Red is the colour of blood

There is clear evidence after the massacre that 'Operation Nandigram' was jointly conducted by the police and armed cadre of the ruling CPI(M)

Rajat Roy nandigram

There was a time when Nandigram was merely a plot of land in a backward agricultural area of West Bengal. It's now another word for carnage. Nandigram also means conspiracy and political isolation. One day, perhaps, it will be a term for harmony.

March 14, 2007, has opened up a new chapter in the contemporary history of West Bengal. It was the day a 2,000-strong police force fired at the villagers of Nandigram in coastal Midnapore, killing at least 15 people, and injuring another 70. The unofficial account puts the death toll at around 72, for several people are still missing. The state administration wanted to take control of the area where thousands of peasants have been opposing government efforts at acquiring 15,000-20,000 acres of agricultural land to set up a chemical hub — or a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) — with investment coming from the Salim group of Indonesia.

There have been other incidents of police firing on people in Bengal. But Nandigram told its own story. In the first place, it was not a case of sporadic firing and there has been no evidence yet that the police acted in self defence. Second, it is gradually becoming clear from an inquiry conducted by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and video clips, that 'Operation Nandigram' was jointly conducted by the police and armed militants of the ruling Communist Party of India Marxist, CPI(M).

That's ironical, to say the least, for in the last 30 years of the Left rule in the state, rural voters have been consistent in their support for the communists. In fact, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, like many other peasant belts of Bengal, Nandigram had joined the communist-inspired Tebhagha Movement. In the heart of Nandigram stands a statue of Bhupal Ponda, a peasant leader of the area who died fighting landlords and zamindars.

Even in the last assembly election, when the the Left Front won 235 seats out of 294, 155-160 of its victories were from rural areas. But that didn't stop the police and the armed men of the CPI(M). The brutality of the attack was such that whatever little could be shown by the various TV channels ( the police and party cadres blocked the entry to the spot when the operation was on) shocked the state. Governor Gopal Gandhi expressed "a sense of cold horror''. In an impromptu statement, he said: "The thought in my mind and of all sensitive people now is — was this spilling of human blood not avoidable?"

The repercussions were felt all over. Some of the prominent Left artists and intellectuals voiced their anger and anguish against the government, a few resigned from government bodies, some returned government awards — and quite a few came out on the streets in protest. The judiciary, too, reacted.

The Kolkata High Court ordered a CBI inquiry into the incident and the interim report of its findings has already put the ruling party on the backfoot. The arrest of ten CPI(M) militants with firearms and the recovery of ammunition, coupled with TV channels' video images of armed men in civilian clothes operating along with the police, indicated the involvement of the party in the incident. The 15 bodies have a macabre story to tell as well. Only five had bullet wounds below the waist. The majority had either been hit on the chest or head.

Two weeks later, the political body count has begun. The first in the line of fire is Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee — severely criticised inside the party, within the Left, and, of course, outside the government for mismanaging the Nandigram affair. The party has stopped the implementation of SEZs in the state till a comprehensive policy is formulated by the Centre.

Though he is heading a coalition government, Bhattacharjee has often been accused of operating with a small team of his choice, bypassing political discussions with the Left Front constituents. The constituents have now been demanding a public condemnation from the front and criticising Bhattacharjee for his unilateral way of functioning. Within the CPI (M), too, critics have raised their voice. Former chief minister Jyoti Basu seized the initiative by admonishing him at a Left Front meeting. Some insiders point out that Basu's role has been revived in the party — while disgruntled members are seeking to shoot from behind his nonagenarian shoulders. Suddenly, Basu is an active player in state politics all over again.

But CPI(M) leaders know that they are facing a serious political crisis — which might become critical if the CBI's final report, expected next month, zeroes in on the role of state administration and the involvement of the party in the incident. If it corroborates the charges of complicity between the party and the state machinery, it will seriously indict the state government. The CPI(M) leaders are also edgy about the high court's initiative in asking the CBI to look into Nandigram. Party State Secretary Biman Bose sarcastically referred to the high court as "pro-active," while CPI(M) General Secretary Prakash Karat hinted at instituting a judicial inquiry— which political circles view as a move to take the sting out of the CBI findings and dilute the possible negative impact it might have on the party and the government.

