Indian Citizens' / Netizens' Forum

[Indian]

http://www.petitiononline.com/redsezwb/

http://www.nandigram-violence.blogspot.com/

http://india2.wordpress.com/2007/11/18/an-appeal-to-severely-punish-the-guilty-of-nandigram-violence/

http://onlinepetitions.sulekha.com/blog/post/2007/11/an-appeal-to-severely-punish-the-guilty-of-nandigram.htm

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1071121/asp/frontpage/story_8574231.asp

PM’S NANDI PAYBACK Echoing artists, Singh stings MANINI CHATTERJEE Wednesday, November 21, 2007



On Board Prime Minister’s Special Flight, Nov. 20: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today made his first public comments on this month’s bloody events in Nandigram, lending his voice to “the spontaneous outpouring of grief and anguish by artists and intellectuals in Kolkata”.

He said it was the state government’s duty “to ensure that all sections of the population, regardless of their political views and affiliations, are entitled to and do receive protection of the law enforcement authorities”.

The Prime Minister’s remarks — which appeared to belie speculation of a “Nandigram-nuclear deal quid pro quo” with the Left — were not spontaneous but part of a prepared statement.

Apart from taking an unexpectedly firm stand against the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government’s handling of Nandigram, Singh also exuded a certain buoyancy about the prospects of sealing the Indo-US nuclear deal now that the Left had agreed to allow talks with the IAEA.

But the most significant aspect of his impromptu news conference was the comments on Nandigram.

In an otherwise free-wheeling interaction with the media on board the Prime Minister’s special flight to Singapore, where he arrived this evening to attend the 13th Asean Summit, Singh first sought to side-step a question on Nandigram. Then, to a follow-up query, he fished out a written statement from his pocket and read it out.

To the first question on whether Parliament would discuss Nandigram, Singh merely said: “This is a matter that should be discussed in Parliament. The presiding officers of both the Houses are looking at how such a discussion can be facilitated…. I would not like to comment further while I am out of the country.”

But when another journalist wanted to know the Prime Minister’s own assessment of what had happened in Nandigram, Singh said — with a smile — that in order not to “get into trouble” he had a statement ready.

The statement was brief but — given the equivocal stance taken by the Centre and the Congress high command so far — laden with political significance.

The events in Nandigram, the Prime Minister said, had taken “a most unfortunate turn” and “I condole the loss of lives and regret the destruction of property”.

He hoped that the state government would take necessary steps to restore people’s confidence through an effective deployment of security forces.

“It is the duty of the state government to ensure that all sections of the population, regardless of their political views and affiliations, are entitled to and do receive protection of the law enforcement agencies,” he said.

He expressed unequivocal support to liberal and Left-leaning intellectuals who have come out against the CPM on the issue.

“I understand the spontaneous outpouring of grief and anguish over the issue as expressed by artists and intellectuals in Kolkata. I hope the state government will take note of this.”

Singh said he had asked the Union home minister “to be in touch” with the Bengal chief minister.

His remarks were far more hard-hitting than anything said by the Congress leadership or the Centre on Nandigram so far, and could well widen the rift with the CPM at a time when the UPA and the Left have worked out a temporary truce over the nuclear deal.

The Prime Minister indicated that he would have been even more forthright under different circumstances. The concluding line of his statement read: “And as Parliament is in session, I do not wish to say anything more,” seemingly oblivious that what he had said was explosive enough.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1071121/asp/bengal/story_8574036.asp

Home ministry sends three reminders NISHIT DHOLABHAI Wednesday, November 21, 2007



Bombs found in a Nandigram village

Nov. 20: The Centre has asked the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government thrice in the past 10 days to ensure a mechanism to coordinate the actions of security agencies in Nandigram.

A home ministry official said “a need to coordinate their (security agencies’) actions and fix responsibility” prompted the advisories. The last went on November 15.

A joint control room was opened in Nandigram last week, but CRPF insiders said there has been little or no exchange of intelligence.

“We wanted a list of those absconding from the troubled areas. It is still to come,” a senior officer said.

Personnel from the state armed police, Eastern Frontier Rifles, a paramilitary force under state control, and the CRPF are now working in the war zone.

Bengal has insisted that the CRPF and state police jointly patrol the affected areas, preventing the central force from raiding sensitive areas on its own.

The central paramilitary force would like three things.

First, that the state declare Nandigram “disturbed”, giving it special powers to act. If that is not possible, the state police should be instructed to send an officer of the rank of sub-inspector with CRPF teams on search operations.

Third, the paramilitary force needs local intelligence which, in this case, is expected from the police.

The CRPF’s reaction forced the state yesterday to reverse its decision to shift five camps further from the trouble- prone areas. State police chief A.B. Vohra said yesterday that he had not issued any instruction to shift the camps.

Even now, the camps are far from the hotbed but the shift would have taken them further away.

Sources said the central force wanted camps in the heart of the affected areas where patrolling could be done on foot within a 5km radius. The present camps are 5 to 15km from the trouble spots.

