In Nanur, one of the more underdeveloped areas in West Bengal’s Birbhum district, people will tell you that the armed gang which killed former CPI(M) MLA Ananda Das and attacked and ransacked the CPI(M)’s zonal office were mostly outsiders. They first assembled at a nearby village Saonta, and then rode in on motorcycles. The attackers were accompanied by a Tata Sumo car carrying more gun-toting men. They had taken the help of a few local people to locate the CPI(M) offices. After fulfiling their ‘task’, the attackers left and probably crossed the river Ajay to Burdwan district.
The ‘pattern’ is the same everywhere. Rezzak Molla, the land and land revenue minister in the Left Front government and a member of the CPI(M) state committee, is a resident of Bhangar, South 24 Parganas district. He admitted that armed people on motorcycles come to his area and terrorise the people at gunpoint. “They are mostly outsiders, and come from Minakhan, Haroa and Rajarhat areas of the neighbouring North 24 Parganas district,” said Molla.
“After the Lok Sabha elections of 2009, they (attackers) started levying heavy fines on the known CPI(M) supporters. Now, they are forcing people to give in writing that they won’t support the CPI(M) anymore. Only on giving the undertaking are the people allowed to stay in their villages. Moreover, people are being forced to take part in the political activities of the Trinamool Congress (TC), the CPI(M)’s main opposition in the state, in their respective areas. As a result, a number of people have been forced to leave the area,” the minister said.
Between 1975 and 1977, during the Emergency years when the Naxal movement began consolidating in West Bengal, violence had dominated the urban life — areas in Kolkata, and in small towns of Nadia, Hooghly, Midnapore, Murshidabad, Burdwan, and North and South 24 Parganas. This time, violence has taken root in rural Bengal. A senior RSP (Revolutionist Socialist Party) leader of Birbhum district observed that earlier political parties used to pay attention to the importance of rural areas as the centre of political power. But after seeing how the CPI(M) built its support base in the rural areas and reaped huge political dividend, all these parties are now keen to take control of the rural Bengal physically. The violent turf war was born out of that and it gave rise to a demand for arms and musclemen. The motorcycle-borne armed gangs are only meeting that demand.
This phenomenon — of men on motorcycles — was first witnessed at Rajarhat in 1999-2000, when the CPI(M) unleashed them on the peasants and fishermen to break the resistance against the state government’s bid for acquiring their land for the satellite city New Town, adjoining Kolkata’s Salt Lake.
In Nanur, it was the RSP — a constituent of the ruling Left Front —which had called the shots in the area. But in 2000, 11 people, mostly poor farm labourers, were killed at Suchpur under the Nanur Police Station. The victims were brought in by a landlord to get control of his land after he got a favourable verdict from the Calcutta High Court. The assailants, allegedly linked to the CPI(M), refused to vacate and butchered the outsiders. The Suchpur case is still lingering in the trial court with one vital witness already murdered by unknown miscreants. According to the district-level RSP leaders, the victims were all with RSP, but were hesitant about taking up the issue with the CPI(M). The Mamata Banerjee-led TC seized this opportunity. Banerjee even claimed that the victims were her supporters.
After the murder of Ananda Das, Tapan Hore, the RSP MLA from Bolpur, had told the state Assembly that a number of RSP workers had joined TC in the recent past as they could not protect themselves on the face of the CPI(M)-sponsored attack.
That also explains the sudden groundswell of support for the TC. Ashis Banerjee, the TC leader in Birbhum, explains the present violence in terms of reactive moves by the ‘local people’. He claimed that the politics of violence was introduced in Nanur by the CPI(M). Now, people have started resisting this under the leadership of Mamata Banerjee. (To be continued)
