The Sankrail episode: The story of the arrested women

Posted by indianvanguard2010 on October 28, 2009

Subharani Baskey in tears outside Midnapore Central Jail. She said she had gone out to see what was happening when police picked her up. (Samir Mondal)

By Partho Sarathi Ray. Oct 27 2009, Sanhati

On 20th October, 2009, Maoists attacked a police station in Sankrail, West Midnapur, West Bengal, taking the O.C. Atindranath Dutta as a prisoner, and demanding the release of fourteen women from police custody. This was a media sensation – the debate centered around whether this defined a hostage situation in India’s heartland, whether this was a repeat of Kandahar, and whether the action is an example of violent turf expansion by the Maoists. Subsequently, the women were released and so was the O.C., who has become somewhat of a media celebrity and, much to the wrath of the Government, not condemnded the Maoists.

What is being hidden under all the media blitz is the story of the fourteen women whose release from police custody was ensured by the Maoists.

These women had all been arrested from in an around Teshabandh village on 3rd September after the 2rd September “encounter” between the combined forces and “Maoists” near Madhupur (there is a previous report on this in Sanhati). The PSBJC had claimed that the encounter was really a firing by the combined forces on a rally of adivasis protesting against the rape of a woman. It had also condemned the arrests of these women from Teshabandh, who were subsequently charged with waging war against the state, as being arrests of innocent people.

A Lalgarh woman who was released on bail in exchange for OC Atindranath Dutta’s freedom weeps on the shoulders of another outside Midnapore Central Jail.

Today their stand has been vindicated. The public prosecutor didn’t oppose their bail plea at the Midnapore court, although the charges against them, which include rioting with deadly weapons, attempt to murder, waging war against the state, raising funds to wage war against the state, sedition and carrying illegal arms, are all non-bailable ones. This is an effective withdrawal of charges.

Now, the media has access to the stories of the women and people know who these “dangerous” people are, whom the Maoists were so intent on getting released from police custody.

One of them is Subharani Baskey, a grandmother of 55-60 (this correspondent knows her personally – she once treated him to a “nona“, a fruit very similar to the custard-apple, just saltier, from her tree). What she has told to the media now is that she was at her home when she heard a commotion outside as the police were arresting the village women. When she went out to enquire, she was arrested for “waging war against the state” and dragged to the Kantapahari police camp.

You can hear the real story from these women, Padmamoni, a mother of two children, Pratima Patra, Sumi Mandi and the others, about what happened that day. When the police had raided their village, alleging that the “Maoists” had taken shelter there, they had stopped whatever chores they were doing and come out and surrounded the police, not letting them enter the village. They were not protecting Maoists, they were protecting themselves, as according to what Pratima Patra has said, the police entering the village means they would go door-to-door, beating up people indiscriminately, breaking furniture and looting household goods.

The Lalgarh women released from jail walk to a bus stop in Midnapore town. Picture by Samir Mondal

Even women from surrounding villages, such as Sumi Mandi, joined them when the news about the raid spread, as is the standard practice in Lalgarh. All these women were arrested, beaten up brutally and taken to the Kantapahari police station where there were charged with the above-mentioned crimes. On the way back to Kantapahari, the police also arrested Ramdulal Mandi, who was walking towards Kantapahari bazar, and charged him with the same crimes. He was also released yesterday. This constant arrests and charging with false cases is the daily reality which Chidambaram- Buddhadeb has imposed in Lalgarh, and now wants to impose on the rest of the adivasi-populated region.

The other thing that we should understand about the reality in Lalgarh is that the adivasis think that the Maoists are their last resort, when everything else fails to protect them from exploitation and oppression, the Maoists are there. This is repeated by hundreds of adivasis when you talk to them, who express their confidence on the “bon-er party“, the “party of the jungles”. This confidence has now been reinforced by this action of the Maoists, where they have ensured the release of these innocent women, rather than their own party cadre, in exchange of the captured O.C.

Moreover, the action of the state which has consistently refused to release these women, and other innocent people who have been arrested in Lalgarh over the past four months, inspite of peaceful protests and demonstrations by the PSBJC and the civil society in Kolkata, but has bowed to the armed might of the Maoists, will further reinforce the idea that it is only a certain language that the state understands, and takes heed of.

 

Chhatradhar Mahato held

source – hindu

KOLKATA: Chhatradhar Mahato, convener of the Maoist-backed Police Santrash Birodhi Janasadharaner Committee, was arrested in an operation conducted by the West Bengal police at Birkar village near Lalgarh in West Bengal’s Paschim Medinipur district on Saturday.
He was arrested by policemen who posed as journalists, according to eye witness accounts. The government, however, was tight-lipped, saying it was awaiting details.
Claiming to represent the tribal people, Mr. Mahato launched on November 2 last a “people’s movement” to protest against alleged police atrocities in Lalgarh which followed an IED blast targeting the convoy of West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee at Salboni.
Aware of the regular communication between Mr. Mahato and a section of the local journalists, two plainclothesmen befriended two local reporters posing as journalists and reached Mr. Mahato’s hideout. “Big success”
District Superintendent of Police Manoj Kumar Verma told reporters at Midnapore that Mr. Mahato’s arrest was a “big success” for the police. The police were trying to arrest Mr. Mahato for quite some time now. More than 15 cases were pending against him.
The arrest could spark fresh agitations by the tribal people in the Jangalmahal (forested land) with Maoists’ backing.
Kishanji, Polit Bureau member of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), told The Hindu: “Unless Chhatradhar Mahato is released unconditionally, the entire Jangalmahal in five States [West Bengal, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Bihar] will be up in flames.” Immediately after Mr. Mahato’s arrest, a landmine went off near Kantapahari (seven km from Lalgarh) and another failed to explode at Kumarbandh.
Mr. Verma said none was injured. Six persons were arrested in connection with the incidents, four of them suspected Maoists.
The arrest is a major boost to the morale of the State government and the police in their fight against the Maoists and the Maoist-backed PSBJC. Home secretary Ardhendu Sen had said in August that the joint operation launched by the security forces at Lalgarh on June 18 to flush out the rebels was “partially successful.”

Singur to Lalgarh via Nandigram, a book

singur to lalgarh

Lalgarh and the Radicalisation of Resistance: From ‘Ordinary Civilians’ to Political Subjects?

by Saroj Giri

(we are posting this article of Saroj Giri on the lalgarh peoples maovement. Saroj Giri is Lecturer in Political Science, University of Delhi. the article underlines the significance of the lalgarh struggle as a qualitatively advanced democratic movement of the peoples and brilliantly exposes the human rightist neutralism based on the thesis of the sepration of common masses and maoists. we are posting it here from MRZine for the purpose of discussion — Editor)

One image stands out from the Lalgarh resistance.  Chattradhar Mahato, the most visible leader of the People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCAPA), distributing food to ordinary villagers — not as a high-up leader doing charity but as one among them.  Is this the ‘new’ image of the Maoist?  But maybe Mahato is not a Maoist — he himself denies being one.  But if he is not, given his power and influence in the area, the ‘dictatorial’ Maoists must have eliminated him by now?  Then maybe he is only being used by them, following their ‘diktat’ out of fear.  But a man with the kind of popularity and love from the masses would fear the Maoists?  So, is he a Maoist, or like a Maoist, after all?  But a Maoist who is this popular among the masses and who does not seem to terrorise them?

