People's Democracy

Class Assault On CPI(M)

Will Be Defeated

AS anticipated, post Assembly elections in West Bengal, a murderous class assault has been unleashed against the CPI(M) and the workers of the Left Front by the Trinamool Congress led combine.  These attacks began soon after the declaration of election results on May 13.  In various parts of the state, targeting especially those areas where the Left Front had won, Party offices and trade union offices were systematically attacked and the Red Flags were torn down with the forcible hoisting of the Trinamool flag.  The houses of local Left Front leaders have been torched and looted. The resistance by the Left comrades was met with murderous attacks. In the first 48 hours, three leading CPI(M) members in the districts of Burdhaman, West Midnapore and Bankura were brutally murdered.  Elsewhere in this issue, some details of these ongoing attacks are given. 

In a parliamentary democracy, usually elections always throw up a winner and a looser.  However, as we have been repeatedly arguing in these columns in the past, in Bengal, the electoral defeat of the Left Front is being used as an opportunity by the vested interests of the ruling classes to mount a class offensive to undo the gains made by the people during the Left Front rule.  This is precisely what is being attempted through these assaults. 

For instance, in the Jangal Mahal area, with the help of the Maoists, the Trinamool Congress is mounting an offensive on those who received land as a part of the Left Front’s land reform programme.  By drawing these hitherto landless agricultural labour and poor peasants, who, today, are legitimate owners of land, into long drawn litigation through such attacks, the erstwhile landlords hope to regain control over lands that they had once illegally held.  In simple terms, they are seeking to reverse the gains of land reforms in Bengal. In certain places, the working hours of agricultural workers have been forcibly increased and their daily wages decreased.  The over three decade long tradition of providing rice and meals to agricultural workers, during work, is being stopped.  In some places, the peasants are not being allowed to harvest the crop.  This is instead being reaped illegitimately.

It is a routine practice in Bengal that the CPI(M) daily, Ganashakti is displayed on boards  at important  street corners and crossings all across the state.  This is to enable those who cannot afford to buy the paper to at least read it.  Such boards are being attacked across the state, burnt or destroyed.

Employing fascist techniques, reminiscent of how Hitler mounted an attack against the Communists after the fascists themselves set fire to the Reichstag, arms are being placed in CPI(M) offices and houses of the leaders and the police is being called to arrest the comrades for possessing illegal arms.  Such are the diabolical levels to which the current class war has reached. 

For ostensible purposes, the Trinamool Congress and its chief publicly stated that, in these elections, they have sought a change and not revenge. In the same breath, however, the TMC chief has claimed that the violence against the Left Front supporters is due to infighting amongst the Left itself! During the election campaign, incendiary speeches were made to inflame passions by saying that the Trinamool workers will teach a proper lesson to the Left.  While the CPI(M) and the Left Front had graciously announced, with humility, that they will discharge their responsibilities as a constructive opposition, this is the class war that the TMC combine is unleashing in Bengal. 

Clearly, this is a class war that is aimed at seeking to weaken the CPI(M) and the Left Front, thus weaken the strength of the exploited classes in our society who had immensely gained from the policies of land reforms and panchayati raj in Bengal over the last three decades and more. 

This is not the first time that such a class attack is being unleashed against the CPI(M) and the Left.  The semi-fascist terror unleashed against the Party, with the massive rigging of the 1972 Assembly elections, that lasted till the defeat of Emergency in 1977, was aimed at seeking to decimate the Communist-led popular movements in the state. Over 1,400 comrades were martyred and 22,000 Party families had to be relocated during the successful resistance defeating this semi-fascist terror.  Contrary to the hopes and machinations of the ruling classes, the people of West Bengal had not only  reposed faith in the CPI(M)-led Left Front in the 1977 elections but continued to repose, in an unprecedented manner not found elsewhere in the country, such faith in the seven consecutive elections that followed. 

This time around too, the current class offensive will be met and will be defeated.  The lives of nearly 400 Left Front workers who have been martyred since the 2009 parliamentary election will not be allowed to be lost in vain.  We express our solidarity with our class brethren in Bengal in this class battle.  The hard-won  rights of the people of Bengal under the Left Front rule will not be allowed to be reversed. 

(May 18, 2011)