Kafila

i think one should be more responsible before quoting death toll numbers like 125…what is the source of such information?…one does not deny that the state government will try its best to conceal real numbers, it could be way more or even less…but before making such estimates one should be more careful as it could have unforseen adverse impact during such volatile times…
it is indeed sad that an ‘activist’ state like Bengal has been totally unsuccessful for the past 30 years to produce any worthwhile opposition and this is the price we pay for putting our faith in brand Buddha
and the first people to be blamed should be journalists…
sadly it takes a tragedy of this sort for media houses to wake up to the fact that something needs to be done…i too belong to this group but where was all this journalistic outrage when Bengal was hailed as the next best thing in resurgence and the capitalist communism the path of industrial progress by all the major media in the country…why does it always need tragedies to mobilise and awaken the media,a little bit of foresight - is it too much to ask??…
the Bengal chief minister is now being compared to Narendra Modi but what to what avail?…its the very same newspapers and media channels which proudly report “you are stupid if you aren’t in Gujarat” and a big report on the orgy of capital infusion and subsequent ‘development’ in the state…
more than 70 people have died of starvation in six tea gardens in north Bengal…in the last six months or so…but it takes hard core numbers for the media to take up the issue…
now in Bengal one needs the party to become an autorickshaw driver or university lecturer and we have only ourselves to blame…
this arrogance of the Left Front in Bengal has been fanned to a large extent by the media and very surprisingly even by the outstation ones, for whom most of the time Bengal bashing is an ‘enjoyable activity’
the dust will eventually settle over Nandigram too as cruelly time makes people forget…
and i dread the day when the media will crown Bengal on the lines of Gujarat - “you are stupid if you are not in Bengal”
from a watchful cynic…

Hi,

there is no choice but to go for industrialization in bengal and buddha is taking the right steps to curb the outragious mindless movements like nandigram.
you should see the bigger picture. 16 lives or 10 crore people’s future. please come out of the parochial mindset.

I am not an CPIM supoporter but a professional. Stop this mission of misinformation and try to be constructive.

debojyoti ganguly
BE, JU; MBA IIM Kozhikode

Debojyoti: Industrialization is just fine. I simply wish you were one of the 16 to perish for the good of humanity - that your house should have been confiscated and you be handed over a compensation cheque. I have no other disagreements with you.
Sohini: I completely agree with what you say. We should certainly be careful about numbers - but as it  happens, there should also be some way of airing the anxieties of local people who find innumberable people missing. Simple body count does not give the full picture. The Calcuttaweb report by Soumitra Basu, for instance gives the wide range of estimates made by different people (see write-up in http://www.calcuttaweb.com/nandigram.shtml) ranging from government estimates (11), to Dainik Statesman (31),  the BBC correspondent’s initial figure of 32, later withdrawn, ostensibly under pressure, to TARA TV which put the number at 100 plus. The point here is that there is a widespread belief that many of the missing may actually be dead - some bodies thrown into the river. Much of what you say about the role of the media in giving the LF a continued good press, even when evidence of total despotic control of institutions and undermining of democratic process has been piling up, is absolutely correct and as disturbing as in the case of Modi. For many years now, a silent, unwritten terror, combined with judicious use of fraudulent practices has been used to win elections at various levels, from panchayats to students’ unions - and even assembly elections.

[...] How many people actually died in Nandigram? Kafila posts a report, dated March 15, by Sanjay Sangvai, NAPM activist, from Nadigram: About 125-130 men, women and children were killed by the police and the cadres of the ruling Communist Party of India (CPM). Many dead bodies were thrown by police into the nearby river. The dead bodies of children were thrown onto the trenches dug by the villagers to stop any encroachment, and they were filled with soil to make roads much like carnage in Gujarat. According to the people the cadres and police have devastated the Sonachura village; they killed the people, drove them out, looted the houses and raped scores of women. Linked by kuffir [...]

Dear Aditya,

Been wondering if this argument can be shifted a little beyond industrial versus agrarian mode of existence or if it can be moved beyond those who perished in the thick of things and those who survived to hold forth from the insulated world outside. The tragedy visiting us today is not, it seems to me, merely about a Nandigram here and a Singur there. It is a much bigger issue even at the level of human rights. There is a human rights’ violation which invites quite appropriately urgent political intervention but this must not let us forget that there are other larger epochal issues concerning the very core of human existence. So when you say “I have no disagreements with you” to Debojyoti, I feel a bit alarmed.

