So What Led To The Bloodshed?

Jaideep Mazumdar
For 11 months, a fierce revolt raging in one pocket of Bengal kept the state at bay. So ferocious was the wall of resistance in the 100-odd villages in two blocks of Nandigram that a terrified state police refused to step into Nandigram. For 11 months, the writ of the state did not run at Nandigram and the whole area was in a state of anarchy. The 2000-odd CPI(M) workers and supporters and their families who had been driven out of the 100-odd villages there and were staying in camps run by their party in CPI(M)-dominated areas neighbouring Nandigram, like Khejuri, were getting restless and were desperate to return home. The Bhumi Uchched Pratirodh Committee (BUPC), the body born out of the popular resistance there to the government's bid to take over 22,500 acres of land there for a chemical hub, was resisting the return of the people it had driven out of Nandigram. And having run out of patience, the 'refugees' attacked the BUPC men, defeated them, and returned home. Now, normality has returned to Nandigram, peace reigns there and everybody is happy.
The above is what the CPI(M)-led Left Front government in West Bengal would want us all to believe. The truth is, however, far removed from this.
Primarily, the character of the resistance was not quite what is being made out by the CPI(M) and its government. The people of Nandigram rose in revolt in early-January due to the government's authoritarian manner of seeking to take over the 100-odd villages for the chemical hub without even working out proper compensation or a fair rehabilitation package. The people of Nandigram--with a long history of revolt and resistance against authoritarian rule--bristled with rage over the manner in which they were sought to be displaced from their villages and farmlands through a mere notification issued by the CPI(M)-controlled Haldia Development Authority (HDA).
A few days later, when the state government realised its folly and promised handsome compensation packages, the people rejected the offer. The mistrust of the government, and the party which runs it, was deep. More so since many of those who had been forced to give up their lands a couple of decades ago for the mega petrochemical complex at Haldia are yet to receive a paisa as compensation.
Also, the people of Nandigram--like people in many other parts of Bengal--had grown tired of the oppression by the highhanded and arrogant CPI(M). Resentment against the CPI(M) simmered and when the spark was provided by the HAD's notification, Nandigram erupted.
So widespread was the revolt that it not only singed the district administration, the police force and the CPI(M), it also led to a mass exodus from the CPI(M) into the BUPC. Having raised the banner of revolt, the people of Nandigram knew there was no going back. Thus, they dug roads and demolished bridges, entrenching themselves in the area to keep out the police and the local administration that they (rightly) feared would crush their revolt at the dictates of the CPI(M). The CPI(M) supporters and workers who remained in Nandigram were hounded out by the BUPC that feared these people would weaken the resistance from within. This was a major error, and we'll come to that later.
But for all the demonisation of the BUPC by the state government and the CPI(M), the body always remained a loose conglomeration of forces of various ideologies and pursuits without any clear chain of command and, perhaps most fatally, without any clear vision and end-objective.
The BUPC's character was at once its strength and its weakness--strength because it acted as the platform for all anti-CPI(M) forces to oppose the ruling party and encompassed all those who revolted, and weakness because, thanks to the nature of its 'loose alliance', it was ill-equipped to oppose a regimented party like the CPI(M) and resist the fierce onslaught that would inevitably follow.For all that the state government and the CPI(M) have to say about the BUPC, it remains a fact that the BUPC men were ill-equipped and couldn't match the firepower of even the CPI(M)'s 'action squads', leave alone the police. Country-made arms were all they could obtain with their limited resources. There was no way they could match the CPI(M)'s financial muscle. They lacked training in guerilla tactics and the presence of Maoists was nowhere as large as what the state government has projected.
From all available indications, a few Maoists were present at Nandigram, but they were there to lend a helping hand to organise the resistance and impart training in arms and making improvised explosive devices to the villagers. There is no credible evidence of the Maoists participating in the resistance and fighting, shoulder-to-shoulder, with the BUPC men. Had that been the case, the CPI(M) would have suffered many casualties. Instead, when it started its attack on Nadnigram, not only did the resistance crumble easily, not even one of the hundreds of CPI(M) marauders suffered a single wound.
Are we to believe that the BUPC men--armed with sophisticated weapons and trained in guerilla tactics, as the CPI(M) and the state government propagates--and the Maoist cadres fighting alongside them fell so easily before the CPI(M) onslaught? That not a single shot fired by the resistance (it has emerged now that all they had were country-made weapons) found its mark? That the fierce fighters that the BUPC men and Maoists were lost all courage and fled their CPI(M) attackers like cowards?Why, then, did the state government and the CPI(M) try to perpetuate those myths about the BUPC? The only possible answer to that is that the state government, by demonising the BUPC, by raising the bogey of Maoists having entrenched themselves in Nandigram and by creating the myth about Nandigram being made an 'impregnable fortress' by the BUPC-Maoist combine which even the state police were scared of venturing into, was only laying the ground for its cadres to attack Nandigram. In other words, the state government facilitated a bloody political battle that would crush opposition to the party in Nandigram once and for all and also silence opposition elsewhere in the state into meek submission.
The outcry over the first attempt by the state government and the party--there's really no distinction between the two in Bengal--on March 14 that led to police firing and deaths provided a handy excuse to the state government to keep the police away from Nandigram. Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and his party said, time and again during the nine months (since March 14 and early November) that the police wouldn't be sent in to Nandigram since that would lead to bloodshed.