These questions are tricky, almost baffling to many.  For the resistance in Lalgarh is a unique experiment, not following any formulaic path or given script.  The Lalgarh resistance not only rattled local power relations and state forces but also challenged accepted ideas and practices of resistance movements, their internal constitution, and above all opened up radical possibilities for the initiative of the masses — partly symbolized in the unscripted image and contested political identity of Mahato and indeed of the PCAPA vis-à-vis Maoists.  Crucially, Lalgarh undermines conventional ideas about the relationship between ‘peaceful’ and ‘violent’ forms of struggle and inaugurates possibilities of resistance unfettered by given notions of political subjectivity or by subservience to the ‘rule of law’.

Lalgarh defied the long-standing shackles on social movements in the country that would ultimately restrict their forms of struggle within the confines given by the lines of command emanating from the Indian state’s monopoly over violence.  Lalgarh showed that, when the democratic struggle of the masses runs into conflict with the repressive apparatus of the state which has lost all democratic legitimacy, the struggle assumes the form of a violent mass movement.  This violent action, being the expression of heightened mass democratic struggle, bringing down structures that anyway have lost all basis, is in every sense a political struggle, an armed struggle if you like, but has nothing to do with a so-called ‘conflict situation’ where ordinary civilians are shown as only trapped and suffering.

Take the violent Dharampur mass action of June 19, an event many on the left and right decried as a Maoist take-over and an end to the democratic struggle.  When this action triggered an offensive by security forces to ‘reclaim’ the area, did the situation turn into a conflict zone between the state and the armed Maoists, with ‘ordinary civilians’ trapped and waiting for outside aid?  This then is the crucial point: Lalgarh refused to lend itself to the usual narrative which presents every armed struggle into a depoliticized ‘conflict situation’ with images of suffering women and children waiting for the international community and NGO aid workers to come and save them. ………..

The image of the ‘ordinary civilian’ here was not one of ‘refusing to take sides’ and rushing to grab the first bit of relief supplies, but one exemplified by someone like Malati.  Clearly showing where her political sympathies lay, Malati stayed on in the PCAPA-run camp and refused the administration’s medical help as she gave birth to a baby — the ambulance waiting for her went back empty (The Statesman, Kolkata, June 30, 2009).  Malati’s ‘humanitarian needs’ were fulfilled by the very struggle which carried out the ‘violent mass action’ — no space for NGOs and the welfarist state, exemplifying the autonomous character of the resistance.  What happened was not just that ‘ordinary civilians’ and adivasis supported the Maoists; the very image of a Maoist underwent a change so that anybody, including women and children, could be a Maoist.

‘Ordinary Civilians’, Maoists

The question then: do ordinary civilians stand opposed to and separate from the Maoists?  This point becomes pertinent from another angle.  Large sections of democratic forces in the country opposing the security-centric solution to the upsurge in Lalgarh proclaim the need to always separate the ordinary villagers/adivasis from the Maoists.  The chief minister, Buddhadev Bhattacharya, is attacked for conflating the two and using the ‘bogey of Maoists’ to victimize ordinary civilians and crush the democratic struggle of the masses.

Lalgarh thus throws several questions: Is the tribal morphing into the Maoist?  Is the groundswell of support for the Maoists such that the adivasis will mostly be Maoists?  In today’s situation, is it possible to be other than Maoist and still assert the kind of political resistance and autonomy that the masses of Lalgarh are presenting today?

The question really is: where and how does the adivasi in resistance stand vis-à-vis the Maoist?  What if the separation of the two is integral to the present statist approach to the Maoists, so central to it that it has to be invented and enforced where one does not exist?  Then, the democratic rights approach calling on the state to make this separation, and spare ‘innocent civilians’, may be a dangerous double-edged sword.

Now what Lalgarh showed is that separating the adivasis from Maoists is no great democratic act, but is in fact what allows the state to undertake severe repression and at the same time claim that it acted in the interests of ordinary civilians. Thus where this separation cannot be made, the state in fact invents it.  This was clear from the responses of state officials.  When the West Bengal home secretary Ardhendu Sen admitted that “it is tough to distinguish between the PCAPA and the Maoists”, it was clear that the separation does not hold (The Statesman, Kolkata, 19 June 2009).  And yet, even though ordinary people cannot be separated from Maoists, the State chief secretary invented this separation, when he stated, in the same news report, that security forces would “ensure security for ordinary people”.  Further, “he stated that common villagers are not involved directly involved with the violence but they are the victims of the violent activities of the Maoists”.

There were reports of the “Maoists support base in women and children” (The Statesman, 28 June 2009).  This support base meant that state officials could hardly find locals for gathering crucial intelligence inputs about the Maoists after the CPIM network collapsed; a senior state officer was quoted stating that “unless we have local sources, it is going to be extremely difficult to identify the Maoists, who have mingled with the villagers.  Although these (new) men are from Lalgarh, we haven’t got people from the core area.  Those villages are still out of bounds”(The Telegraph, Friday June 26, 2009).

In this light, as in the case of Malati, it is not really the armed Maoist who is most dangerous in Lalgarh; it is the ‘ordinary civilian’, the PCAPA supporter who is indistinguishable form the Maoist supporter.  Is Malati a Maoist?  If she refuses health care offered during her most vulnerable moment, then what is the state supposed to do to win back her support?  If ‘ordinary civilians’ do not want to get out of the ‘conflict situation’, and want to take sides, maybe not in any dramatic manner but at least by wanting to err on the side of the ‘violent Maoists’, then the task of separating the Maoists from the civilians becomes tough — and in fact politically reactionary.

What the state realized in Lalgarh was that if anyone can be a Maoist, and if the separation does not hold, then the way to go, under a democracy, is to technically enforce a ’separation’.  A technical solution: reports tell us that the security forces in parts of Lalgarh would sprinkle a special kind of an imported dye from a helicopter in areas where Maoists are present.  This dye makes a mark on the skin which stays for almost a year.  Well, now you can clearly separate Maoists from the ‘ordinary civilians’!

Inventing and enforcing a separation therefore allows the state to repress a popular movement in the name of winning over or defending ordinary civilians.  This enforced separation is such that even when the adivasi in Lalgarh stands with the Maoist or is a Maoist it is regarded not as the condition of the adivasi in the given conjuncture, as part of what it means to be an adivasi, his being or life, but negatively understood as the fallout of government policies.  Thus an adivasi Maoist is treated as just waiting to be rescued or won back into the democratic mainstream by benign policies and favours.

Images of Adivasi and Forms of Struggle

Now the Maoist cadre can and must be distinguished from the ‘ordinary villager’ or adivasi.  However some quarters are not just making this distinction but heavily invested in proactively separating the two — trying to understand Lalgarh through it.  This is happening since this separation is sustained by at least two other long established images of the ‘ordinary villager’ and in particular of the adivasi.

In one case, this separation is sustained by presenting a now familiar image of the ordinary villager or adivasi as the victim, the displaced, a negative fallout of the Nehruvian belief in science and industrial development.  In the second case, there is the image of the adivasi resisting ‘modern development and industrialisation’ and engaging in democratic forms of struggle, engaging in non-hierarchical and autonomous welfarist activities outside the state and statist logic.

The first image informs some ‘pro-poor’, welfare policies of the state, for the ‘upliftment of tribals and displaced’, the kinds declared in rehabilitation packages or ‘poverty alleviation’ programmes.  The second one comes from the dissident, anti-state left where being the marginalized and the subaltern (’outside’ of modernity and capital) in itself is supposed to form the basis of ‘political’ struggle.  These two images, often running counter to each other, however start converging as they get invested in and start deriving their rationale and intensity from their ability to ideologically pit the benign, democracy-loving ‘ordinary villager’ or adivasi against the supposed violence, top-down terror methods and repressive character of the Maoists.