Panini

hi,
agree with the fact that it is indeed a human rights issue be it nandigram or godhra or kashmir or anywhere else…and what alarms me is the utter disrespect for human life and freedom…a section of the people in Nandigram are happy with what they have which does not include electricity and they do not even sell their agri produce in the markts and are just happy being self sufficient and not market savvy…be it development or any mode of human existence or religion why can’t i or any farmer, plumber or anyone else choose their own mode of existence and be happy with what ‘development’ means to us…it does not help that all this is encouraged by the ideology of opportunism…i think at the core of all this are our beliefs which can so easily be diluted with the ‘convenient school of thought’ …
just another very disturbing thought on nandigram-
the residents there, who have stayed back are actually taking journalists around for a conducted tour of the carnage…it is bizarre, they show the same stains, the same kilns, the same corners to everyone…and here i used to think that it us - the urban, educated who relish and thrive in Debord’s ’society of spectacle’….the extension of which is the media spectacle and which is what the likes of Nandigram and any other event of human rights violation are reduced to…as Panini says when does the political intervention follow…and as long as people like Debojyoti and others like him feel this way, it will not help things..
“But for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, appearance to essence . . . truth is considered profane, and only illusion is sacred. Sacredness is in fact held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness ”- Feuerbach quoted in Debord

I hadn’t read Sohini’s earlier letter carefully enough in which the following comment was made:

“now in Bengal one needs the party to become an autorickshaw driver or university lecturer and we have only ourselves to blame…”

I do not know if this is the appropriate thread to post my comments to but I cannot resist the tempatation. Forgive me if it is somewhat deviating from the main thread.

I do not know about autorikshaw drivers - I have an uncanny feeling, though, that it is true - but I do know how appointments are made in colleges and universities depending upon which ideological dispensation is in control at the centre and states.

As against the shameless saffronization of our academic space by the NDA while they ruled, the current hammer-n-sicklization during the current dispensation is equally flagarant. It would be an interesting academic exercise to make a list of selections made in the last two years and a half for example in JNU, DU and Jamia (Jamia’s being a particularly revealing case) along ideological and academic grids. The results I am sure would be horrifying.

Whereas previously the dictats from the Jhandewalan carried the day, these days the pressure point has shifted only a kilometre and half away to Gole Market. Appointments are impossible if you do not have commissars speaking up on your behalf to the VCs, or the bahubalis-cum-ministers of state likewise sending a stern ‘request’ across to the ever-obliging VCs. And then the VCs subverting all norms and appointing Professors and Directors left right and centre without constituting interview-boards thereby subverting all democratic norms. This charade is simply too distressingly funny and unending.

Panini: My reply to Debojyoti was in a different register. What can I say to a smug self-seeker who thinks that people should die that he may enjoy life. And what disagreement can I have on his death. Hence the remark that cause you alarm. On other occasions I have tried to get out of this industry versus agriculture debate.
Shohini: Agree with what you say except that I am not sure about the Feuerbach/Debord quote. I am not sure that we have any access, outside of representation and the sign, to any ‘true signified’. About the copy and the original or appearance and essense, that is a separate debate and I look forward to a fuller exchange in future.

[...] Nandigram update from Sanjay Sangvai [...]

I haven’t read any other comment on this thread except Mr. Ganguly’s and forgive me but his assertion and logic reads like a naive, ignorant, ill-formed, enthusiastic, jingoist’s bravura. And funnily an image of a right-winger capitalist is forming in my head. That surely will be one more menace for us to deal with.

And to top up all this Mr. Ganguly throws a slew of degrees he has earned in his remarkable academic career at us. He almost reads like a Naipaulian character albeit an erroneous one.

Mr. Ganguly, a human life is far greater than any monument of progress you envisage. And I’ll humbly request you to chuck all those degrees you have and to please revert to your primary class moral science lessons. There is more wisdom sitting there.