In fact, efforts are also on at striking a deal between the Congress and the CPI(M). Some leaders of the Congress believe that if the CBI's report is suitably diluted, the Left would be more cooperative with the Central government and tone down its hostile attitude. The move is gaining ground, insiders say.

But the CPI(M) has a more immediate concern: controlling the extent of the damage, within and outside the party. Many in the state

secretariat are believed to be livid that they were kept in the dark about the decision to initiate Operation Nandigram. When attacks started mounting against Bhattacharjee's government, leaders such as Shyamal Chakrabarty, Goutam Deb, Manab Mukherjee, Rezzak Molla and Mohammed Selim were conspicuous in their silence, opting not to defend their chief minister.

Bhattacharjee finds himself almost isolated in the party today. His dream of turning the state into an industrial powerhouse is shattered, as the party, in trying to stave off a backlash, has already put all big projects involving large tracts of agricultural land on hold, while the industry itself is hesitant in moving ahead. Attempts were made to exonerate the chief minister with a report that said his administration had kept him in the dark about developments related to the Nandigram operation. But that boomeranged on him, as West Bengal Home Secretary Prasad Roy told the media that all through the period, the chief minister had been kept in the loop.

Not surprisingly, Bhattacharjee's own position is shaky. Though three senior leaders — Jyoti Basu, Prakash Karat and Biman Bose — held that Bhattacharjee was not going to resign as chief minister, their avowal itself added fuel to the speculations that pressure was building up within the party for his resignation. In May, 2008, the state will have elections in the three-tier panchayat system and in a number of municipalities. The party knows that if it doesn't take some immediate corrective measures, it may face trouble in the elections. A section within the party wants to begin the process of "course correction" with a change of guard.

"But that's easier said than done," says a state committee member. "Any change in the government at this moment will only weaken the party further, and that will only encourage the opposition into baying for more blood."

But while the party may want to protect Bhattacharjee for the time being, some heads are bound to roll. The focus now is on party strongman and local MP Laksman Seth, who, along with a few other local leaders of East Midnapore, was said to have been behind the Nandigram operation. Seth is also the chairman of the Haldia Development Authority (HDA). The proximity of Nandigram to Haldia — the two blocks are separated by the river Haldi — is said to have made Laksman Seth all the more keen to resolve the crisis on his own terms.

It was the HDA which issued a notice on the acquisition of land. The notice stated that altogether 29 moujas would fall under this acquisition bid — 27 from Nandigram and two from neighbouring Khejuri. An estimated population of 80,000 would be affected by the acquisition.

The January 2 notification led to considerable unrest. The peasants formed an organisation called the Bhumi Uchchhed Pratirodh Committee (BUPC) — a group of people opposed to the land acquisition. The leadership of the committee rested with a team comprising local leaders from the Congress, Trinamool Congress, Jamait-e- Hind Ulema and the Socialist Unity Centre of India. A number of local CPI(M) supporters also joined them.

"The villagers were watching the Singur development," says Sabuj Kumar Pradhan, one of the leaders of the BUPC. "We had noted that at Singur the state administration didn't initiate any proper dialogue with the local people before forcibly acquiring their land for the Tata Motors project. So, when the notice for acquisition was served upon Nandigram, we decided to resist it."

The villagers dug up the roads to stop the police and government officials surveying the land from entering the area. The first major clash took place between the CPI(M) activists and local people on January 7, when three villagers died of bullet injuries and two others were seriously injured. The villagers, in turn, lynched one of the CPI(M) activists, Shankar Mondal.

While Bhattacharjee tried to pacify the agitators, saying that no land would be acquired from unwilling peasants, and Bose was talking of initiating a political process, local CPI(M) supporters and opposition were trying to wrest control of the area. Both the warring groups imported arms, and the Talpati Canal —which is between Nandigram and Khejuri and ends at the Hoogly River— became the battleground. The CPI(M) militants camped in a number of brick kilns to launch an attack from the Khejuri side of the canal. It was, incidentally, from one of these brick kilns that ten CPI(M) activists were arrested later.They were found carrying rifles, guns and .315 bullets.

