India: Appeal for talks with broader section of people’s struggles in the forest and mineral belt

Aditya Nigam, Dilip Simeon, Jairus Banaji, Nivedita Menon, Rohini Hensman, Satya Sivaraman, Sumit Sarkar, Tanika Sarkar

In the light of the recent demands raised by sections of the intelligentsia urging the government to heed the CPI (Maoist) “offer of talks”, we insist that “civil society” should rather put pressure on the government to initiate talks with representatives of all struggling popular and adivasi organizations. The CPI (Maoist) cannot be treated as the sole spokesperson of all the people in the forest and mineral belt, convenient though this may be for the state and for that party. Does the government believe that violent insurgents are the only deserving interlocutors?

There is a common pattern to the emergence of Maoist violence in many areas. First a non-violent mass organisation like the Peoples Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCAPA) in West Bengal or Chasi Muliya Adivasi Sangh (CMAS) in Orissa arises in response to marginalisation, displacement or violence against tribals by the police and paramilitaries. Then the Maoists step in, attempting to take over the movement and giving it a violent turn. The state responds with even more violence, which is directed not only against the Maoists but also against unaffiliated adivasis. At this point, some adivasis join the Maoists in self-defence, their leaders like Chhatradhar Mahato, Lalmohan Tudu, Singanna are either arrested or gunned down in fake encounters and large numbers of unaffiliated adivasis are branded Maoists or Maoist sympathisers and arrested, killed or terrorised by the state. Clearly, Maoist violence in these cases obtains legitimacy because of the unbridled use of force by security forces and violations of the fundamental rights of the local people. On the other hand, the unilateral and doctrinal use of the language of warfare by one armed group obscures the political agency of the ordinary people who have had no say in this declaration. It also tramples on the human rights of the often desperately poor people who are obliged to seek a livelihood in organisations of the state. Furthermore, it is not clear that the CPI (Maoist) actually shares the rejection of this kind of “development” by the people of the area, or whether it only wants to wrest control of this process from the Indian state.

The counter-insurgency operations mounted by the central government in these areas has led to unprecedented bloodshed, massacres of civilian populations and rampant violations of constitutional rights in the area. The central government insists on treating the affected areas as a “war zone”, and has shown little inclination towards tackling the huge backlog of tribal oppression that has created fertile ground for such violence. It is also true that whenever the government has conceded space, the conditions for this have been created by mass movements, not by the military actions of the CPI (Maoist). For example, the decision by the Ministry of Environment and Forests to put on hold the agreements with Vedanta and Posco in Orissa due to their non-compliance with legal requirements for obtaining the consent of local adivasis, comes in the wake of sustained joint struggles by a range of political groupings.

We therefore urge all democratic sections to put pressure on the government to ensure that:

(1) Regardless of whether talks with the Maoists materialise, talks should immediately be initiated with those adivasis who are losing their land; and with representatives of the various mass-based organisations/mass movements, if necessary by securing their release from prison.

(2) round-the-clock security from attacks by both Maoists and state-sponsored groups and security personnel be provided to these representatives and their families, as well as to witnesses in cases like the Gompad massacre and their families;

(3) the grievances voiced by these representatives be treated with the utmost seriousness and addressed as soon as possible.

Maoist violence flourishes in the fetid atmosphere provided by the destruction of the rule of law and rampant human rights abuses by the state. If the rule of law is ensured in the forest belt and all democratic rights of the adivasis to freedom of association and freedom of expression, including the right of dissent to current “development” policies, are respected, and this dissent taken into account by the government, the Maoists will lose credibility and their deliberate use of violent methods, often designed to invite collateral damage, will lose any basis for flourishing in these areas.

See Also:
http://development-dialogues.blogspot.com/2010/03/government-should-respond-to-maoist.html

A question marked in red

http://www.indianexpress.com/story/20488.html

Sumit Sarkar
Posted online: Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Indian Express
This is a critique from the Left of the CPM's industrialisation policy in Bengal. Is the violence,
cadre brutality and lack of consent that runs through this strategy the only way to develop? How
do Singur and Nandigram serve the people?
As a lifelong Leftist, I am deeply shocked by recent events in the countryside of West
Bengal. On December 31, a group of us went to Singur, spent the whole day there, visited
4 out of the 5 most affected villages which border the land that has been taken over. We
had conversations with at least 50-60 villagers. Almost all rushed to us and told us their
complaints.
From this brief but not necessarily unrepresentative sample, three things became very
clear, because of which the West Bengal government's version cannot be accepted. One,
the land, far from being infertile or mono-cropped, as has been stated repeatedly, is
extremely fertile and multi-cropped. We saw potatoes and vegetables already growing
after the aman rice has been harvested, some of them actually planted behind the now
fenced-in area which the peasants had lost. Two, there is no doubt that the vast bulk of the
villagers we met are opposed to the take-over of land and most are refusing
compensation. It should also be kept in mind that at best the consent of the registered
landholders as well as sharecroppers is being taken. But agricultural production also
involves sharecroppers who are not covered by Operation Barga since they have come in
later, as well as agricultural labour. Under the government-announced scheme for
compensation, such people are not being remembered.
Three, we found much evidence of force being employed, particularly on the nights of
September 25 and December 2. We met many people — men and also a large number of
women — who had been beaten up, their injuries still visible, including an 80 year old
woman.
What the villagers repeatedly alleged was that along with the police, and it seems more
than the police, party activists, whom the villagers call 'cadres' — which has sadly
become a term of abuse — did the major part of the beating up. Clearly, the whole thing
had been done without consultation, with very little transparency, and in a very
undemocratic manner.
As for the official claims of land being mono-cropped, the Economic and Political
Weekly in an editorial of December 23 has pointed out that the last land survey of the
area was done in the 1970s which means that the records with the government are
backdated. Surely there must be much more investigation on the ground and consultation
with panchayats and other local bodies. No one, not even the government, has actually
claimed that such consultation has taken place. It was done entirely from the top.
These mistakes, to put it mildly, are being repeated on a much bigger scale in the
Nandigram region. This has become far more serious because a much greater area of land
is being taken — with the same lack of transparency, absence of consent and massive
brutality. Once again, one is hearing reports of CPM cadres engaged in an offensive
against peasants. What is happening at Nandigram is a near civil war situation.
The West Bengal government seems determined to follow a particular path of
development involving major concessions both to big capitalists like the Tatas and
multinationals operating in SEZs. Yet the strange thing is that these, particularly the latter,
are things which Left parties and groups as well as many others have been repeatedly and
vehemently opposing. No less a person than the CPM General Secretary in the course of
last week made 2-3 statements attacking SEZs. The CPM has been at the forefront of the
struggles against such developments in other parts of the country.
Surely there must be a search, at least, for paths of development that could balance
necessary industrial development with social concerns and transparency and democratic
values. Is this SEZ model that implies massive displacement and distress really the only
way? If the West Bengal government thinks so, then it also has to accept that the
inevitable consequences are going to be a repetition of Nandigram across the state.
This is the price that will be paid by government, ordinary people as well as investors for
this model of development.
[The writer is an eminent historian]
editor@expressindia.com

