West Bengal Stalinist regime perpetrates peasant massacre (India)

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At least 14 people were killed and some 75 villagers injured Wednesday, when West Bengal’s Stalinist-led state government ordered a more than 4,000-strong contingent of police—including para-military, Rapid Action and Combat Commando forces—to reestablish the government’s authority in the environs of Nandigram, a town located about 150 kilometers from Kolkata (Calcutta.)

In early January the peasants of Nandigram rose up in revolt after learning of government plans to seize 10,000 acres of land in the area for a Special Economic Zone to be operated by the Indonesian-based Salim Group. On the night of January 6-7, more than 200 Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPM] thugs invaded Nandigram, with the tacit support of the police, so as to terrorize the populace and stamp out the opposition movement. Six people died in the ensuing confrontation, but the villagers ultimately chased off the CPM goons.

Until Wednesday the area had remained “out of bounds†to government authorities, with the local populace digging up roads, destroying bridges and building barricades so as to ensure Nandigram remained off limits to government representatives.

From all accounts, Wednesday’s clash was a mini civil war. The police entered the area from three different directions and two of the police columns encountered fierce resistance.

Behind a wall of several hundred women and children, thousands of villagers gathered armed with sickles, rods, and scythes. According to some reports some of the villagers were also armed with homemade pipe bombs and country-made pistols.

The police fired teargas and rubber bullets to force the crowds to disperse, but when the villagers fought back, they resorted to firing live-bullets.

Under the headline “Nandigram Bloodied—Killing fields: 11 die in police firing,†the Hindustan Times described the police attack as follows: “[As] the villagers started fleeing, policemen followed them and dragged some out of their houses and beat them. ‘It was like a war I don’t know where my family members are,’ said Saber, a villager. ‘Bodies were scattered all over the paddy fields smeared with blood. The injured were screaming for help but the policemen kept kicking them.’â€

The death toll has since risen to 14 and may well rise again as the police rampage left many critically injured.

Wednesday’s police action was planned and ordered by the highest levels of the CPM-led Left Front government. And West Bengal Chief Minister and CPM Politburo member Buddadeb Bhattacharjee, his senior ministers, and the CPM’s all-India leadership, are all vociferously defending the storming of Nandigram as necessary to end a “lawless situation in Nandigramâ€â€”that is to uphold the authority of the capitalist state—and are excusing the police massacre as “self-defence.â€

The claims of self-defence are belied first by the government’s decision to order thousands of police clad in battle-gear to invade Nandigram and second by the government’s own casualty figures. According to the statement Bhattacharjee made in the West Bengal Assembly Thursday, while 14 villagers were killed and several score injured, only 12 police suffered injuries and “serious and extensive injuries could be avoided as all the policemen were in protective gear.â€

[...]

(The SEZs are an attempt by the Indian ruling elite to duplicate the Chinese government practice of providing investors with land, long-term tax breaks, relaxed environmental and labor regulations and cheap, and highly government-regimented, labor. ...

[...]

... the peasants of Nandigram are well aware that most of them lack the skills to be employed in modern industry and that the monetary compensation offered by the government can be quickly consumed, leaving them with no means of livelihood.

The massacre at Nandigram has shattered the pretensions of the Left Front and the CPM to defend India’s workers and toilers and shown them to be agents of domestic and international capital who stand ready to unleash violent state repression against working people.

Edited March 18, 2007 by Gupt

[ELW 5]

Awful!

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Poor people in India are getting shafted with this whole globalization business. They are trying to hold on to what is theirs but the powers-that-be don't plan to allow that. The Maoists who won in Nepal have allies in the Bengal/Jharkhand region and all hell is going to break loose in within the next few years.

[ELW 5]

Definitely sounds like a recipe for disaster. So tragic and frustrating for the poor locals.

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Are you familiar with the Naxal problems in the 1960s-1970s? We are looking at a repeat, except this time the 'peasants' are better organized and much better armed. My in-laws are in Calcutta and this could get very dangerous.

[ELW 5]

I hope it won't get too bad in Kolkata (is that the right spelling of the new name?).

