From Popular Movements To Rebellion: The Naxalite Decade 0367134667, 9780367134662, 0429648979, 9780429648977

Table of contents :
Cover......Page 1
Half Title......Page 2
Title......Page 4
Copyright......Page 5
Contents......Page 6
Preface and Acknowledgements......Page 10
Notes on Contributors......Page 14
1. From Popular Movements to Rebellion: Introducing the Naxalite Decade......Page 18
SECTION I PRELUDE TO THE STORM: BENGAL IN THE FIFTIES AND SIXTIES......Page 34
2. The Refugee Movement as a Founding Moment of Popular Movements in Post-independent West Bengal......Page 36
3. Anti-Tram Fare Rise Movement and Teachers' Movement in Calcutta, 1953-54......Page 65
4. The Defining Moments of Left Popular Politics in West Bengal: The Food Movements of 1959 and 1966......Page 102
SECTION II THE NAXALITE DECADE......Page 136
5. The Artisans of Revolt: Peasant Activists of Naxalbari......Page 138
6. Repertoires and Politics in the Time of Naxalbari......Page 169
7. The Prairie Fire Spreads I: Medinipur......Page 186
8. The Prairie Fire Spreads II: Birbhum......Page 218
9. Occupy College Street: Notes from the Sixties......Page 247
10. The Culture Battle......Page 270
11. Spring Thunder and the Dialectic of Critique......Page 294
12. The Naxalite Decade Comes to a Close, but Land Question Persists......Page 324
SECTION III THE DECADE IN BIHAR......Page 356
13. Bihar in 1974: Possibilities and Limits of a Popular Movement......Page 358
14. Bihar in the Sixties and Seventies: The Enigmatic Figure of Karpoori Thakur......Page 390
15. Reports: Rural Poor and the Armed Rebels of Bihar, 1960-70s......Page 415
SECTION IV THE CULTURAL STRUGGLE: A SMALL ANTHOLOGY......Page 450
16. Introducing the Anthology......Page 452
17. The Palpable Reality of Fiction......Page 458
18. Ani/Ani......Page 462
19. Midnight Knock/Kapatey Karagbat......Page 475
20. Corpse Worship/Sbabasadbana......Page 488
21. Human Gems/Manusbratan......Page 497
22. Homecoming/Ghare Phera......Page 518
23. Release Them/Mukti Chai......Page 525
24. Reportage......Page 544
Annexure 1: Report on the Peasant Movement in the Terai Region......Page 555
Bibliography......Page 578

Citation preview

From Popular Movements to Rebellion

From Popular Movements to Rebellion: The Naxalite Decade argues that without an understanding of the popular sources of the rebellion of that time, the age of the Naxalite revolt will remain beyond our understanding. Many of the chapters of the book bring out for the first time unknown peasant heroes and heroines of that era, analyses the nature of the urban revolt, and shows how the urban revolt of that time anticipated street protests and occupy movements that were to shake the world forty-fifty years later. This is a moving and poignant book. Some of the essays are deeply reflective about why the movement failed and was at the end alienated. Ranabir Samaddar says that, the Naxalite Movement has been denied a history. The book also carries six powerful short stories written during the Naxalite Decade and which are palpably true to life of the times. The book has some rare photographs and ends with newspaper clippings from the period. As a study of rebellious politics in post-Independent India, this volume with its focus on West Bengal and Bihar will stand out as an exceptional history of contemporary times. From Popular Movements to Rebellion: The Naxalite Decade will be of enormous relevance to students and scholars of history, politics, sociology and culture, and journalists and political and social activists at large.

Ranabir Samaddar holds the Distinguished Chair in Migration and Forced Migration Studies, Calcutta Research Group, and is a political thinker and one of the foremost theorists in the field of migration and forced migration studies. Author of several well known books and distinguished papers, his writings on migration, labour, colonialism, and the nation state have signalled a new turn in critical postcolonial thinking. To mention only two, Beyond Kolkata: Rajarhat and the Dystopia of Urban Imagination (Routledge, 2014) and his latest work, Karl Marx and the Postcolonial Age (Palgrave MacMillan, 2017) which discusses the relevance of Marx in the global age of postcolonialism and neoliberalism.

From Popular Movements To Rebellion The Naxalite Decade

Edited by

Ranabir Samaddar

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 selection and editorial matter, Ranabir Samaddar; individual chapters, the contributors; and Social Science Press The right of Ranabir Samaddar to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan or Bhutan) British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-13466-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-02670-6 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon 10/13.1 by Manmohan Kumar, Delhi 110035

Contents Preface and Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors 1. From Popular Movements to Rebellion: Introducing the Naxalite Decade Ranabir Samaddar

ix xiii 1

SECTION I

PRELUDE TO THE STORM: BENGAL IN THE FIFTIES AND SIXTIES 2. The Refugee Movement as a Founding Moment of Popular Movements in Post-independent West Bengal Paula Banerjee and Sucharita Sengupta 3. Anti-Tram Fare Rise Movement and Teachers’ Movement in Calcutta, 1953–54 Answesha Sengupta 4. The Defining Moments of Left Popular Politics in West Bengal: The Food Movements of 1959 and 1966 Sibaji Pratim Basu

19

48 85

SECTION II

THE NAXALITE DECADE 5. The Artisans of Revolt: Peasant Activists of Naxalbari Translation by Purna Banerjee 6. Repertoires and Politics in the Time of Naxalbari Ranabir Samaddar 7. The Prairie Fire Spreads I: Medinipur Anwesha Sengupta

121 152 169

vi CONTENTS

8. The Prairie Fire Spreads II: Birbhum Atig Ghosh 9. Occupy College Street: Notes from the Sixties Ranabir Samaddar 10. The Culture Battle Subhoranjan Dasgupta 11. Spring Thunder and the Dialectic of Critique Ranabir Samaddar 12. The Naxalite Decade Comes to a Close, but Land Question Persists Atig Ghosh

201 230 253 277 307

SECTION III

THE DECADE IN BIHAR 13. Bihar in 1974: Possibilities and Limits of a Popular Movement Mithilesh Kumar 14. Bihar in the Sixties and Seventies: The Enigmatic Figure of Karpoori Thakur Manish Kumar Jha 15. Reports: Rural Poor and the Armed Rebels of Bihar, 1960–70s

341

373

398

SECTION IV

THE CULTURAL STRUGGLE: A SMALL ANTHOLOGY 16. Introducing the Anthology Sumanta Banerjee 17. The Palpable Reality of Fiction Subhransu Maitra 18. Ani/Ani By Ashim Ray Translated by Subhransu Maitra 19. Midnight Knock/Kapatey Karaghat Tapabijoy Ghosh Translated by Subhransu Maitra

435 441 445

458

CONTENTS

vii

20. Corpse Worship/Shabasadhana Saibal Mitra Translated by Subhransu Maitra 21. Human Gems/Manushratan Debesh Roy Translated by Subhransu Maitra 22. Homecoming/Ghare Phera Ashim Ray Translated by Subhransu Maitra 23. Release Them/Mukti Chai Tapabijoy Ghosh Translated by Subhransu Maitra 24. Reportage

471

Annexure 1: Report on the Peasant Movement in the Terai Region Kanu Sanyal Bibliography

538

480

501

508

527

561

Preface and Acknowledgements

T

he last three centuries have famously demonstrated that revolutions are the locomotive of history. By the same token revolts have impacted societies in an unprecedented manner. Today we can say that the Naxalite decade impacted Indian society and politics in an indelible way. Subsequent reforms such as agrarian reforms, administrative policies, the twenty-point programme, police reforms, political restructuring of the State – all these owe to a great extent to the decade of insurgency and revolts. As a real-life critique of Indian society, the decade produced a new kind of subjectivity that refuses to die and emerges periodically through various forms of political insubordination. It was a kind of singular metabolism which devoured the narratives of past revolts and threw them back at history in changed forms. It did not produce so much a definite structure of new politics, as a kind of direction to which radical politics must orient itself. The Naxalite decade narrated in this book along with its genealogies has been loosely defined here. Readers will find in this chronicle the duration of the decade appearing variously as from 1967 to 1977, mid-1960s to mid-1970s, and at times from 1967 to the end of 1970s. In fact, in Bihar the Naxalite decade followed the one in Bengal. In Andhra Pradesh the decade began in late 1960s and continued up to early 1980s and then flowed into later insurgencies. Such is the plural temporality of a time, in this case a decade. Yet the justification of keeping the decade as the title notwithstanding its nebulousness is because it reflects the dense memory of ours of a time, a series of events, and of a period – marked with hopes, violence, massacres, forced disappearances, manifestos, awakenings,

x PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

and discords, plus the continuities and discontinuities with the earlier age of popular movements and popular politics. The Naxalite Decade tells us of the mysterious development of popular movements into an insurgency. The book however came to be realised partly by chance and only partly by design. The Calcutta Research Group members were thinking for some years to write a history of the popular movements in the last sixty years in West Bengal and realised that there were very little writings except party literature authored as contemporary commentaries and analyses of the movements and some reminiscences. Yet, had it not been for the sudden request from Esha Béteille of the Social Science Press to think of making a book on the Naxalite decade, the entries in this book would have perhaps seen the light of the day as independent pieces in journals or entries in some disparate collections. Her request occasioned the final shape and tenor of this book, namely that the Naxalite decade was the time of popular rebellion which had plural forms, and whose ground had been laid by a decade and half of popular protests and movements. She also encouraged me to go ahead with the plan, setting at rest my internal doubts and misgivings. I am thankful to her for seeing this collection through to its final form. I am also similarly thankful to Radha Béteille for her editorial assistance. Sibaji Pratim Basu first mooted the idea of a research on popular movements in post-independent West Bengal starting from the fifties of the last century. Colleagues at the Calcutta Research Group then thought through various possibilities of developing the trajectory of the research, and the present direction owes much to their thinking. Likewise, Anwesha Sengupta and Priya Singh managed the collective research steadfastly and with patience and that is how the papers could be initially produced. The direction of the research is also indebted to the workshops organised by the Calcutta Research Group in the last two years where issues related to these papers and the main theme of popular movements and the Naxalite decade were repeatedly visited, the sources were cross checked, the opinions and suggestions of knowledgeable people and experts were sought and heeded to. The present collection is thus indebted to many, including scores of

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

xi

activists and sympathisers who helped with providing documents, pamphlets, other tracts, and arrangements of interviews. As a result, we could get a bigger picture, elements of comparison, as well as a deeper understanding. Here I can only name a few of the scores of people who made this research possible: Abhijit Mazumdar, Achin Vanaik, Aishika Chakraborty, Akum Longchari, Amit Prakash, Anil Acharya, Anuradha Roy, Bharat Bhushan, Chitra Ahanthem, Dipankar Sinha, Dolly Kikon, Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya, Ilina Sen, Iman Mitra, Indu Agnihotri, Jishnu Dasgupta, Kautabh Mani Sengupta, Kumar Rana, Mallarika Sinha Roy, Manabi Majumdar, Manoj Kumar Jha, Meghna Guhathakurta, Nirban Basu, Panchali Roy, Prabhu Mahapatra, Prasanta Ray, Priyankar Upadhyaya, (late) Raghab Bandyopadhyay, Rajarshi Dasgupta, Rama Melkote, Ritajyoti Bandyopadhyay, Ruchira Goswami, Samata Biswas, Samita Sen, Sandip Bandyopadhyay, Sanjay Barbora, Siddhartha Guha Roy, Soibam Haripriya, Subhash Ranjan Chakraborty, Subhasree Ghosh, Sudeshna Banerjee, Sujata Bhadra, Tanika Sarkar, and Tongam Rina. The Department of Political Science, Bankura University and the School of Women’s Studies, Jadavpur University also helped us in organising workshops and participated in the deliberations. We are also like wise indebted to the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation, in particular its Darjeeling District Committee for allowing us to use the material presented in some of the chapters of this book. Needless to say, the contributors to the volume are indebted to each other, and they helped me in giving shape to the final nature of the collective research. I must mention in particular three names who helped in an impossibly short time. Purna Banerjee translated the material of the fifth chapter at a short notice. The permission for translation came from Abhijit Mazumdar of Siliguri. And my debt is to Samata Biswas for helping me in ironing out many inconsistencies in the book. Some of the material included in this volume was translated into Bengali and published as a part of the special issue of the Bengali journal Anushtup (special issue on popular movements, 2017). In the course of translation and publication we had to again visit the main theme. It was a self-clarifying exercise. Anil Acharya, the editor

xii PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

and publisher of the journal, and Anwesha Sengupta, who managed the entire process of planning the translations and making them a coherent collection deserve special thanks. Frontier and Wire also published some of the material in their first and synoptic forms. My thanks go to the editors of these two publications. My thanks go to Sumanta Banerjee, a friend and well wisher for a long time, who has done us proud by contrbuting a prefatory note for the concluding section on short stories. Likwise my thanks are to the translator of these stories, Subhransu Maitra. To Calcutta Research Group any formal acknowledgement of debt will be perhaps preposterous. To its Director, Anita Sengupta and its team of researchers and members this book owes everything. Some of its members have contributed to the volume, some helped it with framing and later refining the ideas, while others provided all kinds of research assistance. I am grateful to all of them. For the photographs and newspaper reports, I am indebted to the collections of the Anandabazar Patrika, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, CPI (ML) Liberation online archive, National Library, Nehru Memorial and Museum Library in New Delhi, and to Uponita Mukherjee. Finally the book owes its existence to Rosa Luxumberg Stiftung, in particular Stefan Mentschel, for seeing merit in this research and helping us to implement the research plan. Their collaboration was indispensable. I hope they will be happy to see in print at least a weak version of our collective idea of what popular movements look like in a long trajectory that includes both short bursts and phases of insurgency, and an incredible variety of issues ranging from fare rise in public transport or relief and rehabilitaion, to food prices, to and we may not believe, social transformation. Ranabir Samaddar Kolkata 31 July 2018

Contributors Ranabir Samaddar, the editor of this volume, is currently the Distinguished Chair in Migration and Forced Migration Studies, Calcutta Research Group. He is a political thinker, and is considered to be one of the foremost theorists in the field of migration and forced migration studies. Karl Marx and the Postcolonial Age (Palgrave MacMillan, 2017) is his latest work, which discusses the relevance of Marx in the global age of postcolonialism and neoliberalism. Paula Banerjee works on the histories of borders, women, and conflicts. She is now the Vice-Chancellor of Sanskrit College & University and member of the Calcutta Research Group. She is also an expert on Indo-American relations and has authored Borders, Histories, and Existences: Gender and Beyond (2010) and When Ambitions Clash (2003). She has edited Unstable Populations, Anxious States (2013), Women in Peace Politics (2008), and (coedited) The State of being Stateless (2016). Sucharita Sengupta is a Doctoral Candidate at the Department of Anthropology and Sociology in the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva. Before this, she was working in the Calcutta Research Group on issues related to migration and forced migration studies. She is now researching on conditions of life under ‘Statelessness’, through the case study of Rohingya refugees in camps of Bangladesh and India. Anwesha Sengupta teaches at the Institute of Development Studies, Kolkata. She has published papers on the theme of partition of India in the east, such as ‘Becoming a Minority Community: Calcutta’s Muslims after Partition’ (2018) and ‘Moveable Migrants, Labouring Lives: making Refugees “Useful in Post-Colonial India”’ (2017).

xiv CONTRIBUTORS

Sibaji Pratim Basu is Professor in the Department of Political Science with Rural Administration at Vidyasagar University, West Bengal and a member of the Calcutta Research Group. His book, The Poet and The Mahatma: Engagement with Nationalism and Internationalism (2009) has received critical acclaim. He is the editor of Forced Migration and Media Mirrors (2014) and The Fleeing People of South Asia: Selections from Refugee Watch (2009) and the co-editor of Politics in Hunger Regime (2011). Purna Banerjee, Associate Professor of English in Presidency University, has published on Victorian novels, nineteenth century travel literature, periodicals, twentieth century displaced women’s narratives, and contemporary social-media-driven protest movements. Atig Ghosh is Assistant Professor of History, Visva Bharati University (Santiniketan). He is a member of the Calcutta Research Group. He has edited Branding the Migrants (2013) and (co-edited) The State of Being Stateless (2015). Subhoranjan Dasgupta is a former professor of Human Sciences at the Institute of Development Studies, Kolkata (IDSK). He has several publications to his credit in Bengali and English. His publications include The Tin Drummer’s Odyssey: Essays on Günter Grass (2002) and Elegy and Dream: Akhtaruzzaman Elias’s Creative Commitment (2000). He has co-edited, The Trauma and the Triumph: Gender and Partition in Eastern India (2008). He has recently received the prestigious Lila Roy Smarak Purashkar (Lila Roy Memorial Award) for essays, interviews and translations published in English and Bengali in journals, magazines and anthologies. Mithilesh Kumar is a Research Fellow at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Patna. He has published numerous papers such as ‘Governing Flood, Migration and Conflict in North Bihar’ 2015), ‘Law, Statistics, Public–Private Partnership and the Emergence of a New Subject’ (2017). Manish Kumar Jha is the Dean, School of Social Work at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. He is also a member of the Calcutta

CONTRIBUTORS

xv

Research Group. He is a recipient of numerous fellowships such as the Commonwealth fellowship at SOAS, London, Erasmus fellowship at UCD, Ireland, UKIERI Fellowship at Durham University, and Palme Professorship at Gothenburg University, Sweden. Sumanta Banerjee is a journalist, columnist, and a cultural historian, and specialises in popular culture of the colonial period. His work focuses on the historical analysis and development of folk culture of Kolkata’s urban poor. He is the author of Memoirs of Roads: Calcutta from Colonial Urbanization to Global Modernization (2016), Dangerous Outcast (1998), and The Parlour and the Streets: Elite and Popular Culture in Nineteenth Century Calcutta (1989). He is the author of In the Wake of Naxalbari (1980), considered as one of the classics of contemporary revolutionary history. Subhransu Maitra is Superintendent (Publications) at Netaji Subhas Open University, Calcutta. His works in translation include Gaandharva Poems of Sankha Ghosh, (Paschimbanga Bangla Akademi, 2004), Wrong Number and other Stories of Mahasweta Devi (Seagull, 2005), Education as Freedom (Niyogi Books, 2014), and Endless Night and Eternal Sunrise: Jibanananda’s World (Ekush Shatak, 2009).

one

CHAPTER

From Popular Movements to Rebellion Introducing the Naxalite Decade Ranabir Samaddar

I

C

an an insurgent movement be termed a popular movement? Or can we also find popular sources of insurgency? Insurgency in the eyes of the State is supposedly a determined act by a minority, a group with resolve, and there is no ‘democratic’ basis to insurgent acts, if by democracy we mean votes, parliamentary confabulations, etc. Indeed, this was the unwritten and unacknowledged question that haunted the established Left as well as the Left-liberal intelligentsia and administrators in the late sixties and early seventies of the last century. They had termed the Naxalbari movement as extremist, anarchist, and sectarian. One can understand their point of view. Yet given that the movement spread so rapidly, engulfed large chunks of the country in that dangerous decade (1965–75), the Left remained silent with embarrassment to the question. What was beneath such a quick spread, what were the popular roots, and what were the historical and political resources that the Naxalites were drawing upon from the past? What gave them legitimacy as a movement of the people, who had perhaps gone wild, and in the eyes of the established Left were destructive, dangerous, and harmful for an orderly growth of politics? What was the nature of the dangerous decade? These are difficult questions. The answers are

2

FROM POPULAR MOVEMENTS TO REBELLION

as much historical as political. This book is only a partial answer to these enquiries. Articles and some scholarly publications came out on particularly what came to be known as the long fifties valuable being the collection, Calcutta: The Stormy Decades (2015). Decolonisation and the Politics of Transition in South Asia (2016) also reflected among others the theme of popular politics in the fifties, and there were of course articles and books on the decade of the forties, and some reflections on the possible continuities and discontinuities of the popular movements in the post-independent era. But most articles and books heavily focused on the nationalist milieu and rightly so, but in the process did not throw much light on what constituted the particularly popular nature and the sources of the movements in the post-independent period. In any case, the reflections did not extend to the sixties – the dangerous decade which extended to the latter half of the seventies, till stability and normalcy returned to the relief of the rulers. By that time of course, liberal analysts had started saying that Calcutta’s and Bengal’s glory was gone forever due to the unrest. Apparently, shortly after Singapore became an independent country in 1965, its founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew was said to have remarked that he wanted his city-state to be like Calcutta. And on the other hand, the Left began saying that with the installation of Left Front government in West Bengal in 1977 the goals of the popular movements in the fifties and sixties had been realised. Bengal was also assured that its long tradition of producing great figures in the arts, culture, and the sciences would now come back to life. Population stabilisation of the city was cited as one major consequence of the restless decades. It was pointed out that in 1950 the city had a population of over 4.5 million, Bombay’s population stood at 2.6 million, and Delhi’s at 1.4 million. Bangalore had just 0.8 million people. By 2001, Bombay’s population was nearly 19 million, Delhi had 16.7 million, and Calcutta’s population was around 11 million. Other cities had become centres of economic opportunities and sites of upward mobility, while Calcutta, and Bengal, was now merely a shadow of its former self. Business and commerce had taken flight and West Bengal had become a wasteland. Singapore was now mentioned as the other destiny that Calcutta

RANABIR SAMADDAR

3

failed to pursue even though they had started their independent journey in an apparently similar situation. This is not the book to deal with these images, aspirations of the moneyed classes, or the commentaries of prosperity and decline of the state of West Bengal and the city. All histories have their other possible versions, histories of fantasies, myths, and counternarratives. These histories will be found in plenty in the prestigious periodicals, journals, and organs of chambers of commerce, and governmental literature of the parties of order. As distinct from them, this book focuses on what happened to the people in that period, what were the people doing, what were their actions in the sixties, and what made them mad? How did the years of fifties flow into those of sixties? For instance, the food movement in 1959 re-enacted itself on a grander scale in 1966. These questions are important because readers have to remember that even in the propaganda and agitation literature of the Left the unprecedented militancy of the late sixties and early seventies stands ignored. The madness is exceptional, and the legitimacy of the sixties has been denied. All nations in history own up their past including the past of failed insurgencies and revolts. Only in miserable Bengal that pride is denied, perhaps because the insurgent sixties and seventies are still not history. Perhaps our time is such that these still remain stories of our lives. After all, the owl of Minerva flies out only at dusk. One of the reasons why the years of the sixties and early seventies seem exceptional and without a genealogy is because of a disinclination to study the modes of popular movements in the preceding years, at least in the preceding decade, of how popular politics may become violent, and politics can reach an acutely contentious form. Without that genealogical awareness, the ten years from mid-sixties to mid-seventies – the Naxalite decade – appears as a spirit, a ghost, in Marx’s famous language a ‘spectre’. The spectral nature of the time repeatedly surfaces today in commentaries and invocations precisely because rulers have only wanted to put a living experience to death. There is thus a radical temporality in linking the Naxalite decade to its own past and to its own time, because only by doing so we can appreciate its original energy to appear as an exceptional time within a time it was traversing.

4

FROM POPULAR MOVEMENTS TO REBELLION

The chapters in this book collectively aim to make sense of the spectral presence of the time of Naxalbari. As essays they stand independently as well. They are testimonies of popular protests, popular politics, collective claim-making, networks of activism, and how democracy expanded in the postcolonial setting of a newly independent country. However, a book like this is only partly by design, as the articles now parts of the book, were authored as tracts of the time of the fifties and early sixties. And only when they had been written, a pattern began to emerge as the research continued to extend to some of the aspects of the late sixties and early seventies – a pattern that tells us how popular movements can transform into an insurgency. That insurgency we all know opened up the politics of the country to new fault lines, new questions about the path of social transformation, nature of ruling regimes, the abiding relevance of street politics, peasant resistance, and many more ethical, political, and social issues. Most of those questions are still relevant and eating into the self-complacence of parliamentary Left politics. The ‘Naxalite decade’ throws light not only on the mode of politics of that time, but helps us to reflect on the evolving modes of popular politics of the past as well – including modes of assembly, mobilisation, protest, securing an area or a territory, burning land records, using handmade and other country weapons, ways of composing leaflets and manifestos, torching, occupying, staging plays on roads and open squares, and all other modes imagined and practised by a politics of confrontation. Yet the Naxalite decade allows for more thought. The decade of 1965–75 known as the Naxalite decade was also the decade of other currents of popular movements and activism. One current played into another, exactly as in the anti-colonial age when the national mood swung from militant revolutionism to constitutional and peaceful mass protests. People giving support to revolutionary activities also were involved in the mass movements of noncooperation. Indeed these periods often overlapped. In the decade we are narrating here, the great Railway Strike (1974) took place. It involved 1.5 million workers and had the support of thousands of others across towns, cities, factories, colonies, and yards, exceeding in intensity even the activities of the insurgents. The

RANABIR SAMADDAR

5

Railway Strike of 1974 did not happen suddenly. At least three to four years of movements, agitations, organisational preparations, new techniques, and new formations were required for the display of militancy exhibited by countless rank and file workers – perhaps without another precedent in the history of working class struggles and in general popular struggles in our country before or after. Without the general swing of the popular mood towards protest, non-conformism, and rebellion the Naxalite decade could not have come about. It is important to see therefore other reflections of that restlessness and new thinking in that time. The decade was not monochromatic as many think the period to be. This book therefore has an important section on Bihar at that time. Three reasons: one, the revolutionary activities of the sixties and early seventies were not confined to West Bengal. In fact, after the initial three-four years in West Bengal, peasant insurgency flared up in greater intensity in Andhra Pradesh and Bihar, with Andhra Pradesh leading the way in spreading the Naxalite message of agrarian revolution. Second, the chapters on Bihar tell us how caste and issues of social justice active in mass mobilisations of that time, helped the formation of mass politics in a particular way, and threw up strong, exceptional leaders. Third, Bihar showed the way for an unprecedented uprising in the form of Jayaprakash Narayan’s movement (commonly known as the JP movement) that directly led along with the Railway Strike to the Emergency of 1975 and the turn of the State to authoritarianism. The suppression of these mass mobilisations along with the suppression of Naxalite movements in states like West Bengal, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh remind us of the fact that the Emergency had started in parts of the country several years before it was imposed on the entire country. The crisis of the order had started earlier; indeed, it was gathering steam for nearly a decade – evinced in the Naxalite uprising as much as in the installation of non-Congress governments in states like West Bengal and causing deep instability in the ruling party, the Congress. The situation of civil war was gathering storm for quite some years before the imposition of National Emergency, much like the situation in Germany where Walter Benjamin feared that the war would start much earlier than when it would be officially declared.

6 FROM POPULAR MOVEMENTS TO REBELLION

Without Bihar and Andhra Pradesh, the Naxalite decade thus remains an incomplete story. Unfortunately, we could not include in this book a section on Andhra Pradesh because of the limitations of our research capacity. We must, however, spend few lines more on the crisis of that time to get a fuller sense of what happened in Bengal, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh in that decade. The crisis was not a one-way street. It was not of the ruling order alone, but also of the Left mode of doing politics, hence of the Left style of organising a party. Parties split, unions split, quarrels flared up, at times to the point of death and weakening of ranks. Ideologies, social and economic status, styles of organisation, personalities, and orientations – all these became occasions of mortal contention. The division of the erstwhile united Communist Party of India into CPI and CPI (M), and the subsequent split between the CPI (M) and the Naxalites are only two most well-known instances. However, split and the consequent ‘going one’s one way’ became the mode of articulating politics. Radicalism meant autonomy of existence. The resolution of the crisis in the organisational life of the Left came only after the National Emergency was over in 1977, after thousands of deaths, fragmentation of many totalities, the brutal suppression of a general strike, and the passage into history of a time that had been there only a decade ago, but now seemed unbelievable, and lost forever to the contemporary age that began with 1977. Chapter 11 in the second section also tries to portray this crisis as it was felt in the revolutionary ranks during that time. The crisis was thus much deeper than the economic level. Close relationships were torn apart. Activists became surly and unfriendly as allegiances began to be formed along the lines of politics. To many, the national temperament appeared to have become barbaric and violent in an incomprehensible way. The response of the liberal intelligentsia and the parliamentary Left in general was pacific or even ‘bourgeois’ in the sense that it saw the crisis as a catastrophe while people felt that things could not go on in the old way. Just as fire lays bare the foundations of a structure, crisis laid bare the habitual basis on which politics was conducted till that time. Never before was the country faced with such stark opposition between activism (acts

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of protest, literature, resistance, rebellion, organisation, etc.) and pacifism including submission to law and order. At the same time, this crisis produced an aesthetic politics of radicalism. Oppression made the social order ugly, but the ugliness could be challenged by other aesthetic means, ranging from new styles of writing, new slogans, new theatres and songs, to new ways of leading life and courting death. Crucial to the crisis was how the people participated and how new writers, dramatists, singers, and poets were produced. Activism became participatory in such a way that it led to the construction of new spaces. The entries in this volume on art, literature, and styles of expression in that time of rebellion are intended to convey the restlessness in the aesthetic world of the people. The first section of the book consisting of three chapters presents select movements in the fifties and the sixties in West Bengal with a focus on the metropolis of Calcutta – the refugee movement, the antitram fare rise movement (popularly known as the tram movement), the teachers’ movement, and the food movement of the late fifties and sixties. They show how certain patterns of agitation politics, mass mobilisations, street fighting, and the spread of movements, built up during this decade contributed to the radicalisation of the people, the organisers, and their modes of thinking. These chapters also show the entry of lower middle classes in mass radical politics, and their growing alliance with workers and other sections of the working people. They also tell us of the crucial role of two elements in the spread of the trust network that acted as the backbone of politics: (a) dispossessed refugees, and (b) small towns and suburbs. The movements selected for the purpose of this section are milestones, though we have to admit that few more movements in the fifties were equally important in this regard, in particular the movement against benami land and the struggle for civil liberties in the background of nationwide suppression of dissent after the India-China border war of 1962. The second section consisting of eight chapters engages with some of the core aspects of the ‘Naxalite decade’. Among these aspects are: the nature of popular participation in the Naxalbari peasant struggle, the nature of insurgency, the spread of the struggle

8 FROM POPULAR MOVEMENTS TO REBELLION

in villages and towns of Bengal (particularly in the erstwhile undivided districts of Medinipur and Birbhum), and the repertoire of the movements. The section also deals with two theoretical aspects: (a) how to look back at the history of such a revolutionary struggle; such an inquiry actually reminds us how Marx and Engels looked back at the revolutions in 1848 in which they had participated, critiqued, and drew lessons from later; and (b) the nature of the all-consuming culture of critique from which the revolution sprang and in which the revolution perished. We should also mention that we did not include any historical-analytical chapter on the Naxalbari peasant struggle, as the writings and reports by the leaders of Naxalbari movement are well-known and available, so are the commentaries. These are much discussed, especially the two reports by Kanu Sanyal (1968 and 1973). We chose in its place a chapter (Chapter 5) consisting of English translations of a few short narratives that throw light on less known actors of the Naxalbari peasant movement; these narratives are testimonies of the immensely popular nature of the Naxalbari revolt. Readers will get from the lives presented in this chapter a glimpse of the unbelievable radicalisation of peasant masses and cadres in that age, and the historical foundations of the struggle in North Bengal. We have included in this volume Kanu Sanyal’s first Terai report as annexure. The third section is on Bihar. The three chapters in this section analyse the movements of that period around issues of caste oppression, nature of the politics of social justice, issue of corruption and legitimacy of rule, the interface of class and caste politics, and how the two personalities – Jayaprakash Narayan and Karpoori Thakur – represented the features and paradoxes of the popular movements in Bihar. In this context, the section ends with a valuable presentation of the early phase of the Naxalite movement in Bihar which retained its autonomy as a rebellion of the oppressed lower castes. It ran parallel to the urban movement led by JP with occasional interface with the latter. Both second and third sections present chronicles, which throw in bold relief the problematic of continuity and discontinuity in popular movements, particularly when a movement suddenly accelerates and develops into an insurgency. Thus, say, in Bihar the Communist

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Party of India (CPI) was strong, while in West Bengal it was the Communist Party of India – Marxist (CPI-M). Yet these parties did not lead the insurgent movements. The insurgent movements drew on the popular struggles of the past, in many cases led by these parties or by the united CPI before 1964; and when these ‘new’ movements began in the late sixties they seemed to have removed like a tornado, for the time being, the established style of popular movements. One reason, as various chapters in this book try to argue, behind the upsurge there seemed to have emerged a new social composition consisting of indigenous communities, dalits, women, and lower stratum of the peasantry, particularly young sections of these groups, and the urban youth. The Naxalite decade for some time seemed to be primarily an urban youth revolt, but that impression was misleading. Never before in post-independent India had there been such a general commotion, in which finally when the workers also joined, the insubordination of the people turned into a national upsurge. The question of continuity and discontinuity therefore lurks behind the story of popular movements to insurgency. If the Naxalite decade had continuity with past popular movements, and at the same time was a break from them, how did it end? Will not the same law of continuity and break be applicable to it? This will require a separate book. In any case the decade ended with the defeat of the insurgents. However, in states other than West Bengal such as Bihar the struggle continued. Andhra Pradesh took to its own road, partly similar to West Bengal, partly different. Splits, unities, debates, new fronts, and new attempts at struggles marked the post-Naxalite decade scenario. It is a difficult story of how it continued, and a difficult discussion of whether the struggles taking place today carry that spirit or scenario of upsurge. However, the book does engage with the question as to what happened with the land question with which Naxalbari and other peasant struggles, and the entire Naxalite decade were identified? Did the land question leave the political scene with the end of the Naxalite decade? Did the much-praised land reforms programme of the first Left Front government address and satisfy the land reforms agenda? Or, was the land question, indeed the peasant question, solved passively through certain administrative measures,

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which could only selectively and that too marginally engage with the land question? Did ‘land to the tillers’ become an out-dated programme? Chapter 12 deals with this theme. The fourth section, the last one, goes back to the question of acts of literature in the time of upsurge. Sumanta Banerjee has done this collection proud by writing a preface to this section. His In the Wake of Naxalbari (1980), a classic tract on the time, along with his edited Thema Book of Naxalite Poetry give us a rich idea of the varied sources of political activism and literary creativity by urban, rural and tribal activists, traditional folk singers, and established poets, some of whom later perished in the struggle. Recalling the literary dimension of the time, this book ends with a collection of short stories on that time. The section can be read along with Chapter 10 in the second section dealing with literary activism of the sixties.1 1

We may note here that more than in any other field the impact of the Naxalbari decade on art and literature has continued for long. Here is one report (by R. Madhavan Nair in The Hindu, 24 June 2011 – http://www.thehindu.com/todayspaper/tp-national/tp-kerala/the-blazing-course-of-a-naxalite-martyr/article2130967. ece (Accessed on 1 June 2018) Yet another disturbing episode from the blood-stained history of the Naxalite movement that has left an indelible mark on the political conscience of the State has been captured on celluloid by Odessa Movies, the film society that often makes movies on radical social themes, in memory of its founder and filmmaker John Abraham. Titled Agnirekha (the blazing course), the film focuses on an incident that happened in 1976, in Malappuram district. Balakrishnan, captured by the police for suspected involvement in the Naxalite movement, set himself ablaze in a police jeep. A police officer sitting next to him perished along with him in the fire that enveloped the vehicle. Agnirekaha  is the fifth movie from Odessa and is being directed by C.V. Sathyan. ‘This film has a special relevance for all those who remember the Naxalite movement. I have attempted to highlight the martyrdom of Balakrishnan’, he said. The shooting of Agnirekha took the Odessa volunteers across Angadippuram, Perinthalmanna, Kongad, Tirunelli, Thrissilery, Kozhikode, and Kannur—all linked to Naxalism in Kerala. The movie features interviews with A. Vasu, Mundoor Ravunni, Karagal Kuzhikrishnan, K. Venu and P.T. Thomas who were once in the forefront of the movement. The cost of making the film was met from small donations from film lovers (earlier Odessa movies were also made that way). For director Sathyan, cameraman, Murali Panikker, and editor Ajith it was a labour of love.

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In short, we may say that the theme of continuity and discontinuity offers us a useful angle from which we can appreciate the Naxalite decade. In many ways the tide and ebb of the movement, the interface of popular movements and the phenomenon of rebellion, critiquing the past to which in many ways it firmly belonged – these and many other aspects become more understandable in the mirror of the anti-colonial struggle of the twentieth century India. The Naxalites may or may have agreed, they brought to popular mind the best of the anti-colonial tradition. A young martyr like Kajal Banerjee was the Khudiram of post-independent Bengal.2

II I have tried to indicate in the previous pages the difficulties of trying to understand the Naxalite decade, because in order to appreciate its nature the decade must be put in the perspective of the history it grew from, the history it was part of, and the history it created. At the same time the difficulty is greater because the Naxalite decade appears as exceptional, as if it had wrenched its own existence from the past. It is this paradox of two contradictory phenomena from which the difficulty stems, namely the difficulty of interpreting the past that Naxalbari inherited and at the same time treating the Naxalite decade as a time of the past. As the political writings of the leaders of the insurgency openly admitted, the Naxalbari struggle and other peasant struggles in Bengal, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh in the sixties and early seventies consciously emulated many of struggles in the past, analysed past struggles, made explicit references to them, and drew analogies. Further, it put to discomfort the sense of surety, comfort, and complacence existing in Left party institutions of that time, namely that with the party existing and progressing, the struggle would be uninterrupted, and there should be no question of self-doubt among the leaders. The Naxalite struggle on the other hand, much like the practice of army generals, looked back on past successes and failures to know 2

Kajal Banerjee was shot dead by the police in Taltala area in Calcutta on 11 August 1970.

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why a battle failed, or, why one succeeded. Interpretation was thus important as a strategy in the formulation and mobilisation of the struggle. Leaders thus rewrote histories of the Telengana armed struggle, Tebhaga peasant struggle, reinterpreted them, and even reinterpreted the party history itself. Interpretation had to be along certain motifs, signs, and axes of analyses. Thus, themes of renaissance, democracy, elections, class origins of combatants, weapons of struggle, the institution of family, gender, caste – nothing was left out of interpretation, even though, not every possible theme was subjected to interrogation and interpretation in the same way, and to the same measure. Yet interpretation can be only one of the many ways of responding to the present; and unbridled interpretation could only lead the political struggle into a labyrinth to the point of losing way and dying. Interpretation never clarifies, it is never complete. The struggle was interpreting a past that was already interpreted through a received history, and the struggles of the sixties and seventies were only trying to lay bare a present that was already appearing to them as interpreted through their interpretation of the past. The insurgents were caught in the violence of interpretations, which never ceased. The differences of interpretations soon expressed themselves in splits and disunities – the history of Naxalism after the Naxalite decade. How the insurgents have tried to come out of this malady is a separate theme, which this book does not undertake save to point out that this may be one way in which one can see the intractable relation between the task of interpretation and making sense of the present. And after all, engaging with the present and changing it is the goal of revolutionary politics, and not endless acts of interpretation. Yet can we not say that the insurgency itself was an act of interpretation of Indian reality and the insurgents failed to see their own uniqueness? They discussed endlessly the relevance and the applicability of what was called in the revolutionary ranks the ‘Chinese path’ – the path of agrarian revolution, peasant struggles, encircling the cities from the countryside, guerrilla operations, base areas, Cultural Revolution, etc. But the impact they were having was different. The impact of insurgency on urban youth, forms of workers’ struggles, etc., was specific to the Indian situation. They

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upheld the ‘Chinese path’, ‘China’s Chairman as our Chairman’, and denounced nationalism, but the nation upheld them as an example of what could be the best in the heritage of sacrifice and struggle. They were ‘our sons and daughters’. They rebelled against the existing form of party organisation, and formed their own party, but their existence remained ‘unorganised’, ‘scattered’ and ‘autonomous’. They denounced Bengal renaissance, but they were acknowledged as having heralded a new beginning – a second renaissance – in attitude, culture, and style of thinking. One can notice few more paradoxes – specifically Indian in nature. They worked in the form of secret groups in the long tradition of secret societies, but their anonymity encouraged many more to join. They challenged the division of democratic-open-public sphere and the secret sphere of politics. Their power of sedition unsettled the political norms of running society. It is that period of crisis, struggle, upsurge, paradoxes, and death to which this collection bears testimony. It consists of, to repeat, selective narratives – partly because the period was highly selective in political emphasis, interpretations, and pronouncements, and partly because we could only do this much. After all, the Naxalite upsurge was unique among political movements because while it drew from the past corpus of politics, it began with an event, an event of militant peasant struggle – from the event of Naxalbari – and remained identified with the event. And it is to the event it looked back as a guiding structure, a symbolic-historical field that not only suggested an alternative, but also a different form of appropriation of the past, and thus a new kind of totality. It was thus impossible for the event to disappear. On the other hand, as the past was thrown wide open by the event, there was a strong notion of justice in keeping the struggle on. The openness created the possibility of a new kind of subject based precisely on the temporal structure of an event that would pass into the future. All these lead us to something this book all along wanted to say, namely that the practice of rebellion is a special form of political existence outside the formal disciplines of knowledge known as the social sciences. It produces a kind of experience that does not die. This experience produces a subjectivity that lives after that particular rebellion has died to resurface at another time. This is perhaps what linked the

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popular movements of the past with the Naxalite decade – say, the refugee militant in the early fifties to the peasant insurgent in late sixties and early seventies. Nearly sixty years ago, Eric Hobsbawm made strenuous efforts to understand what he thought as the ‘pre-political’, ‘transitional phenomenon between the old and the new’, or how ‘primitive social movements’ adapt to ‘modern’ or changing ‘conditions’.3 Notwithstanding the historical material (anarchists, Millenarians, city mob, labour sects, etc.) he was discussing on that occasion, he was anxious to put them in a framework of evolutionary time. Thus, the questions he laboured with were: were these movements modern, political, and revolutionary? I think we can show on the basis of the studies of movements in the sixties and seventies the world over, and India in particular, these were misplaced concerns – at least if we were to understand political subjectivity. Hobsbawm was dealing with subjects of politics, but he ignored the vital question of the materiality of political subjectivity. In our solitary interludes between bouts of learned discussions on the trajectory of popular movements we shall perhaps think, what happened to the refugee boy who came forward in the early fifties of the last century to pelt a stone at a running police van, or the youth who had proudly put forward his/her chest from within the surging crowd in front of the police bayonet, or the one who had climbed the telegraph and electricity pole in a suburban town to cut the wire? What happened to the women who had rushed to a village to halt the march of a police contingent? Where did such people go after the events, after the embers of the movement had died down? This is the re-apparition of the revolutionary time, whose name we have given here the Naxalite decade. On this temporal reality history begins once again, revolutionary subjectivity penetrates reasoning about period, occupies political spaces, and unleashes dynamics not anticipated earlier. The time of the revolutionary subject is an absolute, it speaks of a will to power that builds itself up in the origin of politics. 3

E.J. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1959), ‘Introduction’, pp. 1–12.

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Thus, the subject did not vanish after the decade of fifties or early sixties. Or, it was a never a matter of uprooting politics from this world into another world. It was not as scholars say utopian. It was never a matter of freeing the self from this reality to arrive at a different reality. What happened was the movement of the subject carried out within the world, forcing towards the point at which a different form of politics would become at least partially visible, the highest point of the world, the political world. Until then we were trying to broaden the world of politics without necessarily going towards its peak. All we can say here is that our knowledge of the organic composition of the subject was woefully inadequate till then; our capacity to reflect (through both method and memory) was poor. Perhaps they still are. Perhaps we are still trapped by the false problematic of development of consciousness. The question of revolutionary self is linked to issues of political knowledge, experience, and practice of a different kind of politics. One of the questions therefore repeatedly raising head in discussions of subjectivity – and in this book – has been around death. It was so during the entire Naxalite decade. Not only political activists discussed and memorized the image of ‘death as heavier than the mountain’ made famous by Mao,4 they meditated on death. They trained for death. Even though the radical activists of the fifties to seventies of the preceding century spoke in terms of developing consciousness of the people, they never meant by such mission any pedagogic task – except memorizing some ethical-political tracts – to recite or reproduce in posters, banners, or short campaign literature – be it in question the ageless Manifesto of the Communist Party or The State and Revolution or nearer to their time Mao’s Three Writings. The 4 Mao Tse-Tung, ‘All men must die, but death can vary in its significance. The ancient Chinese writer Szuma Chien said, “Though death befalls all men alike, it may be weightier than Mount Tai or lighter than a feather.” To die for the people is weightier than Mount Tai, but to work for the fascists and die for the exploiters and oppressors is lighter than a feather. Comrade Chang Szu-teh died for the people, and his death is indeed weightier than Mount Tai.’ – ‘Serve the People’, lecture given on 8 September 1944, Selected Works, Volume 3 – https://www.marxists.org/reference/ archive/mao/selected-works/volume-3/mswv3_19.htm (Accessed on 1 June 2018).

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mission of the subject was to set examples, demonstrate models of revolutionary behaviour, and establish a framework of attitudes and gestures – in short, a higher form of existence, an ennoblement of life. The rebel of the sixties was not a philosophical hero, or sage who was determined to bring back to life some original virtue now dead. And even if many intellectuals in the succeeding decades had the luxury to turn the problematic of subjectivity into one of philosophy, here the problematic of subjectivity was around the history being created in those intense years – a history of forms, modes, styles of life as problems of revolution and social transformation – thus a question of form, mode, and style of both ethics and heroism. To this famous question then – Who comes after the subject? – we can say, not the citizen, no one else, but the subject returns: the participants of popular movements and politics reappear as the subject of militant politics, of the radical urge of social transformation. And to the important question doing rounds today – Who comes after the citizen – the answer is, not the marginalised object of governance, but the subject claiming rights and justice by rewriting the conduct of politics. The fact that there was the promise of the age of emancipation5 was the great act of justice, of assuring the society that justice will be finally done and thereby ensuring justice. We may name this subject as, the political subject.

5

Recall the slogan, Shottor-er doshok muktir doshok (‘The decade of seventies will be the decade of liberation’) given by Charu Mazumder. His words were, ‘I do not indulge in day-dreaming when I say that by 1970–71, the People’s Liberation Army will march across a vast area of West Bengal. By and by, the vast masses of people will be inspired with Mao Tse-Tung Thought. Remaining loyal to the revolutionary committees, they will take part in the struggle by supplying wrong information to the enemy, and at a certain stage, they will feel the urge to snatch away rifles from the police and the military.’ - ‘March Onward, The Day of Victory is Near’, Liberation, September-December 1970 – http://cpiml.org/library/charu-mazumdarcollected-writings/formation-of-communist-party-of-india-marxist-leninist-22april-1969/march-onward-day-of-victory-is-near/ (accessed on 1 June 2018); also the concluding line of his brief note, ‘Hate, Stamp, and Smash Centrism’ (May 1970) was ‘Comrades, let us march forward. The seventies will surely be the decade of liberation.’ – https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mazumdar/1970/05/x01. htm (Accessed on 1 June 2018).

one

SECTION Prelude to the Storm Bengal in the Fifties and Sixties

two

CHAPTER

The Refugee Movement A Founding Moment of Popular Movements Paula Banerjee and Sucharita Sengupta

I

ndian independence came with a high price, that was born out of partition displacing 15 million people. Millions had to leave a part of their lives in search of an alternative, being turned into refugees almost overnight. In West Bengal alone 30 million refugees entered until 1960. In the 1970s the number of people entering from the east was closer to a few million. It is no surprise that partition history has remained a favourite arena of research among scholars and students in India and Bengal, although comparatively the partition of Bengal has been a lesser researched area. The scope of this paper however is beyond that. This chapter will rather attempt to study the political economy of the society in West Bengal during the 50s that was largely shaped by the refugees who crossed over from the then East Pakistan to West Bengal. It is common knowledge that the decade of the 1950s saw the birth of a number of popular movements in which the refugees took active part. All these movements had garnered massive support from the general mass of people. In this chapter we investigate the reasons and seek to understand what was so special in the 50s that saw the involvement of refugees in ‘popular’ or mass movements or was there a different logic to their involvement in these movements? All these movements such as the food, tram and teacher’s movements during the decade of 50s in West Bengal had garnered massive support from the general mass of people and saw active participation by the refugees. Through their own strident claims and by participating in

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these micro, popular movements, they became visible. This chapter will thus seek to analyse why there were so many refugees visible in these, what can be called micro movements. Did the leadership actively seek the support of the migrants or refugees? What motivated the refugees or migrants to respond to overtures made by the settled population? It is our contention that without the support of the refugee population these movements would not have made the kind of impact that they eventually did. The refugees in fact carried these movements on their ‘frail’ shoulders. They were the ‘surrogate proletariat’, to borrow a phrase used by Gregory J. Marshall who used it to describe the position of Muslim women of Central Asia after the Soviet Revolution between 1919 and 1929.1 The refugees helped the movements to acquire the militant edge that was needed to achieve the level of success that they did. This chapter will address how and why the refugee population became the surrogate proletariat. By the term surrogate proletariat, we would like to point out to the fact that the refugees were that radical element within the nation during its formative days that was making it possible for the myriad popular movements to withstand the mighty powers of the state by giving these movements its critical edge. We will also look at how in certain moments the refugees assumed leadership roles in these movements and gave it the fierce nature that catapulted these local movements into something far more widespread.

INTRODUCTION The lived experiences of partition refugees came to public comprehension in bits and pieces. In the last sixteen years, however, there is a burgeoning literature on the partition refugees in West Bengal. The literature on refugees followed a familiar terrain and set some patterns that might be interesting to explore. We will endeavour to explain through broad sketches how the narratives evolved. To begin with we were given the literature of victimhood in which the refugees were portrayed only as victims. It cannot be 1

The phrase ‘surrogate proletariat’, was popularized by Gregory J. Marshall in his book The Surrogate Proletariat: Moslem Women and Revolutionary Strategies in Soviet Central Asia, 1919–1929. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 1974.

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denied that in large parts these refugees were victims but by fixing their identities as victims these authors lost much of the richness of refugee experience because even as victims the refugee identity was never fixed as these refugees, even in the worst of times, constantly tried to negotiate with powers that be and strengthen their own agency. By fixing their identities as victims and not problematizing that victimhood the refugees were for a long time displaced from the centre stage of their own experiences and made ‘marginal’ to their narratives. With the ascendance of cultural studies in West Bengal the refugee experience was reduced to the memory of partition that seemed to have traumatized refugees to such an extent that all other experiences paled in comparison. Historians and social scientists belonging to the genre of cultural studies, largely depending on oral narratives settled on the notion that the violence and trauma associated with losing one’s home was the definitive aspect of refugee psyche. Everything else was shaped by that experience. Authors such as Sandip Bandyopadhyay2, Dipesh Chakravarty3, Manas Ray4, and others discussed the imaginative mappings of refugee lives through memories. The understanding was that a refugee lived in his/her memories whether these were prepartition belongings or of post-partition localities. In 1993 Sandip Bandyopadhyay found his refugee respondents still traumatized and bewildered when talking about their experiences of partition.5 For Dipesh Chakravarty what was definitive for the refugee was the memory of their chere asha gram which literally translates as the village they left behind. This village symbolized their 2

Sandip Bandyopadhyay. ‘The Riddles of Partition: Memories of the Bengali Hindus’. In Ranabir Samaddar (ed.). 1997. Reflections of Partition in the East. New Delhi: Vikas Publications. pp. 59–71. 3 Dipesh Chakraborty. ‘Remembered Villages’. In Economic and Political Weekly, 10 August 1996, p. 2143. 4 Manas Ray. ‘Growing Up Refugee: On Memory and Locality’. In Pradip Kumar Bose (ed.). 2000. Refugees in West Bengal: Institutional Practices and Contested Identities. Kolkata: Calcutta Research Group. pp. 163–99. 5 Sandip Bandyopadhyay. ‘The Riddles of Partition: Memories of the Bengali Hindus’. In Ranabir Samaddar (ed.). 1997. Reflections of Partition in the East. New Delhi: Vikas Publications. pp. 59–71.

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yearnings for their desh or home country.6 These writings did not contradict the victimhood narrative but added a new dimension to it. Such narratives were usually anecdotal and reductive challenging the understanding of refugee experience not through multiplicity but through singularity. Often it was the author’s own experience that was privileged over group experiences and it is through such discourses that the author reclaimed agency. Scholars such as Uditi Sen have challenged that the narrative privileged by these social scientists were universal even for Hindu Bengali refugees as the refugees settled in the Andamans do not conform to such received wisdoms. Therefore, it may be said that memory is a trope often used by refugees when talking about the partition but it does not explain how they coped with dislocations and transformed dislocation into an empowering mechanism; and unable to explain this the social scientists working on memory left a lacuna. Besides the memory lane there appeared a number of other writings from the 1990s that discussed institutional responses to the arrival of forced migrants from both the west and the east. These writings by authors such as Samir Das and Monica Mandal discussed how the newly born governments operating within the imperatives of the state and nation-building exercise came to terms with the influx of such huge population groups. Older scholars such as Prafulla Chakrabarti had argued that the government’s work in the field of relief and rehabilitation was one of non-performance.7 The measures that were taken by these governments could be categorized under relief and rehabilitation and according to Das, Mandal, and others the government did the best that it could. Samir Das is of the opinion the government had to respond positively to the influx of refugees because after 1954 the government figured that the refugees were unlikely to go back and ‘hence, had to be accepted as an inalienable part of 6

Dipesh Chakraborty. ‘Remembered Villages’. In Economic and Political Weekly, 10 August 1996, p. 2143. 7 Prafulla K. Chakrabarti. 1990. The Marginal Men: The Refugees and the Left Political Syndrome in West Bengal. Kalyani: Lumiere Books. p. xxiv.

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the Indian nation’.8 Authors such as Das critique how that state viewed refugees not as individuals but in terms of numbers, shelter, food, health, hygiene etc. By doing so however these administrative agencies made it possible for these huge groups to survive and prosper. These authors often conclude that given the challenges and obstacles the administration worked creditably. They shifted the spotlight from the refugees to the administrators thus once again displacing the refugees from the main narrative of partition and displacement. Apart from these there are other scholars who have tried to understand refugee experience through experiences of particular refugee communities. Shekhar Bandyopadhyay, Joya Chatterjee and Uditi Sen belong to this school of thought. These authors feel that generalization results in the loss of the richness of individual or community refugee experiences. Also, they feel that each population group had experiences that were unique to that group and cannot be reducible. Joya Chatterjee in one of her talks makes another argument that both India and Pakistan made identical responses to partition refugees who in turn influenced to make citizenship an issue far removed from the basis of jus soli or their birth right to something much more ethnicized and complex.9 With this one may infer that the shift to jus sanguinis or a right that is acquired, began. Although there is much that can be applauded in these writings these authors were overly concerned with state responses in creating the refugee identity. These authors argued that refugee experiences were crucial in creating the modern nation. However, they did not make any claim about the agency of refugee transforming notions of citizenship. Perhaps there is another way of looking at refugee experiences that has been undertaken by authors such as Dipankar Sinha who talks about the self-help initiatives of refugees who set up 8 Samir Kumar Das. ‘Refugee Crisis: Response of the Government of West Bengal’. In Pradip Kumar Bose (ed.). 2000. Refugees in West Bengal: Institutional Practices and Contested Identities. Kolkata: Calcutta Research Group. p. 11. 9 Joya Chatterjee. ‘From Subjecthood to Citizenship: Migrants and the Making of Nationality in South Asia, 1947–55’. Lecture in Universitat Pompeu Fabra. – https:// www.upf.edu/iuhjvv/_pdf/Joya_Chatterji.pdf (Accessed on 21 November 2017).

24

THE REFUGEE MOVEMENT

colonies and markets and strategized their lives and lived experiences of their neighbours, for sheer survival. Sinha speaks of how these self-help initiatives have given the refugees from the east the image of being ‘hard-working, spirited and having the “never say die” attitude’.10 The authors who have either dealt with communities of displaced persons or refugee activities in building localities have seen refugees as agents of their own lives. It is true that their own lives were sometimes torn apart by greater forces than their own selves such as exigencies of two nation-states. But it is not to be denied that they were agents and through their agency and communitarian struggles they emerged as empowered communities. However, to these authors the question of citizenship of the refugees was not primary; they were more concerned with how the identity of the refugee had evolved over a period of time. As a point of departure, in this chapter we will try to understand how the refugee movement became a part of the various popular movements in West Bengal in the 1950s and 1960s. The argument that we make is that refugee leaders never perceived of themselves as refugees. They always considered themselves to be citizens and to them the only known way of achieving that recognition was through strident claims. To establish this claim of nationality and they had the first-hand experience of how vulnerable such a claim could be, they tried to reinforce it by creating a movement. Whether such a movement was consciously created or not, it brought to the forefront issues that were highly contentious. Claims to citizenship could not be made without claims to land, food, right to politically represent oneself, right to mobility etc. All these issues had the potential of becoming another mass movement and with every movement the refugees started creating a vanguard of participants and empathizers. Land movement brought them in direct confrontation with land owners but the movement swelled because it appealed to many people who may not have been refugees. Thus, refugee leaders created the refugee movement 10

Dipankar Sinha. ‘Foundation of a Refugee Market: A Study in Self-reliance Initiative.’ In Pradip Kumar Bose (ed.). 2000. Refugees in West Bengal: Institutional Practices and Contested Identities. Kolkata: Calcutta Research Group. p. 80.

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which facilitated multiple other movements and reinforced their claims of citizenship. But this citizenship was of a particular kind of avant guard, unsettled, strident, and marginal form that found resonance with that of the oppositional Left politics of the time. We argue that the refugee movement was not merely one of the many popular movements of Bengal in the 50s, but the springboard for other forms of radical movements; and that was the specificity of the 1950s refugee movement in Bengal.

THE CONTEXT ‘They came not in scores or hundreds’ but in millions, ‘they came in an unceasing stream. They came distressed, diseased and disabled; they came as displaced persons from the Eastern Pakistan’.11 Statistics solely can never gauge the magnitude of the tragedy that compelled the flight of millions across the new-found borders. The first movement of large groups across borders could be said to have begun in October 1946 following communal riots in Noakhali and Tippera districts in the then East Pakistan which is now Bangladesh. The second mass movement of people started from the end of 1947,12 continuing thereafter. There were three phases of refugee influx in West Bengal. The first was before 1946, when people came in Calcutta for higher studies or jobs. The second was after independence and the third major exodus took place during the time of Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971. Events immediately following the partition led to millions fleeing which was then East Pakistan to take shelter in West Bengal. In August 1948, ‘police action’ in Hyderabad triggered fresh violence in districts of Barishal, Pabna, Rangpur and Bagura in East Pakistan resulting in a major wave of Hindu exodus. This was followed by another round of massive communal riots in 1950. This had started in Khulna but spread like wildfire to other regions too. The West Bengal government even wrote a letter to the government of East Pakistan 11 Millions Live Again. Kolkata: Government of West Bengal Independence Anniversary. 1953. p.70. (Accessed from the archive of Calcutta Research Group on 20 August 2016). 12 Ibid.

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requesting a probe into the matter and take steps to stop these riots. The government of East Pakistan however refuted the charges and blamed the Indian media for misleading the people by publishing false reports. By 1950, the figure of refugees in West Bengal stood at 244,564 persons. In 1951, between 11 and 17 June, 33,499 Hindus and 11,941 Muslims migrated to West Bengal. In 1952, Pakistan government introduced the system of passport between India and Pakistan. Many thought that applying for and receiving a passport from Pakistan will be difficult and hence another fresh round of movement into West Bengal took place. Ten thousand persons came just before the passport system started on 14 October 1952.13 The West Bengal government was not prepared for this massive influx and there was no proper system to rehabilitate everyone who came from East Pakistan as a ‘refugee’. The government was thus faced with a complete breakdown of state machinery and challenges they could not combat with. Although a board to look after the rehabilitation of refugees was formed with the help of the then Chief Minister, Bidhan Chandra Roy, progress of work was slow. The main charge was given to Hiranmoy Bandopadhyay and he admits that the pace of work of the board in the initial years was very slow, especially because right after the committee was formed; Bidhan Chandra Roy had to go abroad. Hence no work was done in his absence.14 On the other hand, there was unabated flow of refugees, their growing numbers in Sealdah Station, lack of places, food and most importantly sanitation, compounded the horror of the situation. Many refugees were suffering from diseases like tuberculosis and cholera. Bandopadhyay writes in his famous work Udbastu (which translates as Refugees) that refugees who came before 1950 were mainly educated middle class persons who left their country due to political reasons fearing loss of rights on their own land and lack of respect from Muslims, some of whom were their subordinates in work and status. These refugees were adequately settled by the West Bengal government. The problem 13 Tushar Singha.1999. Maranjoyee Sangrame Bastuhara. Kolkata: Dasgupta Publishers. pp. 7–8. 14 Hiranmoy Bandyopadhyay. 1970. Udbastu. Kolkata: Shahitya Sansad.

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started when the influx continued to grow.15 Dearth of resources led to the formation of unified refugee groups who started forming colonies and building resistance whenever there was an attack on them. Strong emotive bonds were the basis of their survival in the colonies and fight against goons of land owners in a united manner was their main goal. Muslims were displaced and there were reports of communal tensions in pockets of West Bengal and attacks on Muslims by Hindu refugees.16 Initially, the central government tried to evade responsibility by feigning ignorance regarding the magnitude of the problem. On 2 March 1950, Mohonlal Saksena, the then central Minister of Rehabilitation came to Calcutta and called a meeting in the Writers’ Building. Hiranmoy Bandyopadhyay and other members of the State Refugee Rehabilitation Board were also present. Bandyopadhyay writes the proceedings of the meeting surprised him to a great extent since Saksena declared that the Centre would not take the responsibility of rehabilitating new refugees coming from East Pakistan to West Bengal. They will be at most given relief. Here was a clear distinction of refugee policy between refugees arriving from West Pakistan and from East Pakistan that the Centre had adopted. While population exchange took place between the borders of West Pakistan and India, the same never happened for Pakistan’s eastern counterpart. In 1950, in the West Bengal Legislative Assembly a debate on this differential treatment took place between Syamaprashad Mookherjee and Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India. Nehru stated in the context of East Pakistan that the exchange of population between two countries was against the social and moral principles of the central government. Mookherjee retorted back saying that Nehru had clearly forgotten this question of ethics and principles when the same policy of population exchange had taken place between West Pakistan and the Punjab borders. But even Mookherjee could not change Nehru’s stand on the issue.17 Large sections of the refugees were thus left 15 16 17

Ibid., pp. 56–57. Ibid., p. 57 Ibid., p. 62

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to fend for themselves. This was enough for refugees to organize themselves as their sheer survival was dependent on that.

THE MOVEMENT(S) AND THE UNITED CENTRAL REFUGEE COUNCIL (UCRC) Although there were differences in the nature of the movement between different refugee groups, they were more or less united on issues of opposing the West Bengal Government. During the late 40s, Nikhil Banga Bastuhara Karma Parishad (All Bengal Homeless Action Council) was the main refugee group. Later, in order to give a platform to refugee voices, two umbrella organizations were formed, the Refugee Central Rehabilitation Council (RCRC) and the UCRC with different political ideologies in 1950. Both these organizations tried to address the manifold dimension of problems that the refugees were facing during this time, although UCRC was much more successful because of its radical politics.18 The UCRC, set up on 12 August 1950, was. an amalgamation of the Communist Party of India (CPI), Forward Bloc, Revolutionary Communist Party of India (RSP) etc. It was formed solely to give a voice to the various grievances of East Bengal refugees and their demands for economic rehabilitation. It started with Anil Singha being an important member and Ambica Chakraborty the Secretary. On 13 August an open session of the UCRC was held in the Maidan in Calcutta. Several processions joined the gathering shouting slogans like Amra Kara? Bastuhara! Amader Dabi Mante Hobe19 (Who are we? The homeless! You have to fulfil our demands) against the government. The UCRC was more active throughout the late 50s. The refugee movement around this time was centred mainly on refugees who lived in colonies. It was said that their lives were much more difficult than camp refugees; however, this was not entirely true. Refugees in some camps were living in an extremely inhumane condition. 18 Arun Deb. ‘The UCRC: Its Role in Establishing the Rights of Refugee Squatters in Calcutta.’ In Pradip Kumar Bose (ed.). 2007. Refugees in West Bengal: Institutional Practices and Contested Identities. Kolkata: Calcutta Research Group. pp. 69–73. 19 Ibid., p. 73.

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Through accounts of these movements we shall trace their claims in a new social and political order. We chart issue-wise evolution of relevant events that created the movement from the mid-50s. The important issues on which refugees centred their movement were:

On Land and Rehabilitation If we look closely at some of the activities of the leaders of the opposition around that time, including protests made by MLAs of the opposition, mainly CPI, a natural connection emerges between refugee politics and the CPI. Left politics became central to the refugee movement because both these politics appealed to the footloose population with a critical mind. According to many experts of the time it was the unsettled conditions of the East Bengal refugees that presented an opportunity to the CPI to exploit them for the interest of the party. With this end in view the party had roped in as many leftist parties possible under the UCRC.20 Hence right from the inception of the UCRC, the CPI took up the cause of the refugees and made anti-government propaganda on the issue of their day-to-day grievances regarding relief, rehabilitation, high prices of food and control over land and so on. The most important issue that UCRC took up right after its establishment was the issue of land. It was partially successful in its prolonged movement against the Land Eviction Bill of 1951 and Calcutta Slum Clearance Bill of 1957 that later became the Calcutta Slum Clearance and Rehabilitation of Slum-Dwellers Act, 1958. In 1951, meetings were organized by the UCRC demanding withdrawal of the Unauthorized Persons’ Eviction Bill and stressed on the speedy rehabilitation of all refugees. A memorandum was drafted by the Council in the same year, demanding the repeal of the Eviction Act, recognition of refugee colonies, formation of rehabilitation committees and formation of enquiry committees to survey the conditions of refugees.21 In a meeting in Bandhabnagar, Dumdum, by UCRC on 7 December 1952 speakers like Pran Krishna 20 A Short Note on the UCRC. File No. 165Z-1924. IB Archive of the West Bengal State Government. (Accessed on 2 June 2016). 21 A Short Note on the UCRC. File No. 165Z-1924. IB Archive of the West Bengal State Government. (Accessed on 2 June 2016).

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Chakraborty and Ambica Chakraborty highlighted the plight of the refugees and criticized the rich landlords. As mentioned above, due to lack of help from the government the refugees had no other option but to settle themselves in the vacant lands of the zamindars. For this most of the refugees were even ready to pay a price to the landowners but the prices demanded by the owners were so high that the refugees were unable to pay. The landowners then applied force to evict the refugees from these lands which were also known as refugee colonies. They failed because the refugees retaliated. When all measures by the government had failed, they introduced the Land Eviction Bill in 1951 to evict the refugees from unauthorized possession. The speakers also admitted their great blunder for not opposing the Bill when it was being introduced in the Assembly. In order to stand against the Eviction Order and to devise new ways, the following resolutions were adopted: 1. Withdrawal of Eviction Bill and to move against it in the High Court. 2. Withdrawal of recent eviction order upon Bandhabnagar Colony and Laxminagar Colony. 3. To start organizational work under UCRC in all colonies. 4. Refugees living in Muslim abandoned lands should not be evicted unless and until substitute houses or lands were given to them by the government.22 In 1952, the UCRC continued its agitation on the issue of rehabilitation alongside protesting against the high prices of food, cloth etc. CPI also organized several meetings and demonstrations in Calcutta against the government. In its convention organized at Netaji Colony, Baranagar, on 29 March 1953, the UCRC passed a resolution asked the government, landowners and zamindars to accept it. This ‘Tripartite Conference’ of government, zamindars and landowners was asked to settle the real value of lands forcibly occupied by the refugees without evicting them and the payment was to be made in easy instalments. The UCRC also demanded recognition by government of all refugee colonies and asked the government not to evict the plot holders from the possession of 22

File No. 165Z-1924. Ambica Chakraborty.

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land; to finally settle the price of land occupied by the refugees and to launch a united agitation against the big landowners and zamindars. The refugee groups were requested to make a difference between the small landholders and big zamindars.23 In a meeting at Ghola, Baruipore, on April 1957, leaders like Prankrishna Chakrabarty (UCRC), Bankim Debnath (UCRC), Ambika Chakraborty (UCRC), Manik Dutta (CPI) decided on a strong agitation ‘for the proper and speedy rehabilitation of refugees’. In order to organize the agitation against the government’s refugee policy, a new committee was formed, the ‘Sonarpur Zonal Worksite camp Bastuhara Parishad’, with 37 refugees of different camps in Ghola as members. In this meeting the following draft resolutions were adopted: 1. To change all worksite camps into rehabilitation centres and provide all refugees living in camps with lands and other sources of income. 2. Temporary tents should be built for refugees before making arrangement for their proper rehabilitation. 3. Cash dole should be increased from Rs 12 to Rs 18 and from Rs 8 to Rs 12 for adults and minors respectively. 4. Males should be given with two dhotis each and women would get two sarees each, every six months. Minors should also be provided with adequate garments. 5. Benami lands (lands of unknown owners) and zamindars near camps should be bought by the government and distributed to the refugees. 6. Management of worksite camps should be conducted in cooperation and consultation with camp committees. It was decided that these demands will be sent to the Chief Minister of West Bengal and other proper quarters. Leaders urged all refugees to unite under the Sonarpur Zonal Worksite Camp so that the government might be compelled to fulfil the basic demands of the refugees enlisted above. Renu Chakrabarty also mentioned in the meeting that ‘there are enough lands belonging to the Zamindars and Jotedars in West Bengal for rehabilitation. 23

Ibid.

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The Government was not acquiring those lands and instead was acquiring lands of local peasants so that there is[sic] a clash between the locals and refugees’. She also alleged that the state government was spending only a fraction of the amount the Centre had been giving to the state for the relief and rehabilitation of the refugees. The lion’s share of the money was going to various government officials and contractors. Hence, refugees should no longer wait for the government to give them land to settle themselves; they should rather rehabilitate themselves by forcibly occupying the lands of the zamindars. She also assured the refugees present in the meeting that all these demands would be placed by her in the floor of the Assembly.24 This meeting clearly indicates the support that the Left leaders had extended to the refugees in their movement for rehabilitation, and that even violence was not ruled out as a potential means to achieve their objective. In another meeting, under the aegis of the UCRC, the following resolutions were passed: 1. To move the government against the Eviction Bill of 1951 and to introduce a new bill for the acceptance of resolution which was adopted in the Belgharia and Netaji Nagar colony conventions of the UCRC, regarding finding a solution to the problem emerging out of forcible occupation of colonies by refugees. 2. To start dry dole in every camp. Instead of providing the refugees with tents, they should be provided with two bundles of tins and Rs 75 per family in order to build their houses. Refugees residing inside camps, who were not allowed to work, should be allowed to work and earn in order to sustain themselves. Doles were clearly not sufficient. 3. All possible attempts should be made for the upliftment of industries in West Bengal for generating employment. A committee had to be formed, comprising of members of Lok Sabha and the State Assembly which will impartially examine the decision of the government to send refugees outside the state of West Bengal to places like Dandakaranya. 24

Files of Renu Chakrabarty, No. 1010/54, IB Archive of the West Bengal State Government. (Accessed in July 2016).

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4. To grant an interim relief to refugees who could not make themselves self-supportive by that time. The government must increase doles for them. 5. It was also urged that the delegates in the meeting should strengthen the UCRC by recruiting more members so that it can take up all problems pertaining to refugees.25 That refugees were also relying more on the UCRC than other refugee committees like the RCRC also becomes clear from their increasing participation in the protest rallies called by the UCRC. RCRC could not match how UCRC was able to orchestrate the refugee movement. In one important protest rally, called by the UCRC, Sara Bangla Bastuhara Sammelan (All Bengal Refugee Conference/ Convention) and East Bengal Refugee Committee on 11 July 1957, refugees from different squatter colonies of Calcutta, from Sealdah Station and suburbs like 24 Parganas, Hoogly and Howrah assembled under the Ochterlony Monument, near the south gate of the Governor’s House. Pran Krishna Chakrabarty and Ambica Chakraborty of UCRC addressed the audience by criticizing the government in their respective speeches. They denounced the government for moving an Amendment Bill of Act XVI of 1951 to evict unauthorized occupants in all squatter colonies, without alternative arrangements for rehabilitation. Many displaced Muslims should have also been rehabilitated. Refugee families were requested by Ambica Chakraborty to donate Rs 8 per person in order to launch a direct action against the government if it failed to respond to the criticisms highlighted in this particular meeting. This rally was joined by thousands of refugees and it continued throughout the day. In the evening at around 5.00 pm, 15 Left leaders, mostly Members of Legislative Assemblies like Jyoti Basu, Manikuntala Sen, Subodh Banerji, Niranjan Sen, Chitta Bose, Renu Chakrabarty and others arrived at the rally and informed the audiences that the government had accepted some of the amendments that were recommended by the UCRC and that most of the demands in favour of the refugees has been conceded. UCRC therefore was successful on this occasion. The government 25

File No. 1652/24. Ambica Chakraborty, Part I.

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had accepted the following: (a) That a visit to East Pakistan by a refugee to dispose of his properties would not debar him from getting the minimum privileges that a refugee is entitled to here; (b) that no refugee family should be evicted from the squatter colonies without rehabilitating them elsewhere; and (c) that no police force or armed men should be employed to evict them. Refugees from 25 colonies carrying festoons were part of this rally, including Maniktala, Bagmari, Ultadanga, Muraripukur, Ambica Colony, Raja Debendra Colony, Durga Colony, Howrah Udbastu Shibir, Bhadrakali Mahila Samiti, Taherpur Colony of Nadia, East Jadavpur Colony, Azadgarh Colonyt, Bijoygarh Colony, Sahidnagar Colony, Ghuswei Camp of Howrah and so on.26 Later, a memorandum of demands was also placed to the government. The memorandum criticized the Rehabilitation Policy of the government, and the failure of the policy was highlighted by giving several instances. It also mentioned that refugees being sent outside Bengal were facing tremendous animosity and were being looked upon as interlopers. It was mentioned that on 18 August 1956, there was a deadly attack on the Bettiah Camp Refugees in Bihar which injured a number of refugees but neither the camp officers nor the police came to their rescue, and no step was taken to arrest the miscreants. The memorandum also criticized the increasing food price, scarcity of employment opportunities, which together contributed in dividing the refugees and the poor local population. Poor management of camp refugees was also detailed there. Finally, there was a suggestion that land available for agricultural purposes or fallow and uncultivated lands should be reclaimed and utilized for rehabilitating refugees who were agricultural labourers.27 UCRC’s policies regarding rehabilitation of refugees brought it squarely to the question of land and eviction. The refugee activists were concerned that over the question of land the government was pitting refugees against the poorer sections of the locals and returnee Muslims. The refugee leadership made an effort so that the rank and file realized that the landless locals and even small 26 27

Ibid. File No. 1652/24. Ambica Chakraborty.

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landowners should not be the focus of their agitation. The refugee agitation should be against the big landowners or the zamindars. This is how the land movement was born. The land movement was syncretic to the refugee movement and not an add-on issue. Rehabilitation brought refugee activists directly to the question of land and competing claims over it.

ON THE ‘DISPERSAL’ POLICY OF THE GOVERNMENT Another major issue taken up by leaders of the refugee movement was the ‘Dispersal’ policy of the government. On 9 February 1956, in an open session of UCRC’s Calcutta District Conference, attended by 1500 persons, including about 300 women, at the Raja Subodh Mallick Sqaure, speakers like Shri Hemanta Basu (MLA), who also chaired the session, Ambica Chakraborty (UCRC) and Narayan Roy (MLA) expressed strong criticism against the government’s refugee rehabilitation policy and demanded their resettlement inside the state of West Bengal and not in places like Dandakaranya, as was being preached by the government for some time now. Failing this, it was said that a state-wise movement would be launched by the UCRC in association with other political and trade union groups. The speakers were also against the West Bengal Rehabilitation Department and called for its abolition. This meeting is important because Ambica Chakraborty informed the audience that at the District Conference of the UCRC, a number of important decisions including opposition to the government’s Dandakaranya scheme have been adopted. An organized movement would also be soon launched to oppose this move. Chakraborty claimed in the meeting that 10,000 refugees had agreed to volunteer in the proposed movement. This meeting is important because the leaders instigated the audience, mostly refugees, by saying how successful their earlier movements over the food, tram-bus fare, teachers and anti-merger issues were and hence opposition to the Dandakaranya scheme would also turn out to be a success. Hare Krishna Konar of the CPI, who later on went on to become the Land and Land Revenue Minister under the United Front

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ministries in 1967, was also a vociferous supporter of the refugee movement. In many meetings, he demonstrated full support to the refugee movement on behalf of the Krishak Sabha. He pointed attention to the peasant mobilization at that time and said that the peasants were also being organized to fight against the land distribution system of the government. He demanded that the government should distribute land both to the peasants of West Bengal and refugee peasants. Speaking about the movement Konar said the peasants should orchestrate their demonstrations in the West Bengal Assembly House in the first half of March of 1957. Denouncing the government, he further stated that all refugees could have been rehabilitated in West Bengal by now had the proposed sanction of Rs 100 million by the central government had been spent for the cause.28 On 9 March, as planned in the meeting above, groups of refugees assembled in small batches at the foot of the Calcutta Monument. Several processions were organized by UCRC’s northern branch in what was termed by them as ‘Protest day’, diverse groups such as Daspara Refugee Camp and Udbastu Mahila Samiti of Titagarh converged at the same place. In a meeting that followed later in the day, it was decided that the refugees would organize into batches and continue their Satyagraha against the government. The government, it was stated, had already employed violent measures to stop the Satyagraha of refugees. It was alleged that police were forcefully picking up satyagrahi refugees and dropping them in the dead of night at faraway places. The meeting was followed by a Satyagraha by 128 refugees including 48 females under the leadership of Sanat Chatterjee of Forward Bloc, who was later arrested.29 In March 1958, the General Council of the UCRC met at the Poddarnagar Colony and took a decision to launch rigorous movement against the government’s move to dispatch refugees outside the state for rehabilitation. Satyagraha was also launched and withdrawn only after the assurance of the government that no 28

Files of Manikuntala Sen. No. 619–36, Part IV. IB Archive of the West Bengal State Government. (Accessed on 31 May 2016). 29 Sen. 619–36.

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refugee would be sent outside West Bengal against his will and that cash doles which had been allegedly stopped, would be restored to the refugees. During the first week of July 1958, a high-level conference on the issue of the rehabilitation of refugees was held in Calcutta, where it was decided that out of the existing camp refugees in West Bengal, 10,000 families would be sent outside West Bengal and that refugee camps would be abolished by 1959, after the rehabilitation of all camp refugees. However, this decision of the government was denounced by the UCRC and it organized meetings with camp refugees protesting against this policy on 5 July 1958 and 6 July 1958 in a camp at Habra.30 Criticizing the ‘Dandakaranya Scheme’, that is dispersing refugees to a place called Dandakaranya and the Andamans, Ambica Chakraborty, in one such meeting remarked that bolder methods of agitation were needed to protest against the rehabilitation of refugees outside West Bengal. She claimed that there was as much as 2.5 million acres of fallow land in West Bengal, where these refugees could be rehabilitated. He also stated that an alternative proposal for rehabilitation of refugees within the state had been submitted by the UCRC to the government but the government showed no intention of acting on it.31 Criticisms of the dispersal policy of the government brought refugee activists again to the land question. Land is one of the first claims made by the partition refugees and it is one of the most persistent refugee claims. It also portrayed how claim making brought refugees inadvertently into the middle of other movements without which the refugee movement itself became meaningless.

IMPACT ON WOMEN On 8 April 1956, few resolutions were passed in a meeting condemning the alleged action of the government against refugees, especially the violence rendered on refugee women and children.32 30

WBIB File No. 165Z, Part XVII. Ibid. 32 Ibid. 31

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In another meeting organized by Manikuntala Sen under the UCRC on 9 February 1958, Sen vehemently protested against the Calcutta Slum Clearance Bill and tried to organize demonstrations of protest by Bustee Dwellers in the early part of March. She was also an important member of the State Committee of National Federation of Indian Women (CPI controlled) who held a conference in Calcutta that year. She stressed the need for the emancipation of women and demanded for them a status at par with their male counterparts in administrative and related jobs. Violence against women refugees was also highlighted in another meeting held on 8 April, where it was stated that women refugees had been allegedly dropped from police trucks in the dead of night in faraway places for protesting against the government. It was said in the meeting that the police were suppressing peaceful refugee movement with repressive measures like the Preventive Detention Act, lathi charge, throwing of tear gas and so on. Both Sen and Chakraborty were also against the acquisition of lands of peasants by the government in order to rehabilitate the refugees. In one of the meetings, Chakraborty requested the refugees to not take up lands of peasants even if the government was acquiring them for the refugees. Tushar Singha in his memoir recalls the continuous hunger strike that women leaders of the Bhadrakali Refugee Women’s Camp of Nadia organized in demand of their basic rights inside the camps like sanitation for women. Cooper’s Camp was the largest refugee camp in Nadia followed by the Dhubulia Camp, where at least 70,000 refugees were kept in extreme adversity. Repeated police violence was perpetrated on the women refugees in the Bhadrakali refugee camps which were strongly condemned by Jyoti Basu in the Assembly House in March 1952. Women refugees like Sarajubala, Manjulika Brahma, Surbala Sheel and Priyabala De had thus taken up hunger strike in resisting the police violence and other forms of torture including sexual abuses that the women refugees were facing inside the camps.33 Probably at least in this respect colony refugees were still in a better position since they enjoyed relatively more freedom than camp refugees did. However, this gendered mode 33

Maranjoyee Singha. pp. 28–29.

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of repression remained a question that was to be analysed in the future. What is important is that refugee activism brought forward questions of physical and economic protection of women, issues that would become the rallying cry for the women’s movement much later.

ON OTHER MOVEMENTS – FOOD, TRAM AND TEACHERS’ MOVEMENTS As has been mentioned earlier, the role of refugees and refugee leaders who were members of the UCRC was quite crucial in other popular movements of the time. Starting from archival documents to several memoirs including Marginal Men and newspaper reports indicate this. Chakraborty writes, all refugee men from colonies near Calcutta had been actively involved in the Tram Movement of 1953. Various colonies of Dumdum, Azadgarh, Bijaygarh, Poddarnagar, Regent Colony, Nehru Colony, Ray Mallik Colony, Lake Colony, and Pratapaditya Colony of South Calcutta took active part in the movement. On 25 July 1953, these colonies were attacked by the police. Refugees who were seen participating in the Tram Movement were beaten up and arrested. Under the Left opposition leaders, a committee was formed against the ‘1 paisa war’ i.e., increment of tram fare by 1 paisa. This committee, entitled, ‘Tram Fare Enhancement Resistance Committee’ had leaders like Suresh Chandra Banerjee, Hemanta Kumar Basu, Subodh Banerjee, Satyapriya Banarji and Jyoti Basu who were also active in their support for the refugee movement and were members of either UCRC or RCRC. Both these refugee organizations had joined the Resistance Committee. Prominent leaders of UCRC were to become prominent leaders of the Resistance Committee as well, writes Prafulla Chakraborty. On 27 July 1953, the police again attacked the colonies. Indu Baran Ganguly, a prominent leader of the refugee movement mentioned before wrote how all refugee men had fled the Azadgarh colony in order to escape police atrocities. Refugee leaders of the colonies also used to collect ‘chanda’ (donation) from colony members so that this money could be used for the movement. One of the leaders of UCRC, Subodh Banerjee

40 THE REFUGEE MOVEMENT

encouraged more refugee participation as this was a means for the refugees to gain power in the new socio-political order. In order to gain power and prominence they had to take up active roles in making these ‘mass’ and ‘popular’ movements.34 UCRC too got more prominence through these movements and paved the way for the Left leaders to be prominent and popular among masses. UCRC thus became the symbol of resistance against all forms of movements that were taking place against the government during this period. This was again proven when another committee, the ‘Famine Resistance Committee’ appealed to the UCRC and few other refugee organizations to lend support to their demand for food. On 29 July a huge procession was organized by these committees that marched towards the Assembly House raising the demand for food. Peasants who had participated from different areas like Sonarpur, Baruipur, Canning and Joynagar were provided with food and water by refugee organizations like ‘Dakhyin Kolkata Shahartali Bastuhara Sanghati’.35 This organization was mainly set up by leaders such as Indu Baran Ganguly. That the leadership of these multiple movements often overlapped is clear from the involvement of leaders like Ambica Chakraborty, mentioned many times in this chapter. In one meeting in October 1953 Satyapriya Banarji (MP) who was the member of Resistance Committee, took part in a meeting by UCRC in Cooper’s Camp, Nadia. In this meeting the speakers unanimously criticized the refugee rehabilitation policy of the government and administration of the Cooper’s Camp. In another meeting held on 29 September 1953 by the Famine Resistance Committee in Wellington Square, Ambica Chakraborty severly criticized the food crisis created by the West Bengal Government. The government’s violent repression of the food movements through police force and military action were also criticized. He also observed that their movement was successful since it had compelled the Central Food Ministry to come down to Calcutta in order to take stock of the situation. This meeting was 34

Most of the ideas of this entire paragraph have been taken from Prafulla Chakraborty. Prantik Manab. pp. 171–72. 35 Ibid.

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attended by 400 persons. The same month in another meeting at Hazra Park, Chakraborty expressed his gratitude over the merger of the Kendriya Khadya Abhijan Committee which was a Leftist organization and added that they were now going to launch a vigorous campaign on the food issue. Jatin Chakraborty added that despite warnings rendered by the Left parties regarding the deterioration of the food situation in the province, the government was paying no heed to them and was instead bluffing the people.36 In another meeting around the same time Satyapriya Banerjee and Ambica Chakraborty strongly criticized the policy of the Congress government for the failure of its refugee policy. Reminding the audience that it was the leaders of the Congress Party who were responsible for the Partition and creation of the entity ‘refugee’, who had also fallen back on their promise of solving the problem of refugees. Thus, a section of the refugees was forced to construct huts on barren and fallow lands on their own initiative with a view to rehabilitate without the help of the government but with their backing, because the landlords of these plots were trying to oust the refugees from these colonies. Banerjee and Chakraborty hence urged the refugees to unanimously condemn this step of the government under the leadership of the UCRC.37 Series of meetings and processions took place on these movements where refugees actively participated and the Intelligence Bureau (IB) files carry evidences of this. All the leaders including Renu Chakraborty and Manikuntala Sen were vociferous supporters of the refugee movement and used to participate in these meetings criticizing the government on issues of land, food and so on. On 8 May 1955, a delegates meeting of camp refugees was held in Ranaghat which had prominent leaders like Renu Chakrabarti, Hemanta Biswas, Naren Guha (CPI), Gopi Shaha (UCRC), Suhrid Mullick and others. The open meeting was attended by 800 persons where the role of the government in solving the “refugee problem” was criticized at length. Resolutions were passed in demand of 36

Ibid. Meeting Report of Jadavpore. File No. 165Z-1924. IB Archive of the West Bengal State Government. (Accessed on 2 June 2016). 37

42 THE REFUGEE MOVEMENT the distribution of free cultivable land among the peasant class refugees, free education for refugee children, loans for building houses and so on.38 Under the chairmanship of Satyapriya Banerjee a meeting was organized by UCRC on 10 July 1955 in which 300 refugees, including 100 women participated. The speakers were UCRC President Pran Krishna Chakraborty, Tarakesh Mazumdar, Renu Chakraborty (MP), Ranen Sen (MLA), Suhrid Mallick Chaudhury, Rani Bala Poddar and others who vehemently criticized the rehabilitation policy of the Congress government. Slogans like ‘Pashimbango Udbastu Shammelan Zindabaad’, ‘Amader Dabi Punorbashon’ (‘Long Live West Bengal Refugee Association’, ‘We demand Rehabilitation’) etc were raised.39

ISSUES RELATING TO CAMPS AND COLONIES IN NADIA In a meeting organized on 29 September 1958, at Kampa, under Bizpur Police Station, Sen, along with other leaders like Jiten Sarkar (CPI) and Kumud Bandhu Dey (CPI), criticized the food policy of the government and urged the people to support the candidates of Pragati Sil Nagarik Block (CPI) in the meeting. In the second Annual Conference of the Nadia District Basthuhara Parishad, on 21 and 22 June 1958, at Fulia Colony, Nadia, the Refugee Rehabilitation Policy of the government was criticized by speakers like Indu Bhaumik, Amritendu Mukharji, Ambica Chakraborty and others. They also stressed on the need to raise agitation on the 21-point demand which had already been placed before the government.40 In another meeting held in the same year in the Fulia Colony of Nadia, many resolutions were adopted for the upliftment of Nadia. The Nadia District Bastuhara Parishad held at Fulia Colony under Shantipore Police Station had organized the meeting in June 1958. Speakers like Ambica Chakraborty and Gour Kundu of Ranaghat delivered speeches criticizing the government of its Relief and Rehabilitation Policy. They also urged refugees in Nadia to 38 File of Renu Chakraborty. No. 397–39. IB Archive of the West Bengal State Government. (Accessed on 2 June 2016. 39 Ibid. 40 Files of Manikuntala Sen. No. 619–36, Part IV. IB Archive of the West Bengal State Government. (Accessed on 31 May 2016).

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get organized under the UCRC and fight against the government for their rights. Resolutions passed in the meeting expressed deep sorrow for the victims of Betiah Refugee Camp. Speakers at the meeting also demanded the conversion of the Cooper’s Camp and Dhubulia Camp into townships, the establishment of spinning machineries at the Taherpur Colony of Nadia, improvement of irrigation scheme in Nadia and improvement of the clay and other industries of Nadia. One member pointed out that in 1956, the newly elected state government had promised to convert Cooper’s Camp into a township scheme. But no action had been taken. The same was promised for the Dhubulia Camp but that had not taken place either. Instead, the government had even stopped dole in these camps. Hence there was no alternative than to lodge a full- fledged movement against the government. Samar Mukherjee, in his speech strongly stated that the government had admitted the refugee problem to be a national one but no constructive, practical policy has been adopted to deal with the situation. He further stated that it was the duty of the government to rehabilitate the 3.2 million refugees financially and that it was a commitment that the government could not evade. Criticizing the government’s decision to abolish the Refugee and Rehabilitation Department by 1961 Mukherjee also trashed the Cleaning Survey Report of the government stating that it was a political decision to facilitate the colony refugees in order to divide the camp and colony refugees. As per the report, the condition of the camp refugees was better than the colony refugees. Mukherjee claimed this to be untrue. He went to say that since the Congress government had not received any vote from camp refugees in the last election it wanted to dismantle the refugee camps. In this situation the refugees should follow the policy of do or die that is, not to give up their struggle till all their demands had been fulfilled by the government. Manikuntala Sen, also delivered speeches in support of Samar Mukherjee. She stated that the government had spent by that time around Rs 1.2 billion but the ‘refugee problem’ was still not solved. She called for the removal of the present government since this government was incapable of doing well by the refugees.

44 THE REFUGEE MOVEMENT

In the same meeting, Ambica Chakraborty stated that the present government was a capitalist one and hence wanted to secure the welfare of only the industrial class. It would never look after the common people. He stated that the crisis was not limited to the refugees alone; the local people were also facing a myriad of problems that the government was being unable to address. Requesting the refugees to not fall prey to the government’s divide and rule policy, he called for a united move of the locals with the refugees to combat the present government. The meeting was followed by songs and a drama ‘Ajkal’ by the Gana Natya Sangha of IPTA, Shantipur.41 At that time several meetings were held under the UCRC that echoed similar concerns. Repeatedly concerns surrounding the Refugee and Rehabilitation Policy of the government was criticized and rendered as the major bone of contention. Radha Ballav Gope of RSP in another such meeting jointly organized by the UCRC, East Bengal Relief Committee and the Shara Bangla Bastuhara Sammelan (All Bengal Refugee Association) on July 2007, declared the government as a betrayer and said that the only solution to the present crisis was to overthrow the government. He also levied charges of corruption against the present government and called upon an audience of over 1000 refugees to launch a rigorous movement in support of their various demands. On the same day, around 400 refugees from the Cooper’s Camp and Rupashree Colony of Ranaghta, Nadia, were de-trained at the Sealdah station with union banners and posters. They were coming to join this meeting, chaired by Ambica Chakraborty.42 Dispossession of the local poor especially poor peasants and Muslims was also a major concern that repeatedly figured in refugee meetings and protest movements. For instance, Renu Chakrabarty, in one of her speeches stated that the government had not yet fulfilled its promises to rehabilitate the refugees and most shocking was the policy of 41 Report of this entire parah has been taken from the files of Manikuntala Sen (MLA) CPI. No. 619–36, Part VII, 1958. 42 File No. 1304–58. Copy of IB Officer’s Report dated 9 April 1958.

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the government to acquire 57 maujas or spatial divisions smaller than villages, within Rajarhat Police Station, which were lands of local peasants, in order to rehabilitate the refugees. In this way, the local peasants began to emerge as the new class of displaced persons. Instead, she urged the government to acquire lands of big zamindars and fisheries to distribute among the refugees. Many of these fisheries that Chakrabarty was referring to belonged to Hem Chandra Nashkar, a minister of the government. The nuances of Left politics in mobilizing refugees and peasants at the same time against the government also became clear as a result of these meetings. Many refugee narratives testify to the eviction of Muslim dwellers and natives in order to rehabilitate refugees from East Bengal. There are several reports on this. Let us give here one instance to make our point. On June 1954, trouble between refugees and local persons was reported to the OC (Officer-in-charge) of Chandipore from the Baduria Police Station. It so happened, that initially one Mahammad Abdur Rahman gave word to refugees that he would not enter the disputed lands where the refugees had settled without prior intimation. But later he contended that the ownership of the land was indeed disputed and there was a possibility that he would try to enter the land. On receiving such intimation, the refugees arrayed themselves in groups in order to combat his entry.43 The memoir of Samar Mukherjee also indicates this. In one meeting held in 1952 in Ghola, Police Station Khardah, all the speakers including Ambica Chakraborty, Sushil Kumar Rai Chawdhury, Sayed Badraddoza, Asim Majumdar and others strongly condemned the government for acquiring wastelands, paddylands, religious places, graveyards and most importantly ‘dwelling houses of the Muslims’ in Sodepur, Natagarh and Ghola areas with a view to rehabilitate the refugees of that area. The forceful acquisition of Muslim lands and lands of other poor persons was strongly criticized by the speakers.44 43

File of Renu Chakraborty. No. 397–39. Copy of telephone message, dated 21 August 1952, from Additional S.P., DIB, 24 Parganas, File No. 1652/24, Ambica Chakraborty, Part II. 44

46 THE REFUGEE MOVEMENT

CONCLUSION One can say that the term ‘Refugee’ was also not naturally acceptable to the persons coming after partition from the east and trying to settle themselves in West Bengal. Not only did the state use repressive measures such as lathi charge or tear gas, the refugees themselves relied on arms to ‘snatch’ their rights, in case of a denial by the government. They never thought they were in need of charity from the existing government but their claim to resources in the new society was an extension of the political obligation that the two newly born states had reached at the price of freedom from the colonial rulers.45 On the pretext of refugee welfare, UCRC, guided by the CPI, was able to become ‘the’ voice of the refugees. We have seen how it is almost impossible to distinguish the two strands of movements- refugee movements devoid of any political colour and Left movements that did not have reference to the problems that the refugees were facing at the time. In a meeting organized by the Bengal Provincial Trade Union Congress (BPTUC), while the general secretary of the organization, Jyoti Basu stressed on the need of industrialization, Ambica Chakraborty, who was present on the behalf of the UCRC, promised wholehearted support to all refugees in all future democratic movements that would be conducted under the BPTUC.46 Partition of the country profited the ruling class. Partition refugees were the collateral damages of the fracture, so that the Congress leaders could rule. They never thought of themselves as refugees. Rather they thought of themselves as martyrs to the cause of freedom and so they figured that at least they had claims to rehabilitation and citizenship. As days went by their claims became more robust and they figured that they needed to make claims with greater emphasis because they were being violently opposed by those in power. Therefore, the kind of citizenship that they envisaged for their future was one of contention. Contentious politics steeped in violence would be the modality for their claim. In making claims for citizenship the refugee leadership figured that they needed to make 45 46

The Refugees Respond, Chapter IV. File No. 165Z/24, Ambica Chakraborty.

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claims to land, food, protection, mobility etc. To redress what they perceived as wrongs to their bodies and communities, they needed to make their claims to citizenship more robust by assuming leadership in these ancillary movements so that never again could they be driven out from their lands and dispossessed of the rights they considered to be their own. In the CPI they found a party that was willing to push forward their cause and become kindred to their movements. For the CPI, the main parliamentary opposition party during this time, any issue that caused slightest discomfort to the government figured in their political campaigns. Refugee issues were such that it created great discomfiture among the ruling class because this dispossession of a huge group of people was derivative of their own claims to leadership of the nation and power. Through supporting and voicing their concerns, the movement(s) got bigger eliciting more public participation. Thus, the party, which had once lost faith among the general mass of people became ‘popular’ through these political agendas riding on which they came to power in West Bengal in 1977. Thus, the coming together of the Left parties and the refugees was a win-win for both at least in the 1950s and 60s. Therefore, the refugees did not merely participate but perhaps gave birth to some of these movements that helped to sustain themselves in a land that they made their own. Without the active participation of the refugees these movements would not have received the level of success that they did. The refugees thus not only became the surrogate proletariat in these movements but also gave it the revolutionary edge that was needed to take these movements forward. The phenomenal rise of the CPI (M) can be partly explained if viewed through this prism. As a testimony to this if one looks at the leadership roles of the party cadres one finds many former refugees there. This also explains the later ambivalence of the CPI (M) to the mass movements and to border crossings but that is another story.

three CHAPTER

Anti-Tram Fare Rise and Teachers’ Movement in Calcutta, 1953–54 Anwesha Sengupta

INTRODUCTION

‘C

alcutta constantly appears to be on the brink of violence’, noted Myron Weiner, the well-known American political scientist and an authority on South Asia, in 1961.1 His observations were based on a series of protest movements that the city had witnessed in 1950s. These movements were organized around various demands. To name a few: the refugees took to the streets asking for better relief and rehabilitation measures; a cross-section of the society came together to protest against the rising fare of public transportation in the city and increasing food prices; the school teachers asked for a salary enhancement; and protests erupted against the proposed merger of Bihar and Bengal. These movements, led by the Left parties of the time and supported by a cross-section of the society, fundamentally shaped the political culture of Calcutta. The city in turn was instrumental in framing the strategies and tactics of these movements in multiple ways. However, all of these mass protests have remained largely underexplored in the existing literature about early postcolonial Calcutta. This chapter addresses this gap through a study of the resistance movement of 1953 against a rise in tram fare, and the Teachers’ Movement of 1954. The main purpose of this chapter is to understand the nature and extent 1

Myron Weiner, ‘Violence and Politics in Calcutta’.  The Journal of Asian Studies 20, no. 3 (May 1961), pp. 275–81, 276

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of ‘popular’ participation in these movements; the governmental modes of managing these movements; how and to what extent the protesters used the urban infrastructure to spread the movements, and finally the ethical questions around these struggles.

SECTION I: THE ANTI-TRAM FARE ENHANCEMENT RESISTANCE MOVEMENT July 1953 was a turbulent month in Calcutta. Amidst the torrential rain and the suffocating heat, the city warmed up to a month-long protest movement against the Congress Government when the latter decided to increase the second class tram fare by 1 paisa. By the middle of the month the protests were so widespread and intense that on 16 July the editorial of the popular Bengali daily Jugantar noted, ‘The fight for one paisa has now turned into a struggle of a million…it has almost prepared the stage for a civil war.’2 Even though the colonial rule had ended, the Calcutta Tram Company was in the hands of its erstwhile British owners in 1953. They proposed the increased fare which the government endorsed. The government was to take over the tramways after the expiry of the current lease. Therefore, they too had an interest in this decision as the income reserve of the company would go to them eventually. When the announcement of the fare hike was made on 25 June, it was perceived as act of collusion between the government and a British company to exploit the people. Immediately there were several public meetings and protest demonstrations. On 29 June 150 people attended a meeting organized by the Tram and Bus Excess Fare Resistance Committee in front of the Kidderpore Tram Depot. In this meeting, the speakers requested the audience against paying the excess fare from 1 July as ‘people were overburdened already by high commodity prices, and the government instead of minimizing their trouble was going to tax them further’.3 When the meeting got over, a procession was 2

Jugantar, 16 July 1953. ‘External C.’s Report of 4.7.53’. File on Jatin Chakrabarty, F.No – 153/45, S.No. 1. 1945, IB, West Bengal State Archives (WBSA), Kolkata. 3

50 ANTI-TRAM FARE RISE AND TEACHERS’ MOVEMENT IN CALCUTTA

taken out from Wellington Square. On the same day, 200 people gathered at Shraddhananda Park to protest against the proposed fare increase under the banner of Biplabi Sadharantantri Tram Bus Jatri Sangha.4 Similar meetings continued on 30 June as well. The Tram Bus Bhara Briddhi Pratirodh Committee (Tram and Bus Fare Increase Resistance Committee, later named as Tram Fare Enhancement Resistance Committee or TFERC) with Hemanta Basu (Forward Bloc) as its president, met at Wellington Square and asked the people to not to pay the increased fare. They regretted that the government colluded with a greedy private company against common people. The Committee urged all the Left parties to get united to resist this unjust demand.5 The other prominent members of the Committee were Jyoti Basu (CPI), Subodh Banerjee (SUC), Suresh Banerjee (Praja Socialist Party) and Satya Priya Banerjee of the Marxist Forward Bloc.

