Moving from poll to poll

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The Bharatiya Janata Party has been celebrating its modest gains in the recently concluded Assembly elections in three States and one Union Territory to dispel the popular impression that the Modi magic ended with last year’s setback in Bihar.

As Prime Minister Narendra Modi completes two years in office, with development failing to create jobs, there is a pressing need to boost the morale of the rank and file which slumped following failure to bring Bihar under BJP’s control. Especially so since seven states, including Uttar Pradesh, the most populous one, and Modi’s own Gujarat, are due to go to the polls next year.

The states of West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Assam and the Union Territory of Puducherry, which figured in the election calendar, together account for 116 of the 543 seats in the Lok Sabha. In the 2014 parliamentary elections, the BJP could bag only 10 of them. It picked up half of Assam’s 14 seats but got only two out of West Bengal’s 42 and one out of Tamil Nadu’s 39. It drew a blank in Kerala, which has 20 seats. Its regional ally picked up Puducherry’s lone seat.

Modi attached great importance to the Assembly elections in these states, and drew up plans to boost the BJP’s prospects with the help of new allies. The services of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh cadres were requisitioned.

The plan succeeded only in Assam. This was the smallest of the four states and the only one where the BJP and the Congress were in a direct contest for power. The BJP was able to oust the Congress government headed by Tarun Gogoi, which had been in office for 15 years at a stretch, and seize power for the first time in an eastern state.

The BJP won by precipitating a sharp polarisation on religious lines in the state, which has an ethnically diverse population. The party’s Hindu vote share shot up from 43 per cent to 63 per cent, while the Congress’s declined from 30 per cent to 25 per cent.

Muslims constitute a third of Assam’s population. Their number has been rising at a higher rate than that of the Hindus from one census to the next. While the community’s higher birth rate accounts for this partly, the BJP has been attributing it mainly to illegal migration from Bangladesh. Sarbananda Sonowal, the new Chief Minister, has vowed to seal the borders to prevent infiltration.

Both the Congress and the BJP were small players in the large states of West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. The regional parties ruling these states, led by charismatic women, won a second term.

Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress had stormed into power in West Bengal in 2011, putting an end to more than three decades of rule by the Left Front, headed by the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Now in a debilitated state, the CPI (M) entered into an informal alliance with the even more debilitated Congress. They could not prevent Mamata Banerjee’s return with a bang.

The CPI (M) suffered a double defeat. It lost the status of the main opposition to the Congress, which had contested fewer seats but won more than it could.

Tamil Nadu has been ruled by two regional parties, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and its breakaway group, the All India Anna DMK, since 1967. In recent elections the two parties had won in alternate elections. This time AIADMK Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa beat off the DMK’s challenge and secured a second successive term.

The Trinamool Congress and the AIADMK were both constituents of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance when Atal Behari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister, and Mamata Banerjee was a member of his Cabinet. But the two parties have stayed out of Modi’s NDA.

The Congress party forged an alliance with the DMK in Tamil Nadu. Failing to find an ally, the BJP went alone, and 230 of its 232 candidates forfeited their deposits as they got less than one-sixth of the valid votes polled in their constituencies.

In Kerala, where the Congress-led United Democratic Front and the CPI (M)-led Left Democratic Front have been alternating in power for more than three decades, the BJP picked up an Assembly seat for the first time. A new Hindu party set up by the social organisation of the Ezhavas, the largest OBC community, with Modi’s blessings, was its main ally. While the alliance cut into the votes of the UDF and the LDF, it could not prevent the LDF’s assumption of power in keeping with the established pattern.

The Congress which lost power in Assam and Kerala received a consolation prize in Puduchcherry.

Modi, whose forte is electioneering, has already started making plans for next year’s big fights.-- Gulf Today, May 24, 2016.

BJP bid to extend footprint

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

India has six political organisations which the Election Commission has recognised as national parties. They are, in the order of their appearance on the political scene, the Congress, the Communist Party of India, the Bharatiya Janata Party, the CPI-Marxist, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the National Congress Party.

They owe their national status to the easy terms set by the Commission. When the CPI was about to lose its national status a few years ago, the Commission lowered the norms to help it remain a national party.