However the events in Lalgarh have shown that this separation pushes back the ‘ordinary villagers’ into political infancy, not allowing them to break with the statist logic and the morass of parliamentary democracy.  For once the ‘ordinary villagers’ or adivasis break with being mere victims and act autonomously as political subjects, they very soon come into conflict with the logic of not just the state but also of oppressive power relations more generally.  Deep-rooted power structures that have found their expression in the abstraction called the state do not fade away progressively through democratic practice and rational deliberation; they exist with a necessity, a knotted base which cannot be untangled unproblematically, without a rupture.

Dharampur marked this rupture where the use of force bringing down the now decrepit power structures was anticipated by the democratic struggle and marked its intensification and qualitative expansion.  From the perspective of the longer struggle, the use of violence at this stage is only a gentle push to bring down terribly weakened but knotty oppressive structure — a push to eliminate the now even more intolerable limits imposed on the democratic practices of the masses.  The mass violence at Dharampur was such an intensification of the autonomous practices of the Lalgarh adivasis.  This ‘ordinary villager’ or adivasi who refuses to limit his democratic practices and struggle within the lines of command given by the state and its oppressive relations, at this point, emerges as the Maoist.  In the given conjuncture, the ‘Maoist’ is the articulation of the ordinary villager or adivasi as the political subject.

What Lalgarh showed is the interplay and interrelation between the ‘peaceful’ and ‘violent’ methods of struggle.  This means that it is not possible to separate the democratic struggle from the Maoist moment in it.  However the state as the defender of oppressive relations in its most generalized form, isolates the violent methods of the Maoists and tries to show it in isolation from the larger struggle of the people against oppression.  In a bid to force ‘ordinary villagers’ to restrict their democratic struggle and practices within the limits set by the state and its agencies, by the limits of parliamentary democracy, the state wants to target Maoists.  This is where the state and, perhaps not surprisingly, the democratic rights activists make the separation between ordinary villagers waiting to be uplifted and the violent Maoists exploiting their plight.

It is against such deft ideological operations that it needs to be pointed out that the ‘violent Maoist’ is actually an emergent quality of the democratic struggle and autonomous political practices of the ‘ordinary villager’ or adivasi in Lalgarh. For, the moment you separate the two, you are back to enclave democracy, NGOisation.  It is here that we have to ask what it means to oppose the state for using the ‘bogey of Maoists’ in order to kill and repress ordinary villagers and ordinary civilians.  Now, the state does not always kill civilians; nor does it right away go after anyone who calls himself a Maoist (didn’t the Bengal government arrest Gour Chakraborty¹ only at an opportune time?).  The state invariably kills, as we see in Lalgarh, when civilians, ordinary villagers, adivasis, enter into a symbiotic relationship with the Maoists; or when the Maoists enter into such a relationship with ordinary villagers.  That is, ‘ordinary villagers’ now are no ordinary villagers engaged in ‘participatory democracy’ or ‘rural empowerment’ but are challenging the very framework given by the state as the generalized expression of power relations; similarly the Maoists are not a small band of abstract believers in violence roaming the countryside recruiting children and poverty-stricken tribals for a Cause but are now engaged in a real struggle on the side of the masses.

Therefore the state does not really kill ordinary villagers in the name of killing Maoists; it kills those who are ’supporters’ of the Maoists, those who are part of the larger, longer struggle which at some point or other assumes the name of Maoist.  To be sure there are armed Maoist combatants and unarmed civilians and one needs to differentiate the two.  However if the democratic struggle and the ‘violent’ struggle so often get intertwined and intersperse each other, if the Maoist moment is an integral moment of the overall struggle, then unarmed civilians are an integral part of the Maoist movement.

To say that the Maoist is the name for the articulation of the ordinary villager/adivasi as a political subject is to say that autonomous democratic practices do not close shop once the repressive state moves in, the form of struggle often alternates between ‘peaceful’ and ‘violent’ ones, and armed revolutionaries as much as unarmed civilians form part of the struggle.  Thus the resistance in Lalgarh was such that it was extremely difficult to sustain the separation between the Maoists and the adivasi population.

Benign Government

Even as there is mounting evidence that ordinary adivasis are part of Maoist politics in the area, the government today is forced to somehow act as though the adivasis are waiting to be won over through the right development policies, employment opportunities.  First security forces were sent in to flush out Maoists.  With hardly any encounters with the Maoists, the armed forces basically marched endlessly from one village to the next, across empty fields and villages whose male members had mostly fled.  It is anybody’s guess where the male members had escaped to!  After the ’success’ of this ‘flushing out’ operation, sincere attempts are being made to reach out to the people there with all kinds of development plans, employment generation, food and medical provisions.  Under express directions form the chief minister, the secretaries from different ministers are posted in the different villages finding out the problems and needs of the people there.

One should not here doubt the sincerity of the CPIM to really follow the democratic rights perspective here in separating ordinary villagers and the Maoists.  In fact it declared that it wants to fight the Maoists politically, grudgingly accepting the centre’s ban on the Maoists.  So much so that the state government declared that it does not want to apply the UAPA, except in rare cases and that too the police will not have the authority to decide its use which will be decided by the government at the highest level.

Now all these welfarist proposals derive their rationale from the belief that ordinary villagers/adivasis stand opposed to the Maoists or got temporarily duped into supporting Maoists.  However in a total reversal of this separation theory, in Lalgarh ordinary villagers not only rejected the welfarist state but upheld the Maoists precisely in their supposed violent avatar.

That is, while, on the one hand, you had the case of Malati rejecting the most benign offer the state can ever make, the 0ffer of medical care to the mother and new-born baby, on the other hand, you had ‘ordinary civilians’ cheering and celebrating (ululate) the mass action at Dharampur, destroying the house of the CPIM leader Anuj Pandey.  Where does one draw the line between ordinary villagers and ‘violent Maoists’ when women who reject welfare measures offered by the state are more than participative in violent programmes of the Maoists?  The Hindustan Times reports from Dharampur, “A huge crowd gathered below in the area now under Section 144 lustily cheering each blow that fell on the white two-story house, quite out of place in this land of deprivation under Lalgarh police station.  By sundown, the hammers had chopped off the first floor, leaving behind a skeleton of what was a ‘posh’ house in the morning” (Hindustan Times, 16 June 2009).

Conclusion

Thus the approach of trying to defend the human rights of ‘ordinary civilians’ by arguing that they are not with the Maoists allows the state to justify repression of the Maoists in the name of defending the rights of these civilians.  Far from this separation being something which the state must be forced to adopt, the state in fact was seen in Lalgarh to enforce it.  Lalgarh showed that when the ‘ordinary civilians’ rejected the state even at its welfarist best and made it difficult to separate them from the Maoists, the state was forced to invent a technical separation (a particular dye mark on the body identifying a Maoist).  This however did not work.

Those on the left who support the democratic struggle in Lalgarh but deplore its supposed Maoist takeover, too, vociferously uphold this separation.  What this separation does is prevent the interplay between different forms of struggle, ‘peaceful’ and ‘violent’, and constrict it within the limits set by the decrepit structures of state power.  In the name of defending the democratic struggle from the authoritarian Maoists, it actually precludes the autonomous emergence of this struggle, a full-fledged political struggle against and beyond the limits set by state power.