Key Moments of the Tram Movement Responding to the call of the Resistance Committee, thousands of commuters in Calcutta and Howrah refused to pay the increased tram fare on the first day of July. Thus began the ‘movement for 1 paisa’ or ‘ek poishar lorai’. Jugantar noted on the following day: ‘All the attempts to impose the increased second class tram fare have practically failed’.6 While the passengers insisted on paying the old fare, the conductors refused to accept it. In this confusion, most of the commuters travelled without tickets in Calcutta and Howrah. ‘Either because of the opportunity to travel without paying or as a mark of protest against the decision of fare hike, a significantly larger crowd travelled in the second class compartments of the trams throughout the day’, the report noted. He added, ‘from early morning the leaders of the left parties and the volunteers of 4

‘External C.’s Report of 4.7.53’. ‘External C.’s Report of 4.7.53’. 6 Jugantar, 2 July 1953. All translations, if not otherwise mentioned, are mine. Also, the entire description of the Tram Movement is based on the reporting of Jugantar (July 1953) and the records of the intelligence department (IB). 5

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the Committee were seen with festoons and badges on both sides of the tramlines in the city asking the passengers not to pay the increased fare’.7 In the next phase of the movement, starting from 6 July, the Resistance Committee called for a total boycott of the trams. People responded to this call with equal enthusiasm. The city witnessed the unusual sight of the overcrowded buses and empty trams during the office hours.8 The tram cars were not the only sites of protests. While crowding the second class compartments of the trams or boycotting those altogether were major forms of resistance, meetings, processions and street corners in support of the movement were also organized simultaneously across the city. Wellington Square and Maidan in central Calcutta, Shraddhananda Park near Sealdah Station and Hazra Crossings in South Calcutta became the regular grounds of public meetings in support of the movement. The dedicated protesters demonstrated along the tram-lines, particularly at the crossings. Picketing at Park Circus Tram depot, Gariahat Road and Rashbehari Avenue crossings, Russa Road and Hazra Road, Lower Circular Road and Elliot Road Junction, Curzon Park were reported on the third day of the movement (3 July). As thousands joined the Tram Movement, it emerged as the ‘law and order’ problem to the city authorities. They began to clamp down on public demonstrations and hundreds were arrested by the police. To protest against the police atrocities, a general strike was called by the Resistance Committee on 4 July. A student strike in support of the ongoing Tram Movement followed (6 July 1953). However, it was the general strike of 15 July that witnessed the most widespread support from the people of Calcutta and Howrah. More than 1 million people did not go to work; almost all the shops in Burrabazar area – a traditional Congress stronghold – remained closed; attendance in the jute mills was very low; all the major markets remained shut; the train services in both Howrah and Sealdah lines were totally disrupted. A massive meeting, with around ten thousand people, 7 8

Jugantar, 2 July 1953. Jugantar, 7 July 1953.

52

ANTI-TRAM FARE RISE AND TEACHERS’ MOVEMENT IN CALCUTTA

was held in Maidan in support of the movement. The All Bengal Teachers’ Association (ABTA) also held a meeting at the Students’ Hall against the police atrocities on the protesters. The day was not without violence. Sanyashi Sardar, a supporter of the movement, was killed in police firing near the Jadavpur area. Police and the government properties were common targets of the stone-pelting protesters and more than 500 of them were arrested from various parts of the city for acts of ‘hooliganism’. Despite the arrests and police firing, the movement only became stronger in the following days as the Tram Workers Union and Tram Mazdoor Panchayat joined it. They decided to strike work till a solution was found to the ongoing problem. The joining of the tram workers with an already massive group of protesters perhaps intimidated the government. The very next day, the government announced a temporary roll-back of the prices of the second class tram tickets. The Tram Movement, however, did not end immediately. Though there were few days of relative calm, it again gained momentum when the police opened fire at a protest meeting in Maidan on 22 July. The police atrocities were not only directed towards the protesters this time. The journalists who were covering the meeting were also beaten up. This incident infuriated many and it seemed that another round of protests would erupt in Calcutta. Indeed, the next few days were packed with public meetings and rallies where the attack on the journalists became a major issue. Finally, the movement was withdrawn on 29 July 1953. To understand the intensity of the movement, we may look into some facts and figures. The trams had always been the easy targets of urban riots and street politics in Calcutta. During the Tram Movement, this was all the more true. According to the estimates of the Calcutta Tram Company within the first six days at least 60 trams were damaged and they made a loss of Rs 2,50,000.9 Throughout the course of the movement, at least 4,000 people were detained or arrested by the police. Almost all the important leaders of the Left were among the arrestees and detainees.10 That a 9

Jugantar, 8 July 1953. The number is calculated from the reports of Jugantar of July 1953.

10

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significantly large section of the urban population was participating actively in the resistance movement is evident from the sheer number of arrests made throughout the month and the frequent meetings and processions that the city witnessed in July. Indeed, the Tram Movement became a benchmark of success for the Left parties for some years to come, something that will become evident when we will discuss the Teachers’ Movement.

Popular Participation How did this happen? Why did the movement gather so much steam in such a short span of time? What was the nature of the popular participation that the movement generated? The newspaper reports and the records of the Intelligence Department indicate the active participation of the following groups in this movement: students and teachers from high schools and colleges, refugees, workers from various fields and ordinary women of the neighbourhoods. Before trying to understand why these groups participated, I would like to elaborate briefly on the nature of their participation.

Students and Teachers The resistance committee, while enrolling volunteers for the movement, had called upon the students’ community specifically to participate in the movement. Teachers affiliated to Siksha Sankat Resistance Committee and ABTA participated in considerable numbers and encouraged the students to join the movement. The students’ strike on 6 July was a success when ‘students of most of the schools and colleges of Calcutta participated in the strike and took out processions. The students of North and Central Calcutta assembled in the university campus and then went to two public meetings at Hazra Park and Wellington Square to protest against the government oppression’.11 The day witnessed a scuffle between the students of Asutosh College and the police, and some student leaders were arrested. Consequently, the Shiksha Sankat Committee asked the students to continue with the strike on the next day. Surendranath College and Asutosh College, both adjacent to the 11

Juagantar, 7 July 1953.

54 ANTI-TRAM FARE RISE AND TEACHERS’ MOVEMENT IN CALCUTTA

Jugantar, 10 July 1953. (Courtesy: Centre for Studies in Social Sciences Archive)

tram lines, became regular sites of protests. Students could come out from the college, throw stones and brickbats to the passing trams and could get back to the colleges. These colleges, because of their locations, gave the students a convenient space to launch their attacks as well as the required refuge. It was almost impossible for the police to enter an educational institution without proper permission. The participation of high school students was also significant. The students and the teachers were further enraged when one retired teacher, Sailendra Mohan Bandyopadhyay, was allegedly beaten to death by the police. All Bengal Teachers Association declared him a martyr and 3 August was declared as a protest day against the killing of Sailendra Mohan. The authorities bitterly complained about the students for rioting and hooliganism. A Calcutta based newspaper reported, ‘in fact it was they [the students], who caused the police the greatest worry’.12 We get glimpses of the role of the students and the youth in the Tram Movement from the autobiographical writings of Sunil Gangopadhyay and Dhritikanta Lahiri Chowdhury. Sunil Gangopadhyay, the famous poet and novelist, was a college student 12

Guha Roy, ‘Fare Hike’, p. 2864.

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and a supporter of the Communist Party in 1953. He actively participated in the Tram Movement: ‘Everyday [sic] we used to go to Wellington Square in the evening. This was the centre of the movement. Confrontation with the police was a regular affair. When the police chased us, we used to run and took shelters in the narrow lanes and by-lanes. We would again return after a while with stones and bricks to throw at the police’.13 The city, with its narrow and winding streets, seemed particularly conducive for mass action against the government. Dhritikanta, a few years senior to Sunil, was then a Masters’ student in Calcutta as well as a party member. One day, when the Tram Movement was on, he was sitting in the party office with others when a senior comrade brought some petty bombs to the office. They had to be thrown into the tram cars. It was decided that they would be used near Jagubabur Bazar at Bhowanipore. Another comrade of his, ‘bente Biren’ (short Biren) was entrusted with the responsibility. He had not thrown a bomb earlier though he knew the procedure ‘in theory’. But things seemed more complicated at ‘ground zero’: We were standing slightly away from Biren, so that people on the road could see the revolutionary activities of Biren. Biren took out the bomb from his sling bag and also the match box… he put the bomb on the nearby footpath and squatted on the ground. Then he struck the match and put fire on the bomb. By then there were around 100–150 spectators. A tram was coming. Biren now threw the bomb targeting the tram. But nothing happened to the vehicle. Only there was smoke everywhere. The reactionary passengers came out of the tram and began shouting at us. We shouted back, “Long Live Revolution”, even if it was a slightly smoky revolution.14

Writing many decades later, Dhritikanta was now sarcastic of the movement and also perhaps amused by the incident. But back in 1953, they participated earnestly to defeat a British-owned 13 Sunil Gangopadhyay. Ardhek Jiban (Kolkata, West Bengal: Ananda, 2006). — www.amarboi.com. (Accessed on 25 September 2016). 14 Dhritikanta Lahiri Chaudhuri. Jibaner Indradhanu (Kolkata: Ananda, 2011), pp. 91–92.

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company and their Indian ally. Their natural propensity towards adventurism and their Left ideologies made them dangerous in the eyes of the government. Though CPI had left the Randive Line, it was still influential to a section of the students and youths. Indeed, since independence, students had been creating continuous ‘trouble’ in Calcutta. The city witnessed its first major student rally on 18 January 1949, which was to mark the protest against police oppression on a section of the refugees in Sealdah four days back. On this occasion, the police had opened fire, killing four and injuring many, triggering off a fresh series of protests throughout the city. This was only the beginning of many such student protests throughout the 50s. More often than not, these protests turned violent.

Refugee Colonies and other Neighbourhoods Prafulla Chakrabarty in his famous book The Marginal Men wrote: …the striking power of the TFERC [Tram Fare Enhancement Resistance Committee] came from the refugees in the squatters’ colonies who had nothing to lose but their hovels; stones, crackers and bombs – these were the weapons of the refugees. Colonies and the bustees occupied by the refugees became centres for manufactures of bombs and crackers…participation of the refugees [in Tram Movement] was total.15

This was hardly surprising since at that point of time the refugees were trying to gain a foothold in the city and a movement like this would quite naturally attract their attention. There were several overlaps between the various demands of the refugees and that of the general urban poor and middle-class population. UCRC extended support towards the movement quite early and appealed to everyone to observe the general strike of July 15. Bijoygarh refugee colony and the college ground of Bijoygarh became a frequent site for public meetings of the resistance committee.16 15

Prafulla Chakrabarty. The Marginal Men (Kolkata: Nayaudyog Edition, 1999), p. 344. 16 Jugantar, 24 June 1953.

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We get the most vivid description of refugee participation and mobilization from memoirs. A couple of passages from one such autobiography will help us understand the nature of refugee participation in the movement. Tejendralal Dutta, in his autobiography Udbastu Andoloner Smriti Chitra, wrote: We became involved in the Tram Movement of 1953. This was a completely political movement. The young men and women of Jadavpur- Tollygunj area massively participated in this movement. The movement helped in giving a clear political identity to the refugee colonies…. Jatin Chakrabarty and Nikhil Das of RSP were the leaders of the movement. Jadavpur local committee was in charge of Ballygunj-Gariahat region and Shanti Sur gave leadership to in this region and we worked under him. Tollygunj local party under Pranab Mukherjee was in charge of Rashbehari More and Hazra More….one public meeting was held in the Naktala Udayansangha playground…hundreds of people from nearby colonies including Vidyasagar Colony, Ramgarh, Lakshminarayan Colony and Arabindo Nagar joined [the meeting]. We volunteers barricaded the main roads with big trunks of trees so that the police van could not reach the venue. The press photographers mounted the big trees to get a glimpse. But as soon as the meeting started the Garwali police surrounded us. They arrested Atul Pal and Pankaj Da. Atul was bleeding. We decided to gherao the Tollygunj thana. Procession of thousands of people proceeded towards the thana. The OC met some of them and promised that those arrested would get bail by the next day. A girl from Pannalal Dasgupta’s group was also injured…. 17

Dutta’s autobiography is insightful because it gives a vivid description of the organization and the activities of the ‘workers’ of Tram Movement, the kind of support they received, the nature of violence perpetrated by the police as well as by the supporters of the movement. On another occasion he mentions: The group of Madhu Majumdar of Moore Avenue was picketing at Tollygunj tram depot when the police came and lathi-charged. At 17

Tejendralal Dutta, Udbastu Andoloner Smriti Chitra (Kolkata, West Bengal: Pratyay, 2011), p. 51.

58 ANTI-TRAM FARE RISE AND TEACHERS’ MOVEMENT IN CALCUTTA that very moment two bombs were thrown to the Tollygunj tram depot from the side of Indrapuri Studio injuring one tram driver and his assistant. They were immediately taken to the Bangur hospital. Everyone was running helter-skelter, a great confusion was created and rumours were spread about many people being killed and injured. The protesters took chance of the chaos and fled. We again went out deep in the night and put up posters from Gariahat Market to Ballygunj Station…. There was a triangular park just before the Ballygunj tram depot. It had a few bushy trees that gave us some cover. Our team had Haren Ray, Ramkanai Deb, Subrata Das and Pankaj Da. Haren was a tube-well mechanic. He had all the necessary tools and he was given the responsibility to uproot the tram lines. He brought two other mechanics with him and they managed to uproot a portion of the tramline near Gariahat market. They took the Kakulia Road and went home by crossing the Dhakuria Level Crossings. I was walking towards Kashba by crossing the Ballygunj level crossing. Suddenly I realized a police van was following me. A rickshaw with a lady was also coming. I quickly boarded the rickshaw. The middle-aged lady asked me “Who are you? Where will you go?” I said I am a worker of Tram Movement and that I am going to my brother-in-law’s house near Saha Soap factory, Kasba. The police stopped the rickshaw immediately. The lady showed them some identity card and introduced me as her brother. The police left us. The lady dropped me at my destination…Next morning Shanti Sur was arrested from Gariahat More. We were very agitated. Some police rounded 10–12 of us also. Suddenly two Punjabi ladies from the first floor of a flat beside us threw buckets of water on the police. The police was startled and we made use of the opportunity and ran.18

From the above extracts, we find that the movement gathered strong support in these neighbourhoods. The woman in the rickshaw or the ladies from the flat helped these unknown men to avoid arrest and flee. There was a belief that the fare-hike was unjust; it should be opposed. The movement became an ethical issue; people were ready to risk legal consequences. This sense of duty among ordinary citizens gave the protesters security, protection and support from very unlikely quarters. Often, it was not a single individual, but an 18

Dutta, Udbastu Andoloner. pp. 51–52.

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entire neighbourhood that stood up against the police. This was very well reflected in a Jugantar report describing the situation of the nights of 17 and 18 July: We went to tour the area between Elgin Road and Purna Cinema a little after midnight. The residents of the locality discouraged us vehemently. We met a crowd at the Elgin Road and Asutosh Mukherjee Road junction and they also asked us not to proceed. It was pitch-dark. We could see the tramlines burning a little ahead of us. We switched on the head light of our car, but immediately the crowd shouted and hurled stones on us. We turned off the light. We could feel the presence of a huge crowd. Some of them were making mashals. A group came to us with two young men at front. We shouted: “we are from press”…then they allowed us to enter. Two young men with mashals in their hands showed us the way. The crowd cooperated now by removing tree trunks and junks from the road. We could see boys, young people and also elderly people among the crowd. We saw that some of them were busy uprooting the tram lines. Some middle-aged men were supervising them. They told us, “write tomorrow that we have uprooted the tram line. We want to see what Atulya Ghosh can do to us, how powerful he is”. They showed that they were carrying fire crackers and acid bulbs. Our two young guides told us, “the government says that we are hooligans! Now we will show them what hooliganism means.” They were from middle-class educated families. We could see women standing at the terrace of the buildings by the roadside. We reached the Suburban School. In front of us, there was a wide empty main road. Across the road we could spot several police vans. Our guides told us that their area ended at that point and police’s area began from the other side of the road. The in-between area was ‘no man’s land’. They took us a little further and then shouted at the police, saying, “Comrades, they are reporters”. Then they disappeared in the dark while shouting “now they are your responsibility”.19

Paras or the neighbourhoods hold a crucial site in the biography of Calcutta. From the colonial period para as a space constituted social identities, shaped socialities, and forged emotive bonds in an 19

Jugantar, 18 July 1953.

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alien city. Questions of honour and dishonour within these newly formed neighbourhoods were played out through confrontations and conflicts. The para thus defined the bounds of an affective space; sentiment became the basis of a new territorialization within the urban. Ranabir Samaddar, writing on the Great Calcutta Killing of 1946, has described how during a riot, ‘respective zones and trenches are marked, how the technique of properly placing barricades is deployed, armed confrontations take place, how other techniques of urban warfare are improvised and polished…’20 During the Tram Movement often the neighbourhood emerged as the territory that had to be guarded. Thus it was not a matter of few individuals participating in the Tram Movement, but the entire neighbourhood was there to protect the protestors. And this sense of duty came from the belief of an unjust act by the government and the tram company. These snippets help us to understand the essentially urban character of this movement. The general sympathy of Calcutta’s educated middle-class was also evident from the letters they wrote to the editors of the newspapers. Some, of course, were wary of the violence. Amulya Charan Mukhopadhyay wrote in a letter: ‘the responsibility is to make the resistance movement successful through sacrifices and great suffering. We should boycott the foreign company completely but continue our daily activities. There can be no shortcut to success. Burning down trams and buses, attacking the police and common people do not help a movement, rather destroy it’.21 Another reader, Adhir Charan Chatterjee, was particularly against the participation of students from schools.22 But the general tone of most of the letters was largely sympathetic towards the movement.

Workers As mentioned earlier the tram workers initially stayed away from the movement and did not participate in the strike of 15 July. This was 20 Ranabir Samaddar. ‘Policing a Riot-torn City: Kolkata, 16–18 August, 1946’. Journal of Genocide Research. (Published online 21 September 2016), pp. 1–22, 9. 21 Jugantar, 7 July 1953. 22 Jugantar, 18 July 1953.

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very significant particularly given ‘their glorious tradition of struggle against the management and their long history of responsive reaction towards significant political issues…’.23 That the Communist party workers were surprised is evident from Jolly M. Kaul’s memoirs: ‘the party had taken it for granted that the [tram] union would respond to its call but it did not.….as secretary of the district committee, I had been actively campaigning for the success of the strike and the news that the organization, which was the strongest base of the party, has refused to fall in line with the party decision came as a severe blow’.24 Siddhartha Guha Roy provided the following explanation for this apparent disavowal of the party-line: ‘during the first few days of the agitation, tramway men despite their “help” and “sympathy” towards the agitators, possibly received some maltreatment from them…. however realizing their mistake, they soon joined hands with the people and decided to launch a continuous strike’.25 One of the reasons cited by the tram company for the fare hike was the increasing expenditure in employees’ salaries, bonuses and dearness allowances. From the beginning of the strike, the company had been saying that the monetary loss caused by the movement would prevent them from paying the bonus to its employees. The possibility of financial difficulties might have prevented the tram workers from joining the strike as well. However, from 17 July tram workers joined the movement. And even after the movement died down, the tram workers’ agitation continued demanding puja bonus, food security and employment.26 A labour unrest in a factory of Indian Iron and Steel Company in Burnpur near Asansol had coincided with the Tram Movement. It had begun with a demand for certain risk benefits made by the workers in the early part of the year. The authorities dealt with it ruthlessly and suspended 400 workers immediately and the government imposed Criminal Penal Code (Cr. PC) Section 144. 23

Guha Roy, ‘Fare Hike and Urban Protest’, p. 2866. J.M. Kaul.  In Search of a Better World: Memoirs  (Kolkata: StreeSamya, 2010), p. 182. 25 Guha Roy, ‘Fare Hike and Urban Protest’, p. 2866. 26 See File on Jatin Chakrabarty, F.No 153/45, S.No. 1, 1945,IB, WBSA. 24

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Consequently, the workers’ resistance movement strengthened. On 23 June they observed a strike which received an overwhelming support from almost all the workers. Anticipating trouble, armed security guards were posted within the factory premises.27 The situation further deteriorated when the police arrested 25 leaders of the resistance committee. While the workers marched to Asansol and began a procession in front of the residence of the district judge, the police fired on them killing seven and injuring many. This incident was severely condemned by the opposition (as well as a section of the Congress leaders). The Tram Fare Resistance Committee picked up the issue when they observed an All Bengal Protest Day on 11 July. They condemned the police atrocities on students in Calcutta during the Tram Movement and in the Burnpur incident. They demanded for an independent enquiry board to investigate the reasons for police firing. From then on, Burnpur remained a constant issue in the protest meetings of Calcutta against the fare increase. At the huge meeting at Maidan on 15 July 1953, Suresh Banerjee emphatically pointed out that the general strike that Wednesday though a unique success for the committee, would not mean the culmination of the movement which was no more directed solely against the increase in tram fare. The meeting was also directed against the all sorts of wrongs done by the Congress regime and would concentrate on achieving the following objectives – ‘a) to prevent mass retrenchment, b) to stop increase in tram fare, c) judicial enquiry in the Asansol firing and d) to pull down the high prices of the food stuffs…the movement would be directed to emancipate the whole country from all sorts of injustice, corruption and exploitation’.28 Thus, tram fare became one more item in the long list of grievances against the government. An essentially urban movement based at Calcutta managed to have some impact on the regional towns and the industrial areas of West Bengal because of the leaders’ 27

Jugantar, 24 June 1953. Extract from the report in connection with the tram fare enhancement resistance committee in Calcutta (South Zone), 15–7–1953, File on Satyapriya Banerjee, F.No. 321–22 (Part III), S.no.41/1922, IB, WBSA. 28

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ability to club other issues with the main demand of reinforcing the old tram fare. The strike on 15 July was successful in Bardhaman, Suri, Chandannagar and Baharampore. It received positive response from industrial areas of Calcutta and Howrah as well. Six jute mills remained completely shut because no mill workers turned up.29 A few other jute mills witnessed a little more than 30 per cent attendance and ran intermittently on that day. Only two mills worked throughout the day. Cossipore and Ichhapore ordinance factory remained completely shut.

People’s Movement One of the main reasons for the huge support behind the Tram Movement was due to the fact that it could be portrayed as a struggle against colonial power. According to the Calcutta Tramways Act, 1951, the Tram Company was given an assured tenure of 20 years after which the state government would acquire the right to purchase the Calcutta tramways at a fixed price of 3,75,000 GBP in 1972. This step was criticized by the Left parties which demanded immediate nationalization of the tram company. A movement against the British-owned tram company could get a nationalist colour very easily. The government bus fare had also increased simultaneously. But the tram cars became the exclusive symbol and targets of the movement.30 When the boycotting phase began, 29

Jugantar, 16 July 1953. There has also been a long history of protest movement in Calcutta where trams had been the targets of the protesters. Siddhartha Guha Roy has written that ‘one of the interesting features of crowd action in Calcutta, during both colonial and post-colonial periods, was the attack on tram cars by frenzied mobs’. However this is nothing particular to Calcutta it seems. As Eric Hobsbawm noted ‘tramways, whether in Calcutta or in Barcelona, are unusually convenient for rioters; partly because of raising fares, which tends to affect all the poor simultaneously, is a very natural percipient of trouble, partly because these large and track bound vehicles, when burned or overturned, block streets and disrupt traffic very easily. Buses do not seem to have played anything like as important a part in riots, underground railways appear to be entirely irrelevant to them (except for transporting rioters) and automobiles can at best be used as improvised road blocks and barricades…’. Guha Roy, ‘Fare Hike and Urban Protest’, p. 2863; Eric 30

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one of the popular slogans of the protesters was ‘Bus e jabo, hete jabo, tram e jabona’ [we will travel by bus or we will walk but we will not take the tram]. Throwing fire crackers and brickbats at the moving trams, uprooting the tramlines and obstructing the movement of trams in various ways became common modes of protest. While mobilizing the crowd, the Left leaders harped on the particular issue of British capital vs peoples’ interest. For example, on 7 July, in a huge gathering of students under the banner of Siksha Sankat Pratirodh Committee and Tram and Bus Fare Enhancement Resistance Committee, a speaker appealed to everyone to boycott trams. Invoking the memories of the recent colonial past, he said, ‘Tram Movement is another version of the boycott movement of 1905’.31 A letter addressed to the editor of Jugantar compared the Congress Ministry with the colonial rulers: ‘like every Swadeshi movement during British rule was termed as hooliganism by the government, [the Congress government] also perceives the ongoing resistance movement as hooliganism’.32 There were certain other reasons that made this movement ‘popular’. As already hinted above, the ability of the resistance committee to link the fare increase with other economic and political issues helped the movement to attract various sections of the society and also to take it, even though on a limited scale, outside Calcutta. High prices of food grains and scarcity of food were certainly major reasons for the public discontent and they were reported daily in the newspapers. Mass agitation on food security issues was led by Sanjukta Durbhiksha Pratirodh Committee of which Hemanta Basu, Biswanath Mukherjee, Ramen De were the main leaders. Hemanta Basu and several other leaders were equally prominent in the Tram Fare Resistance Committee because they could tie several issues together and could bring in a cross-section of society. Refugee agitation was also making news around this time. West Bengal Hobsbawm, ‘Cities and Insurrections’, Global Urban Development Magazine 1, no. 1 (May 2005): 1. – http://www.globalurban.org/Issue1PIMag05/Hobsbawm PDF.pdf. (Accessed on 19 October 2016). 31 Jugantar, 8 July 1953. 32 Jugantar, 14 July 1953.

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was getting used to sporadic protests by the refugees, in the form of hunger strike, meetings and processions. Again, the leadership overlapped: Suresh Chandra Banerjee, Ambika Charan Chakrabarty, Sibnath Banerjee, JyotiBasu, Hemanta Kumar Basu, Manikuntala Sen were prominent figures in these various movements.

Government’s Attitude towards the Movement Before going to the next section on the Teachers’ Movement, let me very briefly touch upon the ways in which the government responded to the movement. When the city was witnessing massive protests against the second class tram fare hike, Bidhan Chandra Roy was mostly in Europe. Before leaving for the foreign shores, he had issued a statement in support of the fare hike saying that if the tram company could make some profit now, it would benefit the government when it purchased the tramways in 1972, because deferring the purchase implied that the company would only get a maximum of 4 per cent profit share.33 In his absence, the government led by Prafulla Sen and Kalipada Mukherjee (Police Minister) attempted to crush the movement with its trigger-happy police, army and by arresting the leaders and participants of the movement indiscriminately. However, their attempts were not successful, forcing Roy to cut his foreign trip short. While the government tried to deal with the movement using state machinery, the Congress party encouraged its supporters to take to the street against the protesters. When on 13 July, there were meetings and processions everywhere in the city, at least 500 Congress supporters were given some money and asked to travel in the trams throughout the day.34 Atulya Ghosh, the party president, repeatedly said that Congress would ‘protect’ the ordinary commuters from the hooligan protesters.35 However, neither as a party nor as a government could the Congress contain the movement. It died down when the tram company, on the advice of the West Bengal government, agreed to postpone the fare hike, at least for the time being. A Tribunal was formed to look into the 33 34 35

Jugantar, 3 July 1953. Jugantar, 14 July 1953. Jugantar, 13 July 1953.

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matter and to make necessary recommendations about tram fare. But it remained an issue of public discussion and political mobilization for months to come. When the winter session of the Assembly began, Manikuntala Sen moved a resolution demanding a discussion on the Tram Movement and the repressive measures of the government towards the protesters. Describing it as ‘peoples’ protest’, Sen said: If the second class tram fare was hiked, the poor people who travelled in the second class would have to face the brunt. It is only natural of them to protest. People of the entire state of West Bengal protested against such a move and justly so. The Tram Company had no justification for this fare hike and that was very evident. When the common men had hardly any money to buy food, protest against the increased tram fare was an ethical protest. This was a peoples’ protest… Apart from few supporters of the company and the government, there was no one in favour of the fare hike.36

In the resolution, she also tagged together other protest movements that followed the Tram Movement: the one was demand of food and the other demand of a puja bonus made by the workers. These were all just demands and the protests, therefore, were legitimate. The government was accused of being authoritarian and ruthless in suppressing such movements. Outside the Assembly, the Communist Party was now busy campaigning for the South Calcutta by-election, where the government’s role in curbing the Tram Movement and its inefficiency in dealing with the food and refugee crises remained the major issues.37 The Left continuously stressed the need for more movements on the line of the Tram Movement against the ‘unjust’ and ‘corrupt’ government. And ‘hardly had the debris been cleared from the tram fare violence of 1953 when Calcutta was again plunged into violence in early 1954’.38 This time it was the teachers from secondary schools under 36

West Bengal Legislative Assembly, 1402–03. See for instance Meeting report dated 8.11.53 at Park Circus Maidan, Manikuntala Sen, F. No. 619/36, S. No. – 106, 1936. 38 Myron Weiner. ‘Violence and Politics in Calcutta’, The Journal of Asian Studies 20, no. 3 (May 1961), p. 276. 37

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A cartoon published in Jugantar (22 July 1953) showing the ‘increases’ of West Bengal. West Bengal seems to suffer from high fever, where various problems are increasing the mercury level. Refugee crisis, interestingly, seems to be the lesser concern here, whereas tram fare hike is the most acute problem. (Courtesy: Centre for Studies in Social Sciences Archive)

the leadership of ABTA who took to the streets, demanding a pay hike and an increased dearness allowance.

SECTION II: TEACHERS’ MOVEMENT Since independence, there had been a continuous demand from the secondary school teachers for an increased salary and dearness allowance. As early as 1 September 1948, a strike was observed by them on this issue. On their 28th annual conference held at Chinsura (now Chuchura, in Hoogly) in April 1953, they announced their resolution to go for a teachers’ strike from 10 February 1954 unless their demands for higher pay were met. ABTA also announced that local and central executive committees would be formed to organize

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the movement and mobilize common people; a signature campaign would begin to pressurize the government, teachers would donate Rs 5 each to make the campaign successful and simultaneous fundraising campaigns would also continue.39 Keeping the demands in mind and to reach out to people, an ‘education week’ was observed in Calcutta and West Bengal between 3 and 9 August 1953, when the city was just recovering from everyday conflict between the Tram Movement workers and the police. But since the West Bengal government kept on ignoring the teachers’ demands, ABTA launched a sit-down strike from 10 February 1954. Their main demand was salary according to the recommendations of the Board of Secondary Education with a dearness allowance of Rs 35 per month.

Support Base Support was extended to the protesting teachers from various sections of the society and different political groups. The Communist Party formally extended their support to this proposed strike.40 Similarly the Praja Socialist Party too stood up for the teachers.41 An All Parties Teachers’ Struggle Coordination Committee was formed that provided the leadership to the movement. The members of the Committee included Subodh Banerjee, Dr Kanailal Bhattacharya of Forward Block (Marxist), Jyoti Basu, Sudhamoy Dasgupta (RCPI), Nihar Ranjan Das of Hindu Mahasabha, Amal Roy (RSP), Satyen Basu of Jana Sangh among others. Bolshevik Party of India under the leadership of Sudha Roy was also actively supporting the movement. Manoranjan Sengupta, President, ABTA, and Satyapriya Roy, Secretary of ABTA were also initially the members of the coordination committee. Later they resigned, perhaps to project a non-political face of ABTA. The ABTA had also appealed to the UCRC for support. On 17 January, UCRC formally extended their support to the teachers’ causes and promised to help the movement.42 39 Shachindra Kumar Mazumdar, Chauannor Smaraniyo 12 Din (Kolkata, West Bengal: ABTA, n.d.), pp. 49–50. 40 Jugantar, 1 February 1954. 41 Jugantar, 2 February 1954. 42 Prafulla Chakrabarty, The Marginal Men, pp. 345–46.

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The teachers’ strike, like the Tram Movement of the previous year, was successful in generating mass support in Calcutta and elsewhere. Throughout late January and early February, the city witnessed several public meetings, processions and protest demonstrations in support of the demands of ABTA. On 25 January, in a mass meeting at Hazra Park, Satyapriya Roy dismissed the government’s argument that it had not enough money to meet ABTA’s demand. A meeting was held on 31 January, at South Jhapardah Bazar, P.S. Domjur, under the CPI banner where Manikuntala Sen and other speakers spoke in support of the strike. Around 500 people attended this meeting. On 4 February, a meeting was organized in Gurudwara Park of Kalighat by ABTA’s South Calcutta Unit, attended by 150 people, where it was decided that the teachers would organize public meetings to secure popular sympathy till 7 February. After that ‘cease work’ would begin from 10 February, followed by a general strike on 12 February. On the next day, in the annual conference of Mahila Atmaraksha Samiti, a resolution was passed in support of the strike.43 The same day saw another solidarity meeting organized by Chetla Citizen’s Committee. On 6 February similar meetings continued. Hiren Dasgupta, Gurudas Dasgupta and other student leaders spoke at Hazra Park, South Calcutta Teachers’ Association held a public meeting presided by Sailendra Nath Banerjee of ABTA, attended by Manikuntala Sen, Subodh Banerjee, Tarapada Lahiri (RSP), Biswajit Dutta (Bengal Revolutionary Group) and Sudha Roy and others. From both these platforms, the speakers appealed to all the teachers of West Bengal to cease work from 10 February until their demands were met. It was decided that a procession would go out from Hazra Park on 11 February to the Writers’ Building to place the demands of the teachers. Similar meetings continued 43

Mahila Atmaraksha Samiti was formed sometime in April, 1942. Though it was set up as a ‘broad front of women with non-Communist backgrounds… Communist women took the initiative and the leading role in planning and doing the organizational work’. For details of their activities, see Gargi Chakravartty ‘Emergence of Mahila Atma Raksha Samiti in the Forties – Calcutta Chapter’ in Calcutta: The Stormy Decades. Tanika Sarkar and Sekhar Bandyopadhyay (eds.). New Delhi: Social Science Press. 2015. pp. 177–203, 181.

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throughout the teachers’ protest.44 Interestingly, in many of these meetings the government was warned about the possibilities of ‘untoward event’ like the Tram Movement, if they did not accept the just demands of the teachers. Simultaneously, the people of Calcutta were also asked to get ready for a movement similar to the one against the tram fare hike.45 Thus, it seems that from the beginning of this struggle some of the leaders of the opposition sniffed an opportunity for another round of a violent movement against the government.

The Strike Begins General sympathy of the students, teachers, city intellectuals, common people, also the working class was in favour of the teachers, even if not all of them were certain about strike as a mode of protest. Particularly prominent were women and students from various schools. On the first day of the strike, no classes were held in at least 130 schools in Calcutta. Thirty schools that remained open had very few students present. Protesting teachers, students and other volunteers picketed in front of their respective institutions and several rallies were taken out in various parts of the city. A number of public meetings were also arranged where the leaders of the coordination committee and ABTA spoke in support of the demands tabled by the striking teachers. Similarly, teachers’ strike was successful in Asansol, Jalpaiguri, Krishnanagar, Kharagpur, Kalna, Coochbehar, Bankura, Siliguri, Tamluk and Siuri. In most of these places, students and their parents also joined the striking teachers.46 The real drama, however, began to unfold on the following day, when the police force prevented a huge procession of teachers, students and sympathizers to proceed beyond the main gate of Rajbhavan. The protesters sat down on the ground and began their 44

See IB files on Manikuntala Sen, Sudha Roy and others for an idea about the nature of these meetings in terms of participation, location etc. 45 See the detention order of Manikuntala Sen dated 18.2.1954, File on Manikuntala Sen, F. No. 619/36 (Part II), S.No 106, 1936, IB, WBSA. 46 Jugantar, 11 February 1954.

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sit-in protests near the governor’s house. Thousands of teachers seating on the road and facing the police barricade became a spectacle in Calcutta. Ordinary people, students, teachers and working-class groups visited the teachers daily to express their solidarity for the movement. The following extracts from three different sources will elaborate the nature of support and enthusiasm that the movement generated. (a) Copy of Telephone message dated 13.2.54 from S.I.S Sarkar of IB to S.S. I.B: As a mark of sympathy with the teachers squatting on the Government House East at about 11.45 hrs from students numbering about 500 including 25 females of Surendranath College, Charuchandra College and Bidyasagar College arrived there in a procession shouting usual slogans in connection with the ABTA movements and mixed up with them. the number of squatters at present has been swelled upto 1000 of whom prominent following members are seen Satyapriya Roy, Manoranjan Sengupta (president ABTA), Anila Debi (teacher, BPSF), Sudha Roy (teacher, BPI). On behalf of the Chamber of Commerce Employees Union [and] Metropol Hotel Workers, some food was sent to the teachers. Kashi Viswanath Sevasamiti is supplying water and collection being made in full swing to continue their struggle….so far it is learnt that the sum of Rs. 500 have already been realized from the sympathizers of the teachers’ struggle…47

(b) Describing the situation of the next day (14.2.54) Jugantar reported on 15.2.54: The hundreds of squatting teachers in the Government Place East, facing the police barricade for last 83 hours, has become a symbol of protest of all labouring class people. On Sunday, labourers, workers, common people visited them throughout the day. They donated money and foodstuffs…Generally we see very little people in Dalhousie area on a holiday. But on Sunday from noon to 10 in the night this place was crowded. Many came with their 47

File on Sudha Roy, F. No. 67–39, Part II, 1939, IB, WBSA.

72 ANTI-TRAM FARE RISE AND TEACHERS’ MOVEMENT IN CALCUTTA children and family. Teacher and student volunteers controlled the crowd efficiently and made a human chain around the protesting teachers. The police force has shown remarkable restraint and they also formed a human chain surrounding the teachers. The teachers are also very polite towards the police…the college and university teachers’ association also extended their support to the squatting teachers. They came in a procession from Maidan and congratulated the teachers…one gentleman from Howrah and one primary school teacher have donated two gold finger rings to the satyagrahi teachers. Mahila Atmaraksha Samiti, Lichubagan Refugee Association, Motijhil Students’ Union, Deshapran Birendranath Institution, Naktala Government Colony Cultural Association, Nayamichhil, Rakhisangha Chetla, Sealdah Hawkers’ Corner, Jagubabur Bazar, Deshpriya Institution, Palpara Deshapriya Nagar Colony etc have send money to the protesting teachers.

(c) Description of 15 February from Shachindrakumar Mazumdar’s Chuannor Smaraniya 12 din 250 teachers came and sat with us in the protest. The cold nights and very warm days took a toll on many teachers. A temporary medical camp was opened where 30 teachers were treated. A relief committee with many students from Medical College came to treat us. They also gave us vaccine to prevent cholera. Several departments were operational – publicity, finance, store and volunteer. A bakery sent 250 breads. A grocer sent around 92 kgs of muri (puffed rice). A student of class five brought with him some luchi for the teachers. It was an emotional scene. Processions of various labour unions and workers union of several merchant firms came to the spot. We collected Rs 2500 that day. A terribly ill little boy sent Rs 3 from Howrah Hospital. From almost all the schools of Calcutta two representative teachers came. Teachers also came from Bongaon, Shantipur, Ranaghat, Katwa, Daihat, Hatgobindapur, Jonai, Mahesh, Rishra, Asansol, Kolaghat.48

Thus, the striking teachers received sympathy and support from different sections of the society. The college teachers, students 48

Mazumdar, Chauannor Smaraniyo 12 Din, p. 97.

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and their parents came forward, so did the labourers and the petty traders, Left-dominated refugee organizations, women’s organizations, cultural platforms. But the participation of the wider public in the Teachers’ Movement was very different from that of the Tram Movement. To this we shall come back later.

Is Teachers’ Strike ‘Ethical’? Among a section of the teachers and the wider public there was a discomfort regarding the ‘ethics’ of a teachers’ strike. It was an old debate. Shachindra Kumar Roy wrote that in a preparatory meeting for the token one-day strike of 1 September 1948, ABTA’s senior leader Anila Debi spoke in favour of putting up posters in various parts of the city to mobilize support. Satyapriya Roy objected to this proposal saying that such were the methods of labour strikes. But the strike itself was the weapon of the labourers, pointed out Anila Debi. After much discussion Roy agreed with her.49 As the ABTA narrative goes, earlier the leadership suffered from the hesitation of the working class street protests demonstrated by shouting slogans, strike, mass squatting, courting arrest etc, against injustice, for winning rights and privileges. In 1954, under the new leadership ABTA broke down that barrier and decided firmly to wield those tools. Street demonstrations, strikes, squatting, courting arrests were taken up during the Teachers’ Movement in 1954. Doubt about its propriety was dispelled. A broad alliance was forged with students, guardians, all other working people and the Left political forces.50 The issue might have been resolved among the leaders of ABTA, but for many other sympathizers of the teachers’ demands, the strike was not the ‘ethical’ path. Teachers were the moral force of the society; they had a national duty, so for them it was not proper to come down to the level of street politics. Among the supporters of the teachers’ strike, there was always a tendency to emphasize the difference between a teacher and a labourer, even if both use strike as a mode of protest. So, a senior teacher who participated 49 50

Mazumdar, Chauannor Smaraniyo, p. 18. http://www.abta-satyapriya.org/index.php (Last accessed on 2 August 2016).

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in the movement opined that, ‘I fully realize that the position of a teacher is not the same as that of an industrial worker because the mission of a teacher is entirely different. In this context a strike by teachers is in itself a deplorable thing…’.51 But then he justified his action and that of his colleagues saying: ‘still [the strike] came because it had to come, for whatever noble mission might inspire the teacher in his life, he is a human being after all. A whole life time spent in poverty may at weaker moments rob one of all ideas when children cry out of hunger. The callousness of society has made even stones melt’.52 There were two broad currents of thought among the protesters and their sympathizers regarding the teachers’ strike: while one group conceived the movement along the lines of the previous year’s tram fare agitation, the other group was anxious to keep themselves distinct from labourers/workers, even if their modes of protest were similar now. That the teachers had a crucial role to play in nation-making and their movement was not only for increasing their salaries, but for a greater good like ensuring the overall upgradation of the education system, were frequently repeated by them. Even if the teachers were in abject poverty, they were not yet ready to be equated with the blue-collared workers. Making such claims became particularly important in a context where a section of the bureaucracy and also some members of the government were raising questions about their qualification and were criticizing their protests. For instance, when a representative of ABTA said that even the bearer (chaprashi) of the Writers’ Building received more DA than the teachers, the education secretary D.M. Sen replied that the teachers could very well apply for those posts and if they were qualified enough, they would be considered. Of course, such a statement was seen as deeply humiliating to the teachers and they began signature campaign demanding Sen’s resignation.53 51 52 53

Letter of Bonomali Dey, Amritabazar Patrika, 21 February 1954. Ibid. Jugantar, 15 February 1954.

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Response from the Government Unlike the Tram Movement, the Teachers’ Movement remained peaceful in its initial phase. The police were, if we may recall the extract from Jugantar, restrained in their behaviour towards the teachers, because the volunteers ensured that the teachers were not provoked. Bidhan Chandra Roy was also somewhat more cautious in his approach to the teachers. Though initially the government tried not to pay much attention to the squatting teachers, soon they realized the emotional charge of such a situation and began negotiations with the representatives of ABTA. Satyapriya Roy, Anila Debi, Phoolrenu Guha, Manoranjan Sengupta and three others met Dr Roy on the evening of 13 February to discuss their demands. Though nothing came out of this initial meeting,54 the Teachers’ Movement was also discussed at length in Congress Working Committee meeting on 15 February. The budget session of the Legislative Assembly began on 15 February, when the Teachers’ Movement had entered its fifth day. Not surprisingly, the teachers’ demonstration outside Rajbhavan emerged as a major issue in the Assembly. When the governor began to deliver his introductory speech on the first day of the session, the members sitting in the opposition interrupted him through continuous sloganeering in support of the protesting teachers. Jugantar reported, ‘amidst unprecedented chaos and agitation began the budget session of the Legislative Assembly this year’.55 After around 15 minutes of protest, all the members of the opposition except three walked out.56 But the contestations were far from over, as the events of the following day would reveal. On 15 February, after a late night meeting, ABTA declared that they would defy Section 144 of the Cr. PC the next day and would march to the Assembly. While some of the satyagrahi teachers were patiently sitting near Rajbhavan facing the police barricade, the 54

Jugantar, 14 February 1954. Jugantar, 16 February 1954. 56 Two of them were representatives of Legislative Council and one was elected member from the teachers’ constituency. 55

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volunteers of the Left political parties were busy organizing ‘squads, street corner meetings and meetings in bustees…in every locality to attract mass sympathy in support of the movement’.57 All the units of Mahila Atmaraksha Samiti were mobilized and their members from the districts had begun to assemble in Calcutta. The CPI and the RCPI aimed to build up a general mass movement around the teachers’ agitation, as it had happed to an extent during the Tram Movement. There was a growing anxiety that if there was no confrontation and if things settled down somewhat amicably, the space for a general movement would not open up. An entry dated 15 February in Manikuntala Sen’s IB file mentions: ‘the teachers struggle coordination committee on the night of 14.2.54 decided that if no settlement was reached by 15th February, the left political groups will mobilize strong at the Calcutta Maidan on the 16th afternoon. [then they would proceed towards the assembly and surround it].. the party workers would be instructed to give provocation to the police, if necessary, by forcibly breaking through the cordon or violating 144 Cr. PC orders, if there be any such, and invite police action without which the intensity of the situation would gradually die out’.58 On 15 February some leaders from a few left parties had

From Jugantar, 14 February 1954. (Courtesy: Calcutta Research Group Archives) 57 58

Source No. 2, 13.2.54, File on Mani Kuntala Sen. Source No. 3, 15.2.54, File on Mani Kuntala Sen.

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also threatened from a public meeting at Maidan that they would not allow the ministers to enter the Assembly until and unless the demands of the teachers were met. Anticipating serious trouble, the police arrested some of the prominent leaders and ABTA members around 2.00 am on 16 February under the Preventive Detention Act. This was going to be a long day marked by violent clashes, as we shall see in a while. As the Assembly session began on 16 February, several adjournment motions related to the strike were tabled by Opposition leaders like Hemanta Kumar Basu, Jyoti Basu and Ranendranath Sen. Though they were dismissed by the Speaker, the government could no longer refuse to address the situation in the Assembly. Dr Roy gave a speech on the ongoing Teachers’ Movement and announced the following measures: a) non-graduate non-trained teachers would receive Rs 10 as interim grant, in addition to their monthly salary of Rs 50, for next three years within which they should get the necessary training; b) the DA that the teachers of government-aided schools were receiving was Rs 20, of which Rs 10 came from the government exchequer and the rest from school funds. Now the government would provide Rs 17.5 for each teacher and would request the managing committees of the schools to give a matching grant from January 1954, if not sooner.59 Merely addressing the demands, however, was no longer sufficient. About 300 people had been detained by then in connection with the movement. A procession of around 10,000 teachers, students, party members was proceeding from Maidan to the Legislative Assembly, determined to break the police cordon and defy 144 Cr. PC. A violent clash seemed inevitable between the police and the protesters. As they reached Rajbhavan, the chief whip came running towards them and requested the leaders to stop. But this had no effect and the rally continued to move forward. Inside the Assembly, the opposition leaders demanded a statement from Roy regarding the arrest of the teachers. A promise from Roy about their early release would bring the tense situation under control, 59 For the full text of Bidhan Roy’s speech, see West Bengal Legislative Assembly Debates, Vol IX, No.1, Budget Session, 1954, pp. 47–93.

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they opined. But Dr Roy, while taking ‘full responsibility for getting these men under arrest’,60 blamed the teachers and the Left leaders for creating confusion in the city by occupying public streets and causing inconvenience to the common people. He refused to make any statement on the release of the arrestees saying that the court would decide on that. By then the police had begun to lathi-charge, fired tear gas shells and the mounted police tore through the crowd to disperse them. When Bankim Mukherjee came out of the Assembly with an all-party delegation to convey the latest proposals of the government, there was no one to negotiate with. The whole area had turned into a battlefield and soon trouble would break out in various parts of the city. On that evening, at least five people were killed and 30 were injured, six government buses and seven trams were set on fire, electricity connections were cut off in some parts of the city, news of arson came from Jagubabur Bazar and a few shops were also looted amidst the chaos. When the confrontation began, the offices in Central Calcutta’s office para were just closing down so the area was crowded. This added to the chaos. Khagen Roy Chowdhury, one such office-goer, complained, ‘suddenly there was tear gas and people started running wherever they could. Amidst this, stone and brickbats were being thrown in every direction. To escape the situation alive seemed impossible…we office goers were in serious trouble. Then police firing began. While fleeing, our clothes tore and became dirty. I lost all the money that I was carrying in my pocket’.61 The military was brought in by the government. Frontranking leaders along with hundreds of others were arrested. Amitabha Sen, who participated in the rally as a student activist, later wrote, ‘As the police opened fire and started beating up the protesters, the entire city rose in protest. The police had to backtrack at Chowringhee area. We put up barricades everywhere, from Hazra to Shyambazar. Confrontations continued till 9 at the night. Section 144 was imposed on the entire city and the army was brought in’.62 60

Legislative Assembly, pp. 58. Letter by Khagen Roy Chowdhury, Jugantar, 22 February 1954. 62 Amitabha Sen, Padatik (Kolkata, West Bengal: NBA, 1998), pp. 48–49. 61

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Interestingly, a group of satyagrahi teachers remained seated where they had been squatting for last few days, throughout the chaos. This gesture, once again, indicates two distinct trends of the movement. The violent turn in the movement was criticized by a section of the people who had been otherwise sympathetic to the teachers’ causes. A letter published in Jugantar noted: ‘I am unable to understand the logic of burning down the buses and the trams. The indiscipline and reckless crowd must remember that repeated destruction of public property only causes harm to the movement. They have destroyed 6 government buses; who will suffer its consequences – Bidhan Roy or the ordinary people?’63 Similarly, another letter in the same daily reminded the protesters that the destruction of public transports would affect the lives of common people who use them for commuting and not the leaders.64 Many blamed the attitude of the government and the aggression of the police for the disturbances of 16 February. Jyoti Basu described Bidhan Roy as ‘our Nero in West Bengal sitting there [inside Assembly House] while firing is taking place outside, tear gassing is taking place and lathi charge is taking place outside the gates of the Assembly’.65 If they were allowed to enter the premises of the Assembly the situation would remain peaceful said Basu. Bankim Mukherjee echoed the same opinion when he said, ‘if the government did not stand so much on prestige and ceremony in defending the sacredness of Section 144 and allow the procession to come up to the corner of the Assembly this would not have happened’.66 Bidhan Roy, the sole spokesman of the ruling party for the day, however justified Section 144 and police action by saying, ‘whenever there is any likelihood of disturbances the privileges of members of the House required that they should not be disturbed when they were busy with such important functions of the State’.67 But such separation between people and those who were in charge of 63 64 65 66 67

Letter by Subodh Ch. Das, Jugantar, 23 February 1954. Letter by Chunilal Dasgupta, Jugantar, 23 February 1954. Sen, Padatik, p. 89. Sen, Padatik, pp. 90–91. Sen, Padatik, p. 91.

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the ‘functions of the State’ was no longer possible in a parliamentary democracy where the governments ruled in the name of the people. Therefore, Bankim Mukherjee could claim that ‘it is the inalienable right of members of this House to receive individuals, groups or deputations…’68 and Jyoti Basu could ask whether ‘this House belong to the Chief Minister or it belongs to all of us – the people of Bengal’.69 Because of such actions like bringing in the army during protest movements, standing by the British-owned tram company, imposing Section 144 or arresting people under Preventive Detention Act, the Congress government had repeatedly been compared with their colonial predecessors. But in a parliamentary democratic form of government, where members of the Opposition bench were also the leaders/representatives of the protests outside, the Chief Minister could not get away without addressing the situation. Despite the disturbances of 16 February, the movement gradually died down as ABTA accepted Dr Roy’s offer. For the next few days the major issue for agitation and mobilization remained the police atrocities on the protesters and the arrests of the teachers. By 20 February, Calcutta seemed peaceful and the military was withdrawn from the street. From 22 February the teachers joined work and the protest was formally withdrawn. The arrested teachers, numbering 392, were also released on the same day.70

SECTION III: CALCUTTA AS A SITE OF POPULAR PROTESTS IN 1950S Densely populated with a significantly high number of urban poor (of which refugees were a dominant section), Calcutta in many ways was Hobsbawm’s ‘ideal city for riot and insurrections’.71 The Great Calcutta Killing of 1946, the February Riots of 1950, movements of the refugees and the Tram and Teachers’ Movements confirm this. As Myron Weiner observed, Calcutta seemed to be on the ‘brink 68 69 70 71

Sen, Padatik, p. 62. Sen, Padatik, p. 60. Jugantar, 23 February 1954. Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Cities and Insurrections’, p. 2.

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of violence’ throughout 50s. Similar observations were made in the columns of popular dailies. For instance, Pranab De from Cuttack wrote a letter to Jugantar saying: Riots and disturbances have become a yearly affair in Calcutta. Writers’ Building was the eye of the storm in last year’s “struggle for 1 paisa” and same is the situation now with the Teachers’ Movement. Protesters take out rallies and march to Writers’, the police resists and riots break out…every riot means destruction of government properties, closing down schools and colleges and utter confusion… if we can move Writers’ Building and the Legislative Assembly outside Calcutta, I think we can control the situation of the city. The protesters will also then move out of the city with their demands and common people of the city will be able to live in peace.72

De had reasons to write such a seemingly bizarre letter. Hobsbawm also writes, ‘…in capital cities the presence of governments…tends to make riots effective...’73 Then again he writes: ‘rulers who brood over a hostile city from some isolated stronghold…may intensify popular hostility, but are technically designed to withstand it’.74 Pranab De was simply suggesting that the sites and the symbols of the government, like the Writers’ and the Legislative Assembly, should shift outside Calcutta. What made Calcutta an ‘ideal insurrectionary city’ further was the presence of the huge concentration of the refugee population.75 Since 1947, Calcutta had witnessed massive influx of refugees. By the end of April 1949, 1,950,000 Hindus had migrated from East Pakistan. Of this displaced population, 970,000 people came to Calcutta and its neighbourhood.76 The numbers swelled massively in 1950s in the aftermath of the February Riots. An estimate suggested that at least 10,000 refugees were squatting at the Sealdah station complex itself in March–April of 1950. A staff 72 73 74 75 76

Jugantar, 18 February 1954. Hobsbawm, p. 3. Hobsbawm, p. 2. Hobsbawm, p. 2. Amritabazar, 27 August 1949.

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reporter of Amritabazar Patrika described: ‘…Sealdah station has become a veritable hell on earth; it is emitting that odour which the famished crowd of ’43 used to spread wherever there was any congregation of theirs’.77 From early 1949 the city had witnessed rallies and protest marches by the refugees and in support of them. As the government tried to pass West Bengal Act XVI to evict the refugees from the lands they had illegally occupied, refugee movement in the city intensified. Their leaders were the same as those who led the Tram Movement and Teachers’ Movement, a point that I have already mentioned. Mobilizing the refugee population of Calcutta was easy for the Left parties as a vast section of them were bhadraloks of upper/middle caste, educated and well-off background. They were articulate and political, often had past associations with revolutionary terrorist groups (like Anushilan Samiti) and Left parties like Communist Party. With grievances of their own, they were almost always ready to take the streets in demand of jobs, a place to stay or voter’s rights; as well as to protest against the tram fare hike and were in favour of teachers’ demands. Their sheer number in Calcutta and their support to the Left parties made Calcutta the major site for mass movements, rallies, street corners and protest marches. The refugee colonies emerged as the strong bastions of the Left. That from 1949, the government would initiate a scheme of ‘dispersal’ and would send the refugees from Calcutta (and its suburbs) to scarcely populated areas within West Bengal and also outside West Bengal (including Andaman, Orissa, Bihar and later Dandakaranya) and also specifically encourage the refugee students to enrol in colleges outside Calcutta, indicates that the refugees were emerging as one of the most formidable oppositions to the Congress ministry. I will not go into the details of refugee politics of the time as it has been thoroughly discussed in Chapter 2, in this book. But their centrality to the oppositional politics of the time explains the essential urban character of the mass movements of early 1950s. The Tram Movement and the Teachers’ Movement happened in the same city within a span of less than a year. Both these movements 77

Amritabazar, 21 April 1950.

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received support and participation from various sections of the urban population. The Left political parties in general and the Communist Party of India in particular had an important role to play in mobilizing the people in support of these movements. All these reasons are perhaps good enough to discuss these movements together. However, despite many similarities, these two movements had certain fundamental differences as well. First, the Tram Movement was much more spontaneous in nature, whereas the Teachers’ Movement was planned for quite some time. Even then, the Tram Movement was more successful in many ways. It sustained itself for almost a month, directly involving people from various walks of life and became in many ways the ‘model’ urban protest. The ‘war for 1 paisa’ became an urban legend for years to come. The Teachers’ Movement, of course, also had its appeal. But in the writings about Calcutta of early 1950s, the Tram Movement features more prominently than the Teachers’ Movement. This was bound to happen. The Tram Movement was a movement primarily of the people who used the transport daily. On the other hand, the teachers were the primary force behind the movement of 1954. They had very specific demands related to their profession. Therefore, the scope and the possibility of participation in the Tram Movement were wider than the Teachers’ Movement. People could show support to the teachers, march with them in solidarity or gather around them as spectators but could not participate in the same way as they had done few months back during the tram fare agitation. Second, the tram lines were spread across the city. Therefore, a movement that was organized around the tram cars and the tram lines was bound to be spread across the city. People could and did participate in this movement from inside their colleges and schools, from the rooftops and paras. The Teachers’ Movement, on the other hand, was more like an ongoing exhibition at a particular place in the city that drew a good number of spectators. Though the teachers were eager to win public support and sympathy, many of them were reluctant to go beyond a sit-in protest. Only at the very last stage, it became confrontational and in that the leaders of the Communist Party had an active role to play. The Left parties were more eager

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than most of the protesting teachers in following the pattern of the Tram Movement. The techniques of the Tram Movement – i.e., its successful use of the urban infrastructure and its ability to mobilize a large number of people – would remain relevant in all the urban protests of 1950s and 60s, namely the Food Movement, refugee struggles, another phase of Tram Movement in mid-60s and of course, the Naxalbari Movement in Calcutta.

four

CHAPTER

The Defining Moments of Left-Popular Politics The Food Movements of 1959 and 1966 Sibaji Pratim Basu

SITUATING THE MOVEMENTS

I

ndia won freedom and was partitioned in 1947. Pakistan, the new state, emerged on the western and the eastern parts of erstwhile British India, resulting in a mass exodus – the largest in the history, according to United Nation High Commission for Refugees, especially with the division of erstwhile British Indian provinces of Punjab and Bengal. Although the Indian state of Punjab could somehow tackle the ‘burden of refugees’ through a so-called ‘landman exchange’, the new – territorially truncated – Indian state of West Bengal had to provide shelter to millions of partition-refugees. Thus, this new state of West Bengal began its journey as a crippled toddler crowned with problems. The pressure of millions of refugees, food shortages (as many of the fertile rice producing districts went to East Pakistan) and industrial decline (owing to lack of supply of raw materials for jute, paper and leather industries) put post-independence West Bengal in a severe crisis. The Dr B.C. Roy-led Congress government in the state, despite several efforts, could only solve these problems partially, thus leaving ample room for oppositional politics, first, dominated by the Communist Party of India (CPI)followed by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or the CPI(M), after CPI’s split, to manage the crisis.

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The CPI/CPI(M), along with other Left and centrist parties, soon began to mobilise people against the government on a host of diverse issues like refugee rehabilitation, increase in teachers’ pay and allowances, anti-tram fare hike, food crisis and so on. Although, the movements were primarily organised and led by the Left parties (in some cases by some centrist parties), in most of the cases, they drew spontaneous participation en masse often crossing party lines, giving these movements a new ‘Left-popular’ dimension that left an indelible mark on the state politics of West Bengal. The Left leadership also sought to uphold the ‘popular’/ ‘mass’ character of such movements. Thus, many issue-based mass organisations were formed (of course, at the behest of the Left parties, mainly the CPI) to lead the movements. For example, the United Central Refugee Council (UCRC) acted as the frontal mass organisation of the CPI, and then the CPI(M) for the partition refugees. Among these movements, the Food Movements of 1959 and 1966 have their own marks of distinction. Historically, the Food Movements of 1959 and 1966 have their own unique existences. Yet, they can be seen as a continuum, a legacy that started in the post-1943 period after the Great Bengal Famine. They passed through the Tebhaga movement (which demanded that the tillers get two-thirds crop-share while the landowners get onethird) to the movements over the corrupt and inadequate Public Distribution System (PDS) between 1956 and 1958. It continued through the first half of the 1960s and reached its zenith in 1966, when, besides the old urban support base, it gradually engulfed the rural spaces and made it a state-wide affair.1 Marcus Franda, the American scholar on the state politics in West Bengal, also held that the 1959 Food Movement had an impact on the internal debates inside the CPI in West Bengal.2 According to him, the militant campaign against the Congress state government was used by the Leftist anti-Congress sections (known as the ‘Left Wing’) within the 1 Sibaji Pratim Basu. 2012. ‘The Chronicle of a Forgotten Movement: 1959 Food Movement Revisited’. Policies and Practices, No. 56. 2 Marcus F. Franda. 1971. Radical Politics in West Bengal. Cambridge, Mass., and London: M.I.T. Press.

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CPI to subdue those sections (popularly known as the ‘Right Wing’) that sought tactical cooperation with Congress. But before going into details of these movements, let us first refer to some relevant theoretical issues about ‘popular’ movements.

POPULAR MOVEMENTS: SOME THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS A distinguished feature of social/protest movements based on genuine grievances (felt by a large number of people), is that they create a relatively autonomous space for people’s action – sometimes peaceful but mostly violent – which cannot be fully controlled or ‘contained’ by any leader or organisation no matter, how powerful they might be. Even if they are initially organised vertically, soon a kind of horizontal movement in different directions is often seen, which can inspire initiatives of other movements on similar, or altogether different people’s issues. Even the instances of such movements of the distant past can inspire future spell of movements. Taking cue from Deleuze and Guattari, we may describe these movements as ‘rhizomatic’.3 In their celebrated book, A Thousand Plateaus, the authors introduce the term ‘rhizome’ in such words: A rhizome as subterranean stem is absolutely different from roots and radicles. ... The rhizome itself assumes very diverse forms, from ramified surface extension in all directions to concretion into bulbs and tubers.4

A rhizome has specific uniqueness yet connectivity. The authors further elaborated: A rhizome ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic chains, organisations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, science and social struggles.5 3 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. 2004. A Thousand Plateaus. London and New York: Continuum. pp. 3–28. 4 Ibid., p. 7. 5 Ibid., p. 8.

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This kind of partly organised but vastly participated movements of radical nature (which often crossed the boundaries of ‘lawful’ movements) marked the first phase of Left politics in West Bengal till they came to power in 1967. In another context, Charles Tilly has called this sort of protest movement-based politics as ‘contentious politics’.6 After this phase, Left politics itself got divided between the ‘official’ parties (who were in favour of ‘using’ parliamentary means to further the cause of revolution) and the ‘revolutionary’/Maoists (who believed in immediate peasant revolution on Maoist lines). The police and the administration often resorted to coercion and counter-attack to contain ‘anarchy and violence’, which often became a part of these movements, which again resulted in a number of deaths by firing and also by beating. The success of these movements was instant: a large number of common masses – the urban poor and the middle classes – joined them and the rate of violence and casualties was much higher than in the pre-independent times. In these movements we find many features, which Tilly associated with ‘social movements’, which happened in Europe first in the 18th century.7 Tilly further distinguished between three sorts of claims advanced by social movements 1. Identity claims declare that ‘we’ – the claimants – constitute a unified force to be reckoned with. Such claims commonly include a name for ‘us’, such as ‘Cherokees’, ‘Diamond Cutters’, or ‘Citizens United against X’. 2. Standing claims assert ties and similarities to other political actors, for example as excluded minorities, established traders, properly constituted citizens’ groups, or loyal supporters of the regime. 3. Programme claims involve stated support for or opposition to actual or proposed actions by the objects of movement claims. The relative salience of identity, standing and programme claims varies significantly among social movements, among claimants within movements, and among phases of movements.8 6

Charles Tilly and Sidney Tarrow. 2007. Contentious Politics. Boulder, Colorado: Paradigm Publishers. 7 Charles Tilly. 2004. Social Movements, 1768–2004. Boulder, Colorado: Paradigm Publishers. pp. 53–54. 8 Ibid. p. 184.

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It may seem here that there is a disconnect between Tilly’s formulation, which sees a lot of ‘organisation’ in social movements, compared to the notion of the ‘rhizomatic’ which puts more value on ‘horizontal movements’ and spontaneity. However, the ‘truth’ about popular/mass movements lies somewhere between the exclusive positions of organisation and spontaneity. Rather, they are dialectically connected. All popular movements, initially spontaneous in nature, develop some kind of ‘vertical’ leadership after a point (if they have to achieve some amount of success or impact), how short-lived that might be. By the same token, all genuine popular or mass movements enjoy an amount of ‘relative autonomy’ based on the spontaneous participation of the people (cutting across various classes and other social groups). They also possess the capacity to inspire other popular movements in different times and spaces. In cases of the Food Movements of 1959 and 1966, we have to bear these in mind.

SECTION ONE: THE 1959 MOVEMENT Since its inception, the Public Distribution System (PDS) had steadily declined in the ‘new’ state of West Bengal. However, the problem did not lie with West Bengal alone. If we go by the official statistics, from the early-1950s to the mid-1960s, we shall find a huge gap between production and procurement of foodgrain, which in turn also affected the PDS in an important way. For example, while the net food production in 1951 was 48.1 million tons throughout India, the government agencies could procure only 3.8 million tons, and only 8.0 million tons of foodgrain could be distributed through the PDS. In 1955, the net production, procurement and distribution through PDS were 61.9, 1.3 and 1.6 (in million tons) respectively. In 1965 the figures on the above items had been: 78.2, 4.0 and 10.1.9 These differences between production, procurement and distribution only reveal the sorry state of PDS throughout India in mid-1950s and 1960s. The situation worsened in West Bengal in 9

Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy. India’s Agricultural Sector, 1995, p. 38: as cited in P.S. George, ‘Public Distribution System, Food Subsidy and Production Incentives’. Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 31. No. 39, 28 September 1996.

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early 1959. In Calcutta and in some Southern Bengal districts, rice was sold between Rs 28 and Rs 30 per maund (1 maund=37.324 kg). Hoarding and black-marketing became rampant in the state, creating a near-famine like situation in rural Bengal. Against this backdrop, the Price Increase and Famine Resistance Committee (PIFRC) came into being in early 1959 with initiative from the CPI. The Left leaders adopted a two-pronged policy in this regard. First, they raised the issue of food scarcity in the State Assembly and thereby, drew public and media attention. Secondly, as a strategy of organising anti-government mass movements, they formed various issue-based committees to draw popular support beyond party-lines. However, in the Assembly the Left and other opposition members raised the debate over food scarcity to such a pitch that the government often seemed to be overwhelmed. Since the beginning of 1959, the government and the CPIdominated opposition were at loggerheads over the crisis. The Leftists and other opposition parties fought the battle at the two levels: a) on the floor of the West Bengal Assembly as well as at the seat of Parliament in Delhi; b) at the level of mobilisation of the common masses through the PIFRC as well as the party organisation. In the West Bengal Assembly, the leaders who led the frontal attack were Jyoti Basu, Somnath Lahiri, Hare Krishna Konar, Hemanta Ghosal, Chitto Basu, Subodh Banerjee and many others, including the then-Independent member, Siddhartha Shankar Ray (who later joined Congress and became the Chief Minister of West Bengal between 1972 and 1977). Their main targets were the B.C. Roy Government and its Food Minister, Prafulla Chandra Sen. In the Parliament, MPs such as A.K. Gopalan, Tridib Chaudhuri, Renu Chakrabarty, Prabhat Kar, Md. Elias and Hiren Mukherjee severely criticised the state government and the food policy of the central government on several occasions. Newspapers like The Statesman, Hindusthan Standard, Amrita Bazar Patrika, Jugantar, Basumati, Anandabazar Patrika and party mouthpieces like Swadhinata throughout 1959 regularly published news of food scarcity, malfunctioning of the PDS, political initiatives of the opposition – within and outside the Assembly and government’s feeble responses. For example, The Statesman, in its

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issue of 3 January reported a heated debate between the opposition and the government sides in the State Legislative Assembly with a heading: ‘Angry Exchanges in the Assembly’.10 Hindusthan Standard, another English newspaper from Calcutta in its editorial of 6 February, questioned the government’s food policy with sarcasm: ‘Starvation is not as swift as the agent of death as “Botalinus” [a soil bacterium].’11 On the very next day (7 February) the editorial of the same newspaper expressed concern over the manner the ‘gulf’ between the government and the people was widening in the state, not only on the issue of availability of food but also in other areas.

Towards August-September 1959 However, despite government’s promises, foodgrain especially rice became more scarce every day. Black-marketing and hoarding of rice by a section of businessmen became the order of the day.Long queues in front of the ration shops which lasted for hours became a common feature in Calcutta and district towns. In such a situation, the Union Food Minister, A.P. Jain visited Calcutta on 26 April on a fact-finding mission. He met the Chief Minister at his residence and later told the reporters that the ‘food situation’ in West Bengal was: ‘easy, smooth and comfortable’.12 Public outcry throughout the state began to mount in the following months of May and June. The CPI and the PIFRC took control of the organisation and campaign. Hemanta Basu, Jyoti Basu, Amar Basu, Makhan Pal, Niranjan Sengupta, Nihar Mukherjee and others, in a jointly signed petition of 6 July declared, on behalf of the PIFRC, their mission to mobilise 50,000 volunteers for making the administration ineffective and organising a two to three-day long continuous general strike throughout the state in August.13 On 9 July, Swadhinata, the CPI organ, gave the clarion call in its editorial: There is no other way. Hence the struggle! … People of West Bengal know quite well that the Congress Government and its food policy 10 11 12 13

The Statesman. Calcutta, 3 January 1959. Hindusthan Standard. 6 January 1959. The Statesman. 27 April 1959. Basumati. 7 July 1959.

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On the part of the regime, the Chief Minister along with Dr P.C. Ghosh of the PSP issued a joint statement on 6 August, warning of stringent action against any anti-government agitation. Despite such warnings the movement seemed to multiply itself every day. By the end of August about 6400 protestors were put behind bars, including Left leaders and MLAs.15 On 19 August, PIFRC protestors squatted in front of the Food Minister’s residence, which was cordoned off by the police and the area was put under the Preventive Section 144 of the Cr. PC. The demonstrators left the place warning the authorities about the forthcoming rally convened by the PIFRC in Calcutta on 31August.16

31 AUGUST – 5 SEPTEMBER 1959: CALCUTTA AND HOWRAH

Calcutta Hundreds and thousands of men and women swept the streets of Calcutta since the early-afternoon of 31 October 1959. They came from the rural districts of West Bengal as well as the semi-urban places around Calcutta and Howrah, braving heavy rains, to attend a rally at the Maidan, a large ground located at the heart of the city near the Octerloney Monument, now known as the Shahid Minar. The rally spilled over into the Surendranath Park then known as the Curzon Park and Rani Rashmani Road. The problem began when the people, forming a procession, proceeded towards the Writers’ Building. They were stopped near the Government Place East, nearly half a kilometre from Writers’ 14

Swadhinata. (Translation by Das and Bandyopadhyay). In Suranjan Das and Premansu Kumar Bandyopadhyay (eds.). 2004. Food Movement of 1959: Documenting a Turning Point in the History of West Bengal. Kolkata: K.P. Bagchi. p. xii. 15 Anandabazar Patrika. 30 August 1959. 16 Amrita Bazar Patrika. 20 August 1959.

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Building. The entire area beyond that point was under Section 144 Cr. PC, which prevented any gathering of more than four persons as unlawful and punishable. This preventive provision is still operative in this part of Calcutta. When they were barred from moving further, the demonstrators led by Left leaders like Mohit Maitra, Amar Basu, Chitta Basu and Makhan Pal squatted on the road, raising anti-government slogans.17 At about 7.20 pm, a small batch of fifty persons broke the police cordon and courted arrest. Trouble started when others began to follow their example. At this point, the police resorted to lathi-charge (charging with long sticks) to disperse the masses. According to reports in Amrita Bazar Patrika (1 September): ‘Tear-gas squad soon went into action and fired 10 rounds. Demonstrators dispersed in different directions, leaving streets strewn with shoes, festoons, banners, food, tiffinbox, umbrellas and scores of injured people.’18 The government’s version of the story was predictably different. In a press-note, appeared on 1 September, it described the above incident from a different angle, defending its own action. It accused that after the first batch of persons had courted arrest ‘suddenly, it appears, the whole crowd surged forward, while still others from amongst them started throwing brickbats, soda water bottles and crackers at the police’.19 Thus, the government put the onus of provoking the police first on the protestors, inviting stern action. Whatever be the cause of the police action, the result was the dispersed protestors (many of whom came from villages and suburbs and had virtually no idea about the geography of the city) began to move in a frenzy in different directions. At this point many sympathisers of the movement who had also gathered around the Esplanade East and Government Place East cheered the demonstrators. These people soon dispersed upon being chased away by the police. Trouble then spread to nearby streets of central Calcutta like Dharmatala Street, Central Avenue and Mission Row. 17 Food Movement of 1959: Documenting a Turning Point in the History of West Bengal, p. xiii. 18 Amrita Bazar Patrika.1 September 1959. 19 The Statesman. 1 September 1959.

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Stone-throwing began near Curzon Park which spread quickly to other parts of the city. According to the above government pressnote, people in small groups at many places ‘continued to throw brickbats, soda water bottles and crackers at passing buses and even private vehicles’. ‘There was an attempt’, the press-note stated, ‘at looting of a small shop and breaking glass panes of the other. An attempt was also made to tamper with the tram tracks. Some street lights were damaged’.20 However, the number of the agitated and panic-stricken people rose rapidly since many more people had also assembled in the Esplanade-Maidan area to cheer the participants in the rally. Once the police resorted to lathi-charging, not only the rallyists, but their sympathising-spectators also got affected. They, together with the rallyists, ran helter-skelter to take refuge. Gradually, the ordinary people on road, innocent passers-by also got caught in the policepublic chase in the chaos that followed. As usual, there was considerable variance between the official number of wounded and deceased and unofficial estimates. Although, the opposition in the Assembly did not disclose the official number of persons killed in the incident of 31 August, reports of the Bengali daily, Jugantar claimed that ‘at least 400 persons were injured’ on that day. The next day, i.e. on 1 September, the streets of Calcutta witnessed massive students’ protests coupled with violence and massacre. After the incidents of 31 August, many school and college students observed strike protesting the police action on that day. Many students assembled at the College Street campus of Calcutta University (located at central Calcutta). Near the University, the police had to retreat for some time in the face of students’ violent resistance. It was reported that hats, turbans and batons of the police were snatched from them and set on fire.21‘This was followed by a procession towards Chief Minster B.C. Roy’s house’, reported Amrita Bazar Patrika.22 But the procession was stopped once 20 21 22

Ibid. Ibid. Amrita Bazar Patrika. 2 September 1959.

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the police started lathi-charging. The newspaper added, ‘Clearly, peaceful demonstrators were given chase by the police, making students fall in confusion.’23 In the Esplanade area, panic-stricken shop-owners immediately shut down the shutters of their shops. At the Hogg Market (popular as New Market), according to reports, the authorities had to ‘prevent shopkeepers from closing their shops to allay panic’.24 Three ambulance vans were also ‘set alight after dusk’. Harassment and manhandling of journalists, including two British women journalists were also reported. Violence and utter chaos gradually engulfed the entire city as evening descended. From Kalighat in the south to Vivekananda Road in the north through central Calcutta such as areas like Esplanade, Subodh Mullick Square, College Street, and C.R. Avenue (popular as Central Avenue) had transitioned to a battleground.

Howrah The scene of violent protest shifted to Howrah after a day of uneasy calm. The Amrita Bazar Patrika stated, ‘Storm centre shifted on Thursday (3 Sept.) from Calcutta to Howrah’.25 The city of Howrah, on the opposite and western banks of river Hooghly (the local name of Ganga) was, and still is, the hub of many medium and small manufacturing industries, alongside some big industries. Goods produced by medium and small industries, in this denselypopulated area, were recognised as ‘quality’ articles both in other parts of India as well as outside. This was perhaps the reason that Howrah was known as the ‘Sheffield of Bengal’. It remains to this day, the home of the vast working-class population of the city, most of whom were badly hit by the food crisis in 1959. The ‘rowdies’ took charge of many streets and roads in Howrah according to newspaper reports. They gathered between Khurut Road and Bamangachi on G.T. Road pelting stones on passing police cars. After 7.30 am, the police began to hit back with lathis 23 24 25

Amrita Bazar Patrika. 2 September 1959. Ibid. Ibid., 4 September 1959.

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and tear-gas, which continued till 10.30 am. Gradually, the local people and passers-by became involved in the incident. The mob set a traffic control post on fire near the south-western parts of the Howrah-Maidan area. Being outnumbered, the police took shelter in the Control Room. The police gradually gained their ground but was not successful in pushing back the angry protestors. Barricades were erected with ‘logs, push carts, scavenging carts, bricks, packing boxes and even telephone poles’ on G.T. Road and other areas. It was also reported that private cars were ‘interfered with [by agitators], but not cyclists’.26 Later, ambulances were emptied to shift wounded agitators. During this daylong violent agitation, the police opened fire on the people on many occasions, killing at least 11 and seriously wounding at least 120 persons. Twenty-five police personnel were also injured in the incident. The mob chased some 20 policemen, who were passing along Narsing Dutt Road. Almost all of them fled, except one, who fell into the hands of the rioters, and was later found dead, with his throat slit. By 4.00 pm, military troops were called in to control the situation because by afternoon the situation had escalated to a point where it was beyond the control of the local police. On the same day (3 September), trouble also spread in the industrial areas in the district of 24 Parganas, especially at Khardah and Behala. In Calcutta, youngsters and even children raised many road blockades. Cars and taxis were not seen on Calcutta roads till the evening. They along with local people roamed the streets challenging occasional vehicles. Train and bus services were stopped, schools, colleges and bazaars also remained closed. Areas like Shovabazar and Beadon Street in north Calcutta, Bhowanipore, Dhakuria and Khidderpore in the south were badly affected. Picketing, road blocks and attacks on the police in these areas continued. To dismantle roadblocks the police baton charged the protestors. They also opened fire at them on at least seven occasions, causing three deaths.27 26 27

Ibid. Ibid.

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On the next day (4 September), Howrah occupied the centre stage again. The trouble began when the violent protestors had beaten two persons to death in the Bharat Jute Mills area. These persons, according to reports, rescued a patrolling sub-inspector of police from the hands of the violent agitators ‘rowdies’. Later, a rumour did spread in the locality, that two workers of Bharat Jute Mills (situated near Dasnagar), who supported the strike, were alive when they were thrown into the factory furnace, causing their instant death. This made the crowd furious, which attacked the bustee (slum), where the two rescuers of the police lived, found and killed them, looted their bustee and burnt about 50 huts. The army put a ½ square mile cordon to control the situation and nearly 500 people were rounded up by them. Later, army and police pickets were set up in the sensitive areas. Life seemed to have come back to ‘normalcy’ in Calcutta on 4 September, after three consecutive days of unprecedented violence and almost-leaderless chaos since independence. Despite some stray incidents of bombing, the city picked up its pace as ‘state and private transport operated normally’. By noon, tram and train services were fully restored. Howrah too, ‘had quietened down’ on the next day, i.e. 5 September. The victims of arson (on 4 September) near Bharat Jute Mills were sheltered in the premises of the jute mill itself.28 The total number of the killed and injured persons, between 31 August and 4 September, varied as usual, according to official and the unofficial accounts. For instance, Jyoti Basu, Leader of the Opposition, along with other opposition MLAs claimed that ‘about 80 people’ were killed during this time, thousands were injured and many went ‘missing’. While, according to official reports, the number of the killed and injured were 41 and about 300 respectively.29 The PIFRC, on 6 September, in a meeting discussed the effects of the movement and the government’s response to it. It was proposed that the next phase (Third Phase) of the movement would begin soon with street corner meetings in different parts of the state, ‘to maintain public pressure on the Government for an impartial 28 29

Ibid., 6 September 1959. West Bengal Legislative Assembly Proceedings. 21 September1959.

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enquiry into police violence and providing compensation to families of killed and wounded’.30

Afterwards Three main kinds of assessment emerged in the media, political parties, and among the people after the tumultuous five days of violence, counter-violence and uncertainty. The  first  kind was an angry reaction against the police action/government’s handling of the situation. The  second  kind  blamed the Left/organisers  of the movement for indulging in ‘lawless anarchy’, which resulted in loss of life and property, and saw a ‘communist conspiracy’ in it. The  third  kind preferred a  middle-road of assessment, while criticising the government’s food policy and also its handling of the situation, also criticised the Left leadership for having no control over the situation.31 In such a tense and charged atmosphere a host of opposition leaders like Jyoti Basu, Hare Krishna Konar, Subodh Banerjee, Jatin Chakrabarty, Chitto Basu, Golam Yazdani Siddhartha Shankar Ray, Labnya Prabha Ghosh, Amarendra Nath Basu, Haridas Mitra and many others took part in Assembly debates and fired volley after volley of criticism against the government. The police ‘barbarism’ against the food agitators was compared with the Jallianwallah Bagh massacre under the British rule. The opposition also moved a No-Confidence motion against the government, which was naturally defeated due to lack of adequate members. Even in Lok Sabha, the opposition members, on 4 September, raised their voice against the ‘brutal firing’ in Calcutta, Howrah and other places. Members such as A.K. Gopalan, Tridib Chaudhuri, Renu Chakrabarty, Prabhat Kar, Md Elias, Hiren Mukherjee criticised the state government in an animated debate. Even the Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru became involved in a haughty interaction with the opposition. Beside the opposition, many members of the civil society, especially the eminent persons belonging to academia, also registered protests in strongest possible terms. The list of such eminent persons 30 31

Food Movement of 1959. p. xiii ‘The Chronicle of a Forgotten Movement’

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included Triguna Sen, Vice Chancellor, Jadavpur University; Prasanta Kumar Bose, Principal, Bangabasi College, Calcutta; a number of teachers of Ballygunj Science College of Calcutta University, Jadavpur University, Vidyasagar College, Surendranath College, City College; intellectuals like Atul Gupta, Tripurari Chakrabarty, Surendra Nath Sen and several others.32 Among the media, party organs like, Swadhinata, Ganadabi, New Age etc along with Dainik Basumati made frontal attack against the government. Many citizens also wrote letters to editors of various newspapers, expressing anger and criticism against the government for its handling of the situation. Notably, the third viewpoint, which carried a great deal of sympathy for the movement held the ‘anti-socials’ responsible for the ‘suppression’ of the movement and criticised the leadership for their lack of control over the courses of movement and observed that the leaders had virtually no control over the anarchic situation. But, as we have argued, this has been a characteristic feature of almost all the ‘social movements’. Social movements, as Tilly argued, often engage in ‘contentious politics’, which is the use of disruptive techniques to make a political point, or to change government policy.33 According to him, examples of such techniques are actions that disturb the normal activities of society such as demonstrations, general strike action, riot, terrorism, civil disobedience, and even revolution or insurrection. Many of these techniques featured in the movement of 1959.

SECTION TWO: THE 1966 MOVEMENT 1959 had a loud echo in 1966. However, as a way of beginning, let us note few aspects of comparison between 1959 and 1966 Food Movements: (a) The 1959 movement began with more preparations, organisation and campaign, although leaders were unable to keep it under control thereafter; whereas in 1966 it started more as a 32

Food Movement of 1959. p. xiv Charles Tilly. 2008. Contentious Performances. New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 5. 33

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spontaneous mass action, the leaders/organisations rallied only after the first incident in Swarupnagar/Tentulia, Bashirhat (then 24 Parganas, now North 24 Parganas). (b) In 1959, it started from Calcutta with the rally of 31 August, which was attended by people from districts. The heat of the movement also spread from Calcutta; but the movement of1966 started from the districts and the heat reached Calcutta. It was often said in those days, that Bashirhat shows the way. (c) A large number of refugees, organised by the Left-dominated United Central Refugee Committee (UCRC), participated in the 1959 Movement. In 1966, however, the distinction between the ‘refugees’ and the indigenous Bengali population had almost blurred – people, even from the districts with little refugee population, participated in large numbers. (d) Students were especially involved in 1966.

Before 16 February The ‘second’ Food Movement (1966) became more fierce than the one in 1959. The ‘epicentre’ now shifted from Calcutta to the districts – involving a greater number of rural people than before and making the small towns and villages, the theatre of a gruesome spectacle. It was more spontaneous and popular than the one in 1959. Although, the opposition parties – comprising the Left and Centre, joined the masses–to foster a spirit of solidarity and also used the ‘parliamentary space’ to embarrass and ‘expose’ the regime and at the same time to organise the protest under their fold, the movement bloomed and spread almost without any party command and initiative. The anti-tram-fare-hike movement of 1965 had already charged the spirit of the city protestors. The events of 1966 ignited it throughout the state. The steep rise in the price of rice and scarcity of kerosene (both distributed through the government-controlled PDS) had been the primary cause behind the movement. The price of rice reached Rs 5 per kg that year. Kerosene, the main domestic fuel of the villagers and the urban poor, and students in districts, became progressively scarce. But what infuriated people the most was an ‘advise’ of the new Chief Minister, Prafulla Sen. Sen, who was the Food Minister

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under the B.C. Roy Ministry during the Food Movement of 1959, had become the CM after the demise of B.C. Roy. In view of growing scarcity of rice, he advised the people of state, in one of his speeches, to change their food habits and replace rice with wheat or flour. He also argued that they could live on ‘green-bananas’ because it had more nutrition value than potatoes. These comments made the people angry and agitated as never before. Interestingly, in many places, the authority had to face the wrath of both the common man and the hoarders including black marketeers, who were extremely unhappy with the government policy of ‘cordoning’, which imposed territorial restrictions disallowing traders to transport and trade foodgrain, especially rice, beyond a restricted territory. In many cases, women from poor family backgrounds were employed by rice merchants as ‘carriers’ of rice from the districts to the cities. Sometimes, the women themselves operated as independent carriers. These women usually travelled (mostly without tickets) in the ladies’ compartment of local trains. Often clashes occurred between these women and the police. Dainik Basumati reported (31 January) one such incident that happened in Hooghly district, in which a (male) member of the home-guard/civic police was severely attacked and beaten up by a group of women, when he entered their compartment, which was reserved for ‘ladies’ in the Sheroaphuli-Tarakeswar local passenger train, in order to confiscate rice from them. Allegedly the women also bit this man as he advanced to catch them. The guard of the train rescued the home-guard by stopping the train, after hearing his call for help.34 According to the same newspaper (8 February), such clashes occurred between the police, black marketers of rice, and ordinary people in the districts of Jalpaiguri and Birbhum. It also reported about such a clash in a village of Medinipur district on 3 February in which one Sub-Divisional Officer (SDO) and one Magistrate were manhandled by both the illegal traders and the angry mob, when the authorities detained a rice-loaded truck. First, the black marketers or illegal exporters had beaten up the SDO and the Magistrate, then, the mob also manhandled them, and finally, 34

Dainik Basumati. 31 January 1966.

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the mob looted the rice from the truck and fled.35 Thus, ‘people’ from all quarters and places were growing impatient with the food policy and PDS of the state government.

Events between 16 February and 9 March But the first ignition sparked off at Bashirhat and Swarupnagar in the 24 Parganas district. The police opened fire at Bashirhat injuring six agitators in a police-people clash in the middle of February. On 16 February, the police again fired on the agitators at Swarupnagar, killing a15-year-old school-boy, Nurul Islam and severely injuring his schoolmate, Manindra Biswas, during a demonstration against the scarcity of kerosene and the steep prices of essential commodities. The news spread like wildfire. And unlike 1959, this time the people from districts/villages did not assemble in Calcutta to meet their demands but they fought back the police and administration in their different localities. Towns and villages in the southern parts of the state like Bashirhat, Swarupnagar, Habra, Baduria Krishnanagar, Barrackpore, Ranaghat, Chakdah, Hindmotor, Uttarpara Assansol, Dhubulia, Palashi, Beldanga, Baharampur, and many other places saw incessant processions, demonstrations, blockades of roads/ railways, destruction of railway signals, closure of schools, and clashes between the agitators and police, during the month-long movement, spanning between 16 February and 14 March.36 Jyoti Basu, then the principal opposition leader, and later the longest serving Chief Minister under the Left Front (LF) government (1977–2001) reminisced about the stormy events after three decades, in 2009: The food crisis had not abated. Cases of suicides and starvation deaths were pouring from the rural belt. The Congress government proved to be a total failure in taking measures to stem such tragedies. By this time though, the price rise and food crisis issues had fuelled the imagination of the entire country.37 35

Dainik Basumati. 8 January 1966. ‘The Chronicle of a Forgotten Movement’, p. 16. 37 Jyoti Basu. Jyoti Basu Memoirs: So Far As I Remember. https://jyotibasumemoirs.wordpress.com/2009/04/01/chapter-xxxvmore-andmore-agitations/(Accessed on 20 July 2016). 36

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The ration system had also broken down. It was apparent that unless the government changed its basic policies, there would be no solution. Meanwhile while the police opened fire at Basirhat killing Nurul Islam, in Baduria, Ali Hafiz and Kalu Mondal were killed. Others who became martyrs were Sukhen Mukherjee in Behala, Bablu Das in Khardah, Ananda Hait in Krishnagar, Ranjan Dutta in Konnagar, Narayan Sadhukhan in Serampore, Rabin Pal in Rishra and S.P. Singh in Hind Motors. Many of these martyrs were either boys or youth. ‘In the first four months of 1966 in the name of putting down the food movement and the agitation for the release of political prisoners the police killed more than 50 agitators… Apart from this, raids and searches in the houses of our supporters became the order of the day. People were brought to police outposts and subjected to major atrocities. Even women and children were not spared. The attacks incidentally were not only confined to our supporters but the general public too suffered a lot. But despite all this, the Congress rulers could not stop the wave of agitations let loose by the general public’.38 On 18 February, clashes between the police and people took place near Baduria Hat. Students from nearby institutions assembled there to mobilise support for observing a strike against the incident of Swarupnagar. The atmosphere was vitiated when an angry mob saw nearly 40 maunds (1 maund = 37 kg approx.) of rice stored on the veranda of a nearby police station. The agitated people demanded immediate selling of the rice but the police acknowledged their inability. As a result, heated exchanges of words took place between the people and police; some among the crowd tried to take away the sacks of rice. Police fired blank shells to drive away the masses. The people ran, crossed the road and began pelting of bricks and brickbats stored there for some construction work. Police fired 35 rounds of bullets, killing as mentioned in the previous paragraph Ali Hafeez (36), a local trader and Kalu Mandal (40), a local mason; injuring Haridas Biswas, Gopal Mandal, Tulsi Goldar, Mrityunjay Mandal and Bipradas.39 On the next day, i.e. 19 February, the 38 39

Ibid. Jugantar. 19 February 1966.

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district of 24 Parganas remained apparently ‘peaceful’, although, as a precautionary measure the state government issued an Order of Closure of all the educational institutions, between 21 and 26 February, in Calcutta, Burdwan and Presidency divisions. On the same day, Girish Chandra Mahato and Kandu Majhi, two MLAs of Lok Sevak Sangha (a Gandhian party influential in Purulia) were arrested in Purulia, when they reached Purulia from Calcutta in the morning of 19 February.40 Like 1959, in 1966 too, the opposition (the ‘left’ and the ‘right’ CPI along with other Left, centrist and even Gandhian parties, e.g. Lok Sevak Sangh) clashed with the state government on the issues of price rise and scarcity of rice and kerosene, and the issue of police atrocities and killings. Questions were raised both on the floor of the Assembly and outside, in districts. Several arrests were made, which ranged from members of the rank and file to leadership. Often the spirit of street-fighting seemed to influence even the members of the Assembly, often called the temple of democracy. The headline of one report (The Hindusthan Standard of 23 February) tells us all: ‘Free for all in the Assembly chambers – broken specs, a bleeding nose, swollen forehead’.41 The report said: ‘Broken specs, a bleeding nose, a swollen forehead and a sprained wrist – these were the results of a 10-minute free-for-all in the West Bengal Assembly chamber on Tuesday, seconds after the Speaker adjourned the House for an hour and a half’. It started when the opposition began protesting on the firings by the police and arrests of the opposition members. They protested over closure of Visitors’ Gallery in the Assembly, and the Finance Minister’s suggestion to discuss the budget proposal (while several opposition members were absent due to arrest or the threat of arrest). The Opposition’s patience ended when the Speaker allowed Sankar Das Banerjee of the Congress to move a privilege motion, since Banerjee had sought permission beforehand. ‘This infuriated the opposition members who rushed in a body towards the Speaker demanding the withdrawal of the permission. And while a tug of 40 41

Ibid., 20 February 1966. Hindusthan Standard. 23 February 1966.

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war ensued, the Congress workers for mace, the Speaker adjourned the House for three hours. Immediately a free fight started. A microphone was broken, files, papers and books including May’s Parliamentary Practice were thrown at each other. One member was seen brandishing a table. Another table had a number standing on it. The fight lasted about 10 minutes, but might have continued had it not been for the timely intervention by some senior members of both sides’.42 The second Food Movement left over 40 dead in five days and several thousands were badly injured. The political impact was tremendous. Senior Congress Minister, Ajay Mukherjee resigned and formed the Bangla Congress, which later joined the Leftists to form the United Front in the elections of 1967. The CPI (M) and the newly formed Bangla Congress too called two separate Food Conventions on 6 March in Calcutta. But neither party could persuade the masses to call off the movement. Thus, both the parties agreed to the peoples’ demand and gave the call for a 24-hour general strike on 10 March. But the spirit of popular spontaneity made the strike continue for another 24 hours.

From 9 to 31 March: Battle between the Government and the Opposition Although the movement came to a formal end with a long silent procession, starting from Subodh Mallick Square in central Calcutta to Deshapriya Park in south Calcutta on 14 March 1966, the aftershock of the movement was felt throughout March in the state. Gradually the spontaneity of the untrained masses was being overtaken by the conscious and calculated steps of seasoned politicians. Various dailies chronicled the day by day developments till the end of March. According to these reports, a tense quiet prevailed in Calcutta and suburbs on 9 March, before the General Strike.43 The situation in Krishnanagar was improving as the day curfew was lifted there. For the first time since the imposition of the order, the 42 43

Ibid. Hindusthan Standard. 10 March 1966.

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bazaars and the shops reopened on the day. But the night curfew still remained. As the zero hour for the general strike approached, police round up of ‘anti-social elements’ spread all over the state. By nightfall the total number of preventive arrests in Calcutta, Howrah, 24 Parganas, and Nadia had crossed the 2000-mark, the break up being Calcutta 600, 24 Parganas 600, Howrah 327and Nadia 113.

Calcutta and Suburbs The movement took the shape of a situation comparable to guerrilla warfare in the serpentine lanes and by-lanes of the city and suburbs. In place of clashes between the police and the agitators on the highways and large open public spaces, bands of youth organised themselves as small units in localities. The streets of Calcutta would witness this sort of ‘guerrilla warfare’ and unwarranted police raids again after three-four years in the wake of Naxalbari movement.44 Let us take a look of the situation from 9 March to 31 March 1966. In Calcutta, Satyapriya Roy, MLC on his way from Legislative Assembly Building was arrested inside a taxi on the day. Other arrests included the Forward Bloc leader Chitta Basu from Barasat and the Joint Secretary of the PSP, Sujit Bannerjee from Calcutta, Sanat Chatterjee of the Forward Bloc, detained in Presidency Jail was transferred to the Medical College Hospital for illness. A few minor untoward incidents were reported. In another incident, the residence of Calcutta Corporation Councillor in Vaishnabghata in the southern suburbs was attacked by a mob in the evening. A few crackers were thrown but none was injured. On the same day, an altercation between some passengers and employees of Calcutta State Transport Corporation (CSTC) near the RG Kar Hospital resulted in a minor scuffle in the morning. As a result, buses could not run on that route for some time and a constable on duty was beaten up by the mob. The police complained that interference by some students from RG Kar Medical College in a quarrel between a group of passengers and employees in the bus terminus started 44

‘The Chronicle of a Forgotten Movement’

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the trouble. They alleged that the students beat up the constable on duty, who had been pulled inside the hospital compound. But later he was given first aid and released. The Principal however denied the whole thing. He said that the students did not intervene neither had they beaten up the constable. The other incident was reported from College Street market area. A rumour spread that a bomb had exploded inside the garbage heap in the market. The police arrived on the spot and detained persons for a few hours for inquiry but the bomb could not be traced. There were also a few demonstrations and meetings at Barasat, Habra and Ashok Nagar in 24 Parganas. At Barasat demonstrators made a round of the town protesting against the police firings. Chitta Basu and others were arrested on the day. At Habra, Left parties and the PSP took out demonstrations. In a statement issued on the day the local PSP had announced that it would squat before the Commerce and Industry Minister T.K. Ghose’s house on 18 March. The city otherwise seemed normal, though in the afternoon attendance in the offices thinned a bit as commuters left early for home on the day. There was a flurry of customers in city markets that afternoon who had come in for their pre-hartal shopping. A large number of marriage parties arrived in the city on Wednesday afternoon apprehending communication and transport difficulties. Trains in most of the suburban sections had a normal run with a few exceptions. In Sealdah-Bongaon, Sealdah-Ranaghat and Sealdah-Krishnanagar sections of the Eastern Railway circuit, services were limited to 80 per cent of capacity. A railway spokesman stated that this was due to the dearth of coaches. An unsuccessful bid was made to set fire to the wooden bridge at Barrackpur station late in the evening. A group of persons set fire to the Shyamnagar Station building. These fires were put out within a few minutes by the station staff. Some arrests were made at Shyamnagar. An attempt to put a state bus on fire at Dakshineshwar was also foiled before any damage was done. A cracker was also reported to have been hurled at a bus near Sodepur station. Fire broke out in a state bus at the Howrah bus stand, where a woman passenger sustained very minor injuries. The fire was promptly put out.

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Government versus Opposition On 10 March, the Chief Minster went around the city, according to press reports.45 Later, he told newsmen that the hartal (general strike) was observed peacefully except for a few serious incidents that occurred at some places in Hooghly, at Khardah in 24 Parganas and at Asansol in Burdwan. There was huge loss and damage to government property at various places. The CM further said that 25 buses in all plied on these special routes in Calcutta. The number of passengers, however, was very small. He alleged that the Left communists were involved in the violence at Asansol, Konnagar, Rishra and Hind Motors. Here is an excerpt of his interview, appeared in Hindusthan Standard on 11 March. Q: Will the movement in rural areas stop with more supply of food? Mr. Sen: I don’t think so. Moreover, where can I get more food? Those who have resorted to violent measures are not participants in the food movement. Q: Kerala had an increased supply of rice after the food movement there. Mr. Sen: The people at Kerala don’t take wheat at all. The Chief Minister said that 50 to 90 percent fair price shops were open on the day and people drew the weekly rations.46

Mr Sen mentioned that he had gone around the city for about two hours in the morning He drove through Chowringhee Road, Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Road, Burrabazar, Bentinck Street and onto Howrah Station. While passing through Bentinck Street, Mr Sen found that some persons from the burning ghat asking a taxi to take them to South Calcutta. He got down from the car and requested the driver to go, but the ‘Sardarji’ refused. (Sikhs in Calcutta are popularly called ‘Sardarji’s. For a long time till early 1970s, the majority of the cab drivers in Calcutta were Sikhs). The Chief Minister waited there for some time and asked a passing police van to give those persons a lift to their destination. Mr Sen said, ‘I did not disclose my identity’. 45 46

Hindusthan Standard. 11 March 1966. Ibid.

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On 13 March, the United Left Front, supported by Forward Bloc, the PSP and the Student’s Action Committee had given a call to observe as Martyr’s Day.47 In Calcutta, a silent procession was taken out from Raja Subodh Mullick square after participants assembled there at 2.00 pm. The ULF had called upon all the people of the state to organise similar silent processions all over West Bengal. According to reporters, in view of the order under Section 144 Cr. PC now in force, the organisers approached Calcutta Police for necessary permission. But permission was refused in consideration of the present disturbed situation. The organisers however stood on their decision to hold the procession. On the other hand, referring to the proposed ‘silent procession’ on 13 March, Mr Guljarilal Nanda, Union Minister said: ‘We are worried about tomorrow. Knowing our earnestness for restoring normal conditions, it should be possible for the Left leaders to postpone the procession’.48 When asked by a reporter as to why the state government would not allow the procession neither the Union Minister nor the Chief Minister, Mr Sen, present at the news conference gave any reply. A Forward Bloc spokesman said that at a Martyr’s Column set up at five-point Shyambazar crossing, wreaths would be placed on behalf of FB, SSP and PSP at 9.00 am on 13 March. Besides CPI Left and CPI Right, other parties of the ULF, who had given the call for Martyr’s Day, were the Revolutionary Socialist Party, Socialist Unity Centre, Bolshevik Party, Revolutionary Communist Party of India, Communist Unity Centre, Samayukta Socialist Party and Forward Bloc Marxist. On 15 March, the CM warned in the Assembly of action against law breakers.49 He told the state assembly that so long as the law and order situation did not return to normality, the government would take action against law-breakers under the ordinary law or under Defence of India rules as the case might be. The Chief Minister said that the state had received a communication from the centre on the Defence of India rules. This was being considered by 47 48 49

Ibid., 13 March 1966. Ibid. Ibid., 16 March 1966.