No, I didn't know about the Naxal troubles so long ago. I was living in Andhra in Naxal areas (first in East Godavari District then in Anantapur District, from 1984-2005). There were always robberies and we often heard of taxis being stopped with rocks in the roads and robbed, but nothing big happened where I was. Still, it was frightening.

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Thirty years ago--in 1967--a "Spring Thunder" of revolutionary struggle broke out in Naxalbari, India. Poor and landless peasants, tea plantation workers and tribal people in the northern part of West Bengal, near the border with Nepal, rose up against centuries of poverty, brutality and humiliation. They armed themselves with bows and spears, snatching guns when they could. And they took up the most advanced ideas--Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.

[...]

The result of the revolutionary line was the outbreak of armed struggle in Naxalbari in the spring of 1967. As In the Wake of Naxalbari described it: "From March 1967 to April 1967 all the villages were organized. From 15,000 to 20,000 peasants were enrolled as whole-time activists. Peasants' committees were formed in every village and they were transformed into armed guards. They soon occupied land in the name of the peasants' committees, burnt all the land records `which had been used to cheat them of their due,' canceled all hypothecary debts [mortgages], passed death sentences on oppressive landlords, formed armed bands by looting guns from the landlords, armed themselves with conventional weapons like bows and arrows and spears, and set up a parallel administration to look after the villages....

"By May that year, the rebels could claim as their strongholds Hatighsha under the Naxalbari police station, Buraganj under the Kharibari police station, and Chowpukhuria under Phansidew police station, where no outsider could enter without their permission."

For three liberating months, the old way in Naxalbari was driven out by the Spring Thunder. In 2,000 villages, revolutionary mass organization of peasants held political power, administering affairs according to their revolutionary interests under the leadership of communist revolutionaries.

The Naxalite Movement Shakes India

In July, the government's military encirclement and suppression campaign finally snatched back the political power that the masses had seized. But the Naxalbari uprising sparked a revolutionary movement that flared throughout India.

[ELW 5]

Wow, so that is how the Naxalites started! And for so short a time!

[Saddle Bronc 124]

Are you familiar with the Naxal problems in the 1960s-1970s? We are looking at a repeat, except this time the 'peasants' are better organized and much better armed. My in-laws are in Calcutta and this could get very dangerous.

Difference here is that the ACTUAL peasants (not someone claiming falsely to "represent" them as Naxals have been doing) is against the party the Naxals would be expected to SUPPORT (it obfuscates about them anyway), CP/I-M.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Are you familiar with the Naxal problems in the 1960s-1970s? We are looking at a repeat, except this time the 'peasants' are better organized and much better armed. My in-laws are in Calcutta and this could get very dangerous.

Difference here is that the ACTUAL peasants (not someone claiming falsely to "represent" them as Naxals have been doing) is against the party the Naxals would be expected to SUPPORT (it obfuscates about them anyway), CP/I-M.

Bengali Naxals have always been against the CPI-M. Their party is the CPI-ML.

[maya62 7]

Poor people in India are getting shafted with this whole globalization business. They are trying to hold on to what is theirs but the powers-that-be don't plan to allow that. The Maoists who won in Nepal have allies in the Bengal/Jharkhand region and all hell is going to break loose in within the next few years.

Not to stray from India, and I know the Maoists in Nepal have ties to those in India, but I wouldn't exactly say they've won yet. They will likely be a strong minority in the new constituent assembly, but still a minority. I doubt we'll see a Maoist PM or a Maoist majority in Nepal anytime soon (please, please let me be right!). In fact, there was apparently a strong march (10K people per the news) against the Maoists in Kathmandu just a couple of days ago.

I worry about my in-laws, too, in Nepal. We are going to visit in June... about the time they are scheduled to have elections... yikes!

Maya

[Saddle Bronc 124]

Not to stray from India, and I know the Maoists in Nepal have ties to those in India, but I wouldn't exactly say they've won yet. They will likely be a strong minority in the new constituent assembly, but still a minority. I doubt we'll see a Maoist PM or a Maoist majority in Nepal anytime soon (please, please let me be right!). In fact, there was apparently a strong march (10K people per the news) against the Maoists in Kathmandu just a couple of days ago.

I worry about my in-laws, too, in Nepal. We are going to visit in June... about the time they are scheduled to have elections... yikes!