Lalgarh showed that the Maoist is the name for the articulation of the democratic struggle which now refuses to give up even when it comes face to the face with the state exercising its monopoly of violence.  Opening a novel chapter in the interrelationship between the ‘Maoist party’ and mass resistance, the Maoist ‘take-over’ of the ‘democratic struggle’ was actually the latter’s articulation beyond the last limits set up by given structures of power, the refusal of the struggle to recoil and rescind in the face of this power, refusal to remain merely another enclosure of democracy, the site of ‘primitive accumulation’ for capital and its democratic claims.  It is a movement and a resistance where ordinary civilians no longer appear ordinary, and where the Maoists do not appear crudely vanguardist.  Lalgarh today helps us rethink the entire question of political subjectivity, party, and the masses — but above all of democracy and its concrete realisation through mass action.

1 Gour Chakraborty, a veteran and widely  respected Communist in his early 70s, had been a leading figure of the Ganapratirodh Mancha (Democratic Resistance Front), a coalition of left revolutionary groups in Kolkata.  On December 26, 2008 West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said that the government wished to deal with the Lalgarh rebellion “politically.”  Gour Chakraborty then announced that he had quit the Democratic Resistance Front to become the public spokesperson for the Communist Party of India (Maoist) in West Bengal, offered to meet with the chief minister, and said “we are giving the CPM a chance to deal with us politically.”  But despite efforts from other constituents of the Left Front in West Bengal, the leadership of the CPM refused to enter into political discussions with Chakraborty.  On June 23, 2009 the West Bengal government arrested Chakraborty, using the provisions of the draconian anti-terrorism Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, as he was leaving a talk show on a TV channel.

Lunacy against Lalgarh “C.P.I. (Maoist) awakened and organized”

-Biplav

Indian ruling class has shown the capitalist lunacy by barbarous ban on Lalgarh and C.P.I.(Maoist) .The ban imposed to the people for their raised voice of the real democracy, has unmasked the so called Indian democracy that the Indian bourgeois class and uncovered the brutal face hiding behind the mask. In other hand, the rebel of Lalgarh has succeeded to awaken the working people of the world, especially of the Indian subcontinent by tearing the clutter of entire capitalists. Flag of Lalgarh will alive forever.

The ban of the bourgeois over Lalgarh and C.P.I.(Maoist) proved one of the saying of peoples. “Poisonous snake is poisonous wherever from it.” The bourgeois are the same from Europe, America, Asia or Africa wherever from they are. They are fake, oppressors, despotic and violent. They pervert people, loot and burden the hegemony. When people become conscious, resist and rebel, then they blazon illusive propaganda, burden fake blames, ban and oppress fiercely. Today Indian bourgeois class is showing this character of its own. Interesting thing is that the bourgeois class commits and is committing all of these activities in the name of ‘Democracy’.

Ban and exploitation for rising voice for real democracy! What would be another thing that shameful in 21st century! Ban is issued over Lalgarh why? Because Lalgarh opposed the oppression, didn’t bear despot, demanded their fundamental rights. Further more raised the voice of democracy of the people. Ban is issued over C.P.I.(Maoist) why? Because C.P.I. (Maoist) awakened, organized and raised for right Lalgarh. Means C.P.I. (Maoist) led to establish the people’s democracy. Lalgarh tried to return back rights; C.P.I. (Maoist) opened the alternative of real democracy instead of so called democracy. The bourgeois were unable to compete in the battle of rights with Lalgarh. And Indian bourgeois were unable to compete with C.P.I.(Maoist) in the battle of democracy then they issued the ban over Lalgarh and C.P.I.(Maoist) to take revenge by force. It merely proved the decrepitude and unfitness of so called 60 years old Indian democracy.

Democracy is class relative, means democracy is also classified. It is impossible to be a common democracy for all class. Moreover, the bourgeois democracy is a useless democracy which gathers up very little (a handful) people. This keeps away the enormous part of the society making right less. The handfuls who are frightened and terrorized from people’s vigilance, take heavenly pleasure in the bourgeois democracy. But the socialism is a democratic system which gathers up maximum class and peoples. Although it leads working people mainly but it can mobilize all except anti people tendencies in the role of transformation of the society. The competition and the struggle of the democracy are expressed in Lalgarh. There is a capitalist democracy on one side and people’s democracy on the other side. One is for capitalist democracy and others are for people’s democracy. Indian ruling class, anti people huge capitalist, feudal, landlord, usurious, revisionist compradors of Lalgarh and corrupted administrators are on the side of the present democracy. They are blaming of extremist, terrorist and exploiting the working people, intellectuals, revolutionary party and its cadres or attempting to burden the old democracy. On the other side, C.P.I.(Maoist) , workmen, peasants, intellectuals and working citizens of the whole world are on the side of people’s democracy. They tempt to lead workmen, peasants, intellectuals instead of capitalist, feudalist, usurious and the people’s democracy in place of old democracy. Workmen, peasants are resisting the exploitation and are rebelling for that. Capitalist, feudalist, landlords and revisionists, beside Indian army, have been defeated and workmen, peasants, intellectuals have won in the competition of Lalgarh. In other word the bourgeois democracy has lost and people’s democracy has won the war. The ban over Lalgarh and C.P.I. (Maoist) of the bourgeois only proves its insanity not success in the clash of democracy.

Indian ruling class blamed of extremist and terrorist on Lalgarh and C.P.I. (Maoist) when it banned them. It would be farcical for them who knows only ‘D’ for democracy because the blamed workmen, peasants, intellectuals are the working class, constructors and majority peoples of India whereas the blamers are equipped with modern weapons, money holder feudalist and a handful in number. The crucial reactionary, exploiters and terrorist, in deed, are democratic and the honest, working population, democrat is the terrorist! It only ascertains farcical on itself. But it is reality being understood by us proletarian socialist is that the tendency perused by Indian bourgeois is not anything new but it is the tendency of heredity shown by its ancestors which the rulers of India are following. When the rapacious ruling class faces catastrophe or reaches near the defeat it takes out parch of terrorist and extremist from its box and starts avenge on working peoples. It attempts to make unsuccessful and disturb, in this way, each pioneer flow of civilization. Few years ago, its followers also had done like this in Nepal. But one should consider the ironically that marauder class failed totally in spite of thousands of attempts to stop the flow of civilization and stop the victory of working people, they collapsed own self instead. Indian ruling class will also, as it is barbarously aggressed over Lalgarh and C.P.I. (Maoist) today, be obligated to follow of their ancestral way in spite of thousand attempts and the victory will go to the working peoples of India and of whole world.

Revolution in India: Lalgarh’s Hopeful Spark

source
And the riot be the rhyme of the unheard…
- Zack de la Rocha
Background of the Movement
At this moment an incredible event is taking place in the West Midnapore district of West Bengal. Before the eruption, this sleepy area was little known except to its own inhabitants. Now, a people’s movement of unprecedented size to West Bengal has risen from the suffering of its adivasi (tribal) inhabitants, galvanizing the region, and shocking greater India. This movement has been popularly termed “the Lalgarh uprising.”

Although one could accurately say the point of eruption of this rebellion occurred early in November of 2008, it is necessary to step back further in order to appreciate the context within which these events have unfolded. Lalgarh is an incredibly impoverished area of West Bengal. It contains one well-developed road—built to accommodate police—that is of little use to its indigenous inhabitants to whom even a motorbike is a rarity. Neither clean water nor electricity is available. Police brutality was a regular occurrence where villagers were detained and tortured for little or no reason—some singled out for repeated horrific abuse. (De, 2008) For many years the State promised development in the area, yet little to none was seen. In 2007, the Jindal Steel Group was given rights to set up a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) for steel production and was awarded a huge portion of land (different reports claim figures somewhere between 4,500 and 5,000 acres).

