For some time now, the ruling CPI(M) in West Bengal has carped about Union rail minister Mamata Banerjee’s Maoist links. But how much truth is there in the allegations? The question came to the fore yet again when she made a startling statement after the Gyaneshwari Express derailment. The train was passing through Sardiha in Jhargram, a tribal belt now overrun by Maoists, in the middle of the night when it went off the tracks. Mamata insisted it was not sabotage despite evidence to the contrary. In fact, she hinted at a CPI(M) conspiracy. That Mamata had a soft focus on the Maoists was further reinforced when the Railways fir, filed by the engine driver, did not name them.
Rather strange, because the perception among the local police is that prima facie the Maoists were the most probable suspects in the rail incident which left 148 dead. And there was motive too—the insurgents had declared a “black week” in the area and had issued threats that government properties, including that of the railways, could be attacked at any time. Moreover, posters of the Peoples’ Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCAPA), mostly seen as a front organisation of the Maoists, had been found near the tracks. These were written in red ink, similar to the ones found during the attack on the Rajdhani Express last October, when members of the PCAPA held up and pelted stones at the train at Banstala station, a few kilometres away from the site of the derailment.
In the present instance, both Maoist and PCAPA leaders have denied involvement. But questions have surfaced on whether the Union government, which has deployed large paramilitary contingents in the area to flush out the Maoists, has in its midst a rail minister (also a key ally) who is protecting the very same people the Centre is going after?
Incidentally, what are the links between the PCAPA and the Maoists? Ashit Mahato, who assumed top leadership of the organisation after Chhatradhar Mahato’s arrest last September, confirms that the distinctions have blurred. Ashit says they “are separate organisations...but we operate in the same area and we have mutual respect. Our goals are broadly the same”.
The PCAPA was formed in November ’08 as a reaction to the police crackdown on villagers in Lalgarh. That, in turn, was a consequence of the landmine blast which narrowly missed chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya’s convoy returning from nearby Salboni. Chhatradhar Mahato’s old association with the Trinamool (he was once a member) was a factor that played in the backdrop as the PCAPA rose into prominence and, parallelly, the TMC gained a foothold in the region. TMC leader Partho Chatterjee told Outlook: “The TMC, a grassroots movement, and the PCAPA, a people’s movement, had a common goal. And a common enemy: the CPI(M), which included the government it led, its administration and its police.”
Most of the photographs of Chhatradhar with Mamata—whether at a rally in Calcutta or a meeting in Lalgarh—are from this time. Partho Chatterjee recalls how he and other TMC leaders visited various villages in Jangalmahal including Choto Pelia, where a labourer named Chitamoni Murmu had been so badly beaten up by the police that she lost an eye. Incidentally, it was ultimately from this village that Chhatradhar was arrested by police posing as journalists. An incident which has left the tribals from this remote village so angry that they have even turned hostile towards the press.
Ashit Mahato says after the arrest, the gulf between the PCAPA and the Maoists narrowed down. “We were being accused of crimes we did not commit. We were being arrested. We were made to go into hiding. But how many PCAPA people will the police arrest? Every single villager, without exception, is a member of the committee.”
In the minds of the villagers, there is now very little distinction between the PCAPA and the Maoists. Explains 17-year-old Srilu Mahato of a village in Jhargram block, “The essential difference is that the Maoists live deep in the jungles and only occasionally come out while the PCAPA members stay back in the villages and attend meetings from time to time.”
That the Maoists already existed in Jangalmahal, the dense forested area on West Bengal’s border with Jharkhand and Orissa—of which Lalgarh is a part—is something government officials working in the area don’t deny. “I’ve worked in the field in the Jangalmahal for many years and I know there were Maoists here,” says a top administrative official in charge of development work in the area. “They migrated from the bordering jungles and, though initially the locals were wary of them, they began to gradually respect the newcomers. They seemed to be interested in running an alternate government, which would provide them with the kind of development that was sorely missing. And unlike the local administrators and police, the Maoists treated the local women with dignity.”
The government says the scenario has changed since the Maoists first came and that the younger generation among them, trained in the use of guns and explosives, are now not in the leaders’ control. It has been suggested that the rail sabotage was the handiwork of such a squad of young rebels. What lends credence to this idea is PCAPA member Bapi Mahato’s statement earlier in the press saying they had intended to derail the goods train rather than the passenger train but got the tracks mixed up. Talking to Outlook, Ashit Mahato dismissed that as a “false statement”.
But at what point did the TMC’s tryst with the actual Maoists begin? Three years ago, Mamata was looking for an entry point into Jangalmahal, a CPI(M) domain for decades. According to Partho Chatterjee, the Marxists had turned Jangalmahal into a hell for the people. “Forget education and electricity, they were denied basic rights like drinking water and food.” When the TMC moved in, it was irrelevant to them whether there were Maoists in the area. “We were less bothered because they were not a political challenge, unlike the CPI(M). They would not fight us in the elections,” says Chatterjee. Moreover, that the Maoists were antipathetic towards the CPI(M) was an advantage.
The Nandigram agitation is widely seen to have deepened the TMC-Maoist interface: the latter offered a cadre base that helped steer the populace into taking on the CPI(M) goons. This tacit alliance was also the reason the TMC could enter Jangalmahal. Not only have prominent Left leaders spoken about it, even threatening to unleash proof of the links to the people, even Maoist leader Koteshwar Rao aka Kishenji, in various interviews to the media, has hinted at having helped Mamata.
As for Mamata’s closeness to the PCAPA, there are clearer pointers. As recently as in January 2010, when she visited Jhargram, she was felicitated by the PCAPA leaders. The Maoist and PCAPA leaders have hinted at her being ungrateful, but being a Union minister she can hardly openly declare her links. She can only show gratitude by denying their presence in Jhargram, which she’s done. And she has been critical of the entry of the joint forces into Lalgarh. So it falls into pattern that she dismissed theories linking the rail sabotage to the Maoists.
With matters as they are, looks like the ghosts of Mamata’s unspoken dalliance will come back to haunt her every now and then. Just like it did on the night of Friday, May 27.