Police officers have apparently asked their CRPF counterparts to patrol on vehicles which, a paramilitary officer said, would not help instil security among villagers terrorised by CPM cadres.

CBI probe

The CBI brass are going through the Calcutta High Court order directing them to investigate the March 14 police firing in Nandigram.

“It is a long, detailed order with several nuances. We are studying it carefully before we constitute a team,” a senior official said.

The court, which had ear- lier ordered a preliminary in-quiry, asked for a full-fledged one after holding the firing “unconstitutional and unjustified”.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1071121/asp/bengal/story_8574034.asp

Missing, from peace march ANSHUMAN PHADIKAR Wednesday, November 21, 2007



Shankar Das, whose father is missing, in Nandigram town. (Sanat Kumar Sinha)

Nandigram, Nov. 20: At least 32 people who had protested against the CPM’s bloody recapture of Nandigram are missing, according to the Bhoomi Uchchhed Pratirodh Committee.

They could not be traced after the Red Army’s attack on a villagers’ procession in Maheshpur on November 10. The families of two have narrated to police eyewitness accounts of their men falling to bullets and being dragged away.

Pratirodh Committee leaders had submitted a list of 42 missing people to Nandigram police station on November 14. Ten have returned home since from places where they had fled.

East Midnapore superintendent of police S.S. Panda said: “We will investigate each case.”

Krishna Maji of Sonachura came to the Nandigram police station this morning with eight-year-old daughter Sonali to collect a receipt for the complaint she lodged yesterday. Her husband Subal, 37, is among the 32.

“With cousin Sripati, he was marching in the procession on November 10. Sripati saw my husband fall after a bullet hit him in the leg. CPM cadres took him away,” said Krishna, 32.

“That is the last time we saw him,” said Sripati, who accompanied Krishna to the police station.

Subrata Samanta, 24, who fell to a bullet near the Bhangabera bridge eight months ago — on March 14 — and was allegedly dragged away towards Khejuri by the police, could not be traced.

Narayan Das, 50, was allegedly hit in the leg and also taken to Khejuri on November 10.

His son, Shankar, 27, has lodged a complaint.

“Neighbour Gautam Mondal said the Red Brigade surrounded my father moments after he slumped to the ground,” said Shankar.

He came to the police station after looking for his father in hospitals in Nandigram, Egra, Tamluk and Calcutta.

Police camps were tonight set up at Garchakraberia and Maheshpur. Panda said three others — at Adhikarypara, Daudpur and Amdabad — would come up soon.

District magistrate Anup Agarwal had asked the police to set up camps at the five places after an all-party meeting last week.

“The committee has urged us to set up another one at Kamalpur. We will set up more if necessary,” the superintendent said.

Pratirodh Committee leaders, however, want the police to focus on the missing.

Swadesh, a member of the Nandigram I panchayat samiti, saw fellow committee leader Aditya Bera, 65, taking a bullet in the leg in Maheshpur. “When he tried to get up, he was shot in the back,” he said.

Bera, from Gokulnagar, was a retired army man.

Bimal Mondal, whose name figured on the initial list of 42, has returned home, though.

“When the firing started, I ran for my life. I went to a relative’s house in Baratala,” he said.

As news of the new police camps spread tonight, many people started getting ready to return home from relief camps.

“Fifty people from 21 families returned to Maheshpur,” said Bhabani Das, committee convener.

Block development officer Ashok Sarkar met the chiefs of the 10 village panchayats in Nandigram today to discuss development work. Seven CPM leaders, two from Trinamul and one from the Congress attended the meeting.

The first such meeting in seven months decided to give priority to repair of roads and distribution of relief among the homeless.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1071120/asp/nation/story_8568279.asp

Nandigram caveat in SC Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Nov. 19: A caveat was today filed in the Supreme Court to ensure the Bengal government is not issued any order in the absence of the other party when it appeals Calcutta High Court’s ruling on Nandigram.

Last Friday, the high court had said the March 14 police firing in Nandigram was “wholly unconstitutional” as the situation had not been provocative enough to warrant bullets. It had also ordered a CBI inquiry.

The caveat was filed on behalf of Calcutta-based lawyer Kedar Nath Yadav, a petitioner in the case. “We will have to be heard before any orders are passed. We will defend the high court order,” Yadav’s lawyer said.

A legal team, headed by Bengal advocate-general Balai Ray, is expected to land in New Delhi early tomorrow.

The buzz is it will move the apex court, but Bengal home secretary Prasad Ranjan Ray said in Calcutta the state was consulting legal experts and a final decision had yet to be taken.

“Lawyers are handling the matter,” chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said when asked if the state would appeal the order.

Ray has apparently advised the state to move the apex court. His team has several appointments lined up with top constitutional lawyers of the Supreme Court.

“On one point, an appeal is already pending (with the Supreme Court), that is whether the CBI can investigate a case without the consent of the state government under Section 6 of the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act. On this point, this case needs to be tested,” Ray said earlier.