The Congress party has declined since the days of the first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Nationally, it has been pushed to the second place by the BJP. In the big states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu it is in the third, fourth or even still lower place.

For several decades, the influence of the two Communist parties has been limited to the three states of West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura. Five years ago the regional Trinamool Congress brought to an end three decades of Left rule in West Bengal.

The Bahujan Samaj Party of former UP Chief Minister Mayawati and the National Congress Party of former Maharashtra strongman Sharad Pawar are essentially one-state parties with just enough presence elsewhere to qualify for national status.

The BJP is the only national party which has recorded growth in the recent past. In the 2014 parliamentary elections, Narendra Modi led it to a spectacular victory, and it became the first party to secure an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha in three decades.

While it swept several states in the north and the west, it could not make much headway in the east and the south.

Two eastern states, West Bengal and Assam, and two southern states, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, are going to the polls in May to elect new Assemblies. Assam has been under Congress rule for 15 years. In Kerala, the Congress-led United Democratic Front is seeking an unprecedented second successive term. West Bengal and Tamil Nadu are ruled by regional parties.

These states, which together account for 113 Lok Sabha seats, had contributed only 10 seats to the BJP’s tally of 281 in 2014. The party is hoping to use the opportunity provided by the Assembly elections to extend its footprint in these regions.

In the Lok Sabha elections the BJP had done well in Assam, winning seven of its 14 seats with the help of regional parties aligned with it. In West Bengal it got only two out of 42 seats and in Tamil Nadu just one out of 39.

Assam is the only one of the four states where the BJP is represented in the Assembly at present. It has five members in the 126-member house. It has no members in the outgoing Assemblies of West Bengal and Tamil Nadu.

Kerala has been inhospitable to Hindutva politics all along. Neither the BJP nor its predecessor, the Jana Sangh, ever won a Lok Sabha or Assembly seat in the state. However, in last year’s local bodies elections the BJP did well in some urban centres, including the capital city of Thiruvananthapuram, where it emerged as the second largest party in the City Corporation after the CPI-M.

This has led to high hopes in the BJP camp, and the party’s national leadership and its ideological mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, are directly plotting the party’s campaign in the state to take advantage of what they view as a favourable situation.

A key element of their strategy is attracting sections of the backward castes and Dalits who are disillusioned with both the CPI-M and the Congress for one reason or another. Traditionally, the bulk of these sections have voted for the Left. The BJP has succeeded in enlisting the support of a couple of organisations of backward communities but the ability of their leaders to influence electoral conduct remains to be proved.

While the Congress and the CPI-M are engaged in a bitter power struggle in Kerala, their West Bengal units have come to a tacit understanding with the blessings of their national leaderships to take on Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress.

The Trinamool Congress and a few regional parties of Tamil Nadu, including Chief Minister J Jayalithaa’s All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, were constituents of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance when Atal Behari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister. These parties have shown no interest in aligning with Modi’s BJP. The party as well as the RSS must introspect on why its ability to win friends has diminished. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, March 15, 2016.

Crucial election for Left

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

West Bengal and Kerala, strongholds of the Communist Party of India-Marxist, are among four Indian states going to the polls shortly. For the Left movement, the outcome of the assembly elections in these states is crucial.

In West Bengal, the Left Front, headed by the CPI-M, has been in office continuously since 1977. The severe setbacks the party suffered in last year’s municipal elections and the previous year’s Lok Sabha elections have damaged its winning record.

The Left’s main challenger in West Bengal is the All India Trinamool Congress, founded by Mamata Banerjee after quitting the Congress in 1997 saying it was soft on the CPI-M. It quickly became the main opposition.

In 2004 the Trinamool Congress aligned itself with the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Lok Sabha poll and became a partner in the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government. Now it is a partner of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government. Last week Mamata Banerjee, as Railway Minister, offered a bouquet of projects to West Bengal to woo the voters.

The Congress, which has had a troubled relationship with the volatile Mamata Banerjee, has reconciled itself to being a junior partner of the Trinamool Congress.

The CPI-M is facing the electorate with a severe handicap as the bitterness caused by its high-handed action in Nandigram and Singur against those opposing forcible acquisition of land for industrial projects has not subsided. Mamata Banerjee personally led the agitation in both places.

Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya lacks the charisma of Jyoti Basu, whom he had succeeded a decade ago, and the LF partners who unquestioningly accepted the CPI-M’s dictates earlier are now remonstrating.

The CPI-M national leadership is hoping for gains in Kerala to compensate for likely losses in West Bengal.

In the last three decades, Kerala has voted the Left Democratic Front, led by the CPI-M, and the United Democratic Front, led by the Congress, to power in alternate elections. The LDF, which will have to make way for the UDF this year if the trend continues, is making a bold bid to break the jinx and win a second successive term.

The poll season began, as usual, with ministers laying foundation stones for projects and the parties organising marches to enthuse the cadres. Away from public gaze, other strategies were also taking shape.

An estranged relative of Muslim League leader and former UDF minister PK Kunhalikutty, whose name had cropped up in a sex scandal in the 1990s, and a television channel spilt into the public domain information on how he had got away without even figuring as an accused in the case. The government promptly asked the police to investigate the matter.

It also sought the Vigilance court’s nod for further investigation in the palmolein case which Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan had been pursuing from the time he was Leader of the Opposition. The prime accused in the case, former Chief Minister K Karunakaran, died recently. The fresh probe is aimed at bringing Leader of the Opposition Oommen Chandy into the net.

The CPI-M had demoted Achuthanandan from the Politburo in 2009 as a disciplinary measure. But his image as a crusader against corruption has brightened with the Supreme Court awarding a year’s rigorous imprisonment to Kerala Congress (B) leader and former UDF minister R Balakrishna Pillai in another case which too he had been pursuing independently of the government. However, it is not clear whether the party is ready to restore his Politburo membership and give him another term as chief minister.

Responding to the revival of the old cases against its leaders, the UDF also tried to breathe new life into some old allegations. Its primary target now is Achuthanandan’s son, VA Arunkumar, not any of the ministers against whom it had previously levelled charges.

The re-floated scandals are unlikely to sway the fronts’ traditional supporters whose loyalties are primordial. Will they persuade the non-partisan voters whose swing from one front to the other leads to a change of government? The answer to this question must wait.

Although the CPI-M does not figure in power play outside Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura, its decline has implications for the nation as a whole. It will further reduce the influence of the Left which has raised its voice against the evils of globalisation even though it has generally comprised with them where it is in power. --Gulf Today, February 28, 2011.

Left on the decline

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The Left-wing parties which wield power in three states in India are going downhill. The Communist Party of India-Marxist, which leads the pack, was routed in local self-government elections in Kerala last week. It had received a severe drubbing in the municipal elections in West Bengal in May.

The Left Front, headed by the CPI-M, has ruled West Bengal continuously for more than three decades, setting a record. The Left Democratic Front, also led by it, has been voted to office in Kerala in alternate elections for as long.

Coming after the heavy losses in last year’s parliamentary poll, the reverses in the local elections are a major setback for the CPI-M as it prepares for the Assembly elections, due next year, in the two states. The other Left parties count for little.

The CPI-M has established procedures for evaluation of its performance, identification of mistakes and initiation of remedial action. However, the time available to it to take corrective measures and avoid a third successive reverse is too short.

Lately, the corrective system has not been functioning well. The party’s state and central committees had conducted mandatory reviews after the Lok Sabha poll but no meaningful measures ensued.

When the country gained freedom in 1947, the Communist Party of India was committed to a policy of violent revolution but it participated in the elections. In the first national elections on adult franchise, held in 1952, it emerged as the largest opposition group in the Lok Sabha, winning more seats than the Socialist Party which polled more votes.

Five years later, the world sat up and took notice as the CPI formed the government in Kerala. That was the first time Communists had come to power through the ballot box anywhere. The government, sadly, was short-lived. The Centre dismissed it in 1959 as violent protests against land and educational reforms initiated by it swept the state.

Despite the rude experience, the CPI remained on the parliamentary path. When the party split in two in the wake of the rift in the international communist movement both the factions continued along the same course. Although communist influence in the country shrank, the CPI-M outpaced the parent body and emerged as the strongest political formation in West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura.

In all these states the CPI-M is now facing a problem which other parties that are a part of the power structure have faced before. It is problem resulting from prolonged exposure to and involvement in power politics. As a party with an assured place in the ruling Establishment it tends to attract those seeking political power more than those wanting social and economic changes.