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the state government. There had been widespread lawlessness and disturbances in Calcutta as well as some districts. The government was firmly resolved to see that lives and properties were not destroyed or disrupted. The West Bengal Congress MPs backed Sen and expressed full confidence in the Chief Minister.50 A meeting was held, state Congress leader, Atulya Ghosh’s residence. Mr Asoke Sen moved a confidence resolution which was seconded by Arun Chandra Guha. Nanda, the Union Home Minister, which C. Subramaniam, the Union Food Minister also attended on invitation taking part in the discussion in which the correspondence that had passed between the Chief Minister and the Opposition leader Mr Jyoti Basu figured. It appeared that intention of the MPs in adopting the resolution was to extend support to Sen’s stand as explained in his point by point reply to the demands of the Left. Moving the resolution, Asoke Sen vigorously supported measures by the Chief Minister and said ‘we would always support him’. Giving an assessment of the situation, Mr Nanda said, that the destruction of property during the recent agitation in West Bengal was planned. The Congress MPs hoped that the resumption of talks between the Chief Minister and the Left leaders would consolidate peace in the state. On 18 March, Jyoti Basu arrived in Delhi. According to reports, Jyoti Basu, Left Communist leader, had suddenly arrived in Delhi in the evening mainly to meet the Prime Minister Mrs Indira Gandhi.51 He was staying with Mr Bhupesh Gupta, the Right Communist leader who was trying for an appointment for him with Mrs Gandhi. Mr Basu’s intention was to discuss with the Prime Minister the questions related to the functioning of his party and the release of its members, now in prison under the Defence of India rules. For the reporters, Basu’s arrival seemed to have been hastened by the virtual failure of the Left leaders’ talks that morning with the Chief Minister of West Bengal, Mr P.C. Sen, on the demands of the United Left Front. On the question of kerosene and increase in the amount of ration in West Bengal, Mr Basu had been requested by the state’s Chief Minister to try to impress upon the Centre the need for 50 51

Ibid., 18 March 1966. Ibid., 19 March 1966.

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augmenting the allotment of these commodities from the central pool. Mr Sen was stated to have pleaded his inability to make any promise to increase the wheat content of the ration, without a guarantee from the Centre for additional supplies. So far as rice is concerned, West Bengal Chief Minister was understood to have indicated that there was little possibility. Jyoti Basu raised the demand for increased supplies of rice when he met the Prime Minister. He also demanded the release of not only those arrested in connection with the recent agitation but also those held under the DIR before the movement began. Mr Sen was stated to have told the ULF deputation that he could not agree to release people arrested for violent activities, including destruction of public property and attacks on Congress leaders’ houses. However, the Leftists’ contention that about 7,000 people had been arrested in connection with the movement was disputed by Mr Sen. His impression was that at the most 2,500 people had been taken to custody. Meanwhile eleven students collected Rs 110 by selling 2750 cc of their own blood52 and donated the money for setting up a martyr’s column in College Square. Achiya Khatun, mother of Nurul Islam, laid the foundation stone of the column on Monday. At a meeting organised there by Student’s Federation (Rightist), its Secretary Paltu DasGupta, urged the government to give help and compensation to the families affected by recent police excesses. There would be another flare-up, unless these demands were met, they warned. A resolution asking for the immediate reopening of schools and colleges was also adopted at the meeting which was also addressed by Professors Gautam Chatterjee and Devdas Bhattacharya. Enchab Ali Mollah and Surat Ali Mollah, respectively the father and younger brother of Nurul Islam, were also present.

Government for Softer Measures and Preparations for another General Strike In the meantime, a call for a General Strike/hartal on 6 April 1966 was given by the ULF. And the government, this time did not take 52

Ibid., 22 March 1966.

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proactive measures.53 According to reports, the Chief Minister Mr P.C. Sen had a free and frank discussion with his Cabinet colleagues at an unscheduled Cabinet meeting as to what should be the attitude of government vis-à-vis 6 April hartal call by United Left Front. The consensus was that this time the government better not resort to any ‘provocative’ posture unpalatable to those bent on making the hartal a ‘sure success’. It was generally felt that the trams, buses and local trains might not be pressed into service on the day. As for the long-distance trains, these would be asked to stream in as far as they could without encountering trouble. The government, however, planned to deploy a larger number of police personnel from outside the state to deal with any eventuality. The police would mount guard in the ‘protected areas’ and vital installations lest these should be made targets of attack by the opposition forces. The cabinet members held the view that the police must come all out for the protection of those who might be specially marked out for ‘revenge’ due to their political convictions. Meanwhile on 26 March, the CPI Leftist (later to be named as the CPI-M) held a meeting at Calcutta Maidan, which was described as ‘The Red’s Maidan Rally’ by the press.54 At that meeting, Jyoti Basu, leader of the Opposition in the State Assembly, told the audience that they had not launched an armed revolution but only a movement so that people could live. The meeting held under the auspices of the Communist Party (L) was presided over by Mohit Maitra, MLC. Some processions from different parts of the city converged at the meeting. Basu said that the Congress which had been cornered at the moment should be isolated and ousted from among the masses. He appealed to the people to make the present movement grow from strength to strength. He said that the Chief Minister had asked why the opposition had not condemned the violence, and why the Chief Minister himself condemned the firings and other repressive measures adopted by the police? Had the Chief Minister expressed sorrow for those killed in connection with the movement? Jyoti Basu felt that it was the Congress which was responsible for engineering 53 54

Ibid., 25 March 1966. Ibid., 27 March 1966.

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violent activities. He said that the Chief Minister had first showed impertinence by calling off the proposed talks with the opposition leaders. This sparked off the recent flare-up. Referring to the failures of the government in the administrative field Jyoti Basu further said that the Congress itself had attacked parliamentary democracy. The people now must take the responsibility saving the democracy from utter ruin. Even if the demands were met, the movement would continue to oust the Congress government. Sadhan Gupta, another Left CPI leader said that the Chief Minister was trying to evade their demands. The All Party Advisory Committee was nothing but a ‘hoax’. ‘We want a committee that would be formed with public cooperation.’55 Mr Gupta, a prominent Advocate at Calcutta High Court, said that if there was a judicial enquiry into the police firings at Basirhat, Swarupnagar, it could be proved that the police were punishable for the ‘murders’. But the present enquiry instituted by the Chief Minister was one-sided for it would only assess the number of displaced and unemployed persons who had taken part in the disturbances. Mohit Maitra, the President of the meeting, announced that 29 March would be observed as a ‘protest day’ when a meeting would be held at Maidan. He also announced the programme for the proposed General Strike on 6 April. At this meeting money was also collected for the martyrs’ families.

Protests from the Cine and Stage Worlds Even the cine and stage personalities joined hands to express solidarity.56 According to reports, Calcutta’s stage and movie people marched in the hot and humid city for miles from south to north in a procession to collect fund for the families affected by recent disturbances. The call given by Artistes and Technician’s Relief Fund Committee, pledged to stand by those who needed help. And it received an almost spontaneous reception. Not that this was the first time that one saw actors and actresses of Calcutta take on 55 56

Ibid. Ibid., 28 March 1966.

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significant roles off the stage and screen. Way back in 1962, they had accepted the challenge of China in their own way. Funds had been raised and blood donated for the jawans. Before that, they had brought out processions for the flood victims and like. Even so, by the sheer length of the trek, Sunday’s event was remarkable. It began at 8.30 am in the morning from the Technicians’ Studio, Tollygunge. The procession took full shape at the crossing of Gariahat and Rashbehari Avenue around 10.00 am. Proceeding along Rashbehari Avenue, it meandered through Shyamaprasad Mukherjee Road, Asutosh Mukherjee Road, Dharmatala Street, College Street and Bidhan Sarani. The marchers reached Shyambazar well past noon. All most all notables of the Bengali stage and screen took part in the procession. Among the actors and actresses, there were Uttam Kumar, Bikash Roy, Tarun Kumar, Dilip Mukherjee, Dilip Roy, Anil Chatterjee, Niranjan Roy, Ajoy Ganguli, Anup Kumar, Chandra Shekhar, Soumitra Chatterjee, Bhanu Bannerjee, Nirmal Chatterjee, Premangshu Bose, Prasad Mukherjee, Sukhen Das, Sailen Mukherjee, Sabitri Chatterjee, Haradhan Bannerjee, Madhabi Mukherjee, Sharmila Tagore, Nilima Das and Ruma Guha Thakurta. Among the directors, Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, Ajay Kar, Asim Bannerjee, Ajay Biswas and Bishnu Chakravorty were there. The collection was quite impressive.

Protest Day and Jyoti Basu’s Negotiations with the Centre In the meantime, meetings and demonstrations were held throughout the state to observe Protest Day on 29 March. The United Left Front arranged a public meeting at the Maidan at 5.30 pm. Street corner meetings were held in Calcutta and the districts. At the meetings organised jointly by the Praja Socialist Party and Forward Bloc, the official food policy was severely condemned. The resignation of the Chief Minister Mr P.C. Sen was also demanded. These parties also gave call to observe Wednesday as the ‘food and full rationing demand day’. At 6.30 pm, Hemanta Bose, Samar Guha and Sujit Banerjee addressed the meeting at the five-point crossing at Shyambazar. At Hazra Park and Gariahat, the meetings were addressed by Sunil Das, Nirmal Bose and others, and in Central Calcutta and Sealdah by Nalini Guha and Sailen De. Street corner

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meetings were held at College Square, Burrabazar and Rashbehari Road crossing.57 On 29 March, Jyoti Basu sent an envoy to Delhi to request the Centre to use its influence over Mr P.C. Sen to ensure that the hartal called by the United Left Front on 6 April be allowed to be observed peacefully. In the absence of Mrs Indira Gandhi, the request has been conveyed in a letter to Mr Dinesh Singh, Minister of External Affairs who had urged Mr Basu on 28 March to do his best to arrive at an understanding with the West Bengal Chief Minister so that proposed hartal might be avoided. Mr Singh was present when the earlier mentioned meeting between the Prime Minster and Jyoti Basu and Bhupesh Gupta on the West Bengal situation had taken place on 19 March. Mrs Gandhi was understood to have made anxious inquiries from abroad on the progress of talks between the Chief Minster P.C. Sen and the ULF. Mr Basu’s letter was handed over to Mr Singh by Jatin Chakravarty, the RSP leader who arrived in Delhi in the afternoon. Mr Bhupesh Gupta was with him when he called on Mr Singh. Mr Basu said in his letter that he was sorry to have failed to prevail upon the Chief Minister to see reason. In spite of the ULFs best efforts, Mr Sen had not accepted even the ‘reduced demands’ of the ULF. Another meeting between Mr Chakravarty and Mr Singh took place on 31 March. Mr Singh had promised to have talks with the Union ministers to ascertain if there was anything that the Centre could do in these circumstances. Mr Chakravarty before leaving for Calcutta told Mr Singh that the Front was not going to negotiate with Mr Sen anymore. At a meeting on 30 March, the Congress Parliamentary Party Executive discussed the situation between the West Bengal Government and the ULF. Mr Nanda who earlier had a telephonic talk with Mr Sen, made a report on the developments. This was followed by a discussion during which members were reported to have generally agreed that the Chief Minister had gone to the furthest limit possible in arriving at a settlement. They said that now that the hartal was going to take place, the government must discharge its responsibility to protect life and property. At the same 57

Ibid., 29 March 1966.

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time, the government should be careful not to give provocation. Jagjivan Ram and one or two others, while expressing this view said that it was time that the Congress tried to find out why people were moving more and more away from it.58

INSTEAD OF A CONCLUSION In 1977, after a decade of the first UF government, the Left Front (LF) led by the CPI (M) came to power in West Bengal and remained there till 2011. In its initial years, the LF took the question of food security seriously and implemented various legal as well as social policies from land reforms (Operation Barga, which allowed three-fourths share to share-croppers) and establishment of three-tier panchayat (rural self-government) system to ensuring the effective functioning of the PDS and successful running many Central government-sponsored programmes. However, these efforts and initiatives started fading after few years. The process of land reforms was only partially completed. In most cases, it was not further radicalised by programmes like cooperative farming, which were necessary for increasing productivity. Generally speaking, the official Left seemed to be self-complacent about their twin policies of Operation Barga and the three-tier panchayat system. But gradually the flow of spontaneity became a matter of ritual under the absolute control of the ‘party’ that is the CPI (M). Then, in 2007, a mass outrage over the malfunctioning of the PDS erupted in many districts of the state, decades after the Food Movements of 1959 and 1966. Popularly known as ration riots, this apparently anomic movement in three southern and one northern district only indicated the gap between the claims of the ruling regime and the reality. And a wind of ‘change’ or ‘parivartan’ began to blow in the districts of southern Bengal. In the words of a contemporary researcher: One may deduce a connection between the mass outrage against corrupt ration dealers as well as the entire PDS system in 2007 58

Ibid., 31 March 1966.

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and the change of power in the following Panchayat Elections of 2008. While this relationship made its presence felt across the state, in some districts, the line appeared much conspicuously. Indeed, a simple mapping of the PDS outrage and the debacle of the regime show a clear correlation between the two. That rural Bengal, which for long has been taken for granted to be the red bastion, was changing its colour was not confined only to Panchayat Elections, the slogan of ‘change’ had remained influential even in the Parliamentary Elections of 2009. And, undoubtedly, this wave of political ‘change’ has drawn a lot from the PDS agitation, which was only too clear from the electoral debacle of the ruling Left in the districts such as Birbhum, North and South 24 Parganas and Nadia, where the PDS agitation was very strong.59

One can say that, after the ration revolt of 2007, exactly as in the case of the Food Movement of 1966 the government changed hands the process of another change started. And we can also say that these apparently ‘anomic’ outrages of the masses and their style of operations in 2007 proved once again that the ‘rhizome’ of 1959 and 1966 could surface at any moment and take any shape even in the distant and not so distant futures. But more importantly the 1966 Food Movement passed into living memory as one of the most significant moments in the history of radicalism in West Bengal. The radicalisation of the society might have led to the ouster of the Congress from the government and the installation of the first United Front government in 1967, but it also fomented the exceptionally militant mood of the people, which could not be contained within the order of the UF government and found direct expression in the Naxalite upsurge in villages and towns of Bengal starting from 1967 onwards.

59

Sibaji Pratim Basu and Geetisha Dasgupta (eds.). 2010. Politics in HungerRegime: Essays in Right to Food in West Bengal. London & Kolkata: Frontpage. pp. 107.

two

SECTION The Naxalite Decade

ƂXe

CHAPTER

Artisans of Revolt The Naxalbari Struggle of 1967 Translated by Purna Banerjee

The Naxalite decade or Naxalite politics began with the Naxalbari movement in May 1967. The reports by the leaders of the movement along with scores of articles and commentaries make it very difficult to write something afresh. However, one thing is missing: while analyses and commentaries including the famous commentary by People’s Daily aired over the Beijing Radio ‘Spring Thunder over India’ throw light on the politics, possibilities, prospects, and the specifically historical nature of the movement, and the media spotlight has been on its famous leaders; few, very few, have cared to find out who the people were fifty years back to join the movement and act in a different manner unimaginable today. In this context, this chapter aims to present here the lives of a few peasant revolutionaries of Naxalbari, of whom we know little, but who made Naxalbari movement possible. The following life descriptions are excerpts from the compilation, Drohakaler Annyo Karigarera.1 Readers will get an idea of the diversity of backgrounds and identities of these revolutionaries, and yet what made them members of a revolutionary movement with the same revolutionary identity. Indeed, these life stories tell us how a popular movement turns into an insurgency. – Ranabir Samaddar [First published in Ebong Jalarka and Lal Tamsuk, the following report was reprinted in Drohakaler Annyo Karigarera. The original title of the account was ‘India’s de Valera: Krishna Bhakta Poudel’. This is an abridged version of the report. – Purna Banerjee] 1 Naxalbari Panchas: Drohakaler Annyo Karigarera, roughly translated as Other Artisans of the Time of Revolt (Siliguri: Darjeeling District Committee, CPI (ML) Liberation, 2017).

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I. A SYMBOL OF COURAGE AND RESOLVE: PEASANT LEADER GALESHWARI THARU2 Under the leadership of the Communist Party of India (CPI), the women in the Terai region of West Bengal were organized well before the Naxalbari movement flamed and claimed the centre stage. The Terai region, where the mountains of Himalayas start its ascent, is covered with numerous verdant tea plantations. Women had been a large part of the labour force of these plantations and were subjected to exploitation at both home and workplace. Against this exploitation, women from the very beginning assumed leadership in organizing and unionizing themselves. During the Naxalite movement this tradition of courageous rebellion and the spirit of organizing was very much part of women’s lives. They continued to assist the Naxalite workers in any capacity that they could. Refusing to be mere spectators in the Naxalbari movement, they plunged in organizational work, participated in marches and meetings, risked their livelihood, acted as shelter providers, messengers, couriers for food and even arms, and eventually as combatants too, yet again proving that women were in no way inferior to men in the battle of life. Peasant leader, Galeshwari Tharu, from Hatighisa was one such completely ordinary and yet a most exceptional woman. She had been a member of the local peasants’ association from 1955 and later was given the membership of the undivided Communist Party of India. She courageously resisted and uncompromisingly fought against landlords and jotedars till the last day of her life. Amidst adversity, she held her head high and fought equally for her right to the twenty bighas of farmland that her family owned and for rights of all other peasants to their lands. It is no surprise then that Galeshwari Tharu became the face of the peasant movement in Hatighisa. During the Naxalbari movement Tharu’s home in Hatighisa became the nerve centre of the organization. Local peasants would congregate at her home and decide on the daily plan-of-action, as directed by their party leaders, before dispersing to the four corners of the region to implement the plans. Daily 2

Ibid., p. 32.

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meetings and marches were almost always organized in some part of the region or the other. Several party workers regularly took shelter in her home and with a smile on her face she kept on providing them with food and care. Along with other women she regularly collected food from the local population and stored it for the cadres sheltered at her home. In addition, she also served as a messenger for the party, often uncomplainingly carrying very sensitive information from one source to another, located in some other remote corner of Naxalbari. However, Tharu’s true mettle was tested in the aftermath of 5 July 1967, when ‘Operation Crossbow’ of the military was announced and police camps were set up in the villages. A reign of terror was unleashed by the police. Arrests, beatings, torture and all other forms of violence against the village folks became the norm. Peasants were forced to abandon their families and homes. Villages in the Hatighisa region, like those in its neighbouring areas, became completely devoid of male presence. Farming stopped altogether. Every day the police picked up two to four individuals for interrogation. They started intimidating and harassing the local women too. At this point Galeshwari Tharu’s sons were also arrested by the police and taken away for interrogation. Tharu and other peasant women finally had enough! They resolved that they would plough the land. The enormity of this apparently innocuous decision can only be understood in the light of the superstitions and prejudices that governed the lives of village elders at that time. It was believed that if women were to plough, it would not rain and there would be drought and famine. But the women remained unshaken in their resolve to plough the land. The elderly Galeswari Tharu encouraged her daughter-in-law, Jhimi Tharu, to lead this charge. Jhimi Tharu and Kanchi Nepali started ploughing. This inspired the women of the neighbouring village in Hochai Mullick’s jote to plough as well. The initiative stopped within three or four days but it helped to unshackle many social barriers. Crimes against women were considerably curbed. In the Hatighisa region, along with Galeshwari Tharu there were other female leaders, such as, Krishnamaya Charjan, Sabitri Das, Suniti Biswakarma (Babulal Bishwakarma’s sister-in-law), and Shanti Munda.

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II. SHANTI MUNDA DARED TO DREAM OF A DIFFERENT INDIA3 Shanti Munda stood apart from others for her fearless leadership and independent spirit. She was born in Hatighisa, in Shebdulla jote. There is no reliable record of her birth date or time; however, during an interview in 2017 Munda claimed that she believed herself to be seventy-four years old. Munda became a card-carrying, formal member of the Communist Party in the year 1965. However, her association with the Party dates further back to when as a teenager she identified with the cause and proudly carried the red flag of the Party while tirelessly marching from village to village with her sister-in-arms, under the leadership of women like Jangal Santal’s mother, Babulal Bishwakarma’s mother, Galeshwari Tharu, and Leela Majumdar. She organized and attended countless marches and community meetings as a dedicated worker, and spoke on issues such as land rights, unequal distribution of crops, status of women in the society, role of women in peasant struggles, etc. These were not restricted to public meetings alone but involved personal oneon-one conversations with countless women. This is how Munda’s political journey began. She had to weather many storms in her life - poverty, deprivation and hunger, betrayal, struggles, and the many difficulties of underground political life. Today, at the age of seventy-four, she remains engaged in the work of raising political consciousness against the divisive politics of communalism. Frail and gaunt, she remains proactive and resistant, ever the rebel leader, a hero. The authors of the commemorative volume, Naxalbari Panchas (Naxalbari 50), arrived at Shanti Munda’s hut one day to recollect and write about her life. As they were inquiring if she was at home, Shanti came out of her sister’s hut located right across her own. Diminutive, weather-beaten, but ramrod straight, exuding enormous courage and forthrightness, Munda’s large bright eyes lit up her face with a telling smile as to why these visitors had come. Shanti Munda speaks fluent Bengali, a language she had picked up, along with many other local dialects, in the course of her party 3

Ibid., pp. 33–37.

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work. The visitors requested her to narrate her life as a party worker and tell them about her struggle. She remained silent for a while; and then she slowly began to speak: It is a tale that goes back half-a-century. I was then a girl of 12 or 13 years. I was connected with the undivided Communist Party from that age. I became a member of the women’s association. I accompanied women leaders like Chaya Dey, Chaitannya Sanyasi’s wife, Kalu Doctor and Leela Majumdar to Champashari and Mallaguri area. Charu Mazumdar owned land there. I saw him distribute his land among the sharecroppers. I was a witness. Ladhi Majhi and Shukhi Majhi were the two sharecroppers. It was the time of the Tebhaga movement. The peasant worked tirelessly on the land, but would get nothing. This was unacceptable. The tebhaga had taken place in Jalpaiguri earlier, now it would also take place in Terai.

Shanti Munda was the daughter of a poor peasant family. They had 18 bighas* of land. They were so poor that they could not afford to get hired help to work with them on their land. The family did all the work. Shanti Munda’s family consisted of her parents and her siblings (a brother and a sister). The yield from the 18 bighas was never large enough to feed the whole family for an entire year. Thus, her father worked on Khyapachand Biswas’s land as a sharecropper. In the beginning her father paid the jotedar’s share with the grain that was produced, later he had to pay the share with money. The ratio for payment depended on the size of the land being farmed. For working on 14 bighas, he paid the latter 18 maunds (1 maund = 37 kgs approx.) of paddy. Later he had to sell the 18 maunds of paddy and also pay. Shanti had witnessed, how in order to sustain this bargain, the peasant would have to hand over their entire produce, and then, their utensils at times. Their plight, tears, helplessness, and hunger were of no avail. The peasant could not escape these vicious deals. They would flee in the dead of night to escape the debts. Sharecroppers like her father, often had to look for a second or a third job to feed their families. Her father after working in the day as a sharecropper would cross the Nepal border to buy cheap sacks of salt in Nepal and bring them back to sell them in the local markets. He was initially a volunteer of

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the Indian National Congress (INC); then he became a follower of Kanu Sanyal, when the latter started frequenting their villages. Slowly Shanti Munda and other locals became associated with the work of the Communist Party of India. When Kanu Sanyal started frequenting Shebdulla’s jote he brought with him another person, Kesab Sarkar. These men worked hard in establishing a night-school in their village. Both Kanu babu and Kesab Sarkar taught in this school. Khokan Majumdar too would come at night. Along with studies, these men discussed peasants’ problems as well. The school soon attracted many pupils. Shanti too became a student at the school. There she first met and came to know Kesab Sarkar. In 1965 Shanti became a member of the Communist Party after the Party was split. She actively attended meetings and marches and took a leadership role in social endeavours such as the digging of wells for safe drinking water and collecting money to help those who had no money to marry off their daughters. Often Shanti Munda would have to rush from one village to another to help settle disputes, when huge conflicts broke out between the peasants and the landowners. Shanti recalled, after the United Front assumed power in February 1967, on 18 March a big peasant’s conference was organized in Rambhola jote. The conference gave a call to the peasants to begin a strong peasant movement. Activists were divided into groups and asked to work in different areas of the region for a more complete coverage. Peasants were encouraged to forcibly snatch away cultivatable land from the jotedars and claim their rights over these lands. Peasant committees began occupying benami land held by the jotedars. The police retreated in many places in the face of peasant determination. Scores of meetings were held then, though she was ill at this time and could not go out much. But she was present at the 18 March meeting, as was Jogen Biswakarma, uncle of Babulal Biswakarma. The police in some areas tried to protect the landlords’ interests and attempted to enter the villages. They escalated their aggression and started harassing and interrogating the men in the villages. A majority of the men absconded from the villages, leaving the villages practically devoid of a male population. She recalled,

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Then on the fateful day of 24, the incident of Jharu jote took place. Perhaps the police had information that the leaders of the movement had assembled there. They mounted a raid on the village to arrest everyone in one fell swoop. When the villagers heard that the police were coming, they all grabbed whatever they could find, like any sharp or heavy household utensils and material that could be wielded as a weapon, their bows and arrows, and rushed over to Jharu jote. It was like everyone from every home of the village and the surrounding ones had rushed in. Peasants, tea garden labour, their families, neighbours, everyone gathered in the field. Sonam Wangdi died shot by an arrow.

Shanti continued, My youngest daughter was just 15 days old at that time. I tied her to my back and ran over to Jhoru jote. Women formed a circle and surrounded the police. Goodness! So many people! This otherwise green stretch of land was invisible under our feet. Everyone had come! Everyone! Men, women, the young, the elderly, even toddlers and infants, everyone! Like ants, a sea of humanity covered the whole field. Nothing could be seen beyond the dark heads that seemed to carpet the entire ground. So many had gathered for this one cause and this one fight? Unbelievable! I hadn’t seen anything like this before. I don’t think even my forefathers had experienced anything like this. Khokan Majumdar, Phani Master, and Lalsa Kheroya of Haldibari tea garden were the leaders present on that day. There were a few other leaders too, but I cannot quite recall who they were. Right before the 24 May incident the police had entered the village and had attacked the women, I remember. They had sexually assaulted the wife of a Nepali pradhan. They had groped and pulled her by the hand to take her with them. Sainu Khoriyar’s wife was pregnant. They hit her repeatedly with the butt of a gun. This resulted in a miscarriage, and later she died too. ‘As Shanti Munda had just given birth to her child only about a fortnight back, she had been quite ill during most of this period. Driven by emotion, she had run over to Jhoru jote the previous day; however, on 25 May she could not leave home at all. The women in the village had resolved that they would not let the police arrest their men on that day. When the police force tried to enter the village,

128 ARTISANS OF REVOLT all the women gathered around the police vehicles and some even wrested the guns away from the hands of the police. The officers asked the women to return their guns, promising to leave the area if the women complied. The women believed them and returned the guns. At first the police seemed to keep their end of the bargain and got into their vehicles and drove a short distance away. Then suddenly they stopped and started shooting at the unarmed women and children gathered there. It was a horrific massacre and eleven people lost their lives on that day. After the 24 and 25 May incidents, Kesab Sarkar had to go underground. He fled to Bihar and later returned to Dagapur. He was arrested immediately upon his return. ‘Kesab Sarkar belonged to a zamindar family from Dinajpur, East Pakistan. The property his family owned there had to be auctioned due to non-payment of revenue. Because of these reasons he was forced to leave East Pakistan and relocate to West Bengal, India. When he came to India he brought his younger brother and his widowed mother with him. The family of three took shelter in the home of Nripen Basu of Siliguri. Nripen was a member of the local Communist Party and through him Kesab Sarkar got a job in a plywood factory. In 1946, there was a labour dispute between the management and the workers in the factory. As Kesab Sarkar was a worker there, he participated and later assumed a leadership role in the movement that led to boycotts and eventually to a strike that lasted for months. Because of his involvement in the strike, he was dismissed from work. This incident led Kesab Sarkar to join the Communist Party. In 1949, Kesab Sarkar became a fulltime party worker when the party officially entrusted him with the task of organizing the labour forces of Champashari. Sarkar travelled to places like Matigara, Hatighisa, Buragunj, and Khoribari, and various settlements in the hills to organize the peasants. He was a very good party worker. Where and whenever necessary the party would call for him, he would instantly respond. He was an educated man and had a good grasp of English. This was of benefit to the party work. However, he never stopped work of cultivation. He had been attacked several times by the jotedars, and he went to jail. He was in jail for three out of five months. The last such return was in 1978 when we were informed that Kesab Sarkar would be released from jail. Jangal Santhal and I travelled together to Siliguri to get him released on bail. He returned to Naxalbari with the two of us. He lived for another eleven or twelve years, though he was ill almost

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the whole time. By this time he was chronically ill. Six months after Jangal Santhal passed away, Kesab died too.

Overcome with emotion, Shanti Munda remained quiet. She then introduced the interviewers to her granddaughter, a third-year student of the Humanities at Siliguri College. She proudly informed them that although her granddaughter was now too busy to practice, because her final exams were upon her, she was also an awardwinning runner. She had won many trophies at athletic meets. The interviewers again went back to what she had been narrating. They pressed her with questions related to the aftermath of the 24–25 May (1967) incidents. Munda continued to shed light on her life. She mentioned how right after Sonam Wangi’s death she went into hiding, carrying her newly born daughter with her. She took shelter in Lataguri; however, she did not stop working. During the day she worked at organizing meetings and during the night she would attend those meetings. When asked about her return home, Munda resumed, Five years I was away. I returned to the Mallaguri area five years later because my son had taken ill. I did not know where comrade Keshab Sarkar was. My house in Mallaguri had been illegally occupied by a person. I had 5 katha of cultivatable land; that too was taken away because I did not have the adequate money to get it registered. I was completely destitute – homeless and landless. Adding to my isolation, my mother-in-law passed away. The death of my brother-in-law followed. I had no news of my husband. I felt very sad and alone…On seeing my abject condition the local CPI (M) and Congress people got together and offered me a job. I accepted it! I could barely make ends meet, but I still managed. Since I did not have any roof to live under, I used banana leaves, jute, and gunny sacks to weave a cover and make a fragile hut. That is all I could manage. Sometimes I thought, what did I do with my life? I was just 12–13 when I devoted myself to this cause…so many years. What do I have to show for it all? It pains me. Yes, it saddens me. Yet, I never quit. I never left the Party. Not even now! I stand next to them, shoulder-to-shoulder. I haven’t stopped fighting for the people. I am with them. I am with the party!

130 ARTISANS OF REVOLT ‘After 1977, I received some land, 3 bighas to be exact, and got legal ownership papers. This helps me out a bit and I continue to till that land: The paddy from it is sufficient for me for the year. However, the land does not provide me with vegetables or anything else.

Shanti Munda digressed into the story of her marriage to Kesab Sarkar, again prompted by the interviewers. She recollected how in 1960 Kesab Sarkar had been a regular visitor at her home. The Mundas had several fruit trees, like banana and guava, in their garden. Kesab Sarkar loved to eat guavas and he would drop by to collect some from their garden. People in the community started talking. They speculated about what his attraction was to this house. Sarkar was a man of resolve. When these rumours reached his ears, he marched over to Shanti Munda’s father and declared that he would marry her. Shanti Munda’s father never approved of this match. Sarkar was forty years old, while she was seventeen. Hearing everything, Kanu Sanyal took over the arrangements for the ceremony and the Party made all arrangements for the wedding, which took place in Dahru Rajgore’s home in Choupukhuria. ‘Almost everyone came to the wedding, but there was no one from my house. My father Digan Munda, could never understand why Kesab Sarkar would want to marry a tribal girl. Further, he did not know how his own community would react to this marriage. He strongly believed that his daughter’s marriage to Kesab Sarkar would never be accepted by his tribe. At first, he was so angry at the news that he wanted to kill Keshab with an arrow. He wanted to move the court against him. My father loved me enormously. At times I feel, my father died before his time worrying for me. I am still alive. I am also ill – high blood pressure, heart-related ailment, and along with that asthma. I need seven hundred rupees per month for medicine. Wherefrom do I get this money? Four thousand rupees from my senior citizen’s pension account and this house built with the proceeds of sale of one bigha land. I have never got anything from the government, and never shall.

When asked if she had heard any news of Shebdulla becoming a model village, she spiritedly roared with laughter and exclaimed

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A BJP MP from the BJP had come to visit our village. I did not go. The others went, and someone opened the Party office with them. That day, suddenly Ahluwalia came to my house with his entourage, told me, ‘Shantidi, Kanu babu had wanted to save this village with bullets. Today I shall do the same thing with ballots’. I was irritated by his comment. Well, where is his model village? I don’t see one today. They are trying to buy the people with money. In the name of Banabasi Kalyan Ashram (Welfare Centre for Forest Dwellers) they give saris to village women in exchange for just a few rupees, they arrange community marriages. In every village they are taking local girls and setting up dance troupes. When they have visitors, these girls have to dance and entertain them. The girls get money and food in return. They have even opened bank accounts for these girls. They use all kinds of tricks to lure the masses to their side. They have no scruples and no other organization can do what they are prepared to do. Such politics is harming the local people. Again, many peasants do not have land. They will face greater crisis. Slowly, but surely, the conspiracy is on to take more land away from the peasants in the name of development and modernization. Machines are being used for picking tea leaves in the tea plantations. Previously 50 workers were needed to pick the tea leaf; however, with machines doing most of the picking, only 10 workers are now employed. Very soon, the machines will replace all the workers. What then? I see impending doom! I sense that the BJP might soon come to power in this state. Political work is not being done sufficiently. And, greater disaster looms large on the horizon. I warn you, struggle for land will again happen. Class war! Armed struggle is the only way. I just know one thing: the bourgeois constitution guiding our country will have to be changed. The commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Naxalbari movement took place in Jhoru jote just the other day, 19 November 2016; it gives me a lot of hope... Everyone must unite! All revolutionary organizations must unite…Where is another leader like Charu da? There is no other way comrade! No other way!

By the time Shanti Munda had finished her impassioned response to the last question from the interviewers, it had started raining. As we walked a little distance from her hut, the drizzle had turned into a full-blown hailstorm. We took shelter under a roof near her

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compound. We saw Shanti Munda with an umbrella in hand looking for us anxiously. She asked, are you all ok? I was worried. We were reminded of a worried mother waiting for us.

III. A VANGUARD AMONG THE PEASANT WOMEN WARRIORS: LEELA KISHAN (SINGHA)4 One of the leading female peasant revolutionaries was Leela Kishan Singha. By late 1970, the villages in and around Hatighisa had become especially vulnerable to daily raids and sometimes multiple raids on a single day. It had become very difficult for the men to remain in their homes. The raids were conducted to round the men up and perpetrate a reign of terror. Some of the local people acted as police informers. Comrades coming from the outside had to be extremely cautious. Men and women dug trenches together and built brick walls to keep watch and they would be ready to fire at the raiding police forces. Leela Kishan Singha’s older brother, Bijay Kishan was attached to the movement from its inception. Her home was a major hub for comrades. They frequently held meetings and discussions there, with Leela participating as an eager member of the audience. At the young age of 14, Leela got directly involved into the movement. In Sebdullah jote women were grouped in units of five to seven for further training and action. Sometimes these small units had young male members as well. Patol Singha could shoot well, and trained the members of the women’s units to use the gun both for self-defence and for attacking the police and the jotedars. Leela Kishan was a member of one such unit. At that time the party had been gone underground. Leela was an active member of her unit and was involved in a direct combat against one jotedar. Right after joining the party, she got arrested in 1971. Near Garidhura there was a place called Saptiguri, where the 14-year-old hid in the home of her paternal aunt. That is where the police stormed in with a warrant and arrested her and another female comrade whose name she cannot recall. She was taken to Siliguri and was put 4

Ibid., pp. 63–64.

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behind bars for five months. Other inmates seeing this young child of 14 behind the iron bars would lament and feel sad. Eventually, her father managed to get her released on bail. She was briefly released after the posting of the bail; however, on the day of her appearance before a judge, she was again arrested. This time around she was sent to Darjeeling and was incarcerated for a year-and-a-half. As Leela narrated her life to her interviewers, she would frequently pause. Her eyes would reflexively move towards the quiet presence of the person sitting next to her, Khemu Singh, as if seeking silent endorsement of the tumultuous life they had lived together. While she narrated, he would sometimes softly help her connect the threads or add some detail to her narrative. Khemu had been her companion, comrade, and co-combatant for the last 35 years of their married life, and if one takes into account the pre-marital years of companionship, then 45 years. Leela Kishan was released from jail in 1973. She stayed at home for only a week, before being called out to join the movement again. By this time Charu Mazumdar, Saroj Dutta, and others had become martyrs. The party was trying to regroup. At this point she came in contact with Binod Mishra, Kartik Pal and Patol Singha. Leela joined the women’s guerrilla unit, which already had Puni Kishan, Tashila, Basanti, Arati, and others. To efficiently carry out actions they would divide themselves into smaller groups of five to six people to cover the entire area. In 1974, Leela Kishan was caught again along with Kartik Pal near the Nepal border. She was arrested under the Arms Act, as she was caught carrying a rifle. She was taken to the police station and was subjected to violent beatings. Her entire body was swollen as she was beaten with a spring. There were no female police personnel at that time. Wangdi was the officer-in-charge for her arrest. In jail she was kept in the Women’s Ward. After the imposition of the National Emergency in 1975, she remained in jail. Patol Singha was at large – in the rebellion. Life in the jail had acquired a normal nature, when suddenly one morning Leela noticed restlessness among the guards. The number of guards had increased. Leela was called to the jailor’s office and informed that Patol Singha had died on that day. What could Leela say? She remained quiet. Memories of the

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long past she had known and seen him, the time they had spent together, organizing and fighting alongside came back. Patol was her elder brother’s friend and she had known him almost all her life. She thought to herself, ‘If this was meant to be…this is what they wanted and did… they were doing this to us all…’. Leela was then led back to her ward. Her elder brother too was in jail at the same time. Her father passed away when she was in jail and she did not even get to pay him her final respects. In 1977 when political prisoners were being released, Leela Kishan too was released. A few days after her release, Siddharta Sankar Ray visited her at home and offered her a house, some land and means-to-a-livelihood, if she were to surrender her arms and quit the politics of rebellion. Leela was silent. When he pressed her for a response, she quietly asked him, what was the use of making promises only to her? Would he be able to give others what they wanted, erase the past, and restore everything to others all that had been lost? Would he agree to the demands of the movement? On hearing her response Ray left. She remembers that immediately after Ray’s visit she again went underground. She was arrested again while attending a summons of the Siliguri Court. Both Janaki Singha and she were arrested from the court premises and directly taken to the Presidency Jail in Calcutta. Being ill, she was put on a medical diet in the Women’s Ward. She remembers that the women with her there were not political prisoners and Naxalites. She returned home on release. In the year 1981, Leela got married to Khemu Singha and set up her home with him in the Rambhola jote locality. A few years after the marriage, she was again arrested – this time for her involvement in Ghoshpukur rifle-loot case. She had a year-anda-half old child. With her child she went to Darjeeling jail, and came out after a month. It was probably 1974. One morning there was an armed confrontation between the police and six rebels. It happened right in front of her paternal home. She was one of the six; she along with Puni Kishan and Ramani Kishand managed to escape from a shower of bullets and arrows being shot from both sides. Although the three of them escaped, Puni and Ramani were caught from a

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different part of the locality. Her husband Khemu Singh was taken captive by the police. Again, she looked at her husband, as if to reassure herself that he was still there next to her. They had not really gone back in time and she had not lost him, all over again. Leela Kishan’s family had owned 12 to 14 bighas of cultivatable land in Shebdulla jote. She had given up 6 bighas of the same to the sharecroppers. In 1994 she contested the panchayat elections from Rambhola, as an independent candidate with outside support from CPI (ML), Kanu Sanyal’s party. She won the election and during the board formation the ruling CPI (M) asked for her support. She was even chosen to serve as the Upa-Pradhan (the Deputy Head), and continued in that position for 10 years. As a parting shot she intrepidly asserts: We are Naxals. We fought tirelessly, day-in and day-out. We fought with our lives against the Congress Party. I can neither forget those days nor do I want to. So, when I see the CPI (M) joining forces with the Congress, I can never accept this self-serving politics of compromise and coalition. Why this appeasement? They spoke of all those great things in women’s associations and other mass organizations… weren’t they in power for all these years? ‘The revolution in the seventies was the demand of the times! Today, people stand on a similar precipice; Naxalbari was relevant then, it is still so now!

Leela Kishan slowly got up from her seat. A solemn evening had overcome them all. Her cattle had been grazing in the field, waiting for her to bring them home. As the interviewers left her home in Rambhola jote, the sky appeared overcast. The promise of an impending storm!

IV. THE FIRST MARTYR FROM AMONG THE LEADERSHIP: BABULAL BISWAKARMA5 The group of four Naxal leaders returned from China in the month of December 1967. Then a section of the Naxalbari leadership along 5

Ibid., pp. 12–14.

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with several cadres made their way to Mirik hills to strengthen the rebellion. It was necessary to move to the hills to train adequately in guerrilla warfare, and stealth and reconnaissance techniques to learn more about the police camps in the region. The idea was to launch sudden attacks on these police camps, grab as many arms and weapons as possible and retreat to the hills. However, food shortage in the hills forced the rebels to return to the Naxalbari area. Under the leadership of Khokan Majumdar, Babulal Biswakarma was entrusted with the task of collecting information about the police camp in the Birsingh jote for mounting an attack on the camp. To avoid suspicion of any kind, Babulal Bishwakarma took shelter in Lalchand Biswakarma’s home in Hochai Mullick’s jote. Babulal arrived there on 6 September 1968 where there were two more members of the guerrilla squad, Joseph Munda and Kuru Munda. On 7 September, after their evening meal, the four rebels left the home of their comrade Lalchand. It was a moonlit evening. The first two to leave the hideout were Khokan Majumdar and Joseph Munda, while Babulal Biswakarma and Kuru Munda left little after. The police were nearby and were searching for them, and they too understood that the police were there. The village women too yelled out to alert them. This prompted the first two rebels to run and hide in the bamboo woods right across Lalchand’s house. Babulal chose to hide in a wild, vegetation-covered, dried-up pond that was situated in the middle of the wood. Kuru Munda did not follow Bishwakarma into the pond covered in dense-growth and instead he dove into the tall grass covered area right next to it. He stayed flat on his belly and hid among the thick grass and dense bushes. The police quietly surrounded the entire area. At around nine that night, the police became certain of their presence and asked them loudly to surrender. Bishwakarma was alone at this time, and one can only assume that on hearing the police warning he had resolved to take on the entire force by himself. His only companion at this hour was a rifle snatched from Baicharan Singh, a Khoribari jotedar. Babulal started firing at the big contingent of the police. For about four hours the exchange of fire continued. Around one at night the police surrounded the pond

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from three sides and began firing. Babulal was riddled with bullets on his chest. There were at least six bullet marks. Babulal’s body was brought to the Naxalbari Police Station around 4.00 pm. The body was not returned to his family because he was considered a high-risk or dangerous individual and so for ‘security reasons’ his last rites were performed by the police. The local peasants were very agitated and angry about the killing of Comrade Bishwakarma. There were several protest marches organized by different villages in the area. On 20 September 1968, at Prasad jote, Naxalbari, the revolutionary students of the North Bengal University organized a protest march. It was followed by a meeting commemorating the legacy of Babulal Biswakarma. Tea garden workers, peasants, party activists from Naxalbari, Kharibari, Phansidewa and many more places joined the march and the meeting. On 19 September 1968 the organ of the revolutionaries, Deshbrati, reported in details his martyrdom…. Who was Babulal? He was born in 1937 in a poor peasant family in the sleepy village of Malancha in the undivided Dinajpur district of North Bengal in 1937. In 1947 the Tebahga movement was at its peak in North Bengal under the leadership of the Communist Party of India. On 20 February 1947, sometime between the middle of the night and early morning, the police entered a village called Khanpur in the today’s South Dinajpur district. Their intent was to arrest the local leadership of the movement. The police raided the homes of unsuspecting villagers deep in sleep, and started arresting the leaders. Jasodha Ma, an older woman of the village alerted the villagers by repeatedly blowing the conch, and the villagers realized what was going on. They soon gathered around and started raising slogans in demand of the release of those arrested. They blocked the exit of the police from the village. At this time, suddenly, without any warning, a shot from the police killed a protestor. As soon as this happened a fierce clash ensued between these protesting villagers and the police. That day the police fired 121 rounds of bullets. A total of 21 people lost their lives, including Jasodhada Ma. Babulal’s elder brothers Haren, Prasanna and Raghunath, were there and escaped death by the skin of their teeth.

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A few months after this incident, Babulal’s entire family had to relocate from Khanpur, in Dinajpur district to Hochai Mullick’s jote in Hatighisa, Darjeeling district. After the 20 February incident, the government and the Right-wing parties had evicted the peasant cadres from that village. In 1952, Babulal’s entire family got in touch with the Darjeeling Communist Party. His elder brother, Harendra, was elected to the position of the Secretary of the local peasant association on the basis of his work in uniting the peasants against the jotedars. His mother too was elected to a leading position in the women’s association. Babulal Bishwakarma’s own direct initiation into the party’s movements took place on 7 February 1953 when as a fifteen-yearold youth he was bloodied and jailed because he took part in a major fight between the peasants and the local armed thugs sent by the jotedar Sarket Singh to forcibly extract punitive interests on foodgrain borrowed by the peasant families. Young Babulal was among those gathered to protest the extraction of the 50 to 100 per cent interest being charged on the impoverished villagers. The fifteen-year-old Bishwakarma, although landless, fought on the side of the peasants. Although underage, he was jailed along with his brethren. He served his jail sentence and upon his release appealed to the Communist Party to engage him as a fulltime member. Since he was still underage he could not be made a member. However, Babulal began participating in the movements like a fulltime party member. In 1956, at the age of 18 years, he was accepted as a fulltime worker of the Party. With renewed zeal he devoted himself to organizing the peasants. In 1959–60 the peasant association initiated a movement against illegal occupation and benami purchase of land by the zamindars and jotedars. Babulal involved himself in mobilizing the peasants for the struggle for land. However due to the reformist leadership of the state peasant association (Pradeshik Krishak Sabha) the movement failed. Babulal was disappointed. But he did not give up and continued the work of organizing the peasants. He was soon acknowledged as a leading peasant leader of the area. He was elected that very year as the assistant secretary of the Siliguri Mahakuma Krishak Sabha and the secretary of the Hatighisa Krishak Sabha.

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He also assumed leadership in tea plantation labour movement. He became a member of the working committee of Terai Tea Plantation Workers’ Union, and later became its assistant secretary. He took part in organizing daily struggles of the workers and their general strike. In 1962 in the wake of the Indo-China border war he supported the stand of the Chinese Communist Party and for that he was sent to jail. In 1964, he joined the CPI (M). In April 1967 when the Naxalbari peasant movement started, he was again arrested because of his strong involvement. He was identified by the government as a dangerous individual. He was an enemy of the state, and was put in solitary confinement in Kurseong Jail. He was released on bail in 1968. He jumped the bail, absconded, and again got involved in revolutionary activities. Then came the fateful day of 7 September 1968. The gun battle between Babulal and the police continued from the evening to 1.00am at night. Rather than surrendering to the police, he embraced death.

V. REVOLUTION’S EMISSARY: KRISHNA BHAKTA POUDEL6 On 2 March 1967 the United Front Government was sworn-in as the ruling government of West Bengal. In April of the same year, Charu Mazumdar completed and published his eighth document. In it he declared: Agrarian revolution is the task of this moment; this task cannot be left undone, and without doing this, nothing good can be done for the peasants. Striving for agrarian revolution without destruction of State power is outright revisionism. So, destruction of State power is today the first and principal task of peasant movement. If this cannot be done on a country-wide, State-wide basis, will the peasants wait silently? No, Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-Tung Thought has taught us that if in any area the peasants can be roused politically, then we can go ahead with the task of destroying State power in that area.

6

Ibid., pp. 69–78.

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After completing the eighth monograph in the series, Charu Mazumdar did not want to delay the process of communicating with the Chinese leadership in any way. He called on comrade Krishna Bhakta Sharma Poudel (or as he was referred to, Krishna Bhakta Poudel) to become his first emissary to China. Krishna Bhakta Poudel was born on 12 January 1924 at Ichcha Basti, Kalimpong, to Narmada (mother) and Bhaskar Poudel (father). His wife was Kunti Devi. As a child Krishna Bhakta had gone to Benaras to study Sanskrit. He returned to Kalimpong circa 1942 and started farming for a living. Around 1962, he became a member of the Communist Party of India (CPI). He was a member of the District Committee and contested the West Bengal Assembly election from the Kalimpong for the state assembly. In 1967–68, a police warrant was issued in his name. His son, Mohan Poudel, informed the interviewers that there was a ransom of ten thousand rupees declared on his father’s head by the state. This was the reason why Krishna Bhakta temporarily relocated to the state of Assam after 1972. He used to live in Sapatgram, of Goalpara district. In 1986 he returned to Kalimpong. He was a supporter of the Gorkhaland movement and became a member of the CPI (ML) party. In 1991, he again stood for elections, this time for a Lok Sabha seat, from Darjeeling as a CPI (ML) candidate. After this he lived in the party office at Hatighisa. On 11 November 2006, he passed away in Midlabon basti at Moktangaon in Kalimpong. Prior to his death, Krishna Bhakta Poudel had given an interview, the details of which form the text of the rest of this account of his life. Krishna Bhakta Poudel was a CPI party member. After coming out of jail in 1964, he decided that like some of his comrades he would not remain in the CPI any longer, as the communist ideology was dead in the CPI. However, even after joining the new party CPI (M) and forming the party in Darjeeling he continued to be assailed by many ideological questions, and while struggling to resolve these questions he was again dragged to jail for his political activities and leanings. When war was declared between India and Pakistan in 1965 he was again thrown behind bars. Almost all of the party leadership was in jail as in 1962 during the time of the China war. But in 1965, the arrests were made discriminatingly and specifically.

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This raised the question: did the CPI (M) also have the same ideological impurities? The creation of CPI (M) no longer seemed enough for revolution. After much soul-searching and fierce debates, it was again decided that a new party would have to be formed along revolutionary ideological lines, but when and how? Charu Mazumdar advised them, first is the question of struggle. Charu Majumdar had quoted Mao: ‘A single spark can create a prairie fire. Like the Terai, the country too was ready for the all-consuming flame of a revolution, as unemployment was soaring, people were without food, peasants were becoming landless, greed was running rampant, and grievances and anguish filled the hearts of the ordinary person. Charu Mazumdar said that the Terai was the place to begin their revolution from, which would spread. In the Terai region peasants and tea-plantation workers were united. Peasants had already supported the labour movement. No one differentiates between a peasant and a worker. Peasants had supported the tea garden labour and vice versa. If something had to be done, if a fire had to be lit – this was the place. It already had a history of struggles; peasants had been fighting against landlords for a long time. For all these reasons the Terai was the most logical choice from where to begin the revolution. Charu Mazumdar had also told Krishna Bhakta that it had to be an armed revolution. He had worked on the necessary political documents and the programme. In his own candid style Poudel shared the way his conversation with Charu Mazumdar proceeded: Where should we take these documents after completion? Who would read them? Who was to be the one to tell us whether our documents and plans-of-action were correct or not? We need a Guru and India cannot offer us one. The Soviet Union cannot offer us one, either. That leaves us with only one place, China. It was imperative for us to take our documents to China at any cost. I have already spoken to a few comrades, but no one seems to have the courage to do this work. After much thought, I have selected you. What do you have say about this? ‘I replied that, if the documents had to be taken and only China could help us, then it had to be done. I mean, if that is the only place where our actions can be properly evaluated, and we would

142 ARTISANS OF REVOLT receive the best feedback as to whether we were doing the right thing or wrong, then I am ready to accept the responsibility. After all, it is a matter of great importance for the people of India and a matter that would help in the proper organization of our new party. I am ready to take this responsibility! However, I also realize that the road I would have to take is a dangerous one. On one side I would be facing the military forces of the Indian ruling class and on the other side are the snow-covered mountains and the treacherous terrain. The danger is further compounded by the fact that the rainy season has set in and the paths are now more slippery. Also, with the coming of the rains every rivulet will be filled to the brim and the journey will be thus more dangerous. At every turn death will await me and I can die at any moment; however, I only want to ascertain that if I were to die my fellow party workers and comrades will not let my efforts go to waste. I only wanted to be reassured that there will be others to readily accept the mantle and complete this important work. Charu babu asked me how much money I would need for this journey. I replied that my needs were very basic. I neither ate at a hotel nor did I rest in one. I was also not used to taking any transport. I walked long distances and I believed that I could easily walk all the way to China. After this I was asked if I knew the roads to China. I replied that I didn’t exactly know the road to China, but I did have a good sense of direction. I knew that China was on the north-east corner and I simply planned to walk in that direction. Everything got settled. I was to be the courier! Charubabu was going to finalise all documents and on return from Kalimpong I was to begin my journey.

Poudel lived in a place called Gorubathan. He returned there to settle some matters. Before leaving for China, he again visited Charubabu. Poudel noticed that Souren Bose was still typing the draft of the documents. He spent that day in Siliguri because although the typing had completed on that day, the time for taking off towards Darjeeling had already passed. Poudel took Rs 50 as road expenses from Charubabu. The next morning Poudel took the documents from Charu Mazumdar, and got ready to leave. Leela Mazumdar (Charu babu’s wife) made him some kind of a halva (sweet dish) which he ate. He also had tea. Charu Mazumdar warned

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him, ‘You may get arrested. But all would be lost if these documents were to fall in the hands of the enemies. Just remember this.’ Along with the documents Charu Mazumdar also handed him a personal letter for Chairman Mao. Poudel was a young man of 31 or 32 years at that time. The first thing he did was to buy 5 kilos of chana or roasted chickpeas from Siliguri. On reaching Mirik, where the party had an office and where Poudel had previously worked with the tea garden workers, he requested his hosts to ground the gram for him. Thus, he had now 15 kilograms of channasattu to carry with him as food for his journey. Poudel did not exactly remember the date on which he left; however, he remembered it was possibly the month of May, as the rainy season followed immediately after and he had reached Peking (now Beijing) on the 22 June or July. He travelled from Mirik in the direction of the Tibetan border. He was first apprehended by the Tibetan dacoits, the khampas. Then he was again caught by the border forces of Nepal. He was badly beaten. They held for about seven days and then let him leave. Again, the khampas got him. They beat him but also told him the direction. He was then apprehended by what he thought by some border security forces who were speaking in Hindi. This was now the Sikkim-Tibet border. His experiences were most interesting because as they went through the ritual of thrashing him, they also provided him the road directions. While they berated him, they also confirmed his guess that he was already at the border and his destination could not have been much further. The border security forces told Poudel further that had he walked any further towards the border he would have become a ‘meal’ for the Chinese. The guards believed that the Chinese were cannibals and they feasted on human flesh. When asked whatever happened to his most valuable possessions, the documents and the letter he was carrying, Poudel answered, I was carrying a handbag with me. I had tied a strong ribbon to both sides of the handbag and made a handle. Right below the sling, on the inside of the bag was a hollow area under a stitched seam. The seam had been reinforced with a double-stitch and the whole thing was made with a sturdy material. I could open out the seam and

144 ARTISANS OF REVOLT access the hollow area as a secret compartment where I had kept the documents and the letter. Of course, the hollow compartment had to be covered and re-stitched, just as it had been. I also realized that because of the beatings all my clothes were dirty and torn and that I could not continue my journey wearing these rags. Moreover, unless I changed all my clothes I could be easily spotted from afar by these border security guards. If I changed course and tried to take a different route, then that too would be a problem because I could easily get lost. In the mountains it was easy to lose one’s way because of the fog. Now at least I had some sense of where I was headed. The guards had given me a sense of bearing and direction that I wanted to follow. Also, when they caught me they confiscated my handbag. They had taken all its contents out and shaken it hard to see whether anything else was hidden and would come loose. When they did not get the proof of any wrongdoing or smuggling, they took my sattu and ate it off a piece of paper. So I had to gather anew ration and clothes. I travelled inland, made friends with some locals and procured provisions. ‘I had been kept a prisoner by the guards for seven days…after that I went into a village for a few days and succeeded in procuring ration and clothes. Now the question was where would I hide my documents? I sometimes smoked tobacco. So, before I left Mirik I had bought a certain kind of tobacco leaf, quite popular in the Nepali community. It was called Katua. One needed to roll-up these leaves and take a drag. Now, when I bought these leaves from Mirik they came in a sturdy paper bag. I planned to use this bag as the compartment for the documents and letter. This time around I took the documents and spread them as the inner lining of the paper bag. One could not tell them apart from the rest of the paper bag. I secured these documents well with a paste and some stitches. I put my ration of sattu in a simple sling bag I had received against my own. I was befriended by a farmer who turned out to be an herbalist too. He made some plant paste for the swelling of my feet. After I used that stuff on the swelling it subsided considerably. It was again time for me to journey. ‘None of the people I met were party workers. They were just ordinary working folks who were kind enough to help a stranger out. I left the area but made sure not to follow the road on which I was caught by the Nepali police. I climbed the mountain that the guards had pointed towards. On climbing the mountain, I saw

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a river and realized that if I crossed the river I would arrive at a second mountain. I visually made this second mountain my target. I waited for the cover of the night and then crossed the freezing river and went over to the mountain, all the while remembering the directions that I had received from the guards when they were beating me. They had shared a general description of the mountain, of different points on it, of the grazing area for sheep, etc. It took me the entire night to walk on the river banks, to cross the river and to arrive at the mountain in subzero temperature. On reaching the mountain I saw a shallow cave and I quickly went and occupied it. I spent most of the day resting in that cave. While sitting near the mouth of the cave I saw a bear walk down from the side of the mountain and very near to the cave I was in. I got nervous spotting a second bear walk down the snow-covered mountain side. When a third and a fourth bear followed, I realized that these were not bears at all. They were hooded-men and as these men came nearer, I realized they were the khampas, the Tibetan dacoits, about whom I had been warned. They arrived at the cave and dragged me outside by my hair. They wanted to occupy the cave and I could not do anything about it; however, I simply stayed outside because by then night had fallen and I could not think where else to go. They did not understand the language I spoke, and I did not understand them, so in the morning I was not sure what they were furiously debating. I fathomed that one of them might be suggesting finishing me off, while the others wanted to use me as captive labour. They had this large trunk filled with stolen goods that weighed around 25 to 30 kgs. They wanted me to carry it and walk in front of them. I did as they asked and walked for three days. The whole time I carried my own luggage as well as their trunk. On the fourth day we reached a village by a river, where the khampas went into a house. From their gesticulations I was able to discern that they had planned to cross the river; but because of the heavy rainfall the foot bridge that was on the river had been swept away. Unable to take their stolen goods across, they decided to sell their wares in the village market. They took the goods out of the trunk and left in the direction of the village leaving me behind in a bamboo hut with an old lady. The old lady had a water pot boiling over an open fire. I asked for some hot water, so that I could make my sattu soup. After she served me hot water I gestured and requested some salt. She brought me salt too. I tried to find out from where they got their salt. The whole

146 ARTISANS OF REVOLT conversation took a while, as it was mostly conducted through repeated gestures and signs. It was then that she said something that sounded like ‘o-oi-lun-thui’. This sound struck me and stayed with me. I kept repeating to myself ‘lun-thui’. I remembered that the Indian guards had mentioned something about a Chinese post in a place called Lunthu, as they had also mentioned the word, Khampa. I realized that if I could escape somehow and arrive at Lunthu or Lunthui, I would be saved. So, I hatched a plan of escape. Right next to the door, inside the single-room – raised, wooden hut – there was a large hole, which they kept covered, but used as their privy. They simply relieved themselves whenever nature called and domestic animals that roamed outside, like dogs, pigs, and chickens, ate whatever was dropped to the ground below. For a second, I thought of making my exit through there; however, I decided against it. I requested the old lady to hold the dog that was outside, while I answered the call of nature. As she responded to my request, I made a run for it. After running for a little while I entered the forest so that I would not be found… After walking for a whole night and half a day and managing to hide from people, the next afternoon… I saw some people rowing boats to carry the mountain goats… I gestured for them to come over and tried to communicate with them that I badly wanted some warm food. I was starving. As I was talking, I noticed that one was wearing a bandana that had a Mao Tse-Tung badge on it. Realization dawned that I had crossed the border and was no longer in Sikkim. I was positive that I had crossed over to Tibet. I was taken to a village for food. The homes in this village were sunken-in structure.... I went into the neighbouring village and met a farm boy who spoke both Nepali and Hindi. I decided that he could serve as my interpreter. He gave me hot tea and then also offered me belly-full Yak milk. He asked me for money, and I gave him the 4 annas that I had. He also showed me the way to the village called Lunthu…At Lunthu I was asked the purpose of my visit. I insisted that we, my group and I, had come to buy sheep. I had lost my way and got separated from my group. I impressed it upon them that my honour and wellbeing was completely dependent upon them. In the evening the rest of the villagers returned home and came to see me. They started questioning me and my motive for the visit. But I could finally sleep in peace, enjoy the sunlight

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and ate a lot of yak meat.... By the second and third evening they started harassing and intimidating me with charges of being a spy sent by Indira Gandhi. Some of them brought out their long knifelike swords and threatened to kill me and feed my flesh to the large swine found in their village. Finally, I confessed that I was not a spy, but a communist and that I had come to seek their support. This surprised the people of the village, one-by-one they brought out photographs of Chairman Mao, Marshals Zhu De and Lin Biao. They were surprised that I could identify all these men. I said, you would not understand my language. Take me to the Chinese. Their attitude towards me changed from that night onwards.

Krishna Bhakta Poudel’s narrative does not end there; indeed, it reached a critical juncture because for the first time he was able to share and convince a group of individuals about the true intent of his journey. The next morning, he understood the crowd that had collected was the village security force. The farm boy who could speak both Hindi and Nepali was the convener of that group. The next morning Poudel was sent to a Chinese camp with the president of the group. It took them three days to reach the check point. At this camp he was cordially received and given rice… He was invited into their bunker like underground living quarters and given the opportunity to warm and rest. He was then met by a superior officer who had many questions for him; however, Poudel surprised the man most by being candid and saying that he would answer all questions openly and honestly, only if he too could ask some questions of his own and if the whole conversation between the two would be in complete confidence. At this the Chinese officer seemed most impressed and sent him off to another camp, this time on horseback. …. Through a big door he entered a building that appeared like a busy office with 14 to 15 rooms on one side and some more quarters on the other. Outside these chambers people were holding meetings, typing, and conversing like in any ordinary office. He was then asked to dismount and follow a security person into a room. He was provided with hot water, some soap and a towel and then they stripped him naked and cleaned him. He was given their uniform to wear and taken to a bedchamber to rest. He was met by a doctor in the room. Through signs the doctor

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communicated with him and asked if he was hurt in any way. The doctor prescribed medicine for all the bruises and cuts and sores he had got during his harrowing journey. After he had slept for two hours he was woken up and taken to a room where he was quizzed on what kind of diet he would partake. The Chinese had set up a huge selection of produce and canned food before him. Painstakingly they lifted each product and asked him to name it, asked him whether he would eat it and documented his response on sheets of paper. After all this data had been accumulated a comprehensive list was prepared and hung out side his quarters. He spent three nights under their roof trying to communicate through gestures. On the fourth day three interpreters arrived – each speaking Bengali, Hindi and English respectively. Of course, they all spoke Chinese. Poudel clearly informed them the real reason for his travel. These interpreters then contacted Peking and came with the news that he would be sent to Peking via Lhasa... In Peking, he was met by Comrade Liu Lin Lee, who was charged with taking care of international activists, who secretly arrived to seek help from the Chinese government. Liu Lin Lee told Krishna Bhakta that he had missed a contingent of 90 Nagas from Assam who had left two days back. They too had come to seek help. Poudel was not interested in touring China. He had come to ‘study Mao Tse-Tung’s ideology’. He requested to be trained in the approaches to revolution that he could deploy in India. He further shared with Comrade Lee that he had in this possession a letter and a few documents for submission to Chairman Mao for his views. Comrade Lee asked Poudel to hand him these documents. He was very impressed at how well Poudel had disguised these documents and how well preserved these were. Liu Lin Lee complimented Poudel on his skills as a revolutionary. Poudel was also provided with a personal tutor who would teach him Mao’s theories and Chinese revolutionary strategies. Poudel was given several books to read and every evening they showed him videos and movies of the revolution. He was asked to give his comments and share views, and encouraged to actively participate in his learning. His classes lasted for a full month. At the end of his classes they again asked him if he would want to see or travel anywhere in China. But

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Krishna Bhakta Poudel was his full name and was not interested in tourism. All he asked for was the instructions on how to organize a revolution. He also wanted to request his hosts for direct help and support to the Naxalite cause; however, stopped himself from asking this outright. Instead, he asked for some Hindi and Bengali books that he could take home with them. They asked him to collect the books from Biratnagar, a border town in Nepal. Poudel would later recall that the Chinese lived up to their promise and he indeed received two trunks of books (however, only one trunk was all he could safely bring back to his comrades and the other had been destroyed) from a bookstore at Biratnagar after he had returned to India. Ramprasad, a Bengali and a local school teacher, had helped him to get the books. Krishna Bhakta Poudel had realized that his time in China had to end, as he had received news of the beginning of the Naxalbari movement. He was eager to go back, especially because he had promised Charu Mazumdar that he would return within two months and Mazumdar had informed him that the struggle would probably start in three months. He informed his hosts of his intentions and they arranged everything for his safe passage back. They had offered him whatever he wanted as provisions for his travel back home; however, all he asked for was his favourite sattu. Nonetheless, they had packed gram sattu and a special white, Chinese sattu for him (to eat with sugar), in addition, they also gave him some marinated/ pickled Chinese eggs and some meat. The meat was essential to keep the body warm in the extreme cold weather conditions. They gave him detailed description of his route (including what he would hear, smell, and see – mountain topography, architecture, gurgling of rivulets, laughter of school kids, smell of leather factory, and sound of utensils being made) and made him memorize it. On his return journey he was surprised to see Kanu Sanyal heading to China. He was returning, and Kanu Sanyal was going. They spent a night together and Poudel shared with Sanyal all he had experiences and learned in China. Although Kanu Sanyal had travelled to China with three other members of the Naxalbari movement, Poudel did not see them with him. In the morning they parted and Poudel was escorted to the place through which he had entered – not the exact

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spot, but it was close enough. All he had to do was to climb down a mountain and he would reach place where he had crossed the river. Since he reached this area around midnight, it was easy for him to change out of the Chinese military uniform he had been wearing all this time. His Chinese guides expressly warned him not to take any Chinese made products over to India. They asked him to dress and behave exactly as he had when he had come this way the first time. He was also asked to go directly to comrade Barbir’s home on reaching Mirik; however, Poudel decided to first visit another friend’s home for tea (he knew them well and loved the quality of tea they served). However, on seeing Poudel his friend was shellshocked. On one hand Poudel had not shaved for over two weeks, as it had taken him about 15 or 16 days to travel back. Also, his clothes were in tatters because of the rough journey. However, the most important reason why his friends were shocked was because people in Darjeeling had already found out that Krishna Bhakta Poudel was returning. The police were on high alert. Poudel had a warrant against his name when he had left, and another had also been issued. Everyone had been speculating that he had just returned from an illegal visit to China. Poudel’s visit to Barbir’s home too resulted in a similar welcome. He was rushed out by Barbir and taken into a cave where they both hid for the night. They had their dinner in the cave itself and the next morning he was escorted to a tea plantation manager’s cottage that was a bit secluded and had no occupants. It is from here that Krishna Bhakta Poudel sent word to Charu Mazumdar of his return. Souren Bose was the first person to come and meet him. It was Bose who escorted Poudel over to Charu Mazumdar’s. He gave a complete report of his travel to China. Poudel did not know what the Chinese Party or Chairman Mao had thought of Charu Mazumdar’s documents. He could not meet Mao. He was rather anxious that he would have to first send information to his comrades of his safe arrival and the impending return. The Chinese had assured him in return not to worry, ‘a message had been sent to your leader on the very first day of your arrival’. Charu Mazumdar had indeed received the information

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of Krishna Bhakta’s safe arrival in China. Krishna Bhakta did not know how Charu Mazumdar got the message… It was the age of flaming foreheads, Lives cradled in blessed annihilation, anointed the age. In this seventh decade of the twentieth century Disdaining the illusionist’s virtuosity—the hollow independence of a fragmented nation Like thousands of indignant youth born of righteous fire Did they dream, of shattered shackles, from within an iron cage? The melody of their final requiem, flows into the sinews of time Hearts agony-awakened…the sweet promise of future conflagrations7

7 Translation of the poem on the back cover of Naxalbari Panchas: Drohakaler Annyo Karigarera, 2017.

six

CHAPTER

Repertoires, Subjectivity and Politics in the Time of Naxalbari Ranabir Samaddar

REPERTOIRES

B

y the time 1966 ended, Bengal stood on the threshold of unprecedented radicalisation. In the background of the violent food movement and the general strike of 22–23 September 1966, peasant agitations in parts of the state, labour unrest, and particularly student movement in the latter half of that year against the expulsion of students from Presidency College1 accentuated the process of radicalisation. The radical mood meant thinking of politics in new ways. It also meant rebelling against the established mode of Left politics. At the same time, the moment of Naxalbari calls back to us the past narratives of how Bengalees became radicalised. Historians of Bengal agree that one of the characteristic ways in which Bengalees were radicalised was through the adoption of a critical, interrogative mode of being and action. In the process it may have gone at times to extreme length, but time does all the corrections in life. In the long run, the interrogations became part of the common 1

On the anti-expulsion student movement in 1866–67, Dipanjan Ray Chaudhury, ‘Chatro-Andolon O Presidency College’, in Sattar Dashak, ed. Anil Acharya, Volume III, Shat-Shattarer Chatra Andolan, (reprint, Kolkata: Anushtup, 2012), pp. 131–58.

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sense of the people. Yet this was not all. Since interrogation and questioning implied acceptance of no final truth, the critical mode meant a permanent workshop of ideas and a permanently dialogic style. Critical mode of thinking meant also emphatic actions, as the actions of the Swadeshi militants accompanying the interrogative mode of thinking on the pages of the journal Jugantar showed.2 Thus, dialogues at times became quarrels, inter-sect strife, and battles over ideas to the point of death. But in this case also, time has been the healer. It is an irony thus that the time of Naxalbari with its extremely critical attitude to the period of what is called the Bengal Renaissance resembled in many ways the latter and exhibited the same critical attitude that latter had shown as evinced in figures like Kaliprasanna Singha, Akshay Dutta, Vidyasagar, and others. This was not willed by any agency. The fact the Naxalites had rebelled against an established party (CPI-M) and an organisational mode made it difficult for them to recoil back to the same structure of reaching truth howsoever some of them wanted and had therefore formed a party (CPI-ML) within two years of their rebellion against the established party of order. The tumultuous events of the time cloud the fact this was a time of intense dialogues. Dialogic truths are uncertain, unstable, and contingent. The truths that the politics and the time of Naxalbari produced hence were destined to have and still have a long life – durable but unstable. For this among other reasons Naxalbari, praised and reviled alike, has come to occupy a singular place of significance in the annals of radical politics in post-independent India. Much has been written on what had happened in that remote place in North Bengal fifty years ago, why and how the politics of Naxalbari engulfed the whole of West Bengal and quickly spread to other parts of the country, the massive participation of students and youth in the mobilisations, the movement’s non-conformism, and heavy state repression on the movement. Journalists and chroniclers have also written on how the movement in a different form, more known as the Maoist movement, continues. 2

On this I have earlier written in Emergence of the Political Subject (New Delhi and London: Sage, 2010), Chapter 3.

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Yet some aspects of the time and the movement have gone unnoticed or have been taken as natural. One of these aspects is how dialogues took shape in contentious time, how they became what Charles Tilly called contentious conversations,3 indeed how repertoires of struggles built around them. It may be worthwhile today to look into aspects like these in some details. The time of extreme radicalisation meant also extreme republicanism and egalitarianism. The time and mobilisation erased all distinctions, hierarchies, and inequalities from the map of revolution. The Revolution did not recognise any caste, or gender, hierarchy, or occupational distinction. Everyone was a Red Guard, a comrade.4 All were in the service of Revolution. How could this happen? Perhaps besides an extreme egalitarian ideology the spiritual ambience of the time and the movement had something to do with creating a utopia on earth. Workers were to go villages, peasants were to be oriented in the ideals of political education, jails had to be transformed into universities, students had to declass, they had to change the educational system (including syllabus) and pattern,5 and all these were to happen not in an isolated or exceptional way, but generally, en masse, as movement – in the form of a movement. The nation was to have no nationalism; it called for the Chairman of China to be ‘our Chairman’. As if the distinctions that could not be eradicated 3

Charles Tilly, ‘Contentious Conversation’, Social Research, Volume 65 (3), pp. 491–510. 4 It is time that an attempt is made to write a history of the popularisation of the word ‘comrade’ in the wake of the Naxalite upsurge; there are apocryphal stories about peasant activists being embarrassed at being addressed as ‘comrade’, and objecting to being addressed such, because Charu Mazumder was addressed in activists’ circles as ‘comrade’, so that must mean that ‘comrade’ was a great leader! Who were women in the struggle: they were comrades, and the peasants? They were comrades. The word ‘comrade’ became the synonym of equality, mutual trust and recognition of dignity, absence of hierarchy, and a sense of solidarity and belonging to a collective. It became highly symbolic of egalitarian and new social relations that the insurgents aspired to build. 5 Considering the significant role that the syllabus change movement played in mobilising students of arts and humanities in colleges and universities, we have very little written accounts of it. One of the scarce references, Promode Sen Gupta, ‘Syllabus Paribartaner Andolan’, Kalpurush, Volume 1 (4), 6 June 1967, pp.102–04.

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from society, could be made to vanish away from the landscape of revolution. Radical subjectivity was the main mark of the movement of the time. In some sense we can say that the movement of the sixties gave birth to the political subject. All these meant a particular mode of doing politics. They meant distinct styles of slogans and repertoires in contentious time. Slogans like these were raised:  Amar bari, tomar bari, Naxalbari, Kharibari  (Your home, my home is Naxalbari and Kharibari);  Tomar nam, amar nam, Naxalbari Vietnam  (Your name, my name Naxalbari, Vietnam);  Chin-er chairman, amader chairman  (China’s Chairman is our chairman too), along with popularisation of some other slogans that originated little earlier in that time of unrest: Jokhon-i janata chai bastra o khadya, Simante beje othe juddher badya (Whenever people want clothes and food, war drums beat up on the borders instead). Lines from the Red Book (Quotations from Mao’s writings) were tuned into slogans and became the stuff of legendary posters, such as Women are half the sky, students and youth are like the sun of eight or nine in the morning, political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, revolution is not a piece of embroidery or a piece of fine art, but the deployment of force by one class over another, etc. These slogans congealed many political truths born out of experiences, and besides helping to mobilize the participants in a particular way, they created a world, which challenged the very concept of politics practised then – hidebound, confined within a kind of nationalistic and narrow imagination, parliamentary, docile, elite, revolving around chamber confabulations – and instead asked politics to be wide, adventurous, ethical, rebellious, and therefore to a large extent arrogant. The proverbial prairie fire happened not because any god willed it, but along with the reality of unrest, these slogans and other rallying cries conjured up a world where people could think that the impossible could be made possible, heaven could be made to appear in this world. These slogans and the rallying calls carried a mix of classical ideas, rhymes and rhythms,  avant guard style, and exhorting words. The mix was heady and the bare English translations of these can hardly give us a sense of the brew, lethal for the forces of order and stability.

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The movement also had literary sensibility. It called for the past literary acts to appear before the tribune of history to prove that they had been in the interests of the people or disprove the charge that the literature produced earlier had served only the interests of the moneyed and the big gentry. Equally significantly, it also produced avant guard literature, music, drama, paintings, and films. Playwrights and theatre personalities like Utpal Dutt, poets like Birendra Chattopadhyay, Kamalesh Sen, well known essayists like Promod Sengupta, Amiya Chakrabarty, story writers and novelists like Mahasveta Devi, and journalists like Samar Sen and Bhavani Roy Chaudhury made the time aesthetically sensitive in a distinct sense. Some of the cultural productions of that time have become part of the abiding legacy for today’s Bengal. In this utopian world, too good to last long but real at the same time, differences were effaced, as if the radical ranks did not suffer from any fault lines of identity of caste, gender, language, religion, etc. All were Red Guards. Parallel journals like Now, Frontier, Anushtup, Kalpurush – all  avant guard  initiatives flourished. Literacy campaigns among peasants, workers, and slum dwellers started. Jails became places of intense self-introspection and learning. As mentioned earlier, they became universities. And make no mistake these were not Kolkatacentric. The mufossil towns of Bengal also immersed themselves in the second renaissance of Bengal. We shall have to interrogate our history deeply more than ever to understand, how say a journal like  Kalpurush  could become sharp and terse, or how from the pen of a political activist like Charu Mazumder clear, lucid, and unambiguous prose could come out inspiring hundreds of youth.6 The question then we must ask: short lived as this heady period (1966–67 to 1971–72) was, and drowned in blood, and finally caged in the prison houses of Bengal and elsewhere, how could politics and culture share the same space so intensely? This is not to say that the two sat easily with each other. Politics was extreme. It was not 6

Sangrahita Rachanabali; Charu Mazumder’s selected writings are available in English translations, which can barely give us the idea of his powerful Bengali prose. For an English collection including the famous ‘Eight Documents’ – https://www. marxists.org/reference/archive/mazumdar/index.htm (Accessed on 2 April 2018).

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easy for cultural repertoires to march in same steps as of politics. There were divisions. For instance, Utpal Dutta broke ranks, some other literary activists were killed, the feud between Saroj Dutta and Samar Sen flared up again, yet some others quietly withdrew. But by and large, we may say, without the cultural repertoires Naxalbari movement would not have the impact it had on society and attained the glory associated with it. But we should not be surprised. As in the time of Swadeshi, and the militant nationalist movement, any kind of death wish carries with it a spiritual strain. Why should I live if life cannot be spent meaningfully? What does death mean? What is inspiration? Questions like these, raised on the streets, did not derive their answers from politics. Aesthetic sensibility gave the answers. We may call this a kind of political spirituality. Such kind of political spirituality always for the moment vanishes after the defeat of a revolution or after order has co-opted revolution or exhausted it. But it did not die. It disappeared for the time, burrowed underground, and re-emerged at a new time and at a new place. In this way the political subject became a subject writing own culture appropriate to a meaningful existence on earth. Hence is the all-important question of repertoire. What was the role of repertoire in creating the new politics that impacted so deeply on this country and specifically Bengal? If as earlier indicated, repertoires of politics changed, one has to look deeply into how structures of mass politics changed in the fifties and sixties in Bengal and to different extents elsewhere in India. The three chapters in the first section give some ideas of the change. The cycles and tides of contention changed since the years of India-China border war of 1962, promulgation of Defence of India Rules, India-Pakistan war of 1965, widespread hunger, near famine condition in many parts of India, in particular Bihar, and food riots and students movements in Bengal. Mass movements created instability in the ruling party, which cracked in many states, and this made possible for non-Congress governments to form in many states for the first time. In such contentious time, collective claim makings increased. Every collective actor’s interest was at risk. Therefore, many actors mobilised for action. Such a period of rapid political

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change produced sequences of innovation in repertoires. Successive innovations or lack of them largely accounted for the tide and ebb of radical activity. Thus if we consider what happened in 1967 as ‘spring thunder’, which is to say a sudden event, we may not be able to grasp the time, though it is true that the fury of the response of society to events of 1967 and the following few years took many by surprise. The events were also clarifying by nature, they clarified the points of contention, they forced political parties to define their stands respectively, who stood where, who were ‘friends, and who were enemies’,7 and which way the path of movement lay. In this sense, of course, 1967 was ‘spring thunder’. No body willed that the Naxalbari movement would soon overflow the confines of a particular place called Naxalbari. No complex outcome ever results from the operation of a single causal mechanism. The diffusion of the mobilization techniques and the ascendancy of the street in politics were partly ‘non-relational’ that is to say they had no direct correspondence with the actual land movement in Naxalbari. But organizational networks of students and youth and other political cadres took up the model of confrontation, street life, and spiritual interrogation of elite institutions. These mechanisms combined into processes, processes led to new coordination. Repertoires built up as a consequence of this collective process. Other mechanisms contributed. In the course of the upsurge, issues of property relations were raised directly. The land question 7 Mao Tse-Tung’s ‘Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society’ (1926, Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung, Volume 1) began with these lines – ‘Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? This is a question of the first importance for the revolution. The basic reason why all previous revolutionary struggles in China achieved so little was their failure to unite with real friends in order to attack real enemies. A revolutionary party is the guide of the masses, and no revolution ever succeeds when the revolutionary party leads them astray. To ensure that we will definitely achieve success in our revolution and will not lead the masses astray, we must pay attention to uniting with our real friends in order to attack our real enemies. To distinguish real friends from real enemies, we must make a general analysis of the economic status of the various classes in Chinese society and of their respective attitudes towards the revolution.’ – https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/ volume-1/mswv1_1.htm (Accessed on 1 March 2018).

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became the most important issue in the radicalisation of the movement. Likewise in factories workers-led councils and solidarity platforms became a dynamic idea. Autonomy of mass movements became the guiding principle. Appropriation of earlier radical devices, creation of new boundaries of politics, China’s certification, shift in the identity of politics, and escalation of politics itself – all these contributed to radicalisation. Repertoires changed as a result. A new ground was created. It was to be a common site of peasant activists and radical students and youth, factory organisers and literary practitioners. Yet it is also true that a repertoire change was inconceivable without regime change. The change in political regime in the wake of Nehru’s death, currency devaluation, two wars (1962 and 1965), and the emergence of non-Congress governments in some states of India including the United Front government in West Bengal formed the milieu in which political repertoires found new forms. Questions asked on the streets in the sixties were those that in ordinary political history require decades of thinking, at times even a century, to emerge as questions, namely, what does it mean to act in the name of freedom, what does it mean to act politically, what does it require to act for social transformation? The extremely contentious politics of the time forced the people, in particular the street fighters, to ask the rulers: Who are you to rule? What are our roles then? Who is the ruler and who is the subject? In short, the issue of the political subject emerged directly under specific conditions cutting many philosophical-ideological knots. Political necessities led to new thinking; political subject hood became a practical question of society. This was a great transition, whose significance unfortunately is still not fully understood by social theorists and political thinkers in India. These questions presented not theories (except in extremely distorted way in party doctrines and programme of the revolutionaries, which mostly copied Chinese experience of revolution), but non-conformist ‘thinking’, not philosophy but rebellious ‘thought’, and not ideologies but ‘subjugated ideas’. It will be worthwhile for all those interested in the fate of politics to see: How does a single incident produce movements and campaigns that break existing institutional frameworks? Under

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what conditions, movements and campaigns ignite broader forms of contentious politics? Again, under what conditions does a movement create new bases? And thus what explains the multiplicity of centres within a movement, its openness to new actors, the inability of a regime to accommodate new claims, and finally how all these contribute to new repertoires of politics? Some answers to all these will not only help us to understand what happened in Bengal in 1967–68 or Europe in 1968 or Pakistan in 1968–70, but will also unlock many of the stalled situations today.  The answers will also mean new insights to our style of doing politics by which we mean revolutionary politics, when groups and sects assume responsibility for humanity, which demands many renunciations, because claiming that responsibility will be now considered as the highest task. This relationship of the truth of one’s self – the revolutionary self – to the representation of that self to society is the subject of an eternal battle, a ghostly battle that a revolutionary time must carry on and will be always marked with. Therefore measure of the self will always accompany the task of measuring the transformation of society. All these bring us back to the question of mode of politics with which this chapter began.

POLITICAL SUBJECT, REVOLUTIONARY SUBJECTIVITY As has been indicated, the new repertoires of politics known in the form of Naxalite movement were possible in the first place by drawing on the popular protests and movements of the past, and the transformation of the repertoire made it unique as a popular revolt. Thus as mentioned in the beginning, ranging from the style of slogans, posters, handbills, manifestos, wall writings, songs, poems, plays, and journal publications, to encouraging critical and interrogative thought, to concrete acts like stone throwing, staging public occupation of a square or a precinct, making and using country bombs and crude guns, torching buses and trams, battling the police from narrow lanes and by lanes of the city, at times mounting open pitched battles with the police and paramilitary forces, night squads with burning torches, using a court of law for open advocacy of the politics of defiance, refusing bail and

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applications for release on bail, hunger strikes in jails, cutting paddy by forcible means, occupying jotedars’ lands, threatening and eventually ousting the bad gentry from the village, to the extreme measure of attempting to establish control over a part of the city’s territory, or a group of villages, or a sub-division or even a district – all these techniques of thought, expression, mobilisation, and action that collectively made up the repertoire of new politics were drawn from the past, refined, and now deployed with deadly effect. This is not to say that the repertoires of politics were marked by judicious sense and prudence. We all know what happened with indiscriminate beheading of statues, killings, and endless argumentation and quarrels to the point of death. Yet we must not lose sight of the way repertoires of politics made the Naxalite age distinct in the history of radicalism in Bengal. They drew from the past, inserted new elements, and combined them in a unique way in the sense that the new repertoires of politics abolished the received distinctions between peaceful actions and thoughts and violent ones, open acts and secret ones, democratic avowals and seditious thinking.8 In all these, ideology was important, but up to a point. The popular context was more important, because it indicated the break of the old party and old political mobilisation structure, the flexible nature of new mobilisations and thus the unrest, which therefore spread quickly through the state. There were many actors, organisations, and modes. Participation of small peasantry in the villages, slum dwellers, and lower middle class in the towns,9 and students and youth in colleges and universities, and even in schools were features of popular participation. As preceding chapters show, the revolt that was brewing was not a unique and singular show 8 On the practice of controlling a part of urban territory as part of urban warfare, see my analysis of the techniques used in the infamous Calcutta Riots of 1946 (Ranabir Samaddar, ‘Policing a Riot-torn City: Kolkata, 16–18 August, 1946’, Journal of Genocide Research, published online 21 September 2016, pp. 1–22); on details of the technique of occupying urban space, see Chapter 8 of this book; plus all writings on Tebhaga movement tell us of accounts of cutting and seizing paddy, plus mobilisation techniques involving children and women of villages. 9 In particular Raghab Bandopadhyay’s (1946–2017) stories and novels (Komunis, Jarnal Sattar, and much later Daladas) reflected the impact of the revolutionary activities and/or traditional party politics on slums of the city.

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by any group or party. So, after the peasant struggle in Naxalbari, the plurality was crucial for the unrest to spread and engulf the entire state. All these imply that the upsurge was not centrally directed, it occasioned the emergence of the plural subject, and its flexibility and creativity in modes of articulation had much to do with the context of popular movements of the preceding one and half decade.10 As with several other politically climactic periods, the period of the Naxalite movement had a strong plural composition, even though it left in the minds of people and on society a singular impression of extremism, unbridled radical attitude, and youth upsurge. While these impressions were not pure myths, and even if these were, as myths they had elements of reality in them, the movements as mentioned in the previous paragraph had the participation of peasants, students, youth, sections of lower middle classes, and workers. Equally importantly, besides the classic forms of organisation like peasant associations, trade unions, student unions, clubs, etc., new forms of associations, forums, groups and circles around journals, publications and personalities, and various autonomous and semi-autonomous formations were active and contributed to the unrest. The role of clandestine groups was to give scope to anonymous people to participate in the unrest. Here we shall mention as only three such instances – Chinta, Krantikal, and Dakshindesh (though we have to remember that most groups had no names, or names but no visible leadership).11 The broader point is that we always assume a natural congruity between the public space, popular space and the democratic space. 10 In fact, to anticipate the history a little, the untimely centralisation of the radical forces following the peasant struggle in Naxalbari, and undue haste in ideological framing of the movement and formalising it on the lines of an established doctrine of party organisation (such as the formation of the CPI-ML) bore the death knell of the upsurge. 11 Some others were: Commune, Chatra Fauz, Lokayan, Abaad, and Kosthipathar; On the formation and activities of some of these groups, particularly Chinta, ‘History of the Documents: Inner-Party Debates in the Indian Communist Movement, 1964–1967’ – http://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/154750/8/08_ chapter%203.pdf (Accessed on 20 October 2018).

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Yet experiences repeatedly suggest that such assumption may not be always valid. A citizen engaging and exposing him/her self publicly, entering a public space and bringing up a demand is a kind of a liberal notion of deliberative democracy, which does not hold true in times of gathering discontent and eventual upsurge. Secret societies, anonymous groups, clandestine activities give scope to a large number of political actors. The connection between political activity and the subject’s apparition on the so-called political stage may happen and indeed happened in the sixties in a manner which Eric Hobsbawm wanted to express by the term ‘primitive rebels’ and ‘social banditry’12 when illegality would be integrated into communities and convey political claims. This would be different from say ‘criminal banditry’. Yet with the inexorable emergence of defiance – as an element of politics – symbolised by anonymity, the subject came to occupy public space, visibility, and distinction. The subject’s entry onto the political stage was thus in a paradoxical mode of anonymity and visibility. What made possible such anonymity and secret way of work the heroic theme of public life? Possibly we have to look into the power of sedition to get an answer to that mystery. In the number of conspiracy cases the rulers, as in the colonial time, brought the central charge of conspiracy for sedition. The function of politics became to declare sedition and organise it. Such practice of sedition called into question the prevailing structure of Leftist politics also. Sedition allowed manifold activism and different developing paths of revolt. It allowed a richer and a diverse vocabulary of political action. Every political action in the village such as cutting paddy, 12 E.J. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1959), and Bandits (1972, revised edition, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001); Hobsbawm opened his introduction to Primitive Rebels with saying that he was writing of ‘the following subjects all of which can be described as “primitive” or “archaic” forms of social agitation: banditry of the Robin Hood type, rural secret societies, various peasant revolutionary movements of revolutionary sort, preindustrial urban “mobs” and their riots, some labour religious sects, and the use of ritual in early labour and revolutionary organisations’. – p. 1; the only point to dispute with Hobsbawm’s insight is his characterisation of ‘primitive’ as distinct from ‘modern’, and ignoring the continuity in mobilising modes and acts.

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seizing land, or attacking a jotedar or a member of the bad gentry, or harassing the powerful in the locality, or gheraoing13 the manager of a factory, occupying a road, a street, a park, or painting a section of the city or town red or covering its walls with posters on the dead of night was like refusing the subject’s inscription in the legal system, adopting a stance of the right to consider oneself as outside the law or beyond the obligations law entails. In short one of the essential characteristics of the formation of political subjectivity was the capacity to question borders – of law, politics, civility, physical space, social identities, education, and affiliations. The result of all these was a broad range of political actions. And, it was this broad range of forms of action in which the popular movements of the decades of fifties and early sixties culminated and took the shape of a radical upsurge shaking Bengal in late 1960s and early 1970s. However it will be important to probe further to see how these varied participations played out in the upsurge as a whole, such as how specific class participations varied, and how the workers movements, particularly the Great Railway Strike of 1974, became the moment of climax, though by that time the Naxalite fury had subsided. After that came the imposition of the National Emergency bringing the curtains down on the decade of the upsurge, though in Bihar and Andhra Pradesh the radicalisation of the movement continued, and the movement spread there. Thus, what kind of generality was produced, and what were the limits built in the general upsurge? Also then the question, what kind of process was this that produced out of manifold existences revolutionary subjectivity known for its singular opposition to the ruling order? How could the political subject internally plural in form produce singularity without which revolutionary subjectivity cannot materialise? The movement was quickly dubbed as fanatic. It is important to understand today how the emergence of the political subject was seen by established society as the fanatic’s appearance, unruly, violent, and unpredictable. Who is a fanatic? Who calls the subject a fanatic? What is precisely this fanaticism? This again speaks 13

On the mode of gherao, see chapter 9, n 1.

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of a situation characteristic of a popular upsurge, and that calls for deeper study and engagement. At least we can say this much: The political subject exceeds the standards set by the regime for permissible violence, and displays determination in the pursuit of a goal – hence its unruliness, its fanaticism. Fanaticism is the readiness to go to war discontinuing the prevailing mode of politics; it is the voice of the underground sects, it breaks the myth that politics is the product of E/enlightenment; it is unruly because it is still beyond the given formula of the time on the war/politics copula. Political subject exceeds rules of politics. In this way, the unruly subject in India not only repeatedly exceeded the overwhelming legal realities, but demonstrated by its life experience that the emergence of the political subject is fundamentally a matter of non-correspondence with the dominant thinking of the time. In short, if politics has to set its face at times against given legal rules and codes, and given political mode, how will it act? The inquiry is thus in one sense about the autonomy of politics: What can be the enabling or debilitating conditions affecting the autonomy of politics, of the subject that claims and gains political agency? This takes us to the issue of legacy – political, organisational, and ideological. Whenever we invoke the memory of the sixties and early seventies of the last century, we may ask: Can we compare this with other epochs of radical upsurges – in India in the 1940s, elsewhere in Europe in the 1960s, or more classically in the European revolutions in the 1840s? We have to explore some of these questions in order to understand more comprehensively the historical significance of the upsurge of the sixties. How did Marx for instance view the European revolutions in 1848? With the defeat of the upsurge, imposition of the National Emergency in 1975, and mainstream politics swinging back to ‘normal’ parliamentary mode, did the following epoch usher in an age of passive revolution? What general lessons does this carry for a chronicle of popular movements and popular politics? From the point of legacy, we can ask one more question: If the years of the mid-sixties carried the imprint of a crisis, was it also not a crisis of the radical form, crisis of the transcendent nature of popular protests that were to culminate in an upsurge? The crisis

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of organisation, decimation of cadres and leaders, the vanishing or the indefinable point of retreat, the decline of plurality, doctrinaire despotism, and multiple splits – all these raise the question: Was this the fate of the movement? Why and how was the source of popular protests and revolt exhausted in the process of radicalisation and organisational transformation? Why did the fountain dry up? Yet, while we may ask these questions now, there is no escape from the fact that the entire movement notwithstanding its diversity was finally framed (or shackled if you like) in the organisational form of a party (the CPI-ML), which while carrying the mantle of the revolt, did everything required to destroy the spontaneity, multiplicity, and diversity of the movement and the participants. What dialectical irony lay in this? While radical theory tells us of the dialectics of constituent power and the constituted power14 (in this case, the power of movement as the symbol of the former and the power of the party of the ML as the symbol of the latter), one of the great questions, counterfactual much as it may appear, will be concerning the politicalorganisational strategy of the time. The upsurge of the sixties and early seventies had many paradoxes: spread of the movement in the country and limited epicentres, autonomy of the movement and the desire of the leaders to centralise, dominance of urban youth activism and the centrality of the peasant question, spontaneous participation of various organisations, associations, and forums in the movement and withdrawal from all existing institutions (such as elections, trade unions, etc.) in order to be pure revolutionaries, brutal pacification methods of the state and the primitive modes of the rebels, international fervour of the time and the extremely local engagement of the revolutionaries, reliance on China for ideologicaltheoretical guidance and the overwhelming national specificities of India that had given birth to the movement, and finally the lower class basis of participation in the movement and the middle class doctrinaire leadership. What political organisational strategy in place of the one that had focused so much on Mao’s ideas (commonly 14

Antonio Negri, Insurgencies: Constituent Power and the Modern State, trans. Maurizia Boscagli (1992, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999).

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known in those days as Mao Tse-Tung’s Thoughts or today as Maoism) could have coped with these paradoxes and taken popular struggles as the basis of going forward for social transformation? What kind of federalisation of radical politics was the call of the hour? Perhaps a new history of Indian radicalism will one day provide us with a possible answer. Readers will notice that while we wanted to eschew questions of Naxalite political line, political strategy, etc., and stick to the theme of popular context, yet this chapter ends facing precisely those issues. The series of questions raised in the previous three paragraphs are not for rhetorical purpose. They were thrown up by the history of the time and they require proper study. Probably some of them will be answered only in another time of upsurge. The line between popular protest and radical-revolutionary movement is porous. The years of 1966–74 proved that historically it is difficult to keep the two categories – the popular and the revolutionary – separate, though we may and perhaps need to make analytic distinction. One important question therefore may be raised: How important or influential were the inner party struggles in the Indian Communist Party (think of the CPI split in 1964 or the Burdwan Plenum of the CPI-M in 1968) in the developing popular upsurge of the time? At one level we may say that intellectual struggles reflect in a particular way the on-going class struggles. Yet, if this statement is not to become a banal declaration, we have to enquire the historical connections between the inner party political debates and the ongoing popular movements of the time, the struggles against the Congress government at the Centre and the states then, the particular nature of the peasant movements and the workers’ movement, and their relation with the political formulations of the party, and more fundamentally the question: what was the relation between the popular upsurge at that time and the particular political formulations by the CPI-ML (for instance, India was semi-colonial and semi-feudal, the city has to be surrounded by the countryside, peasant revolution’s centrality in a revolutionary strategy, etc., etc.) that aspired to lead the people? In a comparison of this epoch with that of 1946–50 we can see striking similarities. Then too people were in revolt, and then too, the revolutionaries wanted a universal

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line/model that could help Indian transformation. And as we know the revolutionaries had failed then, with the popular upsurge finally stymied by the parliamentary framework of rule. This time Chinese experiences and Mao’s teachings were to provide the universal framework. And this time too, the revolutionaries failed with the popular upsurge finally stymied by the parliamentary framework of rule. What is this bind of universality that has repeatedly inspired only to fail the cause of social transformation? Perhaps we need to review the history of popular politics, popular upsurge, and the revolt in the sixties and seventies of the last century in the way Marx repeatedly went back to the history of 1848 or the way Lenin repeatedly drew the link between the developing unrest of the Russian society of his time and the work of the Bolsheviks. This calls for a greater dialectical understanding of the relation between autonomy of popular movement and popular unrest and the political-organisational strategy of the party of the upsurge.

seven CHAPTER

The Prairie Fire Spreads I Medinipur Anwesha Sengupta

INTRODUCTION

P

easant movement in Naxalbari in the foothills in North Bengal known as the terai region came to a close by the end of 1968.1 In 1969, peasant movement flared up in the undivided district of Medinipur (also known as Midnapore2) in the south west of the state. The movement took the form of an upsurge. The rapid spread of the movement in the state astonished many including the forces of law and order. Enquiries were on as to who participated in the movement in Medinipur, and the nature of participation. One can also ask today as to what its legacy has been. This chapter presents an account of the movement in this district. Since we still do not have a proper history or enough data regarding the upsurge in Medinipur in the late sixties and early seventies of the last century, our account will be sketchy. To provide that idea it is important to place the 1 The movement is immortalised in Kanu Sanyal’s ‘Terai-er Krishak Andolan Samparke Report’, 15 September 1968, Deshabrati, 24 October 1968, translated and published in English, ‘Report on the Peasant Movement in the Terai Region’, Liberation, Volume 2 (1), November 1968 – http://www.bannedthought.net/India/ CPI(ML)-Orig/Liberation/1968-Nov/ReportPeasantTerai-Sanyal-v2n1.pdf (Accessed on 6 July 2017). 2 Till the end of 2001, the south-west district of West Bengal was known as Medinipur. From 1 January 2002 it was split into two districts – East Medinipur and West Medinipur. Less than a year ago, West Medinipur was further divided to give birth to Jhargram District.

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peasant movement in Medinipur in late sixties of the previous century, also remembered as the Naxal movement, in a longer history of popular movements in the district since independence. Since the colonial period, Medinipur had a long tradition of anti-colonial struggles, in which peasants played a very important role. During the Non-Cooperation Movement (1921–22) peasants were mobilised by the Congress leader Birendranath Sashmal against taxation. 3 During the Civil Disobedience Movement (1929–31), Medinipur witnessed several confrontations between the sharecroppers and the jotedars and the Congress leaders had to often mediate.4 When Quit India movement was launched, Medinipur (particularly Contai and Tamluk subdivisions) emerged as crucial sites.5 In all these movements peasants of various strata participated under elite leadership and goals set by the prosperous farmers. The tradition of peasant resistance continued during the Tebhaga Movement (1946–47) and Tebhaga rights were established extensively in this district. The participation of local women during the anti-colonial struggles and also during the Tebhaga Movement in Medinipur is particularly important.6 We all are familiar with the iconic image of Matangini Hazra. Perhaps lesser known to us is Bimala Maji, who provided local leadership during the Tebhaga struggle.7 Her primary task was to build party networks among local women through relief and rehabilitation of the destitute, building resistance against wifebeating and sensitising them against zamindari oppression. As the Tebhaga Movement intensified, under Bimala’s leadership women 3

Donald Anthony Low, Congress and the Raj: Facets of the Indian Struggle, 1917–1947, Heinemann: Portsmouth, NH, US, 1977, p. 22. 4 Sachindra Kumar Maity, Freedom Movement in Medinipur, Vol. I, Firma KLM: Kolkata, 1975, p. 42. 5 Bidyut Charaborty, Local Politics and Indian Nationalism, 1919–1944, Manohar: Delhi, 1997, in passim. 6 Rina Pal, Women of Medinipur in Indian Freedom Struggle, Ratna Prakashan: Medinipur, 1996; also, ‘Role of Women in Tebhaga Struggle (1946–50)’ in Neera Chandoke & Ashish Ghosh, Grassroots Movement and Social Change, Developing Countries Research Centre and Departmental Special Assistance Programme in Politics of Developing Countries University of Delhi: Delhi, 1995. 7 Neera Chandoke & Ashish Ghosh, Grassroots Movement, p. 141.

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successfully confronted the guardsmen of the local zamindar. When the major Kishan Sabha leaders of Medinipur were arrested, Bimala’s role went beyond mobilising local women exclusively and she took larger party decisions. Just before independence she was arrested and spent two and half years in jail.8 Women’s participation in Communist politics remained significant in this district in 1950s and the 1960s and they participated in large numbers during the Naxalbari Movement as well.