This afternoon, the apex court threw out a petition by Yadav, urging it to direct the Centre to impose President’s rule in the state under Article 356. The petition contended that the governor’s statement expressing “cold horror” at the firing and his insistence that “no government can allow a war zone to exist without effective action” should be treated as a report to the President.

But a bench headed by Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan rejected his plea. “Is it in the court’s powers? Don’t abuse the process of the court,” the bench said.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1071121/asp/frontpage/story_8574112.asp



In season of harvest, CPM reaps apology KINSUK BASU Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Gokulnagar (Nandigram), Nov. 20: In Nandigram, the price of harvest is repentance — in black and white.

More than 400 villagers owing allegiance to the Bhoomi Uchchhed Pratirodh Committee have handed in letters of apology to the CPM farmers’ wing and requested permission to return to harvest their standing paddy crop.

The harvest season began a week ago and will continue till mid-December.

All India Krishak Sabha leaders knew farmers who had fled during the CPM’s recapture of Nandigram would be desperate to return and cashed in on the urgency.

“The Krishak Sabha drew up a list of active BUPC members and held a meeting. This was before the CRPF marched in. Booth-level CPM leaders decided we would have to give the undertaking before they allowed us in to harvest. We had to give in,” said a farmer from Gokulnagar, who owns over three bighas.

The school dropout could not write the letter himself, so he got it drafted by Ajit Khatua, a literate man he knew.

“I submitted it to Bharat Nayek, our local Krishak Sabha leader. I was also forced to give in writing that I would turn up for their processions, carry the party flag and even be on night vigil to ward off any possible attacks on us in the future,” the farmer said.

Most villagers had to give a similar undertaking.

Khatua, who wrote over a dozen letters for unlettered farmers, said each villager holds three to four bighas on average. With the high-yielding variety of seeds, a farmer can expect around 30 to 35 mon of yield per bigha. “A bag of 1.5 mon rice would sell for at least Rs 380. So it works out to around Rs 7,500 per bigha.”

BUPC members across Garchakraberia, Simulkunda, Kanungochowk, Jambari and Brindabanchowk have written apology letters to the Krishak Sabha’s village units.

Most letters were handed in before the CRPF arrived on November 13.

The CPM, however, denied forcing the farmers to apologise. “No such letters have been taken from anyone. These are all allegations aimed at maligning us,” said Himanshu Das, a Krishak Sabha district committee member and secretary of the CPM’s Khejuri zonal committee.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1071121/asp/bengal/story_8574038.asp

Party restraint on PMWednesday, November 21, 2007



Biman Bose CPM state secretary

Calcutta, Nov. 20: Biman Bose today advised Manmohan Singh to “behave like Prime Minister” and assured him not to worry about Nandigram but the CPM leadership appears to have decided to exercise restraint.

Told about the Prime Minister’s statement, the CPM state secretary was reluctant in the afternoon to comment, saying the central leadership will react.

However, the CPM’s central leaders, busy in the capital with backroom parleys on the Nandigram debate in Parliament, did not issue any statement contesting the Prime Minister’s remarks.

Bose, normally quick to return fire, too, did not make any reference to Singh’s comments while addressing a party rally at Birlapur in South 24-Parganas this evening.

The CPM state secretary broke his silence only when approached by journalists after the meeting. “The Prime Minister should not be worried. He should behave like Prime Minister,’’ Bose said.

State secretariat member Shyamal Chakraborty indicated that the CPM would exercise restraint as many party leaders felt that the Prime Minister’s statement reflected his “political compulsions” following pressure from a section of the Congress and the Opposition.

“Our party as well as the chief minister share the Prime Minister’s concerns. He was right in stressing on building people’s confidence. But it can’t be done overnight and it needs a conscious effort. Trinamul Congress-led forces are preventing people from leaving relief camps,” Chakraborty said.

Embarrassed by the presence of “new refugees” in Nandigram, Bose told the meeting that the “party would sever ties with those who try to intimidate people returning home”.

CPM veteran Benoy Konar urged party workers to close ranks against a “huge conspiracy to malign us and our government as it had happened during the 1962 China war”. He criticised the governor, “so-called intellectuals” and the high court ruling on Nandigram.

Trinamul leader Mamata Banerjee said she had heard about the Prime Minister’s statement. “I shall make a comment tomorrow after carefully studying it,” she said.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1071120/asp/opinion/story_8551999.asp

THE COMMUTWITS’ TRIUMPH - Nandigram is supposed to have taught the reactionaries a lesson
Writing on the Wall - Ashok V. Desai



In Godhra, some people detached a bogie of a train in February 2002, locked in the passengers and burnt them. The perpetrators were never conclusively identified. The Hindutwits claimed that the murderers were Muslims, and called for retribution. It started the next day. Hindu mobs killed thousands of Muslims, looted and destroyed Muslim businesses, and in three days, turned Muslims into the new scheduled caste of Gujarat — poor, deprived and maligned.

