March 13, 2010

‘MAOIST’ ARE PUT ON THE DEFENSIVE DESPERATION IN RURAL BENGAL

KOLKATA(INN): The widening of people’s resistance to the left sectarian incursion has put the self-styled ‘Maoists’ on the defensive. The Bengal unit of the CPI (M) believes that the sectarians are met toe-to-toe in several areas of Midnapore west, Bankura, and Purulia. We recall especially after a recent tour of three days in the western districts of Bengal that the siege mentality that had never worked with the working class and the rural proletariat here in Bengal even when Naxalism was at its height in the 1970s is simply not present, now more than ever. Fearlessness is the key in a great swathe of the countryside. The violence of the ‘Maoists’ continues but the masse would not be cowed down.

The initial firepower of the ‘Maoists’ along with the ambivalence of the union government and the logistical support of the Trinamuli brigade of lumpens, may have had a ‘desired effect’ of the ruling classes in the villages. Now, however, political resistance, more than protest, is the order of the day in the laal mati areas of Bengal. The CPI (M) stays in the front line, as the vanguard party of the working class, organising, agitating, propagating, and leading, the mass of the rural people.

Elsewhere, several top flight leaders of the ‘Maoists’ have been caught by the Bengal police sleuths. The latest such a person to be apprehended is Venkateswara Reddy aka Dipak aka ‘Telgi’ Dipak, aka Sukumar.

This heinous criminal with several murders attributed to him by the police investigation agencies went about Nandigram under the latter nom de plume and was instrumental in providing arms training to Trinamul Congress cadres, and some of these were later allowed to join the il-formed and undisciplined ranks of the ‘Maoists’ in both Midnapore west and Bankura, later also in Purulia and beyond. Rao shared the dais with Trinamuli supremo and her lieutenants according to the claims made by members of the ‘Maoist’ unit of Midnapore west.

An uncomfortable Sisir Adhikary, a central minister, as a bouquet of reward for his ‘work’ in Nandigram and elsewhere was found visibly embarrassed when queried about the ‘Maoist claim. He would demur and said that even if the ‘Maoists’ existed, it now ‘mattered little to him.’ This is important stuff. Earlier, on every occasion similar questions were put to him, or for that matter to the Trinamuli leadership, the inevitable response was either an angry clam up, or a high-pitched denial that there were at all any ‘Maoists’ in Bengal.

The villain and killer ‘Kishanji’ aka Koteswara Rao has stopped appearing before the television channels. He ha started to cosy up to the union Home minister by putting forth his personal cell phone and facsimile number on the scroll of very many TV channels, with no response from the union government, on the surface that is. The compulsion of what is called the dharma of the alliance and the alluring prospects of sharing the loot in Bengal has certainly kept the two uncomfortable partners, the two Congresses, Pradesh, and Trinamul, on the tenterhook of political uncertainty that occasionally bursts out into internecine violence.

However, the impression should not be conveyed through the above words that the left sectarians have ceased operations. The attack on the Shilda camp of the EFR has been recently ‘justified’ by the ‘Maoists’ in a Bengali leaflet as ‘a response’ to a ‘Chidambaram-led state violence’ in Bengal (one can always learn from the ‘Maoists’ lessons on ‘how to distort Marxism-Leninism,’ even the ‘thoughts’ of Mao Ze-dong qua ‘Kishanji’). Since then five CPI (M) workers have been done to death in a brutal manner in the laal mati zones. A headmaster of a school has been kidnapped and an ‘exchange of prisoners’ has been raucously demanded, Sankrail PS fashion, for six hardened criminals in the jail under police custody and interrogation. The people’s movement against ‘Maoists’ in the meanwhile continues to grow, widen, and consolidate. (B PRASANT)

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