THE 1950S: LAYING THE GROUNDWORK Radical peasant struggles persisted in the years immediately after independence. The Times of India, for instance, reported on 29 January 1950 about an attack on the police station by ‘two thousand villagers armed with spears, bows and arrows’. The reporter further noted that the attackers were all ‘Reds’, i.e., Communists. In 1953 peasants of the district tried to build up a movement against the arbitrary eviction of the sharecroppers by the big landowners. Moreover, there was a custom in some villages, known as sajabandha, which forced the peasants to store their meagre harvests in the houses of zamindars and jotedars. Zamindars would then distribute the crops among the peasants as they pleased. This practice was prevalent in Chandrakona and Dharenda region. Under the undivided Communist Party of India’s (CPI) leader Deben Das, peasants successfully built up a movement against this practice in 1953.9 Throughout the decade of 1950s, Medinipur remained a stronghold of the CPI. Under the leadership of the party and the Kishan Sabha unit, the district witnessed several phases of peasant mobilisation. Santosh Rana, the present District Secretary of CPI, noted in an interview that during the Congress rule, peasant movements continued against jotedars and zamindars of the district. Tamluk, Mahishadal, Potashpur, Khejuri, Banshdamohanpur, Garbeta, Agra, Chandrakona and Bankra were the major epicentres 8 Peter Custers, ‘Women’s Role in Tebhaga Movement’, Economic and Political Weekly, 21:43, 1986, WS97–WS104. 9 As told by Santosh Rana and Chapal Bhattacharya (an ex-CPI member from Medinipur town).

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of peasant resistance. Communist Party of India, at this point, was also mobilising people against caste discrimination and practices of untouchability. Medinipur town witnessed three important resistance movements under CPI leadership in 1952: a) movement in demand of political prisoners; primarily centred at Medinipur town, the movement also had some impact in Tamluk, Kanthi and Garbeta. It involved public meetings and signature campaigns and was mainly limited to the educated bhadraloks.10 Similar demands were raised from other districts as well and the government released the political prisoners. b) The ‘Save Education’ movement: this was against the government’s policy of retrenching teachers and employees particularly at the primary-school level. A Medinipur District Save Education Committee was formed under the leadership of peasant leaders Deben Das and Nikunja Choudhury. Participation came from the Forward Bloc, Krishak Praja Party, Jansangh, Mahila Atmaraksha Samiti and Krishak Sabha; they placed their four-point demand before the education department. c) Deben Das and Bhupal Panda also organised a food movement in Medinipur town protesting against arbitrary seizure of paddy and the cordon system. A successful strike, with significant participation from women and students, was an important event of this movement. In February 1954, when the teachers’ movement gained momentum in Calcutta, the teachers of Medinipur district, particularly those of Medinipur town, also participated in large number. The leadership came from Deben Das. Das primarily a peasant leader of the CPI was successful in organising civil society movements throughout the early 1950s. Teachers and students remained an important constituency for years to come for the Communist Party in Medinipur. In the mid-1960s, Kamakshya Nandan Das Mahapatra, an important student leader from CPI, led a students’ agitation in Medinipur town, demanding free primary education, cheap canteen, cheap store for stationery, etc.11 10

The word Bhadralok can be translated as gentlefolks/gentlemen. Personal interview with Santosh Rana, leader of Communist Party of India, Medinipur. 11

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In 1956, West Bengal witnessed mobilisation for and against the West Bengal-Bihar merger. While the agitators, who were in favour of this merger, in order to alleviate the space crunch in West Bengal (particularly given the massive refugee influx), had the support of Bidhan Chandra Roy’s Government, opposition came primarily from the CPI.12 Medinipur, being a CPI stronghold, witnessed intense mobilisation against the proposed merger. Biplab Maji, son of local CPI leader Ananta Maji, writes: Communist Party gave leadership to the state wide anti-merger movement. Party sent my mother to the nearby villages to mobilise local people for this anti-merger movement. Everyday processions of poor peasants and tribals reached Medinipur town under the leadership of the party. Their slogan was “We won’t allow the merger of Bengal and Bihar”. In January 1956, CPI called for bandhs against the Bidhan Roy Ministry that was supporting the merger. Processions of villagers used to come to Medinipur town daily. I also walked with them. First destination was the party office at Mirbazar. From there we went to various major crossings of the town to finally go to the court, where we would stage civil disobedience. Everyday some or the other leader of CPI used to lead the procession. The biggest procession was led by young Communist leader Daru Mukherjee. The people of Medinipur would greet us with flowers and women would blow conch shells. They would mark our foreheads with sandalwood paste tika. As the movement against merger gained strength, Bidhan Roy also backtracked saying that even if the merger happened it would not mean imposition of one language and one culture. ... Communists convinced people about the pitfalls of this proposal. This would only help the capitalists but would be against minority interests. ... On 11 February an anti-merger convention took place at the Senate Hall of Calcutta where peasants, labourers, intellectuals from all the districts of West Bengal came. My mother also attended it with other district leaders. On 24 February, the movement reached its peak in our district. My mother led processions of villagers almost 12 M.N. Chatterjee, ‘West Bengal-Bihar Merger: The Developments in West Bengal’, Indian Affairs Record, II:3, April 1956, pp. 4–7; also see, Shamita Sarkar, ‘The Role of the Communists in the Anti Bengal-Bihar Merger Agitation’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Vol. 74, 2013, pp. 921–24.

174 THE PRAIRIE FIRE SPREADS I every day between 21 January and 24 February, even when there was Cr. PC 144 in Medinipur town.13

Even after February 1956, the anti-merger agitation under the Communist leadership continued in Medinipur district. The Congress supporters and the CPI supporters clashed in Nandigram on 30 March 1956. At that time Medinipur District Congress political conference was taking place in Nandigram. A 300-strong group of anti-merger demonstrators reached the venue shouting slogans against the proposed merger. Three people were injured as ‘coconut shells and brickbats were freely used in the clash’.14 Reorganisation of state boundaries had become a country-wide issue in the mid-1950s. On 25 January, 1956, Bidhan Chandra Roy and Sri Krishna Sinha in a joint statement had called for the BengalBihar merger. The Communists, supporting linguistic reorganisation of the states, took to the streets against this declaration. Leaders like Saroj Mukherjee, Jyotish Joardar, and Jatin Chakraborty were arrested in connection with this movement. The next landmark event in the Left politics of West Bengal and that of Medinipur was the Food Movement of 1959. Though Calcutta and Howrah emerged as the major epicentres, ‘the first phase of civil disobedience movement began on 14 July 1959 when people of Medinipur town, Ghatal, Khejuri, Contai, Tamluk, Garbeta, Bhagabanpur under the joint leadership of the CPI and the Price Increase and Famine Resistance Committee (PIFRC) picketed before law courts and Block Development Offices’.15 Since 1957, CPI supporters were preparing the ground for building a widespread movement against the increasing food prices and food scarcity in the state. Medinipur was one of the major districts where they focussed. From 1958 Medinipur town witnessed frequent processions, gheraos 13

Biplab Maji, Manuscript of his memoir, no pagination, personally collected from the author. 14 Times of India (Henceforth, TOI), 31 March 1956. 15 Suranjan Das and Premansukumar Bandyopadhyay, Food Movement of 1959: Documenting a Turning Point in the History of West Bengal, KP Bagchi & Co.: Kolkata, 2004, p. 6.

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and strikes in protest of the food policy of the government. As instructed by the party many Communist leaders of the district went underground in 1958. But the party office remained as the centre of activities. Ananta Maji, by then a prominent face, went underground. But his wife and children were staying in the party office with his mother at that point. Biplab Maji remembers vividly the days of the Food Movement in Medinipur: My mother was a key figure in the food movement in our district. We as kids were involved too. We used to work as messengers and carried confidential letters between the pages of our books. People from various localities of Medinipur town and from Kharagpur sent rotis and jaggery to the party office. Villagers from all over the district used to reach the office in the early morning. They were fed there. The volunteers would oversee the whole system. After eating, they would go in processions to the court area at around 10 am to carry out a programme of civil disobedience. Initially the police was [sic] active and many of them were arrested. But the capacity of the prison was limited. So the police vans would round them up and would take them to some distant area and drop them there. Then they had to walk back all the way to the town and from there to their villages. The rickshaw-wallahs of Medinipur town provided great help at this time. Poor women of the slum areas also supported the movement. They used to collect wheat and prepare rotis in huge quantities. Nilima Kundu (wife of famous oil-mill owner Anil Kundu16), Sushama Pati (wife of Hiranmoy Pati), Renu Mashi, Bose Ginni, Turi Mashi, Asha Mashi and many others were part of the food collection team. The railway workers of Kharagpur sent food regularly. One day, I remember, we heard in the middle of the night that the police had beaten up CPI supporters. My mother along with some party members and well-wishers went to see the situation. Ramakanta Kundu and Malik Singh went with her. They too were severely beaten up by the police. They were not Communists before. But the food movement and police atrocities made them so.17 16

A Congress supporter who later became the supporter of CPI. Biplab Maji, Manuscript of his memoir, no pagination, personally collected from the author. 17

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The above description gives us a sense of the composition of the people who participated in the Food Movement of 1959. Workers and peasants, women and children of families coming from various backgrounds, and slum dwellers came together demanding food at affordable prices. During the Food Movement of 1966, too, Medinipur remained a site of struggle. In early February of 1966 Dainik Basumati reported that one sub-divisional officer and one magistrate were manhandled in Medinipur by the angry mob which then looted the procured foodgrain. This was not surprising given that Medinipur remained perpetually poverty-stricken. The Times of India reported that around three hundred thousand persons in Khejuri, Nandigram and Bhagabanpur were on the verge of starvation in mid-1953.18 The same newspaper reported about ‘many deaths’ due to severe scarcity of food in Gopiballavpur area in mid1953.19 Throughout the same decade, the district was repeatedly hit by natural disasters like flood and cyclone (1950, 1953 and 1956). Consequently, Medinipur remained a fertile ground for oppositional politics in the 1950s and 1960s. The Naxalbari Movement in the district burst out in this background. Of course, it is difficult to say with certainty as to how much of this legacy inserted itself in the Naxalite peasant struggle, particularly in the context of a total absence of institutional memory of the previous struggles. The Naxalites had broken off from the main branch of the Communist Party, and in that context, it was difficult for them to carry on the memory of the past peasant struggles institutionally. However, some of the peasant leaders had the institutional background of Left movement; more importantly as the first leaflet issued by the peasant organisation in DebraGopiballavpur explicitly remarked, the ‘new’ peasant struggle was going to carry on the legacy of past struggles by the tribal peasantry in the state and particularly in the region. It is important to keep this in mind because in both Gopiballavpur and Debra the en masse participation of tribal peasantry was one of the distinguishing features of the movement. 18 19

TOI, 16 June 1953. TOI, 29 July 1953.

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NAXALBARI MOVEMENT IN MEDINIPUR

Gopiballavpur Political organisers arrived in Gopiballavpur in 1967–68. Medinipur, at least some parts of it, was perhaps bound to become an important site of the Naxalbari Movement. Indeed, the Debra and Gopiballavpur regions (Debra was in another part of the district, the eastern part, while Gopiballavpur was in the southwestern part, adjoining Orissa on the bank of Subarnarekha river) along with Bahragora in present Jharkhand (Baharagora was on the Bihar side of Gopiballavpur) emerged perhaps as the second most important site of radical politics towards the end of the 1960s, after the Naxalbari region itself. Living amidst abject poverty and never-expiring debts, peasants of Medinipur warmed up to the Naxal ideology quite soon. Lebachand Tudu, a tribal peasant leader of the Naxal movement from Patbandha village of Gopiballavpur area, remembered, I come from a very poor region. My family was eternally repaying one loan or the other to the local zamindar Sudhir Bhuian and Sushil Bhuian. My father had grown old, but he still had to work. We used to feel very bad. But we could not do anything. Bhuians were very oppressive. One day they forcibly took two of our cows, even though my brother and I resisted to the end. In the end, we had to give up because our family had borrowed money from them. Amidst this came the news of the Naxalbari incident. We felt hopeful because it was a movement against the zamindars. Santosh Rana and some other students from Calcutta came to mobilise the local people. I was 24 or 25 at that point. I came in contact with Santosh Rana.20

Santosh Rana, who hailed from this region, was perhaps the most important Naxal leader in Gopiballavpur. Born in Dharampur village under Gopiballavpur Police Station, Rana was a research scholar in Rajabazar Science College when the peasant uprising happened in Naxalbari. Already associated with important Left 20 Interview of Lebachand Tudu, published in Amar Bhattacharya, (ed.), Lal Tamshuk: Naxalbari Andoloner Pramanyo Tathya Sankalan [The Red Bond: A Collection of Authentic Documents of the Naxalbari Movement], Gangchil: Kolkata, 2014, pp. 260–61.

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student leaders of the city (like Saibal Mitra, Prahlad Sarkar, Asim Chatterjee, Sanjay Mitra), Santosh was deeply moved by Naxalbari incidents. He left his research and returned to Gopiballavpur to organise the peasants there in December-January 1967. He would play a pivotal role in organising peasant resistance in this region. His younger brother Mihir Rana would also join him in the struggle. Apart from the local peasant leaders21 and a few local youths educated in Calcutta (like Santosh Rana), there was a third section of the leadership in this region. The Presidency Consolidation under the leadership of Asim Chatterjee (Kaka) had decided in March 1968 to go to Gopiballavpur in order to build up a peasant movement.22 Following this decision, a section of radical youths from Calcutta (and elsewhere) reached Gopiballavpur and gave leadership to the local resistance movement. Anil Chatterji, Jhantu, and Ashok were three such activists who reached Gopiballavpur in 1968.23 Many others, including Asim Chatterjee Meghnad (Prithviraj Dasgupta), Pradip Bannerjee, Dipanjan Ray Chowdhury, followed. Ranabir Samaddar, Susanta Jha, Sudeb Chakrabarty, Murari Ghosh (the three 21

Local leaders of Gopiballavpur mostly came from Dalit, indigenous, and other backward communities: to name a few from many peasant leaders and activists whose names are now lost to history, Lebachand Tudu, Tharpa Mandi, Amulya Kalapahar, and Bankim Nayek. 22 Presidency Consolidation was the name of a revolutionary group in late sixties, the name drawing from student leadership of Presidency College anti-expulsion movement. The group was formed in 1968 marking a departure from party-centric political style. Besides student activists of the Presidency College, other prominent student and youth activists, trade union leaders, peasant activists, and activists from employees and small shopkeepers’ organisations in Calcutta and other towns and areas of the state joined the group. It was federal in style of work and worked on the basis of consensus and had a very strong following among students and youth of the city. Probably the greatest achievement of the group was organising peasant revolt in Medinipur district besides spreading in the city the political message of the Naxalbari Movement and organising numerous students’ and workers’ movements in the city. Presidency Consolidation was dissolved after its leaders and activists joined the CPI (ML) in 1970 after the latter’s formation. There is no proper history of this group, except few notes. See for an initial account, Sattar Dashak, Anustup. 23 Santosh Rana, Rajnitir Ek Jiban, Kolkata: Ananda, 2018, p. 114. I have primarily used this book and also gathered valuable information from Ranabir Samaddar to tie together the story of Medinipur during the Naxal days.

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guerre de noms, Ajay, Bijoy, Sujoy became famous among the ranks) also went at the same time – to Baharagora to start the organisation for campaign and encamp there to facilitate coordination of the work in Medinipur. Of Baharagora we shall talk soon. The first task of these urban activists, who were students and youth, and who had come to Gopiballavpur from outside, was to win the trust of the local people, create awareness among the poor peasants about the ideology and possible modes of movement, mingle with the local peasants and understand the socio-political realities of the region. It was the time of the Cultural Revolution in China and its messages were inspiring for revolutionary activists. Charu Mazumdar also had instructed the students to go to villages with nothing but their lungi, gamchha24 and The Red Book. They were to stay with the peasants, eat with them and work with them in their fields. If they could earn their trust and if the peasants realised that there was a need for armed struggle, arms could be arranged locally. The students of the Presidency Consolidation followed these instructions. The beginning of the movement in Gopiballavpur, according to Santosh Rana, could be dated back to April 1968 when labourers working on a road-building project demanded increased wages from the government. A procession went out with almost two hundred workers (mostly Bagdis, one of the lowest castes in Bengal, and a few poor people belonging to Khandayat caste) where slogans were raised in demand of an increased wage. Moreover, slogans supporting the cause of Naxalbari were also raised from the same procession. For the first time Gopiballavpur had witnessed such a procession. The government authorities, a little taken aback by this sudden activism of the local labourers, increased the wage. The students and the youths, who had come from Calcutta, were very much involved in this labour protest. The success of this protest made them popular among local peoples. Encouraged by this incident, they observed May Day that year on the grounds of Nayabasan High School (Gopiballavpur I). Asim Chatterjee joined this event. Gobinda Maity, the CPI leader from Gopiballavpur, was 24

Lungi is a long piece of cloth worn by wrapping it around one’s waist by men in Bengal and gamchha is a cotton towel.

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also invited to speak on this occasion. The May Day meeting was successful and the news of the activities of the Naxalite activists travelled to far off villages. Their politics of a peasant movement against the jotedars and zamindars enthused many.25 They were now taken seriously by the villagers, many of whom were interested in getting involved more directly with this brand of politics. The villagers, however, were not homogeneous in terms of caste, tribe, and class. The levels of exploitation were different, so were their responses to radical politics. ‘The Mals were first to join us, then came the Bagdis, then the Santals and the Mundas’, noted Santosh Rana.26 Doms, the lowest of the low castes of Bengal, remained outside the movement for the longest time. They patiently listened to the Naxal activists but did not join. Perhaps to them, the upper caste identities of the Naxalite youths were a deterrent. Only when the ‘harvest festival’ (discussed later) began at Gopiballavpur, they joined.27 Caste remained an important factor in determining peasants’ location in the rural society and consequently, their responses to radical politics. A poor Brahmin of a village would, for instance, never suffer from starvation because others (from his own caste or from lower castes) would help him out. Similarly, a poor Teli (middle caste) would get financial loan from a Teli zamindar on easier terms.28 Thus caste was an important factor in determining class consciousness in Bengal villages, something that according to Rana, remained under-analysed by the Naxals. They did not, therefore, address issues of caste discriminations in the rural society which might have opened up spaces for larger mobilisation.29 25

Rana, Rajnitir, pp. 115–17. Ibid., p. 150. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid., p. 151. 29 In Bengal, caste has remained mostly invisible in the ‘high’ politics since independence. For an understanding of the relevance of caste in Bengal politics see the recent debate in EPW, initiated by Praskanva Sinha Ray (‘A New Politics of Caste’, 25 August 2012). Others who participated in this debate included Uday Chandra and Kenneth Bo Nielsen, ‘The Importance of Caste in Bengal’, 3 November 2012, Partha Chatterjee, ‘Historicising Caste in Bengal Politics’, Sarbani Bandyopadhyay, ‘Caste and Politics in Bengal’, 15 December 2012, Ranabir Samaddar, ‘Whatever has Happened to Caste in West Bengal’, 7 September 2013. See also, Sekhar Bandyopadhyay and 26

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Instead, the organisation decided to launch the next phase of the movement, when they had managed to build up a support base among the Mals and some other communities. However, notwithstanding the relative absence of awareness of the significance of caste in building peasant consciousness, the radical call for peasant movement, peasant unity for struggle, and emphasis on poor peasants and landless labour helped the radical programme. It was in Baharagora, relatively calm in 1967–68, where the planning work was done for campaign and organisation in Medinipur in those years. Mani Chakrabarty, a veteran communist, was the organiser in Baharagora. Deben Nayek of Surmuhi village at Baharagora was an important member in the Baharagora set up. Baharagora remained central to the work of the Bengal Bihar Orissa Border Regional Committee (BBOBRC). It is important to mention here that the strategic planning of Presidency Consolidation took the form of organising peasants in border areas (such as the Bengal-BiharOrissa border region). Such planning in the first place refused to accept the given practice of the parliamentary Left to operate on the basis of legal divisions of the territory of the country, such as state, district, subdivision, etc., but also recognised the continuum of peasant formations across many so-called borders. Perhaps this form of organising had taken its inspiration from the history of revolutionary movement in China, where forming border regional party committees was one of the modes of functioning. Again, unfortunately we have no records of the functioning of BBOBRC except oral references to it by its leaders. It took almost a year for the leadership consisting of activists and leaders (including urban activists who had come to Medinipur) of Debra, Gopiballavpur, and Baharagora to stay put in Baharagora to plan the campaign work properly and start organising. Meanwhile, by early 1969 the message from the Naxalite leadership for annihilation of class enemies had been formulated and taken some roots among activists throughout the state. As is well known now, central to Charu Mazumdar’s roadmap of revolution was the ‘annihilation of class enemies’, through guerrilla warfare. Anasua Basu Ray Chaudhury, In Search of Space: The Scheduled Caste Movement in West Bengal after Partition, Policies and Practices 59, MCRG, Kolkata 2016.

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Organising work in Gopiballavpur began focusing on this, i.e., killing moneylenders, landlords, threatening the ‘members of bad gentry’, driving the police away (these were termed as ‘actions’). The first ‘action’ happened on August 15, 1969 when Mati Pal, a rich merchant from Dharampur village was targeted. Pal was seriously injured in this attack. Another ‘action’ was organised after 15 days. This time, the targets were a group of merchants from Bhola Belduar (Gopiballavpur I). The members of the targeted group suffered from light injuries while one of the Naxal leaders leading this action, was injured. Though neither of these ‘actions’ was ‘successful’ (as the ‘targets’ were not killed), they spread Naxalbari’s message of armed struggle among local population. That intimidated many, scared quite a few, but enthused several others. The next target was a particular moneylender family from Kancha Amrashol Village. Notorious as they were for lending money against valuable properties and at an interest rate of 25 paisa per rupee per month, they had been attacked by the local Mal and Bagdi (both scheduled caste groups) villagers on two previous occasions. On 27 September (1969), they were attacked by a peasant squad, which killed one male member of the family (Bhupen Senapati) and heavily injured another.30 The squad managed to get hold of the mortgaged goods and returned them to the original owners of the nearby villages. While describing this incident, Leba Tudu noted: ‘The money-lending zamindars were the prime targets. In this region, Nagen Senapati and Bhupen Senapati were notorious as moneylenders. They also had rifles. They were killed and the mortgaged properties were confiscated by the peasants. Everyone got back whatever they had mortgaged to the Senapatis. We became very popular among the poor peasants. They realised that we were their true well-wishers’.31 The day after the attack on the Senapatis, the house of a trader was targeted in a nearby village named Surmuhi (Bahragora Police Station in Bihar). His name was Baishnab Ghosh. In this ‘action’ 30 There is confusion with the date. While Santosh Rana wrote that the attack on Senapatis took place on 27 September, a note published in Liberation noted that that the incident happened on 26 September. See ‘Peasant Guerrilla Struggle in India Becoming More Widespread’ in Liberation November 1969, pp. 89–94, p. 90. 31 Tudu, p. 262.

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hundreds of villagers participated. Though the trader could flee, paddy, clothes, utensils, and ornaments were seized by the peasant raiders. 32 Next was Dasharathi Gharui of Kanthalia Village (Gopiballavpur Police Station). Owner of 160 bigha of land and notorious as a moneylender, Gharui was attacked on 30 September. Local peasantry again participated in large numbers. ‘A remarkable thing about this incident is that the guerrilla unit was formed by a local peasant comrade and the entire planning and execution of the action was done by the peasant guerrillas themselves and on their own initiative, under the guidance of the local Party Committee’, noted the November issue of Liberation.33 Several such actions followed in this region. As the targets were oppressive landowners and moneylenders, local peasants participated enthusiastically. As Santosh Rana remembered ‘in the previous year our contacts were limited to only few villages, but between October and early November (1969) we could reach out to a much larger area’.34 However, the excitement with the ‘annihilation line’ would not last long. Rather, the intense violence and the police terror would intimidate and tire out the common people. The Naxals would lose much of their popular base for following this line. To this we shall come back in a while. Gopiballavpur region witnessed another mode of resistance unique to this region. In Santosh Rana’s words this was a ‘harvesting festival’. He later remembered the event in this way, ‘Between the third week of November and mid-December, 1969 in Gopiballavpur thana... a festival took place – a festival to gain control over the food grains [sic], to destroy feudal structures of land relations, the power and the influences of the zamindars and jotedars, and to reveal the true colours of the revisionists in state power.’35 More than twenty thousand peasants participated in this struggle to take possession of the crops. In another estimate we find that around 40,000 peasants participated in the ‘harvest festival’.36 Tudu recalled, 32

Rana, Rajnitir, pp. 152–55. Liberation, November 1969, p. 92. 34 Rana, Rajnitr, p. 161. 35 Santosh Rana, ‘Gopiballavpur-e Fasal Katar Obhyuthhan, 1969’ in Santosh Rana, Samaj Sreni Rajniti (trans. Society, Class, Politics), Camp: Kolkata, 2006, p. 132. 36 Tarundeb Bhattacharya, Medinipur, Firma KLM Ltd.: Kolkata, 1979, p. 48. 33

184 THE PRAIRIE FIRE SPREADS I Bhalukshulia, Shalajhuria, Kayashol, Ludhirshol, Mohorboni, Panihia, Machabandha and many more villages came together. We used to have secret meetings, in remote backward villages. Zamindars did not get any information about these meetings. We used to talk about land and crops. Peasants were really excited. Initially we robbed the crops from the fields in the middle of the night. Then annihilation and taking control of zamindar’s properties was also a part of our programme. The peasants participated enthusiastically. …The harvest festival spread beyond the borders and villagers in Bihar and Orissa were also enthused…four or five of us took control of the area. We could maintain our authority for seven days.37

Peasant women played the most significant part in these ‘harvest festivals’. The first instance of reaping the paddy from jotedar’s fields was led by the women of Mahipal village, without any leadership of the party. In broad daylight they harvested the paddy from the fields owned by a jotedar from Dharampur village. As has been argued, when it came to the question of women’s role in the Naxalbari Movement, the party had generally failed to offer a radical answer.38 But Medinipur, as we have noted earlier, had a long tradition of women’s militancy. Following that tradition, in Gopiballavpur, on occasions such as this, peasant women took initiative and the male leadership was receptive enough to follow. When the news reached Santosh Rana, Meghnad and others, they decided to include ‘harvest festival’ in their plan of action. They had rightly thought that such an initiative would have an immense appeal among the poor 37

Tudu, p. 262. See P. Bandyopadhyay, ‘Naxalbari Politics: A Feminist Narrative’, Mallarika Sinha Roy, ‘Rethinking Female Militancy in Post-Colonial Bengal’, in Feminist Review, 101, 2012. Santosh Rana’s very detailed autobiographical writing also mentions little about the women in the movement. We get occasional mentions of Kuni Tudu, who had given shelter to one of the comrades (188), who was ‘very brave’ and played a significant role in organising the tribal people of Kharikashol (220–22). Bina (155–56) was the other woman who got mentioned in his narrative. She was from Surmuhi and participated in Naxal squad. However, as Rana himself agreed, like the caste question, the question of gender discrimination in the society remained unaddressed by the Naxal ideologues. 38

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peasant population of the locality.39 As already mentioned, hitherto indifferent sections of the rural poor (like Dom community) joined in large numbers, so did the poorer sections of the Telis, Khandayat, Sadgop, Raju (all middle castes) etc.40 ‘Harvest festival’, however, died an untimely death. Charu Mazumdar criticised it as a ‘reactionary’ initiative and economic adventurism. ‘Action’ against individual zamindars and moneylenders was projected as the only way for advancing the cause of revolution. Consequently, Tudu tells us, ‘The number of attacks on zamindars increased rapidly. I think at least 120 zamindars were killed in the entire district. ... Too much emphasis on action slowed down our movement. We all went underground. There were warrants in our names.’41 Mazumdar’s emphasis on annihilation did not go down well with leaders like Santosh Rana and Asim Chatterjee who were active in the region.

Debra Debra Police Station, around 100 kilometres away from the Gopiballavpur region, was the other important site of Naxalbari Movement in Medinipur. Here the leadership came from Bhabadeb Mandal and Gunadhar Murmu, a local tribal leader in peasant movement, both of whom had been associated with the CPI and later the CPI (M). Bhabadeb Mandal an advocate by profession had unsuccessfully contested the 1967 election as a CPI (M) candidate. Sakti Giri and Nitai Das were two other prominent organisers. Local santal youths, Ganesh Majhi, Arjun Hembram, Baidyanath, and others, also played important role in organizing peasants and later leading ‘actions’ in Debra. Here too in the leadership there were ‘outsiders’ from Presidency Consolidation like Ranabir Samaddar and after his arrest Meghnad and for some time Pradip Banerjee; but unlike Gopiballavpur, where among the top leaders there were several urban activists, villages under Debra thana witnessed more participation of the local political leaders in the 39

Rana, Rajnitir, pp. 161–62. Ibid., p. 151. 41 Tudu, p. 263. 40

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Naxal Movement, and except the persons named above there was no ‘outsider’. The beginning of peasant militancy in Debra could be traced back to 1967, when the United Front came to power in West Bengal. The end of the Congress rule in West Bengal, by now notoriously connected with black-marketers and hoarders encouraged the peasants to raid village markets of Balichak, Radhamohanpur, and Malihati. The agricultural labourers also began agitating in demand of a better wage. The landlord-peasant tension reached such a point that a police camp was placed in the region and Section 144 of the Criminal Penal Code (Cr. PC) was imposed. Amidst this came the news of the Naxalbari peasant uprising; peasants of Debra were encouraged and inspired by the news of armed resistance. Despite the reluctance of the local CPI (M) leadership, the peasants were ready to follow the path of militant resistance. In 1967 student and youth activists had organised intense ‘red guard campaign’ in Debra. Many of the ‘red guards’ were from the cities and towns. This was possible only through the enthusiastic welcome accorded by the Debra peasant leadership and activists. It was a unique experience for the student and youth campaigners and local peasant militants. Nitai Das, name mentioned earlier and later to become one of the prominent peasant organisers of Debra, was instrumental in initiating student activists who had come to Debra as ‘red guards’. All these formed the background of the formation of a united committee of leading activists of Debra, Gopiballavpur, and Baharagora. The news of the organisational work in other parts of the district including the two towns of Medinipur and Kharagpur, and militant peasant movements elsewhere such as Srikakulam, and the beginning of guerrilla activities at not so far away from Gopiballavpur, enthused peasants further. The work in the towns was important, particularly among Kharagpur railway workshop employees and workers. The two towns provided enormous political and logistical support. More importantly, the political edge of the movement became sharper with participation of labour activists of the Kharagpur Railway Workshop and student activists in Medinipur town and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). In order to appreciate the spread of the struggle, it is important to

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remember the significance of coordinated organisational work in these three areas. The formation of the BBOBRC known in the history of the CPI (M-L) as a crucial part of the work among the peasantry was a result of this coordinated leadership. The Presidency Consolidation and the peasant leadership in Medinipur and the border region as a whole provided the stewardship of the expanding struggle. By September-October (1969), the stage for a militant peasant struggle was set at Debra. In Debra, the first peasant raid was organised on 1 October 1969 when the house of jotedar Kanai Kuity (a jotedar from Saldahari village, Debra Police Station) was surrounded by thousands of local tribal peasants under the leadership of Murmu. Estimates of the number of peasant men and women assembled to surround the house of Kanai Kuity vary from three-four thousand to several more. Peasants came from a distance of fifteen kilometres too. While Kuity managed to escape, his house was ransacked, gun was seized and all the documents related to his landed properties were set on fire.42 It was not a guerrilla action, but a mass assault on the jotedar and his forces. In fact, in Debra there was considerable discussion among the political leadership regarding the desirability of secret ‘actions’ and the peasant leaders preferred mass mobilisation and assault. In any case, another ‘action’ followed within three days. This ‘action’ too was not fully ‘successful’ as the targeted jotedar was not killed. But these two attempts in quick succession intimidated other powerful landholders. As the report prepared by the Debra Thana Organizing Committee, CPI (M-L), noted, ‘Two guerrilla actions within a week heralded the beginning of red terror. Though we could not annihilate the jotedar in the second action also, we gained politically. The jotedars began to warn one another by blowing conch-shells. Many jotedars and their agents, the rich peasants fled to town’.43 Debra would witness more such ‘actions’ in that month, killing jotedar 42

Liberation, Nov 1969, p. 93. Santosh Rana however writes that Kanai was killed. See p. 156. 43 ‘Revolutionary Armed Peasant Struggle in Debra, West Bengal: A Report by the Debra Thana Organizing Committee, CPI (M-L)’, original report in Bengali, thus ‘action’ would be khatam (annihilation), Liberation, December 1969, pp. 63–82, p. 71.

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Jiban Das (October 13), Dwija Roy (October 18) and Satish Poray (October 23). Moreover, the local peasants had seized the crops in some areas under the Debra thana.44 Initially the police were taken aback by the intensity of the movement. However, soon they got their act together and began to gain control over the situation and, as Rana writes, in the name of establishing law and order ‘the police took away whatever little the peasants owned – their cattle and poultry animals, money, utensils, and paddy. The peasants who fought the jotedars bravely could not resist the huge state force. Many were arrested. At one point the number of imprisoned people was twice the capacity of the Medinipur jail’.45 Tudu echoes, By November-December the CRPF began to raid villages like Pitashao, Holbendua, Shalberia, our Kalajuria, Sarbachira, Patbandha. They were taking all moveable property from the peasants’ houses. Goats, chicken, paddy – whatever they could lay their hands on. We did not have anything. We were staying at Bhalukshulia then. There were local spies who used to help the CRP in identifying us. They used to get a share of the CRP’s loot. In this ignominious way, they earned quite a lot at the time.46

In Debra by December (1969) there were five police camps. To add to this, companies of the para-military Eastern Frontier Rifles (EFR) were stationed at Balichak to combat the Naxalites in Debra. By early December more than hundred peasants were arrested from Debra alone.47 Despite their best efforts to evade the police, most of the senior leaders were arrested by 1971. In some cases, someone from within the party informed the police regarding the whereabouts of the leaders. Charu Mazumdar’s emphasis on annihilation, disregard for popular movements like ‘harvest festival’ and mass gherao of jotedars’ houses and increasing brutality of the police and paramilitary forces in the villages had alienated the 44

Liberation, November 1969, p. 94. Ibid., p. 137. 46 Tudu, p. 264. 47 Liberation, December 1969, p. 72. 45

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Naxals from the local people. At the same time discord also emerged between the advocates of the line of ‘annihilation’ and ‘militant mass peasant struggle’. With the Presidency Consolidation dissolving and its two main leaders joining the CPI (M-L), the BBOBRC had been formed, but the earlier cohesion was over. Little remained of the coordination that was built up from Baharagora, and the struggle crumbled in face of massive state repression. Leba Tudu wrote later, Initially we used to take into account people’s opinion and wishes – for example capturing the crop. But the policy of annihilation or what we called “action” did not involve people. As if we were doing these “actions” in the name of people and for the people. People had no role to play. But they had to face police atrocities. They probably thought that because of us they were now suffering. When we opposed the oppression of the jotedars, people supported us. But the police robbed them. The Naxals could not or did not resist that. This was the blunder. We could not resist state oppression and people did not take that well. We could not arm the common people also. They became mere spectators.48

Ranabir Samaddar also shares a similar opinion: If we had focussed more on people’s struggle, if we had decided that we would not follow the annihilation line but focus on strengthening our base among the people, who knows what would have happened. The movement might have lived longer. Then there was the total repression, the white terror of the government.49

The rapidly increasing distance between the common people and the leading activists made the latter further exposed to the state oppression. Besides, many of the leaders of other political parties helped the administration to quell the Naxal revolt, scare the peasants, and arrest the organisers. When people began to refuse them shelter, out of fear or disgust, the leafy villages of Gopiballavpur 48

Tudu, pp. 268–69. Samaddar, interview in Anustup, special issue on popular movements and popular politics, 2017. 49

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and the river Subarnarekha were not enough to shield them from the police. Earlier, there had been several occasions when an entire village, braving the police and the paramilitary, had provided food and shelter to the Naxals. An incident mentioned in Rana’s memoir can be cited here. Towards the end of October 1969, Rana was bitten by a poisonous snake. He was immediately taken to a tribal home at the nearby Patbandha village. Since his foot was swollen and he was unable to walk, he had to stay in the house for a whole week. The whole village and many from the neighbouring villages knew that Rana was staying in this village. However, no one informed the police, though at that point the government had announced Rs 5,000 prize money to anyone who would inform about Rana’s whereabouts.50 Similarly, the Debra Thana Organizing Committee noted in that ‘in a plain area like Debra...the masses serve as our jungles and hills...’.51 Leading cadres with injury or illness were carried by peasant activists night after night across Kansabati River (locally known as Kansai) to safety. But the situation changed towards the end of 1970 and such instances of people protecting the Naxalites became fewer.52 When the masses became distant, the politics also suffered. The Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971 and the death of Charu Mazumdar (28 July 1972) further weakened the movement in the entire state as well as in Medinipur region. Moreover, in Medinipur the government, it seems, adopted a carrot-and-stick policy to suppress the movement. ‘The villages where the movement was strong started receiving aid. Many families received money and cattle. Our family too got two cows. They also expanded the irrigation system’,53 noted Tudu, while discussing the reasons for the decline 50

Rana, Rajnitir, pp. 183–84. Liberation, December 1969, 72. 52 Charu Mazumdar at this point advised his followers to attack the police directly. He thought that ‘action’ against the police would encourage the villagers to participate in the movement. If policemen could be killed, the police would look less intimidating to the local population. Following his advice the police camp at Rupaskundi Village (Jharkhand) was attacked on 9 March 1971. Two policemen were killed and two more were injured; whereas the attackers could escape unharmed. However, such actions could not bring back people on the side of the Naxals. See Rana, Rajinitir, pp. 185–89. 53 Tudu, p. 268. 51

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of their movement in Gopiballavpur. Moreover, the threat of CPI (M) in Medinipur was increasing. ‘CPI (M) penetrated this region thoroughly. They used to tell people that if they did not support them against us, major attacks will happen. People felt threatened’.54 Nonetheless dedicated party workers remained and tried to mobilise the local population. As Calcutta became more and more dangerous because of state repression and feud between various splinter groups and clashes between Naxal workers and supporters of the Congress and the CPI (M), many moved to rural shelters. We get a glimpse of their activities from the writing of Dorothy Bhattacharya, the wife of Naxal leader Amar Bhattacharya. Both Amar and Dorothy went to a village of Medinipur in 1976. Though they mingled with the local tribal peasants and lived among them, there was little space for organising militant peasant struggle anymore. ‘Most of the villagers did not know our political identities. We stayed in a hut where party members used to come occasionally to discuss various issues. Villagers used to help us with some ration.’55 Dorothy’s activities in this village involved teaching little children of the poor peasant families and helping a local tribal woman, whose son was a party member, in rice cultivation. In the work of Amar, Dorothy and others traces of Naxalbari remained. Traces of the movement could also be seen in the Railway Strike of 1974, of which Kharagpur was a major epicentre, and in the Maoist insurgency of more recent times. To this we shall return in a while.

Medinipur Jail As a large number of Naxal activists were imprisoned by the early years of 1970s, the prisons themselves emerged as the sites of various kinds of political activities. In Medinipur district both Jhargram Jail and Medinipur Central Jail had a substantial number of Naxalites. Prisons in India are over-crowded; they fail to provide basic facilities to the prisoners and are notorious for human rights violation. The 1970s were no different. The Naxalite activists were tortured and 54

Ibid. Dorothy Bhattacharya, ‘Naxalpanthi Amar k bhalobeshei jibonsangi hoechilam’ (trans. I chose to become the life partner of Naxalite Amar), Gangchil Patrika, Bookfair 2018, p. 180. 55

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killed in particular by the police, both inside and outside the prison. The imprisoned activists, on the other hand, were engaged in various social and political activities within the jails, despite all odds. The activities were manifold. For instance, protests were organised by them on behalf of all the prisoners for better amenities like improved drinking water facilities, medical facilities, better quality food etc. Moreover, many of them took up the responsibilities of teaching letters to the illiterate inmates. Political classes were also held to discuss Marxist literature. Simultaneously, writing slogans on the walls of the prison cells was a common form of building resistance within the boundaries of the prison. To top them all, jailbreaking was the most dangerous and the most striking political activity of the imprisoned Naxal activists. Medinipur Central Jail witnessed it all. From the writings of Santosh Rana, Ranabir Samaddar and Piyasha Bhattacharya Dasgupta, we get a glimpse of the lives of Naxal activists inside Medinipur Central Jail. Santosh Rana’s first encounter with the Medinipur Central Jail happened on 30 May 1968. He was imprisoned under the Preventive Detention Act. That was a time when Naxal Movement was yet to gain significant currency outside North Bengal. Apart from Rana, Medinipur Jail housed only one more political prisoner (Kishan Chatterjee, a Naxal activist who was arrested from Siliguri). Both enjoyed the status of Division I prisoners, which meant bread and butter for breakfast, non-vegetarian meals twice a day, exemption from the daily head-counts and more-or-less free movement within the boundaries of the jail.56 His stay in Medinipur Jail lasted for a month. But he returned to this prison once again in August 1972 for five long years. By then the Naxal Movement had emerged as a real threat to reckon with, the prison was overcrowded with the Naxal activists and the attitude of the authorities had drastically changed towards them. Between the two prison terms of Santosh Rana, the Medinipur Jail had twice witnessed attempted prison breaks by the Naxal activists. The first attempt took place on 16 December 1970 when a group of Naxal workers launched a sudden attack on the prison 56

Rana, Rajnitir, pp. 119–24.

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guards and tried to escape from the prison.57 As the Times of India (TOI) reported: Eight prisoners were killed in a series of violent incidents leading to firing by jail warders at the Medinipur Central Jail yesterday. Twelve others, including two warders, were injured. According to information received at the secretariat today, the trouble was engineered by some Naxalite under trials who, in collusion with other prisoners, attempted a jailbreak in accordance with their party’s programme. Among the killed three were known Naxalites. Inquiries are being made about whether the others had any political affiliation. The deputy inspector general of police left for Medinipur today. It is reported that at 1–30 p.m. yesterday some Naxalite under trials in the jail compound hoisted a red flag atop central tower of the jail and wrote some Naxalite slogans on the walls. They also tried to assault some warders... ... trouble erupted again in the evening when about 500 Naxalite and other prisoners who had assembled near the central tower turned violent. They broke open the kitchen and the store-room of the jail and made a bonfire of jail property. ...A spokesman of the State police said that the warders had opened fire and not the police.58

While the Times of India report reflected the government narrative, Rana had heard himself a very different account of the events of 16 December, from his colleagues who had participated in the ‘jail uprising’: At this point the Medinipur Central Jail had almost 4,000 inmates, whereas its capacity was of one thousand. The inmates were huddled together like cattle in various wards. They were not getting proper food or drinking water. Many of these inmates were not petty thieves or robbers, but peasant activists from Gopiballavpur and other regions. The inmates were agitated. In this context the jail uprising took place on 16th December 1970. A few Naxal inmates were called to the gate by the authorities. 57 58

Lal Tamshuk, p. 195. TOI, 18 December 1970.

194 THE PRAIRIE FIRE SPREADS I They were told that their release order had come. But they did not believe it. They feared that they would be transferred to some other prison which they resisted. There was a chaos...all the inmates were ordered to return to their respective wards. But many did not and assembled in large number near the central tower (gumti). They captured the gumti overpowering the prison staffs.... The prison staffs fled and the prison came under the control of the prisoners. The Naxalites captured three of them, but they were not beaten up.... the news of the attack reached the district administration soon and the Central Reserve Police Force (C.R.P.F) reached the spot and encircled the prison. They took position in the towers outside the prison walls and began firing. One of the three captive prison staffs was [sic] let off. He was asked to tell the C.R.P. that the Naxals would kill the other two, unless they stop firing...finally the firing stopped. But according to the inmates, more than hundred prisoners had died on that day. But the prison authorities claimed that nine people were killed.59

Before this, the Naxals had made an attempt to escape from Medinipur Jail by digging a tunnel.60 And, after 16 December, prisoners in Medinipur Jail (and elsewhere) began to seriously contemplate the possibility of escaping from prison. Another attempt would soon follow in this prison on 3 February 1971, this time through the prising open the skylight frame, getting out to the roof, and scaling the wall. But this attempt failed as well. Armed prison guards with torched sticks entered the cells, beat up the defenceless prisoners with rods and sticks, torched and burnt some of them in the cells. Two activists, Chapal Das Adhikari and Rabin Chakrabarty, were killed, and many more severely injured. Some had to be taken to a district hospital outside. After the series of jailbreak attempts, the next round struggles within jail started with successive hunger strikes (on occasions the strike lasting for 59 Rana, Rajnitir, pp. 190–91; on the series of jail break attempts, see the collection by the journal Jalarka. 60 Laal Tamshuk, p. 195; This incident is not mentioned in Santosh Rana’s account. However, he mentions that after the 16 December incident, Naxal prisoners began to dig a tunnel to escape. However that came to the notice of the prison authorities and the plan got aborted.

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more than a month) on demands to an end to police torture in jails, improvement of living conditions there, grant of political status for all peasant activists,61 and release of prisoners. However, prison break emerged as a political line of the Naxalites, particularly among the followers of Charu Mazumdar. In Mazumdar’s words, ‘The revolutionaries who are today in the prisons of West Bengal have created a new history of struggle that none ever came across in the annals of prison life. These comrades realize and feel from the core of their hearts that revolutionaries remain revolutionaries even while in prison: they are quick to rise up and fight every humiliation. They have made jail-breaking a commonplace affair’.62 ‘No bail, bhango jail’ (Do not ask for bail, but break the jail) became a popular slogan.63 Between 1970 and 1976, there were at least 20 prison break attempts by the Naxalite convicts in different prisons of West Bengal.64 A few of these attempts would be successful and the rest would end in failures, with death of a large number of Naxal leaders and activists. However, such attempts could not be repeated in the Medinipur Central Jail after February 1971. Four leaders were put in fetters for more than a year, and repeated incidents of jailbreak had resulted in increased surveillance and police torture. Yet notwithstanding the reverses and deaths, Medinipur Jail remained an important site of other political activities throughout the early ‘70s. Teaching the illiterate inmates to read and write was one important task that engaged the educated Naxal activists. Ranabir Samaddar remembered: ‘We used to take regular classes with 20–30 peasants. We taught them to read. But we also took political classes, discussed the Red Book’.65 Santosh Rana also writes in a similar manner: ‘two types of classes were held in the prison. 61 Unlike previous Left political leaders, the Naxalite leaders had refused not only bail applications but political status also when given to them on the ground that peasant activists were also political prisoners, and so all Naxalite prisoners including peasants would have to be given political status, and no discrimination would be allowed. 62 Charu Mazumdar, ‘Red Salute to Comrade behind the Bars’. Liberation, January-March 1971. 63 Rana, Rajnitir, pp. 132–33. 64 Laal 195. 65 Samaddar’s interview, p. 462.

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One was for the peasant comrades who were illiterate or barely literate. For them we held classes in the morning. We used to teach letters, basic arithmetic like addition, subtraction, multiplication and division...after six months, there was no illiterate person in our ward. In the evening after lock up we used to have our political classes. The CPI (M-L) party leadership had instructed us not to read anything except the Red Book [sic]. But we did not follow them. We used to read Karl Marx’s Wage Labour and Capital, Value, Price and Profit, The Communist Manifesto, Engels’ Origin of Family, Private Property and State, Lenin’s State and Revolution, Imperialism the Highest form of Capitalism, Mao Zedong’s On New Democracy, On Contradiction, On Practice, Analysis of the Classes in the Chinese Society etc. One of us would read and others would listen’.66 While the male activists participated in these activities, the women activists, living in the female ward could not join them. Medinipur Jail had three women activists at this point. One of them Piyasha Bhattacharya Dasgupta – who was the partner of Meghnad – taught her fellow comrade Kuni to read and write. (Kuni would eventually get married to Leba Tudu.) After learning the Bengali script, Kuni wrote ‘Naxalbari Laal Selam’ on the wall of Piyasha’s cell. Writing slogans in support of Naxalbari Movement was another form of doing politics in the jail. ‘One day a non-Bengali jail officer entered the room and said “I will erase all these [slogans]”.’ I replied: you will do your work and I will do mine...we used to write slogans with crushed flowers and crushed leaves’, remembered Piyasha.67 Political prisoners have time and again noted how they have used their time in prison to read and write extensively. To give one example, Jawaharlal Nehru, who composed extensively his famous writings while in prison, repeatedly mentioned how jail provided him the time and space to read and write.68 Many Naxal activists also read extensively while in prison. The library of the Medinipur Central Jail came to their use. Some read Marx’s Capital borrowing it from the jail library. Others read the Puranas. Santosh Rana, for 66

Rana, Rajnitir, p. 211. Piyasha Bhattacharya Dasgupta, Gangchil Patrika, p. 304. 68 See for instance, ‘Glimpses of World History’, letter dated 1 January 1931; 8 April 1931; 23 April 1932; 9 August 1933 – just to give a few examples. 67

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instance, had read all the volumes of Churchill’s The Second World War available in the Medinipur prison library.69 Friends and families also supplied them with books. It was a complicated process. The jail authorities received the books and sent them to the intelligence department. If the latter gave permission, the books would reach the prisoner. This was one of the many modes of surveillance. Despite such rules, books did make way to the prison. In the words of Piyasha, ‘Reading few famous books [in prison] remained a treasure to me. I read Ilya Ehrenburg’s The Storm, Nikolai Ostrovski’s How the Steel was Tempered, Anna Louis Strong’s Wild River. My comrades used to bring these books for me’. 70 The Naxal leaders also mobilised the inmates around more ‘mundane’ issues. For instance, in 1973, when there was a severe water crisis in the Medinipur Jail, a hunger strike was organised by the Naxal prisoners on behalf of all the prison inmates. This was successful as it forced the prison authorities to install a water pump which increased the availability of water. Though the ‘ordinary prisoners’ did not take part in the hunger strike themselves, they supported this movement. As Santosh Rana noted, ‘due to this incident we could connect with the ordinary prisoners and earned their respect’.71 Literacy classes that were open for all inmates of the prison also connected the Naxal prisoners with the rest of the jail population. While the Naxal activists were becoming estranged from common people because of the party decision to boycott mass movements and mass organisations, within the prison space they continuously attempted to connect with the people and work with and for them. Most of the members of the Bengal-Bihar-Orissa Border Region Committee72 were by now highly critical of the ‘annihilation line’ and the decision to boycott the mass organisations and movements. Within the premises of the Medinipur Central Jail, they translated their criticisms into action by reaching out to other prisoners. 69

Rana, Rajnitir, p. 204. Ibid., pp. 307–08. 71 Ibid., pp. 205–07. 72 As explained earlier, there were separate committees including border committees to look over the party activities of particular regions. Medinipur fell under Bengal-Bihar-Orissa Border Region Committee (BBOBRC). 70

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CONCLUSION: TRACES OF NAXALBARI MOVEMENT IN MEDINIPUR Before the dust of Naxal Movement could properly settle, the Railway Strike of 1974 once again rattled the politics of Medinipur. This time Kharagpur was the eye of the storm. Kharagpur is a strategically important rail head that serves the entire ore and steel belt, connects Calcutta to Mumbai and Chennai and serves the ports of Vishakhapatnam, Paradwip and Haldia. Since 1947 Kharagpur remained a strong base for railway workers’ political activities. Under the leadership of the All India Railwaymen’s Federation (AIRF), the town participated in a series of trade union movements and strikes with various demands like better salary, dearness allowance and job security. However, the culminating point in the railway workers’ struggles was the great 20-day long strike of 1974. Under the leadership of George Fernandes, 1.7 million workers struck work in demand of raise in pay-scale and 12-hour working day for the loco-running staff. Kharagpur emerged as one of the major sites. Between 8 May and 28 May the railway town witnessed repeated confrontations between the strikers and the police, strikers and non-strikers/strike breakers; it also witnessed secret meetings of workers and multiple arrests under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA).73 On 8 May itself, thousands of strikers were suspended in Kharagpur.74 Despite arrests, suspension and police oppression the strike continued for 20 days. It was this strike in which Ranabir Samaddar has located traces of Naxalite radicalism when he wrote: As with several other politically climatic periods, the period of the Naxalite movement had a plural composition, even though it left in the minds of people and on society a singular impression of extremism, of an unbridled radical attitude and youth upsurge. These impressions were not pure myth, and had elements of reality 73 The railway strike has been extensively studied by Ranabir Samaddar. See Ranabir Samaddar, The Crisis of 1974: Railway Strike and the Rank and File, Primus: New Delhi, 2016. 74 In this strike total number of suspension (including temporary) was 63, 796. Medinipur Nana Chokhe, p. 168.

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in them. The movement had the participation of the peasants, students, youth, sections of lower middle classes, and workers. In this sense the popular movements of the decades of the fifties and early sixties culminated in radical upsurge of the late 1960s and early 1970s. However, it will be important to see how these sectional participations played out in the upsurge as a whole, and how specific class participations varied, and how the workers movement, particularly the Great Railway Strike of 1974, was the movement of climax.75

Though the militant moment in Medinipur, its high-octane stridency, could not carry on for long and passed into history after 1974, radicalism probably became structural in the region. Traces of this radicalisation would remain in the politics of this region for decades to come and would resurface periodically – be it in the form of Maoist insurgency in the Jangalmahal or in the peasants’ struggle in Nandigram against the state’s attempt at land grab. Before we end this chapter, certain words of caution are in order about the description presented here. Besides Santosh Rana’s memoir and the partial account by Leba Tudu, and two unpublished internal reports (now untraceable) there is no political or reminiscing account of the peasant struggle in Medinipur in 1967–71 unlike that in Birbhum or Naxalbari. We have only one political report of the party committee published in Deshabarati and Liberation (respectively, the Bengali and English organ of the CPI (M-L). The urban activists who went to Medinipur to organise the struggle there did not write anything – analytical or descriptive. Peasant activists rarely write. They did not write anything. So, this account may have missed several significant names of urban and peasant activists, and events of struggle, defeats, and deaths. Equally, many important discussions perhaps have been left out. Perhaps ground level stories of ‘artisans of revolt’ in Medinipur like the one presented in Chapter 5 of this volume, will fill in the gap. Or, if the activists and leaders of the struggle with the time remaining decide to write 75

Ranabir Samaddar, ‘Fifty Years After Naxalbari, Popular Movements Still Have Lessons to learn’, The Wire, 6 March 2017. – https://thewire.in/politics/naxalbaricommunism-maoism (Last accessed on 2 April 2018).

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(for some have died by now), or undertake a collective enquiry (in the form of a history workshop) into the years when history was being made in Medinipur, we shall have a clearer idea of many of the remarkable aspects of the struggle. We shall once again ask as has been repeatedly asked of the organised movements of workers and peasants: What was the role of the outsiders? How did the peasants mobilise? When was the thin but crucial line between militant mass mobilisation and armed attacks by isolated groups crossed? What was the role of political leadership? How were the aspects of oppressed tribes and castes integrated as if ‘naturally’ in the struggle? And finally, how shall we bring out from complete loss of history the innumerable peasant heroes and heroines who made the struggle possible? Today, when one visits Debra or Gopiballavpur, the changed agrarian scenario will come to immediate notice, with lush green fields of rice, jute, and vegetables, increased availability of water for irrigation, rural roads, and bridges. Kansabati in Debra and Subarnarekha in Gopiballavpur will no longer seem so wild and inaccessible. Yet landless agrarian labour has increased, so has increased the number of middlemen. The jotedars who were mostly Congress supporters were replaced through long years of Left rule by local party leaders, rich peasantry, traders and middlemen, and other commercial interest holders. But the fruits of the struggle were achieved in some ways – through limited land reforms, some security of tenure for the sharecroppers, access to food by the peasants in lean months, and schools in villages. At the same time peasant distress has remained. Traders roam the areas with puffed feathers. In this milieu what has happened to the dream of peasant political power that had galvanised thousands fifty years ago?

eight CHAPTER

The Prairie Fire Spreads II Birbhum Atig Ghosh

Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living. And just when they seem engaged in revolutionising themselves and things, in creating something that never yet existed, precisely in such periods of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service and borrow from them names, battle-cries and costumes in order to present the new scene of world-history in this time-honoured disguise and this borrowed language. – Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)

INTRODUCTION

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he so-called Left bastion in West Bengal which survived almost unchallenged till 2011was not built in a day or by one spontaneous moment of popular revolutionary upsurge. Decades of dedicated mobilisation by Left parties laid the groundwork on which the Left citadel was built. Also, the radical period of revolutionary republicanism, the Naxal years, was not a pure moment of radical spontaneity as if with no historical forward or backward linkages. The present chapter, in focussing on the district of Birbhum, tries to make a case for subterranean material networks of continuity.

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This is not to debunk the idea of Naxalbari as a pure moment, but to insist on a more integrated understanding of the movement even while acknowledging the ‘excess’, so to speak, that marks out in popular memory the revolutionary moment as unique. The chapter also tries to theorize this ‘excess’, to understand what it really meant in material terms. In taking up the case of a district of West Bengal the chapter tries to historically understand how ideologies travel. To elaborate, it tries to make sense of what happens to an ideology – in this case the ideology of Naxalbari – when it travels across disparate geographies and to different socio-economic contexts. How do regional specificities morph and adapt these ideologies to suit their own conditions? Can they or do they at all? What happens to radical republicanism when it is thrust upon the thickets of the polymorphous mofussil? That is, is the programme of annihilation of class enemy, say, equally easy to carry out in the anonymous metropolis and a socially close-knit mofussil? Finally, the chapter reflects on the idea of revolutionary terror and state-sponsored counter-terror. Viewed through this optic, what occurred during the Naxalbari uprising is somewhat central to this chapter’s argument. Was the attempted revolution something of a mistake? What the revolutionaries of 1967 intended, in other words, is not what came out of the attempted revolution and this was so because at its heart was a process of dérapage?1 The revolution was ‘blown off course’ by a series of factors, of which terror as extermination and the leadership’s reluctance or failure to build grassroots organization to counteract statist counter-terror when it was unleashed were critically important. The truth is that the terror developed logic of its own, threatening or punishing people not for what they did but for what they were or represented. This is why the category of ‘suspect’ was at its heart. Moreover, it was a system that perpetuated itself. Once installed, it operated not just as a system of arbitrary and absolute castigatory power but as 1

François Furet and Denis Richet use this idea for the French Revolution of 1789, in The French Revolution, trans. Stephen Hardman (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1970).

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something that could not be stopped or even slowed down. Rather the pace of its operation accelerated, in the end engulfing most of the revolutionaries themselves by way of creating the ground for state-sponsored counter-terror to operate with some degree of legitimacy. Terror ensured that beyond a point the people at large had become distanced from the goals of revolution. It is tempting to build general theories to explain the phenomenon. But we shall desist from such theorization and let the case of Birbhum speak for itself. We shall make no attempt to frame in some conclusive generalization the historical experience of Birbhum; we shall only try to indicate the multiform ways in which ideological imperatives realize themselves in operation on the ground.

BATTLEGROUND BIRBHUM The forest of Gonpur is about an hour’s drive from Muhammadbazaar in Birbhum along the NH14. Farther north of Gonpur—situated off the winding country-road that forks away from the National Highway and threads through the ancient, lichen-whiskered woods—is Damra, a village abutting Jharkhand, underdeveloped, and home to indigenous people in the main. Let us begin our narrative journey in this neck of the woods. June, 1949. Not two years had passed after the transfer of power and the partition of South Asia. A powerful peasants’ movement against the jotedars2 and moneylenders had come into existence in 2 The jotedars are generally identified as a class of ‘wealthy peasants’ in agrarian Bengal. This social stratum, which gained prominence during the colonial rule, owned relatively extensive tracts of land. Though many jotedars were upper-caste bhadralok, whose land-tenure status mostly stood in advantageous contrast to those of under-ryots and bargadars/ sharecroppers (who were landless or land-poor), they adopted the de jure status of ryot (peasant) solely for the financial benefits that the Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885 afforded to ryots. Though there is some controversy regarding the extent of the influence of this class, the exploitative nature of this class, where it existed, is seldom refuted. Cf. Ratnalekha & Rajat Kanta Ray, ‘Zamindars and Jotedars: A Study in Rural Politics in Bengal’, Modern Asian Studies, Volume 9 (1), 1975, pp. 81–102 and ‘The Dynamics of Continuum in Rural Bengal under the British Imperium’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, Volume 10 (2), 1973, pp. 103–28; for a qualification of their thesis, see: Sugata Bose, Peasant

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Damra under the leadership of charismatic Left organizers such as Dharani Roy, Deben Roy, Sourindra Mukherjee (Kumkum) and Turku Hansda. The indigenous people living in Damra, and some forty villages around it, were mainly agricultural workers. Unsurprisingly, the exploitation of the jotedar-moneylender combine here was considerable; as such, a struggle for better wages, tebhaga rights to the harvest,3 and against the extortions of the moneylenders had gained momentum and, in fact, a boycott movement against the jotedars had started in the area. The organizational ability and efficiency of the leadership were apparent; the people in general too were responding enthusiastically. The jotedar-moneylender combine, therefore, had ample reason to be alarmed and they lashed back. On 24 June 1949, jotedar Sarojaksha Ghosal lodged a diary with the Muhammadbazaar Police Station levelling false allegations against Deben Roy, Sourindra Mukherjee (Kumkum) and others. Among the false charges were those of robbery, physical assault and other crimes. On the basis of these charges a force comprising a Head Constable and six sepoys were sent; the force was accompanied by a member of the District Intelligence Branch (DIB) and a watcher. On 25 June, Ruhi Das, Dukhu Let, Golab Let and Baul Let were arrested from Damra. On the same day, the police surrounded and raided the house of Turku Hansda in Nimpahari and apprehended the peasant leaders Deben Roy and Saroj Kumar Hajra as well as the students’ leader Sourindra Mukherjee (Kumkum). They were taken to the police camp at Damra in a jeep. On the way, the police kicked Deben Roy and fractured his leg. The news of the arrest and police atrocity reached the surrounding villages quickly. Angry peasants, armed with bows, arrows and red flags gathered Labour and Colonial Capital; Rural Bengal since 1770 (The New Cambridge History of India, Vol III.2), (Cambridge: CUP, 1993); Nariaki Nakazato, Agrarian System in Eastern Bengal, c. 1870–1914 (Kolkata: KP Bagchi, 1994); Chitta Panda, The Decline of Bengal Zamindars: Midnapore 1870–1920 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996). 3 The demand of the tebhaga (sharing by thirds) rights to harvest was to reduce the landlord’s share from the existing half to one-third of the harvest. Asok Majumdar, The Tebhaga Movement: Politics of Peasant Protest in Bengal 1946–1950, Delhi: Aakar Books, 2011, p. 13.

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under Turku Hansda’s leadership and marched to the police camp demanding the immediate release of the arrested leaders. Terrified by this indignant demonstration of strength, the police barricaded themselves in Mukti Bhattacharyya’s house and from its top floor started firing at the assembly of protestors indiscriminately. The police fired 31 rounds, in the process killing Dashu Majhi, Kudno Majhi, Habol Let and Manik Let. Many more went missing or were seriously wounded. Mukti Let succumbed to his injuries later at the Benagaria Hospital. On the side of the assaulters, only one officer was injured – Constable Ramjas Pandey. From his chest, four bloody arrows were recovered as evidence.4 Memory of the Five Martyrs of Damra (panchshoheed) has become somewhat blurred in the history of the peasant movement in post-independence West Bengal. It is true that on 25 June every year ‘Damra Dibash’ is observed in some parts of Birbhum by the Krishak Sabha to commemorate the martyrs; but this is done, it seems, more to preserve ceremonial continuity than to draw any actual political inspiration from the observance. Yet, we may think of a comparable incident that took place almost two decades later in a village—not unlike Damra—in North Bengal on 25 May 1967. Most of us are familiar with the name of this village located near the Indo-Nepal border—Naxalbari. Probably we should not compare Naxalbari and Damra for a number of reasons, especially given the considerable gap of time that separates the two events. Nevertheless, if we were to imagine these two events as catalytic moments in the history of West Bengal’s peasant struggle, if we were to after all force a comparison between the two, citing the horizon of possibilities they helped open up, we would be surprised. The Krishak Sabha strongly criticized and protested the incident at Damra. After much back and forth over the incident at Damra, finally a temporary settlement was arrived at in the presence of the District Magistrate. The main conditions of the settlement were as follows: following the krishanprotha, after the harvest of seed crops, 1/3 would be received by the cultivator while the 4

Muhammad Selim, Sangramee Birbhum (trans. Militant Birbhum) (Suri, Birbhum: Dhusharmati Prakashana, 2005), pp. 21–27.

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jotedar would receive 2/3 of the share; if the cultivator employed a farm labourer within the period he was supposed to work the fields, then the labourer would have to be given wages (in cash or kind) in accordance with the shoiyaprotha; further, the cultivators would receive straw to thatch their huts. While declaring this award, Birbhum District Magistrate P.P.I. Vaidyanath additionally announced the plan to open another school in the neighbourhood. He gave further assurance that governmental support would be given to the peasants as well as the people of the area. Although Turku Hansda, Ashu Bauri and Abhilash Bauri were sentenced to imprisonment, the incident at Damra had succeeded in achieving many of its goals, even if only at a local level. However, the incident failed to have any significant impress on future peasant movements; it never became a guiding example for, say, future peasant militancy in the district or state, let alone the country.5 On the other hand, the deep impact of Naxalbari across space and over time is well-known. The moment of rural assertion in Naxalbari quickly amplified to encompass other villages, towns and cities, mainly through a dynamic network of youth and students’ politics. The revolutionary spirit engendered by Naxalbari flared up in Birbhum as well. So intense was the ‘eruption’ in Birbhum that Sumanta Banerjee has identified the district, along with DebraGopiballabhpur, as the third major flashpoint of the Naxalbari Movement. In the new ‘Introduction’ (2008) to his authoritative account, In the Wake of Naxalbari, Banerjee writes: Obituarists of the movement have always proved to be premature in their pronouncements. If the movement was declared contained and “crushed” in one part of the country, it soon erupted in another, sometimes a very unexpected corner of the country. Naxalbari was followed by Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh; Srikakulam by 5 For short biographies of the people mentioned here (and afterwards), see Arun Chowdhury, Birbhum Jelar Communist Andolan: Gathan o Byaktitta (trans. The Communist Movement of Birbhum District: Organisation and Personalities) (Kolkata: National Book Agency Pvt. Ltd., 2014); also enormously relevant Bharat Jyoti Roychowdhury, Satchallish theke Sottar ebang Aage Pare (trans. From 1947 to 1970 and Before and After) (Kolkata: Punashcha, 2011).

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Debra-Gopiballabhpur and Birbhum in West Bengal; the latter by Bhojpur, Jehanabad and Aurangabad in Bihar, and then again in Malkangiri in Orissa, Dandakaranya in Chhattisgarh, and Palamau in Jharkhand …6

As many activists of the time fondly remember Birbhum of 1971, ‘When the others were fizzling out, Birbhum flared up’.7 Now, what explains the pervasive nature of the revolutionary mood during 1967–71? Put another way, why was the impact of Damra limited, even local, while the fire of Naxalbari could easily leap from village to village, town to town, city to city—from house to house, as it were? Various analyses and commentaries have stressed the role of ideology which putatively gave birth to a pure, novel, revolutionary zeitgeist, so to speak, that came to frame and drive the spontaneous mood of 1967–71.8 One could probably identify Charu Mazumdar as the fount of this line of thought.9 And it is true that his thesis cannot be roundly rejected. But, as the epigraph to this piece suggests, all events in history, even revolutionary ones, are convergences of historical processes; and the Naxalbari Movement was not an exception. It is not to suggest of course that Naxalbari, as a moment and movement, 6 Sumanta Banerjee, ‘Introduction’ to In the Wake of Naxalbari: Four Decades of a Simmering Revolution (Kolkata, Sahitya Samsad, 2008, first published 1980), p. viii. 7 Ranabir Samaddar, in conversation with Atig Ghosh: ‘Bakira jakhon hnapiye porchhe, takhon jhnapiye porlo Birbhum’. Sailen Mishra too made the same statement. 8 See, for example, Rabindra Ray, The Naxalites and their Ideology (1988, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992). 9 See Charu Mazumdar’s historic Eight Documents, promulgated between 28 January 1965 (First Document) and c. 1966 (Eighth Document); see, in particular, the Third Document: ‘What is the Source of the Spontaneous Revolutionary Outburst in India?’ (9 April 1965); all accessible at People’s March, Historic Documents – Charu Mazumdar, https://ajadhind.wordpress.com/historic-documents-charu-mazumdar/ As Souren Bose has observed, ‘Charu Mazumdar had drafted his political thinking distinctly and as a continuous journey through the Second to the Fifth Document. These documents did bring forward definite political and organizational programs, which served as the pivot for the Naxalbari peasant struggle as well as the formation of the CPI (ML).’ Souren Bose, Charu Mazumdarer Katha, (Kolkata: People’s Book Society, 1989), p. 86.

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possessed no spontaneity, originality, and in that sense purity, beyond a combinatorial convergence of historical processes. It was not certainly a mere sum of the foregoing political processes; but, at the same time, if we were to understand the contours of this widespread revolutionary upheaval, we probably should not entirely ignore these anterior developments and their genealogy. But before we embark on our narrative, we should pause for a moment and acknowledge debt to the people of Birbhum who have, over the years, enthusiastically researched their history and left behind a rich trail of accounts and analyses. This chapter heavily borrows from their works.

BIRBHUM 1947–66: ‘BEATEN MAN, WHO SHALL AVENGE YOU?’10 After the formation of the Communist Party in Birbhum in 1938, the expansion of its organization was accompanied by the establishment of mass organizations for peasants, workers, students and so on. Between 1938 and 1942, the people who dedicated themselves to building up these organizations were mainly former nationalist revolutionaries. They were at that time returning from the British jails. Many of them belonged directly to the Jugantar Group (such as Prabhat Kusum Ghosh of the Bhalash village); some others had been indirectly associated with the Group, such as Dwarik Banerjee of Sainthia. From outside the Jugantar Group, too, came able organizers like Kalipada Bashistha and Suren Banerjee. Some of the organizers came from the Anushilan Group, such as Baidyanath Chakrabarti of the Phintor village of Labpur. From the Congress’s Non-Cooperation Movement came people like Sudhindra Kumar Roy of Nagari.11 We do not have the scope here to present a detailed 10

From Bertolt Brecht, ‘All of Us or None’ (From Svenborger Gedichte), trans. Hoffman Reynolds Hays, in Poetry: A Magazine in Verse, Vol. LXVII, No. III, December 1945, p. 140. 11 Jugantar and Anushilan Samiti were two related organizations active in colonial Bengal in the early twentieth century, which is the guise of suburban and urban fitness clubs, propounded revolutionary violence as the means for ending British rule in India. For a synoptic outline of revolutionary activity in British

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account of this process. However, even though these organizations developed under the umbrella of the same party, it should be mentioned that at least the students’ organization and the peasants’ organization followed more or less parallel trajectories till the middle of the 1960s, though they met at times.12 We will explore this feature in the next section.

Peasant Movement, 1947–66 The demonstration in Damra on 25 June 1949, and the memory of the Five Martyrs indicate a burgeoning peasant organization in Birbhum from a time before independence. The work of building this organization had started with the return of the revolutionary freedom fighters to Birbhum from British jails. This is a complex story. In simplified terms, it may be said that these revolutionaries enlisted with mainly two groups: one section joined Saumyendranath Tagore’s Communist League of India (which later came to be known as Revolutionary Communist Party of India); the other section predictably joined the Communist Party of India (CPI). Both these parties had the same objective before them, i.e. to build a powerful organization among peasants. As such, competition between them became inevitable. After a period of cold war, so to speak, this bitter rivalry came out in the open in 1938 when two competing Birbhum District Krishak Samitis were formed. One was formed under the leadership of Saumyendranath Tagore, and the other under the stewardship of Bankim Mukherjee and Niharendu Dutta Mazumdar. Saumyendranath organized the first Birbhum District Peasants’ Convention at Dubarajpur on 19 April 1938.13 Two days after this, a parallel District Peasants’ Convention was organized Bengal, see: Peter Heehs, ‘Revolutionary Terrorism in British Bengal’, in Elleke Boehmer & Stephen Morton, (eds.)., Terror and the Postcolonial (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). 12 For details, see Muhammad Selim, Sangramee Birbhum; for a longer history, see Durga Banerjee, Swadhinata, Samajtantra o Ganatantrer Sangramey Birbhum (trans. Birbhum in the Struggle for Independence, Socialism and Democracy) (Sainthia, Birbhum: published by Tanushree Banerjee, 1999). 13 Birbhum Barta, 4 Baishakh, 1344 (Bengali calendar); Archives of the Department of History, Visva Bharati.

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at the Langalhata village of Labpur on 22–23 April under the aegis of the CPI, though it was also attended by Congress leaders like Sarat Mukherjee, Mihirlal Chattopadhyay, Kamadakinkar Mukhopadhyay and others.14 On 23 April, Sibdas Banerjee presided over the event and Shamsul Hoda hoisted a red flag bearing the hammer and sickle.15 The differences became apparent now. In 1939, the third Peasants’ Convention was organized in Nanoor. Abdul Halim, in a letter to the editor of Dhushar Mati (Ashen Soil) dated 8 January 1966, dubbed this Convention as the first Birbhum District Peasants’ Convention.16 His contention, which ignores the first two conventions, has been subsequently supported by the official stands of the CPI and later the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI [M]) through untenable arguments.17 The real reason for this unsustainable party line, however, cannot elude the discerning lector. Be it as it may, there is no controversy regarding the ‘second’ District Peasants’ Convention which was held in Mallarpur on 11 May 1940.18 Subsequently, the third, fourth, fifth and sixth Conventions were held in 26–27 May 1942 (Chandpur), 1944 (Rajnagar), 1945 (Deriapur Thana area of Sainthia) and 8 June 1946 (Ahmadpur) respectively. We cannot get into details of these peasants’ conventions. However, it should be mentioned that the DIB files report with increasing anxiety the growing number of popular participation in these conventions as well as the intensifying militancy of the leadership. As such, the Damra incident in 1949, which happened after independence, does not stand out as a unique moment but must be understood as part of an evolving militant trend among peasant leaders and organizations. This is supported by the figures presented by Muhammad Selim in his book: the membership 14 Anil Biswas, ed., Banglar Communist Andolan: Dalil o Prasangkik Tathya [The Communist Movement in Bengal: Records and Relevant Facts], Volume 4 (Kolkata: National Book Agency), 2002, p. 231. 15 District Intelligence Branch Office (DIBO), File No. 55/1937. 16 Cited in Arun Chowdhury & Ashok Bandyopadhyay, (eds.)., Jibaner Sangramey Comrade Abdul Halim (trans. Comrade Halim and his Revolutionary Life). 17 See, Durga Banerjee, Swadhinata, Samajtantra, pp. 34–35; also, Anil Biswas, (ed.)., Banglar Communist Andolan, Vol. 4, p. 232. 18 DIBO, File No. 55/1937.

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of the Birbhum Krishak Sabha grew from 4000 in 1942–43 to 9000 in 1954–55; in 1955–56 it swelled to 10,909; by 1966–67 the Krishak Sabha prided of membership of 21,147 peasants.19 One year after independence, in 1948, the Nehru government declared the Communist Party illegal, probably in order to break the back of the intensifying Left movements. But, the measure could not stem the tide. The Tebhaga Movement as well as other militant peasant movements which took place from 1946 to 1949 bear testimony to this. In Labpur, Sainthia, and Mayureshwar Thana (police station) areas of Birbhum a powerful movement articulated itself during this period, demanding tebhaga rights and opposing the oppression of the zamindar-moneylender nexus. After independence, the police became active to violently quash these peasant movements; the state’s executive arm, predictably, was actively aided by the private armies of the zamindars and jotedars. As a result, Subal Mardi, a tribal youth, was murdered at Goraipur village of Sainthia Thana; we have already heard the saga of Damra’s five martyrs. There are numerous such incidents of murderous state action that are still alive in the popular memory of Birbhum. One may recall the story of Jadu Soren and Anath Lohar of Muhammadbazaar; or that of Shashthi Let of Mayureshwar Thana.20 The stories of these militant peasants, and the terrible death they were dealt by the state-landlord combination, have been quietly pushed out of institutionalized history of the Left, possibly because all these peasants were dalits. Among the important movements of the 1950s were the huge demonstrations held against the hardship caused by increased Canal Tax and compulsory levies and the movement demanding relief for flood-affected people in the villages. In 1959, different corners of the district witnessed agitations, meetings and civil disobedience demanding food, as part of the state-wide food movement. Peasant leaders Turku Hansda and Deben Roy gave leadership to a mass rally and civil disobedience at Suri, the district headquarter.21 19 20 21

Muhammad Selim, Sangramee Birbhum, p. 20. Muhammad Selim, Sangramee Birbhum, p. 31–32. Ibid., p. 32.

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Hundreds of demonstrators were arrested by the administration. It was the same year, when Bidhan Chandra Roy’s police opened fire on 31 August, on hundreds of protestors gathered on the roads of Calcutta demanding right to food, thereby killing at least 80 people.22 In Birbhum rallies were organized to protest against this act of police barbarism. The decade of the 60s opened with the Sino-Indian Border Conflict of 1962. Taking advantage of the situation, the state stirred up a brand of virulent nationalism usually fomented during the times of international conflict and unleashed a policy of suppression of Left movement. Arrests and repression of Left activists became the order of the day. To compound the crisis, the USSR-China debate and eventual parting of ways had its direct effect on the CPI, which split in 1964 and the ‘pro-China’ CPI (M) was formed.23 Possibly because of the split in the Left ranks the peasant movement had somewhat lost its intensity in the first half of the 1960s. It would regain its strength once more, riding on the back of the Food Movement of 1966.

Students’ Movement, 1947–66 In 1942, the ‘Soviet Suhrid o Fascibad Birodhi Sangathan’ (Friends of the Soviet and Anti-Fascism Organisation) was formed. On 7–8 July of the same year, this organisation called a delegates’ convention and a public meeting in Suri. The chief speakers at the convention were Jyoti Basu and the Muslim League leader Chowdhury Shamsul Hoda. Among the other speakers were Manoranjan Dutta of the Communist League of India, Hemchandra Mukhopadhyay of the Hindu Mahasabha, and Pradyot Roychowdhury, one of the revolutionaries convicted in the Birbhum Conspiracy Case of 1934 who had returned to the district after having served his prison term 22

Chapter 4 of this book; for greater details, Sibaji Pratim Basu, ‘The Chronicle of a Forgotten Movement: 1959 Food Movement Revisited’. – http://www.mcrg. ac.in/PP56.pdf (Accessed on 2 January 2018). 23 Pradip Basu, Towards Naxalbari (1953–67): An Account of Inner-Party Ideological Struggle (Kolkata: Progressive Publishers, 2000, pp. 51–54; also see, Lorenz M. Lüthi, The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2010).

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at the Andamans.24 At this time, the Students’ Federation had already been formed in Birbhum. Among the organizers of the convention there were Birbhum District Student Federation leaders like Narahari Dutta, Khayrul Bashar, and Atul Deb. The Muslim Students’ League was also present in the district. Their representatives too were among the organizers, namely Shah Ahmed, Aafi Mahmud and KalimSharafi (who was later arrested for participating in the Quit India Movement of 1942 and at present is a renowned Rabindrasangeet exponent in Bangladesh).25 From the beginning of the 1940s, it is possible to describe a growing trend of Communist students’ movement in Birbhum. We have already made the acquaintance of Prabhat Kusum Ghosh of Bhalash village. He and Saradish Roy of Suri had joined the Students’ Federation in Burdwan while studying there and had become members of the Communist Party in Birbhum in 1942. On their return to the district, they became active not only as workers of the Communist Party but also as organizers of the students’ front. By the mid-1940s, the Students’ Federation had been established in Suri, Rampurhat and Bolpur. From among the students, Byomkesh Roy of Rampurhat became a member of the Party in 1944 and Sourindra Mukherjee (Kumkum) – whom we have encountered at Damra – became a Party member in 1947. Sunil Sen of BolpurSriniketan, too, became a member of the Party in 1947. In the 1950s, he was put in charge of organizing students’ movement in Birbhum and in the mid-1950s he became the state secretary of the Students’ Federation. By 1951–52, a party unit had come into existence among the students and youth of Bolpur. At this time, Communist activist Ajit Sen, having lost his job with the Air Force, had returned to Bolpur as a low-ranking employee of the Bolpur Court. It was under his stewardship that a Party unit of students and youth was formed and its office was set up in Bolpur. Krishnapada Singharoy 24

Incidentally, Pradyot Roychowdhury was also the father of Bharat Jyoti Roychowdhury, Naxal leader of Birbhum in the 1960s-70s and the author of the memoir, Satchallish theke Sottar. The account of the development of the students’ movement in Birbhum is taken from this book (Bharat Jyoti Roychowdhury, Satchallish theke Sottar, pp. 441–48), unless otherwise indicated. 25 Anil Biswas, (ed.)., Banglar Communist Andolan, Vol. 4, p. 251.

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joined Bolpur College in 1953 and under his leadership the college’s Students’ Federation unit was formed. In 1952, Bolpur hosted the Party workers’ conference. Satish Chandra Pakrashi and Bhabani Sen attended the conference as representatives of the state leadership. In 1954, the district conference of the Students’ Federation was organized. Students from all over Birbhum came for this conference. The event was publicly presided over by the famous biographer of Rabindranath Tagore, Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadhyay. In 1955, a youth festival was organized in which Indira Devi Chaudhurani was the chief guest. In the same year the Australian General Secretary of the International Union of Students visited Bolpur and spoke to the students of Bolpur College. The college authorities gifted him a copy of Tagore’s Gitanjali and a handcrafted leather bag of Amar Kutir. In 1956, two members of the Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China – Zhou Enlai and Zhou De – came to Santiniketan. Thousands of people along with the Left parties of Birbhum, the Communist Party and the Students’ Federation came to felicitate them. Hundreds of students raised welcome banners written in Chinese. In this way, Bolpur evolved into the nerve-centre of the Communist students’ movement in the district in the 1950s. A number of female students too were at the forefront of this movement: one recalls the names of Pratibha Mukherjee, Mamata Chatterjee and others in this connection. The Suri Vidyasagar College was established as a branch of the Vidyasagar College in Calcutta in 1942. Tejarat Hossain got admitted to this college in 1951. As we have already noted, the Communist Party had put Sunil Sen in charge of the district’s students’ organization in 1947–48. In 1948, Hossein was a student of Class VIII at the Suri Benimadhab Institution, a resident of Dangalpara and an active participant in the parades and physicaltraining programmes of the Nirmal Bhai-Bon Sangha (Immaculate Brothers and Sisters Association). It was in this year that Hossein first came under the influence of Binay Banerjee, a follower of Sunil Sen and a member of staff at Suri’s chief dispensary. The burning issue for students in those days was the shortage of paper and kerosene. Hossein’s entry into the Communist movement started with activism on this issue. He held pickets outside the school

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and is known to have shattered, by throwing stones, the pane of Gandhi’s photograph which hung in the school’s common room. While in school, Hossein joined the Students’ Federation. In 1951, he joined the Suri Vidyasagar College to study the Intermediate level. In 1951–52, he became the secretary of the District Students’ Federation and almost immediately became member of the Birbhum District Communist Party. At a time, Hossein was involved in the students’ organization, the bidi union and the rickshaw union. As such, predictably, education was not a priority. While Hossein was a student at Suri Vidyasagar, Mani Chakrabarti joined the college to teach Sanskrit. Chakrabarti dedicated himself to building Party organisation in the villages through spreading the message of Marxism. Tejarat Hossein had some college mates, who later on to became renowned personalities, such as Pranab Mukherjee, the 13th President of India, and the internationally-acclaimed footballer PK (Pradip Kumar Banerjee). Meanwhile the Communist Party of India became legal once more in 1952, and district leaders like Saradish Roy, Suren Banerjee and others were released from jail. On his return to Birbhum, Suren Banerjee became the district secretary and started residing at the party office. As we know, Hossein was a student of Suri Vidyasagar at this time. He was then the joint secretary of the college union. In 1954, Hossein was expelled from the college. After failing to get admitted to a number of colleges, he finally got into Bolpur College in 1955. Manik Chattoraj too joined Bolpur College in the same year and soon the famous ‘Tejarat-Manik’ duo was formed. In 1956, Hossein was elected the general secretary of the college union in a direct election. And finally, he decided to concentrate on his studies. His efforts bore fruit – both Hossein and Chattoraj cleared their Intermediate finals successfully in 1957.By this time, Krishnapada Singharoy, having passed out of Bolpur College in 1955, had joined the BA programme of Visva Bharati. There was a Students’ Federation unit in Santiniketan at this time, but there was no formal organization. Students of all stripes were part of the Chhatra Sammilani (students’ union) then. Sunil Sen was still at the Cheena-Bhavana. Biprendu Chakrabarti and Vikraman Nayar were members of the Students’ Federation unit and they were joined

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by Debabrata Roy from Hetampur. Vidyasekhar and Ishwarmurti from Sri Lanka were also members. They dedicated themselves to the popularization of Marxism, holding political debates and discussions, sale of Communist journals and magazines, and so on. Around 40–45 copies of New Age were sold at Visva Bharati. At the district convention of the Students’ Federation of 1954, Tejarat Hossein became the district secretary and Krishnapada Singharoy, the joint secretary. Both of them were from Bolpur. Before the ‘Tejarat-Manik’ duo came to Bolpur, Krishnapada Singharoy had already created a textbook bank, ran a night school in a poor locality, and sold copies of the SF mouthpiece Chhatra Abhijan and other Communist journals and magazines in Bolpur. He also occasionally organized the screening of various Soviet films. With the coming of Tejarat-Manik, these activities were further expanded to a movement demanding the construction of new hostels. To fight the problem of inadequate hostel facilities, Tejarat Hossein and his comrades rented a house on behalf of the SF to run an unofficial hostel. The doors of this hostel – which was appropriately named ‘Cosmopolitan Hostel’ – were open to all, irrespective of religion or caste. The Students Health Home Movement too started under the leadership of Hossein. Meanwhile from the early 1940s, Saumyendranath Tagore’s RCPI had become influential in the Hetampur-Dubarajpur area under the leadership of Amulya Chatterjee and Nepal Majumdar. In the 1950s it had been nourished by student leaders like Subal Rajak, Mahadev Bauri, the poet Ashananda Chattoraj. In the early 1940s, Kalim Sharafi was a student here. In the mid-1950s, Debabrata Roy took the active initiative of building a students’ organization in these parts. As we have noted, he, however, soon moved to Bolpur. In the mid-1950s, Niranjan Sengupta, a sympathizer of the RCPI, was a professor at Hetampur College. He had considerable influence over the students. However, when Tejarat-Manik came to Hetampur College in 1957, they forged a powerful Student Federation organization there with the active help of Kanan Dutta Mudi and Anil Acharya. Tejarat-Manik, however, did not confine themselves to students’ politics alone while in Hetampur; they got actively involved in the Bidi Mazdoor Union and joined the bidi

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workers movement centred on Islampur. The radicalism of Tejarat and Manik finally proved too much for college authorities, who barred them from appearing in the examinations. Hossein returned to Bolpur while Chattoraj travelled to Calcutta to get admission to Scottish Church College. The famous duo finally parted ways. With the coming of the 1960s, there was a phase of inactivity. Tejarat Hossein was arrested from a gathering in Muhammadbazaar during the Food Movement of 1959. Bolpur, too, witnessed political processions. Krishnapada Singharoy and others built a Shaheed Bedi (Martyrs’ Memorial) on the night of 31 August 1959 itself in the Dakbungalow Grounds of Bolpur. Singharoy completed his Master’s degree in 1960 and ceased to be a student. By then, Tejarat Hossein had moved to Calcutta to do his MA after his release from jail. Sunil Sen had moved to Germany; Ajit Sen to Calcutta. The SF unit was still there in Bolpur College (led by Joy Chattopadhyay, Bibhudan Mukherjee, and others), but Krishnapada Singharoy had by then become somewhat detached after getting a job in a school at Purandarpur in 1962. In 1962, Dhushar Mati, the mouthpiece of the district CPI, was first published under the editorship of Sharadish Roy. Tejarat Hossein was the publisher. From 1963, he played an important role in organising intra-Party debates and was crucial in the formation of the CPI (M) in 1964. Hossein was arrested in 1965 and in 1966 his ties with the Communist movement of Birbhum ended. However, Hossein would again be prominent in the Birbhum of the late 1960s as the CPI (M) leader who extended his support to the Naxal revolutionaries of the district. This we will see in the next section. The stasis ended with the Food Movement of 1966.26 From this time, we observe that the two apparently parallel streams of politics begin to merge. In Bolpur, a massive joint rally of peasants and students was organized. Krishnapada Singharoy was arrested from this gathering – and still as a student leader, after so many years. All the students of Bolpur College and schools boycotted 26 For an account of this movement see, Chapter 4 of this book; for the significance of issues of food in popular politics, Sibaji Pratim Basu & Geetisha Dasgupta, (eds.)., Politics in Hunger-Regime: Essays on the Right to Food in West Bengal (Kolkata: Frontpage, 2011).

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class and led a procession to the Bolpur Court. Peasant processions from the nearby villages like Sattor, Bishnukhanda came and joined this gathering. The police lathi-charged (baton-charged) and the students got into a mêlée with the force.27 In other parts of Birbhum, too, the broad scene of clash between the students and peasants, on the one hand, and the police, on the other, is similar. Everywhere indiscriminate arrests became common. The Food Movement of 1966 marked the beginning of the end of the broad separation of students’ and peasants’ movements in Birbhum. Even as the two powerful streams of popular politics commingled, Birbhum was hurtling into 1967, the year of the spring thunder over India and the emergence of the revolutionary mood. From thence opened the road to the unforgettable Birbhum 1970–71. In a bit of a poetic mood one can say of the situation when these two streams of popular movement came together: ‘Thence we came forth to rebehold [sic] the stars.’28

BIRBHUM 1967–71: ‘WE’LL WASH THE WORLD WITH A SECOND DELUGE...’29 As everyone knows, the peasant movement in Naxalbari was not the result of student and youth politics in West Bengal. It was an outcome of the tireless political mobilization by Left activists and organizers ‘of the poor peasantry who were mostly from the Rajbansi scheduled caste and the Santal and Oraon scheduled tribes’ throughout the decades of the 50s and 60s.30 This is clear from the 27

Bharat Jyoti Roychowdhury, Satchallish theke Sottar, pp. 387–94; Also see, Anil Acharya, (ed.)., Sattar Dashak, Vol. III, Shaat-Shattarer Chhatra Andolan (trans. The 1970s, Vol. III, Students’ Movement in the 60s & 70s), Anustup: Kolkata, 2012 (expanded third edition), particularly the chapters by Asim Chattopadhyay, Saibal Mitra and Ranabir Samaddar 28 Dante Alighieri, Canto XXXIV of Vol. I ‘Inferno’, The Divine Comedy, translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1867), p. 112. 29 Vladimir Mayakovsky, ‘Our March’ (composed in 1917) in Poems, translated by Dorian Rottenberg (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1972). 30 Debal K. Singharoy, Peasants’ Movements in Post-Colonial India: Dynamics of Mobilisation and Identity (New Delhi: Sage, 2004), p. 84.

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account of Khokon Majumdar.31 Kanu Sanyal, Kadam Mullick, Khudan Mullick, Keshab Sarkar, Panchanan Sarkar, Jangal Saontal, Jogen Mukherjee, Kanti Kalita (rail worker), Mujibur Rahman, Babulal, Raghunath, Ropna Rajgod, Manilal Singh, Punjab Rao and Khokon Majumdar himself – ‘all of them had got involved in the Terai peasants’ movement’ by early fifties of the last century.32 Charu Mazumdar and Souren Bose came from the Tebhaga Movement of 1946.33 This peasants’ movement and the movement of tea-plantation labourers had from the very beginning chosen the path of armed resistance against the jotedars and planters.34 The original torchbearers of the Naxalbari Movement were these battle-scarred leaders. In the previous section we had the opportunity to look at the broad contours of this development in Birbhum also, where militant peasant movement had burgeoned over the decades of the 40s, 50s and 60s. But, when the strong northerlies from Naxalbari hit the southern plains, it was not the peasants but the students and youth of Birbhum who first enthusiastically took on the mantle of espousing the revolutionary mandate. The leadership of the Naxalbari Movement in Birbhum emerged from among the students and youth, and it was under their direction that the war against state-power assumed a revolutionary character in Birbhum in 1967–71. Bharat Jyoti Roychowdhury has argued that it was solely a particular section of students and youth – ‘who had no direct link with the history of Left political mobilisation in Birbhum before 1967’ – that accounted for the adoption and expansion of the Naxalbari Movement in the district.35 His contention has been supported by Sailen Mishra in his recent book Naxal Andolan: Manusher Bhumika (The Naxalbari Movement: Role of the 31 Khokon Majumdar, Bharater Buke Basanter Bajranirghosh (Siliguri: published by Narayan Chandra Roy, 2004). 32 Ibid., p. 30. 33 Sumanta Banerjee, In the Wake of Naxalbari, p. 21; also see, Arindam Sen, ‘The Movement-Party Dialectic: Tebhaga-Telangana to Naxalbari-CPI (M-L)’ in Economic and Political Weekly,Volume 52 (21), 27 May 2017. 34 Debal K. Singharoy, Peasants’ Movements, p. 84. 35 Bharat Jyoti Roychowdhury, Satchallish theke Sottar, p. 440.

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People).36 It is true that the political ideology of the Naxalbari uprising had very little impact on the traditional Communist leadership in Birbhum. Apart from Tejarat Hossein’s ‘sympathetic support’, no other leader was drawn to the movement. Though some initial sympathy was expressed by sections of the district leadership, it never evolved into anything more strident.37Many of the youth and student leaders of the Naxalbari Movement in Birbhum had learnt their first lessons of Marxism from the Left leaders of the preceding generation. These trailblazers, so to speak, were often family members, family friends, teachers and even seniors in schools and colleges, and many of them had already begun to express their doubt and disillusionment about the efficacy of what they thought to be the moderate, if not compromised, politics of the official Communist Parties, the CPI and the CPI (M) alike. Examples of such figures are sprinkled across the pages of Bharat Jyoti Roychowdhury’s book itself. This book, which is a remarkable combination of reminiscence and history, tells us of the people who visited Roychowdhury’s childhood home – among them were Kanak Mukherjee (née Dasgupta), founder of the All India Democratic Women’s Association; Amulya Sen, founder of the Dakshin Desh Group which later became the Maoist Communist Centre in 1969; Sushital Roy Chowdhury, a leading light of the CPI (M-L); to name a few.38 Roychowdhury’s father, Pradyot Roychowdhury (Sagar), and maternal uncle, Prabhat Kusum Ghosh (Khoka), were themselves ex-revolutionaries who embraced Communism and remained committed Communist Party workers till the end of their lives.39 These people not only inspired the younger generation to explore more militant alternatives, but, as in the case of Amulya Sen or Sushital Roy Chowdhury, in fact, led by example.40 36

Sailen Mishra, Naxal Andolan: Manusher Bhumika (Kolkata: Gangchil, 2017), pp. 16–17. 37 Bharat Jyoti Roychowdhury, Satchallish theke Sottar, p. 440. 38 Ibid., p. 38. 39 Ibid., in passim. 40 Pradip Basu, Towards Naxalbari (1953–67), p. 7; also, Arun Srivastava, Maoism in India, (New Delhi: Prabhat Prakashan, 2015), p. 80.

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In Calcutta, the Naxalbari O Krishak Sangram Sahayak Samiti (NKSSS; Naxalbari and Peasant Struggle Assistance Committee) was formed under the leadership of Sushital Roy Chowdhury, then of the CPI(M).41 In May 1968, on the eve of the first anniversary of the Naxalbari uprising the All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries (AICCCR) was founded with and Sushital Roy Chowdhury as its convenor. On 11 November 1967, the first issue of Liberation came out under the editorship of Suniti Kumar Ghosh. In Bengali, Deshabrati (can be loosely translated as The Patriot) started being published. Soon, the sale of Liberation touched 2,500 and that of Deshabrati, 40,000. In the meantime, the fire of the Naxalbari Movement had spread across the country reaching places like Srikakulam district of north Andhra Pradesh, where it assumed formidable intensity. On 1 May 1969, Kanu Sanyal formally declared the foundation of the CPI (M-L) at the base of the Monument in Calcutta. By mid-1969, the paramilitary forces of the state were brought in to carry out widespread arrests and detentions in the ‘disturbed’ areas. Immediately, the leadership of the CPI (M-L) was pushed underground and from there they carried on their organisational work. In 1970, the offices of the Liberation and Deshabrati were raided and from then on started the full-fledged government campaign to root out revolutionary activities. On 15–16 May 1970, the ‘Eighth’ Congress of the CPI (M-L) was held on the first floor of a house in the Rail Colony of Garden Reach in Calcutta (in continuance with the Seventh Congress of the CPI [M]). In step with the activity at the national and state levels, the work of building the organization was also taking place in Birbhum. Within a few days of the formation of the Coordination Committee, the revolutionaries of Birbhum formed a district committee of the AICCCR and Dipankar Roy was made its Secretary. When the CPI(M-L) was formed, its district committee was formed in Birbhum. 41 The following account has been taken from Bappaditya Paul, The First Naxal, pp. 133–64; Arun Mukherjee, Maoist “Spring Thunder”: The Naxalite Movement, 1967–1972, KP Bagchi & Co.: Kolkata, 2007; and Mallarika Sinha Roy, Gender and Radical Politics in India: Magic Moments of Naxalbari, 1967–1975 (London: Routledge, 2011), unless indicated otherwise.

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Sushanta Banerjee was the first district secretary. It is interesting to note here that many Communist revolutionaries of Birbhum, as elsewhere, were uncertain about accepting Charu Mazumdar as their ‘supreme leader’ straight away and uncritically – Bharat Jyoti Roychowdhury was one of them. But keeping in mind the greater interests of the movement they accepted this doctrine and joined the CPI (M-L) district committee. There was a parallel Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries in Birbhum in this period which was not a part of the AICCCR. In 1970, the leaders of this parallel Coordination Committee too joined the CPI(M-L). The stage for the emergence of the historic movement of Birbhum was thus set.42 After the formation of the CPI (M-L) in Birbhum, people from all rungs of the society, particularly the youth and students, began mobilizing around the Party. Sailen Mishra tells us that a few days later a regional committee was formed for Birbhum-Santhal Paraganas-Murshidabad. Shyamsundar Bose was the secretary of this committee.43 The activists spread out to district towns and villages to propagate the ideological programme of the Party. They started taking revolutionary politics to the masses successfully through small meetings and the public distribution of Party literature. It was against this background of an emergent revolutionary consciousness that the main act of the Naxalbari struggle was inaugurated in Birbhum. We know this as the khatam rajniti (politics of annihilation of class enemies) of Charu Mazumdar.44 This brand of politics did not go uncontested within the Party. Sushital Roy Chowdhury, writing under the pseudonym of Purno, published a document expressing his strong reservations against some aspects of this brand of politics.45 The document reached the comrades of Birbhum, but, by then the doctrine of supreme leadership of Charu Mazumdar had been firmly established in the Party Congress and the ‘line’ of 42

Sailen Mishra, Naxal Andolan, p. 17. Ibid. 44 Sumanta Banerjee, ‘Annihilation of Class Enemies’: CPI (M-L) Tactics at Critical Point’, Economic and Political Weekly, Volume 5 (35), 29 August 1970, pp. 1449–452. 45 Jagadish Chandra Johari, Naxalite Politics in India, (New Delhi: Institute of Constitutional and Parliamentary Studies, 1972), p. 76. 43

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khatam rajniti had struck deep roots. This ‘line’ must have seemed more radical and, for that reason, appealing to the relatively young leadership of the district. The profound influence of this politics, along with the passion which drove it, meant that Comrade Purno’s arguments fell on deaf ears. Similarly, when in July 1970, Comrade Satyanarayan Singh rejected Mazumdar’s policy of annihilation as ‘individual terrorism’;46 he was branded a revisionist and an advocate of the rich peasants. Thus, khatam prevailed.47 A people’s liberation army was never formed in Birbhum. But, guerrilla squads, armed with guns and rifles, held marches in the villages and towns. And the revolutionary masses took part in these marches. Mobile squads were engaged in snatching fire arms. Jotedars and moneylenders were judged in revolutionary courts and punished. Lands of jotedars were grabbed and redistributed among the people. The extent of the spread of, and the popular support for, any movement is most effectively known from the data of the successful implementation of its programme. If we study the data carefully we get a fuller understanding of its work and impact on the ground. Such data for Birbhum 1970–71 has been painstakingly collected and collated by Bharat Jyoti Roychowdhury in his book.48 From his lists, we get the names of the persons who were killed by the cadre of the CPI (M-L) during the annihilation programme. We also get the dates of their murder and the sites where they were murdered. We also find the details of the arsons committed by the Party in various parts of Birbhum; list of the various incidents of ammunition snatching from the police and the armed forces. On the other hand, we get the names of at least 55 people who were murdered by the police, or with the help of the police, as suspected 46 Manoranjan Mohanty, Revolutionary Violence: A Study of the Maoist Movement in India (New Delhi: Sterling: 1977), p. 121. Initially, Singh supported Mazumdar’s ‘line’ of annihilation of class enemies and implemented it to some extent in Musahari and other areas of Bihar. By 1970, however, he had changed his opinion. See, Biplab Dasgupta, The Naxalite Movement (New Delhi: Allied Publishers, 1974), p. 153. 47 For a fuller discussion, see Biplab Dasgupta, ‘Naxalite Armed Struggles and the Annihilation Campaign in Rural Areas’, Economic and Political Weekly, Volume 8 (4), 6 February 1973, pp. 173–88. 48 Bharat Jyoti Roychowdhury, Satchallish theke Sottar, pp. 592–601, 663–77.

