People's Democracy

AS we go to press serious and dangerous attempts are being made to subvert the democratic process and popular verdict in West Bengal. On the night of the April 30, over 60 heavily armed members of the Trinamul Congress had entered the Keshpur village in Midnapore district with the obvious aim of once again terrorising the villagers, and repeating what had happened earlier in the Panskura bye-elections. This time round, however, the alert local villagers surrounded this criminal gang and alerted the police. More than 50 were arrested and a large number of automatic weapons and hundreds of rounds of ammunition confiscated.

What is necessary to note is that a large section of the media instead of decrying such activities of the Trinamul Congress (which are by no means confined only to Midnapore district) is seeking to downplay such brazen criminal activities. Given their congenital anti-Communist pre-occupation which includes the justification of violence against the common people in the name of fighting the Left, this media is becoming a partner in the subversion of democracy, in the worst possible manner. Shamelessly it even gave prominence to the ludicrous charge by the Trinamul that those criminals who escaped arrest by the police have been kidnapped by the CPI(M). The concern by the media is not that armed people are moving around to create violence and mayhem. The media’s worry appears more to be the fact that the Trinamul has been caught in the act, and to that extent the defeat of the Left recedes. So much for the commitment of this ‘fourth estate’ to democracy.

Pathetic, to say the least, is the deafening silence of the Congress. the Congress having chosen to tail the Trinamul is forced to support such butchery of democracy. Given its track record of semi-fascist terror under SS Ray and the Emergency under Mrs Gandhi, this is not altogether unnatural nor surprising. The BJP, of course, with its fascist ideology and training is ready to jettison democracy at the slightest pretext if its serves its political interests.

This Congress silence is not confined only to West Bengal. In Kerala also the Congress has not uttered a single word to condemn the murderous violence unleashed by the RSS against the CPI(M). It silence, it hopes, will buy the RSS votes in its favour. Thus for both the Congress and BJP democracy has become an institution that can be sacrificed at the alter of partisan political interests.

The media also is not limiting its role to buttressing such butchery of democracy. To influence the voters against the Left and manipulate people’s opinion, a series of dubious opinion polls are being fabricated, in which the Ananda Bazar Patrika and The Statesman lead the pack in their respective languages. In the interests of democracy, the time has come to initiate, after the elections, strong action against such polsters and their media sponsors where their predictions go wrong beyond their own stated margins of error.

The people of Kerala and West Bengal however, have for long been used to such desperate efforts by the bourgeois parties and the bourgeois media. By all indications all such efforts will come a cropper.