Party documents show that it is losing long-term cadres who are not interested in the loaves of office. The annual dropout rate has been above 10 per cent in Kerala for some year. It is one of several states where more than 40 per cent of the party members are comparative newcomers.

Elections are a costly process. In a five-year period, parties now face three separate elections — one to the Lok Sabha, another to the Assembly and the third to the local bodies. At one time the CPI-M could proudly say it relied entirely on small contributions from the poor. Material that surfaced in the recent past indicates that the Kerala party has benefited from the munificence of some businessmen with dubious backgrounds.

The absence of charismatic leaders like EMS Namboodiripad and Jyoti Basu, who had led the party in Kerala and West Bengal along the parliamentary path in the early years, is a major handicap for the CPI-M in facing today’s challenges. To make things worse, the central leadership is in the hands of persons with little grassroots level political experience.

Under former general secretary Harkishen Singh Surjeet, the CPI-M had carved out a place for itself in national politics by acting as a catalyst in the formation of non-Congress governments when elections threw up a hung parliament. His successor, Prakash Karat, helped in the formation of the last Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government and the party was able to influence its working to some extent.

Karat’s attempt to bring down the UPA government on the issue of the civilian nuclear agreement with the United States backfired. His effort to put together a non-Congress, non-Bharatiya Janata Party alternative in advance of the 2009 Lok Sabha elections also failed. The party needs a win in the Assembly elections to retain its relevance at the national level.--Gulf Today, Sharjah, November 1, 2010.

India’s Maoist dilemma: the case of Lalgarh

AARADHANA JHUNJHUNWALA
Open Democracy

The ongoing security crisis in West Bengal exposes the cracks in Indian democracy, stemming from a volatile mix of poor governance, petty politics, and a fundamental breakdown in credibility

A battle rages on in the Indian state of West Bengal, between Maoist guerillas called the Naxalites (Naxalbari is the name of a village in West Bengal where the movement was born in 1967) and national and paramilitary forces. The Naxalites, a banned outfit deemed as "a terrorist organization" by the central government, had proclaimed the Lalgarh area of West Midnapore district in Bengal, with its 44 villages, a "liberated zone" on 16 June 2009.

Since then, state and national security personnel have been sent to flush out the Naxals and bring Lalgarh and its adjoining areas under the government's control. In the 20 days since the Special Forces were deployed, not a single Maoist leader has been arrested in the area, besides the group's spokesperson in the city of Kolkata, some 200 kms from Lalgarh. The fear is that the guerilla fighters have retreated to jungles along West Bengal's border with the neighbouring state of Chhattisgarh and may return once the forces currently in Lalgarh withdraw.

Prelude to the siege

On 2 November 2008, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya traveled with 3 ministers of the central government in a high-security convoy through the south-west region of his state after inaugurating a steel plant. On its way to Kolkata from West Midnapore, the convoy narrowly missed being blown to bits by an improvised explosive device. When senior members of the government travel by road, a careful "sanitization" of the route is carried out. The fact that a crude bomb was triggered from a kilometer away through a wire running across open fields and narrowly missed the minister's cars, was a blatant reminder of the deteriorating law and order situation in West Bengal.

The current crisis in Lalgarh is seen as a direct fallout of this attempt to blow up the ministers' cars. The West Bengal police, shamed by the audacity of the attack, allegedly arrested innocent young men and women in the Lalgarh area, accusing them of having links with Naxalites who had already claimed the bomb to be their handiwork. The police's repressive tactics and the unwillingness of local leaders to intervene on behalf of the people was the tipping point of the population's anger, which had built over years of similar experiences with the state's security officials.

Thereafter, the people of Lalgarh have been agitating both peacefully and often violently against policemen and politicians alike, leading up to the 16 June declaration of a liberated zone.

India's Maoists are not a newly formed group and do not have any direct links with Maoist movements in neighboring countries such as Nepal. They are a domestic organization, although it remains unclear where contemporary militants purchase their weaponry from. Ever since the first Maoist uprising in Naxalbari in 1967, the movement has grown in size and covers one third of the country's districts, across 9 states. They are considered a major security threat to the country as acknowledged by successive national and state administrations and yet no concrete strategy to combat them has been undertaken.

