Calcutta Corner

Friday, the 13th

It may only be a coincidence, but the fact that the Assembly Election results are coming out on Friday the 13th — which for many of the superstitiously-inclined, and Bengal has its share of those, is not an auspicious day — is being seen as specially ominous.

The basis of this ridiculous belief could be the commercial success of the hit Hollywood horror flick by the same name (Friday, the 13th) which has forever cast a shadow of doubt over this perfectly innocuous calendar date. But there are those who are convinced that the day will bring ominous tidings. Interestingly, this time around these occultists are finding that they actually have something to lend credence to their beliefs. It is widely feared that there will be retaliatory violence and bloodshed after the Election results are declared when political workers and activists are expected to clash with each other across the state. “Don’t go out of the house on that day,” is a warning that family and friends are issuing to each other rampantly. No one quite knows whether it is in anticipation of violence or whether it is because it’s Friday, the 13th.

Painstaking efforts have been made in order to try and understand and even justify the fear of Friday the 13th. An online blogger offers the explanation that the date was related to a historical event in the month of October in the year 1307 when King Phillip of France attacked, captured and destroyed Knight Templer of France, regarded as the Guardian of Christianity. Others suggest that the superstition is rooted in a fear of the number 13, considered an unlucky number, partly because the calendar ends after 12 months and therefore 13 is the end or death.

Whatever the case maybe, one thing is for sure and that is that as far as post-poll exit polls are concerned Friday, the 13th will usher in the end of 34 years of Left rule in the state of Bengal.

Where it began

And it all started in Nandigram. For three long decades this picturesque village in Bengal’s East Midnapore district kept voting the CPIM back to power. Over and over again. The simple peasants of this fertile farmland, stretching over 36,000 acres and dotted with large fruit and flower trees, ponds and zigzagged with gurgling rivulets, were content with what they had. They cultivated their multi-crop lands growing rice, potatoes and other grains and vegetables and didn’t ask for anything more. Then suddenly one bleak winter morning in January 2007, a notice came up in the regional block office. It stated that a chemical hub would come up all over these 36,000 acres and that the villagers would be expected to cooperate.

That year – 2007 – was the worst year in the history of Nandigram. It was the year of the painful realization that the government that they had thought was their friend was their worst enemy. It was the year of the biggest betrayal. The people revolted. They cut up roads to block of the administration of entering Nandigram.

Then on March 14, 2007, the government sent police forces into Nandigram and hundreds of unidentified men believed to be CPIM musclemen who later came to be known as harmads. Determined to fight till the end, villagers – men, women and children – came out in droves to resist their entry. The evening news of that day carried the shocking news that 14 men, women and children died when the police opened fire on them and there were scores who had been injured.

Nandigram went to the polls on May 3 in the 4th phase of assembly elections. I spent a couple of days there speaking to the men, women and children in the villages. I was trying to verify something. In an interview to us the week before, the WB Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya had accused us and other media of having misrepresented the events that led to the police firing on March 14. According to the CM the police had not entered Nandigram to grab the land of the people against their wishes and they did not, contrary to media reports, fire on the people because they were resisting land grab. He claimed that the police had gone to control an uprising stirred up by the opposition since January 2007 and had opened fire to contain a violent mob.

The police may not have entered Nandigram on March 14, 2007 but they went in to crush a rebellion that was about land grab. It was a flagrant violation of human rights and dignity and anything said in justification of that is indulging in technicalities and semantics.

The Left has been apologizing to the people for the massacre in Nandigram. I asked the people there if they will forgive the Left. “Forgive? We will hang them on May 13,” said a villager in Adhikari village. His wife had been shot in the thigh on March 14 and is now crippled for life.

If the opposition led by Mamata Banerjee seized the opportunity to stir up an uprising for its own political gain – as the Left has accused it of doing – the fact remains that it was a piece of opportunism that will go down in history as one of the greatest services done to human kind.

No wonder then that there is not a single red flag anywhere in Nandigram, where red means bloodshed. Instead 36,000 acres of green stretches out in all directions, with the TMC flags hanging from branches of trees and popping out of the green earth.

Some Left is left...

Singur too voted during the 4th phase. If Nandigram was a success story where a people’s rebellion took on and won over the mighty state force when their interests clashed, Singur was a failure. One thousand acres of land had already been sucked into what is now an abandoned car factory when Mamata Banerjee took her land movement there. Hundreds of people not only lost their farmlands in this now uncultivable stretch – cemented and filled as it is with fly ash and debris to create the factory floor – but because promises of jobs which made these farmers decide to give up their lands didn’t materialize with Ratan Tata pulling out the Nano project. They are now unemployed. The worst hit were the “unwilling” farmers who refused to give up their land, unlike the other “willing” farmers who gave up their lands for money and promises of jobs, these “unwilling” farmers didn’t accept compensation money. They depended on Mamata Banerjee who demanded 400 acres back from the small car factory to give back to these unwilling farmers. That never happened. Therefore, people of Singur are not quite sure of what to make of Mamata Banerjee. Some feel she harmed them…others are willing to believe that she at least tried to help them. Unlike in Nandigram, where there was no doubt, no dilemma, Singur still has some Left left.

Jungle Mahal

The fourth and fifth phases were reserved for the sensitive areas in Bengal known as Jungle Mahal or the Maoist belt. The last 14 constituencies of the fifth phase in fact have been termed “super sensitive.” It goes without saying that Lalgargh – which was the third most contentious issue after Nandigram and Singur facing the Left – went to the polls in this “super sensitive” phase.

The decision of Chhatradhar Mahato, the jailed leader of the Lalgarh movement People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCAPA), to contest the elections from behind bars has overjoyed the people of Lalgarh.

While the state government has always insisted that the PCAPA is a front for Maoists who are active in that area, PCAPA leaders insist that they are a pro-democracy people’s movement and the only reason for their coming into being was to protest against the atrocities committed on the tribal villagers of Lalgarh after a bomb blast took place in the area during the Chief Minister’s visit.

Two days before Lalgarh voted, the mood was suddenly more optimistic than it had been in the last two years ever since the joint forces moved in and Chhatradhar was arrested. Niyoti Mahato, Chhatradhar’s wife, told us that she was campaigning on his behalf because the Election Commission and prison authorities wouldn’t give permission to the jailed leader to campaign outside. “But then we don’t really need to campaign,” she said gleefully. “The moment they heard my husband is running for election they decided to vote.”

Jungle Mahal recorded a nearly 84 percent voter turnout putting paid to all speculations about Maoist attacks and boycotts.

No one trusts the Journos

After Chhatradhar Mahato’s arrest, the people of Lalgarh who have always been friendly towards journalists had turned hostile. When we visited Lalgarh a few months after Chhatradhar’s arrest in November 2009 the same villagers and tribals who had earlier welcomed us refused to talk to us calling us traitors. But two days before Lalgarh voted we went back again and spoke to the people. The suspicion against journalists has abated somewhat. “We are still wary of journalists,” said Chhatradhar’s wife Niyoti. “Till this day we don’t know if the journalists whom we trusted were working in collusion with the police and those journalists never had the guts to return to Lalgarh.”

TMC

A beaming Mamata Banerjee told reporters that an SMS doing the rounds is “TMC means Temple, Mosque, Church”. To ensure that communities live harmoniously together would be one of the TMC government’s main objectives, she said.