The battle was so fierce that about 1,500 CPI(M) supporters and sympathisers were forced to flee Nandigram and take shelter with Laksman Seth. But the party had its control over Khejuri and Haldia.

Now, after the bloodbath, some CPI(M) leaders admit that pressure was building up from the party's district level. Camping in temporary shelters provided by Seth, the 1,500 exiled CPI(M) supporters wanted action. If something was not immediately done, they would surrender to the BUPC and join the fight against the party, they warned. Seth consulted the heavyweight minister from the district, Suryakanta Mishra, and the district's senior leader, Dipak Sarkar. All of them tried to press the state party and the government for immediate action in Nandigram.

But the administration was inclined to go slow. On February 19, an all-party meeting was held at Tamluk, the district headquarters of East Midnapore, where it was unanimously decided that no action would be taken till school examinations were over. Similar meetings were held at block and thana level.

While the administration was dragging its feet on Nandigram, the CPI(M) was preparing itself for the operation. Arms were procured and people brought in and trained. The developments were closely monitored by the party from its two offices at Kunjapur and Kamarda, both in the Khejuri block, under the direct supervision of Ashok Guriya, a district secretariat member, and Bijan Roy, zonal secretary of Khejuri.

The senior school finals ended on March 5. Another set of school-leaving examination was scheduled to begin on March 16. Four days before that, the administration announced that the police would enter Nandigram to take control of the area.

The police entered Nandigram at Sonachura crossing the Bhangabera bridge, and also from the Tekhali end. The BUPC member Sabuj Kumar Pradhan was at Sonachura, where thousands of people had assembled since the morning. Passages from the Geeta and Koran were being read out to keep the crowd together, and their morale high.

"It was decided that women and children would be placed in the front to neutralise the police," says Pradhan. A senior police official, who does not wish to be identified, admits that confronting a mob of 20,000-25,000 in a rural setting is no mean job. It is enough to unnerve the police.

The shooting began. Within hours, Nandigram had morphed into a symbol. And, over a fortnight later, Nandigram continues to haunt.

The CBI is onto the job, the Kolkata High Court is seized with the matter and the CPI(M) leadership is trying to find a way out of the crisis. The issue has been discussed threadbare in state committee and central committee meetings. The opposition, meanwhile, has been given a shot in the arm. The success of their state-wide bandh, called to protest the Nandigram massacre, has encouraged the opposition parties to continue with the agitation. And with the crucial panchayat election a year away, political activity, for both the ruling Left and the opposition, will focus on rural Bengal.

But Nandigram is also a new word for protest. While the antagonists and the protagonists are almost divided into two mutually exclusive camps of pro-industry and pro-peasants, there is room for a debate on the developmental model that the Left Front government is following. It is the model, incidentally, which saw the defeat of Andhra Pradesh ‘CEO’ Chandra Babu Naidu, the model that is causing hundreds of farmers in Andhra, Maharastra and Karnataka to take their lives. In West Bengal, a Marxist government is believing that the infusion of big capital in some chosen industries will automatically trigger a chain of economic activity which in turn will bring development to the door step of the economically backward rural people. But there has been no debate on the question of how to make the peasants a stakeholder in the developmental programme of the state.

Protest is not a bad word. A society which has the voice to protest — particularly against its rulers — is a robust society. And, many believe, it is imperative for any civil society to keep the ruling establishment on its toes by continuously forcing upon them debates on issues which impact peoples' lives.

Nandigram seems to have done just that. In West Bengal, the judiciary, the Governor's House, the intelligentsia and the middle class have all started to critically examine the role performed by its ruling establishment. Perhaps, this would bid goodbye to a long period of yielding and usher in an era in the state when a more pluralistic and vibrant Bengal would emerge.

Nandigram may then become a word for peace.