Thanks and best regards,

Dan Husain

[...] A gentleman, who is understandably proud of his degrees and his achievements, expressed his disagreement with the condemnation of the Nandigram massacre in the following terms on Kafila. (http://www.kafila.org/2007/03/15/nandigram-update-from-sanjay-sangvai/) �There is no choice, but to go in for industrialisation in Bengal and Buddha is taking the right steps to curb the outrageous mindless movements like Nandigram. You should see the bigger picture. Sixteen lives or 10 crore people�s future? Please come out of the parochial mindset. I am not a CPI(M) supporter, but a professional. Stop this mission of misinformation and try to be constructive.�� Debojyoti Ganguly, BE, JU; MBA, IIM Kozhikode. The obvious riposte, duly provided on the same page, is that let us begin to get constructive with Mr Ganguly itself, why not sacrifice him for the sake of a larger collective. But the point behind Nandigram condemnations is not merely this that we have to chose between evicting poor farmers or industrial growth. That is the lie that the CPI(M) would like us to believe. And what an unlikely prophet it is, too, of the virtues of foreign capital. The CPI(M) can now happily accept that Lenin, who wrote an entire thesis condemning finance and foreign capital was truly an opportunist. And that it too, following its divinities, is merely being opportunistic in inviting the Tatas and the Salims. It is good to be opportunistic in a dog-eat-dog capitalistic world. What was most appalling about the Nandigram massacre was the complete cynicism displayed by the state machinery. The cynicism lay not in the repressive actions that led to the massacre, repression is the most recognisable sign of left governments in states, but in forming the culminating event of a series that has been in evidence for over six months now.Singur tooOne would have thought that after the police firing in January, the state government and the party might have shown some restrain in persecuting innocent villagers. And this came after a violent confrontation in another part of the state over the same issue. I refer to the Singur project, where the government had forcibly acquired a 1000 acres of land for a Tata automobile factory.After three successive confrontations with farmers of many different hues, the CPI(M) was still smarting to teach its citizens a lesson. The police did not get into a scrap at Nandigram because the people obstructed its path, it went in there prepared to teach a lesson. This was not, as claimed by the CPI(M) mascots at the Centre, a case of reclaiming government control, nor a simple law and order situation, it was a pre-planned attempt to establish the power and the force of the party and of the government. Two days before the actual police action, as the Bengali paper Bartaman reported, there was a meeting between the CM and the director general of state police, where the police were instructed to go and �clean up� Nandigram. Three thousand policemen, armed with AK-47s, march into an area to reclaim it for the government and the decision has nothing to do with the fact that the government has had to retract its decision of appropriating land from the villagers? The dissociation of land acquisition from police action does not hold water.A secular alliance Nandigram was a sore at many levels. Many thousands of local villagers had been protesting against the decision to establish a SEZ there. There were Bhumi Ucchhed Virodhi Samitis, Land Defence Committees, where an entire gamut of organisations and players had joined hands � the Maoists, Naxalites, Trinamul Congress activists, Jamiat-ul-Ulema Hind, the Medha Patkar led National Alliance for People�s Movements. If ever there was a secular alliance for secular, that is non-religious, purposes, this was it. The touching innocence with which CPI(M) apologists have blamed �outsiders� for this carnage can make the most na�ve political activist blush. What did it expect the Trinamul Congress to do, show dignity and refrain when the CPI(M) was virtually smearing its own face with egg? If outsiders did not enter local politics there would hardly be any political movements anywhere.It is hardly surprising that in trying to defend the indefensible, the CPI(M) has begun to espouse a politics and defend policies that seamlessly connect it to the authoritarian right wing everywhere. �The killings were unfortunate, but the police was provoked�, line of argument does not answer why the bullets only targetted heads and chests, why CPI(M) cadre was accompanying the police, or even that why did this people vs government situation arise in the first place? The most ghastly thing about the Nandigram massacres is that it has been perpetrated by a government and a party, which is supposed to be a custodian of alternative politics. People, who claim to represent the real Indian democracy, are defending the draconian and brutal police action. It is the death of alternatives. Henceforth, it would not be Modi vs Budhhadeb, but both versus us. [...]