In Nandigram, some people forced local supporters of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) to leave, destroyed bridges, dug up roads, and isolated Nandigram from the rest of West Bengal. No one knows who they were. It is widely believed that they were local villagers. The CPI(M) said they were members of the Trinamul Congress, Naxalites, or both, and called for retribution. Armed commutwit mobs invaded Nandigram, killed and wounded hundreds, destroyed their homes, and turned them into the new scheduled caste of West Bengal.

This is not a coincidence; it is transfer of the technology of violence. In the Eighties, the BJP was exasperated; however hard it tried, it just could not get itself elected in any numbers, let alone come to power. And there, in the east, was CPI(M), an equally committed, ideologically-focused party, which simply could not be driven out of power. How did they do it? The Hindutwits diligently studied the secret of communist hegemony.

They worked out that the secret lay in the creation of a captive mob. Till the Sixties, West Bengal used to be India’s most industrialized state. It was the home of the jute industry, India’s largest industry next only to textiles. It was a leader in engineering; in those days of import substitution, anyone who could not get a machine or a part headed for Calcutta, where workshops could reproduce the most complicated engineering goods.

Then arrived bulk handling and cheap plastics. Pourable goods such as cereals began to be transported in containers in the United States of America. Railways acquired new wagons to transport containers; the first container ship was built in the US in 1956, if I remember right. Soon, bulk transportation spread across all the oceans, and increasingly along railway lines. And if small quantities of pourable goods had to be stored, plastic bags were more sturdy than gunny bags, and gave better protection. So over the Sixties and Seventies, life slowly seeped out of Calcutta’s jute industry. And the slump of 1965 hit its engineering industry hard.

That was when the CPI(M) found a niche amongst the embattled industrial workers. Citu started organizing them; it developed the technology of bringing them out in processions and paralysing Calcutta. It taught workers to abuse and attack managers. In a pyrrhic victory, it drove industry out of West Bengal, but captured the unemployed workers — and young men who never had any jobs. They became the CPI(M)’s foot-soldiers. They developed a rough-and-ready social insurance system: they intimidated and collected money from whoever was making a living — shopkeepers, hawkers, farmers, whoever wanted a peaceful life and could pay for it. If the victims belonged to the Congress, so much the better. Within ten years, the musclemen taught West Bengal that it was unprofitable to belong to the Congress — and that supporting CPI(M) minimized costs. This is how the commutwit monopoly of power was created in West Bengal.

Having learnt this technology, the Hindutwits reproduced it in Gujarat. In every village, every community, they collected musclemen and set up branches. But in one respect, they had it easier than the commutwits. Gujarat is more commercialized and industrialized than West Bengal; there were many more rich men to tap, and, correspondingly, the tribute to be collected from each was smaller — so small that many of them would not mind paying. Besides, many of these rich men could be asked to give jobs to the faithful, in which case those believers did not have to be paid a dole at all.

But how were those moneybags to be persuaded that Muslims were their enemies? Right into the Nineties, 600 tons — 600,000,000 grams — of gold used to be smuggled into India. So was most of synthetic cloth. So were thousands of watches. All these goods used to be loaded into fast boats in Dubai, carried across the sea, and land on Gujarat’s coast. They were a source of great convenience for consumers fed up with the rigours of the socialist state, and a source of prosperity for those involved in smuggling and selling the goods; most of whom were Muslims. Once in a while some smugglers were caught; their names were predominantly Muslim. Sometimes the smugglers fought and murdered one another; those caught were again Muslims. Thus there arose an impression in Gujarat that Muslims were smugglers and thieves. So when the Hindutwits offered to sanitize Gujarat of the Muslim criminals, they found ready clients. When they removed Muslim competitors from business, their services were all the more appreciated by Hindu shopkeepers. When the commutwits sanitized West Bengal, they created an economic desert. When the Hindutwits sanitized Gujarat, some flowers went missing, but business continued to bloom.

This is where the difference lies. Year after year, Gujarat grows faster than West Bengal. West Bengal, once one of the richest states, has fallen behind until it is just about average today; Gujarat, once average, has advanced upwards. No ruler of West Bengal who attends meetings in the South and North Blocks of Delhi, who can read figures, can ignore West Bengal’s decline.

That is why the commutwits are in a hurry. But they cannot bring back the capitalists whom they scared away in the Sixties. Nor can they tolerate the emergence of thousands of small industrialists, for whom trade unions would be anathema. What would be compatible with Citu’s prosperity? Obviously, industries that pay workers well. So the commutwits’ first answer was information technology. They laid out the red carpet for IT moguls. Some came, but on the whole they preferred the South; it has a huge output of graduates with good English, and they do not mind people from other states coming in. So today, West Bengal’s IT employment is still in thousands — no higher than that of Gujarat.

Now the commutwits have thought of big industries like steel and car-making. These require large tracts of land, and the commutwits are determined to clear land of obstructive human beings, however much blood they have to shed. The Hindutwits think that the post-Godhra riots taught Muslims a lesson; the commutwits think that Nandigram has taught the reactionaries a lesson. And if it has not, they will teach it again, in battlegrounds galore. Mamata, take guard!

