Like statistics, facts are open to a multiplicity of presentations. The shoot-out in Netai in Lalgarh area of West Midnapore, the deaths in Ketugram and Mangalkote in Burdwan district, the death of one student and the lost vision of another are not tragic and brutal deaths. Slaughter is now integral to the politics of ceaseless violence in West Bengal, supplanting every other means of conducting politics.
By the Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's reckoning a total of 104 people have been killed, 1,435 people have been injured as a result of political conflict between the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Trinamool Congress and the Congress in the State. The Maoist killings — 170 people slaughtered for allegiance to CPI(M) — are in a separate category. It all adds up to a lot of 'innocent' lives lost on account of the failure of political parties to conduct their rivalry in a democratic manner. It makes nonsense of the process that ends with elections where regimes change through a smooth and peaceful transition.
Early elections, the Chief Minister's exit, dismissal of the existing Government and elections under emergency provisions on the Indian Constitution will do very little to end the slaughter of whoever gets in the way of political rivalry. Collective wisdom has it that the Communists started the vicious politics of capturing territory and holding it by bribery, corruption, intimidation, violence; the Opposition was threatened and physically prevented from operating freely in the areas where the red flag fluttered. The way the politics worked was that there was no alternative to the CPI(M).
The fight back of the Opposition has followed the pattern already established. The CPI(M) has been pushed out of the territories liberated from its domination. Instead, there are territories where the Trinamool Congress was till recently in complete control, such as the area described as 'Nandigram'. In other words, between the CPI(M) and the Trinamool Congress, the pattern of politics currently in force in West Bengal is of capturing territory, holding it and resisting any restoration of normalcy, by which is meant a politics of competition that is not accompanied by intimidation and violence.
The fact of the matter is that neither the CPI(M) nor the Trinamool Congress can engage in politics without converting it into a war of liberation. The argument in West Bengal runs on the following lines, even among otherwise level headed persons: The only way to bring about a change of regime is by appropriating and using the methods deployed by the CPI(M) to remain in power for 34 years. Deconstructed and shorn of the veneer of righteousness what this translates into is a politics that uses the idea of occupation and liberation.
It discards without guilt the idea of a plural politics and the freedom of thought and choice that goes along with it. It legitimises the idea of 'cleansing' territories making refugees out of householders. Thousands of people have been compelled for reasons of politics to leave their homes and live in camps or relocate where their allegiance will not inflict punishment. These thousands are no less innocent than the innocents who were, according to one version, trapped in the cross fire between the CPI(M)'s armed militia in Netai and the armed militia that operated from behind the villagers who went to confront the CPI(M) holed up in the house of Rathin Dandapat. There are other versions of what happened, including one that alleges that the innocents who died were caught in a cross fire between two groups of CPI(M)'s militia.
Singur was the turning point. An adamant Government that failed to develop a dialogue over the land acquisition in Singur was matched by an Opposition that was equally resistant to the idea of negotiating a compromise. Accused of appropriating the land that some owners refused to sell, the West Bengal Government and the CPI(M) were converted into villains with the rest of the Opposition playing the role of victims and good guys. The fact that the Singur project was abandoned by the Tatas, who obviously could not see how a factory could operate given the intensity of political conflict was the game changer. It set the terms of the engagement.
Despite the spectacular victories of the Trinamool Congress in the panchayat, Lok Sabha and municipal elections in 2008, 2009 and 2010, through the normal democratic process, it was followed by a politics that demanded instant gratification. The demand was simple — the CPI(M) should quit and the Trinamool Congress-Congress alliance should take over. What followed and continues are the after effects. The cleavages that were created have made it impossible for West Bengal's politics to run on normal lines. The fight for domination which is what the politics has boiled down to will go on and on till one side gains the position of hegemony.