[...] Two women carrying a wounded man away while constable lathis them. (Via NaxalRevolution) The Tragedy of Nandigram by Shuddhabrata Sengupta first posted on the SARAI reader list as a response to Aditya Nigam’s text on Kalifa Nandigram update from Sanjay SangvaiNANDIGRAM KILLINGS: GET INFORMED and BENGAL RESISTANCE are two excellent sources of information. Doing something similar to us here. Also, please regularly check Sanhati …  Thanks to Yash for the links! Kafila - Aditya Nigam’s archive on Nandigram can be found here. This is an excellent resource - thanks to Meenu for the link! Kharagpur: Look East -  Photos and Time linesRepresentations of land acquisitions in the English print media - analysis by Annirudha Dutta That Night in Nandigram by Soumitra Basu, Editor, AnyaswarCNN-IBN Video “Nandigram Still Waits for Justice”  Click here if you don’t know anything about Nandigram. It is the Indian mass media, so take the sound effects with a pinch of salt. Sanhati: Fighting Neoliberalism in Bengal Excellent resource site. See this Wikipedia Link Scroll down to the references to see links to news coverage. Statement by Chief Minister “It was decided that this law-less situation in Nandigram and its surroundings should not be allowed to continue, the damaged roads, bridges and culverts should be repaired without any further delay and police should take up the investigations in the cases of murder.” Instablog TAGS [...]

What about having them out of power for a while ? Are we ( Intellectual middle class Bangali bhadrolok) still talking about the absence of a compatible opposition as an excuse. What do we really want ? Another Nandigram ?

[...] It is needless to mention that the chief minister of West Bengal was architect of the latest program. The order to shoot at the innocent villagers came right from the top. The way the party reacted after the incident is proof enough. And the way the party is hell-bent on conducting a CID enquiry, which is controlled by the same apparatus in the state government that ordered the firing in the first place. Though the official report says that only 14 people died, credible unofficial sources claim that more than 100 died. Even after the killing, there was widespread looting and women of Nandigram raped at a wide scale by the state apparatus. [...]

aditya and sanjay,
i request you guys to depose before the inquiries set up by Bengal Govt or you can also file a report to Supreme Court and NHRC.

i also request you to update your list and numbers mentioned. i am sure that you know counting till thousands.

JHUTH KEE EK HAD HOTI HAI….
know the facts and events before you write fiction….

Prakash Babu, Lies are the speciality of the communists and I have grown up in this party, believing every word of the lies we were asked to believe - till one day, ‘The People’ booted them out in different parts of the world. We wait for that day in Bengal. Then maybe we will get to the truth Marichjhanpi onwards…cheers

Dear Adityaji, I know a bit about your stint in the Communist Party. Unfortunately, you happen to belong to a generation of disillusioned Communists, who harboured illusions about the Soviet Union when it existed and basked in its glory and then turned into an anti-Communist after its downfall, like the whole lot of post-modernists in Europe. Your problem is that your subjective feelings about shattered dreams of socialism in the USSR have overwhelmed your capacity to analyse the developments from an objective and Marxist point of view. Luckily for all of us, the ideology and praxis of Marxism and Scientific Socialism continues to survive, despite the fall of the USSR and opportunistic renegades like you. Marxism and Socialism continues to be the most formidable challenge before US led imperialism and a ray of hope for the millions of exploited people across the globe.

At a personal level, I belong to a generation of Communists who joined the Party in the 1990s. I don’t harbour any illusions about the USSR. My conviction regarding Marxism has developed through my association with the struggles waged by the CPI (M) in defence of secularism and democracy in India. I firmly believe that the CPI (M) is the best place to be for all those who believe in progressive social change and revolution in our country.

As far as the Left Front government of bengal is concerned, my admiration for it arises especially because i don’t come from bengal, but from a state (Bihar) which is the worst example of economic backwardness and Brahminical social oppression, in the absence of land reforms as was carried out in bengal under the aegis of the Left front Government.

You may continue to revel at the idea of the Left front government being defeated in Bengal one day. May be it’ll happen in future, although going by current developments, I don’t see that happening at least in the next assembly ele ctions. As long as Mamata Banerjee and the assorted naxalite idiots are dominating the opposition discourse, the future of the LF government is secured.

However, even if the LF is defeated in bengal one day, how does it matter? The LF has lost elections in Kerala and Tripura several times; that has not led to the decline of the Communist movement. They have fought and come back to power again. That is the beauty of Indian democracy.