Each lesson will reduce the number of industrialists that would be prepared to invest in West Bengal; Buddhadeb will have to travel ever farther to find an investor. But it is a quest in the right direction — for making West Bengal India’s richest state. It may take some time, and many lives, but so what? Revolutions cannot be made without bloodshed. In the meanwhile, the prime minister will continue to monitor the situation closely — from Moscow, Washington, Cape Town, from his eyrie on Race Course Road.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Blood_On_Their_Hands/articleshow/2554334.cms

LEADER ARTICLE: Blood On Their Hands 21 Nov 2007, 0000 hrs IST, Praful Bidwai

West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s rationalisation of the violent “recapture” of Nandigram by CPM cadres as mere “retaliation” against their opponents, who were paid back “in the same coin”, is one of the most brazen defences by an Indian leader of the state’s abdication of its fundamental responsibility to protect the life and limb of all its citizens.

What Nandigram witnessed was a CPM campaign of armed violence to regain control of two of the area’s three blocks, which it lost early this year owing to its abortive bid to impose a 25,000-acre Special Economic Zone on an unwilling population to favour Indonesia’s Salim Group.

Bhattacharjee didn’t speak like a responsible, democratically elected CM, but like a party apparatchik who reposes greater faith in its cadres and musclemen than in the rule of law.

Indeed, he explicitly defended his decision not to send the police into Nandigram because “I didn’t want a repeat of the March 14 incident”, in which 14 people were killed. The firing wasn’t a fluke. Citizens’ independent inquiries have established that armed pro-CPM cadres joined the police in that punitive expedition, some disguised in official uniforms.

A People’s Tribunal, consisting of a retired high court chief justice and social activists, documented this, after recording 174 depositions by the victims. Its chilling conclusions show close police-CPM collusion. The motive was to “teach” SEZ opponents “a lesson”.

The CPM just wouldn’t countenance that it would not be the people’s sole representative or lose its influence in Nandigram. To regain it, it started a systematic campaign of intimidation and eviction of ordinary people, turning thousands into refugees, and imposing collective punishment on them through a months-long economic blockade.

The logic was that the anti-CPM Bhumi Ucched Pratirodh Committee (BUPC) must be ousted at any cost so the party’s unquestioned supremacy could be re-established — even if that meant brutalising innocents. In recent weeks, the impending arrival of the Central Reserve Police Force lent urgency to the task.

The latest episode represents one of the darkest chapters in the history of the Indian Left. It has tarnished the Left’s, particularly the CPM’s, image as one of the few principled components of our political spectrum guided by an ideology and programme, which upholds constitutional values, public decency, and negotiated resolution of conflicts, represents the poor, and is an asset to democracy.

Nandigram showed that the CPM can unleash, for entirely sectarian reasons, violence against farmers and other working people, in whose name it speaks — and from whom it derives its very rationale.

Going by well-corroborated reports, last fortnight’s armed invasion was meticulously planned. The police were confined to the barracks. CPM cadres from four districts were deployed, many of them trained in using firearms. The military-style operation had three components. On November 5-8, a multi-pronged offensive was launched by three attacking groups, each 200-plus-strong. On November 10, a second wave of attackers pushed BUPC supporters into CPM stronghold Khejuri, taking 600 of them “prisoner”. Finally, BUPC stronghold Sonachura was overrun, using the prisoners as a “human shield”. Within hours, the area was “liberated” amidst raucous celebrations by gun-toting musclemen.

This couldn’t have happened without the state’s complicity, indeed without the party suborning the state. This has disturbing implications. Any defence of such actions greatly weakens the liberal-secular-democratic argument against the communal Right, articulated ably by the Left too, that interference by political parties and their affiliates (e.g. the RSS) with the state’s functions gravely undermines democracy.

However, several CPM members and supporters, including some distinguished academics, have turned a blind eye to this while rushing to the party’s defence — just when they should be counselling critical introspection. Their argument rests on presenting CPM cadres as Nandigram’s principal victims, and highlighting “infiltration” by Maoists, assisted by Trinamul Congress.

But evidence of such infiltration is of the same quality as the evidence about Saddam’s mass-destruction weapons.

Besides, it beggars belief that ousted/”dislodged” CPM cadres greatly outnumbered BUPC-supporter refugees. By all credible evidence, the latter (several thousands) outnumbered the former by a factor of 10 or more. The BUPC and Trinamul indisputably have their own thugs. They too practised violence, but it’s hard to believe they matched the state-assisted clout of the domineering, militant, well-oiled ruling party machine.

Even assuming the BUPC “dislodged” CPM cadres, it’s for the state, not the party, to remedy this. Violent retaliation can only generate counter-violence, while breaching constitutional norms. Nor can Maoist “infiltration” justify indiscriminate attacks on adversaries or ordinary people.

Nandigram exposes the rot that has set into the West Bengal CPM in the form of criminalisation, pro-rich policies, corruption, reliance on muscle power, and arrogant disdain towards its own allies — the CPI, Forward Bloc and RSP. The three now say the CPM alone bears “responsibility” for the Nandigram violence and must rethink its policies. Their plea can only work if they quit the cabinet while remaining in the Left Front.