Large sections of these lands were tribal lands, supposedly protected by law for allocation to the indigenous people through a land-reform program. When the development began, adivasi people were displaced, and due to the specter environmental damage, many of their livelihoods were threatened. For years the system had abandoned these people, leaving them under the boot petty bureaucrats to live as paupers and subjected to every imaginable abuse. Then, in a final act of force, it sought to drive them off of the only land they knew. This callous act was no less that applauded by the ruling powers of the area. After word spread of the land rights being granted to Jindal Steel Group, the region shook choking with outrage. (Bhattacharyya, 2009)

On November 2, 2008, a landmine detonated in Shalbani in the West Midnapore district when a procession of business and governmental leaders—including the chief minister of West Bengal—returned from the inauguration of the Jindal Steel Works SEZ, having been planted by Maoist guerrillas to target their convoy in opposition to the shameful industrial project. (Ray, 2008) The high-profile attack spurred a massive campaign of police terror in local villages where many of the indigenous population were targeted as suspects or Maoist sympathizers (support for the Communist Party of India (Maoist) is widespread in many areas of the region). Men, women, and children were targeted without regard and were subjected to physical abuse, torture, and rape. (JNU Students, 2009)

Particularly polarizing moments were when one woman was struck in the face with a rifle butt resulting in a permanent loss of sight in one eye, eleven women were severely abused, and three students were arrested and detained (in a manner more resembling a kidnapping than arrest) on suspicion of being Maoists. However, the inhuman treatment of villagers by police extended far beyond these few vicious incidents and was rooted in a long history of such acts. (Kutty, 2009)

Lalgarh_adivasis_armed_with_traditional_weaponsSeveral days later thousands of villagers mobilized. Armed with only traditional weapons such as bows and arrows, and an iron resolve forged on decades of suffering, they dug trenches and laid tree trunks across roads to prevent security personnel from entering. In retribution they descended on police stations, damaged their cars, cut off electricity to the buildings, and demanded that police explain why so many of the adivasi people had been hurt. Huge mobilizations of this nature went on without pause for more than a month, drawing widespread attention. Police officers became subject to a social boycott, making it difficult for them to acquire the basic necessities of food and sanitary items required to stay in the area. Coupled with a strong Maoist presence, the social boycott made the Lalgarh area almost impregnable for governmental authority figures. (Bhattacharyya, 2009) Since these events, the uprising has spread like a wildfire influencing hundreds of villages in the West Midnapore district and has drawn immense support not just in West Bengal, but also from many areas in India. It has assumed a definite political character.

The Demands

The Demands On November 8, 2008, the People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities (Pulishi Atyacharer Biruddhe Janaganer Committee, or PCPA) was formed in Dalilpur Chowk. It was composed upon formation of elected representatives from 95 villages. (De, 2008) These numbers have vastly grown its foundation. Its inception bypassed previous organizations of tribal elders and mainstream political parties which had utterly failed in providing relief to the people of the area, and gave an organized and democratic voice to those from oppressed groups. The committee now makes all major decisions at large public meetings which are often attended by more than 10,000 people from hundreds of villages. (Chowdhury, 2008) The committee also put forth a 13-point set of demands [see for the list of demands]—as well as the police and administrative boycott—to make clear the adivasi people’s grievances. Many demonstrations, blockades, and strikes have been called by the PCPA, and relatively peaceful assaults on police camps and mainstream party offices were organized, initially by adivasi people. In many cases, police have been forced to withdraw entirely according to their demands. Another significant gain was to win the majority of their 13-point list demands as well as large monetary concessions for development, although these monetary gains were viewed as hoaxes that would never, in the end, benefit the adivasi people. (Kutty, 2009) However, their most important demand—that police go to each village and apologize—had yet to be won. (Indian Express, 2009) The people destroying a CPI-(M) party office

The months after the initial uprising have been characterized by constant forays and negotiations between police, government officials, their respective party cadre, and the people of West Bengal. These conflicts have often taken the form of liberating and losing village territory to government factions. A particularly interesting moment occurred during the weeks prior to the April 2009 Lok Sabha elections. The PCPA put forth a popular demand that no police be allowed into villages during the elections. Although the residents of the areas supported the idea of allowing the polls to occur, they refused to allow them to happen if any police personnel were going to be present. After a long standoff, the villages finally allowed the polls to occur with police presence, but only far outside the villages where the police boycott existed. Any villagers interested in voting were given rides to the designated polling place on buses chartered by the Election Commission. (De, 2009)

An important feature of the uprising has been the oppressive role played by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), known as the CPM—the dominant party in West Bengal’s Left Front government. This “communist” party has been deeply involved with West Bengal’s capitalists for decades and has brutally exploited West Bengal’s large tribal population. In the Lalgarh area, CPM leaders routinely pocket development funds meant for the villagers, and their police forces arrest and torture adivasis suspected of working with the Maoists in the area. Recent Developments On June 14, 2009, the PCPA and Maoists conducted a large campaign where they liberated 48 villages and took control of CPI (Marxist) party buildings in Dharampur. They were met with fierce opposition and were involved in furious gun battles for days preceding these events, but, in the end, succeeded in freeing these villages. (Bhattacharyya, 2009) On June 16, 2009, there was another significant uprising in Lalgarh in which a large number of adivasis set numerous police camps on fire, drove security forces and CPI (Marxist) cadre and leaders out of Lalgarh, retaking control of the area. (Rediff, 2009) An especially important moment was the destruction of the palatial building of CPI (Marxist) leader Anuj Pandey, one of the most hated government officials of the region. The destruction of this building was of great symbolic meaning. It had stood as a tower of oppression keeping the adivasi people under its heavy shadow for many years. Its destruction has finally allowed the sunshine to pour in, lifting the spirits of flowers once so heavily choked by weeds. Unfortunately, since this uprising security forces have descended into the area and have carried out murderous repression campaigns of the same nature that sparked the initial movement. (Sanhati, 2009) We can only hope those facing these campaigns can effectively defend their new found freedom in significant ways. During at least the past few weeks the United States has been providing technical assistance to the Indian government to quell the rebellion, which has allowed them to monitor the areas of Baroperlia, Kantapahari, Ramgarh, Mahultal, Kadashol, Pingboni, Goaltore, Dhrampur and Jhitka (Rajarshee, 2009) as well as plan assaults.

The CPI (Maoist) was officially “banned” throughout India as well in June. Soon after, a spokesperson of the Maoist party, Gour Chakravarthy, was arrested in Kolkata while giving an interview. (Indian Express, 2009) The government has even gone so far as to arrest outsiders who have arrived as neutral observers. A team of intellectuals from Kolkata, including filmmaker Aparna Sen, (General Secretariat of the ILPS, 2009) and a ten-person team of social activists, were arrested and assaulted by police. (MSN News, 2009) Despite the huge mobilization of military units and support from foreign imperialist countries, the people of West Bengal and the Maoists have been able to hold their own against the Indian paramilitary forces by conducting guerrilla-style battles and by driving police back out of newly-seized areas. The tribal people have often mobilized blockades while the PCPA and Maoists have conducted more military-based struggles. (Bhattacharyya, Lalgarh Update) Indian_police_in_lalgarh Since July 4, 2009, paramilitary forces and the West Bengal State police have been sent to capture Pingboni and Birbhanpur. (One India, 2009)

They also have been combing the forests of the Lalgarh area of Kadashole, Salboni, Godamouli, Jhitka, Kantapahari, and Ronja as part of an assault on Maoist forces and tribal people. (Mondal, 2009) Some leaders of the PCPA are also being explicitly targeted for allegedly supporting the Maoists. Sixteen paramilitary groups are operating in the area including COBRA. According to some press reports, the military groups plan to stay in full force until at least the end of July. (The Hindu, 2009) As of July 8th, mainstream news agencies have reported that Lalgarh was recaptured. However, the Maoists forces stationed there were able to escape relatively unscathed to the jungles of Ayodhya hills in Purulia via Belpahari (Chaudhuri, 2009) and still a number of villages remain liberated (up to date numbers are difficult to ascertain).

