[Marxism] Letter: On Nandigram

[Sukla Sen <suklasenp@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

To 
The Editor
The EPW
Mumbai
<edit@xxxxxxxxxx>

Sub: Letters

Dear Editor,

I'll be highly obliged if you carry the following in
your highly esteemed journal.

The letter "On Nandigram", March 31, signed by a
number of well-known academics and activists
[including Prabhat Patnaik et al] makes both an
interesting and disturbing reading.

The pathetic way these "Left intellectuals" have tried
to whitewash the brutal crimes committed by the
CPIM-led Left Front government in Nandigram on March
14-15 should come as an eye-opener for many on the
Left. They have brazenly tried to emulate in their own
sophisticated ways what the priestly clan endowed with
the moral/spiritual halo around them used to do to
bail out the ruling oligarchs, whom they were obliged
to serve in the good olden days, mired in a mess of
their own making. 

While the "letter" repeatedly talks of the "Left" and
the "Left Front", it very skilfully tries to hush up
the crucial fact that in the context of Nandigram the
CPIM stands "in grand isolation" even within the
"Left" and the "Left Front". The CPI, Forward Bloc and
the RSP, all the three other major LF partners, have
repeatedly gone public condemning the actions taken by
the State government in Nandigram. They had even
submitted a five-point charter demanding, inter alia,
unequivocal condemnation of the police actions. Even
Jyoti Basu himself reportedly expressed his
unhappiness with the way things were being handled
bythe government and the State CPIM. In the LF meeting
on March 17, however, the CPIM stoutly resisted these
demands. Eventually an eight-point declaration was
issued very much diluting the demands made by the
allies and incorporating some measures to restrain
them from critiquing the CPIM and the government in
public.
The "letter", which had been issued as a "statement"
on March 23/24 mentions none of that.

It on the contrary goes on to pompously claim: "Nobody
belonging to the Left would ever justify repressive
action against peasants or workers who are the basic
classes of the Left." Totally oblivious of not onlythe
Soviet Union under Stalin, the People's Republic of
China under Mao and Kampuchea under Pol Pot but also
the brutal barbaric and massive police actions against
"refugees" from erstwhile East Pakistan in Marichjhapi
in south Bengal in 1979 by the self-same LF government
resulting in huge deaths and forcible evictions.

It also claims with breathtaking casuistry that "the
CPI(M), the leading partner of the Left Front, has
asked for a judicial inquiry into the tragedy". Never
mind that only on March 17 the Left Front had
stonewalled a demand for an enquiry by the LF partners
themselves. It is only on March 19, Prakash Karat, for
the first time, talked of the desirability of a
judicial enquiry in [a] press conference in Delhi and
in a signed article in the central party organ, the
People's Democracy, published thereafter he claimed
that but for the Kolkata High Court there would have
had been a judicial enquiry by then. But the
WestBengal government, giving a lie to all these
claims, made no move whatever in that direction
despite categorical demands by various sections of the
public.

The claim made in the "letter" "that the state
government has committed itself to recompensing the
families of the victims" also appears to be nothing
but gross distortion of ground realities.

As regards the final all too pious appeal "to all
concerned not to let the wounds of Nandigram become
festering sores", one can only remind that it would
not only require that the victims of Nandigram are
properly recompensed, never mind that the loss of life
is irreparable, but the culprits behind the mayhem,
widely alleged to be pre-planned and deliberate, must
also be identified through an impartial open
publicenquiry and justice be meted out in the
promptest possible manner.
If it applies in case of Gujarat, it must apply in
case of Nandigram as well. Otherwise the sores will
only keep festering.

Yours 
Sukla Sen
EKTA (Committee for Communal Amity)
Mumbai



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