CPI(M) has followed one rule in Bengal and another in India. Today it is paying the price

One doesn't have to be an opponent of economic reforms, a partisan of Mamata Banerjee or a cheerleader of the Jamaat-e-Ulama-e-Hind to recognise that Wednesday, March 14, was an inflexion point in the current politics of West Bengal. After the "cold horror" -- to use Governor Gopal Gandhi's words -- of Nandigram, two sobering realities have hit home.

First, astonishing as this may sound, there is an almost wistful nostalgia for the cynical pragmatism of a Jyoti Basu or even a Harkishen Singh Surjeet. Certainly, they shone in comparison to the bunch of amateurs now running the CPI(M).

Second, the bloody incidents in West Bengal have exposed the limitations of intellectuals as practical politicians. The ivory tower and the state secretariat can never meet, at least not in the Marxist framework.

Consider the time-table. On Sunday, March 11, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee told a public meeting in Kolkata that no land would be taken away if Nandigram's people did not will it. It was a tactical retreat, and emotions should have been allowed to run their course.

Instead, three days later, the Government sent in 4,000 policemen with assault rifles, accompanied by thousands of CPI(M) cadre, to "recapture" villages in the Nandigram area. The ostensible purpose was to repair roads. In which State does a PWD convoy travel with a 4,000-strong police escort? Not even Jammu & Kashmir.

The move had nothing to do with road repair or even pushing ahead with the SEZ that has been proposed for Nandigram. Neither was there an imperative to "reclaim" so-called "rebel territory". Nandigram was not threatening to secede; heavens would not have fallen if the "road repair" mission had been delayed till tempers cooled.

So what was the big hurry? It was simply this: The CPI(M)'s writ had been challenged in an area that was traditionally its electoral bastion.

The dissidents had to be taught a lesson and the Party's control had to be both re-established and seen to be re-established.

So was it a private action by a local CPI(M) leader, acting independently of the Chief Minister who had sounded so conciliatory on Sunday?

Perhaps hard-line party functionaries prevailed upon the Home Minister to despatch 4,000 policemen, behind the Chief Minister's back?

As it happens, in West Bengal, the Chief Minister and the Home Minister are the same person -- Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. So did he know on Sunday what he was going to do on Wednesday?

"The police had to open fire in self-defence. Our force had guns not to fight the enemy but to restore peace in Nandigram," the chief of West Bengal police was quoted as telling The Telegraph. He had a point. When attacked by an unruly mob, the police has a right to hit back. Yet, the initial provocation on Wednesday did not come from the "enemy". It arrived when the State administration marched in 4,000 policemen on a "road repair" expedition.

Intelligent practitioners of politics know when to pull back, climb down, postpone assault, or when to simply shut up. In Delhi, the Jai and Veeru of the CPI(M), Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechury, added dollops of oil to the fire.

Talking to an audience only he seems to perceive, Karat described the protesters in Nandigram and Singur as "Narodniks", an obscure reference to 19th century Russian nihilists that seemed as pointless and exasperating. Most of his party didn't know what he was talking about. Jyoti Basu, whose knowledge of Marxist theory is severely suspect, probably confused it with Narad Muni.

On the day Nandigram was burning, Comrade Yechury was writing yet another strong article -- it appeared in the Hindustan Times on March 15 -- fulminating against market reforms, cautioning against "agrarian distress", and the neglect of the "economic empowerment of the vast majority". "It's about time," his blurb thundered, "that the UPA got down to some serious governance."

Marxist literature devotes many passages to the study of contradictions. Which one was Yechury putting to practice?

The big picture after the Nandigram massacre is that the entire political class -- the Congress and regional parties in the UPA included -- is happy watching the CPI(M) stew in its own juice. It has followed one rule for West Bengal and another for the rest of India, and today there is no sympathy for it.

When Maoists threaten IT installations in Hyderabad or police stations in Chhattisgarh, they are "revolutionaries"; when they do the same thing in Nandigram, they are "ultra-left Maoists". When Muslim groups make religion-specific demands in Gujarat or Maharashtra, they are "upholding secularism"; when they do the same thing in Nandigram, they are "communal organisations". When professional trade unionists want to shut down a Honda factory in Gurgaon or cripple Delhi airport, they are "agitating for genuine rights of workers"; when they do the same thing in Nandigram, they miraculously become "Narodniks".

Is dialectics nothing but another word for two-facedness?

Courtesy: www.dailypioneer.com, March 16, 2007