People's Democracy

THE People’s War Group (PWG) has established tie-up with the Trinamul Congress to commence a campaign of murder and mayhem against the CPI (M) in the western part of Bengal, especially in the districts of Purulia, Bankura, and of Midnapore (east and west).

It has become known that towards this end, the PWG has established state-level and district-level units in Kolkata itself and has built up a dozen-odd "hit squads" comprising hired criminals and professional killers in Purulia, Bankura, and Midnapore west. These murderers have been provided with sophisticated firearms.

The PWG have also managed to rope in a few career professionals including college and university teachers and doctors in Kolkata to provide a semblance of legitimacy to their campaign the principle aim of which is to "finishing off the CPI (M) in Bengal," as one of their circulars would succinctly put it.

These career city-based professionals act as couriers and conduits of the PWG. They collect funds, float, often with foreign funding, a few "tribal welfare" projects and "human rights protection" organisations, and try and subvert the members of the urban middle classes, amongst whom they live and work professionally, against the CPI (M) and campaign for what they would tout as "neo-Marxism."

In particular, these people target the student community, in and out of educational institutions, and try to create a romance-laden picture of "armed struggle," constantly drilling into receptive and gullible minds the extreme importance of "ruthless annihilation" of the "class enemy", in this case the CPI (M). They help the Trinamul Congress goons to target the SFI and the DYFI cadres.

In university campuses, these saboteurs try to ingratiate themselves to the students and speak of the "impending revolution" to be organised and led by (who else but) the PWG. Smooth purveyors of the untruth, these elements conveniently label themselves before the students-youth as occupying the "third political space" (!) in between the right reactionaries and the CPI (M), all the while keeping in close touch with the Trinamul Congress.

Sympathising reporters in at least one English and one Bengali mass circulated daily do their best to provide the killer squads and their political puppet-masters with the "right" kind of publicity.

It is in this background that a university teacher and a civil servant, among others, were taken into custody by the state police recently. Immediately, a section of the anti-left and a whole splinter load of left sectarian groups of self-styled protectors of "human rights" quickly joined force to lead a huge ruckus.

They raised a fierce hue-and-cry about "police brutalities," and about "the end of democratic rule," in Bengal. Leaders of political parties and Left fringe groups spoke about the "rise of fascism in Bengal." The Times of India in its Kolkata edition obliged by promptly floating an anchor story about the "return of the 1970s" in Bengal.

Indeed a section of the corporate press has been hard at work obliging the self-styled protectors of "democracy and human rights" by giving their utterances gracious front page coverage while incidents like the brutal murder of CPI (M) workers like comrade Ajit Ghosh are conveniently packed off to and buried in the anonymity of the inside pages

A visit to the Midnapore court on July 11 revealed that all four of the accused in a case of conspiring against the state presented a picture of carefree bonhomie. Interestingly none appeared to have been at the end of the receiving end of the somewhat proverbial "police brutality" about which the corporate press has been going to town in a frenzied frame of mind.

When we asked quartet of "neo-Marxists" while they were coming out of the court about their well being, they made a few taunting and derisory comments about the CPI (M) but could not come with any sentiments about their having been "tortured" by the police. They were, one noticed, being moved about, not in the notorious "black marias" but in spankingly new passenger cars.

All four clearly appeared hale-and-hearty and a cynical smile hung from their lips. Some of us who had been brutalised by the police during the period between 1972 and 1976, in particular, could very well realise that the persons taken into custody had certainly not met our fate even remotely.

The only persons disappointed in and around the Midnapore court appeared to be the representatives of the media and the self-styled guardians of human rights. They had assembled at the Midnapore court in strength to gather some "hard evidence" about the anti-democratic stand of the Left Front government and its "brutal police force."

They were visibly frustrated and disenchanted at not getting to lay their hands on the kind of "facts" that would have suited their purpose. We do understand their bitter disappointment but are regrettably not able to sympathise with their depressed state of mind.

In the meanwhile, back in Kolkata, Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee assured the shouting brigade of the Trinamul Congress MLAs in the Bengal Assembly that in no circumstances would the Left Front government ever allow a re-run of the terrible decade of the 1970s.

During those terrible years, one recalls, under the tutelage and leadership of the then chief minister, Siddharta Shankar Ray, every democratic norm had been trodden underfoot and a reign of terror had been let loose against the Left in general and the CPI (M) in particular.

As far as the present arrests are concerned, the point to stress is that the police have made their move in the first place not on the basis of the political conviction of the persons taken into custody. They had made the arrests on the irrefutable evidence that has been gathered that the persons concerned were for some time actively aiding and abetting the working out of plans of the PWG and its cohorts to go on a rampage of mayhem and murder in at least three of Bengal’s districts.

Speaking to the media in Kolkata on July 12, Left Front chairman, Biman Basu clarified to say that the police enquiry would bring to light the heinous conspiracy that was being hatched against an elected government in Bengal. He said that the arrests that had been made were on "a precise charge of conspiracy to murder and had nothing to do with the political beliefs or lack thereof of the persons concerned."