“They kill people like birds”

Activist DEBOJIT DATTA, who has played an active role in convening the BUPC, writes of Nandigram from behind the battlelines
Something worse than death stalks Nandigram today. Fear. Cold stifling dehumanising fear. It is impossible to say how many people have really died in the last seven days or how many have been raped. No one has accurate figures. No one can really tell what’s happened on the ground. Locals say about 500 people are missing after they were rounded up from Sonachura, Maheshpura and Nandigram by armed CPM cadres on motorcycles, some wielding AK 47s and SLRs, over 9 and 10 November. What we know for certain is that thousands of people have fled their homes and are stranded in refugee camps across Nandigram. Just in BMT High School, Nandigram over 2,500 people have gathered. There is a winter chill in the air. Most people are lying on unprotected ground, surviving on one round of khichdi in the afternoon and some dried puffed rice at night. Most are from proud self-sufficient homes. To be on relief is itself a kind of humiliation. To understand what is happening in Nandigram – and by extension in Bengal – one has to go back to the beginning. Popular resistance to the CPM first began when the government announced the Tata small car factory in Singur early last year and began forcible acquisition of land. There was firing, lathi-charge, deaths, police deployment. This fascist approach to the takeover of rich agricultural land for industrial purposes was new to Bengal. Many farmers and landless tillers opposed the project. They felt the car factory would dislodge them from secure agricultural homesteads and turn them into Class IV workers. Local anger and unrest was amplified by the intervention of the Trinamool Congress and SUCI. The government responded with brute force. Appalled by its high-handed approach and the absence of consensus, many activists and intellectuals got involved with the Singur struggle in solidarity. 56,000 factories are lying shut in Bengal. The state has almost 3.7 million acres of uncultivable land. Why not utilize that for industrial growth, people argued. Why take over fertile land? At about this time, around July 2006, word began to spread of an impending chemical hub project in Nandigram. The proposed takeover of land straddled an astronomical 28,000 acres. A 100 villages. 38 mouzas. A land rich in rice, coconut, fish and betel leaf. A thriving economy. Unlike Singur, Nandigram has been a CPM bastion for over 35 years. Their assumption was that Nandigram would toe the line. But the unthinkable happened. The villagers broke rank. Confronted by potential eviction, many like Maidur Hossain’s family, who have been staunch CPM supporters for decades, turned against the party. In early December, several activists like me conducted a survey of 600 families in Nandigram seeking people’s opinion on the impending project. Only 12 consented to sell their land. In all my years of activism, I have never seen anything like Nandigram. The villagers’ resolve, unity and passion for their land have transformed my understanding. On January 2, 2007, the local CPM MP and strongman Lakshman Seth put up a summary notice announcing the acquisition of land. On January 3, a peaceful deputation of villagers marched to the Gram Panchayat to enquire about the notice. They were brutally dispersed by the police. The events after that, right up to the massacre of March 14, are well known. Police brutality, attacks by CPM goons, and escalating public outcry on the one hand. And an unprecedented spontaneous resistance on the other. Villagers broke roads and cut off access. The Bhumi Ucched Protirodh Committee (BUPC), cutting across party lines, was formed. It was agreed that everyone’s political identity would be subsumed by the larger common cause: the fight for land. Caught on the backfoot, the CPM government had to relocate the Salem Groups’s chemical project elsewhere. In the months that followed, however, tensions in Nandigram did not recede. The order to relocate the project was never given in writing and no one trusted the government’s word. As BUPC volunteers – including women -- continued to patrol their homes and land, CPM cadres, along with hired goons imported from outside, banked themselves in Khejuri -- separated from Nandigram by a narrow canal -- and continued their assault. They were determined to regain control of Nandigram. It had become too powerful a symbol. It had become a prestige issue. A turf battle. If Nandigram was not quelled, the contagion would spread elsewhere. CPM leaders like Benoy Konar, Lakshman Seth and Biman Bose have constantly exhorted their cadres: “Moro, na maro,” Seth has urged (“Kill, or die yourself.”) “Lift your saris and show Medha Patkar your backside,” Konar has taunted. “Have they been throwing rosogollas at us?” Bose has exhorted. Consequently, the last few months have been riddled with sporadic kidnappings, rapes, bombings, and firing. Drawn into a war-like situation, there has been some violence on both sides. People on both sides have died. Then suddenly, over the last couple of months, the CPM ratched up the violence. With panchayat elections only a few months away, they opened a new battlefront in Block 2 of Nandigram: Satangabari, Ranichowk, Tankapura, Maheshpura. As Anuradha Talwar, president of the Khet Mazdoor Committee, says, “They were determined to make an example of Nandigram. They wanted to tell the rest of Bengal, this is what happens if anyone revolts against us. Historically, this is the way all peasant rebellions have been crushed.” From November 7 to 12, to use one of the villager’s Abdul Qadir’s words, “They killed people like birds.” Personally, I have never seen state machinery used in this fashion in a functioning democracy. On the 8th and 11th, around 38 of us activists, including Medha Patkar, sought police escort to enter Nandigram. Both times, the police turned its face away and stood inert as our cars were smashed and we were stalled for hours by rampaging CPM cadres. Medha was dragged out of the car by her hair, my spectacles were smashed, and after we left, they burned the houses of those who had given us shelter in Kapashberia. The rule of law did not exist. Even the District Magistrate, Khalil Ahmed had no power. “Don’t go in there. We will not be able to help you,” he said. Yet, in a surreal twist, the CPM had banners everywhere shouting, “Why are you promoting terror in Nandigram? Give us an answer, Medha Patkar!” Since the resistance began in Nandigram, the government has been floating the fantastic lie that the villagers of Nandigram are backed by Maoists. I know every constituent of the BUPC, and I know none of us are Maoists. It is a poor refuge to explain away the real truth of the movement in Nandigram. Fear can be a crippling thing though. Many villagers now do not want to speak of what they have seen or suffered because they are afraid of reprisal. As Anuradha Talwar puts it, “It is like internal violence in a family. The wife will not speak up, because the husband will beat her again later.” Yet slowly, the stories are trickling in. Stories like that of Nitaikaran, a 96 year old man who was beaten to death. Eleven of his family members, who had fled to the refugee camps, applied to the CPM functionary at Tekhali for permission to return to their home to cremate their father. Ten people are not needed, they were told. Let one go, we will take responsibility for the cremation. Stories like that of the sisters Anwara Khatun and Ansuma Khatun, 16 and 18 years old, who were raped in Satangabari, along with their mother, Akhreja Biwi. Stories like that of Chandana Das who was molested at Kalicharanpura. Like that of Srikant Paik in Sonachura whose house was burnt and shop looted. For the moment, the villagers of Nandigram seem to have been beaten into submission. All they demand is that they be allowed to return home in genuine safety, under CRPF security, in time to harvest their fields. But the lessons of Nandigram are not over yet. It has exposed the Left Front as nothing before: the Left has left the Left. Abdicated to fascism and a rabid economic programme. Nandigram is a searing example of what will happen across the country if India tries to import America overnight. This government’s craze for instant industrialization, its comfort levels with demolishing a whole class of people and turning them into servants, its disregard for environment, its pandering to corporates at cost has already fractured its image as a pro-people government. The alternatives – Congress, TMC, SUCI – may be no better. But that cannot be a concern at the moment. As Gandhi said to the British: you leave first, then we will figure out who will govern us. Debojit Datta is a member of the Forum for Free Thinkers and the NAPM. He has played an active part in the constitution of the BUPC.
From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 4, Issue 45, Dated Nov 24, 2007