Notable Characteristics of the Lalgarh Uprising demonstration_adivasis_lalgarhFrom the beginning the Lalgarh uprising has been a progressive force. Since its birth, this movement has had an undeniably organic character, and at its height, drew tens of thousands of villagers out to fight against the corrupt establishment. The movement, clearly born out of the struggles of the noble adivasi peasants, has transcended rural tribal lines in important ways by drawing solidarity and defense from broader sections of the populace including students (Sanhati, 2009), human rights organizations (Amnesty International, 2009), small store owners, and adivasi migrant workers. (Ray, 2009) Although spontaneous at birth, the movement has quickly taken shape and developed leadership along democratic lines. The first leading mass organization rising out of the struggle was the PCPA. After its formation, committees quickly appeared in multiple villages, often being lead by women. All the major decisions of this organization were decided at mass meetings consisting of up to 10,000 adivasis from hundreds of villages. (Ray, 2009) Aside from the mass democratic organization the PCPA, embryonic parallel governing structures have begun to emerge as well. These are known as Gram Committees, which were formed in January of 2009 as an alternative to the panchayat system, a tool of the ruling factions of India. Each committee consists of a 10-member elected body—five men and five women—with each body having two delegates for larger area meetings (10 villages). Above those committees are a total of 35 representatives for central committee meetings—at this level the male/female ratio is not required to be equal (with females occupying a minimum of 12 seats)—who play governing roles. Each decision these committees make must be ratified by a general assembly of people and at least 150 of these committees have been formed (although these numbers are rapidly changing). Along with Gram Committees, the villagers also have set up village defense committees—a form of militia—to protect the people from hermad, police, and CPI (Marxist) attacks. (Bhattacharyya, 2009) These committees are quite radical and novel departures from the traditionally patriarchal and authoritarian institutions of the area. Whenever these organizations meet with representatives from the official government, they demand that the officials sit on woven mats alongside them. This occurs in direct contradiction to the traditional practice of governing officials sitting in a chair while the people sit on the ground around them. (Ray, 2009) These practices have served to shatter the chains wrapped around the inhabitants of the area, elevating them from a subservient childlike position, to one of equality, one of a people no longer subject to the rule of a small elite. lalgarh_communal_kitchen A communal kitchen Over the course of the struggle, new developmental initiatives have taken place. In Kantapahari, a hospital set up two years ago, but never utilized by the government, was seized by the PCPA and renamed the “People’s Hospital.” The hospital opened its doors staffed with one physician and six health workers. (Bhattacharyya, 2009) The PCPA has also taken steps to deal with agriculture and water scarcity problems with the instillation of tubewells in multiple villages and irrigation projects such as canal dredging. These initiatives have all taken place solely on the basis of monetary contributions and voluntary labor. The Maoists have also been playing an important role in developmental projects by encouraging a model of self-sufficiency and sustainability as opposed to projects dominated by foreign capital and a wealthy elite. These projects have included health centers, drinking water and irrigation projects, and road development. Besides helping set up parallel governing structures, the Maoists, alongside the villagers, have built at least 50 kilometers of gravel paths, set up tube wells and water tanks, set up irrigation initiatives, and are running health centers. (Bhattacharyya, 2009) lalgarh_woman_armed_with_bowExciting developments have occurred explicitly within the women’s movement—practices such as fair representation have been won and women’s leadership in the general movement has served as an important offensive against traditional patriarchy. An all-women’s branch of the PCPA has been formed, which is not only responsible for the fight against police repression and CPI (Marxist) attacks, but also against domestic oppression. One important initiative of this movement has been the seizure of businesses that distribute alcohol. Those who ignore the ban on consumption can be subject to social boycott. [see note B] (Bhattacharyya, 2009)

Concluding Remarks

It is my belief that the facts overwhelmingly demonstrate that the battle occurring for Lalgarh’s liberation is a just one. This movement is one of unprecedented size to the area, born from and led by the indigenous inhabitants of the region for an undeniably just cause. Revolutionary people should be watching this movement, learning what we can, and offering whatever support possible. No doubt this struggle will be a long and brutal one, with the people of West Bengal facing many trials and tribulations. This is a uniquely polarizing moment in recent political history, already being called the new Naxalbari, and will most likely prove to be a locus of revolutionary struggle for some time to come.

Solidarity Message from the Communist Party of Greece (marxist-leninist) ‘protest rally-picket on’ Tuesday, July 7th, in front of the Indian embassy, Athens.

Call for a protest rally-picket on Tuesday, July 7th, in front of the Indian Embassy, Athens.
Solidarity to the just struggle of the Adivasi in Lalgarh!

The Communist Party of Greece (marxist-leninist) stands by the side of the people in Lalgarh and supports their just struggle, condemns the atrocities conducted by the police and paramilitary forces, denounces the stance of the pseudo-communists that lead the government in Kalkota and calls upon parties, organizations, entities and independent activists to a protest rally-picket on Tuesday, July 7th, in front of the Indian embassy, Athens.

Communist Party of Greece (marxist-leninist)
Athens 2/7/2009

Stand by Lalgarh’s Struggle against State Repression! Statement by Students of DSU, India

Expose SFI-CPM’s Lies! Stand by Lalgarh’s Struggle against State Repression!

Masses make their own histories, not in the best of circumstances of their own choice but in the circumstances given to them.

–Marx

 

The old is dying and the new is struggling to be born; in this interregnum there arises a great diversity of morbid symptoms.

–Gramsci

 

As more and more write-ups and commentaries on the people’s uprising in Lalgarh is pouring in, it is important to respond to some of the salient points that keep coming up albeit couched in political sophistry. Whether it is from the sensation-crazed media or from Karats to Yechury, Biman Bose or Buddhadeb and their likes in the Liberation, or the SFI and AISA in this campus, all have striking similarities. The most striking aspect which also speaks volumes of their political bankruptcy is their latent and mortal fear to accept that people, the masses of the people, can also think. They do have a political will determined by their objective and subjective experiences of the harsh realities of eking out a livelihood in some of the most economically backward regions of the subcontinent. This is a deliberate vice of all ruling class ideologies and their practitioners to portray people as lifeless beings, empty receptacles who can only be `gullible’ and `innocent’. So like the “white man’s burden” it is for the righteous CPM, Liberation and their torchbearers in the campus —including some of the learned faculty— to show the people the `true’ path. But this path is of servility to the existing exploitative, blood-thirsty policies promoted by all the political parties that have put their money-bags in the parliament.