Who could have guessed that behind such seemingly innocent pronouncements a diabolical plot was being hatched to recapture Nandigram with the help of the party's 'action squads' and send out a chilling message to the opposition (that is: 'the price for opposition to the CPI-M could be fatal') not only in Nandigram but across the state?
It is now clear that the purpose behind the portrayal of the BUPC as a deadly, fearsome force was to allow gory retribution by the CPI(M) on an opposition force.

It may be argued that the state government did try all these months to negotiate with the BUPC and the parties that form it (the Trinamool, the Congress and the Jamait-e-Ulema-e-Hind) and pave way for peace in Nandigram. And that it was only after all attempts to restore peace had failed that CPI(M) workers in the refugee camps grew desperate and launched an attack on Nandigram as a last-ditch measure to return home.
This argument is flawed, for a deeper analysis of the government's 'peace efforts' would reveal that they were perfunctory and half-hearted. It wouldn't have suited the CPI(M) to have peace restored in Nandigram because that wouldn't have allowed the opportunity to the party to teach the opposition a lesson.
This is further proved by subsequent events in Nandigram. The fact that, even after Nandigram's recapture, CPI(M) cadres are spreading terror, looting and burning houses, attacking BUPC activists or sympathisers, imposing fines on them and forcing them to swear loyalty to the CPI(M) is proof enough that the objective of the party men who attacked Nandigram in early November was not limited to simply pave way for the 2000-odd CPI(M) 'refugees' to return to their homes, but to teach the BUPC (and all opposition forces in Bengal) a lesson they wouldn't forget in a hurry.
That is also why the CRPF, whose presence in Nandigram's trouble-spots was proving to be a hindrance to the spread of 'red terror' there, have been moved away to places that are CPI(M) strongholds and where no trouble occurred all these months.To lay the entire blame for the resistance at Nandigram being so ignominiously crushed at the doors of the CPI(M) would, however, be telling just half the story. If the CPI(M) cadres are being ruthless now, BUPC men were no less so all these months. The BUPC lacked a bold leadership, strategy and foresight. Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee, who hijacked the resistance, failed to provide any firm direction to it and, ultimately, let it down miserably. No BUPC leader, and Mamata Banerjee as well, carried out an honest SWOT analysis of the movement.
Mamata and the BUPC leaders failed to anticipate the CPI(M)'s -- and the state government's -- moves and sinister gameplan. They came across as politically immature, obstinate and short-sighted people whose only objective was to oppose and fight the CPI(M). They failed to explain why the movement had to go on despite repeated announcements by Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee that no land would be acquired for a chemical hub or any other industrial unit or project at Nandigram. Many felt the movement lacked any rationale after such declarations.But the biggest mistake the BUPC made was to commit atrocities on CPI(M) workers, supporters and sympathisers and their families, impose hefty fines on them and drive them away from the villages. In doing so, the BUPC may have just been, to borrow Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's infamous phrase, paying the CPI(M) back in its own coin (for all these decades of oppression), but they proved themselves to be as bad as the tyrannical CPI(M).
By driving people away from their homes and villages, the BUPC handed the CPI(M) a fantastic PR victory. The sufferings of the thousands who were sheltered in the CPI(M)-run camps accorded to the CPI(M) the moral high ground (for some time and in this aspect at least) and allowed the party the golden opportunity to not only paint the BUPC in a bad light, but also to justify the subsequent onslaught on Nandigram.
Had the BUPC made a mature and generous effort to win over the CPI(M) workers or supporters, or even just let them be, the CPI(M) wouldn't have got the opportunity to attack Nandigram.
The BUPC made a number of tactical errors and couldn't convert itself into a lean, mean fighting machine with a clear chain of command, even though it had all ambitions (howsoever impractical and unsustainable, morally and otherwise) of being one to keep the CPI(M) and the state administration at bay. It didn't even have a proper intelligence-gathering machinery to gather information on the goings-on in the CPI(M) camp. The CPI(M), on the other hand, had this in place and was privy to everything that went on the BUPC.
A major weakness of the BUPC was that it didn't have a long-term objective; it was born out of the movement to resist acquisition of land, but once the proposal to set up the chemical hub was abandoned, it was left with no major issue or even rationale--save the demands for adequate compensation to the families of the dead and injured in the March 14 firing, punishment of the guilty cops and a CBI probe into the firing--to sustain the movement.
But these three demands could never have been a justifiable basis for such a long-drawn battle to keep Nandigram out of bounds for the state administration. The BUPC made the mistake of delaying things for far too long. It could have wrested concessions from the state government and got it to meet its demands when the government was on the backfoot immediately after the March 14 firing. But the BUPC leaders, misled as they were by a visionless Mamata Banerjee, continued with the movement instead of calling it off.In retrospect, the BUPC committed a number of errors, including serious errors in judgement. BUPC men also behaved as ruthlessly and oppressively as the CPI(M). It should have called off the agitation long ago. But all these mistakes, and even far more serious ones, can never ever provide justification for the CPI(M)'s bloody and vicious vengeance. The CPI(M), if nothing else, has also to take responsibility for the fact that its government failed miserably to govern -- it could not make its writ run to maintain basic law and order.