By Nilotpal Basu
ULTIMATELY, the truth
has come out. Not that it was not known; but now that it has come
straight from the, so to say, horse’s mouth; the chief minister of
West Bengal and the Trinamool Congress supremo has eventually lashed out at the
‘Maoists’ for their heinous crime of engineering the Ganeshwari Express
tragedy which took the toll of 148 innocent lives. Contrary to what
she has been claiming all this while that the CPI(M) and the Left was
responsible for the tragedy to defame her and the Railway ministry – she has
ultimately conceded that it was clearly the handiwork of the ‘Maoists’.
What is the provocation
for this belated ‘discovery’? Two activists of the Trinamool Congress had been
gunned down by a ‘Maoist’ squad in a hamlet on the foothills of Ajodhya in
Purulia district – an integral part of the jangal mahal area
in West Bengal which continues to remain infested by ‘Maoist’
activity. There is no doubt that these were murders most vile and all right
thinking people would condemn these with all the strength that one can
muster. The bodies of these hapless victims were brought to Kolkata
and in front of the statue of Mahatma Gandhi – the `apostle of peace’ – that
the chief minister blurted out her ‘pearls of wisdom’.
The travails of the TMC and
its maverick supremo are not only bizarre as one would think. It is at the same
time extremely sinister. The growth of the ‘Maoists’ – obviously, not in
terms of popular support but its depredations and mindless violence in the
districts adjoining the Jharkhand and Orissa borders – was quite strange. Any
avid reading of the history of Left adventurism in the country makes one to
come to an interesting conclusion. While Naxalbari was the cradle of the Left
adventurist movement in the country and the CPI(M) and the Left
suffered most due to its violence in the late sixties and early seventies, the
movement completely petered out, particularly after the Left Front assumed
office in West Bengal in 1977. The agrarian reforms and the protection
and consolidation of the democratic rights of the working people completely
isolated the Naxalites in the state. The resumption of their
activities in early parts of the first decade of the new century started as
armed incursions from Jharkhand initially and later on from Orissa. The thickly
forested jungles on the borders of these states provided the natural cover, as
well as, the strategic base that the ‘Maoists’ needed to move on to West
Bengal.
The Left had from the
very beginning, maintained that the ‘Maoist’ movement cannot be treated merely
as a challenge to law and order. Their involvement in these forest
fringe areas was not because of their compassion for the poor and the tribals
who suffered from locational disadvantage and consequent comparative lack of development. Despite
this, the agrarian reforms and other benefits of decentralisation had expanded
social sector development. It is because of this, the Left had
always been politically strong in these areas. Premised on these
experiences, the Left, therefore, argued for facing the challenge of ‘Maoist’
violence through a three pronged response; first, on the question of targeted
socio-economic development, secondly on the question of political-ideological
offensive to isolate them from the people- and finally, based on these two, to
initiate administrative actions of the security forces that would finally be
successful in containing the violence.
As opposed to this, the
central government had always pitched for all out administrative
confrontation. The home minister, P Chidambaram, the fountainhead of
such an exclusively confrontationist approach even mooted the idea of deploying
the military and the air force to snuff out the ‘Maoists’.
However, the maverick
TMC supremo was totally opposed to the very idea of taking on the
‘Maoists’. Because she understood that in order to undermine and
weaken the Left in these areas which have traditionally been the bastion of the
Left, the ‘Maoists’ could prove to be her hatchet men. The ‘Maoists’
– the opportunists that they are – found these to be extremely
convenient. Their complete ideological bankruptcy and penchant for
military strategy created conditions for the coming together of these two
forces. West Bengal’s recent history – from the ‘Maoists’ involvement in
the Nandigram agitation and the present West Bengal chief minister’s open
dalliance with the ‘Maoists’ in Lalgarh - the alliance was eventually made
official. The media savvy ‘Maoist’ Polit Bureau member Kishanji
announced from behind his masked face that the ‘Maoists’ would love to see the
TMC supremo as the next chief minister of West Bengal in an interview to Ananda
Bazar Patrika before elections.
This was music to her
ears. This made her to claim that there are no ‘Maoists’
in West Bengal. And, she was not even acknowledging the
killings of hundreds of CPI(M) and Left activists and leaders who were being
snuffed out by these ‘Maoist’ marauders. And, she did everything
possible to politically delegitimise the operation of the state and central
joint security forces to protect the life and livelihood of innocent citizens
who were at the receiving end of the mindless ‘Maoist’ violence.
The complicity was so
complete that while the ‘Maoists’ had hijacked a train, the Rajdhani Express,
the Railways under her charge did not even mention the ‘Maoist’ involvement in
the complaint that the department filed. And, finally, came the
shocking allegation in the wake of the Gyaneshwari tragedy. Not only did she
claim that these gruesome deaths of the Ganeshwari passengers were not the
result of ‘Maoist’ depredation but actually they have been done by the CPI(M)
and the Left to discredit the Railway Ministry! The intellectuals – the `civil
society’ her close band of trumpeters for `political change’ in fact went a
step further. They actually called a press conference on the eve of
a crucial municipal election in Kolkata and directly charged the CPI(M) of
engineering the tragedy. These intellectuals – of whom some are now
even part of the cabinet of the present West Bengal government –
justified their position by claiming that ‘Maoists’ did not explicitly take the
responsibility for the incident.