 

Why are these parties insisting that the people of Lalgarh are gullible, ignorant, innocent, illiterate…? It is only in that way they can justify their massive police-paramilitary build up in the region to `liberate’ the people from the clutches of the Maoists who have led them astray under the barrel of the gun. What CPM, Liberation, SFI and AISA is conveniently forgetting is that the same people of Lalgarh has long been fighting the harmads, the fascist goons of the CPM armed to the teeth with ammunition provided from the government ordinance factories. These storm-troopers were the forces through which the CPM used to maintain their control over the people, enforce elections, corner government money meant for the development of the adivasis, and maintain an informers’ network which used to work in tandem with the police. So to say the Maoists have terrorised the people of Lalgarh into submission to indulge in their `infantile disorder’ is to refuse to admit the bold and daring initiative of the masses of Jangalkhand, their efforts to build a future free from all forms of exploitation and domination. The efforts to build health centres, roads linking up all the villages, small check dams and other water harvesting methods through which they have managed two crops a season are all definite indicators of the political will of the people, their vision of their future. Through these efforts where the people –adivasis and dalits were at the centre of development and not CPM and its village strongmen – the impoverished masses of Lalgarh has succeeded in freeing themselves from CPM’s stranglehold in the last eight months of the movement against state repression, and to reverse their dependency on migratory labour outside the region. This people who have dared to manage their own future can rebel against any form of domination and exploitation, and as per SFI if the Maoists are doing that, then they too will be taught a lesson by the masses. The People’s Committee have given an open call for everyone to visit these areas to have a first hand knowledge of what is becoming and what is passing away in the unfolding struggle of Lalgarh. Perhaps the SFI and AISA members should go to these areas and see the initiative of the masses for themselves, and discover the truth.

 

SFI was quoting Mao perhaps to teach the DSU a lesson or two on the need for politics to be in command of all the actions by the revolutionaries. But strangely one thing that is missing in all the SFI and AISA pamphlets was politics from the point of view of the oppressed, deprived, discriminated and exploited. While reading Mao, SFI might have also come across this great insight from that Marxist practitioner—to have faith in the masses and only the masses. All the parliamentary parties fear the masses. Whenever the masses rise in revolt they grab the constitution which normally and conveniently they forget. They turn upside down all dissidence of the people into a `law and order’ question. So when Yechury is busy asking Manmohan Singh to show his seriousness by deploying the forces with immediate effect in Lalgarh and adjoining areas, Prakash Karat makes a song and dance about the virtues of dealing with the Maoists politically and `administratively’ . To add to this, Brinda Karat has gone senile to the extent that she has harped on the imperialist backed (for CPM’s alleged opposition to the Nuke Deal) efforts of the Congress-Trinamul- `Ultra Left’ combine to dislodge a democratically elected government of West Bengal. In all this double–talk of the CPM leaders, their fascist face could not be hidden from the masses. Soon they set the gun on Chidambaram’ s shoulder to declare the CPI (Maoist) as a terrorist organisation. So much for their political and ideological dealing with the Maoists. They have even declined to differentiate between the Maoists and the members of the People’s Committee leading the struggle, paving way for the persecution of one and all resisting state repression. When we look into the arms-haul made from the CPM office in Khejuri near Nandigram—which Mamata Banerjee had declared as `liberated from the clutches of CPM’—nobody asked as to how a party could have police uniforms and ammunition from the ordinance factories in its office. Predictably, there was no police-paramilitary operation against Mamata’s `liberated’ Khejuri. This also shows the class character of ruling class oppression of all forms of dissent —whether armed or unarmed— that are genuinely from the masses of the people. As long as it is turf war between CPM and Trinamul, Congress or BJP, it is not a law and order question.

 

SFI has blamed the Maoists for making people’s struggles a `law and order’ question. Does that mean the people do not have any right to defend themselves against the flagrant violation of their right to livelihood, dignity, and security? There was also an indication that in Kandhamal it was due to the Maoist killing of the Hindu Fascist Lakshmanananda that the people of Kandhamal had to suffer the persecution of the RSS-Bajrang Dal goons. So does that mean by the same standards, the people of Lalgarh have to suffer in the hands of the security forces because the Maoists sided with the oppressed masses? The SFI should come clear. They would make even an RSS and ABVP proud with their findings, which lacks any class analysis and reads like the handout of the officialdom.        

 

Today anyone who defiantly speak against the anti-people policies of the government and at the same time keep all ruling class parties away from their struggle are branded Maoists. And Chidambaram- Buddha combine have also called the Maoists as terrorists. The SFI taking cue from that has also started profiling the very ideology of Marxism-Leninism- Maoism. If they have differences with the ideology of the revolutionaries, they should state first their ideological- political differences. Who is the genuine representative of the revolutionary ideals of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao and all people’s heroes will be determined by those who have dared to make their own histories not in circumstances of their own choice but in circumstances given to them. Lalgarh and its people have dared to do it. The progressive and democratic forces including the Maoists have said they are with them. It is only the CPM, SFI, Liberation and AISA by indulging in duplicity have turned against the fighting masses, or are parroting the oft-repeated sophistry that `innocent’ [read ignorant] people are caught between the state and the Maoists. They should know that the failure of the revisionist CPM in West Bengal or Kerala does not mean the defeat of communist ideology in the subcontinent. It only shows the failure of a party that turned against the cause of social change by caricaturing Marxism, by becoming a part of the Indian ruling class, and thereby the  trusted agents of imperialism, feudalism and the big bourgeoisie. The complete failure of CPM in addressing the genuine demands of the adivasis and poor peasants even after their 30 years of virtual reign in West Bengal is a tell-tale sign of the party’s deviation from the basics of Marxist politics. Their reactionary political ideology as is visible from the failure of land redistribution among the masses, and also from the invitation to the Tatas and Jindals for establishing the industries at the cost of poor peasants and adivasis. It is no different from Congress and BJP’s pro-imperialist political line.

 

Branding anyone who is standing against state oppression as Maoists has become a license to torture and kill. And it is not a new tactic, it was employed when dalit Christians were burnt alive by the RSS goons in Orissa, in persecuting adivasis in the name of Salwa Judum, in the cold-blooded murder of adivasi youths on mere suspicion of being Maoist supporters in Chattisgarh, and in the present state repression in Lalgarh. The SFI is trying hard to justify the butchering of poor adivasis because they have started to resist the perpetuation of decades of organized and systemic violence on the most oppressed sections of the society. The SFI is ruing the punishment of Avijit Mahatos and Anuj Pandeys of the CPM, who has generated people’s wrath because of their fascist stranglehold over the poor masses. SFI must understand that Marxist politics is not what is propagated by CPM, but what is manifested by the conviction of Lalgarh’s adivasi masses to fight against the ruling class’s dictatorship. No amount of `course-correction’ and `introspection’ can save CPM from its eminent doom, and no amount of repression can break the resolve of the heroic Lalgarh masses for their liberation.