(The writer is a political commentator.)

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Rape_cases_point_at_fragile_peace_condition/articleshow/2551215.cms

Rape cases point at fragile peace condition 19 Nov 2007, 0213 hrs IST, Krishnendu Bandyopadhyay

NANDIGRAM: If Satengabari's Mir Akram Ali is a victim of violence unleashed by Bhumi Uchched Pratir-odh Committee (BUPC), his neighbour Agrai Bibi (name changed) is a worse victim of assault by CPM cadres in Nandigram. On November 12, CPM cadres allegedly raped Agrai Bibi and her two teenaged daughters.

The fact that the apparent peace in Nandigram is fragile is evident from another case. On Friday night, Miloni Patra (name changed) of Gokulnagar, too, was allegedly raped by CPM cadres. She is now undergoing treatment at Tamluk Hospital, and the villagers here are seething. Miloni was asleep in her house when the CPM cadres barged in. The menfolk were all away. About five to six goons overpowered her and raped her in turns.

"She came to us first, then we took her to Nandigram Hospital from where she was referred to Tamluk Hospital," said Mantu Pahari and Sheikh Golam Hossain, who are at a BUPC relief camp at Brojomohan Tiwari Siksha Niketan in Nandigram.

Lying on hospital bed, a traumatised Miloni could only say that she was raped. "The government says peace has returned to Nandigram. Where is it? CPM has unleashed complete terror so that no anti-CPM movement ever takes root in rural Bengal. We have asked for CRPF pickets all over Nandigram; only then would these homeless people be able to return to their homes," said Bhabani Das, office secretary of BUPC who runs this camp.

Recounting the night of horror, Agrai Bibi said, "All the men had fled to relief camps. Five CPM cadres barged into our house while another about 25 of them stood in guard outside. They used filthy language, hit me with their guns and dragged me by the hair out of the house. And then one of the cadres raped me. Four others pounced on my two daughters and gangraped them."

She was lucky to find a place in the hospital on Saturday. But, there is no trace as yet of her daughters. "I don't know where they have taken my daughters," said her husband Akbar, a casual labourer. "We have submitted a list of accused. But the police has done nothing," said Sheikh Mohasin, Agrai Bibi's brother.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/CRPF_told_to_move_out_of_troubled_areas/articleshow/2551221.cms

CRPF told to move out of troubled areas 19 Nov 2007, 0216 hrs IST,TNN

NANDIGRAM: First, police outposts were moved out to leave Nandigram open to the Red cadres' assault. Now, CRPF camps are being shifted from violence-torn villages to areas untouched by the brutal CPM attack to retake Nandigram.

The order came from the Bengal police top brass, which has operational control over the paramilitary force. The move has angered Bhumi Uchched Pratirodh Committee members who were depending on the CRPF's reassuring presence to stay in Nandigram.

BUPC leaders say senior police officers decided to move out CRPF after the jawans started cracking down on biker gangs that had struck terror in Nandigram. CPM cadres were given motorcycles to ensure that the Red fear reached out to the remotest villages. But CRPF turned out to be a thorn for the CPM when it nabbed some big biker gangs. The ruling party then goaded the administration to get the jawans out of the way.

The news angered Opposition parties. In Kolkata, Mamata Banerjee said that if the CRPF was removed from Nandigram it would rekindle fresh violence.

The places where the CRPF camps stood till Sunday were: Nandigram, Garchakraberia, Rajaramchak, Khodambari-I and Khodambari-II. All these areas were left bruised and bloodied in the 11-month long violence, especially after the March 14 carnage in which 14 persons were killed.

The police top brass wants these camps to be shifted to Tengua, Pankhai, Jillingham, Teropakhia and Khejuri. Barring Khejuri, none of these places was affected in the mass violence that has been taking place over the last year.

Khejuri was the place from where CPM men launched the assault to retake Nandigram.

State DGP A B Vohra on Sunday asked CRPF officials overseeing the operations in Nandigram to operate only in areas identified by the police superintendent S S Panda. CRPF officials have reportedly been told that they will be able to operate "better" from these areas instead of the 'trouble-zones' where they had set up camp. Following the arrest of Tapan Ghosh, Sukur Ali and Salim Laskar, the CPM has been pushed on the back foot.

Accusations that criminals and goons were involved in the assault to crush resistance in Nandigram is gaining ground day by day.

With Calcutta High Court ordering a CBI investigation and CRPF turning proactive in Nandigram, the ruling CPM does not want to take any more risks.

IG (law & order) Raj Kanojia cited operational reasons for the shift. "Several meetings have been held to identify places from where monitoring can be done effectively," said Kanojia.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1071119/asp/bengal/story_8565314.asp

Ground Zero not for CRPF KINSUK BASU Mon, Nov 19, 2007


CRPF personnel with a motorcycle bearing a fudged numberplate, allegedly used by CPM cadres to terrorise opponents. (Sanat Kumar Sinha)

Nandigram, Nov. 18: The Bengal government today asked the Central Reserve Police Force to shift all its five camps further away from the trouble-prone areas to pockets that have remained CPM strongholds throughout the last 10 months.