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Naxals. Furthermore, there are the accounts of innumerable people who faced brutal torture without trial or while being under trial at the hands of the police or in their custody. The importance of this collection of data cannot be understated; it alerts us to the nature of state terror. However, another very important indicator of the movement’s popularity and the breadth of popular support was its rebellious language. This was expressed in Birbhum 1971 through popular songs. Let us pause here to consider just two such songs quoted in Sailen Mishra’s book.49 In early 1971, one could hear the revolutionary masses singing: Rifle tuley bolchhe jara Aae re e-desh mukto kori Oraa Bharater mohaan janotaa Janani taader Naxalbari [Rifle in hand, those who cry out / For the freedom of this country / They are the noble masses of India /Their mother is Naxalbari]

Here is a song that was most popular in the rural areas of Birbhum in August-September, 1971: Cholechhe krishaker gana-fouj Janajuddher daak shuni Shoshito maanusher aashaa hok Khamotaa dakholer bhaashaa. Mohaan Chin-er bir janotaa Bahu bachhor dhore Gorey tulechhen noya Chin ek E-pathey loraai kore.

[There marches the people’s army of peasants / Rallying to the call for people’s war / Let the hope of the oppressed masses / Be the language of capturing power. / The valiant people of great &hina / )or many years / +ave forged a new &hina / By Àghting along these lines.] 49

The following songs have been taken from Sailen Mishra, Naxal Andolan, p. 19; the translations are by Atig Ghosh.

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The struggle in Birbhum became a struggle against state-power. To quell the movement, the police was joined by one battalion of the Fourth Raipur Infantry, five companies of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), two companies of State Armed Police, two platoons of Eastern Frontier Rifles, two companies of National Volunteer Force, two companies of Saurashtra Reserve Police, in all 8,000 to 10,000 soldiers. This army expedition started on 1 July 1971 and continued till 15 August 1971 with the code name: Operation Steeplechase.50 The impressive marshalling of strength, however, proved ineffectual. During this 45-day campaign, the army arrested 500 persons, of whom only 100 were Naxals. Even these persons were mere sympathizers and not members of the militant squads. The army failed to arrest even one person who was in possession of any form of firearms or even a weapon. The army shot three unarmed supporters, and three CPI (M-L) workers at Gajalpur Majhipara village of the Suri Thana. They were Raghunath Sengupta, Lakshman Mal and Gopal Kisku.51 From Madhaipur, three leaders were arrested on 14 July 1971: Aalok Mukherjee, Biren Ghosh, and Sudeb Biswas.52 However, in spite of the presence of massive state forces in the district, the spirit of the CPI (M-L) workers and the people did not falter. When Siddhartha Shankar Ray, the Union minister in charge of West Bengal, came to Bolpur on 19 September 1971 to flag off his tour of Birbhum, Molotov cocktails and other explosives were hurled at his convoy by way of a literally ‘warm’ welcome.53 Though the army could not initially dampen the revolutionary spirit of Birbhum, in the end the movement failed in the district. 50

E.N. Rammohan, ‘Rise of Naxalism, Its Implication for National Security and the Way Forward’, in V.R. Raghavan, ed., The Naxal Threat: Causes, State responses and Consequences (New Delhi: Vij Books India Pvt. Ltd, 2011), p. 102; also, Anup Kumar Pahari, ‘Unequal Rebellions: The Continuum of “People’s War” in Nepal and India’, in Mahendra Lawoti, & Anup Kumar Pahari, (eds.)., The Maoist Insurgency in Nepal: Revolution in the Twenty-first Century (London: Routledge, 2010), p. 208. 51 Bharat Jyoti Roychowdhury, Satchallish theke Sottar, p. 616. 52 Ibid., p. 614. 53 Siddhartha Shankar Ray’s role in orchestrating counterinsurgency in Birbhum is discussed in the section ‘Counterinsurgency in Birbhum’ in the statist account provided in Sumit Ganguly & David P. Fidler, (eds.)., India and Counterinsurgency: Lessons Learned (London: Routledge, 2009).

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Not merely continued state repression, but the Naxal programme of annihilation proved self-destructive. It also had to do with the reluctance (or failure) of the leadership to create grassroots organisations among the general non-combatant people. As even a statist commentator notes for Birbhum, ‘once guerrillas left the villages the residents could not resist military troops. ... [t]his outcome flowed from their [the Naxal leadership’s] failure to establish village militias and revolutionary committees, which could have provided the self-defence capacity needed to sustain the movement’.54 ‘The reason for the defeat [in Birbhum]’, in the inimitable words of Bharat Jyoti Roychowdhury, ‘inhered in the lack of proper leadership, the nonsensical rodomontade about strategy and tactics of struggle, and the practice of copycat Maoism in inappropriate contexts’.55 Common people could not persist in the violent and unnatural political mode of annihilation for long, even when told again and again by the Naxalite cadres of the future of a classless society. Violence in Birbhum became transgressive, structurally pervasive, and soon became directionless, excessive, all-consuming and, finally self-destructive. As such, once the limits of endurance were breached, the poor masses were bound to become separated from the Naxal cadre. And this was the beginning of the end.

‘NO MATTER HOW MUCH IT BURNED, IT WAS NEVER CONSUMED BY THE FLAMES.’56 In Naxalbari or Debra-Gopiballavpur, the movement started as a struggle to grab and occupy land. And the land issue was at the heart of peasant insurgency. These movements which started with the objective of returning land to the true peasants – and around slogans like ‘langal jar jami tar’57 – soon escalated into a struggle against state power. But the Birbhum movement did not start as 54

From ‘Counterinsurgency in Birbhum’. Bharat Jyoti Roychowdhury, Satchallish theke Sottar, p. 639. 56 The wording refers to the ‘Book of Exodus’ in the Bible when Moses encountered the burning bush. 57 ‘Land belongs to the tiller’. Asok Majumdar, Peasant Protest in Indian Politics: Tebhaga Movement in West Bengal (New Delhi: NIB Publishers, 1993), p. 225. 55

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a forcible land occupation movement. We have seen in an earlier section that in Birbhum there was already a vibrant militant tradition of peasant movement from at least the time of independence. Even in 1968–69 Left parties such as the CPI, CPI (M), Forward Bloc, Socialist Unity Centre of India (SUCI) and others were engaged in peasant mobilization in the district. Many peasants of the district were martyred in the agrarian struggles. One remembers Damra of 1949. It continued into the late 1960s, when, in 1968 in Darpashila village under Bolpur Thana Kamal Mal was killed, in Nanoor Chhekin Sheikh was murdered, in Sirsa village Bijoy Rana and in Ilambazaar Thana area Salam Sheikh met the same fate. There are records of many more such peasants killed by the jotedars or by the police. The parliamentary Left however never went for retaliatory violence. They could not have in any case, for by this time these parties were firmly mired in electoral politics. The process of electoral domestication had actually started a long time back: for instance, Turku Hansda, the militant peasant leader of 1949, was by 1957 the CPI MLA from Suri.58 The parliamentary Left parties, having captured power in 1967, were now eager to eschew the path of revolutionary militancy, while, as in Birbhum and elsewhere, the dalit peasantry and the peasantry belonging to indigenous communities were advancing along the path of greater militancy. The youth and students of Birbhum were also present as catalysts. As a result, the tempestuous developments of Birbhum 1970–71 became possible. The movement acquired intensity. To have a sense of the conjuncture we can again – and for a final time – seek the help of Bharat Jyoti Roychowdhury. We have already noted that Roychowdhury has given a list of 55 persons in his book who were ‘those leaderless people of Birbhum who stood against the state in the bloody days of 1971’ and were martyred in the process.59 According to Roychowdhury, this list is incomplete. Even then the social profile of the 55 martyrs is significant. In terms of economic 58 ‘Statistical Reports of Assembly Elections’, General Election Results and Statistics, Election Commission of India; West Bengal Assembly Election results in 1957; – http://www.elections.in/west-bengal/assembly-constituencies/1957-electionresults.html (Last accessed 2 November 2017). 59 See Note 101.

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profile of the 52 martyrs whose profiles Roychowdhury could gather, 17 were landless agricultural labourers, seven were poor peasants, four were middle peasants and seven belonged to the urban working class. That is, 66 per cent of those who were murdered were from the poorest stratum of the society. In terms of caste and religion, 26 of them were dalits, 13 were low castes, three were Muslims, and four belonged to the Scheduled Tribes. Among the rest, only six belonged to the upper castes. That is, 87 per cent of them were from the lowest social orders. Ten of them were illiterate, 11 were barely literate, and 19 had just about touched the level of school education. Apart from five, all others were between the ages of 19 and 25, or even younger.60 The statistics clearly tells us that the struggle in Birbhum of 1970s was not a struggle of the upper classes and castes. There is also a survey of the social profile of the participants of the Naxalbari Movement in Birbhum. The survey was conducted in Bolpur town and village areas, and in the villages and towns under the jurisdiction of the Ilambazaar Thana, Dubarajpur Thana, Nanoor Thana, and Sainthia Thana. An initial list of 300 respondents was compiled by mainly Bharat Jyoti Roychowdhury, Sailen Mishra, Aalok Mukherjee, Lakshmi Ghosh and Liyakat Ali. In this survey, the results echoed the profiles of the previous list. In terms of economic class, only 23 of the respondents identified themselves as middle peasants, rich peasants, jotedars or declining zamindars; only seven of them fell in the bracket of the upper class. In terms of caste profile, only 59 of them belong to the upper castes. It is noteworthy that as many as 77 of them were dalits and 25 were from the Scheduled Tribes.61 Among them, 11 were women (of whom 10 were arrested) and 254 of them were between the ages of 19 and 25, or even younger, at the time of their participation.62 60

Bharat Jyoti Roychowdhury, Satchallish theke Sottar, pp. 679–80. This significant when one remembers that according to the Census of 1971 only 7.05 per cent and 30 per cent of the total population of Birbhum belonged respectively to Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes. – District Census Handbook: Birbhum (Village & Town Directory), West Bengal, Series-20, Part XII-A, Directorate of Census Operations, West Bengal, 2011, pp. 48–63. 62 Bharat Jyoti Roychowdhury, Satchallish theke Sottar, pp. 681–82. 61

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No matter what the nature and composition of the leadership was, it is incontrovertible in the light of the present statistics, that the muscle and bones of the Naxalbari Movement in Birbhum of 1970–71 were the young people of the lower classes, castes and tribes; drenched in their blood the soil of Birbhum is incarnadine. Today, when in the political arena the arrogant braggadocio of savarna Hindutva has achieved a deafening pitch, when the society is under the threat of getting bogged in the mire of discriminatory hate politics, particularly in Birbhum – the saga of 1970–71 Birbhum remains inspiring. ‘Tho’ much is taken, much abides; ...’63

63

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ulysses (1833), line 65.

nine

CHAPTER

Occupy College Street Ranabir Samaddar

OCCUPY COLLEGE STREET, 1966–69

Y

et with all the agrarian unrest and peasant militancy marking the state, the age would not have been the age of Naxalite revolt were not the city of Calcutta to rise in revolt at the same time. Reports, films, plays, poems, songs, reportages, and books have been composed on the city of that time. Who does not know of Mrinal Sen’s Kolkata Ekattor (Calcutta ’71)? However, there are still some areas left unexplored in the map of urban insurgency that we may investigate. Our political knowledge may have still few things to learn from that time. Today, mainly in the West, ‘occupy’ is the call of the radicals. As a form of social struggle it is seen as having replaced earlier forms of class war. Hundreds of articles, analyses, reports, and reflections have come out on Occupy Wall Street movement and other occupation movements elsewhere as in London. With the end of the occupation dismay has been also evident. Commentators have asked: Whence did the tactic of occupation arise? How did rank and file democracy appear and survive at least for a while? And, why did occupation dissipate? What were the fruits of the movement? Have the gains lasted? In these recollections of moments of exhilaration and subsequent dismay however there is an untold belief that this was something new. As a tactic, occupation mobilised hundreds, often thousands of participants. Its spatial dimension was unique in the history of protests. It had broken many boundaries. Against this background this chapter for a moment will take us back to the decade of the sixties of the last century in Calcutta when the insurgent movement in West Bengal had taken to occupation

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and had developed the tactic. The tactic helped the movement to crystallise and caused ironically at the end the undoing of the mobilisation. Occupy as a tactic thus has a history and the radicals of today perhaps in their enthusiasm for the new left ethos have ignored the history of the insurgent tactics of the past – especially tactics developed in the postcolonial context. Once again it was the popular nature of a movement that had helped the new tactics to emerge. It was a time of gherao, which began in West Bengal in a strong way in the 1960s. Gherao means encirclement. It is a word originally taken from Hindi or Bengali or perhaps from some other Indian language, and denotes a tactic of labour activists in India.1 It is like picketing. Usually, workers would keep a management boss, or a factory owner, or a management or government building under gherao until their demands were met, or answers given. This tactic was advocated in a big way as a means of workers’ protest by Subodh Banerjee, who was the minister of the Public Works Department (PWD) and Labour, respectively in the 1967 and 1969 United Front Governments of West Bengal. Gheraos became the occasions when rebellious workers showed that they  disagreed  with their managers and bosses by  standing  or sitting around persons in authority and not letting them leave until they agreed to do what the protesting workers  demanded. Gherao became the site of assembly of the mass of workers picketing, sitting, slogan shouting, throwing questions at bosses, and waiting with courage or in trepidation, apprehension, or resignation for the police and the goons to appear any time, pounce upon them, and free the bosses. Jute, engineering, and tea industries witnessed at times violent encirclement protests by workers. Police intervened to take out and thus rescue the persons under gherao. At times encirclement continued overnight and for hours. Bombs were 1 On the origin of gherao movement in India, see Sugata Dasgupta, Ronen K. Bhattacharjee, and Surendra Vikram Singh, The Great Gherao of 1969 (Delhi: Orient Longman, 1974), p. 3, n 1; Dasgupta and others also bring to light the contribution of Ram Manohar Lohia in inventing the form, “ghera dalo” in the wake of the anti-famine agitation in Palamau, Bihar, in 1958 – p. 4, n 2. I am grateful to V. Ramaswamy for drawing my attention to this study.

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hurled on the picketers; goons were let loose on them. And the police were always on call.2 The tactic of gherao was deployed in jails also at that time, when jailed activists (for instance in Medinipur Central Jail in 1970), demanding improvement of living conditions and better treatment of prisoners by jail officers and warders, stood their ground outside their wards and cells and refused lock up. The prisoners were mercilessly beaten, kicked, dragged inside, torched, maimed for life, and few eventually killed. Such incidents took place in other jails at that time.3 Besides gherao, one more word became popular. It was abasthan, which would mean camping in, sit-in, picketing. Abasthan indicated flexibility in tactic. It might or might not have meant gherao. It could mean sit-in anywhere in support of a charter of demands. In this way East Esplanade became a place of sit-in demonstrations on various issues by various groups of agitating people. Such a demonstration could continue for days and nights. Sit-ins by teachers, tram workers, or groups of workers were familiar scenes in the mid-sixties in the city. Coming back to gherao, while gherao made the city of Calcutta infamous and became irretrievably associated with labour movement in West Bengal in the decades of sixties and seventies in the last century, and made the radical a figure of terror, the most noticeable use of this tactic was made by the rebellious students and youth of that time. Gheraos of principals of colleges became familiar incidents. Of course, the famous case was the event of gherao of the Principal during the anti-expulsion movement in Presidency College, supported by the broad student community, in 1966–67. Before that happened the gherao of Eden Hindu Hostel in 1966, when the boarders of the Hostel went on hunger strike with their demands for improvement of the living conditions of the hostel; they picketed at the gate of the hostel for 2

Gherao and occupation of factory premises seem to have been long standing tactics in labour movement. In France in 1968 striking workers occupied the car manufacturing factories for days. In the Maruti strike (2012–13) in Gurgaon near New Delhi, workers resorted to occupying the factory premises, which ended violently. 3 For details of these prison revolts and killings of prisoners, see Ebong Jalarka, special issue on Jail Bidroha, Volume 14 (3–4), October 2011–March 2012.

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three days and nights, confining the superintendent of the hostel to his residence in the hostel building, and eventually forcing him to resign. The gherao of the historic hostel established in 1886 shocked the educated middle classes of the city. Subsequently the Principal of the Presidency College was gheraoed by the students with a charter of demands. The movement against the expulsion of radical students in September 1966 led the students to encamp in the college. The college was closed sine die and eventually opened after six months when the expelled students were accommodated in other colleges. The long closure of the college helped the students to stay put at the gates, inside, and in the locality. Gradually, this became a fine technique, which would mean rebellious students camping in the college at night, and the college running as usual during the day. The college lawn became the meeting ground for political discussions, strategy meetings, consultations. It was a rendezvous site, also a control room, where news of any attack on radical students or youth in any part of city would reach fast, support for comrades under attack would be mobilised, and help would be sent immediately. In time both in the college and the hostel crude bombs (called peto) and other handy tools for self-defence began to be stored. After dusk, the college lawn, the portico, and the corridors reverberated with animated discussions, exchanges of views, only to become silent as night progressed and weary, tired activists fell asleep. By morning the cadres would leave the precinct, the college would be returned to its due owners – students, teachers, administrative staff, police spies, etc. As evening approached, the students and youth activists had to be alert about informers and spies, the ever-present possibility of police contingents suddenly landing in the college to pick up the wanted and other activists, and at night whispering voices of volunteers on duty were to awaken the occupiers to the marching sound of the boots of a police party ready to swoop down on unarmed youth and student activists. Who camped in the college? During the day the union room, the canteen, the corridors, were frequented by the rebellious students of the college with some outside delegates joining them. However, as the day ended, a number of outsiders, comrades of other student

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and youth units would join those already there. The college would become what is called today the ‘commons’ of radical forces. Representatives of other units and unions, and curious participants joined the virtual camp. The college was occupied in this way. While this narration of occupation of the Presidency College in 1966–68 has been probably recorded elsewhere and the narration here is kept strictly limited to few lines, this should be enough however to tell us of the way space making went on as a vital part of a rebellious protest movement of that time.4 It is to that history of the occupation by students and youth who through their tactics were breaking old boundaries and creating new ones that the following lines are devoted. The heights to which an occupy movement can ascend and then fall are the lessons of this brief story. First, in order to secure the college the vicinity had to be secured. Thus students had to go out into the neighbourhoods, visit slums, shops, dens, and pits to befriend the populace and neutralise the potential attackers. The vanity of birth and education had to be left behind. If students had to be welcomed in the neighbourhoods, the rough and plebeian denizens of the lower depths had to be also welcomed into the college. Friendship led to comradeship, comradeship broke boundaries of college and the outside world. The college became the common. It was secured in this way. Second, for the college to become an occupation camp of the students and other radical activists, links had to be forged with radical fraternities of other colleges, and equally importantly with other localities. Students had to be companions of youth. In this way an ‘All Units’ (units of students and youth organisations, and trade union solidarity platforms) was formed. The college precinct became the headquarters. Third, no potential enemy was to be allowed in the area or immediately beyond. Intense education, in Paolo Frere’s language conscientisation, deliberation, visits, and unionisation – all these 4 Dipananjan Ray Chaudhury, ‘Chatro-Andolon O Presidency College’, in Sattar Dashak, ed. Anil Acharya, Volume III, Shat-Shattarer Chatra Andolan, (reprint, Kolkata: Anushtup, 2012), pp. 131–58; Kaushik Bandopadhyay, ‘Shat Dashaker Chatro Andolon Proshonge’ in Sattar Dashak, (ed.). Anil Acharya, Volume III, Shat-Shattarer Chatra Andolan, (reprint, Kolkata: Anushtup, 2012), pp. 201–28.

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became the mode of neutralising threats of terror. And failing all these, occasionally strong-arm tactic was needed. In brief, in order to occupy the college, the neighbourhood had to be secured. This was the third boundary to be crossed. Fourth, the occupy site had to become the general site of revolution. Thus besides students and youth activists and leaders, union militants and organisers, political educators from the party who would take political classes in the evening, had to consider the college space as their own. Political discussion in this way crossed the boundaries of student community and created a generality. In those days with very few landline phones available, and no computers, mobile telephony, and social media tools, delegates from units afar, for instance from North Bengal University, could come to College Street without prior intimation to seek advice or extend invitation to a meeting or conference, because they were sure to find someone in responsible position present in the college. That someone did not have to be a student leader of the Presidency College. Fifth, the flexibility of the assembly was one root cause of the metamorphosis of the college precinct into an occupy zone. Flexibility helped crossing boundaries of education, institution, birth, locality, surveillance, and pre-determined schedule. Nobody declared that the Presidency College lawn was to be the headquarters; none inaugurated it; no celebrity came to visit the rebellious students and youth activists. It was an open university, a perhaps never to end workshop of ideas. Yet this was different from today’s occupy stories, because there were lines of command. Activists were not present there through twenty-four hours of day and night. They went out on organisational tasks, came back, convened consultations, and took decisions. For this what was needed was discipline, which was there to the required extent, but not excessive. The All Units had regular meetings, though there was no chairman, vice chairmen, or general secretaries. The meetings were conducted strictly democratically. The units had equal status, and consensus on modes, methods, and programmes developed without much deliberate efforts. It was more of a coordination of units, though ironically the name by which it became finally known was Presidency Consolidation. The occupation was reinforced continuously through new ideas

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and new personnel generated by activities outside the College Street, college, and the city – in the factories of say Howrah or the villages of Medinipur. Students were not students if they were not red guards propagating ideas in villages, factories, and small towns. The youth were not youth if they had not offered their lives and energy for the ‘broader cause’. There was also a historical reason as to why College Street and in particular the Presidency College precincts became the occupation zone of the rebels with delegates coming from other areas to meet, discuss, and assemble. Through the nearly six-month long movement (1966–67), Presidency College became the centre of rebellious students and youth of Bengal. The leaders of the movement became well known in radical circles and organisations. The University also was the centre of radical movements in the fifties and sixties such as student mobilisations in anti-tram fare rise movements in 1953 and 1965, food movements in 1959 and 1966, student movements against educational policies of the government, and rise in educational expenses including tuition fees. Also, from the late fifties student activists had been going to villages to stay with the peasants and mix with peasant activists. College Street occupation carried the legacy and bore the spirit of militant communist style of work.5 This was too good, too delicate a balance to last. As white terror mounted from 1970 and an atmosphere of fear enveloped the city, the efficacy of occupation as a tactic of struggle declined. Arrests, killings, torture decimated the insurgent ranks. The lane next to 5 On this history, see for instance the present CPI (M) leader Shyamal Chakrabarty’s account, Shat Shottorer Chatra Andolan (Kolkata: National Book Agency, 2011). Chakrabarty’s account though one-sided and extremely critical of the radical students and youth movement yet throws light on various aspects of student movement in fifties till the mid-sixties and the presence and spread of the movement in the districts. For him the guidance of the parliamentary Marxist leadership (the CPI-M) was crucial for the organised movement. Therefore, he is at a loss to explain why the history he was presenting led to occupy in the sixties. He failed to understand how a legacy is formed and the inner dynamics of a legacy. In Chakrabarty’s account the events and activities of occupation of College Street were symbols of extremism and anarchism. See in particular his analysis of the Presidency College movement – pp. 285–308.

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the college, Bhabani Dutta Lane, now stands as mute witness to the killings by the police of eight youth activists who belonged to the neighbourhood and had regular presence in the college in the evening. The police shot them dead at night, and now only the memorial plaque at the mouth of the lane on College Street through its presence speaks of the time.6 The camp evaporated as years passed under white terror and activists became escapees. Finally, when the activists more than a decade later, after the violence subsided and ‘normalcy’ returned, sought to recreate the tactic, the milieu of mass upsurge was over. The college once again had shrunk within its structural boundary. Occupying means creating also a boundary, which causes its restriction and eventual decline, in as much as it means modifying or transcending old ones. Occupying Presidency College depended on a combination of both. Hence it survived through tumultuous time. It remained unique. Perhaps if the tactic was replicated in other towns it would have survived, achieved greater success, longevity, and resonance.

OCCUPY TODAY AND ELSEWHERE Perhaps the tactic came back from the depths of popular memory in the early years of this century when on different occasions protesting people occupied various sites, such as agitating workers occupying the automobile factories in Gurgaon near Delhi7 and farmers and political activists occupying for days the road leading to Singur. 6 The names on the memorial column are: Bidhu Sarkar, Shanku Dutta, Anup Bhonsh, Keshto Sanyal, Sekhar Guha, Sankar Das, Gobinda Chakrabarty, and Subir Bhowmik. 7 On the struggle in Maruti automobile plant, Mithilesh Kumar and R. Samaddar, ‘Workers’ Struggles and Autonomy: Strategic and Tactical Considerations’ in Dario Azzellini and Michael G. Kraft (eds.)., The Class Strikes Back: Self Organized Workers’ Struggles in the Twenty-First Century (Leiden: Brill, 2017); also published as ‘Autonomy in India: Tactical and Strategic Considerations on the New Wave of Workers’ Struggles’, Viewpoint, January 2017 – https://viewpointmag. com/2017/01/23/autonomy-in-india-tactical-and-strategic-considerations-on-thenew-wave-of-workers-struggles/ (Accessed on 15 April 2018); on occupation in Kanoria Jute Mill in 1993, Prafulla Chakrabarti, Kanoria Jute Mill-er Sangram (Kolkata: Calcutta Research Group, 2016).

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Before that, in the decade of the eighties in the last century farmers under the leadership of Sharad Joshi and Mahendra Tikait had occupied district headquarters respectively in Satara in Maharashtra and Meerut in UP in India.8 Also, we must not forget the workers occupying Kanoria Jute Mill in the beginning of 1990s. Kanoria Jute Mill was the laboratory of autonomous workers’ movement that ran the mill later under the collective leadership of trade union leaders like Prafulla Chakrabarty, Purnendu Bose, Kushal Debnath, Dola Sen, and others who shot to prominence because of the movement.9 The world over also reverberated in the sixties with echoes of occupation of factories and universities as in Paris in May 1968, and little earlier occupation of campuses in the United States in 1965–66 in protest against the Vietnam War. And indeed, Occupation Wall Street was preceded and followed by occupations in Tunis, Cairo, and Istanbul. In some cases occupation was a tactic. In others as in New York occupation by itself became a goal, hence a strategy. Possibly the most massive occupation took place in Gezi Park in Istanbul in May 2013 with thousands of people converging and occupying with a set of specific demands, such as the preservation of Gezi Park from the tentacles of developers; end to police violence, the right to freedom of assembly and the prosecution of those responsible for the violence against demonstrators; an end to the sale of public spaces, beaches, waters, forests, streams, parks and urban symbols to private companies, large estate holders and investors; the right of people to express their needs and complaints without experiencing fear, arrest or torture; and that the media must perform its professional duty to protect the public good and relay correct information, and act in an ethical and professional way. The Gezi occupation drew global attention and spread mobilisation across the country of Turkey. In some sense the Gezi Park occupation symbolised several of the features of the occupy movement of this century: multiple subjectivities, ‘non-politicised’ goals, focus on a 8 On farmers’ occupation see D.N. Dhanagre, Populism and Power: Farmers’ Movement in Western India, 1984–2014 (London: Routledge, 2016). 9 Prafulla Chakraborty, Kanoria Jute Mill-e Noer Dashake Shramik AndolonerUdbhab O Kromobikash,  Fourth Jayanta Dasgupta Memorial Lecture (in Bengali, Kolkata: Calcutta Research Group, 2015).

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public space and by inference on public sphere, the spread of ‘take the squares’ movement, and the subsequent exhaustion of the movement including the local park forums and its incorporation in electoral politics of the parties of order.10 The Gezi Park movement was not so much about rebellion but of social protest, which, it was claimed, had ‘brought attention to public space as way of enhancing and staging democracy as part of everyday practices of ordinary citizens’... It showed ‘the public sphere as a vital sphere of democracy that should be open to everyone, not trapped in state authority or invested with capitalist ventures’.11 The occupation, the claim has gone further, thus transformed from a rebellious act to a ‘staging ground for the creativity of micro practices’ and as ‘a public square movement it opened up a new arena of experience, and democratic opportunities growing and resonating from Istanbul, Turkey’.12 It was also claimed that with increasing unemployment and degradation of work, ‘the hollowing out of work…made the square a necessary political form, and the character of the square compelled a confrontation with the state, which could not answer the underlying needs even if it wanted to…’ ‘The square now seems like the most natural form of refusal, resistance, and revolt… and this could go toward explaining why the latest movements of the squares have taken on an increasingly nationalist aspect, such as Ukraine’s Euro-Maidan (literally, “Euro-Square”) movement.’ 13 Yet we have to remember that the occupation of College Street and the Presidency College precinct had no park to defend. It was not a square. College Street is a kilometre stretch of thin road crowded by a university (now three universities) and few colleges, which was hardly a natural point to converge, though there was the College 10 Irem Inceoglu writes of these features in ‘The Gezi Resistance and Its Aftermath: A Radical Democratic Opportunity?’, Soundings 57, Eurozine, 17 September 2014 – http://www.eurozine.com/the-gezi-resistance-and-its-aftermath/ (Accessed on 24 May 2017). 11 Nilufer Gole, ‘Gezi: Anatomy of a Public Square Movement’, Insight Turkey, Volume 15 (3, pp. 7–14), Summer 2013, p. 13, also available at – http://file. insightturkey.com/Files/Pdf/it15_03_2013_gole.pdf (Accessed on 27 May 2017). 12 Ibid., p. 7 13 Joshua Clover, ‘Pop and Circumstance’, The Nation, 21 April 2014, p. 34.

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Square, always a natural part of the College Street, but never a point of contention or occupation. Presidency College precinct and the College Street symbolised rather the widespread spirit of insurgent youth, political rebellion, and an ideology of revolt, and a network of insurgent organisations. In a sense this also implied defending College Street, but not in the sense of amassing hundreds and thousands of people to occupy the space as a focus of the movement. Possibly, this was the reason, the flexibility if we like, that helped the mutineers to retain the possession of College Street for nearly two years. Presidency College functioned in the day, the University functioned likewise; the College Square brimmed with children playing in the swimming pools; radical literary functions taking place, progressive publications rolling out from College Street (including the adjoining Keshab Chandra Sen Street and Mirzapur Street); a theatre hall (Minerva Theatre on Beadon Street staging Kallol14) being defended by youth volunteers from attacks by the toughs of the party of order and kept on staging the revolutionary play; and couriers and emissaries from fraternal organisations kept on coming in and going out talking of revolution. It was occupation of a different type. Perhaps purists will not call it an occupation. Perhaps College Street functioned as a base. Whatever may be the judgment, it is important to see how College Street was occupied. In a sense this was natural, given the history of association of the place with rebellious memories of the past – particularly memories of suburban and mufossil students, youth, and teachers coming to College Street and being sucked into the mutinies staged there. In other words, space had not been idealised as yet. It was still a part of a general struggle. There is no doubt that the epic demonstration in the city on 20 November 1968 against the visit of Robert McNamara, the then World Bank President and earlier the US Secretary of Defence, known also as the butcher of Vietnam, was possible because of the flexible marshalling mode of the organisers of the All Units (later known as Presidency Consolidation) quartered in College Street. McNamara’s cavalcade could not pass through 14 Kallol was a play about the sailors’ mutiny in the Royal Indian Navy in 1946. Biswanath Bose begins his RIN Mutiny 1946 (Reference and Guide for All) with the impact of the staging of the play, Kallol, on various sections of the people in Calcutta (Delhi: Northern Book Centre, 1973, chapter 1).

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the rebellious city to the Governor’s House, his place of stay and meetings, and he had to be flown in a helicopter from the airport to the Governor’s House.15 Demonstrations overwhelmed the city from the airport to the Esplanade area. Drawing from all these instances, we can say with some qualifications, wherever occupy was part of a larger political movement and was a tactic aided by the latter, it met with varying degrees of success. Wherever, on the other hand, occupy became a goal unto itself, it failed. In some cases, as in the Indian Railway Strike of 1974 workers walked out of the workshops, plants, marshalling yards, stations, and offices, and declared indefinite strike. They did not occupy any square, any place of work, or any building. On the other hand, in case of Maruti struggle in 2011–13 workers occupied the plant. As we know, after a point Maruti workers’ leadership found occupation there ineffective and attempted to shift the site of protest elsewhere in the heart of the city of Delhi and thus make it mobile.16 Elsewhere, in various places of Europe, migrants occupied with varying degrees of success churches, empty buildings, squares, and town halls to turn the latter into shelters. In 1947–51 in India too refugees had occupied vacant plots and abandoned buildings and grounds with varying degrees of success. When in 1978, refugees occupied some of the vacant forest islands in the Sundarbans in West Bengal, they were driven out, arrested, and some killed in a police operation – an event known as Marichjhanpi massacre.17 15 The New York Times reported on 21 November 1968 on the basis of an Associated Press despatch, ‘Mob violence accompanying the visit to Calcutta of Robert S. McNamara, president of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, continued into its second day today as the police and students again clashed, in front of the United States Information Services building’. And then again it reported, on 1 December 1968, ‘The mob violence that greeted World Bank president Robert S. McNamara in Calcutta the other day was whipped up by Communist leaders who put their own ideological ends above India’s national interests. It does not reflect the sentiments of Government officials and other thoughtful Indians who recognize the urgency of Mr. McNamara’s efforts to promote international substitutes for the bilateral foreign assistance India will no longer be receiving in adequate amounts’. 16 n. 7 17 On Marichjhanpi massacre there is now a considerable amount of literature. See for instance, Ross Mallick, ‘Refugee Resettlement in Forest Reserves: West Bengal

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Besides there is also the fact that in Calcutta the occupation of College Street originated from the radical students with traditional communist background while in the West occupy movement such as Occupy Wall Street, originated from a variety of political persuasions such as new Left, anarchists, do-gooders, liberal Left, environmentalists, and feminists who would often pronounce criticisms of communist politics. There is one more difference between the form of occupation of the Presidency College precinct and the College Street as a whole in the sixties and the occupations that took place decades later in the West. In the latter case, the occupiers focused on physical occupation of a place, enlarging the assembly there, improving the dynamics of occupation in that defined space, and posing that space as the counter-space of the power of Wall Street in New York or the Westminster in London, and other seats of rule. On 27 September 2011 on a fateful night the occupiers annexed a square block of Manhattan’s financial district, called the Zuccotti Park, and renamed it as the Liberty Square. The occupation was a victory, and the occupiers hoped this to be the beginning of a global uprising against Wall Street tyranny. Yet there was no focused demand. As one observer put it, ‘in the third month of Occupy, life in the encampments grew more agitated and dangerous. Homeless people, un-tethered by political discipline, were conspicuous. Violence against women was reported’,18 and further noted, ‘What was truly impossible to find in the vast reaches of the Occupy movement — for more than three months — was a single demand, or a distinct package of them, or, indeed, any specific demands endorsed by the Occupy Wall Street General Assembly…’19. In Cairo, the occupation Policy Reversal and the Marichjhanpi Massacre’, The Journal of Asian Studies, Volume 58 (1), February 1999, pp. 104–25; Anu Jalais, ‘Dwelling on Marichjhanpi’, Economic and Political Weekly, Volume 40 (17), 23 April 2005, pp. 1757–62; also ‘Massacre in Marichjhanpi’, Letters to the Editor (response to Asok Mitra), Economic and Political Weekly, 18 June 2005; Sukharanjan Sengupta, Marichjhanpi Beyond and Within (Kolkata: Frontpage, 2010); in Bengali – Madhumay Pal, Marichjhanpi: Chinna Desh, Chinna Itihash (Kolkata: Gangchil, 2009); Jagadish Chandra Mandal, Naishobder Antorale: Marichjhanpi (Kolkata: Sujan Publications, 2002). 18 Todd Gitlin, Occupy Nation: The Roots, The Spirit, and the Promises of Occupy Wall Street (New York: HarperCollins, It Books, 2012), p. 43. 19 Ibid., p. 109.

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of the Tahrir Square in February the same year and around the same time, or in Athens the occupation of the Syntagma Square (2010–12) had, however, more defined aims, namely the removal of a particular regime. In case of Athens, the occupation also had a concrete nature. It was a part of a countrywide movement that built up a Left anti-austerity party, the Syriza. Perhaps the occupation of the Tahrir Square inspired the occupation of Wall Street. What was noticeable in the occupation of Tahrir and Syntagma Squares was that both were busy traffic circles, high from the point of visibility, and natural sites of convergence of people from all sides in the two cities, and thus effective camping sites. Perhaps the difference owed at least partially to that of the political backgrounds and perspectives. Fifty years back the Presidency College precinct occupation leading to College Street occupation was different. It was not a busy multi-road traffic junction indeed the street was not wide at all and is still not wide today, and not at all the place where all kinds of public would naturally converge. But the salient point here was that institutions such as the University of Calcutta, the Presidency College, the two prominent schools, the Hindu and the Hare, the Calcutta Medical College, the Institute of Welfare and Business Management, the City College of Commerce, and the Goenka College, with the entire place surrounded by an arc of plebeian educational institutions, such as the Bangabasi College, Surendranath College, Vidyasagar College, City College (main campus), Maulana Azad College, the Scottish Church College, and at perhaps two kilometres away the Jaipuria College and the City College for Women, and finally with hundreds of office goers landing in the city at the Sealdah Station rushing to the central business district of the city, the Dalhousie Square (renamed Binoy Badal Dinesh Bag), or the Howrah Station, made College Street – an initially unnatural but understandably a place of mobilisation and occupation. For at least two decades prior to the sixties, the College Street up to Baubazar Street had been a place of mobilisation of students and youth. The rebellious student and youth activists seized this legacy and built on this history their strategy of occupation. In this animated space called College Street there was also a considerable intermingling of students belonging to different

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persuasions. Three researchers in a meticulous study of student unrest that took place in the University of Calcutta in March 1969 analysed the responses to four student formations and found considerable overlap of opinions among student leaders of these formations. In Dasgupta’s account (The Great Gherao of 1969) the flexibility of the student activists in pressing their demands (such as withdrawal of unfair administrative measures) is clear.20 The intermingling of students of various persuasions was evident in the student demonstrations against the visit of Robert McNamara in 1968. There was one more crucial difference with today’s Occupy Movement. In Occupy Wall Street, the strategy was to converge and assemble, while in case of Presidency College there was no such strategy. Rather it was to use the place as the rebellion’s headquarter, and hence of contact and dialogue, a place to decide issues of deployment of cadres to various places and institutions to spread the message of unrest.21 It was thus the live centre of a growing network of points of upsurge. This meant that the external configuration of the place of occupation was as important as the internal configuration. How did the place of occupation look like? How effective was it? In other words, how did College Street matter to the general radical political activists, that is to say, from the outside? This question is different from the one, namely, how does the occupation matter from the inside that is internally, to the participants? The question is not one of a pure play of space, but of links, the general nature of the space and the movement, and of the involvement of society at large. It is a strategy that does not choose between a war of strategy and war of manoeuvre but combines both. Occupy College Street became crucial not only for the number of students and other political activists who spent days 20

The Great Gherao of 1969; particularly chapter 4, pp. 85–126. Some of accounts on that time tell us of the spirit of dialogues among the radical activists. Besides the three volumes of Sattar Dashak (n. 2), see for instance, Aloke Mukherjee, ‘Shat Sattar Dashaker Sandhikkhane B.E. Colleger Chatra Andolan: Kichu Katha’, Ebong Jalarka, Volume 17 (1–2), April-September 2014), pp. 194–214; Kaushik Banerjee, ‘Katachenrai Barbar: Naxalbari, Charu Mazumder’, Parts I and II, Ebong Jalarka, Volume 16 (3–4), October 2013–March 2014), pp. 219–244 and Ebong Jalarka, Volume 17 (1–2), April-September 2014), pp. 250–84). 21

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and nights there, but for others who would reach there for regular or occasional consultation. Occupy College Street or the Presidency College was thus the natural site of organisation, while the All Units became the natural leader of the activities. We cannot think of College Street and the Presidency College without the All Units. However, the inside and outside of occupation – at least College Street and Presidency College precinct occupation – were not clearly marked apart as two territories, temporalities, or figurations. In securing the College and the College Street, mobilisations from outside were needed, while for these mobilisations from outside to actualise the inside had to be at least partially ready to accommodate the ‘outsiders’. Slums played an important role. The Kalabagan slums and the lower middle class inhabited lanes of the area had traditionally produced toughs and for decades were utilised as foot soldiers of reactionary forces in communal riots and beating down radical demonstrations. Not only were they neutralised now, but a large section of the youth came forward to help the insurgents and several of them courted deaths in the ensuing battles with the armed police. Rooms for manufacturing bombs had to be found; walls and exit routes had to be identified in the event of escape, local units had to be built, shelters had to be pre-arranged. All these required rings of support; so first, what had to be secured were the core area of College Street and the two precincts of Presidency College and the Eden Hindu Hostel, and then the nearby lanes, then the colleges and the surrounding localities. In this way the outer peripheries were made one after another. This was a concentric circle where the inside and the outside were mixed in a flexible mode. Hostels played an important role. Besides Eden Hindu Hostel, Vidyasagar Hostel, Surendranath Hostel, Rajabazar Science College Hostel, and the mess houses functioned as shelters, meeting venues, stock houses of rebellious literature, and provisions of food. As was found out, this combination of the inside and the outside suited urban mobile struggles that were to characterise the city in 1969–71. But this also meant that the counter-insurgency forces now had to devise a strategy whereby they could secure one locality after another in opposition to localities dominated by the insurgents, to restrict the mobility of the rebels, and eventually to isolate them, cut out their

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exits, and kill them. This is how the Baranagar-Cossipore massacre happened. Other round ups at the dead of night and shooting the activists down in Beliaghata, College Street, Howrah, Bagha JatinJadavpur, and elsewhere happened in this way. The state was already learning to anticipate urban mobile warfare and tackle it. The occupation with all its flexibility ended in the fire of battle. The rebels could not maintain and did not know how to maintain the flexible tactics of occupation in the overall war like atmosphere of the city. The flexible tactics of occupation had not been designed as a part of a deliberate strategy, and hence these were not pursued properly later, and it was this which led to its doom. The popular nature of the protest of the mid-sixties and its wide base made such flexibility around College Street possible. The state lost little time to learn the spatial features of the situation and plan counter-insurgency strategy. The para-military forces were deployed for cordon and search operations. In these sudden, unannounced combing operations in locality after locality, the ‘outsiders’ and the ‘enemies within’ were identified with the help of informers and were picked up and killed, or maimed for life, or jailed. So the history of occupation is varied, and the outcome. It is important to see them in the specific context in which occupy happens, the nature of popular mobilisation, and its overall relation with the broad revolutionary movement and the class forces. Occupy is an act in class war. And, even though its nature remains civilian its rules are framed or at least influenced by the laws of war. Hence it is important to see it not as a war of position but as a war of manoeuvre. It is a tactic, at least as it unfolded in Calcutta, developed in the sixties, just as popular movement in the forties and fifties developed other tactics of struggle such as stone throwing, burning buses and trams, mass mobilisations aimed at petitioning the Legislative Assembly, and occupying neighbourhoods of the roads where skirmishes with police force were on.

BOUNDARIES OF OCCUPATION We have already alluded in this chapter to the boundary redrawing capacity of occupation and have shown how in the sixties in

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Calcutta it removed several old boundaries in as much as it created new ones. This feature had deep relation with the power and capacity of the occupation to deal with police forces, and last for long time. Its correlation with flexibility was crucial in the new grammar of mobilisation. What is this boundary, the boundary of mobilisation? This question has haunted strategists of mass mobilisations, particularly revolutionary mobilisations. The different answers advanced since then have offered different analytical tools to interrogate contemporary society, and to modes of intervention in popular politics. Is occupation a new form of representation? Is it a response to the crisis of old mode of mobilisation? Is it a combination of the civilian and the military modes of struggle and if so, is this then the reason for its widespread deployment and ‘success’? But what would success mean in this case? How are we to make sense of the encounter between the occupiers and the state, occupiers and other forces, persons, and institutions of authority, between occupiers and non-occupiers, last but not the least between different groups of occupiers, say between those who knew how to make bombs and the scholarly types? And yet again, how are we to make sense of a territory known as the ground of occupation – College Street, Tahrir Square, or Sorbonne and the Left Bank – the grounds of occupation that produced so many deaths, so much despair, utopia, memory, and calculations of conducting an ongoing war? If all these signify old boundaries of space and politics being continuously broken through the act of occupation, they also signify occupation confined to a space, occupation confined within a space. The location in this way while giving birth to new critiques becomes a point of critique. It is like an army or perhaps a battalion asked to stand on a ground, keep it occupied – come, what may – so that the war may be won either through the decisive action there or the occupation facilitating the decisive battle elsewhere. We can also ask questions of relational ontology – say between the ranks of militants who occupied the place and the leaders coming in and out, between men and women, between the ‘natives’ (locals) and outsiders, or between student activists and trade union militants,

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or say between bomb throwing infantry of the assembly and the scholar activists. Questions of these encounters problematise the faith call, ‘we are the ninety percent’ that the Occupy Wall Street was to celebrate later. What made these encounters unique? Even though ephemeral as these encounters remained, they created a new territoriality called occupation. Conversely this new territory gave birth to several of these encounters. Boundary making and remaking was thus not only a practice of encountering, it was also an attempt to create a new and more open geography of power, seen in rudimentary form in spaces marked as party offices, clubs, and camps. There of course remained a difference. While a party office or a club has an official institutional existence, the occupy place or zone does not have, and in the sixties in Calcutta no one could say how long the rebellious activists would be able to occupy College Street. It lent urgency to the task of building up networks – a frantic search for opening up the new ‘possible’. The ephemerality was transforming everyday existence. Such questions push the issue of the physical existence of a collective and friendship within it towards an appreciation of political practices that exist beyond the remit of social movement politics. While geographers may help us to understand the relation between space and activism, the crucial thing to understand here is the creation of a generality as a practical act: not thinking-as-doing but doing-as-thinking – that is open, relational, and incorporating the multiplicity of struggles in different locations. In this respect if we think of the above narrated experience of All Units, we shall then realise that the notion of political strength is often connected with the development of a collective through ongoing dialogues. Dialogues in the evenings transformed the days in the college/s also. The time and territory of struggle were also produced in this way. In producing the time and the territory, the network of organizations represented by the All Units was important. Otherwise, the occupation of College Street would have been considered as metropolis-centric and negligent of the centres of radicalism in suburban, district, and mufossil towns like Howrah, Krishnanagar, Uttarpara, Bally, Chuchura, Malda, Siliguri, Medinipur, Kharagpur, Panskura, Durgapur, Diamond Harbour, Burdwan, Suri, etc. In fact,

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the participation of the latter made College Street. The Presidency College Lawn and the college precinct in this way helped the All Units to consolidate and its leadership to exercise sway over the rank and file. The control of the area became the key to the control of events, time, and the people. The college as a camp created a new boundary, where encounters of various kinds took place and defined the nature of urban activism. Yet the point to remember is that while boundary defining was central to this territoriality, flexibility had to be retained. There was recognition of the need to consider the space as an active process rather than as a fixed container or marker. The boundaries of the occupy zone were in constant flux and social processes were taking place in particular spatial context. Occupation College Street became a strategy of flexible territoriality, where nothing was pre-given about what was to come. The boundaries of the College Street were thus constantly contested and often led to unknown outcomes. Encounters within that space were thus transformative. Presidency College campus (of occupation) led to the production of College Street – represented to and by the State as anarchic, violent, extremist, and the dry gun powder to explode any moment and anywhere. Yet the state could not appropriate it, because the way the space was being reproduced was beyond appropriation. Perhaps as Henry Lefebvre would have said, space attained its full meaning only when contrasted with ‘the opposite and inseparable concept of appropriation’.22 Power on the College Street in this way flowed from a kind of dialectical spatiality that made ‘possible tomorrow what was impossible today’.23 Equality, friendship, and comradeship under conditions of occupation generated a dialectical situation, which meant a refusal to accept the given ways of politics, even given notions of non-conformist politics and party building, and a resolve to master the conditions of existence. New politics came out of new territoriality born out of the need to occupy spaces outside the form of the state. These 22

H. Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), p. 165. H. Lefebvre The Survival of Capitalism: Reproduction of the Relations of Production (London: Alison and Busby, London, 1976), p. 36. 23

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were ‘territories in resistance’.24 To recall, there was no square or park to assemble or congregate and defend. The narrow lanes and streets, educational institutions, centres of cultural repertoires, publishing houses, slums, bookshops, lower class including lower middle-class houses – were all laden with memories of street rebellions of years and decades. Resistance created the territory. Yet we also have to remember that occupation invites full scale annexation by the state. It invited violence on the College Street. The trend of the occupation activists to huddle back in the sanctuary of occupation proved in the long run a wrong tactic. The fault lines grew wider. While occupation undid many old boundaries, it drew new ones. Several of the denizens of the occupation site were killed by the police, others spent years behind bars, and the authority in the following decades changed the face of the College Street indelibly. Camping on the College Street unwittingly helped the secret police to identify the key persons. And when white terror came down, the camp, the college, and all those who would assemble there in solidarity were trampled under boots of the paramilitary forces meticulously prepared for counter-insurgency task. Other colleges also paid heavy price. Most occupations have failed under heavy police deployment. As Engels said of barricade fighting, each such attempt since 1848 had been drowned in blood and ended with the defeat of the proletariat and victory of the bourgeoisie. Yet does it mean that occupation as on the College Street in the sixties will no longer be possible? We can only pay heed to what Engels had said in the Foreword in 1895 to the republication of Marx’s Class Struggles in France with regard to barricade fighting, Even in the classic time of street fighting, therefore, the barricade produced more of a moral than a material effect. It was a means of shaking the steadfastness of the military. If it held out until this was attained, then victory was won; if not, there was defeat... The chances, however, were in 1849 already pretty poor. Everywhere the bourgeoisie had thrown in its lot with the governments; “culture and property” had hailed and feasted the 24

R. Zibechi, Territories in Resistance: A Cartography of Latin American Social Movements (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2012).

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military moving against the insurrections. The spell of the barricade was broken; the soldier no longer saw behind it “the people,” but rebels, agitators, plunderers, levellers, the scum of society; the officer had in the course of time become versed in the tactical forms of street fighting, he no longer marched straight ahead and without cover against the improvised breastwork, but went round it through gardens, yards and houses. And this was now successful, with a little skill, in nine cases out of ten… Up to 1848 it was possible to make the necessary ammunition oneself out of powder and lead; today the cartridges differ for each rifle, and are everywhere alike only in one point, that they are a special product of big industry, and therefore not to be prepared ex tempore, with the result that most rifles are useless as long as one does not possess the ammunition especially suited to them. And, finally, since 1848 the newly built quarters of the big towns have been laid out in long, straight, broad streets, as though made to give full effect to the new cannons and rifles. The revolutionary would have to be mad, who himself chose the working class districts in the North and East of Berlin for a barricade fight.  [Does that mean that in the future the street fight will play no further role? Certainly not; it only means that the conditions since 1848 have become far more unfavourable for civil fights, far more favourable for the military. A future street fight can therefore only be victorious when this unfavourable situation is compensated by other factors... (Italics by Engels)25

In this case there is as yet no scientific analysis of the days and nights on the College Street, the clashes and skirmishes, mobilisations and the street battles, the defeats, deaths, and the legacy. College Street along with the Presidency College of the sixties became a myth. One has to be careful. The purpose of this chapter has not been to set up two contrasting ideal categories – political occupy and social occupy – as two parallel models of political mobilisation and social mobilisation; one that happened in the sixties and one that 25

‘Introduction’ by Frederick Engels to Karl Marx, Class Struggles in France (1850), 1895 – https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/class-strugglesfrance/intro.htm (Accessed on 14 May 2017).

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happened in the beginning of this decade. In real life the political and the social have meshed with each other on various occasions and in varying degrees. Perhaps, the political nature of the mobilisation on College Street was too much;26 a little more attention to the social dimensions of spatial occupation would have made occupation of the College Street more durable. Equally perhaps greater attention to the political will lend greater solidity and focus to the social mobilisations that found an ideal expression in Occupy Wall Street. With regard to the experience of College Street we can say at least this much: Occupations like these and experiences of different kinds of friendships along with practices of an alternative kind of public ethics marking these occupations suggest a history not to be found in a standard political textbook. It will be a history of techniques mobilisation, action, deliberation, and birth of a collective that perhaps perished with the death of the insurgency or perhaps lived on in the lives of some organisations, forums, and platforms, which were all rooted in the contentious politics of the time. They impacted postcolonial polity, reinforced the notion of popular politics, brought forth the idea of radical democracy, and made the right to rebel to be acknowledged for a long time to come as the only real historical right in democracy. Seen in this light, occupation suggests an alternative history that will force us to retrieve the silenced moments that lay behind the roar of bourgeois power. Today, as popular politics again shows signs of acquiring radical edges across the country, this work of broadening the narrative of democracy and breaking down the intellectual orthodoxy of the story of democracy has never been so urgent. 26 Fifty years later, in 2017, when the government of West Bengal proposed banning protests and processions on College Street on the ground that these hampered the day to day academic functioning of the colleges and the university there, many of the participants of the unrest in 1967 recalled the days of the tumultuous time. Asim Chattopadhyay, the erstwhile student leader said explicitly that those were the days of the Occupy. From burning trams against tram fare rise to resisting police onslaught against a students’ strike, to erecting a barricade with hundreds of blackboards pulled down from the university, jamming College Street with the demand to release political prisoners, to preventing Robert McNamara from arriving in the Governor’s House on road – these were, they said, acts of occupation. – See the report, ‘Boma-BarudPratibader Itihas College Streeter’, Ei Shomoy, 5 June 2017, p. 3.

ten

CHAPTER

The Cultural Battle Subhoranjan Dasgupta

LINK WITH THE PAST

T

he Naxalite age was marked, besides all that have been described in the previous chapters, by a cultural mission. The rebels waged a persistent battle to destroy what they perceived as bourgeois decadent culture, and revisionist ideas of purity of art and literature. Art and literature had to be partisan, militant. The cultural struggle produced an outburst of creativity. But the outburst of creativity experienced during the Naxalite decade (1965–75) did not happen suddenly, unannounced. It had its roots in the socio-cultural movements that preceded it. In fact, a close interlink can be established between the creativity that flourished in the sixties and the Marxian debates of the fifties on the one side, and Naxalbari creativity on the other. At times the link was direct and unmediated, and at other times it was not so direct though incipient and pervasive. The most appropriate example of the direct link is offered by Bijan Bhattacharjee’s play Debigarjan which foretold the days to come. This play celebrated the annihilation of a merciless jotedar. Indeed, the last stage direction of the play comes close in tone and tenorto the reportages on the same theme – annihilation – that were published later in the Naxalite mouthpiece, Deshabrati. In order to emphasize this link, I have begun my section on drama by analysing Debigarjan. If one eliminates the religious dimension of the play – the role of Goddess Kali – and the faith in the supposed efficacy of the panchayat system, this work of art fits in perfectly with the plays written during the actual Naxalbari movement. Another crucial link is evident in the role of the cultural ideologue, Saroj Datta. He had participated actively in the debate

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of the fifties and sixties and then with Charu Mazumdar and others, he spearheaded the Naxalite movement. In the preceding years Saroj Dutta had always sided with those interpreters who demanded a total rejection of bourgeois art and petty bourgeois theorization. He called for a people’s art, even debunked Tagore and the literary tradition, and aspired for what he regarded as genuine revolutionary creativity. It was no surprise that he declared his loyalty and affiliation with the Naxalites when the uprising began. During his days as a Naxalbari theorist, he supported what he called ‘anti-reactionary, rebellious art’ to the hilt and called for a dismissal of the tradition which had not spoken categorically for workers and peasants. He was the most important theorist to have supported the demolition of statues. He called for the emergence of a new art created by a new man in a new democracy. It is no wonder that he crossed swords with another member, less immoderate and expansive in his view towards art, Sushital Roychaudhuri, and expectedly, he received the confirmation of his position from no less a person than Charu Mazumdar. In point of fact, one notes that there is a clear, subterranean link between what Saroj Datta had said or written years before the uprising and what he proclaimed during the uprising. Thus, a specific work of art and a specific person provided the crucial links between the Marxian past and the violent Naxalite present. The three specific areas of debates in the past exhibiting a close link between the Naxalites and their forbearers grew around (i) persona and creativity of Tagore (ii) the conflicting nature of the Bengal Renaissance and (iii) contemporary poetic creativity. The Naxalites severely criticized and even debunked Tagore, and what they said or propagated was almost an echo of Benoy Ghosh’s condemnatory assessment. Benoy Ghosh had written, ‘Tagore is sitting in the desolate and secure chamber of the Middle Ages under the tutelage of rajas, badshas and wazirs… his abstract, vapoury and vague humanism are meant to glorify his own class directly’ (Quoted by Anuradha Roy in her book Bengal Marxism).1 1 Anuradha Roy, Bengali Marxism: Early Discourses and Debates (Kolkata: Samya, 2014).

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Understandably, the Naxalites applauded this evaluation before they embarked on their journey of demolition of statues and Bengal Renaissance figures. Similarly, the debunking of the Bengal Renaissance by critics like Prodyot Guha and Bhabani Sen predated assessments by the Naxalites themselves. Rabindra Gupta (penname of Bhabani Sen) declared without much ado that the literature flowing down from Rammohan to Rabindranath was not merely comprador bourgeois in character but also a reflection of the decadent Hindu feudal class. In short, whatever reforms the Bengal Renaissance had introduced and propagated were ‘collaborationist in character’. As opposed to these ‘agents of British imperialism’, stood the revolt and resistance of the Santhals in 1855, Sepoy Mutiny 1857 and earlier the Sanyasi and Fakir revolt of 1772. The Naxalites were in full unison with this denunciation. There was no praise for Rammohan and Vidyasagar. Naxalites now wanted to replace the statues and busts of the leaders of the Bengal Renaissance by the sculptures of Mangal Pandey, Titumir, Queen of Jhansi and Birsa Munda. We can thus find a straight linear connection between Bhabani Sen and Charu Mazumder, Prodyot Guha and Saroj Datta. It is another story that both Bhabani Sen and Prodyot Guha recanted later. The Naxalites, on their part, did not have the time to recant. They were either killed or sucked up by the mainstream in late seventies and early eighties. Many later amended. Finally, contemporary poetic creativity led by poets like Bishnu Dey and Samar Sen were severely castigated by Benoy Ghosh, Prodyot Guha and Saroj Datta. They took up the cause of ‘genuine revolutionary’ poetry and labelled the verse of both Bishnu Dey and Samar Sen as ‘unforgivably decadent’. Samar Sen, on the other hand, defended his output with the help of the following arguments: (i) the capitalist society had reached the point of destruction, it was decadent through and through, hence decadence would gain an automatic entry in the poetry written during this phase; (ii) it was impossible to invoke Satyam, Sundaram, Shivam (truth, beauty, and peace) because the three virtues simply did not exist in the prevailing atmosphere; and (iii) it was not possible for the so-called ‘decadent

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poets’ to write about workers, peasants, and the coming revolution because they had no actual experience of the latter.2 Obviously, this defence and counter-advocacy fell on deaf ears. For example, Prodyot Guha compared the literary dimension of Bishnu Dey with the output of a peasant bard and stressed that the former should emulate the style of the latter. One should note in this context that Prodyot Guha revised his estimate in later years and even sought Bishnu Dey’s forgiveness. As for Samar Sen, he gave up writing poetry altogether and told this critic, ‘Poetry has outlived its purpose and it is not the medium of the age’. The Naxalites were thoroughly critical of Bishnu Dey but they spared Samar Sen because the latter in his news weekly Frontier advocated with temperance the Naxalite cause. One feels perplexed, to say the least, to note that the strident and unforgiving Saroj Datta himself penned some lines of dismal despair. On the one hand, he called Bishnu Dey and Samar Sen decadent, and underlined the need for people’s revolutionary art; while on the other he wrote despairing lines focusing on his loneliness. The lines read: Sometimes I feel that I am treading a dangerous path At night at the hypnotic call of some evil spirit On waking up I will realize with a shudder That, I have not a single fellow-traveller in this world3

In other spheres of creativity as well, there existed close links between the past and the present. Just as we can envisage the stirring dramas of Amal Ray only with a knowledge of Debigarjan, similarly we can forge a valuable link between the poetry of Dronacharya Ghosh (by for the most articulate Naxalite bard) and Sukanta, Subhas, Birendra’s poetic output. Subhas had written long back, ‘Comrade, Will you not bring today the new age’ (Comrade, aaj naba jug anbena?); it would have sounded hundred per cent appropriate in the voice of Dronacharya. Similarly, Swarna Mitra’s novel 2 On the history of the entire debate, Dhananjoy Das (ed.)., Marxbadi Sahitya Bitarka (reprint, Kolkata: Karuna, 2013). 3 Cited in Sumanta Bandyopadhyay, ‘Saroj Datta O Sasanka’, Ekshon, autumn number, 1982, p. 45.

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Grame Chalo (Let Us Go to the Village) draws lineage from the novels of Manik Bandyopadhyay; or, Mahasweta Devi’s astounding abundance recalls Satinath Bhaduri and Adaita Mallabarman. What is noteworthy therefore in this context is that most of those who had been strident iconoclasts in the cultural debates in the fifties and the sixties opted for the Naxalite perspective. There was a link between what they had said in the past with what they were saying now during the days and nights of Naxalbari revolt. Even the form of street or open-air theatre, popular in the Naxalbari phase, had its forerunner in the stirring street plays presented by Utpal Dutt and Badal Sircar. What transpired in the fifties and sixties often acted as guidelines for the latter-day Naxalites who were engaged in actual political praxis. They, thereby, completed the circle.

EFFLORESCENCE Efflorescence… Efflorescence… Efflorescence... I distinctly remember that the legendary teacher of English Literature, Professor Taraknath Sen, used this particular term to evaluate the outburst of sonnet composition in the Elizabethan age. Quite consciously, I repeat this word here to encapsulate, if possible, the abundance of creativity inspired by the Naxalite movement. A few relevant though approximate figures will substantiate the choice of the word. No fewer than 500 poems were written by activists and sympathizers to record the upsurge; no fewer than 200 short stories were penned by the writers to capture the ebb and flow of the complex political movement; no fewer than 50 novels were written to express the Naxalite experience; no fewer than 50 plays were written by indefatigable playwrights to dramatize the movement which struck us like a meteor and then dwindled; no fewer than 20 films were made to capture in celluloid the upsurge and tragic decline of the violent rebellion and resistance. Indeed, when I began to explore this creative efflorescence, I did not know where and how I should terminate my quest. It is therefore strange to read the comment of an otherwise excellent critic, Iraban Basu Ray who labelled this outburst as ‘slim’, ‘confined’ and

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‘slender’.4 If one cares to read the plays published in the journal Abhinay and old copies of two magazines in particular, Anustup and Aneek, one realizes that the objections levelled by Iraban Basu Roy, are fallacious. The truth of the matter is simple. No social and political movement in post-independence India spawned this amount of creativity as Naxalbari occasioned, and that too in all possible branches of literature beginning from poetry and ending in autobiographical writings, with short stories, novels and dramas coming in between. Further, we cannot indulge in staccato roll-calling of names, we have to explore, dissect, and analyse the texts chosen for this chapter. In this paper we shall concentrate on the poetry inspired by the Naxalite movement, dramas, and two spectacular novels.

POETRY AND NAXALBARI There are still some literary critics in our midst who raise their complaining eyebrows the moment they confront the expression ‘committed poetry’. These steadfast disciples of Stefan Mallarme and Paul Valery reason that ‘committed’ poetry is opposed per se to ‘pure’ poetry, and hence not much worth should be attached to this kind of verse. Their argument is as follows: (a) committed poetry does not fulfil the precondition of pure poetry because it brings politics to the forefront; (b) this intrusion of politics leads to the entry of slogans in poetry, and (c) poetry of commitment turns fast into sheer sloganeering. These critics are so stubborn that they hesitate to extend rightful applause to markedly political poets like Vladimir Mayakovski, Bertolt Brecht, and Pablo Neruda. To these critics who love to dwell in their self-contained ivory towers, we should gift the anthology titled Bajaramanik Diye Gantha. Edited and compiled by Rahul Purakayastha, this selection contains 280 rousing lyrics as well as tragic reflective poems penned by 182 poets, some of them Naxalite activists and others dedicated fellow-travellers and sympathizers. Needless to say, this remarkable 4

Iraban Basu Roy, Aneek, Special Issue, 2017, pp. 44–56; also see the collection, Galpa Sankalan (Kolkata: Aneek, 1990).

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anthology proves once and for all that the poetry of commitment fulfils the basic aesthetic preconditions. In fact, poems such as these or committed poetry engender at the same time a new aesthetic or poetics which goes beyond the borders of pure poetry. The poets included in this anthology follow celebrated icons like Mao TseTung and Louis Aragon. Mao Tse-Tung showed how to blend the Chinese tradition of lyric writing with new revolutionary content. Following his footsteps, the activist Dronacharya Ghosh has written, Our births represent only the ceaseless despair of exploitation There is no time now to hold a story session under light shades Now is not the time to drink liquor like a helpless character What is now needed in the face of bullets Is the extermination of class enemies A hard and ruthless organisation.5

In this lyric, resonant with resolution, rebellious promises are uttered with refined nonchalance. The language employed is hard and strong and it reveals a revolutionary programme that must be translated into necessary action. It needs to be mentioned that Dronacharya, one of the finest lyricists of the Naxalbari movement, was killed in Hooghly Jail. And why mention only Dronacharya Ghosh? Murari Mukhopadhyay, Timirbaran Singha, Bipul Chakravarti and many others travelled and fought on the same road, and many perished. One is particularly drawn to Murari Mukhopadhyay’s poem Bhalobeshe. Almost following the structure and syntax of Heinrich Heine’s lyric – another rebellious poet – Murari in this poem links a number of conventional romantic associations with pristine revolutionary ardour. For example, the moon-river-flower and bird shed their conventional semantic to inaugurate the process of violent change. He writes with deathless determination: Moon, river, flower, stars, bird Will be seen after sometime 5

Rahul Purakayastho (ed.)., Bajramanik diye Gantha (Kolkata: Dhansiri, Kolkata, 2017).

260 THE CULTURAL BATTLE Because now in darkness we still have to fight the last battle Now we need fire in our huts.6

Like Dronacharya Ghosh, Murari Mukhopadhyay who was arrested from Baharagora-Chakulia was killed on 25 July 1971 in Hazaribagh Central Prison.7 His lyric Bhalobese is like a sheet of steel, astute and glistening. We are startled even more by Bipul Chakravarti’s lyrics of the ‘heroic’ type built in epic mode. Probably, under the influence of Rainer Maria Rilke, who, in spite of his angelic missions, was firmly rooted in material reality, Bipul compares his condition with that of a wounded tiger. He reminds us of Rilke’s celebrated poem Panther. Awful torture and persecution have failed to weaken his commitment. In point of fact, just the opposite happens – he turns out to be even more ardent and devoted to his revolutionary cause: Stains and marks of whipping from head to foot let these remain Hit me… hit me in that way So that I look like a Royal Bengal Tiger After the bout of your hitting is over.8

Like an enraged and wounded tiger, the poet is determined to strike his foes – his agenda is that of hard and merciless retribution. Not only those engaged in direct political action in towns, cities and villages, but also non-active fellow-travellers, sympathizers and, broadly speaking, humanists coined lyrics and poems to express their sensitive and anguished reactions to the Naxalite movement. Rahul Purakayastha, quite correctly, has included their creativity in the anthology, Bajaramanik Diye Gantha, from which we have cited these poems and which remains till date the best and most comprehensive anthology of poetry dedicated to the violent and idealistic moment. Eminent poets like Subhas Mukhopadhyay, Birendra Chattopadhyay, Sankha Ghosh, Alokeranjan Dasgupta, 6 7 8

Ibid. On Baharagora, chapter 7. Bajramanik diye Gantha.

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Shakti Chattopadhyay, Sunil Gangopadhyay stood beside the activists admiring their sacrifice, courage, and bravery though they did not endorse the picking up of the guns. Sankha Ghosh, the eminent poet of Bengal today, explained the ideological stand of the poets. He said, ‘We endorsed the idealism, desire and aspiration of the Naxalite youths – with that we did not have any quarrel. But we questioned their method, course of action, and violent programme. We were against the ruthless state oppression that was launched against them. I do not know if the Naxalites spread lal santrash (red terror), but of this we are quite sure that the state unleashed horrible white terror or shet santrash (white terror) against them’.9 Poems written by well-known poets expressed solidarity in a variety of moods and intonations. For example, Subhas Mukhopadhyay in his iconic poem Chele geche bone (The son has gone to forest)10 laments the fact that the young rebel has gone to the forest to fight leaving the old and aged comrade in self-lacerating, familial bondage. The pronounced note of sorrow and guilt recorded in this poem gives way to loud and outspoken condemnation in the poems of the uncompromising bard Birendra Chattopadhyay. We all know that Birendra Chattopadhyay, throughout the phase of this movement from the late sixties to the early seventies of the last century, voiced consistent support for the young militants, despite the fact that he was not a Naxalite. One of his condemnatory lyrics burns like hot iron. He wrote, Let my child go every day to hell Let the paid executioner tear his body I, who pray every day Let your child partake of milk and rice.11

The reader falls silent as s/he reads these scalding lyrics. The poet is revealing the very tears of things – to quote Horace – in these poems. 9

From a conversation between the writer and Sankha Ghosh in 2017. Bajramanik diye Gantha. 11 Ibid. 10

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It was the age when a tremulous bridge was constructed between the young, relentless Naxalites and the poets. One such fervent relationship flowered between Timirbaran Singha, the young fearless Naxalite, and the two eminent poets and teachers, Sankha Ghosh and Alokeranjan Dasgupta. Timir was their favourite student and they saw him going into the deep and long night, to use the words of Dylan Thomas.Timir, according to them – to employ the diction of Dylan Thomas again – raged and raged against the dying of light even if his going deep into the murderous night could not be averted. Timir was killed inside the Behrampur Jail in 1971, and on hearing this news, Sankha Ghosh wrote an ardent elegy: The maidan drops heavy in the midst of fog Route march melts towards the horizon I sit low and pick up with my hands Your cut out head, Timir.12

Alokeranjan Dasgupta, on his part, hailed him as Amritadham Yatri (Sojourner to Heaven) and composed in agony: Whose nectar of death do I taste in my mind … when he was handcuffed He gave me in secrecy his songbook Exactly at 2 am As if a terrible theft takes place when everything is given.13

And what did the living Timir had to say to his two teachers as he was leaving? To Sankha Ghosh he said, ‘I am leaving. I do not know where I shall be going, what I shall do and when I shall return’.14 To Alokeranjan, the young man had said with conviction, ‘Sir, you must believe, revolution is approaching, no one can stop it’. What is even more heart-rending is his tongue-in-cheek lyric O Pagal (O Madman) in which he indulges in caustic self-exploration, 12

Ibid. Ibid. 14 From conversation of the author with Sankha Ghosh and Alokeranjan Dasgupta 13

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O you madcap do not go that way, please do not O you madcap get rid of your madness Just say, does it befit you to be a martyr.15

The Naxalite poets picked up this self-deprecatory tone time and again. At times, driven to despair and failure, they questioned the very ethos of their struggle and expressed the terrible fear of loneliness. Such self-questioning found its diction in lyrics. The Naxalite activist Srijan Sen wrote when assailed by this mood The air becomes heavy Memories suddenly become pedlars of flowers I found only stairs before me – stairs of the over-bridge Laying themselves here in the darkness I return home The lamp is flickering A cold, wooden seat welcomes me.16

As we read these poems, we can see how futile the supposed division is between committed poetry and pure poetry. One can say in the imagist mood of Valery, as Srijan Sen wrote, One after another Eyes burn Watch them from far They look pale like the night stars Come closer Every eye looks larger than the sun, each a ball of fire17.

As we read and reread these moving lines, we are indeed traversing at the same time from fiery slogan transforming into stirring verse, the enquiring sotto voce, we realize then that the rebels were not only fighters but minstrels too. Dronacharya, Murari, Bipul, Timir, Srijan—they all remind us of those immortal words of 15

Bajramanik diye Gantha. From Sumanta Bannerji, Thema Book of Naxalite Poetry (Kolkata: Thema, 1980). 17 Ibid. 16

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the French Resistance poet Louis Aragon, ‘Friend, I go to my death, and O Friends will know the reason why’.

DRAMA AND NAXALBARI Some scholar-critics have posed a pertinent query. The query is: ‘Why do you want to begin your section on Naxalite drama and dramaturgy by referring to and analysing Bijan Bhattacharya’s Debigarjan (Roaring of the Goddess)? After all, this rousing play was written four years before the actual Naxalite uprising broke out and it was first staged in 1966’? The reason for this inclusion is simple enough. Debigarjan is the first drama which looked into the seeds of time and foretold the line of annihilation of the class of rampaging landowners or zamindars and jotedars. Indeed, the ultimate stage direction at the end of the play focuses on annihilation and it could have been well-nigh included as a reportage in Deshabrati or in a play written by, say, Amal Roy, who was the most irrepressible among Naxalite dramatists. To put it simply, the playwright who wrote the conciliatory play Nabanna (Harvest) adopted a completely different position in Debigarjan where he anticipated the crucial call for annihilation of class enemies given by the Naxalite leaders from 1969 onwards. In fact, there are two schools of thought regarding Debigarjan. While the astute critic Samik Bandopadhyay read the play as a justified culmination of the seeds that had been planted in Nabanna, Nirmal Ghosh (a close friend of Samik) claimed that the playwright had turned over an entirely new leaf in Debigarjan where he championed the annihilation of the class enemy, the jotedar Pravanjan, as an integral part of an essential class war in which the persecuted peasants unhesitatingly killed the jotedar. No matter what the two schools say, Debigarjan has stood the test of time as a rousing and uncompromising drama which pre-tells the revolutionary violence that broke out four years later. In point of fact, it acts as an appropriate curtain-raiser and bearing this anticipatory truth in mind we begin this section with Debigarjan. Debigarjan is not however a hundred per cent Naxalite drama for two reasons. First, it does not envisage the capture of state

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power as a logical follow-up of the annihilation. That is, it limits itself to the reform of panchayati politics; and, second, it dwells on the depiction of the vengeful Goddess Kali before the play ends. To be precise, the bloodthirsty Kali struts across the stage to provide a religious sanction to what has taken place. No such specific religious association is to be found in Utpal Dutt’s Teer (Arrow) or in the plays of Amal Roy and Manoranjan Biswas. Perhaps it will be fair to say that a master-narrator from the western world, Nobel Laureate Günter Grass, underlined the possibility of an insurrection in Bengal by describing the wrath of Kali who crosses the shore in the last lines of his Calcutta chronicle Zunge Zeigen. But we can also say that reverting back to a religious image and upholding a reformed panchayat should not be dismissed as reactionary baggage. Significant in this play is the violent removal of the class enemy. The play explores the basic contradiction between starving peasants and the depraved jotedar. The play with gripping dialogue had opened at that time the terrain for other dramatists who began their writing after four years. Debigarjan in this way serves as an important link between the earlier Nabanna and Bijan’s full-fledged Naxalite play Chalo Sagare, (Let’s go to the Sea) which he wrote during the Naxalite outburst. Like Debigarjan, Utpal Dutt’s remarkable play Teer also fomented controversy. And in this case the controversy was engineered by no less a person than Utpal Dutt himself. For certain reasons he dismissed the play after its first successful run in Minerva and he also came to the vulnerable conclusion that the politics layering the play was not hundred per cent correct. But critics and viewers were not satisfied by his recalcitrance. For example, Samik Bandopadhyay reminded him that Teer was an excellent production and it needed to be re-staged. Samik wanted to probe Dutt’s indifference towards the play. Reportedly, Utpal Dutt had come out with an unconvincing excuse that the script of the play was missing when queried about his indifference towards his own play. We cannot say now with the passing away of Utpal Dutt as to the exact reason. This was a debate-ridden phase marked by Utpal Dutt’s sharp criticism of Naxalite politics and programme. He found it to be premature and adventurous,

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and he began to keep a distance from the entire, rebellious politics. However, Deshabrati, the Naxalite organ, appreciated the production. It wrote ‘Teer is an unforgettable production. We have seen Ferari Fouj (The Fleeing Army), we have seen Angar (Ember), we were fascinated by the bold content of Kallol (Sound). Still, Teer belongs to a different class. It is a burning document of the Naxalbari agrarian revolution. It is the expression of audacious truth. Teer sets alive the history of Naxalbari’.18 In her excellent evaluation of Teer Sudeshna Chakravarti has written in details on this controversy.19 Let alone the nature of controversy which shrouded Teer, it remains till date as one of Utpal’s best produced dramas where the politics propagated was not awry. As an example of this corrective politics, one could focus on that masterly scene where the class antagonism prevailing in the country is superbly etched. In that scene a capitalist, a jotedar, a newspaper editor, a fashionable lady, and an official communist spout their venom at the Naxalites in similar words and tones. Thereby they come to represent that one and the same bourgeois and semi-feudal class hegemony over workers and peasants. On the other side of the dividing river stand the exploited who are dreaming in terms of an agrarian revolution. Another superb scene at the end of the play depicts the painful and frightening death of the jotedar, Satyaban, who is sucked in by mud and mire. Utpal Dutt’s Satyaban and Bijan Bhattacharya’s Pravanjan remain as abiding examples of class tyranny. Utpal Dutt and Bijan Bhattacharjee were, by any measure, the two most illustrious dramatists of the theme of Naxalite rebellion in their own distinctive ways. There were others however, not negligible in number, who focused on the revolt in their well-crafted plays. These sensitive and insightful playwrights were also activists drawing from their personal experiences. Unfortunately, their contribution to the sphere of literary creativity has been by and large forgotten or lost. The irrepressible Amal Roy, Anal Gupta, Jochan Dastidar, 18

Deshabrati, quoted in Sudeshna Chakravarty, ‘Teer’, Aneek, Special Issue on Naxalbari, 2017, p. 137. 19 Ibid.

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Manoranjan Biswas, Lokenath Chattopadhyay, Samir Majumder, Samar Datta and many others wrote stirring as well as tragic plays to record the ebb and tide, and the rise and fall of the entire political movement. Indeed, this complete dramatic genre could be well compared with other dramatic collections written in any other part of the world exploring similar themes. As it is not possible to dissect in one chapter all the plays, we shall here focus on the texts of two dramatists, Amal Roy and Samar Datta. Amal Roy, in fact, deserves a special recognition because he was the most prolific. Among his plays the three most important are Aat Jora Khola Chokh (Eight Pairs of Open Eyes), Pankajbabu Aaschen (Pankajbabu is Coming) and Lash Bipani (Corpse). We shall mention in brief Amal’s play Aat Jora Khola Chokh. The play is based on an actual incident which took place on 19 November 1970. The incident was macabre. Eight young Naxalites were arrested by the police, tortured, and then murdered. The corpses were dumped in different areas of Barasat. This frightful act came to be known as Barasat killings. In the play even after their murder, their eyes remain open. They continue to stare. Amal Roy in a postscript to this play stated, ‘Writing this play has been my most honoured experience’.20 The play created resonance among theatre-goers and was greeted by activists and commoners alike. Asim Chatterjee, better known as Kaka, chose this play for particular praise and said. ‘It is difficult, nay impossible, to forget Amal Roy. He is an integral part of the Naxalbari creative endeavour’.21 Amal Roy closely followed the Brechtian mode of multiple dramatic representations. He erased the distance between the living and the dead. The murdered protagonists emerge alive and engage themselves in dangerous and active libertarian politics. Fixed borderlines are wiped out while the living turns to dead and the dead turns into living with their message of liberation. Besides words and actions, the glaring eyes of the dead prove that the movement, doomed to temporary defeat, will ultimately emerge victorious. The dialogues are sharp. Consider the following example: 20 21

Postscript to the play Aat Jora Khola Chokh, Abhinay, Volume 4. Asim Chatterjee in an interview with the author.

268 THE CULTURAL BATTLE Third Goon – Sir, I am feeling afraid. Note, how the eyes of all the corpses are open Second Goon – Sir, the eyes are alit even in this darkness Officer – Come, come back Second Goon – I am feeling really afraid, even after dropping the corpses, what fright, what fear! First Goon – Even after death they are staring at us with strange, vengeful eyes Officer – Hurry up, quick Third Goon – Eight pairs of open eyes, eight pairs of open eyes! Eight pairs of open eyes of the corpses.22

The reader will be certainly surprised by the title of the drama written by Samar Datta, Giordano Bruno. After all, what has Giordano Bruno to do with the Naxalbari upsurge? In this play where Adorno’s Wahrheitsgestalt is palpable, the essential structure binds the seeker of truth in the Middle Ages and burnt at the stake with the seeker of truth in our own times and clime. Giordano Bruno inspired by Copernicus stuck to the scientific truth that the earth revolves around the sun and even his impending death at the hands of the Church could not wilt him into submission. Similarly, the play suggests, the Naxalites profess the undeniable socio-economic truth that the prime contradiction in our country is between the semi-feudal landowners and the poor peasants. Thus, scientific truth and political or socio-economic truth reinforce each other and both demand the ultimate sacrifice for its assertion and dissemination. Thus, both Giordano Bruno and the dedicated Naxal are not afraid of death and persecution. The fearless, no-holds bar attitude couples the Middle Ages and our age and strengthens the bond between the martyrs separated by seas and time. So, ultimately, it is the truth that will only matter, scientific truth or political truth and a hundred Giordano Brunos will be reborn in the form of the Naxalites. The following extract from the drama highlights this association bridging five centuries. 22

Aat Jora Khola Chokh, p. 156.

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One document of history One myriad of history Theorist Karl Marx One document of history One myriad of history Chairman Mao Tse Tung One fossil of history Valiant Giordano Bruno23

NOVELS AND NAXALBARI

Grame Chalo My first reading of the novel Grame Chalo (Let Us Go to the Village) by Swarna Mitra was cursory and quick. I had been however struck by its narrative quality. A second, meticulous, reading brought out its multifaceted quality. It reminds us of Nabarun Bhattacharjee’s Herbert. In fact, and this is no hyperbolic exaggeration, Mahasweta Devi’s Agnigarbha, Nabarun Bhattacharya’s Herbert, and Swarna Mitra’s Grame Chalo should find their deserving places in any evaluation marking out the best Bengali novels written after 1967. While dissecting a work of art, T.W. Adorno had stressed the importance of the Wahrheitsgestalt of the creative text. By Wahrheitsgestalt we mean truthful structure or structure of truth which prevails as the base on which imagination rests and flowers. Even a surreal literary narrative is not far-placed from this indispensable requisite. In fact, the surreal imagination of the artist seeks sustenance from the fundamental expression of truth. In Grame Chalo, this truth revolves around the tense dialectic of everlasting hope and incessant despair. The main protagonist of the novel, Raghu, is constantly assailed by doubts. On the one hand, holding Mao’s (Little Red Book) close to his chest, he passionately hopes that the ruthlessly exploited villagers will rise in revolt; on the other, he is baffled by their non-activism and 23

Last page, quoted from the play, manuscript given to the author by the playwright’s wife.

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inertia. Ultimately, activism wins when the persecuted peasants kill Satinath, the zamindar and trader. But in the very next chapter the old rebel Khuro (the uncle) is killed by the police. This dialectic races towards a synthesis when other rebellious peasants led by Satyaban once again exhibit their resolve to fight further and avenge the death of their old mentor. The last lines of this novel ring with courage and resolution: Armed people, in the midst the burning pyre of uncle on the right side. Satyaban’s grave face, Kalipada’s eyes full of resolution. And Rohinida’s lidless stare towards the sun’.24

This is however the aspired for end and is preceded by repeated vacillations. For example, the baffled Raghu ruminates. ‘At times in the empty field, at times beside the rice field, in the midst of intense seclusion, he sits alone and thinks – why is it happening so? The peasants of the village – don’t they want a revolution? Or perhaps the situation is not right for armed struggle? If that is so, how and why did the fire of revolution burst forth in Gopiballavpur?25

This self-questioning, runs like a leitmotif throughout the novel, with Raghu at times feeling enthused and at other moments submitting to despair. Moreover, the swing between ‘hope, everlasting hope’, to quote Shelley, and despondency constructs the Wahrheitsgestalt of the novel. This intense struggle, this selfdissection reaches its apex in a particular section where Raghu’s mentor Achintya analyses the entire situation and inspires him to move forward. The dialogue between Achintya and Raghu reminds us of the other impassioned dialogue between Alyosha Karamazov and the Great Inquisitor on seeking the truth. The sensitive prose of Grame Chalo contributes to the quality of the text. The debate on truth, at times soft and muted, at times agonizing as the debate raises its head, makes the prose distinctive. 24 25

Grame Chalo, last lines of the novel (Kolkata: People’s Book Agency, 1974). Ibid., p. 9.

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In a paradoxical way, the novelist responds to the changing seasons, to the sun and moon and the star, to the vegetation all around, to the barren fields, to the rivers – streams – forests, to create a poetic backdrop which links up with the tormented reality as its counterpoint. The poet inside Swarna Mitra becomes both reflective and ebullient. However, the Bengali language Raghu employs to indoctrinate the villagers is high-flown. For example, one does not expect semiliterate peasants living in remote villages to understand the phrase Sangrami Sahajodha or fighting comrade. The critic Nirmal Ghosh has found the novel as a result suffering in narrative craft, proper sequence of events, and comprehensiveness.26 It is true that Grame Cholo like Akhteruzzaman Elias’ Khowabnama (Interpretation of Dreams) is to a certain extent stylized, but Swarna Mitra manages to ensure the flow of cogitations and events. Logic and sequence are maintained. From Raghu’s arrival in the village, choosing the Santhals as his ally to his doubts and vacillations, and ultimately the militant assault, are intermeshed in the story, and offer a steady narrative. There is an inherent tragic dimension in the death of Khuro, but the loss fails to deter others. In the mixed moment of death and resolve Grame Cholo ends. It ends with quoting Mao Tse-Tung’s verse. After all this was the Naxalite age.

Bashai Tudu (Bashai Tudu) Several critics have accused Mahasweta Devi of being far too ‘simplistic’ in her novels. Her prose style, they have described, as unimaginative and pedestrian, and the structure of her novels was labelled as loosely knit and vaguely episodic in character. In fact, this accusation encompasses almost her entire creative output, from her early novel Laili Ashmaner Aina to her celebrated novel Hajar Churasir Ma, (Mother of 1084) which focuses on the urban rebellion of the Naxalites. But one needs to pause here and reflect on the creative worth of a novel like Bashai Tudu which is by far her most moving text on peasant unrest, resistance, and armed revolt. It is well-nigh difficult to grasp and appreciate the beauty of 26

Nirmal Ghosh, Naxalbari Andolon O Bangla Sahitya (Kolkata: Karuna, 1979).

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this novel in a single reading. Even a perceptive reader has to read this novel more than once to explore and discover its many-faceted nature. No wonder, a critic like Nirmal Ghosh begins his appraisal of Mahasweta Devi’s Naxalite or pro-Naxalite oeuvre by evaluating this novel.27 He has written no fewer than ten pages to assess this singular creative product. Likewise, the eminent litterateur Samik Bandyopadhyay has devoted a fair quantum of time to translate this novel into English. The basic message emanating from the storyline is essentially simple. It claims that peasant revolt in a semi-feudal society is of a perennial nature, that is, it never dies or extinguishes itself, and the central hero of this revolt, Bashai Tudu, is also deathless. Indeed, the iconic rebel Bashai Tudu rises no fewer than five times from extermination, like phoenix from the ashes, and guides the insurrections repeatedly. The power-wielders – jotedar, mahajan, jamindar, police, local bureaucracy – are left flabbergasted by this ‘deathless’ dimension of BashaiTudu whose political standpoint is firm and unambiguous. Neither the revolutionary Bashai Tudu dies, nor the revolution. The flame, then, is extinguished only when naked and rampant exploitation terminates. In a few succinct lines, the novelist depicts this miraculous and surreal reality which witnesses the return of Bashai Tudu over and over again in spite of his corpse being identified: Deadly, deadly, deadly tired. One has to return again. One has to identify Bashai yet again... But now Kali has to sit for a moment. He enters slowly into the cave. Burial in soft soil; expected, very much expected. Bandage in the corner… blood-soaked broken ampoules. Kali collects carefully and places these in the grave. On the same night Bashai escapes. There is nothing comrade in the sixth, seventh, eight deaths, the problem is with existing life.28

This excerpt not only underlines the mysterious immortality of Bashai but also challenges critics who question Mahasweta Devi’s style of the narrative. We encounter here an animated quality of 27 28

Nirmal Ghosh, Naxalbari Andolon O Bangla Sahitya (Kolkata: Karuna, 1979). ‘Bashai Tudu’ in Mahasweta Devi, Agnigarbha (Kolkata: Karuna, 1978), p. 88.

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prose that quivers with suppressed excitement. The suppression is broken by single, meaningful words and staccato sentences which combine to create a prose that is highly evocative. In point of fact, this prose ascends to the level of lyric a few lines later where Bashai’s return is again predicted by his friend and sympathizer Kali Santra. The lines read. ... But Kali knew that this time too Bashai had strangled the darkness itself. There would come a day when he would wring the air and give it a body, wring the darkness to turn into fire. The night the sixth Bashai buried the fifth and left - how did he look? Let him be very beautiful, very young, very dark… very, very young, very... very... very... He was falling asleep.29

Excerpts such as these with phonetic richness were characteristic of the fictional prose of the time. Mahasweta Devi’s novels at times seemed to some as structurally infirm. But characteristic of political novels, these works such as her documentary novel, Aranyer Adhikar; (Forest Rights or Right to the Forest) or a gripping narrative like Hajar Churasir Ma (Mother of 1084) or a historical narrative like Jhansir Rani (Queen of Jhansi) were finely conceived. This is most apparent in Bashai Tudu where one section or chapter flows seamlessly into the next; where past, present, and future crisscross in rhythmic patterns, and events and debates are juxtaposed in a way that all together these techniques convey the impression that the final verdict of the debate will lead to rebellious action. The two protagonists, the rebel Bashai Tudu, and his counterfoil Kali Santra, a critical member of the bourgeoisiefied CPI (M), are locked in a non-antagonistic relationship and their reflective dialogues create the necessary foundation on which the revolt will happen. The fifth chapter of the novel running to twentyone pages tells the readers of a patient interaction between the two friends, suggesting that the outcome of the impasse can only be a revolt – the only answer to the prevailing environment. But does Kali Santra propagate revolt in unambiguous terms? He does not, 29

Ibid., p. 140.

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though he is not against it per se. He is still attached to the CPI (M) out of a sense of loyalty. His heart lies where Bashai’s heart lies. Others, including the local bureaucracy, are aware of this deep communion and that is why whenever Bashai Tudu is killed, Kali Santra is directed to identify the corpse. Under pressure, he does the identification but lo and behold after some time he is asked to identify again. In other words, he serves as the palpable and real witness of Bashai Tudu’s repeated reincarnations. He hates to perform this rite of identification, he finds it unholy: Kali Santra knows that every day he is dying, but by bit. As he goes, he feels that he is only surviving, but he is almost dead. He regards himself as unclean, unholy. What dirt is this that cannot be washed away while bathing?30

This painful trend of self-questioning and self-evaluation reaches its climax in the last chapter where Kali Santra indulges in a reverie and articulates a dream narrative. He sleeps and Mahasweta Devi ends the novel on an ambivalent and poignant note. Is Kali Santra also going to be arrested? While we ruminate over this question, a police force enters the forest where Kali is sleeping: Kali slept. From the east, with their backs to the sun, a small police battalion entered the forest and moved with inhuman, uncanny skill towards where Kali slept. Their feet on the wet earth moved silently.

Readers will notice how Mahasweta encases the arguments of the rebels against the jotedars and their ilk, clarified the prevailing situation on the basis of discussions, in particular, between Bashai Tudu and Kali Santra, and created in the fiction short lyrical interludes to smoothen the many rough edges of the text. These rough edges however are appropriate to the agrarian scenario and the uprising. Both Kalipada Santra and Bashai Tudu agree that the CPI (M) and its peasant organization Kisan Sabha have done little for farm labourers and bonded labour. In order to win elections it has supported the middle peasants who wield a considerable influence in the countryside. It has also ‘forgiven’ the big landowners who are the real ruthless 30

Ibid., p. 140.

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oppressors. In such a desperate situation, peasant autonomy has found expression in the rebellion with Bashai Tudu taking on the role of the leader. The dialogues and scenes of violence create the basic fabric of the novel, rough and scarred, but interspersed by softening lyrical pauses. One such enigmatic pause reads, Dawn was breaking over a dripping landscape, over an earth asleep in the cool morning breeze after a frenzied mating with the rains. Masses of turgid water swirled in rivulets between the rows of date-palms. They came and stood by the canal and watched the water, the sheer abundance of it.31

In this way Mahasweta created Basai Tudu with her mastery of the craft of literary narrative. It is not surprising that this novel (novelette according to some) has attracted translators, critics and commentators. Samik Bandyopadhyay, the translator of the novel, has drawn our attention to its linguistic felicity. His remark is revealing: ‘We find here a prose that is a collage of literary Bengali, street Bengali, bureaucratic Bengali, tribal Bengali, and the languages of the tribals… Other strands in the collage include quotes from and allusions to a wide range of literature from the classics, both Euro-American and Bengali to popular crimes, from political tracts to legal documents; and to a similar range of “entertainments” from the ubiquitous Tagore songs to film lyrics’.32 This felicity and plurality of languages, in the words of Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak, ‘evokes a modern myth of a tribal peasant revolutionary who teams up with others whenever the landless farm labourers are driven to a crisis, leads them to a revolt, gets killed and appears again at the next point and a dedicated communist journalist who has to identify Bashai Tudu’s body every time – an original mix of documentary realism and revolutionary fantasy, history and fiction, so characteristic of Mahasweta Devi’.33 Both Samik Bandyopadhyay and Gayatri 31

Ibid., p. 150. Samik Bandyopadhyay’s ‘Foreword’ to his English translation of Bashai Tudu (Kolkata: Thema Books, 2002), p. XVII. 33 Gayatri Chakravarti Spivak’s ‘Foreword’ to the English edition of Bashai Tudu (Kolkata: Thema Books), 2002, p. XV. 32

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Chakravarti Spivak have analysed the process of Bashai’s mythification. They say, ‘Once she (the author) conceives Bashai Tudu, she lets him grow into a myth, who dies at every encounter and is reborn to lead the next one. Even as the magic of the myth runs through the narrative and lends it coherence and unity, one has only to read between the lines to discern the revolutionary project that keeps the myth alive as a strategy by making it obligatory for every successor to Bashai’s image to take the place of the dead man’.34 The magic realism of the novel – the magic embedded in the deathlessness of Bashai and the realism in the fierce diurnal struggle – makes it a unique commentary of the time of Naxalbari. For, it is Bashai who changes society and comes to symbolize the time and place transcending his name and the local situation.

FINAL REMARKS Yet, just as the Naxalite age is over and we do not want to discuss it – our past we do not want to recall – this varied, sensitive, and searching endeavour branching into several directions like poetry, novel, drama, short story, and film, is hardly recalled, read, watched, and discussed today. We are all victims of amnesia or embarrassment. The amnesia or embarrassment is collective. It is difficult to categorize the reasons for this indifference. Perhaps the times have changed inexorably in this globalized world. Perhaps our priorities have changed. We are no longer disturbed or animated by revolutionary creativity. Perhaps we are keen to maintain the status quo in the countryside, towns, and cities, and therefore reluctant to make the signs and symbols of defiant, bloody protests as parts of our lives and narratives. Yet, how long shall we able to avoid the Utopian longing present in us that will always remind us at our most uncomfortable moments of these literary and artistic creations?35 34

Ibid., p. XVIII. However, a change was perceptible in 2016 and 2017. Quite a few books on the Naxalbari movement were published during this phase. A work of documentation in two volumes, a detailed work on drama and dramatic representation of the time, and a comprehensive anthology of Naxalbari poetry were published. We can only hope that this trend will continues. 35

eleven CHAPTER

Spring Thunder and the Dialectic of Critique Ranabir Samaddar

THE DOUBLE NATURE OF CRITIQUE

S

pring Thunder as a description of an event elicited criticism almost from the moment it was presented not only as an idea but conceptualized as a specific form of radical and revolutionary politics.1 The criticism also came from fellow travellers. The criticism was not of the event, but of the mode of organizational functioning of the revolutionaries, the pattern of their actions, and the way in which the Spring Thunder as both a description of an event, and a programme and a path looked at the question of the genesis of revolutionary politics, and specifically, its popular roots. The criticism went hand in hand with organization-building, party formation, establishment of what was called revolutionary authority, and the fast pace of the radical activities. Development of the revolution and critique of the revolution accompanied each other, a fact whose significance we are yet to understand.2 1 ‘Spring Thunder over India’, People’s Daily editorial, 5 July 1967, reprinted as Appendix II to Marius Damas, Approaching Naxalbari (Delhi: South Asia Books, 1991), pp. 276–79. 2 Suniti Kumar Ghosh in his insider’s account, Naxalbari Before and After: Reminiscences and Appraisal (Kolkata: New Age Publishers Ltd., 2009), gave a graphic description of the development of the Naxalite thoughts in 1965–72 (publication of the first of the eight documents written by Charu Mazumder to his death) and divided the period in four phases. The description showed how each phase, even the first one, was marked by criticism, with internal critiques along

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At the same time, we have to note that Spring Thunder itself was based on a severe criticism of the old party set up, political practices, old way of class analysis, old analysis of the nature of the state, old style of work reflected in the prevalent mass line, parliamentary style of work, etc. It will be important to see how criticism was forged in this conundrum; how criticism functioned as a key in the life of a political movement. There were two strands of criticism building up in those years in the first half of the decade of the sixties of the last century: one revolving around inner party struggles on issues that made up what was formulated as ‘revisionism’, in short all that had justified class compromises and held back popular movements, struggles, and popular upsurge, and two, focusing on struggles on the ground and preparing formulations on the basis of those struggles. If the first strand was thus doctrine-centric and ideological the second one focused on practices and formulating critique through new political practice.3 Criticism was thus a phenomenon building up on the margin of mainstream Left politics. In this milieu critique was uncertain of its ontology, its role, mode, and duration – all were matters of working out as the revolutionary movement would advance. Thus popular movements in 1966–69, their nature reflecting that of an upsurge, criticism of the old style of functioning of the Left, the battle over directions, the emergence of new ‘authority’4 (authority of Naxalbari and the authority of Charu Mazumder as representing Naxalbari5) to guide the revolution, and with situational developments marking the transition from one phase to another. Thus issues of guerrilla action, party building, authority, election, mass movement, mass organization, cultural policy, and individual and violent mode of organization building became themes of criticism through this period, and these themes emerged on top of one another, at times simultaneously, as the Spring Thunder moved ferociously ahead. – Chapter 17, ‘Appraisal’, pp. 309–22. 3 Pradip Basu points this out in Naxalbarir Purbakhan (Kolkata: Progressive Publishers, 1998), chapter 2, pp. 16–160. 4 On how authority including the personal authority of Charu Mazumder was institutionalized, Suniti Kumar Ghosh, ‘Shottor Dashaker Kichu Katha’, Naxalbari Andolaner Pramanya Tathya Sankalan (Agarpara: Naya Istahar Prakashani, n.d., pp. 35–39 (CRG archive). 5 Saroj Dutta was candid on the question of what he thought as ‘revolutionary authority’. In his words, ‘Without revolutionary authority revolution is not possible.’

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critique by the fellow travellers of the way criticism was developing or was being practiced (resulting in intolerance) as part of the politics of Spring Thunder – all these were mixed up with one another and made critique the most essential feature of the time. Critiquing the past, critiquing the present, critiquing culture and history, critiquing the mode through which criticism had been hitherto done, critiquing errant comrades, critiquing those who differed with authority, gave little room to think of and offer anything strategic, coherent, and positive. The more Spring Thunder wanted to think ahead, the more it was hurled back to an absolutely critical that is an absolutely negating mode – a case of what Theodor Adorno would have called ‘negative dialectics’.6 Such a radical negativity had profound consequences for the movement known as the Spring Thunder. In this all-round atmosphere of negativity where institutions, leadership, politics, culture, ethics, state, history, and the self – everything was being criticized, the task of criticism required legitimacy. Of course, it was the legitimacy of revolution or more correctly speaking the critique drew from the legitimacy of the revolution, the legitimacy of Naxalbari, of the Spring Thunder – Further, ‘Individuals have set up the party in the world history of revolutions, thus the Bolshevik Party was the creation of Lenin, and the Chinese Communist Party the creation of the Chairman. Thus the history of party building is that individuals create party. This is the law of history. Indian history has reposed that historic task in the hands of Charu Mazumder. Hence Charu Mazumder is the central Committee of the CPI (ML). Today the new CPI (ML) will grow around him’ – Report of Saroj Dutta’s Speech to the North Bengal Bihar Border Regional Committee. He delivered this speech some days before he was killed. – published as introduction to the writings of Charu Mazumder, Charu Mazumder Rachana Sankalan (Kolkata: Lallanthan Prakashani, 1998), pp. iv–v; Suniti Kumar Ghosh in Naxalbari Before and After narrated (pp. 301–02) the discussion among party leaders over the note, and it was agreed to publish the note in Deshabarati under the title, ‘Without revolutionary leadership revolution is not possible’, but later with the insistence of two party leaders the old title had come back, ‘Without revolutionary authority revolution is not possible’, and thus ‘leadership’ was changed for ‘authority’. Ghosh apparently asked in vain for the authenticity of the original title given by Dutta. Today there is no way to verify the truth of this purloined letter carried by the party leader along with Dutta’s original note. 6 Theodor Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans., E.B. Ashton (London: Routledge, 1973).

