Between Left And Right

Itis hard to decide which is more unappetising--the spectacle of BuddhadebBhattacharya declaring that the CPI(M) had paid protestors back in their own coinat Nandigram, or the BJP and Congress condemning the violence there, ignoringtheir own culpability for similar behaviour in Chhattisgarh and Gujarat. The useof vigilante groups or armed cadre, supported and sanctioned by a pliantbureaucracy, to physically defeat an opposing group--whether definedin religious or political terms--rather than relying on legal means andpolitical discussions, is evidently the latest fashion in governance. It istime, we are told, to forget the old expectation that it is the police which ismeant to maintain law and order and not gangs of party members, or that ChiefMinisters will rise above their individual parties to represent the people ofthe state as a whole (the logic behind the first-past-the-post system where theelected member equally represents those who voted against her or him), or eventhat, there is a Constitution which all elected officials are sworn to uphold.

Letus take the bare facts of Nandigram, as scripted by the Chief Minister of WestBengal himself--villagers protesting against land acquisition formed theBhumi Ucched Pratirodh Committee (BUPC) and drove out supporters of the CPI(M) whowere in favour of the proposed chemical hub. In November 2007, these CPI(M) cadre'reclaimed' their villages, and this time, it is the BUPC members who weredriven out, their houses burnt and women raped.In essence, this is not very different from the Salwa Judum being runjointly by the Congress MLA of Dantewara, Mahendra Karma, and the BJP governmentof Chhattisgarh, where armed vigilantes, some of them given official positionsas special police officers, burn villages, kill people, and rape women withimpunity, on the grounds that they are wresting these areas back from theNaxalites. In both cases, the local administration has ceased to exercise itsown judgement--officials take orders from the goons of the party in power. InDantewada district, a letter from the Chief Secretary carries less weight thanthe orders of a lumpen Salwa Judum camp leader.

Inboth cases, the presence of Maoists is used to imply that anything goes, thatonce an area is declared 'Naxal-affected’, all the normal protections of therule of law and fundamental rights cease to apply. Government presence in theseareas then depends solely on the power of the gun, and the relative superiorityof its police and vigilantes over the 'other side’, including unarmedcivilians.

Yet,the differences between Nandigram and Dantewada are as striking as thesimilarities, and they lie not in the hubris of the ruling party, which is muchthe same, but in the responses of the media and civil society. Even though thescale of Salwa Judum terror is far greater than Nandigram, it has gone almostentirely unreported. 

According to the figures provided in a PIL before theSupreme Court, at least 540 persons have been killed by the Salwa Judum andsecurity forces from June 2005 till the present, including 33 children (some asyoung as two and five), and 45 women. This is a small fraction of the killingsby the Salwa Judum, most of which have gone unrecorded, and does not include theapproximately 550 civilians and police personnel that the Naxalites have killedin escalating retaliatory action for Salwa Judum. At least 2,825 houses havebeen burnt by the Salwa Judum and at least 99 women have been raped.Approximately one lakh people, or one-eighth of the district’s population hasbeen displaced--half of them are in government controlled camps to which theywere forcibly evacuated, and the other half are refugees in neighbouring states. 

A petition--one of hundreds--submitted along with the PIL, afterdescribing the killing and torture inflicted by Salwa Judum, asks despairingly,"Why is this happening in our country, why is this happening inChhattisgarh? Why has the Chhattisgarh administration been running this? Has ourChief Minister been elected only for this?”And yet, not once have the atrocities committed by the SalwaJudum figured on the front pages of any national newspaper; not once has anyteam of parliamentarians gone to talk to the affected people; and not once haveNHRC members visited. 

When two lakh people rallied in Jagdalpur on November 5ththis year to protest against the Salwa Judum and land acquisition by the Tatasand Essar for steel plants, there was not even a whisper in the national press;it is hard to imagine that a rally of even 10,000 would have gone unreported hadit been in favour of Salwa Judum or industrial acquisition.

Inpart, this silence is explained by the natural anti-leftism of the media, andits warped notion of 'balance’. AsMichael Tomasky pointed out in the American context, but which could as wellapply to the Indian media when dealing with the BJP: 'they now bend over backward to demonstrate that they can be'tough' on liberals and 'fair' to conservatives'. But the media is noteverything. 

The difference also needs to be further explained in terms of the lack of the appropriate kind oforganisations to feed the media. Nandigram and the Gujarat genocide of 2002 bothbecame front page news, in part because they were located next to major citieswith concentrations of journalists (Ahmedabad and Calcutta), in part because ofthe presence of middle class local activists, in part because the issue wastaken up by opposing parliamentary parties. Chhattisgarh, by contrast, lacks atribal middle class or a density of civil/political society organisations; manynational newspapers do not have correspondents there since it is a new state; inan unprecedented show of unity, both the Congress and the BJP are jointlyprosecuting the counterinsurgency. 

Above all, Chhattisgarh, unlike Bengal, alsohas a Public Security Act, which is even worse than POTA in terms of itscensorship, and which has been used to arrest and intimidate people who haveprotested, like the General Secretary of the PUCL, Binayak Sen.

But,finally, the real difference lies in the principles of the Left and Right,between a state ruled for many years by the Left as in Bengal and one ruled bythe BJP as in Gujarat. Whereas the citizens of Gujarat let no hint of remorsetaint their restful nights, even after having witnessed the murder and maimingof their fellow citizens, the people of Bengal are an anguished lot, anguishedat the betrayal of the principles they voted for. 

Decades of CPI (M) rule may nothave done much for Bengal’s human development indicators but it has expandedthe constituency of those who believe in democracy and equality; it hasentrenched a conscience in its supporters. The strongest critics of the CPI (M) comefrom within. Decades of BJP rule, on the other hand, may have created GujaratShining, but has destroyed the very possibility of humanity. As for Chhattisgarh,let us all go back to pretending that it doesn’t exist; at the rate thatvillages are being emptied and people killed, there will soon be nothing andnobody left to destroy.

NandiniSundar is Professor of Sociology, Delhi University