Who is the Left?

Hardnews

http://www.hardnewsmedia.com/portal/2007/12/1860

We salute the magnificent spirit in which secular-democratic and genuinely socialist forces in Bengal express their dissent. Maybe, a Left politics will emerge out of this churning. It cannot possibly come out of the morally bankrupt official Left

Sumit Sarkar/Tanika Sarkar Delhi

Nandigram, the CPM tells us, has been brought back into the Left fold. Once a secure Left base, it had dared to defy the party's handover of its land and livelihood to a dubious foreign corporate group. Worse, it defended its land with peoples' lives. That defiance — lasting, unbelievably, for 11 months, despite massacres, rapes, infliction of disability and trauma — is at last over. Villagers sign undertakings, promising total submission. Surely, we should celebrate the Left victory?

What do those who call themselves Leftist have to say when they condemn party action? Can one be a Leftist and yet be against the party? Let us dare to reverse the question. Must a party, by virtue of calling itself communist, by definition be Leftist? Is socialism a matter of labels, words and signs alone?

The CPM handed over, without information and consent, agricultural land to multinational companies at Singur and Nandigram. Its factsheets on Singur lied about the quality of land and the party's claims of securing agreements from peasants have been contested at the high court. When asked about the nature of the deal — where the government spent huge amounts to practically gift away land to the Tatas — the queries under the Right to Information Act were returned unanswered. Peaceful peasant resistance was met with brutal repression by the police and cadres.

With this precedent before them, Nandigram peasants feared the worst when an official notification informed them that 35 mouzas would be given away to the Salem group on the advice of an American market survey company. When the local party failed to give any concrete information, villagers — all of them CPM supporters — fortified Block 1 of Nandigram to keep the police and the party out, to preserve their land and their lives.

The party replied with shootouts and killings and peasants retaliated with one killing in return. Henceforth, their fear of reprisals became acute, enhancing their determination to resist. The bloody events of March 14 are well known. Cases pending at the Kolkata High Court continued to languish there, the CBI enquiries were folded up after two days, no party leader visited the area and not a scrap of relief or compensation came from the state government to the battered victims. This was not a climate conducive to placing any faith in Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya's belated assurance that there would be no chemical hub if peasants do not want it. Villagers were convinced that once the party forced its way into Nandigram, they would make the peasants 'want ' the hub.

We are asked why our criticism is selective, what about CPM loyalists ousted from the villages? This is precisely what the BJP asks secularists; why don't you talk that much about Kashmiri refugees? The answer is the same: while all intimidation is reprehensible, a swollen, huge party machinery and State apparatus exist to care for the latter. For rebellious Nandigram peasants, there was no support, except from civil society groups.

We also believe that there could have been no more unequal combat. There is no terror like State terror, though the use of terror by any one should not be supported. This is a state whose leading party has been continuously in power for 30 years and, at present, the central government depends on it for its survival.

We do not accept that any Left strategy should destroy a viable small peasant economy and environment in the interests of giant corporate companies. We believe that a harsh and ruthless neo-liberal power has been installed only by destroying even bourgeois legal constitutional norms — which is how Nandigram was won back. The peasant movement has been crushed by means that the Kolkata High Court considers illegal; that, in the process, civil and democratic rights of protests have been mauled.

The recent rural upsurges in the poorest districts against the non-availability of rationed foodstuff, and the urban upsurge against the corrupt party-business-police nexus that achieved the death of a Muslim youth who had married a Hindu girl, made it essential for the discredited party to make Nandigram an example of how far its repression can reach. We believe that a combination of Stalinist terror and neo-liberal economics is not a valid form of Leftism. On the contrary, all Leftists are committed to protest and resist injustice, inequality and repression wherever it exists — in Czechoslovakia, at Tiananmen Square, at Kampuchea, in Nandigram.

We challenge the defenders of the parties to identify any communist, socialist or even welfarist elements in West Bengal today — or a modicum of democratic right to dissent. We protest that because some anti-Left newspapers have been unfairly critical of the Left parties' foreign policy, no one else has the right to criticise anything else that the Left does.

We salute the magnificent spirit in which secular-democratic and genuinely socialist forces in Bengal express their dissent. Maybe, a Left politics will emerge out of this churning. It cannot possibly come out of the morally bankrupt official Left.

The writers are eminent historians based in delhi