I look forward to the day when we’ll all see a CPI (M) led LF government at the Centre. That will be a great moment for the Indian people, especially the working class and the peasantry. That will also be a day when the LF government in Bengal will not have to depend upon big capital to industrialize - it can be acieved through Public Sector investment. Perhaps, cynics like you would also come back to the communist fold that day.

May god bless you, prakash…

Such a short reply… I can understand your uneasyness… As far as God is concerned, I am not so weak that I need his/her/its blessing… tell your god/s….

well mr. nigam… i am not surprised that ur rightward shift has come to a point where u actually try and seek solace in god, specially when left without an argument! former communists like u disgust me to a point, where if one looks at ur hopelessly pathetic “activist” life it becomes evident that people like urself will ally themselves to the ideology/ organisation/ people from where u stand to gain the most… not surprisingly ur disillusionment with marxism began with the collapse of the soviet union, cos thats when “activists” like ur self realised that with the power structure that u supported, now gone, there are few opportunistic gains to be made from communism. so for people like u who allied themselves with the communist movement only for reasons of opportunism, I PITY U! so now that ur slogans have changed to “long live post modernism”, “long live the vangaurds of the truth- the corporate controlled media” and “long live internet and orkut activism” if there is a god i sincerely hope his/her blessings are showered on u… u need them more than anyone, cos with the growth of the imperialist right wing across the world, i am certain i know where u are headed next.

I do not wish to waste words addressing the likes of Mr Rai/Ray or Mr Ravi, but for those who might happen to visit this interesting ‘debate’, just one word: Some day we will have to examine this most lasting contribution of Leninism and Stalinism to the world of activism - the language of violent polemics masquerading as argument - and its profound relationship to a psychology of fear - that has found such brilliant manifestation in these comments. These, as well as some of the earlier comments by another CPM ‘activist’ on this very blog, are of course, welcome. We wish to preserve these as specimens for all to see, as an archive of this mode of speech, for further analysis.

The discerning eye will, of course, not miss the irony of the fact that despite protestations of these gentlemen to the contrary, the theological tone here is unmistakable. This language of ‘apostasy’, ‘renegacy’ and so on has deep roots in theology (infidel, kafir, tankhaiya, just to name a few from more familiar traditions). May I just point out that according to the Chambers English Dictionary, the word ‘renegade’ comes from Christian theology and means, originally, “a turncoat, esp. a Christian turned Muslim”! Remember how often Stalin spoke of Trotsky as “Judas Trotsky”? The logical and theological structure of Stalinist marxism derives from this world: The Book (that no one reads, but is interpreted only by the Clergy - the Politburo; the sectarian Mass, in the form of various Party rituals and of course, a Pantheon of not just a Holy Trinity of Marx, Engels and Lenin, but indeed Father Stalin himself included!). Probably something more akin to pre-Reformation Christianity.

The point to be noted, of course, about such fulminations are that they reflect the mindset behind the gulags and concentration camps. Remember that even respected Leftwing and Marxist scholars like Sumit and Tanika Sarkar have been dubbed as serving the RSS and accused of being agents of some of the same enemies that one of these commentators accuses me of. If Tanika and Sumit can be thus dismissed after a life long commitment to Marxism, by these little stalins, is it really difficult at all to understand why ALL members of Lenin’s central committee (except Stalin) had to face the firing squad - accused of being German agents? It was small men like these who ruled stalinist Russia. They are living specimens for anyone who really wants to research the basis of totalitarianism in the last century.

And of course, for all the claims to ’science’ of these gentlemen, can anyone, including these venerated souls and their high priests tell me of any scientist demanding an ‘objective and Darwininan analysis’ or an ‘objective Newtonian analysis’ - failing which, you are ‘renegades to science’! Renegades to Science?! God Bless You, sirs, again.