Maya

Maya, maoists (Naxals, JVP, Sendero-Luminoso, etc.) never have cared for elections--only for wrecking of societies. They never have a vision for reconstructions.

(shown by Naxals' most frequent attempt to boycott elections)

[maya62 7]

Not to stray from India, and I know the Maoists in Nepal have ties to those in India, but I wouldn't exactly say they've won yet. They will likely be a strong minority in the new constituent assembly, but still a minority. I doubt we'll see a Maoist PM or a Maoist majority in Nepal anytime soon (please, please let me be right!). In fact, there was apparently a strong march (10K people per the news) against the Maoists in Kathmandu just a couple of days ago.

I worry about my in-laws, too, in Nepal. We are going to visit in June... about the time they are scheduled to have elections... yikes!

Maya

Maya, maoists (Naxals, JVP, Sendero-Luminoso, etc.) never have cared for elections--only for wrecking of societies. They never have a vision for reconstructions.

(shown by Naxals' most frequent attempt to boycott elections)

OK... this is not comforting

I wonder if the Nepali Maoists will try to boycott the very elections they have been clamouring for. Things are such a mess. Still.

I am trying to have hope that they have submitted (kind of) to being held in UN camps, have surrendered some of their weapons, and have reached an agreement about what portion of the Assembly will be CPN-M seats. Am I being completely naive?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/6474303.stm

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Singur and Nanadigram massacre created the seed of revival in Maoist movements in West Bengal

Kiran Chaube

Mar. 22, 2007

Something went very wrong for West Bengal and India. What the communists in West Bengal did will create havoc in coming months. The massacre of farmers, stealing their lands and above all insult to the working class has created a scenario where the Naxlsbvari movement and Moism will prosper.

The Maoists are not good for any society, but the Indian Government, Indian military and security forces, did not stop the Marxists who acted like the Nazis. For the first time, common people in West Bengal realized that there is not much difference between the Congress party of Sonia Gandhi and the Marxists. They all want to grab the land of the poor to bring American dollars, European Euro and hard cash and prosperity for politicians from Indian oligarchs and industrialists.

People in Singur and Nandigram had enough of that. They understand the game plan. They are now turning towards the Maoists – they could make it happen in Nepal. Can they bring West Bengal and Indian Government to its knees?

Maoism is the worst thing that is possible to any society. They kill anyone and everyone without reason. But what causes that kind of savage movement? What caused the French revolution? What happened in Bolshevik revolution? What made Mao the great leader of China? The answer lies in exploiting and torturing common people by the rich.

Capitalism does not mean cheating the poor. That is what happened in Singur and Nanadigram. The communists of India are opportunists. They were caught pants down in bed with Western capitalists and Indian oligarchs stealing land and livelihood from the poor farmers of West Bengal.

The saddest part of the whole thing is that the Indian Military stood still allowing torture of common people by communists controlled cops of West Bengal. The Indian central Government under Manmohan Singh did nothing because it wants to stay in power with the sixty odd seats held by the left parties in the parliament. Sonia Gandhi’s party sacrificed Indian common people for maintaining status quo in power. The decency, freedom, and human rights – all went down the tube.

Tracking the Naxal resurgence in India

Bidyut Chakrabarty

22-Mar-07

Naxalism, a euphemism for the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist revolutionary movement in India, drawing the nomenclature from an unheard of village, Naxalbari, in West Bengal that became the epicentre of tribal-peasant revolt in the spring of 1967, has witnessed a resurgence since the early 1990s.

Naxalism typifies a particular kind of militant and violent armed struggle by the peasants, tribals and dalits, led by a leadership drawing doctrinal support from Marxism-Leninism and strategic inspiration from Mao. The contemporary Maoists draw heavily upon the iniquitous land tenure system and exploitation of the peasantry by landlords in framing their ideological aims. The Indian Ministry of Home Affairs has openly acknowledged that 13 states and 170 districts (out of 604) are affected by this movement, now cast as the most serious threat to India's national security.