Yesterday, the CRPF said its camps were not close enough to the trouble spots and that it wanted to set up a few in the interiors.

The force was bewildered by today’s decision, especially because its demand for a camp at Takapura was turned down. “The proposal was shot down. We don’t understand why,” an officer said.

CRPF deputy inspector-general Alok Raj said: “We have no idea about the five new sites and the intelligence feed that led to the choice.”

“Our prime concern remains the affected people, but we are not sure how far we will be useful to them,” he added.

The decision to relocate the camps came hours after director-general of police A.B. Vohra met senior officers of the district police and the central force at Nandigram police station this morning.

The CRPF has been asked to move from Nandigram College to Tengua, from Rajaramchowk to Jellingham, from Khodambari to Khejuri and Teropokhia and from Gokulnagar to Pankhai.

In most of these areas, the CRPF has been asked to pitch tents as there are no houses where the jawans and the officers can stay.

A paramilitary officer said it would take them at least two days to settle down and get a feel of the place before starting patrolling.

The delay will “slow down the confidence-building process”, he added.

Today’s decision has left the Bhoomi Uchchhed Pratirodh Committee stumped. Many of its leaders alleged that the move was aimed at helping CPM supporters move around freely on motorcycles in the “recaptured” areas and terrorise people.

The meeting at the police station tried to work out ways for the return of the refugees from relief camps.

Abu Taher, a Pratirodh Committee convener, said: “Forget women, even men can’t think of returning to Satengabari, Ranichowk, Kamalpur, Tekhali or Akhandabari. We have been asking for CRPF camps repeatedly at these places but our plea was not taken into consideration even at today’s meeting. Why? Don’t you see the reason?”

The police brass refused to see “politics” in the relocation of CRPF camps.

“We had a detailed discussion about the modalities of setting up the camps and things should work out fine. I hope the people regain their confidence gradually and return home,” Vohra said.

His words had few takers in the relief camps.

Many of them have already been threatened against entering the fray in next year’s rural elections. “A few who dared to return home were told their coffins were ready. There would be only one punishment for filing a nomination against a CPM candidate,” said Bharat Mondal of Khodambari.

Committee supporters Babulal Akhtar and Sheikh Shahauddin were arrested today when they returned home to Hajrakata. The police said they were wanted in several cases of rioting.

Shahauddin told The Telegraph two days ago that the CPM had set a Rs 1.5-lakh tax for him to return home.

“No one will dare to go back if such arrests continue,” a villager said.

At the camp, Sheikh Moti of Bandhavbari said: “My wife fled home with bruises this morning.”

Hunt for ‘rape’ duo

Nandigram police are looking for alleged CPM supporters Sagar Das and Kalipada Gayen in connection with the “rape” of a woman from Garupara.

A mother of three sons and two daughters, she was alone at her house when CPM cadres allegedly raped her twice on Wednesday and Thursday. She managed to reach her husband at a relief camp in Nandigram town yesterday.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/City_with_a_conscience/articleshow/2551212.cms

City with a conscience 19 Nov 2007, 0210 hrs IST,TNN

Kolkata may not be turbo-charged. It may not have Mumbai's hard nose for money or Delhi's political intrigue or Bangalore's grasping modernity. But there is no denying that the 'Dying City' (in Rajiv Gandhi’s doomsday words) can put the rest to shame when it comes to fighting for a cause.

There is probably no other city in India where life comes to a standstill because of protest marches against imperialism, the US invasion of Iraq, the Gujarat riots, the destruction of the Babri Masjid, and for all things pro-Cuba and Castro.

In the last few months, though, there has been a marked and welcome change in the kind of causes being championed. The cause is no longer a glamorous geographical location about which the average Kolkatan knows nothing.

The enemy has a familiar face and has come closer home, right into its backyard. And the city has reacted with outrage. First after the gruesome death of Rizwanur Rahman, the Muslim youth who married the daughter of a Hindu industrialist.

And then after Nandigram, where villagers were shot for trying to protect their lands from being annexed for a chemical hub. A bayonet had pricked the city's conscience. The intelligentsia, which had chosen to remain silent on home issues over the years, poured out on to the streets. Mrinal Sen, Rituparno Ghosh, Aparna Sen and hundreds of others publicly condemned the government.

The ostrich had finally lifted its head out of the sand. For years there had been no public hue and cry over serious governmental lapses—when women were raped in Dhantala by CPM leaders in early 2000 or when Keshpur-Garbeta were recaptured by CPM men in 2000-2001.

But Singur, and more lately Nandigram, changed all that. "I have never seen such a protest before," says film-maker and leftist ideologue Mrinal Sen. "So many intellectuals coming together on a common platform is a rarity."

Kolkata's culture of protest can be traced to the strong bond between the Left and the intelligentsia in the early days of the undivided Communist Party of India. In post-independent India, the City on the Hoogly became the nerve centre of the Left movement.

