. CPI(M) MP NilotpalBasu's article on the Left Front was reprinted even inthe US progressive paper Guardian earlier this year.Even Noam Chomsky, the libertarian, found reasons topraise the Left Front government when he came toCalcutta. The myth of the Left Front as alternativehas to be disposed of, before a struggle for a realalternative can succeed. Let the tragedy of thepeasants of Singur create at least the possibility ofthat. They deserve such revenge.
[1] The first lines of the song went: Hei Samaalo dhanho kasteta dao shan hoJan kabul aar maan kabulAar debona aar debona rakte bona dhan moder jan hoOh keep a watch on the paddy, hone your scytheWith life and honour as stakeWe will never again hand over the paddy sown with ourlife's blood[2] Cadre has come to sound like an obscene andutterly alienating word in West Bengal. Cadre todayevokes the image of stick or other more murderousweapons wielding thugs, tragically carrying the redflag. Yet, notwithstanding the Stalinist nature of themajor left parties, and despite their clear reformistturn from 1942, and again after 1951 (there was ashort in-between period in 1948-51 when they hadbecome ultra-left) communist party cadre had meant themost sincere, dedicated social movement activist.[3] Though on paper in West Bengal none of the Maoistgroups are banned, in practice, people suspected ofMaoist affiliation are routinely arrested andvariously heckled and tortured by the police,especially outside Calcutta.[4] See Kunal Chattopadhyay, Tebhaga Andolaner Itihas,Kolkata, 1987, reprint, 1997. In English the mostdetailed study is Adrienne Cooper's Sharecropping andSharecroppers' Struggle in Bengal 1930-1950, Calcutta,1988.
[5] Medha Patkar made this point repeatedly, includingin a speech in Jadavpur University Campus on 8thDecember.[6] The Socialist Unity Centre of India is a smallerStalinist formation, opposed to the Left Front.Naxalite is a way of referring to the Maoists of alltrends, in view of the origin of Maoism in India fromthe peasant struggles in Naxalbari, in North Bengal.The CPI(ML) Liberation is active in Singur.[7] Dainik Statesman, 3 December 2006, page 1, newsbox 'Policer Kaaj Police Korechhe: Buddha' ('ThePolice have Done Their Duty: Buddha')[8] The Telegraph has been among the most consistentspokespersons of the ruling class. Whereas even TheStatesman, despite its historic connections with theTata family, has reported relatively objectively, TheTelegraph and its Bengali sister publication, AnandaBazar Patrika, have been running a sustained campaignvilifying protestors and arguing that there is noalternative to industrialization at any cost. TheTelegraph has indeed gone further. On 5th December, itran an editorial virtually calling for the suspensionof what little democracy remains in West Bengal.Entitled 'No Velvet Glove', the Editorial thundered:"The menace of Maoist violence is not new to WestBengal. When it had first surfaced in the late Sixtiesand early Seventies, it was eradicated throughcounter-violence. Mr Bhattacharjee must learn fromthat experience and nip the present movement in thebud before Maoist weeds strangle the hundred flowersof West Bengal." Even after the passage of decades,people still remember much of what had been done atthat time. The "eradication of Maoism" meant theCossipore-Baranagor e massacre, when an entire area hadbeen sealed off and every known youth connected theleasdt bit to the Naxalites murdered. It included themassive application of the Maintenance of InternalSecurity Act, from which Bush could learn somethingabout fighting terrorism. It included the killings ofprisoners. It included "encounters" where prisonerswere shot in the back and proclaimed dead inencounters.[9] Interview taken by Soma Marik, 19th November 2006.Courtesy Soma Marik.