Until the Maoists in Nepal became a part of the government, there was talk of Maoist elements in India and Nepal establishing a "red corridor" from Pashupati in Nepal to Tirupati in South India, a claim the Nepali Maoists vehemently deny. Nonetheless, Indian policymakers recognise that a "red belt" runs within the subcontinent, from the Uttar Pradesh-Bihar border with Nepal in the north, through West Bengal, Jharkhand, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

Though it gave a name to the Maoist movement in India, the Naxalbari movement of the late 1960s was crushed within five years in West Bengal. Attempts to reinvigorate the movement in Bihar and other neighbouring states did not take off. Though the movement remained splintered and factionalised even within Andhra Pradesh, it has since not only galvanised the girijans (tribals) there, but spread to other states too. The 1990s witnessed a renaissance of the movement. They have managed to put the police and para-military forces under considerable pressure, while achieving some degree of unity to their cause.

Two consecutive attacks by the Maoists on Indian jails in 2004/5 to release their colleagues and the more recent massacre of security personnel in Chhattisgarh on March 16 illustrate the magnitude of what is officially characterised as "red terror". Even the government-sponsored resistance campaign Salva Judam has been reduced to para-military combat, with little capital spent on its most fundamental purpose to address genuine socioeconomic grievances in the affected districts and states.

Naxalism has since spread and consolidated in the tribal belts and underdeveloped and underprivileged areas. Here the Maoists impose taxes, mete out quick (often ruthlessly brutal) justice and run administrative bureaucracies, schools and health services. Having lost their mass character and because their activities are rather secretive, the agenda of the Maoists differs in the various states where they operate.

The Maoists draw their sustenance from existing inequities. Due to the existence of problems relating to land, in the absence of land reforms; the small farmers, landless labourers and the tribals continue to suffer. Though apparently and avowedly carrying out "people's struggle", democratic function has never been their concern. This is clearly evidenced in the "kangaroo justice" meted out to dissenters from within, suspected police informers, and to those who refuse to accept their regime.

Successive Indian governments have not been equipped to deal with the Naxalites, both ideologically and programmatically. In spite of Naxalism being framed as a law and order problem, the lack of sufficiently trained personnel and an appropriate strategic outlook to deal with the problem has stymied India's policy options. Available accounts suggest that complicity of state administrations with the rural rich, have given the Maoists a reason to continue with their campaign. The police are accused of killing "extremists" in cold blood during fake encounters, although this is always denied. Torture and custodial deaths have often elicited criticism and agitation by the Indian human rights lobby. More damaging for security forces has been the accusation of the victimisation of innocent civilians to elicit information on the Maoists.

Lately, Naxalism has invited attention from the highest quarters. A Monitoring Committee of the affected states, headed by the Union Home Secretary has been created with the Home Minister personally coordinating the efforts. A special combat school to train the police has been set up in Chhattisgarh under an Army Brigadier. More battalions of para military forces have been created and more battalions are being deployed to fight the Naxals. Even the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has declared the Naxal "challenge" as the most serious internal security threat to the country.

The police approach to the "Naxalite" problem exposes weakness within state governments, nay the Indian state, to this socioeconomic problem. Naxal forces seek to compel the state, which is guided primarily by its responsibility to govern rather than transform to adopt policies and enact legislations that, left to itself, it is not inclined to pursue. Various state governments have, from time to time, banned Maoist outfits, without developing any consistent policy to deal with such elements. These bans, along with preventive detention or anti-terror laws that allow the police to come down heavily on such groups, have very often boomeranged and created a political constituency for the Naxals.

Very recently, Manmohan Singh posited that the Naxalite problem had a strong socioeconomic dimension that was at the very heart of the issue. In fact, he made a distinction between the hardcore revolutionary, who had to be dealt with severely, and the foot-soldier, who ought to be weaned off from the path of violence through socioeconomic packages. The statement suggested a significant shift in dealing with the "red menace", by constituting it as a socioeconomic issue rather than a law and order problem. Delhi and the various state governments would probably be better served by the Prime Minister's wisdom, even though the multiple dimensions to the problem continue to challenge the Indian bureaucracy.

Bidyut Chakrabarthy is the Dean of Social Science at the University of Delhi, India.

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I found this online. Apparently this will be the new flag of India if the Naxals win the civil war they are so desperately trying to start.