Communist leader P C Joshi heralded this idea of bringing artistes, poets, singers and playwrights into the party fold to spread the message of revolution. The Indian People's Theatre Association was formed in 1942 and attracted fertile young minds from all over the country. Ritwik Ghatak, Balraj Sahni, Chetan Anand, Khwaja Ahmed Abbas, Shambhu Mitra, Utpal Dutta, Bijan Bhattacharya, Salil Chowdhury, Kaifi Azmi and Sahir Ludhianvi were the icons of this period.

Processions, rallies, bandhs, strikes became the language of protest. Films by Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen such as Seemabaddha and Calcutta '71 captured this ferment; in writer Sunil Gangopadhyay's first novel Atmaprakash, set in the turbulent '60s, the protagonist looks down from his office and sees the same faces marching on the streets for a different cause every day.

But then the Left became the Establishment. With the near-complete dominance of the CPM in Bengal politics, the protest marches and fiery slogans became synonymous with the party's show of strength. Protest was co-opted by the Politburo.

The Kolkata of the 1960s where trams were burnt after the fares were hiked by one paisa stopped reacting to matters closer home. The intelligentsia was to blame for this complicit silence. Unless the ruling party summoned poets and painters for a condemnation of globalisation or US imperialism they stayed away.

That is why Nandigram is so important. When it began burning, bonds of enslavement were broken, the fetters on conscience unstayed. When a Shankha Ghosh or an Asoke Mitra spoke out against government repression it was deeply significant. When an 83-year-old Mrinal Sen walked the streets, he became a totem of freedom—breaking the shackles of years and years of belief in a political system which claimed to be pro-poor. He made the headlines.

"All these years we pretended to look away whenever any wrong was committed in our state," says actor-director Kaushik Sen. "This is our party, our government, so let's look away. After all, we are Leftists, and we identified with the party and the government. Never before in 30 years has there been so much opposition to the Left government from a section of the intellectuals."

Nandigram has proved that michhil or the culture of protest still thumps in the heart of Kolkata. It still is the city with a conscience. Thousands of farmers have killed themselves in Maharashtra. Has Mumbai blinked? When Gujarat was being garrotted, did Ahmedabad stop trading? Bangalore remains gloriously apolitical, as sterile as silicon.

In Delhi, they wake up and cry havoc only when designers' outlets are sealed. In Kolkata they may still open their umbrellas when it rains at the Kremlin, but it's also true that this city can make others' problem its own. It doesn’t believe in minding its own business. That is why it can cry for Cuba and Saddam Hussein. And for Rizwan and Nandigram.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1071119/asp/bengal/story_8565317.asp

Trio (Forward Bloc, RSP and the CPI) snub Big Brother BARUN GHOSH Monday, November 19, 2007


CRPF personnel in Nandigram

Calcutta, Nov. 18: Three partners in the ruling Left Front today refused to participate in a peace rally lined up by the CPM youth and student wings, handing the party the first such rebuff ever.

A week after the Forward Bloc, RSP and the CPI held the CPM “responsible” for the bloodshed in Nandigram, their youth and student wings decided to skip Tuesday’s “peace procession” organised by the Democratic Youth Federation of India and the SFI.

“This is the first time in 30 years that we have decided to skip a DYFI and SFI rally in order to register our protest against the CPM’s armed recapture of Nandigram villages,” Rajiv Banerjee, the state secretary of the RSP-affiliated Progressive Students’ Union, said.

“In fact, we are left with no option but to review our future association with the DYFI and the SFI for joint programmes.”

Banerjee said the RSP’s student wing and the Revolutionary Youth Front, its youth arm, now had second thoughts on joining the DYFI’s anti-imperialism rally scheduled for the third week of December.

“Before the March 14 firing in Nandigram, we had joined a DYFI rally against imperialism. On several other occasions too, we have organised rallies and processions together,” he said.

The boycott decision was taken at a joint meeting held today “when they approached us for joining the peace rally”, state RSP youth wing secretary Swapan Maikap said.

The procession will start from Subodh Mullick Square and conclude on Rani Rash-moni Avenue where youth and student leaders are expected to address it.

A member of the Chhatra Bloc, affiliated to the Forward Bloc, said any joint rally would not only “bracket us with the CPM but also send a wrong message” to the people.

“We are not going to collaborate with the DYFI and the SFI on any programme. We shall take a final decision after a joint meeting on December 11,” Debu Roy said.

The CPI youth wing sang much the same tune, saying it too would stay away in protest against the “CPM’s highhandedness”.

“What the CPM has done in Nandigram with the help of its cadres goes against the Left’s avowed policy. So, we would not like to associate ourselves with it,” said Gautam Roy, the state secretary of the All India Youth Federation of India, affiliated to the CPI.

The DYFI and SFI leaders, however, put up a brave front. Asked why the rally was being shunned, DYFI state secreta-ry Abhas Roychowdhury said: “We have decided to organise it on our own.”
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