Latests Report from Lalgarh

CRPP
———— ——— ——— ——— ——— ——— -

COMMITTEE FOR THE RELEASE OF POLITICAL PRISONERS
185/3, FOURTH FLOOR, ZAKIR NAGAR, NEW DELHI
CONDEMN THE ARREST OF GOUR CHAKRAVARTY,
THE WEST BENGAL STATE SPOKESPERSON OF CPI (MAOIST)!
RELEASE HIM UNCONDITIONALLY!
The Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners (CRPP) strongly condemns the arrest and media trial of Gour Chakravarty, the West Bengal State Spokesperson of the CPI (Maoist).
This is a complete volte face of the CPI (M) led government which had continuously insisted that they would deal with the Maoists politically. In fact it shows beyond doubt that the issues raised by the Maoists and the militant struggles of the Adivasis of Lalgarh have become a real problem for the CPM-led government in West Bengal. The only way that this government can deal with the issues of life and death for the toiling masses, pertaining to the four dreaded Ds—Displacement, Destruction, Destitution and Death—are through the baton and barrels of the police and paramilitary. Otherwise any people oriented government would have first listened to the just demands of the Adivasis of Lalgarh. The right to dissent against the policies of the State is a constitutionally guaranteed right. And when the people of Lalgarh have protested against the policies of the government which they understood would result in their peril, the political and administrative response of the government of West Bengal was through ruthless military action and a high voltage media blitzkrieg demonising the people of Lalgarh ably supported by the Central Government under Manmohan Singh and home minister Chidambaram.
Anyone who is closely observing West Bengal politics particularly since Singur and Nandigram struggles of the people can recall that Gour Chakravarty stood as a spokesperson of the CPI (Maoist) of West Bengal responding to the challenges thrown by Buddhadeb Battacharjee, the Chief Minister and CPI (M) for an open political debate on issues Maoists differ with the ruling party in the state. But the Chief Minister instead of engaging in a political debate with Gour Chakravarty being the political representative of the CPI (Maoist), put him behind the bars. Therefore, the basis for the arrest of Gour Chakravarty is intensely political. This shows that the Chief Minister and his ruling party did not want to answer questions raised by the Maoist spokesperson regarding the people’s issues entailing Singur, Nandigram and now Lalgarh. Instead they resorted to the brutal suppression of the voices of the people using military might and draconian laws like the newly promulgated CLAA by the central government. Ironically, while Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee was busy banning the CPI(Maoist) his own party was opposing the same as he went about the same law to arrest, incarcerate, and silence the incessant and flowing voice of Gour Chakravarty.
Gour Chakravarty as the spokesperson of the CPI (Maoist) had upheld the right to dissent of the Adivasis of Lalgarh against the World Bank, imperialist backed up anti-people policies of the West Bengal government. Further he had openly exhorted the people that merely fighting against the West Bengal government would not suffice as he was convinced that the fundamental problem was related to the exploitative, predatory class character of the Indian State. This conviction had made him exhort the people to do away with this parasitic apparatus of the Indian state.
Though the Constitution of India calls itself a democracy with the right to freedom of expression and association, the governments of West Bengal and the one at the centre would dread such a scenario where the people have the courage and conviction to stand against the policies of the government.
Gour Chakravarty had tried to measure the possibilities of the human face that the Congress government at the centre and the CPI (M) government in West Bengal were pretending to project before the people. He was only trying to push the limits of stability that these governments were promising the people before and after the parliamentary elections. His crime—he insisted that there cannot be any stability without the just interests of the toiling masses being served. Without putting an end to all forms of exploitation; humiliation; mistreatment; discrimination. All these ideals of Gour Chakravarty have become a ‘law and order’ question for the CPM-led government in West Bengal.
This also brings to the fore that the CPM-led government despite all its pretensions is no less different from a Congress or BJP government while addressing the burning issues of the common masses. To address sincerely the issues that are dear to the masses of the people one need to have the political will to openly defy the policies of the World Bank and imperialism.
Gour Chakravarty being the spokesperson of the West Bengal CPI (Maoist) has challenged the CPM-led government to be one of, by and for the Will of the masses of the people. He is the conscience of the toiling masses. He cannot be behind the bars. We demand his unconditional release.

27.06.09

SUPPORT THE HEROIC STRUGGLE OF ADIVASIS IN LALGARH, INDIA

Over the past week, thousands of Indian police and paramilitary forces have descended on Lalgarh, West Bengal to crush the just struggle of the adivasis (tribal people). Progressive people around the world must raise our voices to help break the reign of military terror that has been unleashed upon the people.

 

In November 2008, the adivasis of Lalgarh rose up against decades of abuse by the police and the “new landlords,” the local kingpins of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), commonly known as “CPM.” This is the same “communist” party that tried to take away peasants’ land in Nandigram and Singur, only to be beaten back and exposed by determined struggle.

 

In recent years, hundreds of adivasis in the Lalgarh area have been imprisoned on false charges of having ties with the Maoist insurgency.  They formed the People’s Committee against Police Atrocities (PCPA), which has extended its influence to hundreds of villages in the Lalgarh area.  In recent months, Maoist activists who have been working in the area for years initiated development projects for drinking water, irrigation, roads and health centers that have involved over 200,000 people. 

 

After CPM cadre fired on a demonstration led by the PCPA in early June, thousands of adivasis burned down CPM offices and police camps, symbols of unbridled power and oppression.  As the movement spread to new areas, the West Bengal Left Front government, led by the CPM, asked the central government to send in its armed forces to “retake” the area.  As several thousand West Bengal police and central paramilitaries moved towards Lalgarh, they were met with dug up roads, felled trees and massed demonstrations of adivasis trying to obstruct their progress. They also were dogged by landmines and a series of ambushes by the Maoist forces.  It took them 2 1/2 days to reach the Lalgarh police station.

 

When the police and paramilitaries reached Lalgarh, they moved to teach the adivasis a lesson.  CPM cadre dressed in police uniforms pointed out homes of PCPA members. Police broke into their  houses and dragged villagers outside to be beaten. Children were not spared; they broke the leg of a seven year old boy.  Hundreds of women were stripped naked and humiliated: a woman was raped with a rifle butt by a policeman.  The paramilitaries forced local youths to act as “human shields,” searching for hidden mines and explosives. Faced with this brutality, tens of thousands of adivasis were forced to flee their villages. Hundreds of houses have been burnt down and several thousand families were herded out of their villages. More than 20,000 people are placed now in make-shift camps looked after by the opposition parties.

 

Even during this military operation, the Maoists operating in the area held mass meetings of villagers only a few kilometers from the state forces. According to the Bengali daily Sanbad Pratidin of June 27, the U.S. and Israel have provided technical assistance that has allowed a recently launched Indian satellite to locate Maoist guerilla units in the dense forests. The West Bengal government also clamped down on outside observers. A team of intellectuals from Kolkata, included the film maker Aparna Sen, that visited Lalgarh and called for a cease fire was arrested and charged with subversion.  A week later, the Communist Party of India (Maoist) was banned throughout India, and Gour Chakravarthy, the open spokesperson of the CPI (Maoist) in West Bengal, was arrested in Kolkata while giving an interview inside a TV channel studio in Kolkata.

 

The adivasis of Lalgarh need the support of progressive and freedom-loving people around the world. The brutality of the West Bengal state and the Indian government must be brought into the light of day.

 

The International League of People’s Struggle (ILPS), (a worldwide alliance of democratic, anti-imperialist mass organizations) supports the heroic and just struggle of the people of Jangal Mahal – Lalgarh and condemns the reactionary and anti-people ruling classes in India that hand in glove with the imperialist powers are hell bent on using brute force to crush the peoples resistance.

 

We urge all ILPS members, and other progressive, democratic and anti-imperialist people everywhere, to urgently build support for the struggling people of Lalgarh.  Statements of support, public meetings, and demonstrations at Indian embassies and consulates around the world can put pressure on the state to withdraw its occupying forces, and can let the struggling people of Lalgarh know that they have friends far beyond West Bengal.

 

Down with the fascist aggression of the CPM, the WB state and Central Indian state against people of India!

Down with the imperialism, Zionism and all other reaction!

Support the Heroic Struggle of Adivasis in Lalgarh, India!

 

 

General Secretariat

International League of Peoples’ Struggle

29/06/09