The Maoists have spread across regions in central and eastern India where some of the country's poorest and most marginalised population is concentrated. Pratik Kanjilal writes in the Hindustan Times that a map marking some of the least developed districts in the country would easily overlap those with Naxal activity.

A failure of governance and development

The current case of West Bengal is a little out of the ordinary. When the Communist Party of India (Marxist) first received a mandate to govern the eastern state in 1977, it was after the last remaining Naxalbari activists had been driven out of the state by the then chief minster of West Bengal, Siddhartha Shankar Ray of the Congress Party. The Marxists introduced land reforms benefiting many in rural Bengal who for generations had worked as landless laborers on farms owned by "zamindars", landlords.

Today, the Marxists take credit for rooting out Maoists from West Bengal, instead of acknowledging Ray's role and it is this imaginative history that contributed to the government's arrogant and complacent attitude to the renewed Naxal threat.

Falling behind on promises to develop rural infrastructure, to create jobs for people (the Indian governments National Rural Employment Guarantee Program is yet to be implemented in the district) and to provide basic healthcare and education facilities are the root causes for disenchantment with the ruling government in West Bengal. Yet, as many commentators in the media point out, the West Bengal government could have saved these territories from falling in to the hands of the Maoists if they had woken up from their slumber when reports of Naxal activity began trickling in around 2004.

A South Asia Intelligence Review report from 2004 warns of a possible "Naxalbari Redux" in Bengal and points out how the administration, including Chief Minister Bhattacharya were aware of growing discontent and violence in West Midnapore and its surrounding districts, yet chose to ignore them as minor, local protests. In an assessment of the ongoing stand off in Lalgarh, KPS Gill, one of the country's most well-respected police officers, blames the "state denial, appeasement and progressive error; paralysis in the face of rising Maoist violence," which allowed the group to spread its operations further in to Bengal. He also faults the lack of a comprehensive strategy to root out the Naxals; since the start of paramilitary operations, the rebels seem to have simply melted away into adjoining forests and even neighboring states.

It is not simply underdevelopment that lies at the heart of people's distress. Aditya Nigam points out in the Tehelka magazine that the Left Front government has been nothing short of a totalitarian regime that allows no room for dissent and complaint. The party's cadres have been accused of high-handedness, bearing illegal arms, siphoning off state funds and preventing citizens from speaking out against the party. Their activities are unchecked by West Bengal's police force, which remains hijacked by the Left Front's leaders.

It is in this vacuum of a law and order system and out of fear of cadre violence and police brutality that the people of rural Bengal turned to groups such as the People's Committee Against Police Atrocities (PSBJC), formed after last November's police brutalities in Lalgarh and eventually the Maoists, who claim to support the populace in its uprising against the state's hubris and complacency.
Playing politics with the Maoists

Bengal's main opposition party the Trinamool Congress and its leader Mamata Banerjee picked up 19 seats in the recent national elections and is part of the coalition ruling at the centre. In her agitations against state brutality in Nandigram in 2007 and against poor land acquisition policies in Singur in 2008, Banerjee is accused of receiving help from local Maoist groups. The PSBJC's convener, Chhatradhar Mahato was once a member of her party and his older brother is a high-ranking Maoist operative sought by the police. Hence, the Left Front has been quick to accuse Banerjee of allowing the Maoists to penetrate Bengal.

However, in an interview with Livemint, Koteswar Rao, head of guerilla operations for the CPI (Maoist) dismisses the claim that his group had been receiving support from the main opposition party in the state. The Maoists claim to support only the people, and in particular the adivasis or tribals in Lalgarh and its adjoining areas. However, CNN-IBN has Rao on record saying that Banerjee should refrain from allowing the central government to send paramilitary forces to West Midnapore, as she would lose the people's support.

Whether Banerjee was seeking help from Maoists during her earlier agitations at Nandigram and Singur is unclear, yet many in Bengal's administration are more than convinced and accuse her of bringing the guerillas into the state's internal politics. Banerjee, now the Minister of Railways in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's cabinet, denies allegations of collusion with the Maoists for her own political gains. She points out the Left Front's poor governance and the poor behavior of its cadres as the primary reasons behind the unrest in Lalgarh. For the moment, she is happy to let the state government deal with the Maoists as she doesn't want either side to use her as a pawn to blame the consequences of their decisions on.