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but then this legitimacy had to be given a form. Authority – revolutionary authority – was the form. It was in this way, Charu Mazumder became the revolutionary authority, and the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) was the institutional authority of the revolutionary movement. The Party journal Deshabarati and Liberation became the authoritative voices of revolutionary truth. The establishment of authority was accompanied by a strange summersault – a movement that epitomized critique aspired to be above criticism, and all those who criticized this authoritative mode of being were delegitimized of revolutionary virtue. The classic instance of this ontology of critique was evident when the thirtieth anniversary of the Naxalbari peasant struggle was commemorated in 1997. It was recognized that Naxalbari happened in the context of unprecedented mass struggles in 1966–67, which had been turned into opportunistic grab of governmental power by the parliamentary Left. However even after state repression, as it was pointed out, Naxalbari created more Naxalbaris (in Debra, Gopiballavpur, Srikakulam, Mushahari, Birbhum, and elsewhere), and the urban unrest was now to be redirected towards rallying in support of the peasantry. The new party had combated revisionist errors, theoretical mistakes, and gone ahead. However ‘with Charu Mazumder’s martyrdom the first phase of Naxalbari struggle ended’.7 These later recollections minimized the gravity of the differences within the revolutionary ranks in spite of evidences of 7 ‘Paschimbange je Uttoradhikar Amra Phire Petey Chai’, published by Bidyut Bhaumik on behalf of the Thirtieth Anniversary of Naxalbari Celebration Committee, Halishar, 1997, p. 13 (CRG archive); there is however a large element of untruth in this claim. As more Naxalbaris were created, opposition to the Party line emanated from these new centres, like Mushahari, Debra-Gopiballavpur, and Birbhum. Besides the opposition by Andhra leaders like T. Nagi Reddy and C. Pulla Reddy, who were leading struggles independently of the Party, persisted. On these see, particularly on Satyanarain Singh’s opposition based on struggles in Mushahari in Bihar, see Saifuddin, ‘Satyanarain Singh: Akatitha Katha’, Ebong Jalarka, January-June 2006, pp. 172–90; on the opposition to the ‘party line’ by the leaders of the DebraGopiballavpur peasant struggle under the Bengal Bihar Orissa Border Regional Committee (BBOBRC) and leaders of the struggle in Birbhum under the West Bengal Bihar Border Regional Committee (Murshidabad-Birbhum-Santhal Parganas) see Suniti Kumar Ghosh, Naxalbari Before and After, pp. 267–69.

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persisting differences.8 Three aspects of this style of recollection – indeed the dominant narrative of the radicals in later years – are significant: first, the overwhelming presence of critique as an element in theoretical-political understanding of mass movement and struggle; second, only a partial acknowledgement of the role of urban upsurge as a consequence and component of the time, and leaving the issue at that, without attempting to analyse its significance in shaping strategy and the path (not surprisingly; and in this the Naxalite leadership remaining strangely disinterested in theorizing the massive upsurge in towns, mufossils, and cities of Bengal in 1965–66); and third, the absence of any attempt to analyse the failure of the movement, which ended ‘with the death of Charu Mazumder’. This was a clear instance of the paradoxical overlap of the event and the doctrine. The event is the moment of beginning, but doctrine brings out its meaning. People, popular movement, masses remain as hovering shadows in this chiaroscuro of events and the path or the doctrine. The party had laid down the path. It had given the doctrinal truth. Interestingly, in the immediate aftermath of the event, its political significance was clear. It did not require the later doctrinal elaboration. Thus in several immediate political commentaries the event made clear sense, such as, the pressure on the landlords of the area by the peasants of Naxalbari to cede title claims of land to the latter, supremacy of the voice of the peasant committees to which the State must pay heed to, United Front government’s prolandowner stance, deployment of coercive machinery by the State to suppress peasant movement, and the heroic mass mobilisation of the peasants in self-defence.9 Perhaps, these commentaries were 8 One later report however recalled how from the beginning, the AICCR had internal differences particularly with Andhra leaders on issues such as attitude towards China, approach to Srikakulam armed struggle, and the relation between elections and armed struggle. As this report commented, ‘…the differences were deep and bordering on the basic. For the AICCR, the only way to fight back the repression by the police and the landlords’ goondas was by going on an offensive campaign for the ‘annihilation of class enemies’, but Nagi Reddy continued to emphasise, ‘For us it is a matter of resistance’. – ‘A Peal of Spring Thunder’ in Naxalbari is not just the Name of a Village, 1, An AIRSF Publication, September 1996, pp. 26–27 (CRG archive); see also n. 32. 9 ‘Naxalbarir Naksha’, editorial, Kalpurusher Katha, 4, 1967, Nirbachita Kalpurush, 1967–69, Kolkata, pp. 35–40.

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enough for the time being. The event was still open ended. It could lead to several paths, and forms of struggle. Perhaps that would have been true realization of the call, ‘Create More Naxalbaris’, and a general line would have emerged in course of time, indicating an Indian path of revolutionary transformation of popular movements and mass struggles.10 It was already historic that the Naxalbari peasant struggle had raised the important question of revolution in post-independence India’s political history. Indeed, as the Terai Krishak Sabha leaflet famously asked, Whenever peasants have protested against the reactionary clique of landowners that became strong during the Congress regime, the reactionary clique in order to retain land – illegally occupied and under different names with the help of land settlement clerks and officers, police, and officials of the government - has launched massive attacks on the peasants and has wanted to stifle peasants’ demand for social justice. The loud cries of anarchy today are meant to pave the way for such attacks. To strengthen the reactionary clique, on one hand the tea garden owners and the Congress Party are raising hue and cry, and on the other hand police and some government officials are raising the pretext of democracy for all. 10 On the occasion of the fiftieth year of Naxalbari Bernard D’Mello noted what he thought to be the correctness of the ‘line of Naxalbari’, and thus the creation of many Naxalbaris that smouldered in India from 1968 to 1975, and were suppressed by the State. He further noted that during what he termed as the second phase, from 1977 to 2003, the Naxalite movement, especially in North Telangana and other parts of the then-state of Andhra Pradesh, and in what was then central and south Bihar (the latter now the province of Jharkhand), as also in parts of what is called Dandakaranya, the forest area situated in the border and adjoining tribal districts of the states of Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, and Orissa, was marked by building of mass organizations and mass struggles. After that in the next phase the movement became strong in few parts like Chattisgarh and Jharkhand. Yet, while noting the resilience of the armed movement in few parts of the country, he does not interrogate in his analysis the almost insurmountable difficulty in the transition of a radical mass movement to an armed revolutionary movement and consequently the failure of the ‘line of Naxalbari.’ In this sense the original problem remains. See his article, ‘Whither Maoist Movement?’, Frontier, Volume 50 (5), 6–12 August 2017 – http://www.frontierweekly.com/articles/vol-50/50-5/50-5-Whither%20Maoist%20 Movement.html (Accessed on 11 August 2017).

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The Terai peasant wants to know, is democracy only for land and tea garden owners?11

Yet we must not think that the fast pace of doctrinal elaboration, and the establishment of a party based on the principle of revolutionary authority derived from the event of Naxalbari was the handiwork of a clique or group.12 The force of upsurge created the need of a centre, of a mouthpiece of truth, of revolutionary authority around which revolution could grow. The certitude of truth was required by the movement. If earlier truths had been criticized, the new truth needed reconfirmation. Therefore, no wonder, precisely around the time Naxalbari happened and in its aftermath the famous red leaflet (the above-mentioned leaflet of the Terai peasant association) was circulating widely among countless people in the state, and radical activists were feeling their way and thoughts, Charu Mazumder was explaining the revolutionary significance in doctrinal terms like these: India has been turned into a base of imperialism and revisionism and is acting today as a base of reactionary forces against the people struggling for liberation. That is why the Naxalbari struggle is not merely a national struggle; it is also an international struggle.13

Or, We want to introduce a system under which the administration will be carried out by revolutionary committees at all levels. Previously this did not form a part of the programme of democratic revolution. 11

‘Terai-er Krishaker Pashe Daran’ (issued by Jangal Santhal, President, Siliguri Mahakuma Krishak Samiti, 20 May 1967 – in Bengali, translation mine). 12 Innumerable reminiscences of leaders of the Party of that time show how with various kinds of misgivings and hesitation, the overwhelming number of leaders and activists agreed to form a party based on authority. See Suniti Kumar Ghosh, ‘Shottor Dashaker Kichu Katha’, Naxalbari Andolaner Pramanya Tathya Sankalan; also the intimate account of Santosh Rana, Rajnitir Ek Jiban (Kolkata: Ananda Publishers, 2018), pp. 134–36. 13 Charu Mazumder, ‘One year of Naxalbari Struggle’, Liberation, June 1968, reprinted in Charu Mazumder on the Naxalbari Road – A Compilation, A World to Win, 1987/9, p. 30.

284 SPRING THUNDER AND THE DIALECTIC OF CRITIQUE This is a contribution of China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. We are adopting it because we believe that China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is the third revolution that has influenced the world system. After the first revolution – the Great October Revolution – the democratic revolution of every country became part of the world socialist revolution. After the second revolution – the Great Chinese Revolution – the revolution in every country can be victorious only by taking the path of people’s war. Exactly, in the same way today, after the third revolution – the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution – the democratic revolution of every country has become a part and parcel of this Cultural Revolution. This is because no revolution in any country in the present era can win victory without fighting revisionism. Today revisionism is the enemy of revolution in every country, and its weapon is bourgeois democracy. So the democratic revolution will have to move forward by fighting incessantly against bourgeois democracy, that is, against institutions like elections and parliament. Therefore we can never make use of these institutions in carrying forward the democratic revolution today. We must carry on administration by forming revolutionary committees with the cooperation of the masses and with their leaders as members....14

One can notice how the doctrinal wheel moved on remorselessly. First, in one stroke, the great phase of anti-colonial revolutions was taken out from the history of global revolutions. The Chinese revolution was people’s war, which it was, but its national content was now emptied. Second, while Naxalbari raised the question of the power to the peasant committees, the doctrine spoke of power to the revolutionary committees as the supposed lesson of Cultural Revolution, which meant ignoring the historically established mass organs of people’s movement, and on the other hand freedom for small, roving bands of rebels to enjoy power and execute it at will without any responsibility, because these so-called revolutionary committees will not be elected committees. And, finally the link between the national character of the progressive and revolutionary 14

Charu Mazumder, ‘March Forward Summing Up the Experiences of the Revolutionary Peasant Struggle in India’, December 1969, in A World to Win, 1987/9, pp. 30–31.

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movements in various countries and the global anti-imperialist movement was transformed into making the national movements parts of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. We all know the disastrous consequences of these doctrinal moves. They need not be recounted here again. What is important to note is the political process by which every ounce of theoretical significance of an event was extracted and exhausted through a process of critique, and a monstrous doctrine was erected on the basis of the legitimacy of an event. Thus, important insights now hinged precariously on the margins of the political concept of revolution, revolution now meant primarily struggle against revisionism as the core of critique. Likewise, the revolution was to fight against bourgeois nationalism, which was ‘narrow and the biggest weapon of the ruling class’. Once again, as can be seen, with this the entire question of the nation was jettisoned and nothing remained as a national charter of struggle. Finally, the political concept of revolution emphasized the mobilization of the peasantry, but now the doctrine was that the mobilization of the mass of peasantry on sectional issues must lead to armed struggle, and only then the mobilization would make sense as evidence of revolutionary consciousness.15 In short, while the revolutionary doctrine of 1967–69 drew from the rebellious consciousness of the time and drew legitimacy from the event of 15

Charu Mazumder, ‘Carry on the Struggle against Modern Revisionism’ and ‘It is by Fighting Against Revisionism that the Peasant Struggle will have to be Taken Forward’, Eight Documents (January 1965–April 1967) in A World to Win, 1987/9, pp. 31–39; original in Bengali compiled and published as ‘Sangshodhanbad Birodhi Aitihasik At-ti Dalil’, Charu Mazumder Rachana Sankalan, pp. 1–33; one big consequence of this formulation that the success of a sectional struggle of the peasantry depends on whether it has turned into armed struggle - people’s war – was that the peasant upsurge in Gopiballavpur in 1969 for seizing the crops was not appreciated by the Party and Charu Mazumder. See on the entire period and Charu Mazumder’s advice, Santosh Rana, Samaj, Shreni, Rajniti (Kolkata: Camp, 2006), pp. 108–39. To be truthful, even Kanu Sanyal’s ‘Report on the Peasant Movement in the Terai Region’ said, ‘The struggle of the Terai peasant is an armed struggle – not for land but for state power. This is a fundamental question, and the revisionist thinking, which has been prevailing in the peasant movement for the last few decades, can only be combated by solving this question’ – Liberation, Volume 2 (1), 1968, reprinted in Suniti Kumar Ghosh, The Historic Turning-Point: A Liberation Anthology, Volume 1 (published by S.K. Ghosh, Kolkata: 1992), p. 353.

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Naxalbari, this rebelliousness consciousness was ossified into a set of doctrines that exhausted the multiplicity and flexibility of the time. The fast development of revolutionary consciousness was stymied because its expression was now put in the straightjacket of a ‘path’. The ‘path’ laden with doctrinal truths was unable to unlock the crucial question of transforming popular struggle into revolutionary struggle. The reason lay in the failure to recognize the significance of the relation between people, classes, and revolution. With a little bit of exaggeration, they could have said, classes do not make revolutions, people do. In this way, the intense desire for authority and legitimacy that was produced by the movement made the movement its first victim. The popular desire for new truths in that age of convulsion was immense. It also reflected class struggle that came back to haunt ‘democracy’, because everything that this new practice represented spoke loudly against the values of liberal democracy. The poorer classes and the underclass demanded change. The system was blamed. To achieve this change required the capture of state power and its use to end the uncontested power of the super-rich. It was a kind of Left populism that rejected nationalism, xenophobia, any talk of gradual change, reforms, and various social differences. It was all about classes and class struggle. This was evident in the rhetoric, analysis, and the proposed path of Spring Thunder. And, yet no one was prepared including the proponents of Spring Thunder for the terrible form in which class struggle had returned to political contestation. The return of the politics of class struggle and the re-engagement of extra-parliamentary popular movements were symbolized by the ferocity of critique represented by these movements coupled with the institutionalization of authority in the movement. Only with the conclusion of the long decade of 1965–75 could we realize that India had entered in that period a new phase of class struggle, and that this was a period, at the conclusion of which, the country along with the pattern of the politics of class struggle, had changed enormously. This double nature of critique embodied Spring Thunder. It also influenced the way the Spring Thunder created history. It would be a history of contradictory features: critique as mode of existence and authority as the mode of organization, a longing for the lost

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popular roots and a policy of recreating exceptional radical events, realization of the imperatives of federalizing radical politics and a relentless call for centralization of radical forces through their unity (a unity that would never be achieved given the hold of the ethos of critique on the movement). These contradictory aspects have shaped the outlook of the radical forces towards the moment of beginning. For them the moment of beginning has a mystique. They retain it. They cannot see 1967 as a moment in a flow of struggles (with the continuities and discontinuities) but an exceptional event, yet they know that without popular struggles 1967 would not have arrived, and hence their insufferable contradiction. Meanwhile India has changed. The politics of Spring Thunder lags behind. Theoretically, in a broad sense, it remains still in its moment of beginning. Nowhere is this more pronounced than in the reflections on 1967 by those who profess to continue along its path. Fifty years later, it remains the same story – of how to redefine the movement and develop unity in action. But since Spring Thunder has been seen as a breakthrough, the rhetorical question posed by all radical groups after fifty years is, namely, where is the breakthrough now, the new breakthrough? Why is there no breakthrough? How can it come? On the other hand, while the search for breakthrough continues, people demand all-round basic changes with no breakthrough in sight. The parliamentary Left abjures the idea of a breakthrough while the radical and far Left cannot offer a vision that will be liberationist and yet popular. Reality has surpassed the confines of old debates (some of which still remain valid) such as, parliamentary politics versus politics of the street, land to the tillers versus feudalism, class versus caste, or reforms versus revolution. Given that reality has produced new questions, on which the radicals cannot formulate politics in their framework of 1967, unity remains as elusive today as it was five decades ago. The continuing presence of 1967 as an idea and memory along with the presence of the far Left in parts of the country constitute the possibility of parallel power in India. Yet due to reasons indicated and explained above, it is not a situation of dual power, though we can say that militant opposition to bourgeois state power in India is in the environment. The environment of class rule and class struggle fosters such parallel

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power. This power cannot be killed; on the other hand, the situation cannot develop into what can be called a situation of dual power.

THE EVENT AND THE PATH Kanu Sanyal in 1973 authored a critical re-statement of the peasant upsurge in Naxalbari.16 He took pains to point out that the peasant upsurge was not a one-day event – sudden and without any lineage. He pointed out the mass work in the preceding years, strenuous political education of the peasantry, collective leadership, and a policy of building up militant peasant struggles in the area – all these led to the peasant upsurge of 1967. In that restatement of the event he criticized what he held as the anarchist and Left sectarian tendency of Charu Mazumder and said that it was by rejecting the said anarchist and sectarian line (of individual annihilation, armed activities without any mass support, etc.) of Charu Mazumder that Naxalbari happened. And it was because of the imposition of Charu Mazumder’s line and authority over the broader revolutionary movement in the country that the movement in Naxalbari dissipated and was finally defeated and crushed. This self-critical analysis of 1973 by Kanu Sanyal followed his first document (1968) on the same Terai struggle.17 The first document in the form of a report on the peasant movement in Naxalbari had followed the style of Mao’s famous report on Hunan peasant movement,18 and had emphasized 16 Kanu Sanyal, ‘Naxalbari Samparke Aro Baktabya’, April 1973, published by Asit Sinha, December 1975, Kolkata; published in English, ‘More about Naxalbari’ in Samar Sen, Debabrata Panda, and Ashish Lahiri (eds.)., Naxalbari and After, A Frontier Anthology: A Moving Human Document of a Turbulent Decade (Kolkata: Kathashilpa, 1978), Volume 2, pp. 326–347, reproduced from Proletarian Path, Volume 2 (4–5), May-August 1974. 17 Kanu Sanyal, ‘Terai-er Krishak Andolan Samparke Report’, 15 September 1968, Deshabrati, 24 October 1968, re-published by Asit Sinha, December 1975, translated in English, ‘Report on the Peasant Movement in the Terai Region’, Liberation, Volume 2 (1), November 1968 – http://www.bannedthought.net/India/ CPI(ML)-Orig/Liberation/1968-Nov/ReportPeasantTerai-Sanyal-v2n1.pdf (Accessed on 6 July 2017). 18 Mao Tse-Tung, ‘Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement In Hunan‘, March 1927, Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung, Volume 1 - https://www.

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the dimension of upsurge in the struggle and its insurrectionist acts. The first report had conjured up the image of an extraordinary event, while the second one emphasized the long and arduous mass work leading to the struggle of 1967.19 Both these dimensions played themselves out repeatedly in critical discussions on Spring Thunder. Indeed, by the time Kanu Sanyal’s reassessment came out in 1973, and was widely circulated in the following years, the approach to the moment of origin had been set. Naxalbari as an event had come to dominate the revolutionaries’ imagery. Political and strategic analysis was submerged in this imagery of the event. Yet, ironically at the same time, various groups and parties working in the name of Naxalbari and carrying the legacy of Spring Thunder were also engaged with their respective task of political analysis. Some of them tried to make sense of the changes in the country’s situation especially from the decade of the nineties in the last century. Yet all through their mutual dialogues and criticisms, the event of 1967 remained a marker. Hence the question repeatedly surfaced: What does Naxalbari signify? What does it mean when we say Naxalbari’s path is our path? The dilemma was made acute by the realization, evident in many subsequent commentaries, namely that the situation had changed from the decade of the eighties and certainly nineties, which made the tactical lines and even the strategic line of Naxalbari inapplicable and impossible in the new situation. Yet every critical revolutionary reflection began with ‘Long Live Naxalbari’. If it indicated only the path of revolution without any concrete strategic-tactical connotation, this would have been alright, though then the slogan would have been reduced to banality. The fact that the slogan meant something as an offensive strategy even under altered condition of the country was a pointer to the fact that the event with its marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_2.htm (Accessed on 6 July 2017). 19 As mentioned in n 11, it is also significant that the famous red leaflet issued by the Naxalbari peasant movement, ‘Terai-er Krishaker Pashe Daran’ (issued in the name of Jangal Santhal, President, Siliguri Mahakuma Krishak Samiti, 20 May 1967) did not speak of peasant revolution, but of various issues on which the peasants struggled there, and was an appeal to all to rally in favour of Terai peasants.

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specific politics, known as the politics of Spring Thunder, still created consternation among the ruling classes. Such has been the implication of 1967 as the embodiment of revolutionary criticism that is to say criticism of existing social conditions by revolution. To be truthful, the limitations of the particular strategy of revolution as professed by the revolutionaries of 1967 were clear even then – at least they became clear in the following three four years. Even Kanu Sanyal’s first report on the Terai peasant struggle authored after just one year of the struggle had no choice but to ask, why did the peasant movement crumble down in such short time? His answer was that they had not practiced Mao’s line properly. They had not focused on building a mass base, liberating the villages, imparting revolutionary consciousness among the peasantry, and building guerrilla forces. As to why all these could not be done was not asked by the leader of the Terai struggle. And as we know, within another five years of debacle he had to ask even more fundamental questions. Yet while Naxalbari peasantry struggle declined, similar struggles flared up in Debra, Gopiballavpur, and Birbhum20 in West 20

Except some reports in Deshabrati and Liberation we do not have as yet proper accounts and analyses of the peasant struggles in Gopiballavpur, Debra, and Birbhum (on Birbhum there are few writings). On Gopiballavpur we get some primary idea from Santosh Rana’s writings (n 11 and n 14); on Debra struggle, ‘Revolutionary Armed Struggle in Debra (West Bengal)’, Liberation, Volume 3 (2), December 1969, reprinted in Suniti Kumar Ghosh, The Historic Turning-Point: A Liberation Anthology, Volume 2 (published by S.K. Ghosh, Kolkata: 1993), pp. 263–75. On the struggle in Birbhum a report by the West Bengal-Bihar Border Regional Committee, CPI (ML), ‘A review of Armed Struggle in Birbhum’, Liberation, July 1971–January 1972, reprinted in Suniti Kumar Ghosh, The Historic Turning-Point: A Liberation Anthology, Volume 2, pp. 281–304; see also two graphic reports, ‘A report on Birbhum’ by a Correspondent, Frontier, 26 June 1971, and ‘Another Report on Birbhum’ by A.B.. Frontier, 10 July 1971 – in Samar Sen, Debabrata Panda, and Ashish Lahiri (eds.), Naxalbari and After: A Frontier Anthology, Volume 1 (Kolkata: Kathashilpa, 1978), pp. 111–24; these two reports tell us of armed detachments of the revolutionaries roving in the district, punishments of moneylenders and the bad gentry, coercive measures deployed by them so that people desist from voting, and police and operations of the para-military force; The peasantry is absent. As one report says, they are silently happy. Some of them are concerned when they are returned their pawned articles, ‘Who will lend them money when they need it even if they want to pawn their articles? Their want being perpetual, they will

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Bengal, and other places in Andhra Pradesh and later Bihar. And everywhere it was the same story: peasant struggle initially gaining mass support and in no time turning into an armed struggle, heavy state repression, roving bands of armed cadres unable to cope with the repression, scattered anarchist acts, and eventual decimation of the movement. In all these the Party as the leader of the movement had more of a spiritual presence. It had little to contribute to the actual struggles, their coordination, and guidance.21 By the time it was clear that the struggle was facing all round rout, the leaders had died, or were in prison, or been killed one after another. Suppression coupled with internal fragmentation brought an end to the popular presence in revolutionary politics. Radical negativity had emptied itself of all positive meanings and possibilities.22 Even though some sections of the Party (fragmented in different platforms, groups, unity centres, and parties) regrouped within a decade as in Bihar and Andhra Pradesh, and the struggle once again became popular, the basic dilemma remained. Meanwhile, one more often need money’. (p. 123) Noticeably, these and other reports in Deshabrati and Liberation were heavily influenced by Kanu Sanyal’s first Terai report, Charu Mazumder’s writings, and of course Mao’s Hunan report. Yet amidst many euphoric descriptions at times one can find indications of difficulties and realisation of the need for new thinking. 21 For instance, Sushital Ray Chaudhury in his last letter to Charu Mazumder (n.d) mentioned how the party was unable to guide hundreds of young urban activities who wanted to go the villages and take any responsibility for them, and had instead encouraged them to be irresponsible in their actions. – ‘Ekti Asamapta Chithir Khasra’, Ebong Jalarka, Volume 1 (4), April-June 1998, pp. 1–7. The editorial comment while publishing this letter said that this was perhaps a draft; of the 19 pages only seven pages survived. Also it is not known if the letter reached Charu Mazumder. Sushital Ray Chaudhury died in 1971 and Charu Mazumder died in 1972. 22 Classic again is the case of the writings of Sushital Ray Chaudhury, one of the most senior leaders of the party, who wanted an end to the anarchic practices of the party (in his words ‘Left sectarianism’), but his own views remained imprisoned in the doctrine and path propounded by the Spring Thunder. See his article on the path of Naxalbari, ‘November Biplaber Alokey Bharater Muktir Path: Naxalbarir Path’, Deshabrati, 9 November 1967, reprinted in Ebong Jalarka, Volume 1 (4), April-June 1998, pp. 23–35; similarly his article justifying vote boycott, ‘Nirbachan Boycott Korben Keno?’, Ebong Jalarka, Volume 1 (4), April-June 1998, pp. 17–23.

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problem emerged. In 1967 the radical negativity of the politics of Spring Thunder had developed primarily in fundamental opposition to the traditional parliamentary Left. Now in the decades of the eighties and nineties the question arose: With the parliamentary Left in governmental power in West Bengal and two other states, should the radicals strive for broad Left unity?23 In time, the opposition to the conventional Left dimmed, as the radicals realized the need for strenuous mass work, and that the possibility of recreating Naxalbari was almost over. And, as undertaking more and more mass work became the line, the event with its specific politics receded in strategic thinking. Naxalbari acquired a mythical form in memory. And if more and more mass work was the way out, who could beat the parliamentary Left in this game? Therefore, the question would repeatedly torment radical politics: What would be a revolutionary perspective in the altered circumstances in a neo-liberal India? What would be the form of dual power in this new situation? What sense to make of the elections and the possibility of anti-autocratic, populist, anti-globalization parties coming to governmental power in the states? How are the radical forces to relate to them? What will be the form of the united front? How to redefine classes in a situation characterized by the rise of corporate bourgeoisie, informal labour, urban restructuring, logistical turn in economy, agrarian crisis that is more than a case of failing to give land to the tillers and is now engulfing middle peasants also, industrial restructuring and ‘jobless growth’, and the resistance taking various new forms on issues of dignity, rights, social justice, gender justice, local autonomies, federalization of politics, etc.? The old formulation of that Indian economy and society is semi-feudal and semi-colonial does not work anymore. 23

Ashim Chatterjee, a prominent leader of the decades of the sixties and early seventies was a representative of this trend. His three reflections over a period of twenty years showed the evolution of this trend. He finally ended with emphasizing the need for Left-democratic practices and Left unity as a way out of the radical conundrum – in his words, ‘democratic leftism is the leftism of twenty first century’. See his document, ‘Ganatantrik Bampanthai Ekush Shataker Bampantha’, 20 January 2011 in Naxalbari Phire Dekha O Ajker Kotha, published by Ratan Chattopadhyay, Hooghly, Unique Printers, Kolkata, 30 November 2016, pp. 76–80.

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Simple vote boycotts do not work. Dialogues have become the mode of expanding networks of resistance and claim makings. Also, one cannot say that villages will encircle the cities, where now 32 per cent of the country’s population lives. And above all the migrant population (450 million) is a huge segment of the country’s total population, bringing to light two of the main features of modern Indian economy – primitive accumulation and massive migrant labour force. Very little of these could be discerned in the sixties when the Spring Thunder broke out in the Indian sky. Reflections of Naxalbari could not focus on the crucial question: What is living and what is dead in the politics of Naxalbari? The reflections of the followers of the Naxalbari politics by and large reproduced the old duality: Naxalbari as an exceptional event and Naxalbari as a political-strategic line, Naxalbari as Spring Thunder and Naxalbari as the culmination of a long arduous process of critical political work and of specific forms of mass struggles. The only exceptions to this scenario were the most organized revolutionary groups – the Communist Party of India Marxist Leninist (Liberation) and the Communist Party of India (Maoist). In both cases success and growth seem to have pulled them out of the straightjacket of 1967, though the particular reasons have not been the same. The former probably epitomizes the politics of radical mass politics, the latter the politics of defiant armed struggle holding on to its achievements and bases even at great cost. Yet, the unique combination of popular struggle and emphasis on armed resistance featuring the time of Naxalbari is missing individually in these two forms of legacies. Together they represent the paradoxes of 1967. This takes us to a major question: Why has the imagery of Spring Thunder as a great event from which revolution flowed proven to be compulsive to later generations of revolutionaries and radicals? Why is its duality and paradox reproduced again and again? What was its composition that ordained both its rebirth and defeat in later years? As we know, the movement re-emerged in some areas where it later suffered setback. It was suppressed in some places while it constantly surfaced in new regions conveying the promise of becoming the alternative political force of the masses. This

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bewildering diversity of Naxalbari politics in the last fifty years is something to be probed into with great detail. All along its path the Spring Thunder influenced several localities, areas, sections of society, and made great achievements while in this period it also weakened and collapsed in several regions. What explains this duality? Probably we should, as hinted earlier, begin again with large economic changes in this period. The informal sector has grown big with contributing around 40 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and engaging about 80 per cent of the workforce. The overall economic growth is because of the increase in service sector, and manufacturing activity in contrast is stagnant or registering decline. The core sector growth has slowed down to 2.5 per cent per annum. There are little investments in the manufacturing sector. The sale of durable and non-durable commodities is struggling to maintain their break-even sale point. Massive numbers of people are being retrenched in the manufacturing sectors, and this has spread to the IT sector now. A substantial number of industrial sectors have been deregulated for investment by overseas capital. This has been a period of global change, and with constant bleeding of foreign currency the foreign debt to be repaid has only increased. While ‘money is making more money’ – thus we see continuous growth in the share market index, while at the same time industrial or agricultural growth is languishing on a lower base, and the commodity sectors that formed the earlier traditional base for achieving higher growth are also languishing. The new digitized financial regime has little relation with production. Circulation of money, information, credit, finance, infrastructural projects, and rental activities are enlarging the consumption market. New finance capital moves from country to country for higher returns on investment guaranteed by the governments of these countries. The finance markets have impacted on earlier class formations and have re-created the polity fractured along new lines. At the same time agrarian crisis characterized by massive farmer suicides marks the country. Cities are marked by migrant labour besides being drowned in poverty, unemployment, and corruption. New cities, called the new towns or smart cities, are to bypass this condition, but they will not change urban squalor. They will be the new hunting ground of private capital based as they are

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on public-private partnership (PPP). The functions of the state in this way are being transferred to private capital and management. Finally, large-scale acquisition of forest land, other public lands and urban land at a nominal price is creating a rental economy and helping the bourgeoisie acquire a sustainable asset base. The result of all these developments is that poverty, injustice, discrimination, dispossession and exploitation still remain. Hence ‘Naxalbari’ as an idea of revolution is still considered as valid and draws newer people. Yet, these developments as mentioned above have complicated the class structure and class relations, and ‘Naxalbari’ as a specific path and programme has failed on several occasions in such a changing scenario.

CHANGES OF SITUATION AND REPRODUCTION OF THE EVENT We must return then to the question: notwithstanding all the changes in the Indian situation after the sixties of the last century why is this singular attraction of Naxalbari, the Spring Thunder, not only as an idea but also as a specific path? Why is the remorseless reproduction of the duality, the paradox and the contradiction? On the fiftieth year of the event (1977–2017) radicals and revolutionaries have not only commemorated the event, but have re-emphasized the specific path that the event supposedly held up, the components of which to repeat are: emphasis on the themes of semi-feudalism and the central role of peasantry in the revolution, worker-peasant alliance, strategy of surrounding the cities by the countryside, opposition to imperialism and the comprador bourgeoisie (perhaps support to the national bourgeoisie if there is one), the global salience of the Chinese path of revolution and Mao Tse-Tung’s thoughts, the need for a revolutionary party, opposition to all forms of parliamentarianism, centrality of armed struggle, building up red bases and people’s army and a united front.24 Most of these, the Naxalites will argue, remain relevant even now and thus the politics 24 Based on ‘Spring Thunder over India’ and Charu Mazumder’s’At-ti Dalil’ (‘Eight Documents’), see the discussion arguing for their continuing relevance, ‘Samayer Jhunti Chepe Dhorun, Comrade Charu Mazunder-ke Smaran Korun’, Editorial 2, Sarjamin, Fiftieth Anniversary Number, 3 (4), May 2017, pp. 5–14.

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of rebellion will recall Naxalbari even after fifty years not only as an event but also as a specific path and programme, notwithstanding the fact that in the last few decades the situation and the formulations have undergone metamorphosis. Thus, if we take up the question of the peasantry, which was the key question in the Naxalbari movement and the party programme, we shall see that the agrarian question today is not mainly an issue of land seizure and redistribution, but more one of preventing land from passing over to corporate interests, peasant distress under market conditions, new forms of rural debt, caste and gender oppression, agrarian labour turning into informal and migrant labour for various jobs like construction work, waste reprocessing, small scale and artisanal mining, etc. Peasant labour as a stable form of labour is transforming. In the mid-sixties there was a rising shortage of food because of droughts, which forced India to import about 10 million tons of food grains in 1965–66. Then, with the help of new agricultural technology and new seeds, agricultural production increased massively. For instance, the annual wheat production doubled from 11.28 million tons in 1962–63 to 25 million tons in ten years. Likewise, rice production too grew enormously. Total foodgrain production in India reached an all-time high of 251.12 million tonnes in 2015. Along with this change, agrarian crisis took on a different form. Today according to the Census of 2011, about 120 million cultivators form 25 per cent of the total national workforce, and this is in addition to the 144 million agricultural labourers. Yet the contribution of agriculture to country’s GDP is declining and stands now at 13.7 per cent, supporting almost 60 per cent of the population. At the same time there is emphasis on agricultural export, which now is 10 per cent of country’s total exports and the fourth-largest exported principal commodity. Yet about 65 per cent of the farmland consists of marginal and small farms of less than one hectare in size, and about 60 per cent of rural population or 42 per cent of total population are dependent on these farms. Only a small part of the arable land is irrigated; and the inadequacy of proper transport facility, poor rural roadways, and inadequate post harvesting infrastructure has meant reportedly an annual wastage of Rs 500 billion – enough to wipe out hunger in the

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villages. Add to that today’s bias in the government’s procurement policy in terms of region and crop item, coupled with a decline in public investment in agriculture, in real terms. The farm output is huge while starvation prevails in several parts of the countryside. Finally, the pricing mechanism is crucial now in impoverishing the middle and poor peasants, driving the latter into a new bondage of debt. In short while the agrarian question is still relevant, it has taken on a new form. Peasant labour in many cases is now semi-urban labour. All these changes are taking place under the shadow of the return of primitive accumulation on a big scale, which signifies that the elemental contradiction between the landlords and the peasants is being replaced with the contradiction between the expropriated or near-expropriated peasantry (along with the destitute urban and semi-urban masses) and the entire process of brutal accumulation based on corporate interests, agrarian capitalism, and market forces. Class configurations have become thus complicated, while class conflicts rage. Likewise, worker-peasant alliance will indicate something new today, meaning new formations and new alliances, at the core of which stands the figure of the informal worker combining the social characteristics of both forms of labour. Indeed, the informal, migrant, logistical labour is now by itself an independent form of labour and not to be seen only as negative to formal labour in industries. At the same time, labour in manufacturing industries is going down in ratio when compared to labour in process industries and logistical enterprises. In all these ways the old characterization of India as semi-feudal and semi-colonial makes little sense, so does the strategy of surrounding the cities by the countryside. Yet, opposition to imperialism and the Indian corporate bourgeoisie continues to exist along with the need for revolutionary formations and alliances, united fronts and the path of dual power. While some of these features are still being expressed in old ideas and language, they call for new programmes and theorization of a new path. Meanwhile resistance has also taken new forms and under conditions of globalization and neo-liberalism politics too has changed a lot. Class struggle as politics has evolved along newer lines – of which the two most pronounced features are (a) the emergence

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of populism as a form of politics resisting centralization, right wing mobilization, corporate attack on peasantry, etc., and (b) the demand for federalization and autonomy at various levels of political life – state, village, nationality, movement, etc. Yet these are not disparate features. They indicate and make sense as a coherent set of new features. In short, we are in an in-between situation where the old mode of expression of revolt still carries a ring of authenticity, but the present features indicate a new situation. We cannot do without Naxalbari, but Naxalbari as a programme is out of tune with time, and hence as a path may not take us far. This is the dialectic of contemporaneity and inadequacy, the dialectic of critique too. Naxalbari began as a critique of reality and suggested a new path; and Naxalbari as a path is now itself a subject of critique by reality, which carries beyond the original critique that Naxalbari symbolized, the suggestion of a new path. What is striking is the way the legacy of Naxalbari, an event known in the form of Spring Thunder, has been composed with finite modes. These finite modes operate on a plane of immanence. We have thus a contradiction of fundamental importance here: (a) the expressive character of particular, acts, practices, documents, and individuals of that epoch, and (b) the immanence of being – of Naxalbari, the event. These two aspects deeply related and jostling with each other do not guarantee any stability to the meaning of Naxalbari. But they produce a situation where only Naxalbari can express itself that is to say Naxalbari is its own meaning, its own expression. There is no other formal essence of it corresponding to any principle or theory deduced from it. Clarity of form and content cannot take us beyond their duality. Clarity is dual and the duality can only be expressed in the event. If anything, the event showed that the question is not why we have inadequate ideas, but how do we come to form adequate ideas?25 Because of this dialectic, the intensity of Naxalbari is infinite; its reproduction is in an infinite series. There is no essence of it. It has only its physics, the character – the composition of its 25

Not exactly in this way, Gilles Deleuze had raised this question in his Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, trans. Martin Joughin (New York: Zone Books, 1992), p. 148.

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finite modes. This specific composition was able to create certain concepts and a spirit binding them together. We term that as legacy, in which inadequacy and immanence uncomfortably coexist. It is therefore necessary to understand those finite modes of expression that speak of the plural composition of Naxalbari. A single spark started a prairie fire, but once alight the fire was far greater than the spark. There were many sparks, many small and big fires. Thus, students’ movements, worker’s movements, youth upsurge, cultural movements and new publications – all these happened in the name of Naxalbari. They also happened independently. Within six years of Naxalbari, in 1973, the Provincial Armed Constabulary revolted in Uttar Pradesh over better pay and work conditions with the revolt finally crushed by the army resulting in the deaths of 30 policemen and hundreds jailed. It led to the resignation of the Congress ministry in the state. And, within seven years, in 1974, the Great Railway Strike involving 1.5 million workers shook the country. All these happened beyond the framework familiar to the radicals. And, while the CPI (M-L) leaders and doctrinaires kept on speaking about the centrality of peasant struggle and the strategy of surrounding the cities by the countryside, urban upsurges became as important as rural struggles with both inspiring each other. In the same way, waves of strikes shook the cities, with the entire situation climaxing in the great railway strike in May 1974. These struggles were of course only finite modes, as individual specific modes they were particular and could only go so far; but collectively they created a spirit of rebellion, whose doctrinal straightjacket concealed the truth of thousand mutinies. Perhaps these mutinies could have congealed in the form of a parallel power, but the programme of Spring Thunder put an end to any such possibility.26 The new power that Spring Thunder released had no existing or new institutional structure as support to hold on to in order to become a material reality. The new power did not go 26 Even the self-critical reflections by leaders of Naxalbari avoided the question of the plural composition of the time. Thus neither Kanu Sanyal’s, ‘Naxalbari Samparke Aro Baktabya’ nor Ashim Chatterjee’s ‘Naxalbarir Prakrita Shikha-ke Urdhe Tule Dhorun’ (in Naxalbari Phire Dekha O Ajker Kotha) discusses the time and the multiple mutinies and are confined to doctrinal disputations, though they emphasise

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beyond the state of possibility. The Naxalbari peasant struggle had concrete demands and put forward the question of the power of the peasant association (krishaksabha). But following Naxalbari there was no overall slogan that would be particular, have institutional implications, and speak of transfer of power to certain organs or institutions. Of course, there was the slogan of ‘Create More Naxalbaris’. But as slogan this did not clarify the central question of institutional power which the revolution would strive for and culminate into. Great slogans are not made, they are found out, such as ‘All Power to the Soviets’. The biography of a slogan is significant, for it tells us of the life of a movement. ‘Create more Naxalbaris’ in this perspective though inspirational remained unclear as a specific path of action with institutional implications.27 Slogans tell us of the intriguing relation between a popular movement, an upsurge, and its revolutionary transformation.28 As indicated earlier, too much concentration on critique deprived the movement of any positive thrust towards institutionally realizing the revolutionary potential of a movement and achieving its transformation. the aspect of mass participation in the movement. Likewise, Timir Basu’s ‘Sramik Andolan: Biparjayer Dhara’ does not mention the significance of the biggest general strike in post-independence India’s history and confines itself to only recording the impediments in the path of workers’ struggles. – Anil Acharya (ed.), Shottor Dashak, Volume 1 (reprint, Kolkata: Anushtup, 2010), pp. 100–14. However, less doctrinal writings chronicle the multiple composition of the time of the upsurge in a refreshing manner; for instance, Kamalesh Sen, ‘Shottorer Sanskritik Andolan’ in Anil Acharya (ed.), Shottor Dashak, Volume 2 (reprint, Kolkata: Anushtup, 2014), pp. 54–86, and on the urban upsurge see for the various entries in Anil Acharya (ed.), Shottor Dashak, Volume 3 (reprint, Kolkata: Anushtup, 2012). 27 This was clear from the way ‘new Naxalbaris’ were celebrated. The celebration was marked by absence of any analysis of why these struggles much like Naxalbari struggle itself were being defeated, if the later struggles were improving on the earlier form. See the description of ‘Naxalbari-type Upsurge’ in Thirty Years of Naxalbari: An Epic of Heroic Struggle and Sacrifice, pp. 1–11, where the dominant imagery is of ‘the prairie fire.’ – http://www.bannedthought.net/India/PeoplesMarch/PM19992006/publications/30%20years/part1.htm (Accessed on 27 July 2017). 28 See for instance the interview by Leba Tudu on the peasant struggle in Gopiballavpur and the increasing distance between peasant demands and mass peasant movement and the armed actions, ‘Aitihasik Gopiballavpur, Aitihasik Rupasikundi’ in Naxalbari Andolaner Pramanya Tathya Sankalan, pp. 40–50.

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In many ways the situation was similar to many other revolutionary situations elsewhere. After the 1830 revolutions in Europe Prussia had turned its back on liberal reforms forced upon it after its defeat by Napoleon. Radical ideas received setback. Again after the defeat of 1848 revolutions, Marx had to revise his agenda of proletarian support to the bourgeois democrats as a measure to strengthen the revolution.29 Similarly following the defeat of 1905 revolution in Russia Lenin had to advocate the participation of the Bolshevik deputies in the Duma.30 In India little of that kind of change of course by the revolutionaries happened. The function of the event of Naxalbari became one of continuous legitimization of the programme and the path that 1967 had come to represent. In the name of critique doctrinal quarrels went on for decades – up to the end of the last century. Self-criticism was caught up in the labyrinth of doctrine. One crucial point, it seemed, was to come to a unified understanding on where and how Charu Mazumder had erred, and how to move away from the path espoused by him. This led to many non-dialectical posers such as, people’s war or the line of mass struggles and mass movements, establishing parallel power – locally or nationally, or dual power to be realized through establishing red base in an area or politically realizing it through massive local movements and actions. At times, the question became one of counter-posing mass struggle with guerrilla struggle. Since the framework of people’s war as a specific doctrine and fighting revisionism as a fundamental political task were the two inviolable truths, the critique could not go beyond conveying some insights. Critique was caught as if in a never ending concentric 29 On this see, David Riazanov, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: An Introduction to their Lives and Work,1927, trans. Joshua Konitz (reprint, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973), chapter 5 – https://www.marxists.org/archive/riazanov/ works/1927-ma/ch05.htm (Accessed on 21 July 2017). 30 Lenin advised the Bolsheviks ‘to  use the Duma and the Duma rostrum for revolutionary Social-Democratic propaganda and agitation’ – V.I. Lenin, ‘Draft Resolution on the Present Moment and the Tasks of the Party’, The Fifth (AllRussian) Conference of the R.S.D.L.P, 21–27 December 1908 (3–9 January 1909), Lenin Collected Works, Volume 15 – https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/ works/1908/5thconfr/1.htm#v15pp73-321 (Accessed on 21 July 2017).

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circle.31 The radical activists at the receiving end of state terror and faced with the consequences of the fundamental mistakes of the founding years of the Party attempted time and again to correct those errors. Yet the grave setbacks and evident changes in economic and political situation did not lead to any radical shift in course. The event and the doctrine remained inseparable. The critique of parliamentarianism as a result lost vigour. The only way remained was to go back to the event again and again. Thus again and again, the event was invoked amidst setbacks, and the only call given was ‘Strike back, Arouse the People’,32 or, ‘Aggression is the Only Way for Self-defence’33. The tactic led to further decimation. Critique became a fetish. Critique itself became an ideology.

THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF ENDLESS CRITIQUE Endless critique as a principle of revolution is unable to grasp the complications of a situation. The dogma of struggle of two lines in the party, through which the party would develop, oversimplifies arguments in order to cast the opinions into opposing stereotypes. Marx had avoided that method. Hence in the last decade of his life he moved to a study of the Russian situation that did not resemble the European situation. Likewise, Lenin all through his life changed tactics, positions, and analysis as the situation would demand, and did not erect any particular group or opinion as the inveterate enemy of revolution all seasons and time. For both Marx and Lenin, dialogue remained an important component of revolutionary organization and party building. 31 One of the revealing instance of the unending doctrinal circle is the document, ‘The Strategy for People’s War in India: Repudiation of the Views on Military Line of the Central Reorganisation Committee, Communist Party of India (MarxistLeninist)’, Spring Thunder, 1, 1998; Spring Thunder was then the theoretical journal of the Maoist Unity Centre (MUC), Communist Party of India (M-L). In April 1999 the MUC merged with the CPI (M-L) Naxalbari. (CRG archive) 32 Deshabarati, editorial, 2 (37), 20 March 1969, reprinted in Ebong Jalarka, ‘Deshabrati Collection 10’, July-December 2006, pp. 28–30. 33 Deshabarati, editorial, 3 (37), 19 March 1970, Ebong Jalarka, ‘Deshabrati Collection 10’, July-December 2006, pp. 143–144; on this there were differences, see n. 8.

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Let us note some of the complexities of the situation of that time, and how the building of doctrine on the basis of an absolute critique missed these complexities to the peril of the revolutionary path. We can give two instances. First, in the beginning of this chapter we noted that there were two parallel trends to be connected with each other later resulting in the formation of the CPI (M-L) – one, doctrinal that had as its main substance critique of revisionism, and second, practice-centric that wanted to create alternative politics, style of work, and alternative ways of organising. Yet we cannot take Charu Mazumder’s Eight Documents as an instance of the latter. Later reflections showed that they too were dogmatic. They ignored the massive political churning that went on for three years (1965–67) in southern Bengal and did not draw appropriate conclusions from the upsurge known as the Food Movement of 1966. On the other hand, the Committee for Inner Party Struggle prepared a document, ‘Present Situation and Our Tasks’, which had less concern for taking the Chinese path, but noted the broad nature of popular struggles, issue-based movements, increased mass militancy, the increasing potency of the weapon of general strike, peasant unrests throughout the state, and ‘the unmistakable signs of a civil war’.34 This document too targeted revisionism, but its thrust was on making sense of the broad situation that was fast changing then. Indeed, there was no mention of Chinese path. In this sense then the document of the Committee for Inner Party Struggle was more realistic and less doctrinaire, while Charu Mazumder’s Eight Documents seems more doctrine oriented, because the Eight Documents critique became an ideology and played a decisive role in shaping the emerging organization. The second instance: In his report on the peasant movement in the Terai Region (Terai-er Krishak Andolan Samparke Report), Kanu Sanyal narrated how the Siliguri sub-divisional peasant convention of 18 March 1967 gave a call to establish the authority of the 34 Original in Bengali, n.d., reprinted in Sushital Ray Chaudhury, ‘Ranadiver Juachuri’, Deshabarati, 10 August 1967, translated by Suniti Kumar Ghosh, Naxalbari: Before and After, pp. 113–16. Yet it never occurred to SunitiGhosh that this document differed greatly with the specific doctrine of Naxalbari, which Ghosh upheld in this book.

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peasant committee in all matters of the village, organize, and arm to crush the resistance of jotedars and the ‘bad’ gentry, smash the jotedar’s monopoly of ownership of land, and redistribute the land anew through peasant committees. This was what Marx had said about criticism by society. Yet the All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries (AICCR) and more so the Party (CPI M-L), instead of concentrating on developing mass struggles, establishing alternative institutions of power, and ways of coordinating various workers’ and peasant struggles towards developing a general line of struggle, focused on critiquing revisionism and foregrounding the Chinese path with people’s war as its core. Thereby the AICCR and the Party ignored the implications of call of the historic peasant conference, namely, to make the krishaksabha, the mainstay of political work in the village.35 In an atmosphere of enchantment with a culture of critique the concrete issue of dual power was ignored. Readers will have noticed that this chapter counter poses event and critique – especially a culture of critique that produces a doctrine in turn and relies on the legitimacy drawn from the event. The result is that, and we have repeatedly tried to show in the foregoing pages, the critique failed to appreciate the origin, the event, which had produced the critique in the first place. Naxalbari and events preceding Naxalbari, such as the Food Movement of 1966, the split in the Communist Party in 1964, Sino-Soviet dispute, SinoIndia war, struggle for civil liberties in 1962–65, workers’ struggles, devaluation, and the like, were ignored in their dynamics. Instead, the event of Naxalbari became the deux ex machine of a doctrinaire history and a doctrinaire politics. We can thus formulate one of the relevant lessons of the political history of radicalism of that time. Revolution in order to develop demands the condition for a procedure faithful to the event. That procedure calls for flexibility, at the same time fidelity to the event, which is united but also split with truth formation. Fidelity to the event requires that any genuinely political decision must not be subordinated to a separate doctrine. An event is an intervention in 35 Also referred to in Naxalbari Before and After, p. 124; and once again Ghosh misses the implications of Sanyal’s report.

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the form of politics. It treats politics as militant procedure in place of politics as opinion. Of course, and to repeat, this does not mean that all that happened after Naxalbari was a betrayal of the event, and that whatever followed was the handiwork of a group of anarchists having no connection with the event. Spring Thunder signified both the event and a specific politics and doctrine. What it lacked was flexibility to delve deep into the phenomenon of the peasant struggles and other popular struggles of that time. Lenin from his war time study of Hegel had deduced that cognition was nature’s reflection by man, but it was not a simple, unmediated, complete reflection. Besides laws, there was always the condition of abstraction, approximation, and change. Thus pre-given laws of revolution (Chinese or Russian for that matter) can tell us only up to a point. Nothing was permanent or absolutely definitive. Politics, Lenin continuously emphasized, required experimentation, involving leaps, breaks, as well as gradualness. In other words, politics was an art. It called for flexibility, which critique alone could never provide. Critique leading to new truths was not an intellectual problem but a political problem. We can now understand why the ideology of critique provided by Spring Thunder missed the complications of a rapidly changing situation. It ignored the political implications of the massive popular movements at that time in villages and towns involving peasants, workers, students and youth – a milieu that had made Naxalbari possible. On one hand, the revolutionaries went on criticising each and every opinion that even slightly strayed from the received Chinese path, on the other hand they were unable to analyse the weaknesses of their own foundations.36 36 Once more we can turn to Suniti Ghosh’s Naxalbari: Before and After. This book is a classic case of revolutionary thinking trapped in the straightjacket of a doctrine based on the fundamentalism of critique. Thus Ghosh responding to various criticisms about adventurist policies asked rhetorically, ‘Naxalbari – premature or timely?’ (p. 136) He had forgotten that he was discussing an event, which by itself was neither premature nor timely, but a product of a time; and it was up to the revolutionaries to adjust themselves to the reality of the event. Ghosh concluded that while ‘Naxalbari met with defeat quickly’ (p. 136), ‘the communist revolutionaries followed a line which was basically correct but many of their policies... were wrong and led to defeat’ (p. 137). Perpetual criticism, a feature of the book and in that it

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Later, some analysts put this inability of the revolutionaries to critique their own foundation in a manner that would open up new horizons of thinking and practice as having to do with their ‘the existential ideology’.37 The ideology was built, it was argued, in the method they espoused. Their ‘decisive contribution to the theory of revolution consisted of considerations on the method of making it’, and the ‘methods (were) geared towards precipitating a Revolution’.38 While the focus on methods was a distinct part of the critique that the politics of Spring Thunder developed, this chapter has argued that, we must analyse the dynamics of critique that foreclosed subsequent attempts at rectification. The chapter shows that at the heart of the critique developed by Spring Thunder was the question of how to resolve the tension between a popular movement and a revolutionary movement, between the concept of people and a revolutionary class, or to put the matter bluntly, between politics and war. As a consequence of the failure to resolve the tension, the style of critique that Naxalites developed did not focus on analyses of movements, events, organizations, and actions. Politics became a matter and problem of line. Politics in this way became mythological, conjuring up a form of power – a counter-power – that was mostly simulated, with fleeting basis in the reality of power and counterpower. Power and critique were thus trapped in an unending, selfregenerating, tautological spiral whose very movement perpetuated the reality-principle upon which the dialectic fed. We must take note of this state of critique in the decade of 1967–1975, also the model of criticism it prescribed. Resort to sociologism will not help us escape the dilemmas that the revolutionaries of that decade faced. Rigour in political analysis will be the best way to honour the revolutionaries of 1967. They are all dead, and but surely they would have been the happiest to know that attempts at understanding the time and building on that understanding are still continuing. faithfully represented the milieu revolutionary politics, was in the long run unable to create any meaningful criticism because it had lost all flexibility. 37 Rabindra Ray, Naxalites and Their Ideology (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988), Chapter 7, ‘The Existential Ideology of the Naxalites’, pp. 198–225. 38 Ibid., pp. 198–99.

twelve CHAPTER

The Naxalite Decade Comes to a Close But Land Question Persists Atig Ghosh

THE FIRST LEFT FRONT GOVERNMENT AND THE LAND QUESTION: AN INTRODUCTION

T

he Naxalite decade came to a close in West Bengal in 1977 with the Left Front coming to power in the state. With the establishment of the Left Front government the politics of rebellion as the chief feature of the state was over. The Left Front had been set up after the repressive climate of the Emergency was relaxed in January 1977. The six founding parties of the Left Front were the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or the CPI (M) as the main force of the Front, and other partners being the All India Forward Bloc (AIFB), the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), the Marxist Forward Bloc (MFB), the Revolutionary Communist Party of India (RCPI), and the Biplabi Bangla Congress (BBC). They articulated a common programme. Over the years, the Left Front, though joined by among others the Communist Party of India (CPI) in 1982, came to be increasingly controlled and micro-managed by the CPI (M), so much so that towards the end of its rule, Left Front and the CPI (M) had become almost synonymous in common use. Once it achieved victory in 1977, the Left Front stayed in power for the next 34 years. The approximately 80 million people of the state re-elected the Left repeatedly, indicating a continuing popularity and longevity

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not found by Marxists in any other democracy. The Communist electoral victory in one of India’s most industrialised (at the time of independence) and strategically important states predictably created considerable interest and discussion over its performance in office. This performance was expressed in the first five years mainly through rural development initiatives. Though rural development policy implementation was not the only Left Front endeavour, it was the most critical in consolidating Left power. Electorally the rural areas with 74 per cent of the state population were very important in maintaining the influence of the CPI (M). Rural development had priority over urban industrial development in determining the success of the Left Front government. It was also the area where the Left Front government had constitutional authority as agrarian reform fell largely within state jurisdiction. From the first Left Front government period (1977–82) rural development became the main claim to the political legitimacy of Left rule. Two issues were upheld as the main components of rural development: land reforms and Panchayat (rural self-government) rule in the villages. These two issues were considered as interconnected. They were upheld also as evidence of the success of parliamentary Left politics, and the failure of the path of agrarian revolution propagated by the Naxalites. Left Front’s agrarian reforms had proved the politics of Spring Thunder as erroneous. In this chapter we shall take a review of the land reforms programme of the first Left Front government to see if the land question was substantially addressed, for it was around the land question that the Naxalbari rebellion had broken out and the rebellious politics of agrarian revolution had spread so quickly. Now, the Naxalites had been defeated and crushed, but did the land problem go away? Since the present study will be concerned with the Left Front’s first term in government, special reference will be made to Operation Barga of 1977 and the Panchayat elections of 1978. As indicated, land reform and decentralisation of administration were the two key priorities in the first term. On 29 September 1977 the West Bengal Land (Amendment) Bill was passed. Through Operation Barga, in which share-croppers were given inheritable rights on lands they

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tilled, 1.1 million acres of land was distributed amongst 1.4 million share-croppers.1 On 4 June 1978 three-tier Panchayat local bodies were elected across the state, and in the elections the Left Front won a landslide victory.2 Some 800,000 acres of land were distributed to 1.5 million heads of households between 1978 and 1982.3 The task facing the Left Front government on assuming office in 1977 was fraught with difficulties, despite its massive majority in the Legislative Assembly. The government had learnt that the United Fronts of the late 1960s, under pressure from the radical Left, had attempted some rapid radical change only to be thwarted. Yet the attempts had helped the CPI (M) gain a larger base, but the party’s inability to stand up to state repression had exposed its weakness in the face of an authoritarian government. Now, having won the Assembly election, the Left Front could use its power either for radical polarisation of class forces, or for a more gradual incremental change designed to give longevity to the government: longevity sufficient for its base to survive till conditions in the rest of India caught up with West Bengal. Since these conditions may take decades to mature, if they matured at all, a Left-run state government intent on remaining in power for decades could hardly be expected to keep up a tempo of popular revolutionary fervour. In any case, whatever may be the reason in the short or long run, the sudden victory in 1977 left them without an articulated strategy for directing their new-found power However, their ad hoc responses to problems indicated where their interests lay and the groups they were most oriented to promoting. It was these policies which insured their popularity and consolidated their base in the state. It was Jyoti Basu, a man known for his precision of articulation, who, in holding up West Bengal as an example for the rest of India, made the most revealing statement about Left Front government policy in 1985: 1

Bidyut Chakraborty, Left Radicalism in India, London: Routledge, 2014, p. 107. Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, ‘Thirty Years of left Front Government in West Bengal’, People’s Democracy, Vol. XXXI, No. 25, 24 June 2007, – http://archives. peoplesdemocracy.in/2007/0624/06242007_buddhadev.htm 3 Kheya Bag, ‘Red Bengal’s Rise and Fall’, New Left Review, 70, Jul-Aug 2017, – https://newleftreview.org/II/70/kheya-bag-red-bengal-s-rise-and-fall. 2

310 THE NAXALITE DECADE COMES TO A CLOSE The Left Front Government in the State of West Bengal has limited powers. It has to operate within a capitalist feudal economy. The Constitution, contrary to federal principles, does not provide for the needed powers for the States and we suffer from a special disability because the Union Government is ill-disposed towards our Government. In such a situation, we have been explaining to the people why we cannot bring about fundamental changes even though the ideology and character of our Government are different from those that characterise the Government at the Centre. But we do hold that by forming the Government through elections it is possible for us to rule in a manner which is distinctly better and more democratic than the way followed by the Congress party at the Centre and in many other States. It is also possible to give relief to the people, particularly the deprived sections, through the minimum programme adopted by the Left Front. We have been attempting to do so by motivating the people and enlisting their support and sympathy. Our objective is to raise their political consciousness along with giving them relief so that they can distinguish between truth and falsehood and friends and enemies, and realise the alternative path which will free them from the shackles of Capitalism and Feudalism and usher in a new modern progressive society. This is a difficult task and we have to traverse a long path. But we visualise success in our objective when large masses all over India will be imbued with the correct political consciousness and free themselves from bourgeois influence and ideology, particularly the working masses. They will arrive at the truth through experience and continuous struggles. The Left and democratic State Governments can help and expedite this process even with their limited powers. It is with such a perspective and objective that we are functioning in West Bengal.4

Yet it will be argued in this chapter that contrary to Jyoti Basu’s assertion, the Left Front failed, not primarily because of the limitations on its power and resources, but because it did not make appropriate use of the powers and resources that it had at its disposal. Rather than promoting the interests of the rural and 4

Jyoti Basu, Chief Minister of West Bengal, Left Front Government’s Industrial Policy: Some Aspects (Calcutta: Information and Cultural Affairs Department, 1985), p. 5.

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urban lower classes, it gave primacy to the traditional rural and urban middle-class base of the Communist movement, which ultimately proved an obstacle to the further advancement both of lower-class interests, and those of the revolutionary Communist movement as a whole. In time, the ruling CPI (M) which had been founded as a revolutionary alternative to the old ‘revisionist’ Communist Party (CPI), became through its experience in office, no different from its parent party. Among the non-partisan voices, there is general consensus about this. Dwaipayan Bhattacharya, prophetically analysing the initial electoral losses of the Left Front in 2008, through the theoretical optic of ‘party-society’, opined: ‘The preponderance of the party over the social space, the transformation of the party from a hegemonic force into a violative one and ultimately the ruptures in the ‘party-society’ have all gone on to loosen the dominance of the Left Front in West Bengal’.5 He has further expanded in Government as Practice: Democratic Left in a Transforming India, his 2016 book, that the CPI (M) was so caught up in the process of preserving power that it refused to reinvent a process of change that came about after the reforms it initiated in the 1980s. Rather than utilising the quotidian nature of its engagement with the people to further change – by expanding the benefits of land reforms to improve the status of landless agricultural workers; by organising and working towards the improvement of livelihoods in the unorganised sector; by focussing on primary education and health; by involving its cadre from the lower segments of society in a way that they could be taken into higher leadership – the party was merely reduced to an arbiter of sorts, with decisions taken in a top-down manner, leadership remaining ossified and dominated by the upper castes and the focus restricted to winning elections.6 In a similar vein, Ranabir Samaddar has explained the hubristic logic of the Left Front rule and the process of its inevitable collapse: 5 Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya, ‘Left in the Lurch: The Demise of the World’ Longest Elected Regime?’ Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. 45, No. 3, 16 January 2010. 6 Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya, Government as Practice: Democratic Left in a Transforming India, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.

312 THE NAXALITE DECADE COMES TO A CLOSE …party substituted for society, local bosses working as local barons substituted for the party, party committees substituted for government’s intelligence wing, inviting speculative and comprador capital appeared as steps towards organic industrialisation of the state and protests began to be considered as conspiracies against Left rule…7

Samaddar in fact has termed the entire period of 1977–2011 marked by limited reforms undertaken by the Left Front governments as an era of ‘passive revolution’,8 and has declared that this is an on-going story of transition.9 There has been much debate among the commentators on Samaddar’s evaluation. But, for the purpose of this chapter, suffice it to say that the policies of the first Left Front government were enough indications of the politics of reforms the Left Front would pursue through its continued rule.

LAND REFORMS

The question of land size Land reform was the most significant programme a Communist government could be expected to undertake under Indian conditions at that time. As land is a state subject under the Indian constitution reforming land relations was within the jurisdiction of the Left Front government. Though plaintiffs had recourse to court challenges and some of the new legislations were subject to Presidential approval, the legal and extra-legal powers open to the state government were considerable. These included the use of the state police and administration, as well as the Left peasant organisations. Indeed, peasant mobilisation helped the land reforms the government achieved in a limited way in several districts in its first term. At a formal level, the radical objectives of the state land reform programme appeared unambiguous especially in the West Bengal government’s Seventh Five Year Plan in terms of addressing issues 7 Ranabir Samaddar, Passive Revolution in West Bengal, 1977–2011, Sage, 2013, p. XVI. 8 Ibid., pp. xxiv–xxv. 9 Ibid., p. 234.

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affecting the lower classes.10 However, by the time the Left Front came to power there had already been a gradual lowering and tightening of land ceiling laws to the point where the small minority of zamindars and big landlords had been virtually eliminated. Any further expropriation of jotedars’ landholdings would have antagonised a substantial number of villagers in the large and the middle peasant category, and any equalisation of landholdings would have threatened the Left’s rural base. Greater political mobilisation of agricultural labourers and marginal cultivators with enforcement of land expropriations by the state government would have increased polarisation in rural society, resulting in a backlash which might have driven out the Left Front from power. Some economists also argued that with the provision of credit and agricultural inputs, small peasants were more efficient and productive than their larger counterparts. However, in West Bengal the small peasant class lacked the financial resources to implement improvement schemes and the state’s resources in 1977 were limited. The land-person ratio continued to deteriorate as cultivable area could not be significantly increased, and population growth continued unabated. Between 1961 and 1971 the land-person ratio decreased by 28 per cent from 0.444 acres to 0.321 acres.11 Benami land also could not be recovered on a large scale. Any possible solution was bound to adversely affect a sizeable class in rural Bengal. The villages were not homogeneous. In an analysis of the antagonisms among the different strata of the Bengal peasantry, West Bengal Board of Revenue, in fact, highlighted the difficulty of choosing the expropriators from the expropriated: ‘Questions of what administrative or fiscal action benefits whom, how, why and where have grown in complexity and so have the consequences of these actions on shifting interest alignments and conflicts within the rural structure’.12 While academically peasantry 10

West Bengal, Development and Planning Department, Draft Seventh Five Year Plan 1985–90 and Annual Plan 1985–86, vol. I (Calcutta: mimeographed, January 1985), p. VI. 11 Biplab Dasgupta, ‘Gram Banglar Sreni Binyas’, Desh-hitaishee, Annual Puja Issue, 1980, p. 86. 12 West Bengal, Board of Revenue, Dynamics of the Rural Situation in West Bengal – Panchayati Raj (Calcutta: West Bengal Government Press, 1979), p. 13.

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could be classified as exploiters and exploited according to whether or not they employed labour, in West Bengal there was a wide variation of employment patterns with a large intermediate class which simultaneously hired labour, worked on their own land and hired themselves out as labourers. According to Utsa Patnaik, a class breakdown by landholdings in West Bengal would classify poor peasants as owning less than 1.60 acres, lower middle between 1.61 and 4.60, upper middle as between 4.61 and 9.80, and the rich peasants and landlords as over 9.81 acres.13 With the decreasing land-man ratio and the increasing use of high-yielding varieties this might be considered slightly on the high side. For West Bengal, P. Sundarayya’s upper limit of 5 acres for the middle peasantry would seem more accurate for our time period.14 Also, with varied local conditions any categorisation could only be an approximation rather than a definite classification, and within the state with seven different agro-climatic regions there were wide variations in land productivity and cropping patterns.15 For a land reform programme, any classification of landownership had to take these productivity variations into account. Another factor to be kept in mind was the small absolute sizes involved.16 In an equitable land reform, a third of an acre per person would have to be the maximum allowable. Thus, supplementary income through outside work for small peasants was essential for the small peasant to survive.17 One survey found that marginal farmers (defined as owning less than 1 hectare) derived 68.9 per cent of their income from property 13 Utsa Patnaik, ‘Class Differentiation within the Peasantry: An Approach to Analysis of Indian Agriculture’, Economic and Political Weekly (hereafter EPW), Review of Agriculture, September 1976, p. 193. 14 P. Sundarayya, An Explanatory Note on the Central Committee Resolution on Certain Agrarian Issues, adopted March 8–15, 1973 (Calcutta: CPI-M, 1973), p. 44. 15 Rainfall and Cropping Patterns: West Bengal, vol. XVI, National Commission on Agriculture 1979, Government of India, p. 13. 16 Agricultural Census 1976–77, Board of Revenue and Directorate of Agriculture (Socio-Economic and Evaluation Branch), Government of West Bengal,1979, p. 10. 17 National Sample Survey, Government of India, 26th round, Report No. 215 (West Bengal) vol. I pp. 67–68. Cited in Ajit Kumar Ghose, Agrarian Reform in West Bengal: Objectives, Achievement and Limitations (Geneva: International Labour Organization,1980), p. 35.

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rather than from their own or family labour.18 Integration into the market economy was also considerable. Even landless agricultural labourers, according to this survey, spent 23.1 per cent of their income on industrially produced consumption goods.19 Some crops such as jute were produced exclusively for the market while food crops were also traded extensively. Though private moneylenders remained the major source of rural credit, institutional sources were increasing significantly.20 Most spectacular of all was of course what was called the green revolution, which resulted in significant increases in use of fertiliser and high yielding variety seeds, irrigated water and output.21 Though not as early and rapidly as in the Punjab, the 1970s in West Bengal showed substantial increases in agricultural output. This resulted in increased productivity and market surplus; and because of the pressure of the surplus producing farmer lobby, the government had to subsidise with higher food procurement prices. In short, food self-sufficiency was achieved but at a gain to the dominant segment of rural society. There was another complication. In categorising rural social classes the landless agricultural labour category seems straightforward, but many minute landowners lease out land to bigger landowners and vice versa.22 If one uses the employment of hired labour, rather than size of landholdings, as a definition of class, then by this definition there would be little land left to give to the tillers since only landholdings over 10 hectares used hired labour for most farm work.23 Production of a surplus for a market 18 A.N. Bose, ‘Intersectional Linkage in a Comprehensive Area Development Approach: The Case of West Bengal’, World Employment Programme Research Paper, International Labour Office, Geneva, 1983, p. 55, 62. 19 Ibid. 20 Ajit Kumar Ghose, Agrarian Reform in West Bengal, p. 14. 21 James K. Boyce, Agricultural Growth in Bangladesh and West Bengal, Oxford University, D. Phil Thesis 1984, pp. 275, 345. 22 National Sample Survey, Government of India, 26th round, Report No. 215 (West Bengal) vol. I pp. 67–68. 23 World Agricultural Census 1970–71, Board of Revenue and Directorate of Agriculture (Socio-Economic and Evaluation Branch), Government of West Bengal, 1975, p. 92.

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was even more difficult to define as a class category since some crops like jute or sugarcane were only for the market, while rice, wheat, and potatoes could be for both, and the portion sold depended on seasonal prices and productivity. Furthermore, peasants with as little as 2 or 3 hectares were often connected to urban employment and had relatives completely integrated with the urban sector. A single criterion, even the most commonly used one of landownership, was therefore inadequate. The use of hired labour and land leasing had to be taken into account as well as additional sources of income. A small farmer might be defined as having land or equivalent sources of income around the 0.321 acre per land-man ratio or about 2 acres per household, anything less than half this being defined as marginal farming. The middle peasantry, as commonly suggested, would be those who work their own land without normally employing non-family labour. This would be placed somewhat arbitrarily at 5 acres. The law of 12 to 17 irrigated acres current in the 1980s was more than this. Confiscation of land over 5 acres, which could be defined as rich peasant, and over the current ceiling limit as landlord, would provide 44 per cent of cultivable land for redistribution and leave 87 per cent of agricultural households either the gainers or unaffected by the reform.24 This could have been the minimal first step towards land reform, a short-term goal that had to be followed at an opportune time by equalisation of land as the mid-term goal. This categorisation differed from the agricultural census definition but had the advantage of including use of hired labour as a criterion. It could also indicate what could have been a workable guideline for a land reform programme in 1977–82 that would have allowed large-scale land redistribution without alienating the vast majority of the agricultural population. The use of the 5-acre limit would have been a judicious one because the number of households with more land than this was significantly less than those with less than 5 acres. Within this framework, therefore, there would have been less possibility of opposition to implementation of land reforms. 24

Agricultural Census 1976–77, p. 10; National Sample Survey, Government of India, 26th round, Report No. 215 (West Bengal) vol. I p. 66.

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According to Benoy Choudhury, the Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s Land Reforms and Land Revenue Minister during the Left Front government’s first term, only the complete confiscation of all holdings over 10 acres would enable the agricultural labourers and marginal farmers to receive 1.5 acres per household. According to him, only 4.2 per cent of households owned over 10 acres, controlling 33.3 per cent of agricultural land or 4.53 million acres. With 3,751,000 landless and marginal farmer households, equalisation of landholdings at 1.5 acres per household would have required complete confiscation of all lands held by the largest landowners. The Land Reforms minister stated that the biggest lacuna was allowing the landlords to retain land up to the ceiling limit. The basic land reform slogan (for Choudhury writing in May 1977) should have been taking over all the land from feudal and capitalist landlords without compensation and distributing it among landless labourers free. All the land must be taken from the landlords, otherwise the Ceiling Act would end up as a farce and not enough land would be available to distribute.25 This was, however, precisely what happened. The ceiling being too high, there was insufficient land available for significant land redistribution, and whatever may have been the Land Reforms Minister’s view on the subject, the CPI (M)-led government showed no intention of changing the status quo in this regard or the Minister himself of implementing his own recommendations. When the CPI (M) first published Benoy Choudhury’s booklet in May 1977 on the eve of the election of the CPI (M) to power, his position could be taken as a statement of party policy, but by its fifth reprinting in January 1981 (which has been cited here) it had ceased to have any meaning except to show how short the political practice had fallen from its original policy.

Different opinions on the land size The original CPI (M) position as formulated in the resolution of the Central Committee on Tasks on the Kisan Front of 1967 and on 25

Benoy Choudhury, Banglar Bhumibyabosthar Ruprekha (Calcutta: National Book Agency, Fifth Edition, January 1981), pp. 30–31.

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Certain Agrarian Issues in 1973 was far different from the CPI (M) policies in the Left Front government.26 This difference reflected part of the general trend towards moderation in the party. The 1967 and 1973 documents bear the orientation of the then General Secretary P. Sundarayya who subsequently resigned from the party leadership and Politburo in 1976, when his positions were no longer being accepted in course of the drift towards moderation. The difference on the agrarian question between the former Central Committee position and that of the West Bengal party and the Left Front was brought out in P. Sundarayya’s explanatory note on Certain Agrarian Issues.27 Sundarayya’s critique of the Bengal position is only a thinly disguised accusation of reformism in the West Bengal. He said, ‘Some comrades in West Bengal argue that the ownership right to the tenants should not be campaigned for now ... as it would antagonise these sections’ of landowners ‘and they would go away from the democratic alliance’. That ‘these critics have gone to the extremely ridiculous position’ of hesitating to raise popular demands when ‘the Congress itself is forced to come forward to satisfy ... the masses with such legislation, though only to cheat them, is something queer ... This attitude, if logically extended, would mean that we should formulate and advance demands of tenants in such a way as would be acceptable to the landlords’.28 Sundarayya rejected the position of some West Bengal peasant leaders that a ceiling of 25 acres would be ‘a very big step’. ‘With such an amount of ceiling ... no land will be available for distribution’.29 He reiterated the Central Committee policy of expropriating all the land of the landlords including that below the ceiling. To allow retention of land below the ceiling would only perpetuate landlordism, ‘cheating the agricultural labour and poor peasants’, leaving the CPI (M) policy of distributing land free to the landless as an ‘empty slogan’.30 26

Communist Party of India (Marxist), Central Committee, Tasks on Kisan Front (Calcutta: April 1967); Communist Party of India (Marxist), Central Committee, Resolution on Certain Agrarian Issues (Calcutta: 1973). 27 Sundarayya, Explanatory Note, p. 30. 28 Ibid., pp. 8–9, 30. 29 Ibid., pp. 11–12. 30 Ibid., pp. 1–2.

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The reason for this wrong position in the CPI (M) lay, according to Sundarayya, in the rich and middle peasant composition of the party and their orientation to these classes. The CPI (M) Central Committee itself had earlier admitted peasant unity in the party was erroneously ‘based upon the middle and rich peasantry, instead of building it round the rural labour and the poor and ... organising these sections as the main backbone and driving force of the movement’.31 The Central Committee admitted this task would not be easy as the rich and middle peasant orientation was ‘deep rooted and long-accumulated’ and because ‘the bulk of our leading kisan activists come from the rich and middle peasant class’ rather than the poor peasants and agricultural labour.32 Harekrishna Konar, another veteran leader of the party, and the land and land revenue minister when the Naxalbari revolt had broken out in 1967, had taken the same position, noting that ‘today the old practice of building peasant unity based on the middle peasants is not useful for agrarian revolution but this old outlook still holds the activists of the peasant movement back.’ Though he argued ‘particular emphasis’ had to be ‘laid on the task of organising the agricultural labourers and poor peasants and making them conscious’, this was almost totally absent from the policy implementation of the Left Front government.33 When Santosh Rana, leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), suggested lowering the land ceiling, the CPI (M) Land Reforms minister described this as a provocation, which it certainly would have been, even among the CPI (M) supporters.34 Faced with the choice between implementing significant land reforms to help the landless and poor peasantry, and helping the middle and rich peasantry by doing nothing of significance, the 31

Communist Party of India (Marxist), Tasks, 1967, pp. 5–6. Ibid., p. 16. 33 Harekrishna Konar, Agrarian Problems of India (Calcutta: Gour Sabha,1977), p. 47. 34 Santosh Rana, ‘Left Front Government in West Bengal: An Appraisal,’ For a New Democracy, special issue, October-February 1981–82 (Calcutta: Provisional Central Committee, Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) 1982), p. 43; Bhabani Sen Gupta, ‘Time to take Stock’, India Today, December 31, 1982, p. 115. 32

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Left Front chose the latter approach, thereby preserving its rural base. The CPI (M) ‘central leadership wanted to abandon political action that would polarise the rich and the middle peasants on the one hand and the poor and marginal peasants and landless workers on the other. They practically abandoned meaningful struggle for land reforms’.35 ‘In their eagerness to preserve all peasant unity in rural West Bengal the Government is probably shifting away from potentially the most active agents of agrarian reorganisation’ namely agricultural labour and the poor peasantry.36 This all-peasant unity could only be preserved by keeping the potentially most revolutionary classes inactive or subordinate, as they represented the greatest potential threat to the CPI (M)’s own vested interest in the middle and rich peasantry. As a result, all that the Left Front could offer the lower classes were minor concessions and palliatives, often through laws passed by the previous Congress regime but never implemented. The agency for this implementation was the existing state bureaucracy, with all the deficiencies that entailed. Unlike the Panchayats where the parties at least had to put up slates of candidates and participate politically, in the land reform programme, party participation was optional. Though the Left peasant organisations were requested to assist the administration, the administration carried out the work at every step of the process. And the less said about the administration the better, as a publication of the Directorate of Land Records and Surveys admitted, ‘that the entire gamut of land reforms implementation is an open sesame for the dishonest employees is a widely known fact of life’.37 Though the legislation that the department was implementing had usually been in effect from the Congress period, the Left Front claimed greater dedication in carrying the programme through. 35

Ranjit Kumar Lahiri, ‘Land Reforms in West Bengal – Some Implications,’ in Manjula Bose (ed.). Land Reforms in Eastern India (Calcutta: Planning Forum, Jadavpur University,1981), p. 120. 36 B.K. Sarkar and R.K. Prasannan, What Happened to the Vested Land? (Calcutta: Directorate of Land Records and Surveys, West Bengal, March 1976), p. 6. 37 D. Bandypadhyay, Land Reforms Commissioner, Land Reforms in West Bengal (Calcutta: Information and Cultural Affairs Department, Government of West Bengal, 1980), pp. 10–11.

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The laws had been introduced by Congress but till the Left Front government came to power, they had largely been observed in the breach. The Land Reforms Commissioner noted the deficiencies of the bureaucracy as an agency of social change. Generally, the bureaucracy maintained a stance of hostile neutrality to the entire issue of land reforms. The reason lay in the age-old tradition of the administration of maintaining order, with or without law. The main burden of administrative ethos and procedure, general civil and original laws, judicial pronouncements and practices fell on the task of maintaining and safeguarding of existing property relationship in the rural areas. Thus, not surprisingly the bureaucracy had a ‘natural’ bias against any action or an isolated law which aimed at altering the existing socio-economic arrangements or occasioning conflict in the countryside.38 Added to that was the added problem in form of rulings of the allegedly Congress-oriented Calcutta High Court that had resulted in 20,000 civil injunctions centring around land reforms, and the Land Revenue Courts had 27,000 cases pending, resulting in 180,779 acres being hit by court injunctions.39 The acreage increased slightly from 164,733 acres under injunction at the end of 1978, indicating the backlog of cases was not being cleared. One analyst argued that this was happening in alleged connivance of Marxist lawyers who for personal gain prolonged cases at government expense.40 Between 1977 and 1980, the Left Front government spent about Rs 12 million as fees to official lawyers, yet these suits were not cleared.41 Those retaining their land through court injunctions and pending cases were earning over Rs 40 million per year.42 The Indian Supreme Court, by contrast, proved to be 38 Timir Basu, Bhumi Sangskarer Swarup (Calcutta: Abaniranjan Rai, Feb 1982), p.17; West Bengal, ‘Statement of Vested Agricultural Land Hit by Injunction up to 31st December, 1984,’ (mimeographed) 1985. 39 Basu, Bhumi, p. 17. 40 Profulla Roy Choudhury, ‘Land Reforms: Promise and Fulfilment,’ EPW, 27 December 1980, p. 2172. 41 Ibid. 42 Communist Party of India (Marxist), Political Resolution, adopted by the Eleventh Congress, Vijayawada, January 26–31, 1982 (New Delhi: March 1982), pp. 33–34.

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more proactive in its orientation.43 The Supreme Court Judgement of 9 May 1980 noted that ‘there is no substantial decrease in the limit’ of ceiling land under current West Bengal law. The ceiling limit of ‘6.18 acres in the case of an individual, and 12.35 to 17.29 acres of irrigated land, in the case of a family ... in the Gangetic plains of West Bengal is not small by any standard’.44 Such land reforms would leave all but the biggest landlords untouched and even they would be able to retain up to the ceiling, enabling them to remain in the landlord class. The surplus land above the ceiling was available for distribution to the landless and poor peasantry. To satisfy the largest number of people the Left Front distributed the surplus into pieces all below an acre and averaging 0.54 acres. While good for acquiring a political base and helping to meet immediate peasant aspirations, which it did, this by no stretch of imagination was a radical land reform programme, let alone opening the road to some form of community ownership or cooperativisation in the future. The Left Front government involved as many people as possible in the countryside in this extremely conservative land reform programme so that a sizeable population acquired a stake in the system, and thus the government thought it was perfectly reasonable to distribute small bits of land however uneconomic to land hungry peasants and/or agricultural labourers so that they would never look for any radical alternative to the present property system and stay eager to acquire some property.45

The identification and distribution of the surplus land The identification and distribution of this surplus land was almost entirely the work of the state bureaucracy. The government went loud with claims. By 1982, it claimed that, 1,249,117 acres of agricultural 43

West Bengal, Board of Revenue, Supreme Court Judgment dated 9 May 1980 Upholding Ceiling on Land Prescribed under the West Bengal Land Reforms Act, 1955 (Calcutta: Government of West Bengal, 1981), p. 13. 44 Asit Kumar Bhattacharyya, ‘An Examination of Land Reforms with Special Reference to West Bengal’ Manjula Bose (ed.) Land Reform in Eastern India (Calcutta: Jadavpur University, 1981), p. 185. 45 West Bengal, Board of Revenue, Statistical Cell, Land Reforms in West Bengal: Statistical Report VII (Calcutta: 1982), p. 4.

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land had been vested representing about 1/4 of the all-India total, and further, ‘West Bengal is the only state in India to have vested so much ceiling surplus agricultural land’.46 This was echoed by a foreign expert, who said, ‘The LF ministries’ record on land redistribution is indubitably impressive, particularly when compared with other states in India. Some 4.4 million acres were ‘vested’ (expropriated and held) in government nationwide. Of this West Bengal accounted for 1.2 million acres of which 800,000 acres have been redistributed to the landless (Election Manifesto of the LF, 1987)’.47 This uncritical acceptance of Left Front’s land reform statistics was surprising since it was well known among both the land reform officials in charge of land redistribution and Indian scholars of the subject that these figures were the result of inappropriate calculation that included redistribution figures from the Estates Acquisition Act (1,049,221 acres till 1985) with that under the Land Reforms Act (184,049). As only the latter was comparable with land reforms in other states, the former being part of the zamindari abolition programme, ‘the performance of West Bengal with respect to ceiling laws cannot, therefore, be regarded as extraordinary’.48 At the end of 1978, land to the amount of 1,005,148 acres had been distributed under the Estates Acquisition Act, and 117,428 under the Land Reforms Act. But by the end of 1984 only 1,049,220 acres and 184,049 had been vested indicating only 44,072 and 66,621 acres had been vested in the first six years of Left Front rule, a rate no better than under the previous Congress government.49 The Land Reforms Minister stated in the assembly that from the election of the Left Front till mid 1982 46

West Bengal State Committee, Communist Party of India (Marxist), Significant Six Years of the Left Front Government of West Bengal (Calcutta: CPI (M) West Bengal State Committee, September 1983), p. 42. 47 T.J. Nossiter, Marxist State Governments in India (London: Pinter Publishers, 1988), p. 140. 48 Nripen Bandyopadhyaya, ‘Evaluation of Land Reform Measures in West Bengal: A Report’ (Calcutta: mimeographed by the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, 1983), p. 23; also see, Government of India, Department of Rural Development, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, ‘Proceedings of Conference of Revenue Ministers,’ held in New Delhi, May 1985, pp. 131–33 49 Profulla Roy Choudhury, Left Experiment in West Bengal (New Delhi, Patriot Publishers, July 1985), p. 159.

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150,000 acres had been vested and 120,000 distributed, which meant that 1 million acres had been vested before the Left Front came to power and 630,000 acres distributed already.50 The 799,224 acres distributed by the end of 1984 went to 1,572,531 persons or about 1/2 acre per beneficiary. Though an annual publication of the Left Front government continued to make the claim that West Bengal had vested l/6 of the all-India total and distributed l/5, the same publication admitted that only about 200,000 acres had been vested over the first twelve years of Communist rule, leaving the majority of land being vested by previous Congress regimes.51 As the 200,000 acres vested over the twelve years of Left Front rule was only 0.92 per cent of the total state area and 1.2 per cent of the cultivable area, Nossiter’s claim that ‘the LF ministries’ record of land redistribution is indubitably impressive’ was open to serious doubt. The West Bengal government blamed this poor record on central government delays in giving Presidential assent to land reform legislation and on previous United Front governments having already distributed land in the 1967 to 1969 period. It neglected to mention that during these previous regimes peasants had been encouraged to seize the land themselves without waiting for the administration. Rebellious actions by the radical peasantry were the reason of whatever redistribution had taken place. It was a mark of the political distance the Left had travelled from its early radical phase of the mid and late sixties that now in late 1970s and the 1980s the state bureaucracy was entrusted with the task of doing everything. Militant peasant initiatives were discouraged, even when legislation waiting for central government approval had been delayed – all these giving time to ‘unscrupulous’ land owners ‘to formulate strategy to evade the new ceiling provisions’.52 50

West Bengal, Board of Revenue, Statistical Cell, Land Reforms in West Bengal, VII, p. 7. 51 Government of West Bengal, Department of Information and Cultural Affairs, 12 Years of Left Front Government (Calcutta: Director of Information, June 1989), pp. 2–4. 52 Government of West Bengal, 12 Years, p. 4.

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In contrast to the land grab movements of peasants during the governments of the 1960s, the 1977 government did practically nothing. According to CPI (M) Central Committee member Biplab Dasgupta, During the brief United Front rule by the left-wing parties in 1967 and 1969–70, the village level committees of poor peasants and landless labourers helped to identify such benami land (that is land held illegally in excess of the permitted limit), took over 300,000 acres of such land and distributed it among the landless. While the legality of such action was disputable there was no denying the effectiveness of bringing about a change in the land relations in rural West Bengal. The beneficiaries of such populist land reform formed the hard core of the support which the Left Front received during the 1977 and 1982 elections.53

Thus, nineteen months of Left participation in government in the 1960s achieved more through peasant land seizures than the twelve years of Communist rule since 1977 (300,000 acres versus 80,000 distributed till 1985). As this represented only 1.8 and 0.55 per cent of cultivable land, the distribution of 2.35 per cent of the land under all Left linked governments did not indicate significant land reform. The redistribution was cosmetic, and the fact remains that neither the Congress nor the Left governments had carried out significant land reform since zamindari abolition. ‘With these land ceiling measures, and the abolition of landlordism and intermediaries, the power in the countryside was transferred to small landlords and rich peasants ... Their needs and priorities became, to the administrators and policy-makers, the needs and priorities of the village population as a whole’.54 The downsizing of reported land holdings was largely the result of generational subdivision and bogus transfers rather than state intervention. 53 Biplab Dasgupta, ‘Some Aspects of Land Reform in West Bengal’ in Land Reform: Land Settlement and Cooperatives, no. 1/2 (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation: 1982), p. 13. 54 Ibid., p. 14.

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Atul Kohli and Nossiter, in specifically examining and then praising the West Bengal land reforms, did not point out its insignificance in terms of total cultivable land. Kohli specifically mentioned the percentage of cultivable land redistributed for the other two states he examined (Karnataka 0.2 per cent and Uttar Pradesh 0.7 per cent), thereby supporting his thesis of their poor land redistribution performance.55 Nossiter and Kohli were aware of the importance of this figure but omitted to mention it for West Bengal. The redistribution in twelve years of only 0.55 per cent of cultivable land makes their whole thesis of the Left Front’s ‘spectacular,’ ‘indubitably impressive’, and ‘truly remarkable accomplishment’ in land reform untenable.56 By 1980 already, the West Bengal government Third Workshop on land reforms noted that the ‘progress made up to date was rather tardy and unsatisfactory in almost all the districts’.57 Though recovery of ceiling surplus land was a priority item it was felt that there was large scope for giving further attention to this matter at the field level and to speed up the vesting of surplus land ... It was pointed out that a very large quantity of ceiling surplus land was retained by the intermediaries by clandestine manner. The common modus operandi was benami transaction, creation of sham and fake tenancies, trusts, and endowments.58 In 1981 an amount of 0.374 million acres of vested land had not been distributed with little having been done in the previous three years to expedite distribution. Their illegal occupants thus earned Rs 140 million annually.59 The Third Workshop on Land Reforms found that one of the reasons these acres of vested land could not be distributed was that the elected rural institutions described these lands as ‘unfit for agriculture’.60 Though peasants were expected 55

Atul Kohli, The State and Poverty in India: The Politics of Reform (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 166, 215. 56 Ibid., p. 124; Nossiter, Marxist State Governments, pp. 140, 171, 184. 57 West Bengal, Board of Revenue, Third Workshop on Land Reforms: Operational Decisions, 15–16 September 1980 (Calcutta: Government of West Bengal, October 1980), p. 3. 58 Ibid. 59 Roy Choudhury, ‘Land Reforms,’ p. 2172. 60 West Bengal, Board of Revenue, Third Workshop on Land Reforms, p. 4.

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to help in detecting surplus land, the policy was that vested land be taken possession of only after ‘quasi-judicial and administrative processes’ were complete.61 The CPI (M) Land and Land Revenue Reforms Minister Benoy Choudhury concluded: ‘The achievement in the matter of distribution of vested land has not been satisfactory though highest priority was assigned to this job’.62 The Board of Revenue also found that they did not always get the desired degree of cooperation from the lower levels of the bureaucracy and the Panchayats. ‘It was thought that with their local knowledge the representatives of Panchayati Raj Institution would be able to make a breakthrough in the usual dilatory process of identification of vested plot and its occupier. The circular did not have the desired effect’.63 The Land Reforms Office in Burdwan stated that surplus land was not always being distributed according to the allocation priorities of the Government, implying that those less deserving but more influential were receiving the land. The Additional District Magistrate (Land Reforms) therefore instructed the Junior Land Revenue Officers to ensure proper distribution and to ‘pursue the Panchayats, where necessary, for making distribution accordingly’.64 The problems were similar in another major effort at land reform, redistributing illegally acquired land. Under the Restoration of Alienated Land Act, land which had been acquired through distress sales or under coercion was to be legally restored to the original owners. However, implementation was ‘extremely tardy and unsatisfactory’ with disposal of cases having come to a ‘standstill’. Only 15 per cent of cases were disposed in favour of the aggrieved party, with an average area of 1 acre involved.65 ‘It was found that 61

Roy Choudhury, ‘Land Reforms’. West Bengal, Board of Revenue, Statistical Cell, Land Reforms in West Bengal, VII, p. 1. 63 West Bengal, Board of Revenue, Fourth Workshop on Land Reforms: Operational Decisions, 23–24 June 1981 (Calcutta: Government of West Bengal, July 1981), p. 4. 64 West Bengal, Land Reforms Office (Management and Settlement Wings), Burdwan, Land Reforms in the District of Burdwan (Burdwan: Government of West Bengal, 1980) mimeographed, p. 15. 65 West Bengal, Board of Revenue, Fourth Workshop on Land Reforms, p. 7. 62

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not only restoration orders were passed in very few cases, but also most of these orders remained only in paper’ with the party who had seized the land continuing to retain possession. Those disputes settled out of court also did not bring any benefit to the aggrieved party in a large number of cases.66 The State Government Workshop on Land Reforms noted that the backlog of pending cases presented ‘a major problem especially in areas where there was concentration of tribal population. This might result in rural tension. It was imperative to dispose of all pending cases, particularly the cases involving alienation of Tribal Lands’.67 With over 200,000 cases pending representing a large area of land this was difficult to achieve.68 P. Roy Choudhury in an article in Economic and Political Weekly concluded, ‘the achievements of the Left Front Government in West Bengal in the matter of land reforms have not been such as warrant satisfaction. Whatever has been done is to the credit of the much-maligned bureaucracy. The situation would have been far better had the political wing in the state been without link with land and landed interests’.69 Even within the party publications of the CPI (M) the dichotomy between theory and practice in land reform continued. The CPI (M) Kisan Sabha leader, Shantimoy Ghosh, in an article in the CPI (M) theoretical journal Marxbadi Path (Marxist Path), wrote of the need to expropriate the land of landlords and distribute it to the tillers. When the inconsistency of this with the Left Front and Kisan Sabha’s implementation programme was pointed out, Promode Das Gupta, secretary of the CPI(M) state unit, said that in West Bengal’s current situation this ‘slogan was pure phrase mongering’, but was valid for a programme of all-India agrarian revolution.70 Rather than making a radical redistribution of land, the Left Front was to put emphasis on ensuring security of tenure for 66

West Bengal, Board of Revenue, Workshop on Land Reforms: A Few Operational Decisions, June 23–24, 1978 (Calcutta: Government of West Bengal, 1978), p. 5. 67 West Bengal, Board of Revenue, Third Workshop on Land Reforms, p. 9. 68 Roy Choudhury, Left Experiment, p. 9. 69 Roy Choudhury, ‘Land Reforms’, p. 2173. 70 Ashis Barman, ‘New Challenges for Left’, Link, 26 January 1983, p. 38.

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sharecroppers and providing them with a legally stipulated 3/4 share of crops. This became known as Operation Barga. The programme for recording tenancy rights to sharecroppers received the widest publicity. That primary attention was given to Operation Barga seemed incongruous considering that agricultural labourers outnumbered sharecroppers and sharecropping, whose number even the proponents of Operation Barga admitted, was on the decline.71 Even so, the objectives enshrined in the Operation Barga were to prove illusory, as either many sharecroppers were left out or land again was leased out by poor sharecroppers to rich farmers, or here also benami practices continued. Or, land remained formally recorded with a sharecropper, while the land use pattern changed, and this happened on a large scale in the huge countryside adjoining cities and towns. In any case, while Operation Barga gave limited security of tenure to a section of small peasantry, it bypassed the fundamental question of land redistribution.

THE PANCHAYATI RAJ AND THE LAND QUESTION Did the much talked of panchayati system facilitate agrarian reforms, and did it provide a basis for peasant power – the two questions that had animated the Bengal countryside in the sixties? Promode Das Gupta, the then secretary of the West Bengal CPI (M) state unit, waxed eloquent after the Panchayat Election results of 1978, The Panchayat election that was held a few days back in West Bengal has given birth to new inspiration, new enthusiasm not only in the hearts of the people of this state but also in the hearts of all Left and democratic people of the country. ... The people of this country are eager to learn: How the three-tier Panchayat of the state would work? What kind of powers will rest with all these Panchayats? How these Panchayats will struggle to bring change in the socio-economic life of the villages?72 71

Dasgupta, ‘Gram Banglar’, p. 89. Promode Das Gupta, ‘Panchayat o Gana-udyog’ (Panchayat and People’s Enterprise), published on 1 August 1978, reprinted in Promode Das Gupta: 72

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The triumphal notes in Das Gupta’s declamation would soon be tested against the hard realities of implementation. However, the first Left Front government’s experiment with the Panchayats in West Bengal is important for showing the possibilities and constraints on attempting rural change in favour of the lower classes through the Panchayats. As a state government with a difference, its Panchayat experiment indicated the extent to which change was possible in Indian democracy, and the problems in attempting devolution of power to the villages and the lower classes. The way in which this was attempted has been studied by Rajarshi Dasgupta, among others, whose work on the two villages from Cooch Behar and Malda suggests a model for understanding how the CPI (M) ‘machinery’ functioned to secure electoral power and ideological hegemony for the Left regime, especially at the Panchayat level in everyday village politics. The protean capacity of the party allowed changes at the local level in pragmatic ways, serving incompatible interests at times. The party proved adept in formulating different strategies for different tiers of the Panchayat system, calibrating their rivalries.73 Dasgupta, of course, takes a long view, spanning thirty years of Left Front rule in West Bengal. In what follows, attempt would be made to demonstrate that the pragmatic adaptability and shrewd realpolitik which Dasgupta speaks of or hints at was already in evidence during the Left Front’s first term. The Panchayati Raj was constructed as an institutional counter-strategy against the militancy of the Krishak Sabhas of the preceding decades, which threatened to destabilise any elected government not only from without (the Naxalbari uprising) but also from within (the militancy of Hare Krishna Konar in the late 1960s). The ‘passive revolution’ had worked for the time being and the spectre of Naxalbari exorcised. Meanwhile, a clientele of beneficiaries of the party was created in the rural reaches through the operation of the Panchayat system Nirbachito Rachona Samkalan (Promode Das Gupta: Selected Works), Calcutta: National Book Agency, 2010, p. 161. 73 Rajarshi Dasgupta, ‘The CPI (M) ‘Machinery’ in West Bengal: Two Village Narratives from Kochbihar and Malda,’ Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. XLIV, No. 9, 28 February 2009, pp. 70–81.

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that helped keep the Left Front in power arguably more than any other factor and for more than three decades.74 Many observers hold that the CPI (M) had a realistic chance of bringing about genuine reform of local governments in the West Bengal countryside. The party was probably the best disciplined in India, made its rural thrust its highest priority for the next five years, and had enormous incentive to succeed,75 and the experiment appeared to have greater potential for success as a Left government could be expected to override the rural vested interests and use its rural cadre organisation to ensure that not only was development aid actually delivered, but that it got to those most in need. Where previously Panchayat elections were held on the basis of individual nominations, now for the first time official party slates would compete against each other, bringing party politics formally to village government. The village Panchayats could give the Left an organisational base from which to resist possible central government repression in the future. The thirty-six-point programme of the Left Front in the 1977 assembly election stated that ‘elections to the Panchayats should be held immediately on the system of proportional representation with measures to be taken to confer more powers and resources on all local bodies’.76 After the Panchayat election during the floods at the end of 1978 the potential of the Panchayats for rural reconstruction was realised in its flood relief programme. Unlike in the past the relief work undertaken through the Panchayats prevented the usual rural migration to Kolkata normally associated with such natural calamities.77 Their success 74 For the importance of Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) in village politics of West Bengal, see Arild E. Ruud, Poetics of Village Politics: The Making of West Bengal’s Rural Communism, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003; and, Dayabati Roy and Parthasarathi Banerjee, Gram Banglar Rajniti (Bengal’s Rural Politics), Kolkata: People’s Book Society, 2005. 75 Marcus Franda, India’s Rural Development, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979, pp. 142–43. 76 Anjali Ghosh, Peaceful Transition in Power, Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1981, p. C-40. 77 West Bengal, Directorate of Panchayats, Panchayats in West Bengal, Calcutta: 1981, p. 14.

