Extremist trouble

Published : Dec 19, 2008 00:00 IST

West Bengal: Maoists, supported by the Trinamool Congress and the Congress, are trying to create a Nandigram-like situation.

HARDLY a year has elapsed since the fires of Nandigram were extinguished when a similar situation is being precipitated in West Bengal by some of the same divisive forces. This time the venue is the tribal belt in West Medinipur district. As of November 26, Lalgarh and its contiguous areas have remained cut off from the State administration for over three weeks. Maoist elements, hiding behind the shield of the tribal population, are threatening armed resistance against the state machinery. While in Nandigram it was the Trinamool Congress-led opposition backed by the Maoists who tried to create a muktanchal (liberated zone), in the case of Lalgarh it is the other way round: the Maoists are backed by the Trinamool Congress, the Congress and other assorted groups. Some individuals and organisations, such as the Matangini Mahila Samiti and the Association for Protection and Democratic Rights (APDR), that participated in the Nandigram movement are also active in Lalgarh.

The present situation follows from the assassination attempt on Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee on November 2. A powerful explosive device went off at about 2 p.m. on the Salboni-Medinipur road at Kalaichandi in West Medinipur moments after the convoys of the Chief Minister and Union Steel Minister Ram Vilas Paswan passed by. They were returning from Salboni after attending a function at which the foundation stone for the Rs.35,000-crore mega steel project of Jindal Steel Works was laid. Six security personnel were injured in the incident. The Communist Party of India (Maoist), which later owned up to the attack, confirmed that its target was indeed Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and warned that there would be countless more explosions.

During the police investigation that followed in the villages around the forested Lalgarh area that Maoists are known to frequent, 11 people were arrested and detained in connection with the attack. Of them, two, according to Home Secretary Ashok Mohan Chakrabarty, were members of the Maoist squad. On the basis of prima facie evidence, the police arrested Sunil Hansda, a Jharkhand Party leader, who was involved in earlier incidents in Jharkhand and also in Jhargram in West Bengal. According to police sources, firearms, including a 9 mm pistol and a 6.75 mm Bulgarian pistol, and 43 rounds of cartridges were recovered from those arrested.

What apparently precipitated the agitation was the arrest of three school-going teenage boys. They were later released on bail, but the matter took a serious turn when a retired teacher from the same school was also arrested on suspicion and taken to the Lalgarh police station to identify some miscreant. Although Superintendent of Police Rajesh Singh admitted that the teachers arrest was a mistake, the mischief had already been done. The local people, at the instigation of Maoists, set up roadblocks and refused to let the police force enter the area.

On November 7, soon after the release of the three boys, villagers armed with bows and arrows and other rustic weapons assembled outside the Lalgarh police station to protest against what they considered arbitrary arrests. They threw stones at the police station and the vans parked outside it. Roads were dug up and electricity poles and trees were uprooted, severing the links with the district headquarters of West Medinipur and the subdivisional headquarters in Jhargram. The roads connecting West Medinipur to the neighbouring district of Bankura were also dug up.

An all-party meeting at the local level on November 9 failed to achieve a breakthrough. Subsequently, a tribal outfit called the Bharat Jakat Majhi Marwa (BJMM), comprising mostly village elders, issued a set of conditions to the local administration to end the agitation. The demands included a compensation of Rs.2 lakh to the women who were roughed up by the police during the arrests, release of all the villagers arrested over the past few years in connection with Maoist activities, Rajesh Kumar Singh being made to do squats holding his ears in front of the villagers, and all police personnel of the Lalgarh police station being made to crawl from Dalilpur to Chhotopelia village. The last two demands were later withdrawn.

Though the BJMM initially spearheaded the agitation, the tribal leaders soon found themselves sidelined as the movement was almost completely taken over by the Maoists and the Maoist-led Peoples Committee Against Police Oppression.

Following a meeting with the district administration on November 13, BJMM leaders were apparently agreeable to the lifting of the blockades in all places except Lalgarh, but their plea was ignored by the agitators. Meanwhile, the State governments request for deployment of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) in Lalgarh was turned down by the Centre on the grounds that CRPF personnel would be required for five election-bound States.

As in Nandigram, here too the State government has found that its attempts to arrive at a solution through dialogue are consistently rebuffed by the agitators, allegedly at the insistence of the Maoists. Realising the delicate nature of the situation, the State government has all along been cautious to avoid any kind of flare-up, which, it seems, is what the Maoists want to precipitate.

This strategy of the agitators becomes clear from their insistence on holding the discussions with the district administration and the police at Dalilpur (a Maoist stronghold) and their refusal to go to any of the government offices, such as the Lalgarh police station or the Jhargram subdivisional office. Their proclaimed decision to hold a public trial (gana adalat) at Dalilpur in the very near future confirms the State governments belief that the agitators are not really interested in finding an amicable solution to the problem.

Meanwhile, the Lalgarh movement began to spread as tribal people from the neighbouring districts of Bankura and Purulia extended it their support. With the police and the administration unable to enter the region, the Maoists have been able to settle down and move freely to and from Jharkhand across the State border.

The movement also found political support from both the Trinamool Congress and the Congress. Trinamool supremo Mamata Banerjee said, It is not an issue where political parties have a role. The Adivasi Samaj [tribal society] is fighting for protection from police harassment. Her party even staged a dharna at the District Collectorate in support of the demands of the tribal people.

The Pradesh Congress Committees working president, Pradip Bhattacharya, held more or less a similar view when he told Frontline: This is strictly a tribal movement. The Maoists are fishing in troubled waters. The Adivasis have our sympathies and our outside support. However, Sidhu Soren, leader of the Peoples Committee Against Police Atrocities, reportedly said, We dont call it a tribal movement. Most villagers cutting across caste and creed lines have endorsed our charter of demands.

The West Medinipur district secretary of the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist) told Frontline: The situation here has now become completely apolitical and an excuse to indulge in anti-social activities. The Maoists, the Trinamool Congress and the Congress are itching for a confrontation. They want dead bodies, and that is exactly what we are avoiding at all costs.

The opposition, which harps on the neglect and backwardness of the area and the tribal population, does not seem to take note of a plan being hatched by outside forces to isolate the border areas of West Bengal. These areas are largely inhabited by a tribal population that has links of kinship, language and culture with neighbouring Jharkhand. In fact, a highly placed political source told Frontline that the Aditya Group faction of the Jharkhand Party, which wants the three adjoining districts of Purulia, Bankura and West Medinipur all with sizable tribal populations to be added to the State of Jharkhand, has apparently taken up the leadership of the tribal movement in some areas. Some of the members of this faction have almost a dual membership, with the Jharkhand Party and the Maoists, the source said.

According to Buddhadeb Chaudhuri, a professor of anthropology at Calcutta University, the Lalgarh agitation looks more like a politically motivated upheaval than a natural tribal revolt. The leadership for the movement is now coming not from within the tribal community but from outside. The main tribal community involved, the Santhals, are fiercely protective of their identity, and once they feel this identity is under threat, they can easily be mobilised. They have to be handled very tactfully, Chaudhuri told Frontline.

Addressing a public gathering on November 22 in South 24 Parganas district, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee stressed that the State government was always ready to have peaceful discussions with the tribal population and solve its problems but was in no mood for any compromise with Maoists, whom he labelled as cowards, misleading the tribal people, indulging in individual assassination of innocent people, and fleeing the State to evade arrest. He also deplored the persistently negative attitude of the Trinamool Congress to all development projects and its support to extremist forces for the sole purpose of embarrassing the government even though it might mean ruin for the development of the State.

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