Now that the TMC supremo
has assumed the chief minister’s office, she has to reconcile with the harsh
cold reality. She thought that the zeal with which the ‘Maoists’ had worked
overtime to see her in the office that she holds today would continue to do so
even after the objective has been secured. But, as we know, the
‘Maoists’ show extreme opportunism in siding with this or that bourgeois
political party for carrying on with violent methods to physically eliminate
all political opposition. The ‘Maoists’ clearly had an agenda that
they would use the TMC to ensure the physical elimination of the CPI(M) and the
Left to facilitate their own physical stranglehold over a region
which had remained a bastion of the Left.
CHICKENS COME HOME TO
ROOST
But, now the chickens
have come home to roost. The latest dramatic turn of events saw the
felling of that very ‘Maoist’ leader who once wanted to anoint the TMC supremo
as the incumbent chief minister of West Bengal. This is the
real irony. The operation of the joint security forces which was
held back for almost five months had to be ultimately allowed since the
‘Maoists’ were not sparing the TMC functionaries once they had been able to
regroup with the relief that the new government had provided. The
process of the so-called negotiations which was bound to fail because of the
pan Indian nature of the ‘Maoist’ activity also further emboldened them.
It is in this background
that the gun battle ensured in the forests of Burisole which has by now become
a household name – as the site which marked the elimination of
Kishanji. In a way, this was inevitable. Far from being a
revolutionary movement, which the ‘Maoists’ claim to lead, apparently he found
himself thoroughly isolated and encircled – that is what the security forces
had claimed.
But strangely, neither
the chief minister nor any of her top ranking officials from the police or the
general administration had come out with any authentic version over the
sequence of events which led to the elimination of Kishanji immediately after
the announcement of the incident. More than anybody else, it is their
supporters – particularly those sections of liberal persuasion – some of them
even sympathetic to the ‘Maoist’ cause have come out quite sharply against the
same government and the security forces for having done what they did.
In doing this, they seem
to have taken a leaf out of chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s book of records.
She did exactly this in questioning the elimination of Azad – the spokesman of
the ‘Maoists’. She had actually demanded enquiry into Azad’s `murder’ not only
outside but also in the parliament itself. In fact, directed by the court, an
inquiry is still going on about this incident.
Now that Kishanji has
been eliminated, the same charges are being leveled. It is being
alleged that the security forces had him in custody and this amounts to a `cold
blooded murder of a prisoner in custody’. It is now for the state
government to clarify the real course of development
transparently. Rule of law would require that of her government.
However, in a public
meeting recently, the chief minister has claimed that the security forces had
encircled Kishanji for three continuous days. The forces had also
made an announcement over a public address system that he would be allowed a
safe way out . But according to her, he did not respond positively and fired
back. This is what led to the armed confrontation which saw her one
time `well wisher’ dead.
SINISTER RELATIONSHIP
The convergence of
purpose which brought the TMC and the ‘Maoists’ together to eliminate the Left
– does no longer exist. The functional alliance appears to have come
unstuck. And, therefore, this belated admission over Gyneshwari Express
tragedy and this renewed restoration of the joint security forces’ operation
leading to the elimination of Kishanji.
But the tenuous exercise
to try and balance the relationship between these two sinister forces had
continued for the last few months since the new government in West
Bengal had assumed office, now seems to be finally over. The
group of interlocutors who had been officially appointed by the state
government to carry out the discussions with the ‘Maoists’ have finally thrown
up their hands. And, in the statement issued recently expressing their
inability to carry on the process, they have squarely blamed the state
government for having killed Kishanji `in cold blood’.
The course of the
sinister alliance has really come to complete its vicious circle. Sadly,
the TMC and some of their grassroot level activists who are also poor and
vulnerable have also now come to suffer from the mindless violence of the
‘Maoists’.
But the chief minister
is not prepared to accept the reality. While she has lambasted the ‘Maoists’
and their liberal sympathisers who don the mantle of the human
rights organisations for failing to condemn the death and killings of hapless
victims of the mindless ‘Maoist’ violence – even going to the extent of
pointing out that a large number of activists of the Left
had suffered – she failed to concede that she herself had shown
similar proclivities.
To compound her almost
criminal negligence in shielding the ‘Maoists’ – she is actually still
maintaining that the CPI(M) and the ‘Maoists’ are in league. This is
not withstanding the fact that after the Lok Sabha elections alone almost 250
CPI(M) activists and leaders mostly poor and tribals laid down their lives in
the course of taking on the political and ideological challenge of the
‘Maoists’. But still there is time. The threat that
‘Maoist’ violence poses to the life and livelihood of the most downtrodden
sections of the society in the remotest jungles of West Bengal can
only be repulsed by the joining of forces. The unity of all political parties
who believe in the rule of law and securing life of the people must act
together to isolate the ‘Maoists’. It is the only enduring way to
establish peace. And, elimination of a single individual –
however important he may be – cannot mark the end to the mindless violence
which the ‘Maoists’ had been perpetrating. The restoration of
legitimate political activities of all political forces in the affected areas
of jangal mahal area is the only rational course to achieve that
objective.
People’s Democracy, December 04, 2011