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in relief work prompted the Left Front to allocate more resources and responsibility to the Panchayats. However, there was a catch: though the conception was promising and the public was told that the Panchayat would receive increased power and financial resources, its success as an agency for rural transformation would depend on the type of people elected to the village Panchayats and the direction the Left Front would give these bodies. The 1978 Panchayat election gave the Left Front an overwhelming mandate. At the village level, out of 46,700 seats the CPI (M) got 28,105, the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) 1,674, the Forward Bloc (FB) 1,539, the opposition Congress-I 4,536, Congress-S 580, Communist Party of India (CPI) 825, and the independents 9,436. The Panchayat Samiti, grouping several village Gram Panchayats, gave the CPI (M) 5,596 out of 8,454 with the Congress gaining only 623, the RSP 353, FB 320, CPI 132, and Congress-S 105. The only substantial non- CPI (M) group in the Samiti were independents who got 1,323. Of the 647 district-level Zilla Parishad seats, CPI (M) got 488, RSP 30, FB 44, CPI 5, Congress-I 23 and independents 53.78 The Communist mandate was clear but the nomination of the Left Front’s candidates was rather hastily and haphazardly done. Though the Panchayat election was held in June 1978, a full year after the Left Front came to power, the Left Front including the powerful CPI (M) lacked the cadre to nominate experienced party members to most of the posts. The CPI (M) had only 38,889 members in 1978, 10,000 having joined since the return of the Left Front to power in 1977.79 In the scramble to get nominations from the ruling state parties many influential persons and even former Congressmen jumped on the Communist bandwagon and succeeded in obtaining seats.80 The inclusion of these opportunists disgruntled 78

M. Shiviah, K.B. Srivastava and A.C. Jena, Panchayati Raj Elections in West Bengal, 1978, Hyderabad: National Institute of Rural Development, 1980, p. 134. 79 Communist Party of India (Marxist), Report and Resolution on Organisation adopted by the Salkia Plenum, 27–31 December 1978, New Delhi: May 1979, pp. 12, 49. 80 West Bengal State Conference, CPI (M), Rajnaitik-Sangathanik Report (‘Political Organisational Report’), 14th Plenary Session, 27 December 1981–1

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some of the traditional Communist supporters who were left out of the nominations. The divisions among the Left Front partners resulted in their contesting against each other in about 6,000 seats.81 An independent survey by the National Institute of Rural Development in Hyderabad on one Gram Panchayat each in the districts of Nadia, Midnapore, and Jalpaiguri found the educational level of Panchayat members ‘high enough to justify appreciation of the voters’ judgement. There (was) no illiterate’ Panchayat member.82 The dominance of the relatively well-educated section of the village community in the Panchayat was confirmed by the survey. The education of 78 per cent of members was between the primary and higher secondary level while 14 per cent were graduates. With only 8 per cent below primary graduation level, the underrepresentation of the illiterates, who form 67.03 per cent of West Bengal’s rural population but 1 per cent of Panchayat members, was marked.83 In spite of this, on the basis of the above survey the West Bengal Left Front government concluded that ‘judging by the evidence of this survey the members of the Panchayats by a significant majority can be taken to represent the interests of the poorer sections in villages’.84 Given the class composition of contemporary Bengal villages this would appear to be something of a distortion, the opposite being closer to the truth. Using the same government statistics, P. Roy Choudhury argued that the Panchayats were dominated by ‘the same old class of rural vested interests including moneylenders…51 per cent belong to the landowning classes; the rest are classified as ‘others’ but are themselves linked with landed interests’.85 He referred to the Land January 1982, Calcutta: West Bengal State Committee, CPI (M), March 1982, p. 91; Shiviah et al, Panchayati Raj Elections, p. 51. 81 Shiviah et al, Panchayati Raj Elections, p. 136. 82 Ibid, p. 51. 83 India, Registrar General and Census Commissioner, Census of India, 1981, Provisional Population Totals: Workers and Non-Workers, Series-1, Paper 3, 1981, p. 177. 84 West Bengal, Economic Review 1980–81, Calcutta: West Bengal Government Press, 1981, p. 21. 85 Ibid.

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Reforms Commissioner D. Bandyopadhyay who said that only 6.54 per cent of Panchayat members belonged to the rural poor.86 Atul Kohli, from a sample of sixty Gram Panchayat members, took an intermediate position that ‘institutional power has, at least for now, been transferred from the hands of the dominant propertied groups to a lower middle stratum’.87 As with all surveys which attempt to determine class land holdings, underestimation of holdings by landowners tended to place them in a lower class than is actually the case. In the Kohli survey 8.3 per cent of agriculturalist Gram Panchayat members had less than 2 acres, 69 per cent 2–5 acres, 19.4 per cent 6–10 acres, and 2.8 per cent over 10 acres of land. Yet in this same group none used only family labour on their land, 83.3 per cent used hired labour, and 16.7 per cent used sharecroppers. While reporting use of outside labour hiring was presumably considered safe to reveal, land-holdings were not, as the stated small size of holdings would indicate that some at least would more efficiently use family rather than hired labour. Under-reporting of landholdings from fear of confiscation was more clearly revealed in an International Labour Organization (ILO) study on West Bengal, where listing and agriculture schedules of leased lands revealed a close correlation of 4,645 and 4,436 acres of leased-in land but only 1,408 and 312 acres of leased-out land. As the figures of leased-in and leased-out land should be identical, landowners were clearly understating their ownership, a discrepancy which was too large to be attributed solely to landowner absenteeism.88 Whatever the differences in class composition, the similarities appeared to be closer to that of the class-caste composition under the previous Congress government. A 1974 village study of Panchayat leadership in Hooghly district showed that leadership in the Anchal and Gram Panchayats were respectively, rich holding over 15 acres, 25 and 11 per cent, upper-middle class with 7–15 acres, 50 and 56 per cent, and middle class with 2–7 acres, 21 and 25 per cent. 86

Ibid. Atul Kohli, ‘Parliamentary Communism and Agrarian Reform,’ Asian Survey, vol. 23, no. 7, July 1983, p. 794. 88 Tares Maitra, Expansion of Employment Through Local Resource Mobilisation, Bangkok: Asian Employment Programme, ILO, 1982, p. 9. 87

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There were no positions held below this level except for an 11 per cent landless share in the Gram Panchayat. In caste composition, the Anchal and Gram Panchayats were composed respectively of 25 and 11 per cent high caste, 50 and 67 per cent dominant agriculturalist caste, and 25 and 22 per cent other middle castes. There were no members outside these categories.89 In a study by Marvin Davis, even though government requirements for ward representatives gave the low castes three of the nine seats, the members were nominees of the dominant faction on whom they were dependent.90 Thus class-caste composition was indicative in an indirect way of the political controls exercised by the dominant elite over lower-class members who were their nominees. The Left Front government exacerbated this tendency by changing the law to make appointments of Scheduled Castes and Tribes and women by the state government dependent on the nominees recommended by the local Panchayats, thereby increasing the control of whichever faction was locally dominant.91 Though not dominated by the biggest landowners who were few in number and allied more closely to the Congress, the Panchayats were composed of the middle strata of the village society, whose interests were by no means synonymous with those of the poorer sections of the villages. The heavy bias towards middle propertied owners, and the gross underrepresentation of the landless, however, was only to be expected, given the middle peasant and rural middle-class dominance in the CPI (M) rural membership. As the question of the landless organising and representing themselves through the Panchayats did not arise, given their token membership in the Panchayats, it was up to the rural middle class to represent their interests. ‘(T) he relative prosperity of members was obvious and most of their 89

Rajatasubhra Mukhopadhyay, ‘Resource Distribution and Power Structure: A Case Study of a West Bengal Village,’ The Eastern Anthropologist, vol. 35, no. 1, January-March 1982, p. 70. 90 Marvin Davis, Rank and Rivalry: The Politics of Inequality in Rural West Bengal, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, p. 185. 91 Government of West Bengal, Legislative Department, The West Bengal Panchayat Act, 1973 as modified up to November 1980, Alipore: West Bengal Government Press, 1980, p. 96, section 210.

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projects were of dubious value for the lower classes.’92 While the rural propertied classes failed to effectively represent the poorest classes, the poorest classes themselves in this situation were often unable or unwilling to assert themselves politically. The organisers who came from outside the poorer classes were often unsuited to being their spokesmen and found greater affinity and ease of mobilisation among the rural middle class.93 In short, though the Panchayats succeeded to a certain extent in devolving power in the villages to the next lowest rung of more numerous middle-class elements and consolidating their position, it did not increase the political power of the lowest classes to any appreciable degree. The bureaucratic power of the Panchayats was ineffective to bring about land reforms; it became a tool for resource politics in the countryside. Thus, cold stores, sand mining, rural road construction, rural cooperatives, including cooperative banks, loans, etc. – all these became the new themes of resource politics. Land redistribution was a far cry. No wonder, after the Left Front was unseated in 2011 by agrarian protests which the Panchayat system had been designed to control and quash, the same Panchayats, which had been the bulwark of the Left’s enduring electoral success in the state, were unable, perhaps even unwilling, to put up resistance to the new state government. The Panchayats were overnight incorporated in the relief politics of the new regime. This was the logical step from what the Panchayati Raj had been deployed to do since 1977. In the record of land reform in the Left Front administration, the caste question remained an embarrassing one. The Naxalites even when not theorising caste as an integral part of their politics had made the Dalits and the indigenous people the mainstay of peasant rebellion. But now in the governmentalized politics of the Left Front, as a consequence of the policy of consolidating the middle peasantry and a middle-class power base in the countryside, the 92

Ross Mallick, Development Policy of a Communist Government: West Bengal since 1977, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 142. 93 T.M. Vinod Kumar and Jatin De, Basic Needs and the Provision of Government Services: An Areas Study of Ranaghat Block in West Bengal, Geneva: International Labour Organization, World Employment Programme Working Paper, February 1980, p. 21.

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lower castes and tribes who formed the bulk of the lowest of the classes were excluded from the dynamics of power. Predictably, the Left Front government took the view – and its Chief Minister Jyoti Basu indicated this – that the perspective of helping the rural poor would mean that the Dalits would also be automatically helped. It would require a separate essay to write on the caste question in West Bengal. We have only indicated here the relation between caste and the land question. In any case, both the Panchayat System and the rising power of the middle castes in West Bengal showed how the land question was resolved over time by the Left Front government. The period of the first Left Front Administration, which earned great praise from all corners for its land reforms programme, was also the time that showed the complexity of the issue of land and the utter reformist way the Front had decided to tackle it. The Panchayat was the institutional framework of the ‘limited revolution’ from the top. The beneficiaries were the middle castes. And this is how the fire of agrarian rebellion was doused in Bengal.

three

SECTION The Decade in Bihar

thirteen CHAPTER

Bihar in 1974 Possibilities and Limits of a Popular Movement Mithilesh Kumar

This stained, pitted first-light this day-break, battered by night, this dawn that we all ached for, this is not that one. – Faiz Ahmed Faiz, ‘Subh-e-Aazaadi’.

INTRODUCTION

A

s the Naxalite decade overwhelmed West Bengal, what was happening in the neighbouring state, Bihar? Bihar, in the eighties, mirrored the Naxalite decade of Bengal with equal vigour or perhaps with more intensity and on a greater scale. The violence of class war was witness in the last years of the sixties and the first half of the seventies to a rare chiaroscuro of militant movement and popular movement – one mixed with the other. This chapter thus returns to the theme – raised in the introduction – of the simultaneity and succession of popular movement and insurgent class war. In no other state in India was there as telling an instance of this simultaneity as in Bihar at that time. To understand this apparently inscrutable aspect of radical politics of the people, we have to go back though extremely briefly to the background in Translated by Mustansir Dalvi, Faiz Ahmed Faiz – New Translation, 7 August 2014, faizahmedafaiznewtranslations.blogspot.com/2014/08/faiz-shab-e-aazaadi. html.

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which the popular outburst occurred in Bihar in the early seventies. It will help us understand our paradoxical past this book chronicles. When on 14 August 1947 Faiz Ahmed Faiz wrote, Subah-eAzadi, he was delineating the fault lines of the emerging postcolonial democracies. It was clear that there was a sense of incompleteness, abandonment and promises being broken even as they were made. There certainly was a sense that ‘the moment of arrival’ had not yet been achieved by the nation. These were the fault lines which were going to define the politics of the postcolonial nation-state and the struggle for democracy. Slogans from the Left like ye azadi jhooti hai (this Independence is false) to the Gandhian method of redistribution of land (known as Bhoodan led by Acharya Vinoba Bhave) was a clear indication that not everyone saw independence as a ‘tryst with destiny’. In fact, the main currents of opposition to the government and the state seen emerging and consolidating were evident from such slogans and programmes. Our study is located in this moment – the year of 1974–75, and it will be quite fruitful if we mention briefly the main currents of several movements, which developed from the time of independence. The Communist Movement in India had gone through various ‘lines’ from P.C. Joshi to B.T. Randive and had split repeatedly. The major split came in 1964 with the formation of Communist Party of India (Marxist). With the explosion of Naxalbari Movement in 1967, a new Communist Party called Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) was born in 1969. It believed in armed struggle and a revolution in which peasants and landless agricultural workers were going to play a crucial role. They had virtually no presence among the industrial working class. In 1971, Satyanarayan Singh broke away from the CPI (M-L) led by Charu Mazumdar and formed the Provisional Central Committee, Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) with other groups from Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal. Each of the communist parties had their own assessment of the political economy and class struggle prevalent in India in 1974–75. After many vicissitudes, the CPI had come to the conclusion in 1971 that ‘the national democratic revolution required the unity of the ‘Left and democratic forces’, drawing in ‘not only the masses, following the Congress but also its progressive

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sections’… .The Ninth Congress declared, ‘the old concept of anti-congressism has proven a barren and reactionary concept which was now ‘a weapon of sabotage of left and democratic unity’.1 Despite some differences in policy matter and economic conditions, this ‘line’ of CPI allowed them to have a pact with the Congress government and play an ambiguous role during the Railway Strike of 1974 and go completely against the Bihar Movement. The CPI (M) took great pains to define ‘Left and democratic’ forces in the Tenth Congress. This of course included the party, their allies in West Bengal as well as their mass organizations. It also included parties and groups ranging from the CPI, AIADMK, DMK, Akali Dal and almost every ‘radical’ element in all the parties ranging from Janata Party to Congress. Organizations of indigenous people were also included. It was clear that CPI (M), putatively left of CPI, was even more eclectic and, although they did not mention it as such, differed from the CPI on the issue of not opposing the Congress. By 1974, the CPI (M-L) had splintered into several groups, but commentators agree that after the brutal suppression of the Movement in West Bengal, it continued with great momentum in Bihar. However, the ‘Left adventurist’ line made it difficult for them to organically link to the masses. We will later see how each of these factions of the Communist Movement played their role in the Bihar Movement, which crucially decided the course of the radical movement in the state. The Socialist Movement in India which formed the chief leadership of the Bihar Movement was always faction-ridden and was notorious for splitting constantly. The major Socialist parties during the Bihar Movement were Samyukta Socialist Party of which George Fernandes, the leader of the Railway Strike, was the most important leader. The other was Socialist Party (Lohiawadi) whose leaders were Raj Narain and Karpoori Thakur. The latter had already become the chief minister of Bihar and would be appointed for a second term after the Emergency. One of the original founders of the Socialist Party was Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) but he had crossed over to the Sarvodaya Movement in 1954 to join Acharya 1

David Lockwood, The Communist Party of India and the Indian Emergency (New Delhi: Sage, 2016). p. 81.

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Vinoba Bhave’s programme of Bhoodan. Their contradictions came to the fore during the Bihar Movement. The final stream of political actors important in the analysis of Bihar Movement was the Right which included Congress (O), Jan Sangha, and Anand Marga. Congress (O) was formed after the split in the Congress of which Morarji Desai was the leader who would go on to become the Prime Minister of the Janata Party led government in 1977. Jan Sangh (later Bharatiya Janata Party – BJP) was the electoral front of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing Hindu organization. Anand Marga was a religious organization. These are the dramatis personae of the Bihar Movement.

EVENTS AND THE CONTEXT

Events The event of 18 March 1974, is when the Bihar Movement is supposed to have begun. The event in itself is quite well known and, in fact, is now part of the folklore. On that day, the Bihar Assembly was to assemble for the inauguration of the Budget Session. University students under the banner of Bihar Chhatra Sangharsh Samiti (BCSS) had decided to block the entry of the Governor. The BCSS comprised non-Left student organizations like the youth wing of Congress (O), Vidyarthi Parishad, Tarun Shanti Sena, Samajvadi Yuvjan Sabha, Bihar State Students Council, Bharatiya Krantikari Yuvak Sangh and Bhartiya Yuva Sangh. There was a lathi charge on the students and tear gas shells were fired, but unlike previous occasions the police opened fire in which eight people died and hundreds were injured.2 News of this incident spread like wildfire throughout the state that resulted in students and other groups organizing militant demonstrations. Suffice to say now that at that moment, 18 March 1974, appeared suddenly as a moment of insurrection. Bihar was under siege. The students attacked at will symbols and power 2 Lalan Tiwari, Democracy and Dissent: A Case Study of the Bihar Movement, 1974–75 (Delhi: Mittal Publications, 1987); all references to historical events and chronology are from this study if otherwise not stated. This study records events of the movement on a daily basis.

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centres across the state. Jayaprakash Narayan had not yet joined the movement (he would join it half a month later on 6 April). It was from that time that the movement veered away from its moment of insurrection to a popular movement which claimed autonomy not only from representative democracy but also from government and governmentality. In a quote attributed to Lenin it is said that ‘There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen’. Most probably it is an imaginative rendition of Lenin’s ‘The Chief Task of the Day’. In any case, the point is that while a condition for insurrection or popular movement is a result of a series of economic and political developments over the years, when there is a catalytic situation, it often takes everyone by surprise with its ferocity and fast pace of development. The event of 18 March had been building up for quite some time. Student unrest in Bihar had been going on intermittently with varied degrees of intensity since the mid-1960s. In 1965 a pitched battle between students and police was fought in Patna over the same demands made in 1974. The main issues then were fee reduction, transportation cost, and changes in examination scheme.3 The student movement gained momentum in 1972. Filhal (For Now) a Hindi journal, gives detailed account of the students’ struggle in Patna University.4 There was discontent among teachers as well because of salaries that were due for six months which reached a climax when a student, Bindeshwar Jha, was raped by a Home Guard and a policeman while Jha was on his way to his lodge. Police brutality after March 1974 was already evident in incidents such as these, thus creating mass discontent. On 8 August 1972, about 5000 students had gone to the office of the Vice Chancellor of Patna University to present a charter of demands. When they did not find him in the office, the students took the demonstration to Pirbohar Police Station (where the police had refused to lodge the complaint of Jha). The police started a lathi charge on students and used teargas. Next day, the students went to the chief minister but he 3 Arvind N. Das, Does Bihar Show the Way? Apathy, Agitation, and Alternatives in an Unchanging State (Kolkata: Research Indian Publications, 1979). 4 For this, Veer Bharat Talwar (ed.)., Naxalbari Ke Daur Mein (New Delhi: Anamika, 2007).

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refused to concede to their demands. After this, the students formed a 41-member Samyukta Chhatra Sangharsh Samiti. This was the first attempt at organizing the students, not on the basis of organizations mostly attached to electoral political parties, but a coalition of different groups based on a clear programme. This Sangharsh Samiti formed on 17 August 1972 went on a one-day strike on 21 August. The next day they called for Patna bandh (closure) which was successful. On 23 August, the students presented a 14-point charter of demands which included the release of all imprisoned students, suspension of teachers and the principal who had ordered violence, waiver of fee because of famine, etc. All the demands related to the condition of the universities and the education system. However, immediately after a press conference where the demands had been voiced, the Sangharsh Samiti decided to withdraw the strike and sought the help of the legislators to demand ‘justice’. The movement peaked in September. On 5 September about 30,000 students marched to the Assembly but were stopped by a large posse of police and lathi charged (whipped with sticks). Teargas was used as well. The victims of this violence were mainly students but also included some journalists, officials of the Secretariat, hawkers and rickshawallas. All these sections of the society were to later play crucial roles in the Bihar Movement especially the rickshawallas who represented the subaltern voice of the urban poor. On 7 September police beat up the students of Patna College and Science College without any provocation in which more than 100 students were injured. What happened next was to become the dominant narrative of state repression. On the same day Central Reserve Police (CRP) were called to the university. Help was also sought from Orissa Police. The aim of the government was to demonstrate the determination of the state to quell the movement. Even the Army was alerted. This widespread student discontent also has to be seen in the larger political context of other struggles that were being conducted by other political forces at that time, whose attacks on the state were also getting bolder. Bihar had been touched deeply by the Naxalbari Movement. It brought and the oppressive caste condition of rural Bihar and

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the class struggle into relief. The question of land now hinged on Bihar’s political economy at that time and social izzat (dignity). It was difficult to extricate one from the other because this was at the heart of Dalit and Naxalite politics. It was part of the legacy of the Naxalbari struggle which forced the debate between Left politics and the politics of social identity especially on issues of caste and class. This debate caused a cleavage in political thought and practice in India. Class struggle in rural Bihar was going on continuously without interruption and under severe repression since the late sixties. It began in Ekwari in Bhojpur from where the charismatic Jagdish Mahto, popularly known as Jagdish Master had emerged. In fact, it was the killing of landlords in Musahari which saw the re-entry of JP (as Jayaprakash Narayan was called) into politics when he camped in Musahari to bring peace between the Dalits and the upper castes. Jayaprakash Narayan was later accused of helping the landlords at the expense of the Dalits during the movement, especially in West Bengal, when he was trying to expand the movement throughout the country.5 Similarly, there was a wave of strikes, in industries and tool down by sectional unions of railways which culminated in course of time into the biggest strike by the organized working class in India. The unrest among the industrial working class, especially in South Bihar (now Jharkhand) was taking place simultaneously and it overlapped with the beginning of the Jharkhand Movement.6 The relationship between the struggle of the working class and identity struggle was complex. We shall have to revisit it when we present a detailed account of the trajectory of the Bihar Movement. Even though we cannot say that these sporadic movements, in a predetermined way, inexorably led to the Bihar Movement, they built up what Charles Tilly has called repertoires.7 They represented the situation, marked by the interface of violent and non-violent struggles of the people, when, as Arvind Das pointed out, politics 5

Arvind N. Das, Does Bihar Show the Way?: Apathy, Agitation, and Alternatives in an Unchanging State. (Calcutta: Research Indian Publications, 1979). 6 Ibid. 7 Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2010).

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was brought to the streets of Bihar.8 It was a postcolonial moment which set itself the task of not only deepening democracy but also redefining it as well. Most of the slogans used in contemporary struggles today were, for instance, formed during the Bihar Movement. To understand the specific nature of the time, we have to now move towards an analysis of the conditions of the Bihar Movement to identify the moment of crisis, the preparation of the oppressed classes to take on the ruling classes and the ability of the ruling class to rule with legitimacy and authority.

Explanations of the Bihar Crisis That there was a crisis in the decade 1964–74 is unanimously accepted by scholars and has been documented by the Government of India. Ranabir Samaddar in his work on the Railway Strike of 1974 has observed: The magnitude and rate of unemployment in the country increased significantly in the 1960s and1970s. The economy grew at a rate of around 3.5 per cent as against the planned rate of 5 per cent per annum. Though employment grew at a relatively high rate of 2 per cent per annum, the labour force grew faster—at a rate of 2.5 per cent as against less than 2 per cent per annum assumed, the result was an increase in unemployment. The magnitude of unemployment doubled during 1956–72, from around 5 to 10 million, and the unemployment rate went from 2.6 to 3.8 per cent. With the availability of comprehensive data on levels of consumption, employment and unemployment for 1972–73 which revealed a high incidence of poverty (54 per cent rural and 41 per cent urban) and high unemployment rates (8.4 per cent on current daily status and 4.3 per cent on currently weekly status basis), the situation was serious.9

Bipan Chandra’s study of the Emergency is more in the nature of an apologia in relation to both the Emergency and the critique of the Bihar Movement, and is seen through the criticism of Jayaprakash 8

Does Bihar Show the Way? Ranabir Samaddar, Crisis of 1974: Railway Strike and the Rank and File. (Delhi: Primus, 2017). 9

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Narayan which also points to the economic crisis that India was going through.10 Chandra put the economic crisis in international perspective and stated that the oil shock of 1973 was a major factor triggering the economic crisis because it raised the prices of petroleum, fertilizers, etc. dramatically. The economy during this period saw negative growth and although it picked up from 1967 the rate of growth of national income was only 2.9 per cent down from 4.3 per cent during 1954–64. Industrial production declined to about 3.3 per cent during 1965–70 and 2.8 per cent during 1970–74. This was against growth of 7 per cent during 1956–61 and 9 per cent during 1961–65. He also accepts that there was a fall in the production of basic goods. He pointed to the crisis in agriculture which saw an increase of 35 per cent in production from 1967–70. This was followed by drought and there was a sharp decline in agricultural production and foodgrain had to be imported.11 He however bypassed the Bihar drought of 1966, which was declared as famine, followed by devastating flood in North Bihar. Paul Brass in his study of the Bihar famine of 1966–67 pointed out that 1965–66 was the year of the so-called Green Revolution when there was a marked increase in the production of foodgrain especially rice.12 Taking into consideration all foodgrain, the production increased by 2 million tons. However, this increase concealed the fact that there was a sharp decline in rice production in Bihar and Eastern Uttar Pradesh. The quantum of the decline can be gauged from the fact that the index of total foodgrain production in Bihar fell from 139.7 in 1964–65 to 67.4 in 1966–67. However, agricultural production showed steady growth from 1967–73. In fact, for the study of our period it is important to note that the index for 1971–72, 1972–73 and 1973–74 were 170.2, 157.7 and 154.4 respectively, which showed a decrease. These figures are important to us as Chandra claimed that the lull in the Bihar Movement was caused by a recovering economy. This is an unsubstantiated claim 10 Bipan Chandra, In the Name of Democracy: JP Movement and the Emergency (New Delhi: Penguin, 2003). 11 Ibid., p. 16. 12 Paul R. Brass, ‘The Political Uses of Crisis: The Bihar Famine of 1966–1967’, The Journal of Asian Studies, Volume 45 (2), 1986, pp. 245–67.

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whereas the Bihar Movement could be viewed as a direct result of economic crisis, hence a movement based on economic demands. The situation however, showed that the movement had gone beyond economic demands to political demands that challenged the established order of postcolonial democracy. As an important aside, one of the principal leaders who was at the forefront of relief in Bihar leading the Bihar Relief Committee (BRC) was JP, the most important dramatis personae of the Bihar Movement. Though JP was in his Sarvodaya phase of reconstruction and reform (Bhoodan, Gramdan and even Jeevandan), he was to go to Musahari soon, and on his own admission had started thinking about re-entering politics. He was looking for a movement through which he could join the political struggle and the student movements of Gujarat and Bihar proved to be two such occasions. Ghanshyam Shah conducted a field study of the Bihar Movement and Gujarat’s Nav Nirman Andolan and pointed out that agrarian unrest in Bihar had worsened over the years and in 1970 there were 649 agrarian agitations – seven times more than the year before.13 The agrarian struggles were largely in the hands of revolutionary Left, led by CPI (M-L) and the parliamentary Left, like CPI and CPI (M). The former carried out armed struggles with emphasis on killing oppressive landlords and their lathaits (henchmen). CPI and CPI (M) were engaged in mass movements and occupied the lands of the landlords. Noticeably, even though agricultural production had increased dramatically from the years of famine, agrarian struggles were evolving through violent acts and mass movements. The more crucial reason for this was the wide and oppressive class divide which was at the root of these movements. This was true especially in the case of Dalits who were mostly landless agricultural workers. Apart from the economic exploitation of Dalits there was untouchability, widespread sexual abuse of Dalit women and other atrocities. The struggles, especially the violent struggles under the leadership of the revolutionary Left became struggles for izzat 13 Ghanshyam Shah, Protest Movements in Two Indian States: A Study of the Gujarat and Bihar Movements (Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 1977).

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(dignity) for the Dalits. In fact, Dalits became the social base for the revolutionaries of the Naxalite Movement. Shah’s analysis of urban unrest points towards some interesting aspects on the struggles preceding the Bihar Movement. Shah identified teachers, government employees, lawyers and other vocal sections of the urban middle class as supporters of the urban agitations. This was also the period of prolonged student struggle on issues like better amenities in the university, reduction of fees, supply of books, and (even) reduction in the prices of cinema tickets. The most important thing to note here was the alliance between the middle classes and the working class. The government had imposed a professional tax in 1973 that affected both the middle classes as well the working class. The opposition parties and trade unions came together to form Bihar Rajya Abhaab Peshakar Virodhi Mazdur SwaKarmachari Sangharsh Samiti. This committee organized rallies in front of the Assembly. On 16 December 1973 the committee organized a rally in which 120 trade unions participated which included industrial workers, teachers, engineers, government employees and railwaymen etc. These struggles ran concurrent to the Nav Nirman Andolan. Bihar Bandh was declared on 21 January 1974 by the Samyukta Sangharsh Samiti (CPI, CPM, SSP, Jana Sangh and others). The Bandh was organized to protest against high prices and scarcity of essential commodities. The participation of nearly 400 trade unions was prominent. One of the tasks on our hands is to understand why the working class and the peasantry played an ambiguous role in the Bihar Movement when there was a sustained and simultaneous struggle. The role of the urban working class is quite important to understand because one should not forget that this was the period when the preparation for the Railway Strike had begun in earnest. The failure of the Bihar Movement to form an alliance with the Railway Strike remains a puzzle because George Fernandes was one of the major leaders of the strike and the movement. The Bihar Movement also ran concurrent to militant working class struggles in the coalfields of South Bihar and in several industrial towns of which the most important were Jamshedpur, Dhanbad, Barkakana, Ranchi, etc.

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It was also the time when the Naxalites were engaged in organizing the Dalits who were the most oppressed. Although during the Bihar Movement students went to the villages and established Janata sarkars (peoples’ government), the experiment did not result in any active participation of the Dalits. Ironically, the middle peasantry and later landlords became supporters of the Bihar Movement. The Satyanarayan Sinha group of the CPI (M-L) participated in the agitation without formally joining the Bihar Movement. In short, all these movements were going on in parallel the student movement, movements of teachers and government officials, working class movements and the Naxal movement. And quite interestingly JP was related to all of them in various capacities. These struggles went on without a conscious aim to form a network or alliance although they overlapped. However, at crucial times during the Bihar Movement it seemed that these movements were, if not totally indifferent, at least indecisive about the linkages and the need to form a broader alliance. What were the causes of such ambiguity? Why was the ‘total revolution’ partial?

VICISSITUDES OF A PARTIAL ‘TOTAL REVOLUTION’ Jayaprakash Narayan called for ‘total revolution’ as he joined the Bihar movement. But if the revolution had to be total, the people as a whole had to join in. But did the people of Bihar at that time constitute a whole? What did it mean to be the ‘people’ of Bihar at that time, or did they join as ‘masses’? Was there any implication of this difference between the two terms, if by ‘people’ we indicate a totality, and by ‘masses’ a collection of pluralities? This can be a line of investigation allowing us an entry into the eventful days and months of 1974. We indicated earlier that the Bihar Movement began as an upsurge of militant masses, and there were multifarious militant political trends in Bihar at that time. With the entry of JP in the movement and his assumption of leadership, the movement became a classic popular movement. It is important to note that in the Left literature on insurrection and upsurge, the ‘masses’ is always expressed as a multiple (not multitude). It is not a singular category and is, in fact,

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not constituted but extracted, even though with ‘people’ to become a singular category at a particular moment irrespective of the precarious nature of its constitution. Thus, we have to see the issue of singularity and multiplicity in a dialectical frame. Thus, Marx put the question of ‘masses’ firmly at the centre in his analysis of Class Struggle in France. The following passage makes it clear that the indeterminacy of an upsurge comes from the nebulousness of the masses and its formations. It becomes a necessity because of this indeterminacy to establish a reciprocal relation between the party which assumes leadership and the ‘masses’. Marx wrote, The time of surprise attacks, of revolutions carried through by small conscious minorities at the head of unconscious masses, is past. Where it is a question of a complete transformation of the social organization, the masses themselves must also be in it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake….But in order that the masses may understand what is to be done, long, persistent work is required, and it is just this work which we are now pursuing, and with a success that drives the enemy to despair.14

The point about the singularity of ‘people’ and multiplicity of the ‘masses’ was very clear in Lenin’s formulations also. We can say that the moment of ‘people’ is constituted when the working class and the poor peasants decide to join hands. What is important to note is that the dialectics between the leadership and the ‘masses’ are only contingent and can break down any time. As we know that Mao considered the question of ‘masses’ and the ‘people’ in the context of anti-imperial war thus putting the question of nation firmly at the centre of his analysis. He differentiated between ‘masses’ and ‘people’ in order to arrive at the thesis of New Democracy in the life of a postcolonial nation.15 The alliance of classes in the antiimperialist war against Japan was the basis of Mao’s understanding of the correlation between the ‘nation’ and the ‘people’, and his understanding that it was the ‘people’ who constituted the ‘nation’. 14 Karl Marx, ‘The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850’ in The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850, Marxists Internet Archive. (Accessed on 7 November 2016). 15 Mao Tse-Tung, On New Democracy, Marxists Internet Archive. (Accessed on 7 November 2016).

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‘Masses’ is a political entity through which war is conducted. ‘Masses’ have to be continuously aroused and educated. Thus, it is a mobile entity. In short, in the literature on revolution, ‘masses’ is a political force that is inherently insurrectionary, while formation of ‘people’ lies in the time and space of peaceful movements and reforms in the postcolonial political condition. Indeed, we can advance little further and say that ‘popular movement’ is one of the characteristics of ‘passive revolution’. It was this notion of the ‘people’ as a ‘totality’ and as a synthesis which led to the concept of ‘Total Revolution’ propounded by JP in the Bihar Movement, where the original demand of radical economic and social transformation mutated into a tepid demand of dissolution of the Bihar Assembly. As mentioned earlier the repertoire for the Bihar Movement was already being prepared at least a year in advance. The first ‘action’ in 1974 was under the leadership of the CPI when it called a ‘Bihar Bandh’ on 21 January on the issue of price rise, unemployment and corruption. All opposition parties supported the bandh and it was a complete success. In February, though, the fissures between the Left and non-Left forces especially among the student wings appeared. There was a convention in February where all students’ organization participated. Left students’ groups All India Students’ Federation (AISF), Students’ Federation of India (SFI), and Bihar Student Association (BSI) walked out of the convention on the issue of bharatiyata (Indian-ness) in education system raised by the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP). These Left groups went on to form the Chhatra Naujawan Sangharsh Morcha. The non-Left student organizations formed the Chhatra Sangharsh Samiti which went on to become the primary force under JP’s leadership. The Chhatra Naujawan Sangharsh Morcha called a gherao (picketing) of the education minister, Vidyakar Kavi, on 16 March. The programme passed off without any incident. Arvind Das relates another incident in Bettiah on the same day when students and peasant youth clashed with armed police for several hours in which several people were killed and injured. This was one of the few incidents when the students forged a successful alliance with the peasantry. This alliance, however, could not be emulated for long.

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The administration had announced that college, school and universities would be closed from 13–19 March. By that time the students had taken over the administration of college and universities. Students of the College of Commerce, Magadh University, suspended the Principal, the Vice Principal, and dissolved the managing committee. They appointed in their places respectively a commerce student as Principal and other two students as Vice Principals. Bashistha Narayan Singh from the student wing of Congress (O) took over as Vice Chancellor of Patna University and issued the order that the university would open on 18 March, and that employees, students and teachers should participate in the demonstration of 18 March. These experiments in taking over administrative roles were ways the agitating students community asserted their autonomy, and these became the characteristic of the first phase of struggle (second and onwards was marked with the advent of JP). In fact, Lalu Prasad Yadav, then the president of Bihar Chhatra Parishad made it clear that politicians would not be allowed to participate in the demonstration of 18 March 1974. Against the backdrop of the need to assert their for autonomy in the colleges and universities around the state, the students moved away from their 12-point demands which were basically all economic in nature and had started to take over and regulate other spheres of government activities. For example, students in several towns like Muzaffarpur and Motihari took it upon themselves to fix the prices of essential commodities. The prices were supposed to be effective from the morning of 18 March. The fixed price was arrived at in a meeting between students, traders, district supply officers and the city magistrate. It was quite clear that the attempt was to create a political space autonomous of the government and the state, and to take control of the state machinery. This is not to say that there was a conscious attempt by the students to challenge the state because the ‘masses of students’ were not following any vanguard or perhaps because there was none at this crucial stage. It was a ‘mass’ that was amorphous, autonomous even among themselves, evident in the formation of distinct students’ groups as the movement progressed in the state which were not necessarily connected to the central leadership of the Chhatra Samiti.

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Once 18 March arrived, students started to remove the barricades and enter the Assembly which prompted the police to open fire and in the ensuing confusion people were scattered. Violence followed in the aftermath of the killing of some students and injury to hundreds. In that tenuous situation, the offices of the newspapers The Searchlight and Pradeep were burnt down. As soon as the word spread of the attack on the demonstration and killing of the students, protests broke out across the length and breadth of the state. To give an indication of the magnitude of violence, incidents were reported from Motihari, Bhelahi, Pipra, Ranchi, Deoghar, Madhepura, Siwan, Gaya, Dehri-on-Sone to several other towns in the state. The demands and actions were similar everywhere though there is no evidence to suggest that there was a coordinated plan to follow a programme of protest. Students in the towns and cities were relay fasting, controlling and fixing the prices of essential commodities, and gazetted officers and other high officials were gheraoed. One should also remember that following the violence and anarchy that marred 18 March, the Army had been called in to Patna on the promise that more would be deployed all over the state if such a need arose. It was a situation where ‘masses of students’ had come direct into conflict with the state apparatus as an implicit threat of coordinated action to challenge the state and government loomed large. It was a moment of insurrection, a point where the ‘masses’ involved did not completely grasp what was at stake. But it was a moment of aporia too, and this is where JP intervened. Jayaprakash Narayan intervened with his silent procession on 8 April, which was remarkable in its symbolism and it led to one of the most important slogans of the movement. Jayaprakash Narayan led the procession and the participants covered their mouths with saffron scarves with their hands behind their backs symbolizing nonviolence and eschewing the use of bad language during the protest. It was at this point when the slogan hamla chahe jaisa hoga haath hamara nahi uthega (whatever may be the aggression upon us, our hands will not be raised) was coined. He gave a speech on this day which indicated the change in the direction of the movement. It was here that JP first admitted that he was looking for a political opening for the last 27 years. He finally identified students as a

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political group that could be pushed to the fore as the vanguard of the movement. He could also deploy students as a moral force apart and away from a political force and in its wake turned the discourse of conflict to one of ethics, and made it a question of moral revolution which would ‘struggle against the very system which had compelled almost everybody to become corrupt’. It was because of this ethical notion introduced in the movement that the demand for the dissolution of Assembly became the core demand eclipsing other demands related to the oppressed classes in the forms of the Naxalite Movement and the Railway Strike. In fact, this was also the reason why students were unable to achieve any organic political unity with the struggles of peasants and workers notwithstanding individual attempts. The implicitly coercive method of fixing prices and regulating the markets by the students, gave way to experiments in Janata Sarkar (people’s government). Janata Sarkar, of course, was meant to be experiments in grassroots democracy. However, these instead of being autonomous entities were dependent heavily on the state apparatus. Thus, Janata Sarkar worked closely with the local administration and the police. Jayaprakash Narayan in fact, made an emphatic statement that Janata Sarkar was not a parallel government. It was an experiment that was decentralized but connected to the state hence, in some senses, became a supplementary form of governance. It is also important to note that in the wake of the entry of JP the organizational nature of the movement began to undergo transformation with the coming of Bihar Sarvodaya Mandal, Tarun Shanti Sena and Gandhi Peace Foundation. From this point onwards, apart from the ideology, the workers of Sarvodaya too began to dominate the movement. The movement had decisively turned away from the ‘masses’ and was addressing itself to the ‘people’. Four days after the silent procession, the movement witnessed a decisive moment which gave it a new direction altogether. With the incident of 12 April, the next stage of the Bihar Movement began. From 9 April the ‘paralyze the government’ programme started being directed against the district administration, police, banks, post and the telegraph department, etc. On 12 April in a programme of

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‘paralyze the government’ in Gaya, the police opened fire on the pretext that students had attacked government offices and police stations. As a result, eight students died and several were injured. Curfew was imposed. The Bihar Government asked K. Abraham to submit a report on the Gaya incident. JP later admitted that it was the Abraham report that made him firm in his demand for the dissolution of the Assembly although the demand was put forward by the students themselves. By this time the non-Congress, non-Left parties had extended their support to the movement. The gherao of MLAs and demand for their resignation forcefully began in earnest. At this juncture JP had to leave Patna for Vellore for treatment as a result of which he was not directly connected with the movement for over a month and the leadership of the movement was taken over by his follower Acharya Rammurthy. During his absence from Patna, on 8 May the Railway Strike commenced. It was the largest strike by the working class of India. The attitude of JP towards the strike was clear. He wanted to avoid the strike on the pretext that the economy was in crisis. As late as 13 April, he had written to George Fernandes to meet the government halfway to avoid a strike.16 On 15 May, during the strike, he again wrote to Fernandes almost admonishing him and suggesting the suspension of the Strike and negotiation with the government.17 Even during his call to the industrial workers in September he asked the railway workers not to go on a strike but to assist the students in Satyagraha. What is important to note is that during the Railway Strike the Patna and Bhagalpur Chhatra Samiti decided to call for a bandh in support of the striking railway workers. This was in contravention of the Bihar Chhatra Sangh Samiti and the direction of Rammurthy, who opposed it. However, the students in contravention of the central leadership went ahead with the strike which was successful not only in Patna and Bhagalpur but in other railway towns as well. This was the first instance in which there 16

Jayaprakash Narayan, Selected Works, ed. Bimal Prasad, Vol. X (New Delhi: Manohar, 2009). 17 Ibid.

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was a concerted and determined attempt by students and workers to form an alliance. There were three streams, which influenced Bihar Movement with varied degrees of intensity. First, the direct influence was that of the Nav Nirman Movement in Gujarat where almost the same demands were formulated and almost the same trajectory was followed except that in the case of Gujarat the Assembly was dissolved and Chimanbhai Patel was removed from the post of chief minister. The second influence was that of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), a radical movement based on identity, which supported the Bihar Movement, and interestingly, had a very close alliance with the workers of the Railway Strike. It was admitted even by the most ardent of the supporters of the Bihar Movement that it was not as effective in South Bihar as it was in North Bihar. The potential of a network of alliance was never explored even though the political conditions were favourable. Arvind Das has written of the very strong alliance forged between the workers and the peasants in South Bihar. One must also not forget the strong influence of the JMM among the colliery workers. Many cadres and leaders of the JMM were colliery workers. Third, the Naxalite Movement had contributed substantially to the contentious atmosphere of that time. Representing the class struggle in the countryside and conducted on the lines of a guerrilla warfare it influenced the overall condition. Although JP would repeatedly call on the Naxalites to shun violence and join the Bihar Movement, it was of no avail. There were several reasons for this disjunction although it must be said that Satyanarayan Singh’s group which was quite important did support the movement. However, by and large, the Naxals while carrying on guerrilla tactics throughout the period remained inward looking. They went to the other extreme, focusing on only the peasants, who to them were the ‘masses’. Vinod Mishra of CPI (ML-Liberation) admitted later in 1982: Our main drawbacks consisted…in our failure to link up with the anti-Congress upsurge of students, youth, and all sections of people

360 BIHAR IN 1974 of Bihar (the leadership of this upsurge was later captured by JP and it degenerated into impotency).18

This is of course only a partial recognition of the mistake, for Mishra failed to acknowledge the fundamental problematic of the Bihar Movement around the dialectic of ‘people’, ‘masses’, and ‘class’. Jayaprakash Narayan desired to constitute out of these simultaneous movements a singular ‘people’, and ‘total revolution’ became a project of subsuming the entire population. This formulation is a reverse of Ranabir Samaddar’s: ‘masses dissolve into people, a legal category. Labour (as the core of the class) no longer defines historical subjectivity, law (as the core of the people) becomes the historical subject’.19 Here instead of masses dissolving into people, the masses went beyond the legal category of the people challenging the social contract between the government and its people. Thus, ‘people’ is a legal category, at the extreme republican moment ‘masses’ become its antagonist. It will be an insurrectionary moment at the limits of the legal. ‘Masses’ then are outside of legal, hence, outside of ‘people’. Not people, but masses will need leadership, perhaps a party. Jayaprakash Narayan did not aim for that, in fact he aimed for the opposite. The Naxals were busy in organizing the leadership of class and failed to recognize the historical presence of the ‘masses’ at the time of upsurge. Thus, if we have to look at a theory of the historical subject – as the core of the masses – we may recall with a slightly variant rendition, Gramsci’s The Modern Prince: The modern prince, the myth prince, cannot be a real person, a concrete individual. It can only be an organism, a complex element of society in which a collective will, which has already been recognized and has to some extent asserted itself in action, begins to take form. History has already provided this organism, and it is the political party – the first cell in which there come 18 Vinod Mishra, ‘Evaluation of the Past’, Marxists Internet Archive. (Accessed on 7 November 2016). 19 Ranabir Samaddar, ‘Classes, People, and Populism’, Policies and Practices 75 (2016).

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together germs of a collective will tending to become universal and total.20

The first implication of this definition is that it precludes the presence of a single leader something which theorists of populism and popular movements such as Ernesto Laclau stress upon. Instead of a leader embodying popular or people’s will, the modern prince contains ‘collective will’. It does not embody the ‘popular will’. What it means is that ‘masses’ will be always differentiated, in struggle both within and without. The problem that the modern prince (the party) has to confront then is not to contain this struggle but give it full play within and use this differentiation to make an insurrection which is simultaneous but uneven. Jayaprakash Narayan perhaps realized this difference. Once he was back from Vellore he gave the call for ‘Total Revolution’ on 5 June. This was also the time when he became more militant (most likely because of the twin reasons of the flagging interest among the students and the petty bourgeoisie as a whole and a very likely possibility of the rise of the ‘masses’ instead of that of the ‘people’). It is during this period that he gave the call to the police and the Army to search their conscience and refrain from firing on the students. He made it very clear that it was not a call for either disobeying orders or for mutiny. However, he made the statement later that he would not be afraid to make that call if things did not improve for which he was severely criticized especially because of the Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) revolt in Uttar Pradesh the previous year. This was also the moment when he gave a call to the Naxals to give up arms and join the movement which coincided with JP’s attempt to mobilize the peasantry including the landlords. Jayaprakash Narayan was well versed in the debate between the Chinese Communist Party and the Soviet Communist Party. He made the statement that he found China more revolutionary than USSR. On this count he was in agreement with the Naxals. This 20

Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, (eds.). Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith (New York: International, 1985).

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was followed by the most comprehensive call given by JP to the industrial working class. He appealed for the support of wide range of workers for the general strike on 3–5 October which according to Arvind Das proved to be a moment when the movement reached the summit after a long period of lassitude. He appealed to workers in mining, engineering, steel, cement, paper, chemicals, road transport and other industries. He asked banks, post and telegraph and railway workers not to strike but to cooperate with the students by stopping the trains and staying away from work and people. The last bit is curious and is important in order to understand the composition of the movement. One obvious reason for asking these categories of workers to stay away from the strike was that these were critical logistical industries. Also, he could ensure that the various constituents of a class could be differentially deployed and yet become a seamless whole. This was at the heart of JP’s politics: a search for singularity. To the credit of the Bihar Movement, the urban poor finally and decisively came to the fore as a political actor although under the leadership of the students and the petty bourgeoisie. Rickshawallas (cycle rickshaw pullers), hawkers, contract labour and other wage earners wholeheartedly supported the movement. When the workers did not respond to the call of JP it was the urban poor who ensured that the strike was total in big towns. The relationship of this class of workers with that of students and the petty bourgeoisie was almost organic to an extent, that it was the rickshawallas who provided the transport logistics. They would not take fare from students or other protestors while asking ‘ka babu chawal ek rupaya mein ek ser milega na’ (Isn’t it Sir that we shall get one kg of rice with one rupee?). The rickshawallas were also the ones who would take the wounded to hospitals. This might also be due to the fact that this class of workers was not unionized; hence outside the influence of CPI-dominated industrial workers’ unions. At a later stage of the movement the rickshawallas began to be identified by the police as crucial elements of the movement and had to face repression in equal measure like the students. In this way, JP’s ‘Total Revolution’ was not only about moral regeneration and idealist

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eradication of caste, dowry and other social ills. It was also not only about grassroots democracy which in any case meant a fusion of state and civil society. More importantly it implied the formation of the ‘people – a seamless whole. JP knew that ‘people’ was a result of a precarious balance of several classes, and to preserve the singularity of the ‘people’ it was important that the demands had to be ‘equivalential’. In Laclau’s words, The requests are turning into claims. We will call a demand which, satisfied or not, remains isolated a democratic demand. A plurality of demands which, through their equivalential articulation, constitute a broader social subjectivity we will call popular demands – they start, at a very incipient level, to constitute the ‘people’ as a potential historical actor.21

This is precisely the reason for the movement to move away from economic demands to that of the ‘popular demand’ for dissolution of the Assembly and then subsequently the demand to remove Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Economic demands could have been articulated even antagonistically. But the dissolution of the Assembly was the only demand that was ‘popular’. Laclau is right when he says that to constitute a ‘people’ plurality (and divergence) of the demands would have to be fused; and this fusion was not the sum of its parts but a considerably different demand. With the meeting of 18 November and acceptance by JP of the electoral challenge thrown by Indira Gandhi, the popular movement entered the phase of electoral politics. We must not be surprised however that in the ensuing electoral game (after the National Emergency was lifted) the aftermath of the Bihar Movement brought those classes to the forefront who were largely middle castes and belonged to the kulak category. Dalits, working class and even the urban poor would have to wait to earn political representation. The moment of a people in upsurge was over. The various constituents of ‘people’ had dissolved into ‘masses’. 21

Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason (London: Verso, 2005).

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A REAPPRAISAL OF JAYAPRAKASH NARAYAN After the Non-Cooperation Movement led by Gandhi this was the only movement which was so completely identified with one individual. The Bihar Movement is more popularly known as the JP Movement. Almost all scholars who have studied the movement agree that the Bihar Movement cannot be understood without and away from JP. Most scholars are critical of JP as well. Bipan Chandra goes as far to claim that JP was a Don Quixote with ‘hazy, naïve and unrealistic thinking’. But he also asserts that JP was an opportunist who was aware of the consequences and advantages of targeting Indira Gandhi but could not come up with a coherent plan to achieve it. Chandra finishes his assessment of JP by indicating his fear that the movement led by him could go the Mussolini and Hitler way. Chandra came close to calling JP a fascist. Ghanshyam Shah is more charitable and says that the Bihar Movement cannot be understood without understanding JP. He agrees with his respondents who claim that JP was both confused and complex, that he was at once a Marxist, a liberal, a democrat, a moralist, a humanist, a politician, a saint, and a dreamer. What Shah wants to establish is that the trajectory of the movement was dependent on JP whose confusion and vacillation resulted in the ebb and flow of the movement. As astute an observer as Arvind Das comes to the conclusion that it was JP’s charisma that was the reason behind the fact that the movement lasted so long and that it was JP who ensured massive popular involvement in the movement. Similarly, he also holds JP responsible for the many drawbacks of the movement such as the absence of the working class, Dalits, agricultural workers, and finally for taking the radical edge out of the movement and making the dissolution of the Assembly and Parliament as the sole demand, and virtually ending the movement by agreeing to participate in elections. Yet, in order to understand a political figure and his or her influence on the movement the point of departure cannot be the individual but the movement itself. We have to turn the above analysis about JP upside down. This will be an analysis that is historical as well as political. We have to discover the dialectics

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between the contingencies thrown up by the movement and the political manoeuvring of JP. It is through this method that the naiveté, vacillation, confusion and opportunism etc. can be explained. We begin by invoking Gramsci’s idea of passive revolution. Gramsci’s concept of passive revolution makes it clear that during the initial phase of development of a mighty struggle the social relations arising out of the various modes of production may not intersect. In such a case, classes may not be well defined or in the case that they are well-defined the alliance between classes might be possible, or also it may be the case that each class will put itself in a ‘war of positions’. It is at this juncture that popular movement intervenes, and as Gramsci says, in such a scenario an insurrection is an impossibility. It is the moment of the ‘people’ as the contemporary social formation may blur class divisions and give rise to ‘groups’. Students, kulaks, landlords and urban poor could come together in the Bihar Movement because the first three actually belonged to the same class as most commentators have observed. This was also true in the case of non-gazetted government servants, lawyers and other professionals who formed a major part of the movement. This was also, one can say, an alliance between urban and rural petty bourgeoisie. On the other hand, the rural poor, mainly agricultural labourers, mostly Dalits, belonged to another class formation that was certainly indifferent, if not antagonistic, to the movement. The same was true for the organized working class. These were the forces relevant to the destiny of the Bihar Movement. The problem with which JP had to grapple was how to form a singular ‘people’ with these various class positions. It was a commentary on the precarious nature of the Bihar Movement, namely the fact, that George Fernandes who was both the leader of the Railway Strike and staunch supporter of the movement could not convince the workers to forge an alliance with the Bihar Movement. Rank and file workers were largely autonomous of the leadership in terms of organization, mobilization, and carrying out of programmes. JP’s call to the organized working class might have fallen on deaf ears; but this led him to organize the unorganized workers, which according to several reports was quite successful. The same was true for women who through Mahila Sangharsh Samiti

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played an important though subordinate role in the movement. This was the material basis for the invocation of ‘Total Revolution’. Let us invoke Ranabir Samaddar again to clarify this point. He writes: ‘It is a situation, where the presence of “class” will always bring back the “people”, and the presence of “people” will always conjure up the spectre of “class”’. This provides a clue to understanding the materiality of the category of ‘people’, especially, when Samaddar points out that invocation of ‘people’ will conjure up the spectre of class. But we may ask, why is ‘class’ present as a spectre and why does ‘class’ bring in the ‘people’? This is because between ‘class’ and ‘people’ there is a mediating agency and that agency is ‘group’. ‘People’ in this sense is not a negation of ‘class’ but a rearrangement of class relations and this could be achieved only when ‘class’ is made invisible. This is the origin of the spectre. JP’s ‘Total Revolution’ was based on this understanding of ‘people’ and ‘class’, as delineated by Samaddar. JP was very much aware that any direct attempt at subsuming class in the movement would lead to class struggle within the people so it had to be displaced at the level of governmentality, hence population groups. Jayaprakash He looked at the people through the optic of population groups. It will be wrong to think that he derived the ‘people’ from population groups. His effort in Bhoodan, Gramdan and Janata Sarkars was to break the regime of existing governmental way of managing population, and his task was to re-constitute population by first constituting ‘people’. What is evident from above examples is that JP was a leader who was guided by tactics. This is the reason why there were different responses at different times in the popular movement that he was part of. This is also the reason why he moved away from one current of thought to another. Scholars of JP’s political thought divide his development into four stages – Marxism, followed by social democracy, Sarvodaya and then the phase of ‘Total Revolution’. The mistake that the scholars make is that they consider JP making a rupture at each stage. It will be more appropriate to say that instead of effecting ruptures JP drew from all the sources and components of his political thinking. It was because of this reason that he regularly invoked Lenin and Mao during the period of the

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Bihar Movement especially at the later stages. When he defended party-less democracy he invoked the concept of the withering of state saying that party-less democracy was to be achieved and was not an immediate goal, much like the withering of the state. He had enough chance to learn from the experiments of Janata Sarkar to understand the stranglehold of governmentality. In fact, he tried to find a balance between governmentality and state. And this was at the heart of a popular movement: a delicate balance between the constituent parts of ‘people’. Ghanshyam Shah’s observation that Janata Sarkar became anaemic is misplaced. Popular movement acts as a mediator and intervenes between various political spaces and political subjects. Samaddar points out, ‘Nobody could discuss any more “people” or various problems for popular politics without relating the concept to sovereign power, legality and governmental power’. Hence, popular politics develops at the intersection or rather within the matrix of these three forms of power: sovereign, legal, and governmental. On the other hand, and as opposed to this dynamic insurrectionist politics does not occur within this matrix but as a dialectical confrontation between masses and the sovereign power. Again, JP intuitively understood the nature of this matrix. He understood that ‘people’ is not a stable category and is contingent upon the dialectical tension between several ‘groups’. For instance, if the concept of the ‘people’ would have included Dalits and workers, the caste and class struggle would have indeed made ‘people’ so unstable as not to be effective at all as a force. ‘People’ then is not like the united front of Mao. In this sense, JP’s notion of the ‘people’ was a synthesis between the groups (classes cannot achieve synthesis because their inherent relationship is one of struggle). All these however do not mean that the tactical manoeuvres of JP bore fruit. The absence of Dalit agricultural workers and the working class was due to the fact that JP was unable to form even a tactical, short-term alliance with this class. As such, these classes remained autonomous. They carried on their own struggles in parallel influencing each other to a varied extent. But these movements never intersected meaningfully. This weakened the movement. The connection did not take the form of entanglement.

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As a result, the Bihar Movement was faced with the limits of the situation. No one was more aware of this than JP; hence he made repeated appeals to the revolutionary Naxals to give up arms and join the movement and tried to dissuade the railway workers from going on strike, and instead help the ‘people’ from outside. Yet JP failed in that task. The ‘law’ of class struggle was too inexorable even for JP, who was perhaps the most consummate and at the same time visionary politician at that time.

CONCLUSION The Bihar Movement was a popular movement that came at a time of crisis – a conjuncture of several currents of discontent and a new formation of the ‘people’. The stage of ‘passive revolution’ ensured that instead of an insurrection by the ‘masses’ there was a complex play of tactics by JP. JP himself tried to manoeuvre differently at different stages of the movement. The inherently unstable nature of the ‘people’ meant that spontaneous action instead of organization and strategy had primacy. In Midnight’s Children Salman Rushdie refers to the Bihar Movement at great length. At the midnight when the Emergency was declared, Aadam Sinai, the son of Saleem Sinai, was born. It was clear that this moment in history was different from that of the stroke of midnight hour that had delivered independence – only a partial fulfilment of the promise of the nation. The new midnight’s children were born after a movement that would change the constitution of the ‘people’ by rearranging and realigning the groups that made the ‘people’. For Aadam Sinai instead of nationbuilding, social justice would be at the core of the nation. This would not fulfil the promise of the nation but would go beyond the theme of betrayal of the nation, into new sites of struggle. This would be a new form of independence to be delivered to the nation. No wonder then that the Bihar Movement was called the struggle for a second freedom. Yet, as indicated above, the struggle in Bihar for a second freedom produced like the original one many intended and

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unintended consequences. The movement established in the aftermath the political domination of intermediary castes. The representatives of these classes were not the old landlords or zamindars, but prosperous farmers and kulaks, and through the late seventies and eighties the conflict between these intermediary castes and Dalits became acute. It showed the way the contradictions within the Bihar Movement of 1974 had evolved. At the end of the post-Emergency elections, the change was noticeable. It reflected the complexity of the social classes and their representation in the electoral arena. Harry Blair in his study of elections gave the following picture: The 1977 election meant a noticeable decline in the Forwards’ representation, to 48.6 per cent, though a look at the figures for the individual caste groups shows that all that decline was borne by the Brahmans, who dropped from 18.3 per cent of the general seats in 1975 to only 7.6 per cent in 1977, or in numerical terms from 36 MLAs to 19. The other three castes among the Forwards even gained a bit; in fact their collective share (for Bhumihars plus Raiputs plus Kayasthas) went up from 36.5 to 40.9 per cent. As the Forwards declined in strength, the Backwards grew, but just as the Forwards’ loss was really the drop of just one caste group, so the advance of the Back-wards was actually the progress of only onecommunity, the Yadavs, who by 1977 had become the second largest group in the Assembly, next only to the Raiputs. For the other Upper Backwards, representation has been essentially stationary over the period (Banias and Koiris) or even declining, as with the Kurmis. The category labelled other Shudras has consisted of a different mix each time, with never more than two from any caste group. They are primarily the Annexure I Backwards, such as Dhanuks, Hajjams, Kahars, Kewats, Mallahs and Noniyas. Among the Backwards, the Upper Backwards have been consistently overrepresented. Even back in 1962, the four Upper Backward castes had 28.8 per cent of the general MLA seats, as against only 24.3 per cent of the non-Scheduled population. By 1977, their percentage of seats had grown to 34.9. The Lower Backwards, on the other hand, are 40 per cent of non-Scheduled population, but have never had more than 3.6 per cent of the general seats. Backward participation in

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state politics, then, has been a very uneven business, confined for all practical purposes to the Upper Backward community.22

It is clear then that in the period from mid-1960s to late 1970s and perhaps even later, the social classes as reflected in caste groups were still realigning where the powerful old caste groups although declining had not declined to a situation where they became either ineffective or were completely co-opted by the rising power. Similarly, the rising caste groups had not yet been able to stake claim in the making of the government. These social struggles as reflected in the election results were both the fissures within the popular movement that defined this period as well as the basis on which contingent alliances were formed that made and unmade governments within a matter of months. Blair pointed out that it was the ‘combination of a Forward-Harijan alliance in the Assembly and the national-level Jana Sangh/Bharatiya Lok Dal (BLD) conflict within the Janata Party that brought down the (Karpoori) Thakur government. It was succeeded by a ministry headed by a Harijan, Ram Sunder Das, but dominated by the same combination of Forwards and Jana Sanghis that had defeated the Thakur government’. Karpoori Thakur who belonged to the Extremely Backward Class (EBC) category emerged as that political figure who could momentarily act as a compromise and as a highly respected figure to lead a precarious government which also had to be populist. And, when Karpoori Thakur tried to transcend the balance of social classes as was evident in the case of giving reservation within reservation based on the recommendations of Mungeri Lal Commission he was swiftly brought down. However, as Walter Hauser pointed out what Karpoori Thakur had done by providing reservations based on the ‘Karpoori formula’ made sure that ‘politics was changed beyond recognition’. Hauser also showed through his conversation with Jayaprakash Narayan on the reservation policy pursued by Thakur how Socialist politics itself had changed as caste emerged as the most important element of political mobilization. Jayaprakash Narayan told Hauser about 22

Harry W. Blair, ‘Rising Kulaks and Backward Classes in Bihar – Social Change in the Late 1970s’, Economic and Political Weekly, 15 (2), 12 January 1980.

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Karpoori Thakur, ‘He is moving too fast. These things will all come in good time. We Socialists have been pushing these social interests for many years and will continue to do so’. Hauser also pointed out that backward classes politics were no longer in the mood to follow the old Socialist pattern of politics when it came to caste. Through the Karpoori Thakur formula, he had put caste and reservation as a procedure of government. This was a decisive moment in making of the popular government under Karpoori Thakur. And by the time Karpoori left, he had been able to put in place various policy measures that still to a large extent define politics and government in Bihar, to name few important among these measures the – reservation, prohibition, and instruction in Hindi. This became the politics of social justice. Language itself became a matter of politics. Karpoori’s government in 1977 made it mandatory to conduct all administrative work in Hindi. Sachchidanand Singh, the irrigation minister, sent out a circular that officers using English in administrative work would be punished and that all communication between the central government and the state should be done in English and that English could be used only after obtaining special permission. When some reacted angrily to this proposal of angrezi hatao (remove English), it brought out the problem of the role of Hindi as a ‘national’ language to the fore. Karpoori had to clarify that the use of Hindi was in no way meant abandoning the three-language formula, and he introduced Tamil as one of the languages taught. Writers like Phanishwar Nath Renu took upon themselves the task of using local dialects in Hindi to make the written language more popular both as a political and cultural project. The pamphlets and political journals shunned the Sanskrit laden use of Hindi as the written language which was considered to be more literary and instead adopted colloquial words. In this debate on use of Hindi as an administrative language an opportunity was lost for Hindi to emerge as a strong ‘regional’ bhasha or language and shed its pretention to be the ‘national’ language. Hindi which was emerging in literary and political journals during this time does suggest after all Renu himself brought the ‘aanchalik’ (local, regional) into the literary tradition of Hindi. However, whatever may be the advantages and disadvantages of

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the Karpoori insistence on Hindi, it galvanized and mobilized the students as a political group who then made claims on the state. In the process students emerged as one of the most radical and organized political subjects of the entire decade of 1967–77. Finally, Karpoori Thakur’s government as the aftermath of the Bihar Movement though unable to produce a stable governmental regime created a space for future practices of governmentality practiced by some of the most astute socialists who came to power in the 1990s. Perhaps, in that sense, the post-1977 populist signified a distinct development within Socialist thought in India away from the old Marxist tradition. Thakur’s stint in power represented the first experiments in ‘Socialist’ government, and the importance of the post-1977 government in Bihar lay in the fact that it represented the first signs of the shift in Socialist politics that would come with the advent of liberalization in India. May be, in the long run the Bihar Movement was to point out the other possibilities which JP’s total revolution, Lohiaite Socialism, and the politics of social justice could have taken together. But that is an object of another study. In order to do so, we would have to first explore Karpoori Thakur’s politics in greater detail which is beyond the scope of this chapter, and for which we shall have to move on to Chapter 14.

fourteen CHAPTER

Caste and Popular Politics in Bihar The Enigmatic Figure of Karpoori Thakur Manish Kumar Jha

INTRODUCTION

E

xactly two years after the imposition of the Emergency in India in 1975, on 25 June 1977, Arun Sinha reported in the Economic and Political Weekly: Located on the western fringes of Patna, in the Braj Kishore memorial, 235 legislators of Janata Party had met to elect their leader…Even before the voting was completed, it was clear that Karpoori Thakur was winning. With the solid support of about 50 BLD legislators and about 68 belonging to Jan Sangh, he had a head start over the other candidates…Despite this foregone conclusion the air was thick with speculation while the voting was in process. Karpoori Thakur was a barber by caste, wasn’t he?1

The caste background of Karpoori Thakur always shadowed his leadership despite his unparalleled acumen and competence to deal with the contentious politics of Bihar. The questions that continue to be argued during and after the lifetime of Karpoori Thakur revolve around his influence in shaping the foundation of antiCongress politics by invigorating backward caste politics in Bihar. 1

Arun Sinha, ‘Janata Elects a Leader’, Economic and Political Weekly, Volume 12 (26), 25 June 1977, p. 1001.

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He represented the political aspirations of the intermediary castes and posed a formidable challenge to upper caste/class politics in the state. Karpoori was one of the foremost socialist leaders of the state who provided impetus to the idea of social justice and influenced the contours of backward caste politics that demonstrated its first electoral triumph as early as in 1967 and continues to dominate state politics since 1990. Born into a family belonging to the Nai (barber) caste that constitutes less than 1.5 per cent of Bihar’s population Thakur managed to occupy the centre stage of the Socialist Party and backward caste politics in Bihar between 1960 and 1987. Similar to other socialist leaders of the time, his initiation into politics started with his engagement in the independence movement, but his ideological moorings gravitated towards the Socialist Party from the early years of his political career. During the decade of the 1960s, he emerged as a representative of the political aspirations of the intermediate (read backward) castes and thus posed a serious challenge to political parties like the Congress (I), the Congress (O) and Jan Sangh, which were largely dominated by upper caste leaders. Influenced by and socialised in ‘Lohiaite’ political tradition, Thakur was instrumental in challenging the dominant conception and visualisation of politics in Bihar and started leading the political agenda of the state. Though the phenomenal success of caste-based mobilisation and its macro implications in favour of other backward castes became much more perceptible after the 1990s, the progression acquired diverse trajectories in different parts of the country. In Bihar, some leaders belonging to the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) had played a crucial role in shaping the socio-political contours of backward caste politics that developed over decades, which finally emerged as governing politics since the 1990s. In his assessment of backward caste politics, Jaffrelot underlines the fact that Bihar has been a socialist laboratory where socialist parties together polled 20 to 25 per cent of the votes, even during the initial phase of Congress dominance.2 On the socialist side, Karpoori Thakur played a leading 2

Christophe Jaffrelot, India’s Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Low Castes in North Indian Politics (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003), p. 266.

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role in the assertion of OBCs, and his activities explained the rise of Samyukta Socialist Party (SSP) at the expense of the Congress. Karpoori’s politics was a serious attempt towards building a coalition among the backward caste groups for political recognition and assertion. However, the endeavour met with numerous complexities and impediments. The personal ambitions of the backward caste leaders, the obligations and demands of real politics, career prospects of different leaders and their ideological commitments made it very difficult for them to set aside their differences. These differences kept the diverse lower caste groups apart, and they were unable to forge a stable and reliable political coalition on the basis of economic or ideological factors. Ramashray Roy explains that the fear, distrust and recrimination among the shudra castes prevented their political coalescence and blocked their political ascendancy.3 Against the odds, influenced by Ram Manohar Lohia’s politics, Karpoori Thakur emerged as a young and persuasive face of socialist politics in Bihar. Lohia’s effective articulation about the relationship between the socialist political tradition and lower caste movements, recognising ‘the political potential of the horizontal mobilisation of lower castes on issues of social justice and ritual discrimination’ became the guiding principle of Karpoori’s politics. The electoral success of Thakur was exemplary, and he won all the elections that he contested in since 1952 except for the 1984 Lok Sabha election. His fiery and argumentative statements inside the Legislative Assembly on varied issues and concerns of the underprivileged sections of the society was matched by his direct engagement with people and communities on the margins of society and polity. The ideas of social justice and people-centric development with mass mobilisation were inextricably linked with his thoughts, and the consequent understanding informed most of his political actions in the realm of popular politics and assertion by subaltern groups. In this way he emerged as the vanguard of collective mobilisations and assertions, 3

Ramashray Roy, ‘Structural Rigidity, Social Mobilization and Political ‘Immobilise’ in Bihar’. Indian Journal of Political Science, Volume 49 (1), JanuaryMarch 1988, p. 62.

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and his strategies demonstrated the power of the hitherto excluded and marginalised castes and communities in Bihar. In order to comprehend the contentious style of Karpoori’s politics and his contribution to popular movements, one needs to explore some of the crucial aspects of the time in Bihar and his political moorings, interlinked as they remained throughout the sixties and seventies. These aspects related to the nature of his engagement and contestation with contemporary colleagues; his articulation of socialist politics and its implications for the backward castes and communities that helped him occupy the centre stage of competitive socialist politics in Bihar; his ideological alignment and points of contention with Ram Manohar Lohia, Jayaprakash Narayan and Vinoba Bhave; and related to this his engagement with the issues of the peasants’, farmers’ and students’ politics and movements as a form of popular politics. One will also have to analyse the emergence of students, peasants and backward castes as political subjects through aggressive politics and popular movements; and in view of all these, his legislative engagements as a vocal opposition leader and as Chief Minister of the state, and yet he made his mark as pursuing a style of politics that aimed at and achieved with varying degrees of success what could be called a coalition of extremes and a politics of pragmatism. Above all, one will have to study the lasting impact of Karpoori Thakur’s political strategies that gave birth to the ‘Karpoori formula’ and the ‘Karpoori division’, also the way popular politics acted as elements of such strategies. We do not have the scope here to reflect on all these aspects individually within one chapter, but we shall reflect on them in their totality and interconnections.

SOCIALIST POLITICS OF THE TIME, THE BIHAR MOVEMENT, JP AND KARPOORI THAKUR To comprehend Karpoori Thakur’s politics, one needs to grasp the leadership conflict within the Socialist Bloc in the country. Explaining the fragmentation among socialist leaders, Lewis Fickett wrote in 1972, ‘The great Socialist leaders—Jayaprakash Narayan, Dr Ram Manohar Lohia, J. B. Kripalani, and Asoka Mehta—all tended to be

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prima donnas, each espousing his own kind of political salvation, each indulging in the fruitless ideological abstractions so characteristic of Indian intellectual politicians and each unwilling to compromise with the others. Consequently, over a period of time, these leaders have all renounced, defected, or been expelled from the Party, each time leaving it a little weaker by taking with them their loyal supporters’.4 In Bihar, most of the Praja Socialist Party (PSP) cadres had long since defected in successive waves to the Congress – in 1964 Asoka Mehta left the Praja Socialist Party with his supporters, taking with him an estimated one-third of the supporters from the PSP cadres. The defections in Bihar, in a way, created greater space for backward caste leaders as many upper caste socialist leaders defected to the Congress. In fact, since the merger of Bihar State Backward Classes Federation with Lohia’s Samajwadi Party in 1957, and the subsequent adoption of the resolution by Lohia’s supporters in 1959, securing 60 per cent reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs), Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and religious minorities in the organisations and government jobs became the main agenda of socialist politics.5 The schema of reservation for backward classes, in a way, widened the difference between two factions of socialists: Samyukta Socialist Party (SSP) and Praja Socialist Party (PSP). It also alienated a large number of upper caste socialist leaders. A sense of restricted political prospects prevailed among these upper caste leaders who were subsequently co-opted by the Congress party. While the SSP vociferously insisted upon 60 per cent reservation for these groups; the approach of PSP was quite subdued on this. Besides, the clash of personalities among central socialist leaders and the social background of leaders had its implication in the form of fragmentation and realignment of socialist politics. Unlike the more grounded leadership of SSP, the PSP party elite was mostly high caste, educated, and largely urbanised. Fickett observed that due to the social background of leaders along with other historical 4 Lewis P. Fickett, (Jr.) ‘The Praja Socialist Party of India, 1952–1972: A Final Assessment’, Asian Survey, Volume 13 (9), September 1973, p. 829. 5 F. Frankel, ‘Decline of a Social Order’, in F. Frankel & M. S. A. Rao (eds.). Dominance and State Power in India, Volume 2 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989).

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and ideological considerations, PSP responded only reluctantly to the demand of a predetermined degree of representation for the underprivileged groups in Indian society (backward castes, indigenous communities and women).6 The context offered better space and scope for the kind of politics espoused by leaders like Karpoori Thakur. He became one of the fervent proponents of the slogan ‘Sansopa ne baandhi gaanth, pichde pawen sau me saath’ (Samyukta Socialist Party is determined to secure 60 per cent reservations for the backwards) and became the principal campaigner for the same. Other popular slogans, such as ‘LohiaKarpoori ki lalkaar, badlo-badlo ye sarkar’ (Lohia-Karpoori have given a clarion call for change of political regime) and ‘Sau se kam na hazar se jyada, samajwaad ka yahi takaja’ (Neither less than hundred nor more than thousand, this is the socialist ideology) caught the imagination of the backward and downtrodden sections of society. Furthermore, the language question also kept the socialists apart. The SSP, reflecting its North Indian base, took a very hard line in favour of an unconditional acceptance of the Hindi language. While agreeing that Hindi should be the national language, the PSP opposed the imposition of Hindi on non-Hindi (unwilling) regions of the country.7 Elaborating upon the predicament with socialist politics, Paul R. Brass8 argued that the socialist split demonstrated the complex interconnectedness of power, personal interest and principles in politics. The defection of one section of leaders followed by the merger of Praja Socialist Party (PSP) and Socialist Party (SP) with the Samyukta Socialist Party (SSP) in June 1964, the question of Lohia’s leadership and the issue of alliances with Jan Sangh and the CPI were vigorously debated and contested within the party. The debate, dialogue and misunderstanding around alliances have had their implications in shaping popular politics and movements as also their leadership. A coalition of the SSP, Jan Sangh, Congress 6 Lewis P. Fickett, (Jr.) ‘The Praja Socialist Party of India, 1952–1972: A Final Assessment’, Asian Survey, Volume 13 (9), September 1973, p. 831. 7 Ibid. 8 Paul R. Brass, ‘Leadership Conflict and the Disintegration of the Indian Socialist Movement: Personal Ambition, Power and Policy’, The Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, Volume 14 (1), 1976, p. 21.

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(O) and Swatantra Party for government formation in the late 1960s and early 1970s remained a feature of severe contention in socialist politics. The role, relevance and tactic of leaders like Karpoori Thakur have to be seen in this backdrop. Between 1965 and 1972, Karpoori Thakur, Ramanand Tiwari, and Bhola Prasad Singh were the leading forces of SSP in Bihar but they differed on questions and issues of alliance. ‘The wing for which Bhola Prasad Singh was spokesman argued for an alliance with Congress (O), Jan Sangh, and Swatantra against Congress (R), whereas the wing led by Ramanand Tiwari favoured an alliance with Congress (R) and the PSP…At this time Karpoori Thakur was not identified strongly with either side’.9 The general camaraderie and simultaneous internal rivalry between two socialist stalwarts, Ramanand Tiwari and Karpoori Thakur, around the vexed issue of the composition of the coalition dominated the political scene during 1969–71. Whereas one group of SSP, Congress (O), Jan Sangh came together to support Ramanand Tiwari as the chief ministerial candidate, the other group promoted Thakur’s candidature. The apprehension about accepting an upper caste leader as chief minister and the risk of a coalition with the Right-wing Jan Sangh was considered as a betrayal to backward class interests and the socialist ideology. These deliberations and subsequent political developments were construed as Karpoori’s conspiracy. After he became cognizant of the fact about his lack of acceptance as a leader, Ramanand Tiwari came out openly about SSP’s internal contention and wrote vociferously against the Jan Sangh. In his 28 February 1970 letter to the president of the SSP parliamentary board, Tiwari underlined that Jan Sangh intended to push the country towards Hindu fascism. He wrote, ‘the foundational edifice of Jan Sangh is communal tension and hatred. It is unacceptable for SSP to form a government with JS...we should always remember that forming a government is only the means and not the end. It looks like that we have started considering it as an end’.10 The Congress party exploited 9 ‘Leadership Conflict and the Disintegration of the Indian Socialist Movement’, p. 31. 10 Letter published in the Hindi Daily, Aryavarta, 12 March 1970.

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the internal rivalry in SSP and managed to form a government led by Daroga Prasad Roy as chief minister; however, the government barely survived nine months. Ironically, in December 1970, Karpoori Thakur formed a government with support from the Jan Sangh, and Ramanand Tiwari became one of the cabinet ministers. In fact, the apprehension of a coalition, the caste identity of chief ministerial candidates, opposition to accepting an upper caste leader as chief minister, and the fear of a split in SSP led to a compromise that made Karpoori Thakur Chief Minister of Bihar. The government that was formed was a coalition of the SSP, Congress (O), Jan Sangh, Swatantra, and other minor parties. The political development provided the Jan Sangh with the space to participate in governance, an opportunity that the party could astutely utilise in widening its acceptance among electorates in the years and decades to come. Thakur’s political craft and acumen (as well as the limits of his politics) enabled him to establish himself as the most prominent leader of the Socialist Bloc. Despite accusations of political manoeuvring, Karpoori Thakur emerged as a most acceptable leader by different factions of the party. Brass found it intriguing that ‘in most disputes at the central and state levels, Karpoori Thakur cast himself and was cast by others in the role of mediator and peacemaker rather than as a principal protagonist’.11 The sequence of events, political strategies behind the scene and its policy outcome determined the future of Bihar politics in the decades to come. The policies adopted after the formation of a government by Karpoori Thakur made it apparent that political resurgence of backward class leaders was going to persist in the state, at least within non-Congress formations. Navigating and negotiating through these phases of factionalism within the party, one-upmanship among socialist leaders, and most importantly the demands of popular movements, Karpoori kept striving to balance different factions, and came out as the most acceptable leader in the opposition bloc. He employed silence, neutrality and ambiguity as strategies during the internal feud within the party in the state as also in national politics. 11

p. 32.

‘Leadership conflict and the disintegration of the Indian Socialist Movement’,

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The day after taking over as Chief Minister, Thakur’s cabinet took the first major decision to implement the Official Language Act strictly and made it mandatory to use Hindi for all official communication. With the caption ‘Janta ki bhasa ka aadar, loktantra ka aadar’ (respecting the people’s language is respecting democracy), one newspaper editorial observed, ‘Chief Minister Karpoori Thakur has informed the press that adverse comment will be mentioned in the service book of all those who would violate this directive... needless to state that the common people of Bihar faced enormous trouble due to the usage in English in official work...The gulf between government and people preserved by English language is not allowing people experience that they live in a democratic society’.12 The previous demand of ‘angrezi main ab kaam na hoga, phir se desh ghulam na hoga’ (We will not allow usage of English, we will not let the country be colonised again) and ‘rashtrapati ka beta ya chaprasi ki santaan; bhangi ya bhabhan ho, sabki shiksha ek samaan’ (President’s child or peon’s child, sweeper or Brahmin, everyone will have common education) acquired its reverberation in governmental policy. Earlier, in his capacity as Deputy Chief Minister with the Education portfolio, Karpoori Thakur had removed English as a compulsory subject and made it an optional paper for students in high school. It was evident to him that children from backward communities and rural backgrounds often failed in examinations because English was a compulsory subject. As the students could not qualify in matriculation, they were not eligible for higher education and hence lost out on employment opportunities. Students who had completed their 10th standard examination during this phase were often contemptuously referred to as ‘Karpoori Division’. The condescending upper caste and a dominant section of the society accused Thakur of bringing anarchy to the education system. To his credit a large number of students passed under the ‘Karpoori Division’ every year and became eligible for Intermediate courses that allowed them to enter colleges and universities. As Finance Minister, he decided to discontinue the collection of revenue (malgujari) from those with 3.5 acres of irrigated and 12

Aryavarta, 25 December 1970.

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7 acres of unirrigated land. The policy pronouncement was in line with Lohia’s slogan ‘jis kheti se laabh nahi, us par lage lagan nahi’ (No tax on those farms from which there is no profit). The decision offered immense relief to small and marginal farmers. It manifestly exhibited the socialist character of the government. These progressive pronouncements attenuated the apprehension that the Right-wing Jan Sangh-supported coalition government would compromise on pro-poor socialist ideologies and agenda. To consolidate the backward caste electorate, SSP nominated a large number of candidates from non-elite groups, and the socialists had a larger number of OBC Members of Legislative Assemblies (MLAs) elected; in the 1967 elections, almost 40 per cent of SSP MLAs were from the lower castes in Bihar.13 With his ability to manoeuvre the complex political terrain of the socialist party, and after establishing his hold on the state party unit, Karpoori Thakur became more aggressive and vocal about popular politics and mass movements in the decade of 1960s. In 1965, he led a powerful movement against ‘anti-people’ and ‘anti-student’ policies and the repressive act of Congress government which could galvanise massive mass support. The anxious state took recourse to violence and suppression of the voices of opposition; the incidence of lathicharge on prominent leaders like Thakur and Ramanand Tiwari became an exceptionally controversial issue for the ruling regime. Karpoori Thakur’s feel for popular politics was manifested during his protest for ensuring job security of employees in the industries run by the Tata Company in Jamshedpur. In solidarity with the workers, he started a fast-unto-death that continued for 28 days. As a result, the management agreed to enhance minimum wages, weekly holidays and job security for the workers. Though the Thakur government (1970–71) was short-lived, the backward caste political leaders tasted success between 1967 and 1972; SSP made ‘backwardism’ into a near-creed. SSP became the second largest party in the 1967 elections and again in the 1969 mid-term poll. Of the seven chief ministers of Bihar since 1967, 13

Christophe Jaffrelot, ‘The Rise of the other Backward Classes in the Hindi Belt’, The Journal of Asian Studies, Volume 59 (1), 2000, pp. 86–108.

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four were from backward castes and one belonged to the Scheduled Caste. Though the rise of this politics was temporarily arrested after the victory of the Congress in 1972, the socialist strategy of people’s mobilisation got re-activated during the movement led by Jayapakash Narayan in 1974. As discussed in detail in Chapter 13, the movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan was one of the most decisive political phenomena in post-colonial India. The outbreak of a ‘people’s agitation’ in Bihar led to a call for ‘Total Revolution’ by Jayaprakash Narayan and the subsequent imposition of the National Emergency revealed the potential and limit of popular movements in the state and the country. Viewed by the rulers as a challenge and threat to parliamentary democracy, the movement, which began as response to governmental drift and corruption, led to violence and repression. Perceived and articulated as expressions of popular protests, the outcome of the movements was that ‘the people’, disdaining party affiliations and various social barriers, had risen to challenge the political-economic establishment.14 While exploring the 1974 political developments, John Wood explains that populist agitation is a collective attempt to bring about change in political-economic institutions. ‘It implies that much if not all of the initiative for change comes from below and from outside established political institutions…The justification for all strategy and goals is in the name of “the people”, and a premium is placed on the capacity of leaders to create and placate the popular opinion’.15 How does one understand this politics and its leadership in the name of ‘people’ which was different from the conventional party system? During the 1974 movement, hundreds of trade unions, including those of industrial workers, teachers, engineers, journalists, government and university employees, railway union, etc., participated in the demonstrations. The main slogan was ‘Pura rashan pura kaam, nahin to hoga chakka jaam’ (full ration to ensure full work or else all 14 John R. Wood, ‘Extra-Parliamentary Opposition in India: An Analysis of Populist Agitations in Gujarat and Bihar’. Pacific Affairs, Volume 48 (3), Autumn,1975, p. 315. 15 Ibid., p. 315.

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work would come to a grinding halt). Echoing the popular sentiment, Karpoori Thakur appealed to the opposition parties, intellectuals, students, and youths to declare ‘jehad’ (crusade) for ending ‘the Congress misrule’ in Bihar. The appeal by Jayaprakash Narayan and mobilisation on the ground by leaders like Karpoori Thakur influenced youth and a convention of students’ representatives from all over the state was organised in Patna on 17–18 February 1974. Over five hundred delegates from 135 colleges came to Patna to attend the convention where two parallel students’ bodies, viz. Bihar Pradesh Chhatra Sangharsha Samiti and Bihar Pradesh Chhatra Naujawan Morcha were formed. The latter represented the students of the Communist Party of India (CPI) and other Leftist parties, whereas the former was made up of those owing allegiance to the Jan Sangh, the Congress (O) and the Samyukta Socialist Party.16 Again, we shall not go into the details because Chapter 13 has presented and analysed various aspects of the JP movement. However, the consolidation of support by leaders like Thakur needs to be seen in the backdrop of a series of incidents that occurred during the popular movements in Bihar. On 16 March 1974, in Bettiah, five people were killed in police firing. In next few weeks, more than twenty-five people were killed in firing during riots in Munger, Ranchi, Deoghar and elsewhere. The students, looking for direction and a sense of purpose, through their organisation Chhatra Sangharsh Samiti had succeeded in persuading Jayaprakash Narayan to assume leadership of the movement. His idea was broad-based and Jayaprakash Narayan claimed that this was the opportunity to shift the contours of policies from rajniti to lokniti. Within weeks, students’ and peoples’ struggle committees were formed in every university and district headquarters in Bihar. Populism was clearly evident not only in the rhetoric of the ‘people’s struggles’, but in the broad social base, spontaneous thrust, and diffused goals of the agitations.17 JP facilitated the two dominant youth organisations, the Samajwadi Yuvajan Sabha (SYS) and the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi 16

Babulal Fadia, State Politics in Bihar (New Delhi: Radiant Publisher, 1984),

p. 51. 17

Wood, ‘Extra-Parliamentary Opposition in India’, p. 322.

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Parishad (ABVP), the youth wings of the SSP and Jan Sangh respectively, to come together thereby adding confusion regarding the ideological contour of the movement. In February 1974, the CPI broke away from this conglomeration; the ABVP, SYS and TSS then formed the Bihar Chhatra Sangharsh Samiti (BCSS) which adopted a dominant Rightist stance. These developments had implications for the popular movement and politics in the years to come. On the pretext of it being an exigent situation, several ideological and strategic compromises were made. Ideological confusion was all pervasive during Jayaprakash Narayan’s movement, and leaders like Karpoori Thakur had to encounter acute questions from their respective constituencies. Though non-Congress politics had previous experiences of a coalition with Jan Sangh (JS), an overt expression of accommodation for Jan Sangh by Jayaprakash Narayan was confusing. While speaking in favour of a joint bloc of the Janata Party and Jan Sangh in Parliament, JP thanked the Jan Sangh for their support to his movement during the Bihar agitation. He further said, ‘if you are fascist then I too am a fascist’, in effect giving the party an assurance that he considered that there was no longer any stigma attached to it because of its association with the RSS.18 The public statement of accommodation and assimilation of the Right-wing political group in the anti-Congress front by the tallest leader of the movement crafted a complicated political terrain for the months and years to come. Socialist politics in Bihar and leaders like Karpoori were now fettered by this milieu. However, as the agitation proceeded, and as its goals expanded and took on a distinctly political character, people also began to ask questions. Who would be the harbingers of the ‘total revolution’?19 The confusion, contradictions, and complexities of this contentious politics were the greatest challenges for not only Jayaprakash Narayan but also other socialist leaders who tried to 18 B.D. Graham, ‘The Jan Sangh and Bloc Politics, 1967–80’, The Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, Volume 25 (3), 1987, p. 257. 19 Janardan Thakur, ‘Total Revolution’, Economic and Political Weekly, Volume 10 (8), 22 February 1975, pp. 344–45.

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cast it within foundational issues of democracy. Ranabir Samaddar has commented on the dilemma of the time, ‘JP was posing the problem of democracy in an age of distrust, and secondly, he was bringing forward the issue of political will with which the power of the representative sovereign was to be confronted. By raising the question of social majority vis-à-vis the representative majority, and therefore the issue of mediation, double figures and double wills, he was suggesting nothing short of a re-politicisation of democracy’.20 If this was the issue at stake, that is to say the intent of re-politicisation of democracy, what were the efforts made by leaders like Thakur? Some of the questions posed by the movement help us to understand the shape of things to come ‘post movement’. A party functionary of the Congress (O) from Bihar wrote to Asoka Mehta, party secretary: ‘How are we to participate in the movement? Are we to function in an amorphous manner? What would be our position as a political party in the post-movement stage? Do we have to eschew politics altogether?’21 Such complexities and ambiguities hovered around the political scene and made matters difficult for the Janata Party experiment. The differential strategies, approaches and styles had implications for the political relationship between JP and Karpoori. The political trajectory of the two leaders, their caste and class affiliations, strategies and ideological ambiguities demand analysis. Nature, character and political realignments prompted Karpoori to oscillate between active engagements and background work during the heightened phase of the JP movement. Immediately after the imposition of the Emergency, he went underground in Nepal and continued his organising endeavour from there. Needless to say, the idioms, signs, symbols and slogans of the Bihar Movement galvanised sections of society, hitherto at the receiving end of political processes led by dominant castes. After the 1977 Janata Party victory, Karpoori Thakur became chief minister and his attempt now was to build a stable political constituency in the altered political situation in the state. 20 Ranabir Samaddar, ‘Jayaprakash Narayan and the Politics of Representative Democracy’. Economic and Political Weekly, Volume 43 (31), 2008, p. 50. 21 Rakesh Ankit, ‘Janata Party (1974–77): Creation of an All-India Opposition’, History and Sociology of South Asia, Volume 11 (1), 2017, pp. 39–54.

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RESERVATION AS A POLITICAL STRATEGY IN POPULAR POLITICS To promote a pro-poor socialist agenda, he introduced a policy to reserve seats in government jobs and educational institutions for members of the backward castes. It is important to recollect that though Bihar government had listed OBCs in two annexes as early as in 1951, which contained 79 castes in Annexure 1 and 30 castes in Annexure 2, subsequently in 1964 the Patna High Court had held the list unconstitutional. The demands for OBC reservation in government jobs continued to find space in political discourse intermittently; it did not get actualised though.22 The persistent insistence by OBC leaders and their growing political power in the late 1960s and early 1970s compelled the Congress government to constitute the Mungeri Lal Commission which listed 128 castes as OBC and 93 castes as Most Backward Classes (MBC). The commission recommended 26 per cent reservation in jobs and 24 per cent reservation in educational institutions. However, the Congress government did not take any action on the recommendations. Karpoori implemented the recommendations of the Mungeri Lal Commission in 1978. The policy provided provision of 12 per cent and 8 per cent reservation in jobs for most backward and other backward classes respectively. Additionally, 3 per cent for women of any group and 3 per cent for those who were ‘economically backward’ were reserved. The layered reservation policy of his government symbolised a significant success for the backward classes. After being grossly under-represented in the echelons of state bureaucracy for the entire period of independence and the British rule, the ‘Backward’ finally gained a modicum of their fair share of the posts.23 Lohia’s articulation about the relationship between the socialist political tradition and lower caste movements, recognising 22

In 1953, Baijnath Singh, a Congress MLA had introduced a non-official Bill that sought 25 per cent reservation for OBCs in Government jobs; it was subsequently withdrawn under party pressure. 23 Harry W. Blair, ‘Rising Kulaks and Backward Classes in Bihar: Social Change in the Late 1970s’,  Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 15, no. 2, (12 January 1980) p. 67. 

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‘the political potential of the horizontal mobilisation of lower castes on issues of social justice and ritual discrimination’ finally got actualised.24 However, JP had concerns and reluctance about the manner Karpoori implemented the reservation policy. With his confidant, JP had expressed disagreement with Karpoori’s approach and style. Some think that JP even let the agitation against OBC reservation flourish. The decision resulted in a ferocious agitation against the reservation by the upper castes and a virtual caste war between the ‘forward’, and the ‘backward’ erupted. Interestingly, in their opposition to reservation for OBCs, the upper castes pretended and projected alliance with Dalits that was articulated through the slogan ‘agri-Harijan bhai bhai, yeh pichdi jaat kahan se aayi?’ (Upper caste and harijan castes are brothers, from where has the backward emerged). The upper caste leaders, across the political spectrum, were wary of Thakur’s politics and they craftily mobilised the disgruntled MLAs from ruling and opposition groups. A significant number of scheduled caste MLAs aligned with Jan Sangh and put up a combined opposition against Karpoori Thakur in the Bihar Assembly. The longstanding animosity of the upper castes towards Karpoori Thakur and the apprehension about his political acumen got confirmed by his bold and controversial decision. If we take Harry Blair’s assessment of governmental posts created in Bihar per year, it showed the number to be 9000, and with 20 per cent seats reserved for the Backward Classes (BCs), the figure came to around 1800 posts.25 Thus, the question and the resistance to the policy and resultant widespread violence were beyond tangible gains by way of employability. The policy had a high emblematic value that caught the imagination of people with political awareness and aspirations. At the same time, to garner more political support, Karpoori Thakur besides pioneering backward caste politics in the state 24

D.L. Sheth, Changing Terms of Elite Discourse: The Case of Reservation for ‘Other Backward Classes’ in Sathyamurthy (ed.)., Region, Religion, Caste, Gender and Culture in Contemporary India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 108. 25 Harry W. Blair, ‘Rising Kulaks and Backward Classes in Bihar: Social Change in the Late 1970s’, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 15, no. 2, (12 January 1980).

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opted for decentralisation and held Panchayat elections in 1978. The outcome of the election result showed that there was a largescale ouster of the old officeholders. They were replaced by a new set of office bearers, with allegiance to Karpoori and his politics, which gained ground. It confirmed the signs of the rise of backward caste politics as the dominant form of politics in Bihar. In the backdrop of the implementation of Mungeri Lal Commission’s recommendations, the 1978 Panchayat elections demonstrated a shift in the political centre of gravity at the village level.26 Through the reservation policy and Panchayat election, Karpoori asserted that the Backwards had displaced the Forwards as the dominant force in Bihar politics, that the old days of dominance in public affairs from the village to the Vidhan Sabha by the ‘twice-born’ were gone forever. The Forwards interpreted things this way as well, fearing that their days of dominance might indeed have departed, and responded with a volatile mixture of fear and rage.27 Besides, the Backwards had a broader class interest. As middle and small farmers, or cultivators who essentially worked on their holdings and as a new group in power, they were not only interested in stability and control but also more concerned than the old ‘twice-born’ maliks with maximising profits.28 As Chief Minster he was well aware of these interests and was vigorous in articulating the same. He established himself as a campaigner of rural middle caste/class interests. The policy initiative was criticised as an inadequate (and politically unattainable) alternative to land reform. But it turned out to be a political masterstroke for decades to come. Two features of Thakur’s programme were significant. ‘First, his mobilisation along caste lines was a tactical move informed by socialist principles. Second, he aimed to divide the benefits of government employment more fairly, not to use government programs to improve conditions 26

Manish K. Jha and Pushpendra, ‘Governing Caste and Managing Conflicts: Bihar, 1990–2011’, in Ranabir Samaddar (ed.)., Government of Peace: Social Governance, Security and the Problematic of Peace (New York: Routledge, 2005). 27 Harry W. Blair, ‘Rising Kulaks and Backward Classes in Bihar: Social Change in the Late 1970s’,  Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 15, no. 2, (12 January 1980), p. 66. 28 Ibid., p. 71.

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for his constituency’.29 In this way Thakur pursued the Lohia line of mobilisation of the backward classes. Lohia’s prediction that castebased reservations would lead to political transformations proved true. Even though, these decisions could not easily consolidate backward classes in the socio-political arena. While analysing pragmatic and progressive leaders in regional politics, James Manor argued that Thakur’s early initiatives inflamed reactions among both Forward castes and Scheduled Castes who felt threatened by it, and finally this led to Thakur’s government’s premature collapse. It was replaced by a government dominated by ‘Forwards and Jan Sanghis’.30 On Karpoori’s political strategies, Manor quoted Karnataka Chief Minister, Devraj Urs, ‘Karpoori climbed into the ring before he learned how to box’.31 Nonetheless, Karpoori knew how to reach his message to the people of Bihar. Effective communication of the political agenda is of crucial consequence for any political party, and it requires diverse strategies to reach out to its constituents. From the early phase of his political career, Karpoori Thakur, on the one hand, believed in the strength of peasant mobilisation against the dominant castes and landed gentry, and on the other, he employed his oratory and analytical intervention through Assembly debates. His initial mobilisation endeavour was directed against the Zamindars that led to release of land which was subsequently distributed among poor Dalits. Informed by ground realities of rural Bihar and initiated in the politics of struggle, Thakur turned out to be a persuasive and unswerving leader of subaltern masses. In the post-colonial phase, as a young and articulate socialist leader in the Bihar Assembly, his questions, comments, intervention and overall participation in Assembly debates remain as testimonies of his knowledge, understanding and assertiveness. More importantly, his participation in the Bihar Legislative Assembly was an articulation of his ideas of popular politics. One 29 P.   Clements, ‘A Rawlsian analysis of the Plight of Bihar’, Studies in Comparative International Development, Volume 39 (4), 2005, pp. 3–29. 30 Harry W. Blair, ‘Rising Kulaks and Backward Classes in Bihar: Social Change in the Late 1970s’,  Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 15, no. 2, (12 January 1980), p. 67. 31 Manor, ‘Pragmatic Progressives in Regional Politics’, p. 207.

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illustration of an intervention in the Bihar Assembly in February and March 1953 (second year of his legislative term) will help us understand this point. While speaking on the government proposal of the Bihar Maintenance of Public Order (Amendment) Bill, 1953, Thakur underscored concerns about arbitrariness and abuse of state authority by the party-in-power in the newly independent nationstate. In the name of public order maintenance, the high-handedness of the ruling party (in this case, Congress) was exemplified by Thakur. He vehemently countered the governmental claim that the Bill had a correctional element, and that it intended to undo the repressive elements of the Colonial Detention Act. Arguing against the proposed Bill, Thakur said that though the Detention Act had the provision of scrutiny by the higher judiciary against wrongful detention, such remedy got undermined in the proposed Bill. To substantiate his argument against abuse of power by the government, he cited numerous occurrences of the imposition of Section 144 through which the state denied permission for public meetings of the opposition leaders and social workers. He charged the ruling political regime for not permitting opposition parties to organise peasants and workers for claiming their rights and entitlements. Elaborating further, he blamed the government for undermining people’s liberty through the proposed legislation and demanded a referendum on the Bill.32 Participating in the assembly debate in support of the proposal for a referendum on the Bill by fellow socialist leader, Ramesh Jha, on 16 September 1953, Karpoori brought out the importance of minority opposition voices for protecting the liberty and freedom of people. Emphasising the need to put the Bill to a referendum in order to ascertain public opinion, he stressed the need to engage with the people on a greater scale in the running of state and government. He also expressed the idea of a ‘continued consent of the electorate’ in the intervening phase between two general elections. Underlining faith in people’s continued engagement with politics and policy-making, Karpoori Thakur emphasised that unlike representative democracy that was 32

‘Karpoori ka Sansadiya Jeevan’, Khand-1(in Hindi): 1952–1966, (Patna: Bihar Vidhan Sabha Sachivalaya, 2003), pp. 14–19.

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hierarchical, partisan and authoritarian, direct democratic practices such as referendum could effectively deal with issues and concerns of the poor, backward and socially excluded. This was an early instance of his articulation of popular politics.

THE LAND QUESTION, MOBILISATION AND CHALLENGES FOR KARPOORI THAKUR On 20 March 1953, while responding to the cut-motion brought by a senior socialist leader, Ramanand Tiwari, on ‘Management of Estates consequent upon the abolition of Zamindari’, Thakur asserted that only through redistribution of land, the existing inequity and mismanagement could be dealt with.33 He also laid emphasis on instituting the Panchayati Raj system for revenue collection (malgujari). In the Assembly debate, he underscored that the rent collection from farmers by Zamindars needed to be withdrawn with immediate effect. Again, speaking on the proposal of the Bihar Land Reforms (Amendment) Bill, 1953 by the then Chief Minister on 1 April 1953, Karpoori wanted a fixed date to be determined for taking over all Zamindari estates by the State. He stated ‘If the Government wants to demonstrate that the Zamindari system is being abolished, it has to abolish all Zamindari in one go. I understand that the postponement is adversely affecting the interest of the state. Since the time the discussion about Zamindari abolition was initiated, hundred thousands of acres of land, fallow, public common land, water bodies and irrigation channels, cremation ground, etc have been appropriated, managed, and settled by the Zamindars in their favour. Whatever is remaining will also be controlled by the Zamindars soon. If the government is genuinely keen to save these lands and spaces for public usage, it needs to act instantaneously’.34 In terms of the land issue and the emergence of backward caste politics of Bihar, Zamindari abolition in 1956 had a critical importance. Post-Zamindari abolition, a class of rich peasants 33 34

Ibid., p. 33. Ibid., p. 45.