so mr nigam is publicly dissociating himself from not only Stalin but Lenin also…which shows his true ideological orientation…pucca reformist.. may the dollar bless him…

well mr. nigam… my last note to u, considering i dont see too much merit in this new fad of internet/ blog “activism” i think i will spare myself more wasted time on futile discussions with people like urself who epitomise this new fad… well here goes- for starters, i am NOT AND NEVER HAVE BEEN a member of the cpim, infact i have not even been associated with any mass organisation of the party too. but yes, i have and continue to be a staunch sympathiser of the organised left in India, in particular the cpim. my admiration for the cpim led lf stems from the fact that where rabble rousers like urself can only revel in shouting roof top slogans in safe havens like the internet, the only real and genuine resistance at a grass root level to neo liberal economic policies and the growth of the religious right wing in our country comes from the left. its sad that people like urself dont recognize the contribution of the left in this regard… as a concerned citizen, the only glimmer of hope one can find in the country is the left. the fact that acts like the rti, employment guarantee act etc. have today become a possibility is only and only because of the pressure the left was able to create in the centre… but ofcourse an abberation for the left- the firing in nandigram- must be viewed as a norm by the likes of u, cos probably thats the safe stand the likes of u love to take. any amount of constructive criticism of the left is always welcome (plenty of it comes from me too), but since people like u propogate the worst kind of fiction in the name of fact (like 125 dead in nandigram- a claim that even mamata banerjee has stopped making) it is evident that u would like to see the total desercation of the left at any cost. so mr. nigam, if the left, according to u is not providing a correct alternate model of development, maybe u could help us in finding one… or maybe ur like the “bleeding heart” naxals who believe in destroying everything that exists but dont have an alternate model to present… so please dont let ur search for the “multi coloured left” take too long before the totalitarian right leaves u with no space to do so. and yes, u could store prakash’s and my mails as specimens (of whatever), but do the same with urs too, cos when u and i are ruled by the rss and irrevocable damage has happened, then maybe ur messages could be studied as the many liberals, who in proving their liberal credentials only proved as fodder to the right wing, or maybe u would have escaped to ur liberal haven, the united states of america by then. MAY THE DOLLAR BLESS U!

Whose Prakash are you Mr Ray? Whose Ray Mr Prakash?

Ravi’s - the sun that is born of itself and therefore abstract and impersonal? Ravi’s is a storyless existence - or shall I say ‘existence without an originary narrative’ - but, ha, I like that not!

(In any case his story linking the collapse of the Soviet Union to Aditya’s ‘opportunistic’ shift to the forces of right reaction is not only boring but too facile, childish and even desperate. It is bad psychoanalysis and far far worse socio-economic (?) explanation of an individual’s possibly genuine existential anxiety. Each one of us has to face fundamental questions and make choices. So what’s wrong if the moment of a very different kind of self-reflection is triggered by the collapse of the Soviet Union?)

So the question remains: whose Prakash are you, Mr Ray? Aaditya’s - who is a humanized sun since he is said to be born of a mother, albeit mythological, called Aditi and therefore fallible and maybe even lazy occasionally and a master of his own mind despite being not effectively dis-umbilicized? In fact, in some of his more boyish avatars, Aditya comes across as more ‘moony’ than ’sunny’. And boy o boy, do I like that?

Or are you the Prakash of the Enlightenment Europe where everything is reducible to rationality and the universals devised by a superior scientific temper? Or are you the Prakash of a million suns that blinded the entire universe at the end of Mahabharat? Or, are you the enlightened wind of Gole Market? Or the revolutionary storm that keeps the area around the Dalhousie square in a state of perpetually radicalized state of animation?

Or are you the sun of an effete roublized nostalgia throwing liberal dollaops of “dollar” “dollar” invectives at everyone who does not see eye to eye?

dear aditya ji,

thanks a ton for your solidarity to the JNUSU and punished students…
though i am little puzzled that what inspired you to stand with the leninists, stalinists and maoists.. i mean marxist..
anyway i welcome your gesture and the JNUSU needs more and more people on its side….

I couldn’t understand some parts of this article gram Update from Sanjay Sangvai at Kafila, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.

Nandigram is what we can only see now.For the last abt 25 yrs CPM politicised evrythng incldg police and judiciary (to a lesser extent at higher levels)and evrybdy is a comrade incldg the ‘Todi’s. CPM in WB controls evrybdy’s lives and decides who will marry whom, who are’we’ and who are ‘they’, who can run his vehicle on the road, who can build or purchase house or flat - if anybdy does - who will supply materials etc. etc. and what is right and what is wrong. Irony is even senior leaders like somnathda are playing ‘Dhritarashtra’ and going out of their way to prove right what is utterly wrong to humanity. i am working outside WB and shudder to think if I hv ever to return there.