"Good" or "evil"?

The nature and organization of people's groups such as the PSBJC has been a matter of great debate in the Indian media. The Hoot, a media watchdog traces the different representations of the PSBJC in newspapers, blogs and magazines from across the country. Some commentators assume that the PSBJC is a front for the Maoists, but several others have been skeptical of such assumptions as they point to reports of the organization undertaking small-scale relief projects in West Midnapore since it began its agitation against the state police. While mainstream newspapers and news channels are sticking to the former line, bloggers have written out against such an oversimplification.

Some extend this argument to the media's treatment of Maoists as well and claim that they cannot be labeled "terrorists" all that easily. Writer and activist Arundhati Roy has also warned the media and population at large of such a simplification of the Maoist movement in a recent article for Outlook magazine.

Nobody's battle, everyone's troubles

From being a bastion of the Left Front, Lalgarh has become the centre of a complicated battle involving a state government, its opposition, paramilitary forces, an elusive and banned guerilla group and most tragically, the local populace. The Left Front and its opposition continue to blame one another for resurgent Maoist activity in West Bengal; an elite paramilitary force tries to hunt down the Maoists with out any real action plan; and the state administration has still not acknowledged its poor governance record in West Midnapore or even announced any long term program of reform.

In the cross-fire between all these groups, the people of Lalgarh and its surrounding districts seem to have no one trustworthy to turn to who will deliver job security, roads, schools and hospitals along with access to a really democratic space where they may express their grievances freely without fear of being literally shot down. Simply flushing out the Maoist guerillas is no long term solution. The law of the land seems to have fled from the district some years ago, and no one has a roadmap for bringing it back.

Aaradhana Jhunjhunwala is a Kolkata-based writer and blogger. She recently graduated from the University of Pennsylvania where she studied History, Economics and Comparitive Literature.

Neglect will convert India into a police state, warns AHRC

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600th POST OF THIS BLOG
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The following is a statement issued by the Asian Human Rights Commission, Hong Kong:

The Indian state of West Bengal is once again in the news for condemnable reasons. In a short span, the conflict in Lalgarh of West Midnapore district has increased in intensity, costing life and property. Today, the Maoists have called for a 48-hour-long strike paralysing life in almost the entire state.

Violence propagated by the Maoist and Naxalite ideologies, for whatever reason, cannot be justified. Yet, the spread of Maoist activities in the state resulting in the state administration losing control over several villages is nothing but an indicator of the callousness and the criminal neglect the state administration entertains against the poorest of the poorest -- the tribal communities in the state.

The spread of Maoist and Naxalite activities in India has been gradual and concentrated in the most neglected regions of the country. Regions that have succumbed to the spread of Maoist and Naxalite violence are governed by corrupt state administrations to a relatively higher degree, notorious for their feudal practices, and for entertaining total disregard to the life of the rural populace, particularly of the members of the tribal communities. The fact that the Maoists could claim control of several villages in West Bengal, a state administered for more than three decades by the champions of the working-class, draws parallels between the corrupt administrations in the rest of India and West Bengal government.

Indiscriminate isolation and alienation of the rural communities and the capitalisation of their natural habitat with complete disregard to the life and the fundamental rights of the people who depend on these resources is the fertile soil for a Maoist or a Naxalite. While the growth of Maoists and Naxalite cadres indicates the absence of the writ of the state in parts of the country, in the Indian context, it is also the indicator of extreme poverty and violence used against innocent citizens by the state and those who are sponsored by the state. In this context, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) cadres and the Salwa Judum are parallel forces operating with common intentions -- the exploitation of the poor. While the CPI (M) cadres receive unparalleled support from the party secretariat, the Salwa Judum receives similar encouragement from the upper caste and the rich.

The West Bengal state government's response to the Maoist uprising is equally condemnable like the response of the state governments in Chhattisgarh, Uttaranchal, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh to the Naxalite problem in these states. The only difference is the West Bengal State Police is so alienated from the people that the state administration had to call for central reserve police units to take charge of the situation.

