OUTLOOK

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fname=jaideep&fodname=20070323&sid=1

Kolkata Korner

Don't Kolkata's 'intellectuals' know Communist history? Why are they so shocked at the massacre of villagers who didn't want to part with their land at Nandigram?

Jaideep Mazumdar

Damning Exposé
The cat will be out of the bag on Monday. The CBI, which has been asked to probe the Nandigram carnage by the Calcutta High Court, submitted its findings in a sealed cover to the Court on Thursday. The contents of the report, which by all accounts would be a damning one, will be made public on Monday. From various newspaper accounts, one gathers that the CBI has unearthed evidence that does more than disproving the police version that the protesting villagers at Nandigram had hurled bombs and fired at the cops, thus forcing the police to open fire at them. The CBI sleuths had more to find—they stumbled on spent and live cartridges of bullets that clearly hadn’t been fired by the police. Many of the victims, they noted, sustained injuries caused by sharp weapons such as choppers. And they arrested ten CPI(M) supporters and activities who were holed up in a brick kiln—they were members of the CPI(M) death squads and confessed as much. Arms, ammunition, police uniforms, helmets and diaries containing numbers of top CPI(M) functionaries were recovered from them. Their cellphone records showed they were in constant touch with senior CPI(M) leaders. Whether the CBI has been honest in detailing all its findings is a matter of speculation, but it can be safely assumed that not all of these pieces of evidence that severely indict Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s police and government can be brushed under the carpet. In which case, wouldn’t it only be logical to demand, once the contents of the CBI report are made public, to demand a trial of the indicted persons, including the CPI(M) leaders? And would Bhattacharjee have any moral right to continue to occupy the CM’s chair then?

Amazing Naiveté
Left-leaning intellectuals, academics, poets, artistes, writers and stage personalities are up in arms against the Bhattacharjee government and the CPI(M) over the Nandigram carnage. They are, like everyone else, horrified. All of them say they thought the CPI(M)-led Left Front government is supposed to be different, its supposed to be pro-poor, have a humane face and is supposed to be sympathetic to the masses. Oh, really? I can’t believe how naïve these people can be. All they have to do is look around and recall events around the world. Tiananmen Square, the Cultural Revolution, the Great Leap Forward, the Siberian concentration camps, despotic Communist rulers in erstwhile USSR’s satellite states in Eastern Europe, Stalin, Mao, Kim Jong Il….the list goes on. All Communist regimes are despotic in nature and have inflicted untold sufferings on their people. The atrocities of Saddam Hussein on Kurds and Shias or Slobodan Milosevic’s on Yugoslav’s Muslims would fade in comparison to what Stalin, Mao and others have done or what Kim, Fidel Castro and a few more are doing today. Don’t these ‘intellectuals’ read history? Why, then, are they so shocked at the massacre of villagers who didn’t want to part with their land at Nandigram? It is but only natural for communists to suppress opposition brutally.