The West Bengal state administration did nothing to prevent a situation that has now forced thousands to flee from the state, or at the minimum, to ensure the safety of those fleeing from the war zone. Instead, the state administration and its leaders are engaged in discussions in New Delhi and Kolkata to figure out how the CPI (M) lost pathetically in the national elections, once again demonstrating their neglect to the constitutional mandate and the requirement of the people.

The Naxalite and Maoist problem is complex. In minimalist terms, Naxalism and Maoism in India are the response of a highly oppressed community, forced to remain silent for decades, against the forces it sees as its oppressors. The response by the government so far has been based on the philosophy of the use of violence to curb violence. To prove that this will not work, India has several examples, of which the situation in Manipur, Assam and Jammu and Kashmir stands out, in terms of the period of conflict, the life and property lost and in terms of the lack of 'success' in achieving any progress.

A peaceful solution to the Maoist and Naxalite problem is not beyond the reach of the government. There will not be a solution to prevent Maoist or Naxlaite violence in the country, unless the fundamental guarantees, particularly of the rural poor concerning their right to food, health and life are protected, promoted and fulfilled. Unfortunately however, the state as well as central administration in the country is neglectful to this fact. Instead, the administrations seem to be looking forward to convert India into a police state.

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About AHRC: The Asian Human Rights Commission is a regional non-governmental organisation monitoring and lobbying human rights issues in Asia. The Hong Kong-based group was founded in 1984

Communal elements shift focus from Nandigram to Taslima Nasrin

TASLIMA NASRIN

KOLKATA witnessed mob violence on Wednesday in the wake of a protest called by a little known group called the All India Minority Forum. Although the group was ostensibly protesting against the CPI (M) atrocities in Nandigram, Islamic fundamentalists shifted the focus to their campaign against Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasrin.

Nandigram has a large Muslim population. Several Muslim organizations were cooperating with the Bhoomi Uchched Samiti, which spearheaded the agitation against eviction.

Taslima Nasrin, author of several best-sellers, had fled Bangladesh in 1994 after extremist groups in the country targeted her and she lost her job as doctor at the Dhaka Medical College.

The fundamentalists were annoyed with her as she had said religious scriptures were out of time and out of place. She had also called for a uniform civil code that accorded women equality and justice.

An organization by the name of Soldiers of Islam issued a fatwa against her and set a price on her head. Fourteen political parties and religious organizations jointly called a general strike and demanded that she be hanged. There were several street demonstrations in Dhaka, and newspapers which published her writings were attacked.

After spending a few years in exile in Europe, Taslima Nasrin came to India and took up residence in Kolkata. Islamic fundamentalists have been opposing her stay in the country since then. Last August, goons led by three MLAs of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen attacked her at the Press Club in Hyderabad, when she went there to address a press conference.

Apparently the harassed CPI (M) leadership is ready to appease the communal forces. The party’s State secretary Biman Bose said Taslima Nasrin must leave the State to ensure that violence did not recur.

Taslima Nasrin’s current visa expires on February 17 next year.

In a statement, the Mumbai-based group EKTA (Committee for Communal Amity) deplored the fundamentalists’ demand for Taslima Nasreen’s expulsion.

EKTA said, “The linking up of this demand with protests against the state-sponsored bloodbath in Nandigram is highly intriguing, to say the least. We join our voices with all voices of sanity in decrying this act of criminal insanity seriously threatening the social peace and equilibrium in the city.

“We do highly welcome the decision of the State government to deploy the Army to restore peace and also confidence of the common citizens. We do, however, strongly deplore the call given by the CPI(M) State Secretary and the ruling Left Front Chairman, Biman Bose, before TV cameras that Ms. Nasrin should leave the State forthwith in theinterest of peace. We consider such comment highly provocative and downright nauseating.

"The reported offer by the city police to the Bangladeshi writer tomove her out of the State cannot but be linked to the comment made by the LF Chairman. We do strongly protest such move.”

Official website of Taslima Nasrin at http://taslimanasrin.com/

PS: CNN-IBN reports that West Bengal police has moved Taslima Nasrin to Rajasthan.

PPS: Biman Bose withdrew his statement a day later. This was done after the West Bengal police removed Taslima Nasrin to Rajasthan. It is nevertheless welcome as it indicates his – and, hopefully, his party’s – readiness to respect public sentiments.