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emerged from among bigger tenants belonging to backward castes such as the Yadavs, Koeris and Kurmis. Unlike most upper caste landowners who would not touch the plough, the backward caste peasants worked in the fields along with their wives and children. Economic prosperity has had a positive influence towards their economic consolidation. However, their socio-economic standing in the deeply hierarchical caste society remained subordinated. The success of the Socialist Party after the 1967 election, in a way, provided impetus to the assertion of backward caste politics and finally by 1977, it gained prominence in Bihar politics. Elaborating the complex reality of select backward caste, Sinha explains, ‘Since this class of rich peasants from the backward castes is a rising class, it is very aggressive. It has to fight two battles. Socially and politically, it is struggling against the upper castes; and economically it is facing the harijan agricultural labourers and sharecroppers who are now organising themselves’.35 In course of post-independence development though some OBCs had attained the status of rich peasants owing to their investments in agriculture, OBC peasants, by and large, occupied a subordinate position vis-à-vis the landed groups from the privileged castes. Reservation Policy, which is an Indian form of Affirmative Action, facilitated the appropriation by the OBCs of the institutions of the state till then dominated by the landlord classes.36 The interest among OBC groups varied; and their engagement, demands and resistance came across in numerous forms. The series of conflict between sharecroppers and agricultural labourers on the one hand and labour-hiring rich peasants on the other along with backward-forward caste antagonism complicated the situation for Thakur in managing the governance of the state. As chief minister, Karpoori Thakur was well aware of the interests of the backward castes and was not at all shy in articulating them. He wanted to be 35

Arun Sinha, ‘Advancing Class Interests in the Name of Caste’, Economic and Political Weekly, Volume 13 (16), 22 April 1978, pp. 675–76. 36 F. Frankel, ‘Decline of a Social Order’, in F. Frankel & M. S. A. Rao (eds.). Dominance and State Power in India, Volume 2 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989).

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acknowledged as ‘the champion of the rural middle-class interests as well as of the rural middle caste interest’.37 The diverse class/caste interests and its political repercussion had its obvious reverberation during Karpoori’s ruling regime. It is significant that the All-India Backward Classes’ Federation marched through the streets of Patna on 14 March demanding, along with reservation of jobs, the release of all the accused in the Belchhi massacre case, particularly of Inderdeo Chaudhary, MLA, the main accused in the case and a hero of the Kurmi caste. This was a clear indication of the caste conflict that would soon create a rupture in backward caste and Dalit relationship. The major outrages against harijan sharecroppers and agricultural labourers since March 1977 occurred in Kargahar, Belchhi, Pathadda, Chhaundadano, Gopalpur and Dharampura and in almost all cases the accused belonged to these aggressive backward castes. Much of these conflicts and massacres explain the nature of the coalition of assorted political formations, the nature of the state and the conduct of government and limits of popular politics. Thakur’s 26 per cent reservation may have been a masterstroke in addressing the political constituents of the Socialist Bloc, but soon it led to an open confrontation between the backward castes and the Dalits. There were open armed clashes, arson, and inter-community riots. While clashes between the backward castes and forward castes became the defining moment of the phase, it was soon to be overtaken by backward caste-Dalit conflicts. Forward castes league and backward caste federations were formed to mobilise castes/communities against and for the reservation respectively. Karpoori Thakur was opposed both by the upper castes and by the advanced sections of the backwards and turned out to be a misunderstood leader towards the close of his political career. Though he continued to be a representative political figure for a majority of the subaltern communities across caste divisions from the early 1960s to the mid-1980s, the turn of political events after 1985 witnessed the assertion of dominant 37

Harry W. Blair, ‘Rising Kulaks and Backward Classes in Bihar: Social Change in the Late 1970s’,  Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 15, no. 2, (12 January 1980), p. 71.

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backward castes that subsequently undermined his influence and authority over oppositional space. The character, intention, language and assertion by political leaders coming from Yadav and Kurmi caste groups, gave an impression of competition for the inheritance of the political legacy of Karpoori Thakur, but the strategies were designed to minimise his political clout. More importantly, in the evolving dynamics of caste/class struggles Thakur’s space shrank. There was not much scope for practising backward class politics under the slogan of justice for all subaltern classes including Dalits and indigenous people, while assuring the Forward castes that Bihar was peaceful, stable and that the government was for all.

CONCLUSION The dynamic politics of Karpoori spanning four decades, from the mid-1940s to the mid-1980s – most noticeably from the late sixties to the early eighties demonstrated his inventive approach in awakening the lower orders of the society. The strategies largely revolved around bringing a semblance of caste and class awareness in rural Bihar that was restraining the upward mobility of socio-economically deprived caste groups. In fact, the argument, articulation and agenda-setting reflected that Karpoori’s politics was informed and influenced by a theory of conduct of government, and the effort was always to practice that conduct. He, not only tried to influence the governmental conduct through vociferous engagement in policy and legislative deliberations but also through oppositional demands and plans of action. Situating himself within the governmental framework, Karpoori employed governmental rationality so as to advance the position of the subaltern population groups. Quite often he defined the purpose of government and highlighted limits and potentialities of governmental omission and commission. In most of his political articulation and strategies, the penchant for underlining state against democracy was apparent. In his approach to governing as also in opposing, emphasis upon population calculation, political arithmetic and rationality

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in the name of care and welfare of the excluded population was always discernible. Mitchell Dean has argued that calculation is central because government requires that the ‘right manner’ be defined, distinct ‘finalities’ prioritised, and tactics tuned to achieve an optimal result.38 The centrality of calculation and calculated programmes of intervention turned out to be the defining character of whatever Thakur championed as Chief Minister. During his brief stints in governing Bihar as Chief Minister and Deputy Chief Minister, Thakur came into sight as a populist leader in a great hurry; what has been ignored or underestimated was his sharp political estimation and ground-breaking craft of governance, pervading his policies and prescriptions. The implementation of OBC reservation, grouping castes into Annexures, making English an optional subject, and carrying out Panchayat elections were well calculated populist decisions executed with urgency and alacrity. These decisions transformed the social category of caste into ‘caste political’ that magnified caste within a specific class, and actively pursued caste-conflict to challenge the dominance of the upper castes in electoral politics.39 Under the influence of socialist ideology, Karpoori was instrumental in redefining the idea of governing society by expanding caste coalition on the basis of the power of the backward castes. Even as opposition leader, he always kept a close watch on the state and the manner in which it conducted itself. Karpoori believed in a calculated programme of intervention that combined vernacular political understanding and pragmatic knowledge with practices of assessment and calculation. But, what he perhaps did not realise was that in spite of calculation and proper management, the effect of governmental intervention ran the risk of generating contradictions and confrontations within society upsetting the very process of governance. A close scrutiny of the political developments in post-colonial Bihar shows evidence of the dominant influence of Karpoori in the 38 Mitchell Dean, Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society (London: Sage, 1999), p. 33. 39 Manish K. Jha and Pushpendra, ‘Governing Caste and Managing Conflicts: Bihar, 1990–2011’, in Ranabir Samaddar (ed.)., Government of Peace: Social Governance, Security and the Problematic of Peace (New York: Routledge, 2005).

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rise and fall of socialist politics in Bihar, and in the backward caste sway in Bihar politics that laid the foundation for subaltern politics. While engaging with political competitors within the Socialist Party as also with the opposition Congress leaders, he seemed to be in an incessant ‘war of position’. Gramsci’s elucidation of ‘war of position’ and its triumph as the doctrine of political success within socialist and social democratic parties seemed to have a subtle influence on socialist leaders like Karpoori. His tactics gave an impression that he was in a continuous war of position through slow, persistent conflicts and skirmishes, and he kept seeking influence and power. Here, influence and power need to be understood and examined not only within his own Socialist Bloc, but also vis-à-vis the ruling Congress – the party-in-power. In the founding decade of the postcolonial life of the nation, the state had natural legitimacy for its actions. Early on, Karpoori recognised the extraordinary influence of state and government in shaping the discourse of society. He knew that the government and the vision of the ruling class shaped people’s consciousness, as the ‘common sense’ of that society. This was what was needed to be challenged. Karpoori’s engagements inside the Legislative Assembly and outside, in public as also within his party demonstrate an exemplary urge for influencing and challenging that ‘common sense’. The war of position, then, is the struggle to gain positions of influence that can develop counter-hegemony for the Socialist Movement. The gain was translated in terms of establishing backward caste influence in Bihar politics. To quote Blair, ‘Sachhidanand Sinha, who led the struggle culminating in the separation of Bihar from Bengal in 1912, could be said to be the creator of Modern Bihar. Sri Krishna Sinha, who shepherded the province into independence and through its first decade and a half thereafter, could be described as the creator of a Forward Raj in Bihar. And Karpoori Thakur may well turn out to have been the creator of a Backward Raj’.40

40

Harry W. Blair, ‘Rising Kulaks and Backward Classes in Bihar: Social Change in the Late 1970s’,  Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 15, no. 2, (12 January 1980), p. 72.

Ƃfteen CHAPTER

Reports Rural Poor and the Armed Rebels of Bihar, 1960s–70s

(While socialist politics and the Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) movement were gathering strength, the Dalits and the oppressed peasants and other communities were not sitting silently. In the agrarian milieu of Bihar marked by land dispossession, famine, and repeated draughts, peasant struggles began acquiring a militant character from the late sixties. The JP movement or the Karpoori (Thakur) style socialist politics only barely understood the rumblings below. Three accounts written in the eighties chronicled the rumblings. Kalyan Mukherjee and Rajendra Singh Yadav’s Bhojpur: Naxalism in the Plains of Bihar (1980), Arvind Narain Das’ Agrarian Unrest and Socio-economic Change in Bihar, 1900–1980 (1983) and his other writings, and the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)’s publication, Report from the Flaming Fields of Bihar: A CPI (ML) Document (1986) still remain relevant for anyone to get a sense of the autonomous strength of the militant peasant movement in Bihar at that time, and the emergence of the oppressed castes and class as the political subject. These are known writings, and we do not intend to repeat their findings here. In this chapter we reproduce (a) a report published in the organ of the CPI (ML), Liberation (1970), which gives an idea of the early phase of the Naxalite movement in Bihar; (b) two articles written by a senior police officer published in The Searchlight (Patna) in 1975; (c) some excerpts from the Flaming Fields of Bihar; and (d) an interview of a peasant revolutionary of that time, who passed away in 2010 – a rare case of a peasant warrior surviving the gruesome years and struggles. The Searchlight articles reproduced here were the second and third parts of a three-

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part serial published on 11–12 and 14 June 1975, with the series titled as ‘The Cult of Violence’. The first part (‘From Naxalbari to Ekwadi’) is more known, and was referred to by both Mukherjee and Singh, and Das. These three articles established – perhaps for the first time – an acknowledgement by the government that the agrarian movement in Bihar was changing, dalits were becoming assertive, and class war had been inflamed in the plains of Bihar. And, as the police officer Sinha claimed, responsible for this violent turn was of course Naxalbari. In this admission lay the historical importance of these articles. We hope that these four entries along with the previous two chapters will convey to the readers the complexity of the situation in Bihar during the Naxalite decade. – Ranabir Samaddar)

PEASANT GUERRILLA STRUGGLE FORGES AHEAD IN BIHAR (Liberation, Volume 3, Nos. 7–9, May–July 1970, pp. 51–53) Despite severe repression, despite attempts at encirclement, the peasants’ guerrilla struggle is developing rapidly in Bihar. It is creating panic among the class-enemies and their reactionary and revisionist lackeys while it is rousing to action the oppressed masses of peasants in newer and newer areas every day. The flames of armed guerrilla struggle have spread from North Bihar to Chotanagpur in South Bihar. Guided by Mao Tse-tung Thought and led by the C.P.I. (M-L), the revolutionary peasants of Bihar are dealing relentless blows at the tottering regime of feudal landlords and compradorbureaucrat capitalists. The brave peasants of Bihar are vigorously carrying on the battle of annihilation of class-enemies, a battle which is a higher form of class struggle as well as the starting-point of a people’s war.

Mushahari (Muzaffarpur District) Our Mushahari comrades observed May Day this year by annihilating three class enemies in two separate guerrilla actions.

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One of them was a mukhia of Shura village–the most hated man of the area. The other two belonged to the village Chaumukh. Recently, Mushahari comrades annihilated one more class-enemy. This has roused the peasant masses tremendously while alarm has gripped the minds of the class-enemies. Leaders of revisionist and other reactionary parties, headed by that arch-revolutionary Jaya Prakash [sic] Narayan, have rushed to the Mushahari Sakra-Katra region to save the landlords from their impending doom. These apologists for feudalism and imperialism are trying to rouse the people against the C.P.I. (M-L) and resorting to all kinds of trickery... (….) Today the battle of annihilation of class-enemies waged heroically by the peasantry is revealing before the people the true features of all reactionaries, renegades and scabs.

Darbhanga District In Darbhanga, peasant guerrillas led by our Party have annihilated the man who was responsible for the arrest of Comrade Umadhar Singh. This has greatly raised the morale of the peasantry.

Monghyr District In Monghyr, the armed peasant guerrilla struggle is forging ahead even after the arrest of two leaders by the reactionary police. One notorious landlord, Agarwal, has recently been annihilated by our peasant guerrillas in broad day-light. This has silenced the lying propaganda that everything is over in Surajgarha after the arrest of the two leaders. Mrs. Sunaina Sharma, M.L.A., the daughter-in-law of the Late Karyanand Sharma of the Dange revisionist clique, has openly joined hands with landlords and declared war against the revolutionary peasants led by the C.P.I. (M-L).

Purulia District The peasant’s guerrilla war led by the C.P.I. (M-L) has achieved new success in Purulia. On May 6, a small group of three guerrillas waylaid and annihilated a despotic jotedar and usurer Sudhir Kujatkar of Golconda village under Purulia Sadar Thana. On the afternoon of that day this class enemy was returning home from another village when the guerrillas attacked him not far from his

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house. As he cried in alarm and pain his brother came out to help him. But the guerrillas who had already finished off the class enemy attacked his brother and seriously injured him. The news of the annihilation of this class enemy has greatly enthused the broad masses of the toiling people of the area. It may be remembered that another class-enemy had been annihilated some time ago.

FROM TELENGANA TO TAREGANA By BN Sinha, IPS

The Searchlight, Patna, 12 June 1975 (p. 4) In the second part of the article on the cult of violence the writer compares the uprising in Telengana in Andhra Pradesh with that in Tarengana (Masaurhi) areas of the Patna district and other parts of Bihar and calls for firm action against the breakers of law. – The Searchlight

Telengana in 1949 had risen to eminence because of the uprising; simultaneously, North Bhagalpur also had had a crop of violence. When Naxalbari stole the limelight, Sirikakulam, a thickly afforested area and the home of the Girijans, the tribals, also share the same. The exploitations of the Girijans by the plainsmen were pretty old; moneylenders charged exorbitant interest and in lieu of the interest and capital, took possession of the land owned by the Girijans, even though the land could not be transferred legally to them. The discontent deepened, a condition similar to the one in the Chotanagpur belt with usurpation of lands by the moneylenders and others, abhorrently called the ‘Dikus’ (the outsiders) despite ban on sale of land to the non-Adivasis. Coincidentally, this belt, mostly in Singhbhum, Ranchi, Giridih and Hazaribagh, rocked with an orgy of violence, the first murder of a village grocer-cum-lender taking place in Mandar PS of Ranchi in the second half of 1970, followed by a chain of similar murders in the contiguous region. The wave travelled to other districts, crossed over to Monghyr town, the ripples spreading forcefully to Surajgarha and settling in Mokamesh

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PS area of Patna district, a rich alluvial tract, inundated every year by the mighty Ganga and enriched by the receding Ganga as well and peopled by rich landowners.

Naxalites’ Belief The Naxalites do not believe in parliamentary institutions or peaceful transition to socialism; on the contrary, according to them socialism cannot be attained without armed struggles. The incident of March 3, 1967 at Naxalbari was a symbolic act and reiteration of the resolve of the Naxalites to push and carry on armed struggles. It was also a step in the direction of ‘seizing the power’. The ideology and methodology are distinct: building up areas of peasants’ armed struggle in the rural areas, raising the cadre among the landless people, organizing class struggle among the broad peasant masses and transforming the latter into the guerrilla units, through a long drawn armed struggle building the people’s armed power, and ultimately, converting the struggle into a people’s war. A conceptual interpretation of all the recorded incidence of violence from Singhbhum to Patna and from Purnea to Champaran on the other side of the Ganga brings out clearly a well oriented movement punctuated with lull, recession and sudden escalation.

Topography From Telengana and Sirikakulam of Andhra Pradesh to Tarengana is a far cry; the distant vast stretches of forests and the 4000 ft high hills do have parallels in the southern-most Bihar but these disappear into plains with a tiny rail station as its silhousette located at Tarengana in the district of Patna. The hillocks of Rajgir and Gaya are not very far off, only 40–50 miles south south-east and south and the Rohtas forests and Poonpoon and Sone rivers adjacent to it. In these areas the Naxalites did entrench themselves, for the terrain was the most suitable, the people the most receptive and the moral resistances very poor. Beyond Tarengana are villages humming with typical Indian life, and divided into tolas1, each representing a culturally cohesive 1

The following terms and their translations have been provided by the editor Ranabir Samaddar. Hamlet in a village, usually formed along caste lines.

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group. These tolas, topographically and culturally torn asunder, also have been reverberating with socio-economic upheavals for long and presently, have been ideologically separated as well. Those who have lands and consequently social recognition are looked upon as Kulaks whereas those who have no lands are called the downtrodden. The group is knit by one rudiment –- the caste, but not necessarily always. There is a division among co-castemen2 and the land is generally the divisive factor. The Yadavs in Bhojour are spearheading the attack on the Bhumihars and the Rajputs and the same Yadavas are active in Patherhat against their rich co-castemen3. It is, this crux of the present struggle that requires to be grasped for it throws the class struggle in its true colour.

Tarengana Incidents It was on 9.3.72 that the nebulous annihilation programme was ushered in the tract round the Tarengana. An old man, Ramsaroop Sharma was murdered. Chandra Sharma, another septuagenarian, followed Ramsaroop to the other world on 5.4.72. The chief of the rural police of this area Ragho Singh lost his head on 18.11.72. In all these cases, persons inimical to the families were sought to be cropped in thereby giving indulgence to the activists, making the police waste time and energy. In all Birda Mushar was the ace activist. The landed elite retaliated in 1973 and killed Raghunandan Rabidas. This killing had serious socio-political ricochet in as much as there was a direct clash between the Bhumihars and the Harijans near village Dihri PS Poonpoon where from Birda hailed. And thereafter, Ramuna Singh of Khaira PS Naubatpur and police constable Krishna Kumar Dubey were beheaded. Soon there was an attack on armed police post at Isopur PS Phulwari and two rifles were looted. The police and the Naxalites had, thereafter, direct confrontation leading to the recovery of one looted rifle of Phulwari PS and another of Piro PS of Bhojpur, 2 3

‘caste brethren’. ‘caste brethren’.

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thereby focusing an inter-district ramification of an armed struggle. The confrontation and arrest of 9 Naxalites and recoveries of not only rifles but one hand grenade, 2 country-made bombs and other weapons had a deterrent effect. But by the time 1974 was drawing close, the activists had already revamped their units, gone into action, and by the year 1975 there was a cloud burst in Patherhat close to Madhuban and Deokuli and it led to the killing of Rameshwar Yadava, Adityanarain Yadava, a sarpanch, Mathura Singh, Rabho Yadava, Raghuni Yadava and burning part of village Deokuli and killing of four Awadhiyas and intensive policing of the areas. Insurgency and disturbed law and order situation are two separate situations. A normal functioning of law and order machinery envisages certain conditions; the victim goes either to the Court or to the Police; the witnesses appear to tell the story and the police moves unhampered and other agencies of administration work without any let or hindrance. All these conditions evaporate in a State where insurgency or near-insurgency prevails. If there is an insurgency, or near insurgency then all who are devoted to the common good have to plan counter-insurgency measures and restore the rule of law, which may not be the old law rather a new law, nonetheless, a law codified by the common will of the people, and thereafter, maintain order.

FROM THE GUN TO THE SUN By BN Sinha, IPS

The Searchlight, Patna, 14 June 1975 (p. 4) In the third and concluding part of the article on the cult of violence indulged in by Naxalites the writer calls for weaning away people from the activists as he feels that without the minimum support of the people order cannot be enforced. – The Searchlight

Any armed movement is generally an underground movement and its logistics involve guerrilla warfare. The guerrillas live amongst the people whose cause they champion and inspire them

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to actions with whatever weapons are locally available, and store looted arms and ammunitions for a major confrontation with the police contingents and even superior armed formations of the Establishments. They have links generally with the hostile foreign powers. They have even bases in foreign countries where literature is copiously printed and training to the cadres is imparted. These foreign countries are generally on the borders for reasons of operational facilities. Evidences of all these features operating in the context of Naxalism have been established and corroborated. Generally a rugged afforested hilly and riverine terrain is selected for conducting raids and executing annihilation programmes. The Sone bed of the Garua hills in Aurangabad, the Raum forests in Singhbhum, the bushy and thorny tracts of Madhuban-Patherhet are natural enclaves where the activists have held their training and target classes and raised their cadres. As Samuel P. Huntington has defined in modern history, the guerrilla struggles of the Chinese, the Vietnamese, the Cubans, and the Algerians are important events and guerrilla war literally means ‘small war’. The soldier of this war is a civilian soldier, irregular and non-professional. From Sahar PS to Mokama PS distinct traces of the guerrilla tactics have been found; the most daring one which took place on the evening of 21.5.75 on Sahar Canal road when CRP4 vehicle was ambushed, one Jawan was killed, two Jawans seriously injured and the vehicle’s tyre deflated, and there was an open cross fire with the contingent of CRP, BMP5, and District armed police. The activists wore Khaki uniform; used police weapons looted from the armed posts previously, and displayed trained skill. What has come about in this state is simply incidental; the landless people consist mostly of a certain type of people. The intellectual content has been provided to them by educated persons, whole time activists who hail from the rich and even sophisticated rungs of society. In a pamphlet found in circulation in the district of Nawadah this inevitable banning on the intellectuals has been acknowledged and similarly in the latest leaflet recovered in the area of Masaurhi 4 5

Central Reserve Police. Bihar Military Police.

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PS the achievements and philosophy behind all actions have been dished out.

Countermeasures Of the counter insurgency measures the following are the usual ones; concentrated police operations or operations by the special task forces may be from the supreme armed formation the army itself; simultaneous survey operations cataloguing all maladies area wise and irrespective of any political or in the context of Bihar caste affiliations, and undertaking administrative steps to remove these maladies in toto; putting in zealous and dedicated social reformers drawn from all shades to bring about transformation on the socio-cultural planes; because military defeat of the guerrilla is not enough nor can it be an end in itself and bringing in drastic legislations to stamp out all social injustices, and last but not the least, sending properly oriented personnel at all levels and in all spheres of the Government to the areas to pursue and coordinate all activities. Where the task of the police ends, the tasks of other agencies soon begin so that the political vacuum is immediately filled up with progressive programmes. At this stage the police or security forces are quartered in minimum merely to enforce law and the rest withdraw to the barracks. The Government forces have a difficult task; for clearing the areas of the violent elements the forces cannot work in a vacuum. It is not a simple question of perfecting operations but a complicated job of acting against one’s own people. The police have to have a clear orientation; it is not fighting any enemy either on one’s own territory or the foreign territory where the talk is straight and simple in direction. Here, the police are lodged against only illegally armed citizens and they police have to act within the limits of the legal commitments. The police have commitments to the Constitution and the penal laws of the country. It becomes clear that the police have to collect information and act upon them. Unfortunately, the information does not reach the police, the activists move by night and have their fixed sanctuaries in invariably which are not easy to reach. The police have no control over socio-political forces and it need not have any either. In the given

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situations the police are to protect the human targets, the armed posts, and public installations. It is to eliminate terror and enforce law within the framework of judiciary. The police have to avoid over reaction on its part.

Activist’s Role 6

At Masourhi P.S.H Quarters, Mr N. Sandhu IPS7 was seriously hit by a bomb thrown at him in a small room by the two activist young teenagers and the injured ASP8 and horrified armed policemen even then did not cause any physical harm to the arrested activists. On such occasions the police sometimes go berserk. That the police of Masourhi PS exercised utmost restraint on 22.4.75 is definitely a great event. Actually, without the minimum support of the people order cannot be enforced. The activists have to be isolated and people have to be weaned away from the activists. It is not an easy job. The socio-economic issues and the cultural complexes in the State of Bihar are clear. The Naxalite movement has escalated but time has not run out. The cry for land, treatment of equity, and recognition of the dignity of every man and every woman is vociferous. The State has to be taken out of the morass of caste; and social justice programmes have to be fulfilled with speed. Then alone the Sun that has started menacingly smiling from the distant East and collected a cloud on this land will emerge in its shine and bring bounties for all.

EXCERPTS FROM REPORT FROM THE FLAMING FIELDS OF BIHAR The Battleground and the Forces (Part I, chapter 2, pp. 9–12) The plains and forests of Bihar are ablaze. From Purnea in Palamau and Bhojpur to Bhagalpur, agricultural labourers and poor peasants 6

Police Station House. Indian Police Service. 8 Additional Superintendent of Police. 7

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are up in arms throughout the State. Armed clashes between the private armies of landlords and the peasants often running for hours together, killings of notorious landlords and murders of peasant leaders, police firings on processions and mass meetings, coldblooded murders of revolutionaries in police encounters, peasant guerrilla squads overrunning police camps to seize rifles, strikes of agrarian labourers, and landlord gangs indulging in pogroms are all regular features in today’s Bihar. The latest massacre of over 60 people at Arwal in Gaya by the Bihar Police has surpassed all previous records of police brutality and has been rightly termed as the resurrection of Jallianwallabagh on the soil of Bihar The main arena of the battle is confined to the central districts of Bhojpur, Gaya, Patna, Nalanda and Aurangabad. The immediate impact of the struggle stretches to the neighbouring districts of Nawada, Hazaribagh, Palamau and Rohtas in Bihar and, to a certain extent, also to Varanasi, Gazipur and Ballia, the bordering districts of Eastern Uttar Pradesh. The principal organizations siding with the peasants are the CPI (ML) (Liberation), the CPI (ML) (Party Unity), and the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC). In some pockets, actions of the PCC CPI (ML) and certain pro-Lin Piao groups are also active. The Chhatra-Yuva Sangharsh Vahini, an organization basing on JP’s ideas, has also developed struggles in a few pockets. While various peasant mass organizations – open, semi-open and secret – built up by different M-L groups stand in the forefront of the struggle; peasant guerrilla squads, armed with the guns and rifles seized from the landlords and the police and popularly known as the Red Army or Red Guard, provide the backbone. On the side of the landlords are ranged almost all the major political parties, the Congress (I) assuming the principal role. The CPI is most vociferous in opposing the revolutionary camp and openly colludes with the Congress (I), the landlords, and the state in splitting and suppressing the movement. For the CPI as well as the CPI (M), the latter however is the weaker partner in Bihar, the Naxalites are pitting agrarian labourers against the peasants, providing, in the process, excuses to the state for unleashing severe repression on the masses – and all this at the behest of the CIA.

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However, since different opposition parties and dissident Congress factions have contradictions with the ruling Congress as well as among themselves, they try to utilize the peasant struggle and particularly the instances of repression for their narrow political ends. The Lok Dal, the main opposition party in Bihar, alarmed as it is at its slipping hold over the harijans and backward castes, frantically opposes all class-based mobilizations of the peasantry, always striving to isolate and split the forces of revolutionary democracy. However, the same motive of protecting its own social base also makes it show concern over the repression let loose by the upper-caste landlords and the police on the agrarian labourers and poor peasants from among the harijans and backward castes. These political parties apart, there are the caste-based private armies of the landlords, propped up in collaboration with the state. Apart from the regular opposition parties there are also many splinter organizations and groups subscribing to the philosophies of Gandhi, Vinoba Bhave and JP as well as various voluntary agencies undertaking so-called developmental activities. Majority of them rely on foreign funding and work with the avowed aim of disrupting the peasant movement. However, some sections among them comprising idealist students and youths do cooperate with the forces of revolutionary democracy. Various streams of Jharkhand movement do not have any welldefined programme for the adivasi peasants. However, in some cases they do undertake struggles against eviction and exploitation by the merchants and money-lenders and for the right on forest land and forest produce, also for social progress. And at times they, too, cooperate with the forces of revolutionary democracy.

Bihar Peasants in Modern History (Part II, chapter 3, p. 15) Peasant struggles are by no means a twentieth century phenomenon in the history of Bihar. In the nineteenth century itself Bihar had witnessed scores of heroic struggles of the peasantry, the Santhal Insurrection of 1855–56, the Munda Uprising of 1899–1901, and the Indigo Revolts in the latter half of the nineteenth century being the most notable among them. However, these were all isolated instances of peasant uprising with the leadership being provided by

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the local peasant leaders themselves without any national perspective and modern ideas. In contrast, peasant struggles in the present century are marked by outside intervention right from the days of the Champaran Satyagraha of 1917 when Gandhi first began his experiments with the peasantry…

Between Independence and Naxalbari (Part II, chapter 3, pp. 23–24) After Sahajanand’s death, his close associate Karyanand Sharma sought to carry on the movement. Sharma had led the famous Barahiya Bakasht struggle of 1937–39 and disillusioned with the Congress, he later joined the CPI. It was under his leadership that the CPI waged some important agrarian struggles in the 50s, the most notable among them being the Sathi Farms struggle in Champaran. Attempts were also made to develop separate agricultural labourers’ struggle on wage demands as well as struggles on the question of the bataidars’ rights and also on issues of homestead tenancy, famine relief measures, taqavi loans, canal rent in canal-irrigated areas, sugarcane prices etc. Till his death in 1960, Karyanand was a front ranking CPI leader in Bihar and also the leader of the party’s legislative wing. During his last years, he came to lay increasing stress on organizing the agricultural labourers and poor peasants, particularly on building the Khet Mazdoor Sabha. The 1950s also witnessed intense struggles of the bataidars. In the Kosi belt the landlords were in the habit of getting vast tracts of diara land reclaimed by tenants brought in from various adjoining districts and then evicting these tenants to rent out the land to a new set of tenants at still higher rents. Since 1939 the bataidars particularly the adivasis among them, began to actively resist the landlords’ eviction bids. Soon non-adivasi bataidars were also on the move in a big way. In the 50s their struggle under the leadership of the legendary Nakshatra Malakar reached such a peak that the government was forced to undertake a fresh survey and settlement operation in Purnea in 1952. At least half of the total bataidar families came to be recorded as occupancy tenants. In a number of places bataidars were also successful in pushing the rent down to one-fourth or even stopped paying it altogether.

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As far as the CPI (M) is concerned, it has never really been active in the arena of peasant struggle in Bihar. To start with, the party launched a parallel Kisan Sabha in Champaran which began to offer passive resistance to the local tyrants. But just when this resistance started assuming an active shape on issues of social oppression, minimum wages and security of tenancy, the CPI (M) leaders compromised and switched over almost exclusively to electoral politics. In early 70s the CPI and the Socialists gave a call for ‘land grab’ movement, but the whole exercise was simply a grand show and fizzled out with a whimper.

The Advent of Naxalism (Part II, chapter 3, pp. 24–25) The late 60s and early 70s witnessed the first serious attempts at integrating revolutionary Marxism with the concrete conditions of Bihar under the impulses of the new-born Naxalbari upsurge and under the leadership of the new-born Communist Party, the CPI (ML). The protracted struggle of the Bihar peasantry entered a new phase in its development. The first breakthrough was made in the Musahari block of Muzaffarpur district in North Bihar. But the struggle there soon collapsed under strong pressures from the trinity of landlords, police and neo-Sarvodaites led by JP. The Party, having already undergone a split and the dominant section of the state Leadership itself being the forerunner of Menshevism, was no match for the massive onslaught of the enemy. On their part, the revolutionary ranks of the Party went ahead with their attempts to develop peasant struggles over a wide range of districts, both in northern (Purnea, Darbhanga, Bhagalpur, Munger) and southern (Hazaribagh, Ranchi, Palamau) parts of the State, but they could not achieve any notable success. Quite unexpectedly the movement was then found to gather momentum in Bhojpur and to a lesser extent in Patna. Unexpected, because practically the entire district committee of the CPI (M) had already come over to the fold of Naxalbari; and yet the movement could not grow beyond the stage of propaganda. However, the entire complexion underwent a great change when a new brand of leadership sprang up. This leadership had its root in the prevailing agrarian and social conditions in the district and it sought to

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provide popular forms of outlet to the mounting yet pent-up grievances of the people, including a very big rally on the demand of Harijanistan. Leading elements among these indigenous forces were already influenced by Naxalbari and Mao, and had hazy ideas about revolutionary Marxism. Combined with ex-CPI (M) leaders and guided by the Party, this core of local leadership then went on to usher in a new phase of militant peasant movement. Heroic guerrilla actions of the vanguards against notorious landlords, combined with attempts at developing revolutionary committees to mobilize the masses for seizing land and crops provided a militant, mass character to the movement right from the beginning, and gradually Bhojpur created a niche for itself in the history of peasant movements in modern India. This was the phase of complete underground and illegal activities, with stress on armed struggle in the form of guerrilla actions against individual landlords and enemy agents as well as police camps for seizure of modern arms, and on combined resistance of armed units and the people against landlords and the police. The movement went on despite heavy odds, but gradually lost much of its momentum by 1976; Patna too had already suffered serious setbacks. However, as we shall see, this was to prove but a temporary phase in what has come to be recognized as one of the most protracted and militant peasant movement in the history of modern India.

Counter-Insurgency of a Different Variety (Part II, chapter 3, pp. 25–26) If Bihar has such a prolonged history of peasant struggles, it has also been a witness to a sustained and concerted counter-insurgency move, right from the days of Gandhi, spearheaded as much by the dealers in state violence as by the champions of Gandhian nonviolence. After Gandhi, it was first Vinoba’s turn, who entered Bihar in September 1952 with his slogan of Bhoodan. The idea was to persuade the landlords to part with their excess land and share it with landless and poor peasants and Vinoba resolved to test the efficacy of his idea in Bihar. It was his declared strategy to concentrate the campaign in Bihar, and he vowed not to leave Bihar till he and his followers had collected and distributed the targeted

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amount of 32,00,000 acres of land. But when in June 1956 Bhave finally left Bihar, the figure of total collection was put at 21,47,842 only to get depleted to 21,32,787 acres by March 1966. Moreover, of this as much as 11,82,000 acres were found to be unfit for cultivation and of the rest, a considerable part consisted of legally contested land. As for distribution, the less said the better. The organizers themselves claimed to have distributed only 3,11,032 acres till March 1966 where after the campaign clearly fizzled out. Visualized as the most successful testing ground of Bhoodan by its protagonist, Bihar actually proved to be its graveyard. Bhoodan later gave way to Gramdan, and with Vinoba beating a spiritual retreat to Wardha it was now JP’s turn. JP concentrated his activities in Musahari and later in Bhojpur. Interestingly enough, the entire Musahari block was claimed to have been gifted away in the Gramdan movement. Overtly or covertly, the Sarvodayites have all along collaborated with the government to stem the tide of agrarian conflicts. Right from Vinoba’s role in Telangana and Bihar to JP’s move at Musahari and Bhojpur, from the Chhatra Yuva Sangharsh Vahini’s trips to Sahar in Bhojpur during 1977–78 to Kuldip Nayar’s recent padayatra along with Sachchidanand under the auspices of PRAYAS – all their activities are nothing but part of a wider counterinsurgency move to stamp out armed peasant struggle from the face of Bihar. As Badri Narain Sinha, DIG (Naxalite), disclosed in his article ‘From Naxalbari to Ekwari’ (The Searchlight, June 11–13, 1975), ‘putting in zealous and dedicated social reformers drawn from all shades to bring about transformation on the socio-cultural planes’ is as much a part of ‘the encounter-insurgency measures’ as ‘concentrated police operations or operations by the special task forces, may be from the supreme armed formation, the army itself’.

Agrarian Conflict in Chhotanagpur (Part II, chapter 3, pp. 26–27) Before we conclude this brief historical survey let us have a quick glance at developments in the Chhotanagpur region. Way back in 1939, the educated elite within the adivasis formed an Adivasi Mahasabha and subsequently there came into existence the Jharkhand Party (1950) centring on the demand of a separate

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Jharkhand State. Although the process of land alienation was somewhat slow in this region due to restrictions imposed by the Special Tenancy Acts, a land recovery struggle, similar in content to the anti-eviction struggle in the plains, did break out with great force in many parts of the region. This struggle took a militant turn in the early 70s with the formation of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) in 1972. Originating in the Tundi block in Dhanbad district, the JMM-led movement soon spread across the length and breadth of Chhotanagpur. Apart from spearheading the land recovery movement, the JMM also took up various constructive programmes among the adivasis such as introduction of a second crop in the region, construction of irrigation works, liquor boycott, spreading basic literacy and opening cooperative granaries. All these gave a tremendous fillip to the movement for a separate Jharkhand State. But in the process of this ‘constructive work’ and under the guidance of liberal labour leader A.K. Roy, the movement gradually lost its militant edge and as certain scholars put it, Shibu Soren was reduced to more or less an ‘agricultural extension agent’ of the government (K.G. Iyer and R.N. Maharaj, 1977). Later on, Soren severed his links with A.K. Roy and entered into an open alliance with the Congress. Alienation due to industrial acquisition has also become a very important cause of tension in Chhotanagpur with extensive expansion of mining and industrial activities.

Changing Class Composition in Bihar Villages (Part II, chapter 6, pp. 47–55) Landlords and the Kulak Lobby The landlords today comprise two sections. On the one hand, there are the feudal landlords who resort to old methods of cultivation through tenants and on the other hand, there are the junker-type capitalist landlords who generally divide their land into two parts with one part being leased out or cultivated by domestic farm servants and the other part being cultivated by hired labourers using modern means. The Mahants in Bihar are usually big landlords of the feudal-type, commanding armed private gangs of their own and often leading landlords of their respective areas in attacks on poor

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peasants. In place of the old administrative machinery of earlier zamindars, today’s landlords have at their disposal the well-knit administrative machinery of the modern state manned by thoroughly corrupt and bureaucratic government officials. In the existing socio-economic conditions of Bihar, the new landlords and kulaks enjoy consolidated economic, social and political power at Panchayat and block levels, openly in league with corrupt government officials and darogas, and caste-based mobilizations have become their new watch word in their war against the rural poor as well as in their factional infightings. Under universal suffrage and parliamentary democracy the whole complexion of politics and political parties in Bihar has undergone a thorough change and assumed the worst casteist form. It is these classes which provide leadership to the recently emerging private gangs of landlords which operate as politico-military formations. Ironically, the very sections of the better-off backward caste tenants which once provided the backbone of the erstwhile Kisan Sabha movement, have now transformed themselves into kulaks and are often found to be more aggressive than others against agricultural labourers demanding increased wages. The two Senas, vis., the Bhoomi Sena and the Lorik Sena, which have shot into the limelight in Bihar in recent years are led by backward caste elements from the Kurmis and Yadavas respectively.

Middle Peasants Middle peasants, in the true sense of the term, are found mainly among the backward castes of Koiris, Yadavas and major sections of Kurmis. The lands operated by them are either fully owned or partly owned and partly leased in from upper-caste landholders. Only occasionally do they employ hired labour. It is rare for upper-caste middle peasants to lease in land, the overwhelming majority of them either lease out their land or get it cultivated through banihars or hired labourers. However, except operating the plough, considered to be a customary taboo, a good majority of them do put in self-labour in their fields. Particularly, Bhumihar middle peasants put in hard labour, in some cases nowadays they operate the plough as well. Among the backward castes, section of Awadhia Kurmis, having

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moved up on the social ladder and encouraged by the abundant supply of cheap agrarian labour, have given up direct cultivation. Middle peasants are linked with the landlords and kulaks through numerous economic ties such as trade, money-lending, interests of the landlords, supply of credit and other input facilities from block offices and so on and so forth. And to top it all, there is the aspect of caste solidarity. Mobilized by the landlords on the basis of caste, middle peasants often serve as cannon-fodder in the former’s factional infightings as well as in their battle with agricultural labourers and poor peasants who are struggling for minimum wages and pieces of land. However, as middle peasants mainly belong to the lower castes, they face the wrath of upper-caste landlords. There are also serious contradictions concerning the share of various facilities provided by government institutions, tenancy rates, control over communal and grazing land etc. The question of building solid unity with middle peasants, who make up nearly twenty per cent of the rural population, is a question of decisive importance in tilting the balance in favour of agrarian revolution. Recent changes in the agrarian scene and caste-based rigid social divisions in the countryside of Bihar have rendered the task much more complicated. Solid unity with middle and even rich peasants belonging to the Koiris and other backward castes down the social ladder develops rather easily due to the peculiar position of these castes. Hardworking by nature and oppressed by upper-caste landlords and harassed by widespread theft and dacoity, they quickly come over to the fold of revolutionary organizations. The most complicated is the question of unity with the Yadava middle peasantry, as they often obstruct the rural poor’s struggle against the zamindars by coming in between the two conflicting sides. For instance, often when a wage or land struggle against a zamindar reaches the verge of victory, he suddenly switches over from cultivation through hired labour to that through tenants, and in effecting this switch he finds readymade takers in the Yadavas. Thus the zamindar retreats into the background while the Yadavas come to the fore and the struggle naturally loses its edge. Then there are the questions of use

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of communal land, tanks etc., and struggle against theft and dacoity. All this leads to the contradiction with them taking a serious and sharp turn. But fortunately enough, such frictions prevail only in certain pockets and are not widespread. In fact, in many other cases they are quite good allies. Regarding relations with middle peasants belonging to the Awadhia Kurmis as well as various upper castes, the main questions are those of wages, vested land and social oppression.

The Bataidars Tenancy in Bihar is generally not of the type of ‘entrepreneur renting’. Big farmers leasing in land with a view to enlarging their operational holdings to undertake large-scale capitalist farming is a rare phenomenon in Bihar where land is primarily leased in by marginal and small farmers for sheer subsistence. Various forms of tenancy are in vogue in Bihar, e.g., (a) Nagdior Manibatai: Under this system the tenant has to pay a fixed amount of rent, hether in cash or grains, regardless of the total production. The landlord plays no role in the process of cultivation. In parts of Bhojpur, the prevailing rate is 16 maunds or Rs 700 per bigha, going up to 22 maunds9 in case of better irrigation facilities. (b) Tehai: Here the landlord and the tenant equally share the land revenue, irrigation charges as well as cost of fertilizers and seeds, but the latter gets only one-third of the produce. (c) Chauthai: The landlord provides the total capital and the tenant gets one-fourth of the produce, in certain of the produce even though he provides half of the capital. In the irrigated areas of Bhojpur the yield of paddy reaches nearly 30 maunds per bigha, out of which 22 maunds have to be paid back as rent. The greater part of the 8 maunds left with the tenant is then spent on seeds and other investments for the next season. So in the kharif season the tenant is hardly able to save anything. However, in the ravi season the tenant is entitled to the entire produce. 9

16 maunds is 592 kg; 22 maunds is 814 kg; Rs 700 per bigha. In Bihar, different regions have different sizes of bigha. Near the capital, Patna, one bigha is equivalent to 20 katha; 1 katha equating to 1,361 square feet (126.4 m2).

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A case-study of tenancy practices in Musahari block of Muzaffarpur district, conducted by B.N. Verma and B.R. Mishra of Rajendra Agricultural University, Pusa, Bihar (Social Scientist, No. 135, August 1984) is worth mentioning in this connection. The study covered three villages and had the following major findings to offer. (1) Share in produce: The entire cost of cultivation is borne by the tenant, but the produce, of both main as well as byproducts and in both HYV10 and local varieties, is shared equally between the landlord and the tenant. Any sharing of cost by the landlord during a bad crop year or during some crisis is considered as a loan to be repaid immediately after the harvest. The cost of cultivation comes to 45 to 50 per cent of the total produce and the tenant, therefore, is left with as meagre a margin as 0 to 5 per cent which naturally keeps him in a perpetual bondage of debt. (2) Labour service associated with tenancy: 85.50 per cent of pure tenants and 71.43 per cent of combined tenants (those with some land of their own) have to perform compulsory labour service in the landlords’ fields for an average of 118 and 96 days a year respectively. True, they are paid wages for that, but the fact remains that to protect their tenancy they must render service in the lessors’ field and in some cases also in their houses. To some extent, their status may be compared to that of attached or bonded labourers. (3) Security and duration of lease: Land was found to be leased out for short periods and tenants were reported to be changed frequently. (4) Status of terms and conditions: Oral. The landlords were generally found to be prefer leasing out land to tenants who belonged to the lower castes, had small pieces of land of their own and large families. Moreover, they were also found to prefer leasing out their land to as many tenants as possible. This, they felt, enabled them to exercise greater control over the tenants and made the latter put in extensive labour. 10

High Yielding Variety seeds.

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The case of Musahari is by no means an isolated one, rather it represents the typical phenomenon in tenancy in Bihar, which, in its turn, constitutes a major plank of the state’s agrarian structure. As tenancy is generally oral and renewed annually, landlords try to raise the amount of rent every year. In the absence of solid organizational unity, this generates sharp competition among the bataidars themselves. Thousands of cases related to tenancy are pending in the courts of Bihar, but seldom does the judgment go in favour of the bataidars. A great majority of bataidars have to resort to the sale of their labour-power as well, and as such, they fall in the category of poor peasants. Hardly one-third of the bataidars may be classified as lower-middle or middle peasants…. The Working Group of Land Reforms, set up by the Government of India, had the following advice to the bataidars of Bihar: Landowners … are organized and aggressive … with an obliging administration on their side, they are definitely not going to give up an iota of their rights, privileges and economic dominance without a stiff fight … No law, however good it may be, in conferring, on paper, rights, title and interest to the bataidars will have the slightest chance of success unless the bataidars have a strong and militant mass organization of their own, capable of not only defending their own rights given by the law but also capable of mounting counter-action to prevent and forestall any direct attack on them. (Mainstream, Vol. 11, No. 40)

Well, when this advice is put into practice it results in Arwal-type massacres, and the Indian Parliament, the so-called representative body of the people, has no time to discuss such massacres.

Agricultural Labourers Their number has greatly increased since the 60s, particularly as a result of the large-scale eviction of erstwhile tenants in the wake of the Ceiling Act. In 1981, they accounted for 35.50 per cent of the total population of main of workers in Bihar while for India as a whole the corresponding share was only 24.94 per cent. Region-

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wise, the percentage share was highest in North Bihar, followed by South Bihar and Chhotanagpur in that order. District-wise, the percentage was highest in West Champaran (51.53), followed by Purnea (51.35) and Katihar (49.47). In Chhotanagpur, the figure was highest in Palamau (36.71) per cent, nearly double the average for the region… Low figures for agricultural labourers in the Chhotanagpur region are due to the existence of hilly tracts, prevalence of adivasi population, and the consequent special tenurial systems. However, large numbers of adivasis have migrated to the tea gardens of Assam and to North Bihar as labourers. During the cultivating seasons, one also finds them migrating to West Bengal, and nowadays to Punjab, too, in search of work as agricultural labourers. In caste terms, the agricultural labourers of Bihar have the following percentage distribution – Upper Castes: 0.3; Middle Caste: 34.2; Scheduled Castes: 39.1, Scheduled Tribes: 12.4; Muslims: 14.0 (S.R. Bose and P.P. Ghosh, Agro-Economic Survey of Bihar). Agricultural labourers in Bihar can be broadly classified into the following three categories: (a) Banihars or Charwahas: They are actually attached labourers, working in the landlords’ fields on an annual contract basis. They are allotted little pieces of land, varying in size from 5 kathas to 1 bigha (20 kathas make one bigha, but the size of a bigha varies greatly from one region to another; in Bhojpur, 1.5 bighas may be roughly equivalent to 1 acre.); for their own cultivation, and during agricultural sessions they receive wages for their daily work at par with daily wage labourers. In some areas, the landlord demands a share of what is produced on the allotted land, but the general practice is that the landlord, having advanced the seeds, take back one-and-a-half times the amount advanced when the crop is harvested. Debt burdens force them to stay attached with the landlord, in some cases for generations, and often they are made to work as domestic servants as well. (b) Land-owning Labourers. Although, they own small pieces of land, for their subsistence they are forced to rely mostly on their work as wage labourers.

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(c) Landless Labourers: Their number is not quite high and they are heavily under-employed. Recent years have witnessed a tremendous increase in their migration to Punjab where the wages are quite high in comparison to Bihar. In Bihar, their daily wages range from 750 grams to 2 kgs of wheat or rice, or Rs 2 to Rs 10 in cash. During harvesting season, they receive one out of every 10 bundles of crops harvested as wages. The wages differ greatly due to different factors, the foremost of which is the state of their organized strength. Full-time free wage labourers working in modern capitalist farms or in areas of cash crops are quite an exception in Bihar. The struggles of agricultural labourers revolve around the issues of wage, dwelling land, interest rates, communal, government, surplus, and benami lands under the occupation of landlords and rich peasants; water resources; fishing; social oppression and so on and so forth. Moreover, in Bihar, unemployment, not to speak of underemployment, is widespread among agricultural labourers and they have no avenues open to them for moving to industrial centres. Apart from the struggle for the rise in wages, one also finds agricultural labourers quite eagerly participating in struggles for land, both for the purpose of dwelling as well as self-cultivation. Even if sometimes they managed to get parchas from the government officials, the land remained under the illegal control of gun-totting landlords. Any protest on their part is met with immediate attacks by the landlords. With their hamlets surrounded and set ablaze, property looted, women raped, and dear and near ones killed by the merciless landlords and their mercenaries, dissenting agricultural labourers are either forced to surrender or made to flee the village. It is this situation that is being challenged today by the agricultural labourers of Bihar, under the leadership of the communist revolutionaries and with the aid of their own armed squads. Not only the agricultural labourers, but the poor and lowermiddle peasants and the half-labourer-half-tenants are also there in the forefront of the struggle, and in this they enjoy the support of sizeable sections of the middle peasants, too. And the targets are the landlords rural poor.

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The pages that follow will bring you the saga of this heroic struggle. Over then, to the flaming fields of Bihar.

The Great Upheaval (Part III, chapter 7, pp. 59–63) If in the wake of the lifting of the black curtain of the Emergency the country witnessed a general awakening among various social classes and strata, Bihar saw a veritable upheaval of the peasantry. The years 1977–80 were marked by various new types of initiatives on the part of our Party forces, culminating in the emergence of a host of local-level mass organizations – Kisan Sanghas (peasant associations), Sangharsha Samitis (action committees), Jan Kalyan Samitis (people’s welfare committees) and so on and so forth – in different parts of rural Bihar. Under the leadership of these organizations, peasants began to voice their long-standing yet immediate demands, holding meetings, taking out processions, and staging demonstrations before all sorts of government officials from the Block Development Officers to the District Magistrates. Though the issues and forms of protest varied from one place to another, on the whole, the following issues emerged as the major focal points—stopping all atrocities on the oppressed classes and castes and meting out punishment to the offenders; enforcement of the minimum wages act; distribution of surplus and vested land among landless and poor peasants; provision of adequate irrigation facilities; regular supply of electricity, seeds and fertilizers at cheaper rates; disbursement of drought relief and agricultural loans among deserving peasants; fair compensation and rehabilitation in case of displacement; weakening and liquidating landlords’ control over all communal properties; opposing various corruptions and malpractices of government officials and the police, and so on. Strikes were conducted to secure increases in wages, attempts were made to capture vested land, some notorious thieves and dacoits were punished at some places, and during the days of drought the rich landed gentry was asked, and at times forced, to contribute foodgrain for the sustenance of the rural poor. This was the period of the Janata rule both in the Centre and at the State. At the helm of affairs in Bihar was the ‘Socialist’ Karpoori Thakur, the self-styled messiah of the backwards and

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harijans. Meanwhile, our Party had undergone a thoroughgoing rectification campaign, leading to the drastic changes in the Party line in accordance with our appraisal of the post-Emergency situation. Undoubtedly, this played a profound part in ridding our work among the Bihar peasants of all the old rigidities and dogmatic notions, and consequently, in unleashing the unprecedented peasant upsurge that soon shook the plains of Central Bihar, with Patna standing in the forefront. And with the formation of the Bihar Pradesh Kisan Sabha (BPKS, 23 February 1981), the whole process got a new fillip. The BPKS came up with a comprehensive programme and started coordinating all local-level activities, gradually raising them to district-level and even to State-level. And finally, as an important constituent of the People’s Front, it began to rally the peasantry in general democratic movements as well. The year 1981–82 witnessed a veritable storm of peasant struggle that brought to the fore miraculous potentialities inherent in the organized strength of the rural poor. Thousands of peasants rose in waves of mass movements, protests and resistance struggles with whatever arms they had in their possession. They assembled in mammoth mass meetings to voice their demands and to proclaim their determination for relentless struggle. Demonstrations and militant gheraos became a normal feature. The cruellest among the landlords and their criminal gangs were taken as targets. The upsurge (concentrated in Patna and adjoining areas of Gaya and Nalanda districts) mainly centred on: • Smashing the control of the landlords over village properties (tanks, common land, etc.) and bringing them under the control of the village people; • Wage-increase; • Seizure of vested land held illegally by the landlords; • Smashing feudal social oppression; • Curbing social evils like theft and dacoity; • Curbing oppression of women, especially harijan women; • Smashing armed gangs of the landlords; and • Resisting police atrocities. Demonstrations, mass meetings, gheraos, strikes, masses in their hundreds and thousands encircling thanas (police stations) and

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forcing the authorities to release their arrested comrades, executions of notorious landlords and their musclemen, snatching firearms from the landlords’ armed gangs and from tyrant landlords as well as from the police-these were the main forms of struggle through which the peasants vented their ire. The landed gentry were very much robbed of their habitual ‘special privileges’. Utmost care was taken not to hurt those who were not among the listed targets of struggle, even in the face of serious provocations on the part of many such persons who, because of caste prejudices or for some reasons or other, indulged in certain hostile acts against the downtrodden. Village committees sprang up like mushrooms after the first rain, and peasants displayed exemplary solidarity, militancy and tenacity. Often, a single village of a cluster of 5 to 10 villages emerged as the leading centre for an entire area covering 50 to 60 villages. Braving severe repression, the people at these centres put up heroic resistance against constant enemy attacks. The movement went through a number of ups and downs, and in the process, there emerged in each centre (i) a small but strong leading group of Party elements (popularly known as aua, i.e., the vanguard), (ii) local armed squads, and (iii) powerful village committees, generally the village units of the peasant association. As a rule, these centres fall within the interior boundary of the areas of operation of the regular armed units. In such areas, mass participation in meetings and demonstrations has jumped from 100 to 10,000 or more, and armed resistance against landlords and their henchmen by a few has given way to armed mass resistance involving hundreds of peasants. If a village or tola (hamlet) is attacked, hundreds of peasants from neighbouring villages rush with arms and join forces with the resistance. Following are some such major storm centres where the peasant struggle has decidedly entered the phase of large-scale agitations embracing thousands of masses: • Sikandrpur-Lahsuna (Poonpoon-Naubatpur-Masaurhi border belt of Patna district), • Narhi-Pirhi (northern part of Bikramblock bordering Pali and Naubatpur block in Patna district), • Mathila (Dumraon block of Bhojpur district),

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• Baruha (Nawanagar-Brahmapur-Jagdishpur border belt in Bhojpur district), • Masarh (the belt bordering Hilsa and Ekangarsarai blocks of Nalanda, Ghosi block of Gaya and Dhanarua block of Patna) and • Kaithi (Obra-Daudnagar-Hanspura border belt in Aurangabad district). While retaining and consolidating its grip over the old areas of struggle, the upheaval has also spread to newer areas, covering 26 of the 38 districts of Bihar. In terms of the emergence of stable centres of struggle, and intensity and expansion of work, these twenty six districts can be divided into three categories. In the first category fall those districts where work has spread to well over three-fourths of the district, the struggle is most intense and is marked by regular occurrence of armed clashes and guerilla operations. Rural areas of Patna and Gaya, the entire district of Bhojpur along with a few adjoining blocks of Rohtas district, and the districts of Nalanda and Aurangabad constitute this category. The second category comprises districts where work has spread to several pockets, and where the struggle has reached the level of mass movements with occasional instances of mass resistance and armed clashes. The remaining blocks of Rohtas and the districts of Nawada, Hazaribagh, East Champaran, Madhubani, Vaishali, Begusarai, Muzaffarpur, Darbhanga, Bhagalpur, Purnea, Giridih and Palamau fall in this category. Work in the third category districts is confined to certain pockets and is still at the level of propaganda and organization. In some of these districts mass movements did take place in the past, but the movement as well as the organization could not be sustained. The districts of Siwan, Samastipur, West Champaran, Munger, Gopalganj, Madhepura, and Ranchi belong to this category. In all, our work has spread to nearly 140 blocks of these 26 districts (each district has on an average 14 to 16 blocks and each block in its turn, covers some 100 villages). In the region under the first category, 60 blocks out of 90 are under the grip of peasant movement, and to be more specific, the struggle is highly intense

426 RURAL POOR AND THE ARMED REBELS OF BIHAR, 1960S-70S

in 26 blocks. The combined rural population of this region is over one crore.

The Reactions (Part III, chapter 8): ‘The Rural Poor: The Worst Trouble-makers’ (pp. 83–84) For the landlords and the government, the rural poor are the real ‘trouble-makers’. That is why, despite all tall talks about the welfare the upliftment of the harijans and other weaker sections of the society, it is they who become the first and foremost victims of each and every punitive campaign let loose by the landlords and the government. Their houses are ransacked and set ablaze, their women raped and the men arrested, beaten and killed indiscriminately. Their leaders are put behind the bars under the NSA11 or Bihar Crime Control Act, or simply killed in fake encounters (like the case of Dr Gopal Prasad in Hilsa, Nalanda, or Jiut and Sahato, who were killed when asleep). In contrast, one never hears of raids of Bhoomi Sena dens, or of arrests of Bhoomi Sena chieftains. All police repression is directed almost exclusively against the rural poor, simply because they dare to aspire for a better life and have learnt to press for their rights. As against this view of the establishment, those who are on the side of agrarian movements look upon the rural poor as the vanguards. Of course, they do not deny that the rural poor, too, have their share of drawbacks. The curse of casteism apart, there are various other corrupting influences of the semi-feudal society (like gambling, liquor addiction, theft etc.). But with the development of the movement and the organization, the poor are fast ridding themselves of these vices. Throughout these long years of struggle, it is the rural poor who have proved to be the most consistent force standing at the head of the movement – be it the period of only underground and illegal activities as in the past or of both legal and illegal activities as in the present, be it the period of severe repression or of widespread upsurge. It is they who have always borne the brunt of all barbarous repression, and have yet stood firmly in the forefront – whether 11

National Security Act.

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in elections, in demonstrations and rallies on general demands, in resistance movements against police atrocities and landlords’ attacks, in struggles for democratic rights (the movement for the withdrawal of the Bihar Press Bill for instance), or in various other programmes of the Indian People’s Front. They are the real vanguards; they are the nucleus in all local organizations of the Kisan Sabha and the Party as well as in the armed units.

A PEASANT WARRIOR OF EKWARI (The text of the following interview, titled, ‘An Extraordinary Ordinary Man’, was written after a conversation with Ramnaresh Ram in Delhi on the eve of the ‘Daam Bandho-Kaam Do’ (‘Check prices, give us jobs’) rally organized by IPF (Indian People’s Front) on 8 October 1990. It appeared in the 23 September–6 October 1990 issue of Samkaleen Janmat. This is possibly the only occasion on which he spoke in any detail to any magazine about his life and struggles. We acknowledge – http://archive.cpiml.org/liberation/ year_2010/dec_10/special.html – from where we took the excerpt. – Ranabir Samaddar)

Meeting this living legend, one would not think that he has crossed the age of 66. What is striking is his simplicity and endearingly resolute personality. Listening to comrade Ram Naresh Ram is an experience in itself which gives us an insight into history and makes us understand why, in spite of attacks by the ruling classes and frenzied talk of its demise, Naxalbari has not died, and why it will remain alive. Asked how he feels when he looks back on his life, Comrade Ram Naresh smiles. At first he is not willing to walk down the memory lane with us, especially so where personal memories are concerned, preferring instead that we remain with the present political challenges and his vision for the future. Still, when he was finally persuaded to talk about past days, it was as if a whole new window to history opened up. The first spark of Naxalbari in Bihar actually fell in Musahari but it was soon extinguished. This spark was once again ignited in Ekwaari village and took the form of a raging fire in the Bhojpur revolution which could never again be extinguished. When this

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spark fell in Ekwaari, the three who came forward to pick it up and carry the torch are well known in the Bhojpur revolution as the trio of ‘Mahto, Paswan and Yadav’ – Master Jagdish Prasad, Ramnaresh Ram, and Rameshwar Ahir (Sadhuji). With them were Comrade Ramayan Ram and Comrade Baijnath Choudhury who were part time workers in name only; they used to work as much as, and in some aspects more than, full time workers. They were all from Ekwaari. When Comrade Ram Naresh turns his eyes to the past, they light up with the memories of these names. He tells us that he was born in Ekwaari in 1924 in a poor landless family; they lived on the landlord’s land. The family gave bonded labour for the landlord. ‘My great grandfather did “banihari” (worked as an attached labourer) with this same landlord. Although my family had no thought of my schooling, I got an education up to middle school. A boy from the neighbourhood motivated me to go to the school with him. When I went there, I saw that many boys shouting out their lessons aloud. I felt that this was another world; if I also studied I too would shout out loud like this and start reading books. The class teacher asked me my name and whether I wanted to study and I said, “Yes!” That very day I was admitted to the children’s class although I had not taken the admission fee with me. In those days the admission fee for the children’s class was two annas. Back in my home, they were searching for me, worried at my unexplained absence. The school was a mile away from home. When I returned at 5 in the evening, I was about to be thrashed! But when I explained that I had gone to school and enrolled and had to pay a fee of two annas, my father was very happy. He was poor but very courageous in social matters. It was he who first inspired me to take part in politics. Due to poverty I was often absent from school but as this did not affect examinations, the teachers were affectionate to me and did not bother too much about attendance. Poverty, the absence of schooling after middle school in the village, and my getting involved in the 1942 movement, were the reasons I did not study further after middle school.’ ‘I was influenced by the voice of peasants’ rebellion in Telengana, its suppression, and the news of the hanging of comrades Balu, Balan, and others. At that time the Communist Party newspaper Naya

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Savera was calling for collection of funds to fight the false charges slapped on the comrades. I also got involved in fund collection and joined the Communist movement in 1948, although the man instrumental in making me join this movement was a racketeer himself. I think his name was Sinhasan. We soon got to know of his dishonesty. Whatever funds we had collected, he spent the money to buy utensils for his home instead of sending it to the Party. As soon as we came to know this, he was thrown out of the Party cell. We started searching anew for people who were Communists. Not long after, Satya Narayan Singh, who was underground at that time, arrived in our midst, stayed for a week, organized us, and conducted an education programme. Then the Communist Party was formed in our area and I got membership in 1951. Then the Party was working in the open. At that time my political understanding was very little; but debates over socialist revolution and people’s democratic revolution were coming to the fore and caught my attention too. Earlier the work of the Communist Party was mainly urban based, especially in the industrial cities. But later, especially in Bihar, work in rural areas started to be emphasized. ‘There was an on-going debate over the party line in the Communist Party which was aggravated by the India-China war. The Party was divided into three groups. All these events were creating turmoil in my heart. The policy of the CPI of “bearding the lion in its own den”, that is, of fighting the system through parliamentarianism, was opposed as being parliamentary cretinism, prey to blind nationalism, and embracing the policy of peaceful transition, i.e. straying away from the path of armed struggle. The party broke and the CPI (M) was formed. ‘In the beginning the CPI (M) seemed to take up the line of the people’s democratic revolution by talking of armed struggle, of opposing parliamentarianism and following internationalism. However, in reality they started treading the same path as the CPI. On the pretext that circumstances were not yet ripe for revolution, they began hobnobbing with a section of the ruling classes, and are still doing so today. But in those days, in spite of seeing the shortcomings of the CPI (M), I was with them as they appeared more progressive than the CPI.

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‘Anyway, we were busy in the task of organizing and preparing the peasants for militant struggles. Our village Ekwari has a large population – the second most-populated in Bhojpur district. It had a considerable bhumihar population and was known as a bhumihar village. But taken together, the total population of backward, dalit, religious minorities, etc, was three times that of the bhumihars. Although from an economic point of view there was no big zamindar, these so-called zamindars enjoyed great power because of their caste and they perpetrated very cruel oppression in social matters. In 1965 I was elected the Mukhiya (head) of the Ekwari Gram Sabha. Even after I won, some people held a caste meeting to plot against my life. However, seeing people’s mobilization here, they did not dare to do so. Then came the Assembly election of 1967. I stood again as the candidate of the CPI (M). Comrade Jagdish Master was our election agent in this election. The lathi wielding young men of the zamindars had already conspired to attack and capture the booths and had created havoc. Master sahib and I reached the place, challenged some false voters, and had them arrested. At this, they locked me up in a house and started beating up Master Jagdish. Some people came to his aid, but they were also beaten unconscious. They left Master Jagdish for dead. One of the workers took Comrade Jagdish home. Even in this injured condition, Master sahib resolved to avenge the attack and demolish feudal “pride”. Meanwhile Comrade Rameshwar (Sadhuji) came back from jail influenced by the politics of the CPI (M) and joined hands with us to begin his journey in the Communist movement. ‘Meanwhile the spark of Naxalbari rebellion reached the soil of Bihar, but in spite of being influenced by that line, I remained away from the organization of the CPI (ML) till 1970 and remained with the CPI (M). The reason for this was that the Bihar leadership of the CPI (ML) was in the hands of Satyanarayan Singh, of whose activities I was well aware and unhappy with. These were the reasons why Comrade Jagdish and Sadhuji joined the organization but left it again. Then began the search for proper leadership, which we eventually found… ‘In the beginning we propagated party politics among youth and students. Many students and young people left home and

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dedicated themselves to organizing the poor landless farmers. Seeing this, priority was given to political intervention and the region was divided. Before this re-organization peasants’ movement had emerged in Musahari in Bihar, but now it suffered a setback. The main speciality of Bhojpur was that firstly it was the centre of militant peasants’ movement, and secondly the leadership here was in the hands of local youth and older experienced people who were full of the spirit of sacrifice, and were totally selfless… ‘In the era after the martyrdom of Charu Majumdar Master Sahib (Jagdish Master) was elected member of the Bihar State Committee. However, he was martyred before he could attend even a single meeting of the State. He had written in his diary and used to say, “One cannot predict when a leader of a revolutionary party will become martyred, so every comrade must be mentally prepared to shoulder the responsibilities of any area at any time.” Such was the wisdom of the comrades thanks to which a stable party organization was built in Bhojpur…’

four

SECTION The Cultural Struggle: A Small Anthology

sixteen CHAPTER

Introducing the Anthology Sumanta Banerjee

T

he stories collected in this volume invoke images from an important scenario in the history of Indian politics – the Naxalite movement of the late 1960 and mid 1970 period in West Bengal – focused mainly on Calcutta in those days. Although well-documented in various books, and familiar to old-timers, the origins of this movement may be briefly recapitulated to meet the curiosity of the new generation of readers in India, as well as those abroad. The name originated from Naxalbari – an area in the northeastern tip of India, bordering Nepal on the west, Sikkim and Bhutan on the north, and East Pakistan on the south, where a peasant uprising lasted for a brief period during March-July 1967. It was led by a group of radical Communist ideologues and activists, who, belonged to the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI (M), which at that time was a partner of a coalition called the United Front that ruled West Bengal. These radicals challenged their own party leadership by putting into action what the CPI (M) had pledged to implement – in occupation of lands illegally owned by landlords, redistribution of lands among the poor peasantry, cancellation of all debts owed to moneylenders, among other things. In response, the CPI (M) ministers acceded to the United Front Government’s decision to unleash the police on the rebel peasants. On 25 May that year, the police opened fire on a crowd of villagers in Prasadjote in Naxalbari, killing nine, including six women and two children which led to

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an explosion of fury among the peasants who clashed with the landlords and the police all through the months of June and July. At the end of July, the United Front Government launched a major police action in Naxalbari, resulting in the rounding up of the peasant activists and their leaders. With that a lull set in in Naxalbari itself – which continues till now. But while Naxalbari itself existentially retreated into the background, its name remained etched in history to designate a revolutionary movement that continues to challenge the present Indian state in its reincarnation as what is known as the Maoist movement. In 1967, despite the state’s success in crushing the uprising in Naxalbari within a few months, nothing could be quite the same in Indian politics again. Naxalbari found echoes far and wide all over India as the Hindi poet Kumar Vikal was to write soon: This simple word of four syllables Is not just the name of a village But the name of the whole country.

Inspired by the news of the rebellion there, peasants in other parts of the country rose in revolt against the age-old economic and social exploitation by landlords, mainly under the leadership of the dissident Communist revolutionaries — notably in Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh and Bhojpur in Bihar among other states. They took up arms to oust the oppressive landlords from their villages and resist the police which came to protect the landlords. Their rebellion drew the sympathy of the urban intelligentsia. There were demonstrations of solidarity with these peasants by students and intellectuals in cities like Calcutta, New Delhi and Hyderabad. Both the militant expression of protests among the peasantry and its support among sections of the urban intelligentsia, combined to encourage the creation of a new political party – Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) or CPI (ML) in 1969, which announced its programme of rural based armed revolution, inspired by the model of strategy and tactics that was fashioned by Mao Tse-Tung in China some forty years ago. Drawn by the message of this new party, during the 1960-70 period, quite a number of middle class

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young students from prestigious institutions like Presidency College in Calcutta, and St. Stephen’s College in Delhi, left their studies and went to the villages to join the peasantry and share their experiences of fighting the landlords and the police. Those followers who stayed back in Calcutta and other towns carried out the CPI (ML) urban programme of guerrilla warfare, which assumed spectacularly violent forms like daring assaults on police personnel and snatching away of their weapons to build up their own arsenal. Driven by an anti-Naxalite paranoia, the administration retaliated by unleashing a reign of terror in Calcutta and neighbouring districts in West Bengal, which indiscriminately targeted every youth. With increasing help from the Centre which sent its paramilitary and army soldiers, the state police’s counteroffensive against the Naxalites (followers of the CPI (ML) began to gain momentum from the last quarter of 1970. Curfews were declared in Calcutta and other towns, and combing operations were launched during which homes were raided, and young members of their families used to be dragged out and holed up as suspected Naxalites, and no rights under the law were allowed them. If caught, they were summarily killed — their bodies sometimes displayed on the roads and publicized as trophies by the police. It is this tragic history that is the backdrop of the stories in this volume. Debesh Roy’s ‘Human Gems’ written in the vein of black comedy looks at corpses galore through the eyes of an ex-judge who is entrusted with the task of investigating into the causes of the proliferation of these dead bodies and is led to delving into the murky depths of the façade of ‘democracy’ that hides the policepolitician-bureaucrat collusion. What Debesh Roy describes is not a fictional nightmare. Contemporary newspaper reports bear testimony to what was happening in Calcutta in the 1970s. Here for instance is one such report carried by the well-known Bengali newspaper Ananda Bazar Patrika dated 21 November 1970: Late at night on 17 November, a huge posse of armed police surrounded the CIT building at Beliaghata and carried out a ruthless search of each and every one of the 556 flats there. The police arrested over 100 young men, took four of them to a lonely

438 INTRODUCING THE ANTHOLOGY quadrangle, made them stand in a single file and then killed them by riddling their bodies with bullets. There was no semblance of a clash…

Tapobijoy Ghosh’s ‘Midnight Knock’ vividly recalls the trauma that middle class parents faced in those nights of curfew and police combing operations, when they were woken up by the ominous knocks on their doors. His story again, reflects the lived experiences of such parents, like the following one, which was reported in a Bengali weekly. On 1 March 1971, a gentleman called Hiralal Pal was giving lessons to his children in his house in Ashokenagar near Calcutta. His teenaged son Asit, who was ill, was listening to the radio evening news. What followed can be best described in his own words: Suddenly there was aloud bomb blast… We all sat silently. At about 8.00pm, on hearing sounds of banging at my door, I rushed to open it. As soon as I flung it open, about seven or eight military personnel entered by room, dragged every one of us, searched our rooms and shouted at us saying we had thrown bombs at the military. Not even my wife, my little child, my two daughters could escape their outrage…. The military personnel dragged my sick son from the bed and poked his chest with their rifles…. After a lot of obscene abuse and interrogations, disregarding our pleas they took away Asit…. All the arrested boys were made to sit in the street surrounded by the military. Asit was dressed in a lungi and short only…. After some time, we heard his voice – ‘Baba’ – ‘Ma’ (father – mother)…. We next heard the sound of shots. Darpan, 19 March 1971

Tapobijoy Ghosh’s story ends with a counter-knock on the doors of society. Bhudhar Babu, a typical Bengali elderly school teacher, finally decides to protest when his neighbourhood one midnight is besieged by the police and everyone cowers in fear of a knock. He comes out on the veranda and shouts out at his neighbours to resist ‘…Wake up – all of you – wake up…’ Tapobijoy’s other story – ‘Release Them’ – takes us into the depths of the heart of a middle-aged mother, whose son is imprisoned as a Naxalite in a jail during the Indira Gandhi-imposed Emergency in 1975-76.

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When reading it I remembered a song composed by Vipul Chakravarti demanding the release of all political prisoners (most of them were Naxalites): Oder mukti chai, mukti chai Ora Khudiram-er bhai Ora Bhagat Sing-er bhai Ora Sidhu Kanhur bhai Ora Titumeer-er bhai Oder mukti chai (We demand their release They are the brothers of Khudiram and Bhagat Singh They are the brothers of Sidhu and Kanhu They are the brothers of Titumeer We demand their release)

It was by a brilliant stroke of his pen, that Vipul Chakravarti brought together the Naxalite prisoners along with the martyrs of the freedom movement and the heroes of the anti-colonial peasant movement of the past within a common poetic narrative of revolutionary protest. Vipul Chakravarti’s verses became the rallying cry in street demonstrations in Calcutta (following the lifting of the Emergency in 1977), demanding the release of Naxalite prisoners. Since these stories were written, a new generation of political activists has emerged on the Indian political scene during the last fifty years, who derive their inspiration from the original impulses of the Naxalbari rebellion, and its ideological underpinning. But why did the Naxalite resistance fail at that time? Ashim Ray’s two stories delve into this grey area of self-introspection in the Naxalite movement. ‘Ani’ is a sensitive record of the crisis faced by old Communist parents and the generation gap from their son who rebelled and drifted into the Naxalite movement in the late 1960 period. His other story ‘Homecoming’, captures the sense of frustration and defeat among the Naxalite cadres in the early 1970s, at a time of divisions and disagreements among their leaders. Home coming is in a sense a metaphor for political self-introspection – returning to your past for an honest re-examination of both the

440 INTRODUCING THE ANTHOLOGY

achievements and failures of the movement. It reminds me of the Punjabi poet Surjit Pattar’s poem Ghar Lotna Mushkil Hai Aj (To go back home now is difficult) – composed in the late 1970s, where he poignantly describes the existentialist and ideological dilemma of the Naxalite activists of those days: ‘Who will recognize us? Death has put its mark on the forehead, Friends have left their footprints on the face… My mother will be scared. She’ll wonder – My son has aged Whose curse had made him so? To go home now is difficult... How many suns have set? How many gods have died?

These questions are metaphors for the sad and complex relationship between the revolutionaries and their domestic roots, and their attempts to replace the `setting suns’ and ‘dying gods’ of their ideology with new suns and gods. These questions still remain relevant, and need to be addressed by the present generation of the Maoist leadership. Over the last decades, the shape of Maoist resistance against state atrocities has undergone a dynamic change. The Maoist movement has acquired military strength to be able sometimes to wreak havoc on the state’s para-military forces (e.g. their attacks on CRPF jawans in Chhattisgarh through the use of the most sophisticated weaponry). But the increasing militarization of the movement has its flip side too. It is eroding its ideological base. With the arrest and killing of a large number of its ideologues and top political leaders, the Maoist armed cadres are bereft of any guidance. They often degenerate into apolitical gangs of extortionists and revengeful killers, who target non-combatant citizens. The present leaders of the Maoist movement will have to go through a painful process of self-introspection – a `homecoming’ of sorts – to restore the moral spirit that originally inspired the Naxalite movement in the past. Something of that spirit is captured in these stories that were written in those tumultuous decades of the 1960s and 1970s.

seventeen CHAPTER

Palpable Reality of Fiction Subranshu Maitra

All changed, transformed utterly, A terrible beauty is born. W. B. Yeats

A

ll the six short stories in this section mirror the pain and turmoil of the city of Calcutta in the 70s when Naxal Movement was at its peak. Ani [in Ani] is that rare individual—the locus classicus—who clinically distils the agony and the dilemma of the young protagonists of 1970-71 and invests the denouement with a kind of grimness which hasn’t ceased to haunt us even today. Aniruddha or, Ani for short, who is all of twenty years and impatient and eager for revolution, is the archetypal Naxalite revolutionary with all the markers of his political class and time coming alive in everything that he says or does. He is contemptuous of, and rejects the entire heritage of what is popularly called the Bengali Renaissance and Indian nationalism of the 19th and 20th centuries. He traces his political lineage from the ‘yeh azadi jhuta hai’ [this is a false freedom] kind of Left-wing extremism resorted to by the Communist Party of India (CPI) in the late 1940s and early 50s prior to its acceptance of the parliamentary path in 1952. He was reasonably certain that Calcutta was going to be liberated soon as a result of the continuous onslaught of the Naxalite urban guerrilla squads. He proudly reminds his father—a former communist—of this imminent triumph. On the other hand, his father is doing his

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utmost to save his son’s life by getting him out of Calcutta, now turned into a macabre slaughterhouse. This suicidal and fratricidal radicalism which led to vandalizing iconoclasm, somewhat naively, pinned immense hopes on a Maoist revolution that would transform India into an earthly paradise. In all this, Ani unerringly resembles and represents his countless counterparts in the 70s in Calcutta and elsewhere in the country. One can trace this reaction to the highly histrionic and ideological propaganda unleashed on impressionable minds by the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist). Ani is one such person. This kind of ideological propaganda fuelled the Naxalite revolt in the 1960s and ‘70s in different parts of India at a very high cost. Ani lays bare another dreadful aspect of fratricidal and sectarian inter-party violence prevalent during those nightmarish times when individual political parties were pitted against one another and all were jointly pitted against the Naxalites. The cadres were baying for their opponent’s blood by hunting each other down. Ani escapes death by the skin of his teeth when his home is attacked and ransacked by anti-Naxalite vigilantes of the other parties, presumably out to avenge the death of their cadres killed by the Naxalites. Later, Ani is shot dead by the police and maligned as an anti-social thief, when savage anti-insurgency crackdown by the state begins to overwhelm and root out the movement. Suspended between his own communist past and his son’s precarious present, the father is caught in the web of futile ideological wrangles. To placate his mind, he sometimes tries to interrogate events and tries to keep his son out of harm’s way. But destiny finally catches up with Ani. There are, among us, many men and women in their late fifties or early sixties who encountered figures like Ani and his unfortunate parents in their own youth. Midnight Knock is another riveting story that mirrors the late phase of the 1970-71 Naxalite experience. The first part of the story shows the movement in full cry—urban guerrillas coming together, forming secret squads and ambushing ‘class enemies’. The latter part shows the state striking back with fierce violence which takes a heavy toll on innocent lives, trampling underfoot

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all human rights. But resistance, though feeble at first, begins to gain momentum through figures like Bhubanbabu who, instead of choosing to play safe, decides to rally people and take a stand against police excesses. Resistance such as the one in the Midnight Knock went on gaining strength and culminated in the mid-1970s in the ‘Bandimukti Andolan’ demanding the release of almost 20,000 young men and women held in the jails of West Bengal, which is the main theme of the story Release Them. Corpse Worship is a frightening story. It is about police sadism often perpetrated in Lalbazar, the police headquarters in the heart of Calcutta in those days under the garb of interrogating the Naxalite accused. The fiendish police officer seen in action in the story is a very familiar type. This type first surfaced among the colonial police under the British Raj and has continued to flourish instead of becoming extinct after 1947. The sadist police officer is also a coward at heart. After he has all but tortured Suman’s wife to death by inflicting a miscarriage on her and shot dead Suman himself, the psychopathic police officer is frightened and becomes a morbid wreck. Morally defeated by his prisoners who never yield, he’s left wallowing in his foul mire of depravity and cowardice. The way Suman was killed was the standard operating procedure perfected by Calcutta Police for staging fake encounters. Perhaps the most famous victim of such fake encounters is Saroj Dutta— celebrated Naxalite ideologue, columnist and poet. Reminiscent of Jonathan Swift at his mordant best when he recommends a diet of the flesh of Irish children for the British, Debesh Roy in his Human Gems produces a tremendous satire on the spectacular display of sectarian violence and mayhem perpetrated by the state and society during the Naxalite revolt. In 1971 genocidal attacks were mounted by semi-fascist statesponsored vigilantes in which the police amply connived in Calcutta’s suburbs and localities (Kossipore, Baranagar, Barasat, Jadavpur, Behala, etc.). These areas were believed to be the last bastions of the Naxalites who had already been effectively routed out from the Bengal countryside as a result of ruthless police and military operations.

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The narrator who is heading a judicial enquiry into one such carnage perpetrated in the northern suburbs of Calcutta has mentally regressed into a state where he is unable to react to human tragedy but is instead entirely preoccupied with the nitty-gritties of how to prove the various factual details of the murders. These are bewildering in their ghastly ramifications and tend to uncontrollably widen the scope of the enquiry till it is completely dehumanized. This continues till it is increasingly seen that the carnage is but a fearsome syndrome of a deeper malaise which is driving the entire society including the erudite author himself back into regressive states of primal savagery and disintegration of personality apparent in the loss of language and functional imagery. Had he survived, Ani could have faced a predicament similar to Tapan’s in Homecoming (Ashim Ray is the author of both the stories). Tapan survives almost miraculously and not unnaturally he finds himself drifting, rudderless. The euphoria over Naxalbari metastasizing all over India is over, nobody is talking of revolution anymore and everyday life is back to what it was. A vast emptiness engulfs Tapan, and wraith-like he drifts about the city unable to make any sense of his existence. However, two or three years down the line, Tapan would perhaps not be drifting any more. We can imagine him getting his act together and fighting a prolonged gloomy rearguard action, hopeless and doomed, like Labanyaprabha and Banbihari in the immensely moving story Release Them by Tapabijoy Ghosh (also the author of Midnight Knock). Midnight Knock is set in the dark years of Indira Gandhi’s Emergency, though West Bengal has had more than its fair share of an ersatz emergency 1970 onward). Nearly 20,000 young men and women were rotting in the jails of the state and were being subjected to cruel persecution almost every day. Release Them shows the small beginnings of a resistance. The first stirrings of this resistance were seen in Midnight Knock. Experiences such as these accumulated to culminate in the Bandimukti Andolan a movement for the release of prisoners held without trial under draconian laws. This later merged in Jayaprakash Narayan’s epic movement for the restoration of democracy.

eighteen CHAPTER

Ani Ashim Ray

‘B

aba, wasn’t it you and people like you who used to say that the Bengal Renaissance is a bogus thing?’ Perhaps it’s precisely something of this sort that Ani wants to tell me, but in our conversations our lips seldom move. For, the conversation is likely enough to end as soon as the lips move. The moment the lips start moving—forming words, the awareness of his being part of my flesh, blood, bones and marrow—an awareness which comes home to me in silence, is lost. And I for my part do not want to let this rare dialogue be destroyed by talking. And eyeing the almost ever-present ever-awake half-suppressed smile around Ani’s thin moustache I say silently, ‘How about Vidyasagar, though? Whatever you may say, my dear, they’ve gone and overdone it—it’s overkill’. When his mother raised the issue of Vidyasagar about a week ago, Ani had said, ‘And how long would you put us to sleep with the nipple of Vidyasagar in our mouth?’ And that answer again surfaces in a smile playing about his young moustache. Now, after some time I stretch and move in my seat. In an effort to cut through this magic web of silence I say as I clear my throat, ‘Hasn’t your cold got better yet?’ Caught off guard and rather embarrassed, Ani laughs. Directing the full gaze of his sad black eyes at me, he suddenly says, ‘Your revolt in nineteen forty-eight—when you took to the street to stage

Translated by Subhransu Maitra. Ashim Ray, ‘Ani’, Collected Stories of Ashim Ray, Dey’s Publishing, West Bengal, September, 1994; Bhadra, 1401 (1st edition, 2 volumes).

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an armed revolution—there’s a lot of difference between then and now. There was nobody to support you then, and now the toiling masses of the whole world support us.’ Horrified I keep gazing at him. What I’ll say in reply to this is well-rehearsed and on my lips, and it is also almost inevitable that as a reaction to this Ani will stop coming to my room. We have-both of us-been playing blind man’s buff the past one year in this darkness, we can’t catch each other, perhaps we don’t try to, either. If Ani sits a little while in my room instead, saying nothing, perhaps my craving as a father is then considerably satisfied. I am on the point of being vocal, yet bite my lip and pretend to yawn, but part of me keeps growling in my mind, ‘It’s youth, Ani—your youth, the blood’s boiling inside you. Now I will tame all the blood-boiling young men of the country with lollies and candyfloss and then, the moment your blood stops boiling—say when you’re a little over thirty—I’ll let you go. Then your mind will judge, your intellect will test things, you will think twice before accepting something, you’ll look before you leap, and you will get caught in the tentacles of the octopuslike lust for life. If only the boys of the country could just leapfrog these years—these ten or twelve years and grow old! Because the youth of Bengal will never get to reach its culmination, its banner of triumph will never forge ahead step by step and merge in the sun-lit horizon. It has all along been only a symbol of incomplete, unfinished greatness—certainly at least from the days of the antiBritish struggle. The valour of this unfinished greatness has dazzled my eyes, Ani. I have lost my vision. I don’t want to see any more’. It looks as if Ani can guess what’s at the back of my mind. The mocking smile, he flashes these days again, surfaces around his thin moustache. And I can hear loud and clear the words which Ani tells his mother but which are really meant for me, ‘You see, actually baba can’t get away from his past because he is no longer a political element. Baba thinks that this time too, the police will violently mow down the movement as they did in his time. He doesn’t take the trouble even once to look around him. He’s been only dreaming of what he himself did once upon a time. People have forgotten all about it, you know and it is better to. Worshipping the past doesn’t do any good. We have started the war and we will finish it’.

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The last words spoken by Ani hammer my brain. True, I have drifted away from politics, but I have not yet perhaps lost the ability to figure out the slogans which send the adrenalin racing to the heart and make them steel their muscles with a new resolve. In the slogans Ani and the others chant there are extraordinary, astonishing words which are apparently sentimental, melodramatic, but their fierce daring moves me—as if these words do not merely shout, indeed they shake up our Bengali middle-class existence by the roots. If I had not belonged here, if I were not a middle-class Bengali, but a German or Punjabi instead, I would have viewed this new saga of Bengal from a distance—as they see a movie—yawned in a mood of north-Indian nonchalance and said, ’Why not call in the military?’ But the fire is raging so close that we can feel the heat. The incidents have now acquired such an amazing ability to happen by themselves, to be self-born, emerge in the newspapers every morning so complete in themselves that I have all but forgotten whatever history and geography of revolutions I’d read in my youth and for a very long time clung to like jetsam sailing away in this current of middle-aged life. Now my own reactionary thoughts startle me out of my wits. Since I can’t make my son leapfrog into old age, why not pack him off to England, or at least to Delhi, Mumbai or Ahmedabad? These thoughts of an immature mind or myopic thoughts sometimes beset me and then I can’t help thrashing about stung by my inability as a father. If this revolution of the boys like Ani had arrived at least five years later, at the time of my retirement, I would have then gone and persuaded my senior Bosebabu on bended knees to appoint Ani to a post in the lighting department of Calcutta Corporation. As in the offices of many other organizations and departments, our office also has the tradition of a son succeeding his father to the post. The only question that pierces my heart like a thorn at every turn is whether I will be able to keep him alive over the next five years and it drives me wild more than the omniscient questions such as what the country will look like in five years. Perhaps Ani will get up and leave. Our mental conversation cannot be prolonged very long. Perhaps Ani objects, though I at least like it. He feels restless, so do I. Now I, too, pipe up, ’Rupnarayanpur is a nice place, isn’t it, Ani?’

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‘Much too boring, too quiet. There’s nothing else to do, except sleep. Besides, it wasn’t possible to stay back a few days more. Grandfather was under pressure. You see, though you’d asked me to stay back, prolonging the stay would have most probably inconvenienced them.’ No, not England; I had sent him off to Rupnarayanpur lying on the border of Bengal and Bihar. A distant cousin of my father—I call him uncle—is the railway station master out there. A couple of months ago they had bombed a police van in the main street in this neighbourhood killing a cop. Firmly believing that the murderers were hanging around close by and cooling their heels, the police raided the neighbourhood three hours later and whisked away the local boys including Ani. In the police lock-up they punched the boys like footballs. Ani came back home after six days—the little finger of his left hand badly fractured. After this the police took to frequently turning up at my house. This is precisely when my wife’s nervous ailment began. Whenever gusts of wind rattle the doors at the dead of night, Nihar, though asleep, breaks into shouts. Driven to desperation I write to the station master—my distant uncle. The disciple of a certain Babaji, a Vaishnab guru, my uncle is a good man and he is sick of the quiet of the place. Within a few days of my writing to him, he agrees to my proposal. ‘Actually I am a coward. What we need today is to be able to triumph over death as Sugata did. I can’t do it. And that’s the real problem. And what you say makes me laugh, baba. Do you suppose that a man is just like a dog or a cat and all their problems will be solved only if you take the trouble to feed them twice a day and affectionately fondle them?’ Ani lays his hands on the silent magic of friendship we’d conjured up and tears it to pieces. As soon as we talk, it becomes absolutely clear that we—father and son—are rushing along two parallel lines. If we keep quiet, it seems as though the memory of so many mornings, evenings, nights spent in each other’s company has superseded our judgment and analysis and created a sphere of profound kinship and all feelings of animosity lose their sharp edge. There are even possibilities in silence, perhaps. Through silence, possibilities of surviving and living together slowly course through

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our blood-stream; but it can’t be helped now. The blow struck by Ani hurts me into speech. ‘Are you boys going to manufacture a made-in-Bengal revolution, Ani?’ The words escape my lips in spite of myself. Trying to make light of my remark, I pick up the pencil lying on the table and waggle it up and down—once, twice. ‘How do you mean?’ Ani turns his head to look at me and in this gaze I again discover those young men of Bengal who have now chosen the path of armed struggle. But this warning fails to quiet me. Driven by an acute restlessness, I shout back, ‘You tell me, what else is it, if not made-in-Bengal? Does the history of revolution in any blessed country show that revolution can be hastened by killing off individuals? Come on—show me at least one country where this happened—Russia, China, Cuba or Vietnam?’ ‘Forget all that you’d learnt, baba. A new revolution is taking place everywhere—on all sides and through it new yardsticks for judging things are being developed. I gave you some materials about it to read. Did you read them well?’ His measured, quiet voice upsets me, makes me increasingly more restless. Indeed it is as if it mocks my whole existence and in an instant makes pretty short work of all my political thinking, my views and analysis. ‘I did, didn’t I? But they are all gospels, everything’s taken for granted. It has been taken for granted that the common masses of our country have woken up, the peasants in the villages and farms are boiling with class-hatred. You see, the fact of the matter is that you’ve created your world with your fond imagination. But revolution is every bit a materialistic business, it depends on real, material conditions.’ Having delivered myself of this speech I feel gratified.. Silently, at the back of my mind I praise my ability to analyse things and I peer across at Ani, but it seems that Ani has made everything that I’ve told him goes into one ear and goes out the other. As if the words are of a kind that does not make him think anew, it’s just so much hearsay like the rest. ‘You didn’t really give any serious attention to the things I’d given you to read.’

450 ANI

Now I forget all about my vow of evening silence. It seems as if I have no sense of responsibility towards Ani, as if he is only an adversary. No matter what’s happening all around, no matter what hell breaks loose—can it wipe out the history of the last twenty years that we have spent together? Instantly, however, this self-confidence goes to pieces. ‘I have already said—haven’t I—that there was certainly a need for chaps like you. In fact, when everybody is engaged in building up their career in the name of revolution, the immense self-sacrifice of you boys….’ Raising his hand Ani stands up in a gesture of protest and speaks slowly, quietly, ’Please don’t give me such hackneyed, half-baked stuff and hollow consolation yet again. Everybody is mouthing these things, do you have to do it, too? Is revolution all about writing editorials for a newspaper or a cocktail party? Death and sacrifice are inevitable in a revolution. Man has vanquished death today. Revolution is inevitable because he has vanquished death like Sugata’. It is not that his lips form these words and he speaks them. But I can hear them all the same. This is what he tells his mother. When he speaks to me—his lips forming the words, the conversation does not go very far. Before it can actually take off, it comes to a full stop. In this matter Ani has hit upon a method. He lapses into silence precisely when my analytical mind starts warming up. And then I can exactly hear the answers from his silent face. Looking at his sharp young dark face with his hand lifted up, I feel overwhelmed. I bellow, ‘Ani, wait a little longer yet. Don’t go and leap in the fire like this and burn yourselves out. You have to keep the fire going for years on end.’ A suppressed snigger flickers about Ani’s lips, ‘As you have kept the fire going over the last twenty-two years’. I can hear Ani’s reply loud and clear. But I am not one who caves in and I say, ‘I am not really defending our weakness or our inability. Indeed a decisive showdown should have taken place when we stormed the streets chanting slogans like ‘Ye azadi jhuta hai’ immediately after the country gained independence. That was exactly the time for a turnaround in the history of India. If it had happened, young men

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wouldn’t have had to go and dash their heads against a wall so desperately as they are doing today all over the country—at least in our Bengal…In fact I can remember that day quite well. While we hit the street going in a procession to break open the jails, the girls wearing sun glasses were flocking to Eden Gardens to see a cricket match and we got beaten up and battered’. A serene smile fills Ani’s face. I feel as if that smile of selfconfidence in his face slaps me across the cheek like a pair of shoes. ‘And now? Can’t you see what’s happening now? Calcutta—all of it—is going to be a liberated zone. There is no room here for middleclass sentimentality or sloppiness. Don’t you smell gun powder the moment you step out in the street? This is precisely the way the hour of the revolution is drawing near.’ I ache all over from stiffness. Twenty-five years ago, we had taken the plunge to battle the police in the streets, and those days sail back into my mind. At that time revolution was ringing in our veins day and night. And when the tide ebbed away within two or three years, the innards of self-deception surfaced breaking through the mud. A close associate of mine was in a tearing hurry to be the boss of an advertising firm and I went and stood wringing my hands before a very distant maternal uncle of mine who was a deputy mayor of Calcutta Corporation. Henceforth we began seeking to justify everything in terms of Marxism. And before us unfolded the pages of the history of a universal self-deception in our youth. But compared to this, isn’t this business of Ani and the boys like him more characterized by clarity? And more significant? Is it really a repetition or a rebirth? Looking intently at my face Ani drifts towards the shelf of my books. Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao—the books have gathered dust. Picking up a soiled rag rather absentmindedly he starts dusting the books and stops abruptly. I steal a glance at him to see which book he is looking at—Lenin or Mao Tse Tung. ‘Baba, don’t you feel that these books have nothing to do with your current hand-wringing existence and the way you live— indulging in corruption if necessary to earn some extra pittance and defending it with high-sounding arguments? These books do not fit into such a museum. The tide of revolution full of foam has nothing

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to do with this lifeless, moribund, mechanical changkraman—going round and round in the same circle. Through his self-sacrifice Sugata has done immeasurably more for revolution in his life of twenty-one years than you did in all of your fifty years. With his self-sacrifice he has helped spread the conflagration of revolution. And what have you done with your powers of analysis and dust-coated texts of Marxism?’ Ani is now looking at the light in the western sky through the window. Perhaps because I am getting on in years, I am now fond of watching this western glow. And when I look in that direction, my eyes are riveted on it. The last violet blush of a late autumn twilight in Kolkata flares in the sky over this neighbourhood. Violet and jafrani—saffron lie cheek by jowl. Looking at this skyscape I once again look back over my past. The words emanating from Ani’s silent face turns me upside down pretty much the same way as their slogans do. Have I really been living in a museum, my Marxist museum? For, politics is indeed the principle that carries men along to a definite, fixed goal. Once the tide of revolution had receded, didn’t we—caught in the mud and muck—lose sight of the goal and try to erect homes on those mudflats and slush? In a heartbreaking petty-bourgeois effort to stem the rot? Besides, what else could we have done? At once my analytical powers rear their head. We would have opened up the path to mass suicide—self-annihilation all over the country, failed in that effort and ended up martyrs! To hide my own restlessness, I pick up the pencil again and twirl it in my hand making it dance. Eying me Ani cannot resist smiling. There is no mockery in it, only an amused young man’s wonderful luminous laughter. I laugh, too. And I feel as if after a long time the blood circulation in my body has become normal. A couple of years ago, just after Ani had started going to college, I was quite amazed to discover a line of verse on the back of his exercise book—‘It is just that I wish to sit on the grass of Bengal.’ ‘Hello, Ani, who is it by?’ A rather embarrassed Ani had replied, ‘Jibanananda Das. You didn’t hear of him, may be. Did you?’ When I admitted my ignorance, he said bowing his head, ‘The book of poems is called Rupashi Bangla. The poems are just wonderful, you know’. I had gained the impression that Ani was perhaps very

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quietly proceeding along those lines to the world of poetry. I have no head for poetry and stuff of that kind; yet I felt I could rest easy thinking that that line of poetry was not very dangerous. But over the next two years Rupashi Bangla—Bengal beautiful—kept altering vastly, Ani was transformed, too, altered drastically. His boisterous hearty laughter ceased. He used to play cricket on the intolerably cramped cricket ground which was a strip of land in the neighbourhood boxed in on one side by an open drain and on the other by a crumbling boundary wall coated with cow dung cakes (used as cheap fuel) drying off in the sun and a garbage heap. That ceased, too. His face gradually acquired a sombre, smouldering look. And sometimes he would keep quiet and stare with wide open eyes. Things went on like this for some time. Then one day I was suddenly summoned to the police station. The officer-in-charge was a classmate of mine. I didn’t know it till then. The neighbourhood in which the police station was located I hardly ever visited particularly because I myself was once involved in politics. I couldn’t even recognize him and it was impossible for me to do so because as he grew old he had transmogrified himself out of all recognition into such an important figure! After some small talk over cups of tea he abruptly remarked, ‘You had better keep an eye on your son. He has got into bad company’. I let the matter rest there and without taking my last sip of tea I fled the scene. Perhaps trying to give me a few words of comfort, my classmate observed, ‘Of course I admit there are many socio-economic factors involved in it. You got into politics—didn’t you? Now you see, nothing can be achieved by violence’. I was sore, but I held my peace. Every day the leaders of the country are filling the newspaper columns with effusions on whether violence is good or something evil. I’m just an inspector of lighting of Calcutta Corporation. What can I say about it? I seek solace in self-analysis of this kind. Even what was a bad enough situation last summer seems to be a tranquil dream compared to what is happening now towards the end of autumn. The bomb explosion in our neighbourhood, Ani being consequently hauled off to prison and getting beaten up by the police made him all the more fiercely ardent to cling to his ways. After this he stopped coming home. And then he would

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turn up out of the blue, pop into the house, see his mother and disappear in a jiffy. In their relationship of mother and son there was such a direct visible living element that did not exist in our relationship. His mother would upbraid him, call him names and clasp him to her breast, too, in a surge of affection. There was a tremendous flesh-and-blood tug and pull in it. Ani’s mother was never afraid of him. On the other hand, she would also joke with him and he had to stand her chaff. Sitting in an adjacent room I would in vain try to make sense of this female propensity to seek answers to all kinds of problems, and questions through direct, physical relations. Then something hideously strange happened—my own political party attacked my house! I had once handcuffed my youth to the flagpole of this party and marched through the streets and even now I am inextricably linked to it through ties of old friendship. Last Tuesday the boys of this party came round in the evening looking for Ani armed to the teeth with clubs, iron rods, choppers and pipe-guns. The whole neighbourhood shook as they descended on it lobbing bombs everywhere. Once upon a time I was in the thick of political struggles with the uncles and elder brothers of these young men as my comrades. Like one stunned I eyed the faces of these assailants, but saw that I didn’t know anyone among them and they didn’t know me either. I was not at all prepared for this macabre melodrama. Sticking my head through the window to take a look around I was nonplussed by the yells and turmoil outside and the invective and filthy abuse swirling round my ears like bullets fired at me. A young man stepped forward and said with heavy sarcasm, ‘Why, you’ve battened on the bribes you take and grown a nice tummy!’ Another at once chimed in, ‘Come on, let’s rip it open’. They rained hard kicks on the doors of which a part was consequently smashed in and kept dangling from the hinges. Then I was suddenly reminded that Ani had turned up to see his mother. Up sprang like a Kandiya dancer and stood there hugging the battered door—swords lifted up staring me in the face. I felt as if I were standing there disembodied because I could neither hear nor see the ferocious noise going on before me and unblinking eyes of rows of assailants. Suddenly the face of a man I had seen in a previous incarnation seemed to rise up before the arrayed faces of

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those fierce young men. And a booming, commanding voice rang out, ‘No, no, not here by any means. Do whatever you will outside this house, not inside’. I cannot remember anything else, perhaps I’d passed out. When I came to, I saw my wife sprinkling water on my face. And Ani was not at home. The noise of Ani coughing abruptly jolts me out of my introspection and I start violently and sit up. Perhaps Ani is rising to go now. It might be dangerous for him to stay back any longer. ‘It is not as if we ourselves neither question nor doubt.’ I sit up pricking up my ears. I stare at my son and keep on staring in much the same way as a man who hasn’t had anything to eat for days on end keeps looking ravenously at rice put on a plate to be served. Perhaps Ani tells himself in a low tone, ‘For example, this is what most of them say and you, too, that revolution is for the majority of the poor masses of the country. But tell me, what’s to be done? They have to be awakened and shown the right path. Well, you see, the path you people travelled down only leads to you being made ministers, but doesn’t lead to revolution’. I do not say anything. Such moments of clarity, ease and eloquence are indeed few and far between in our silent evening conversations. When our lips move, then I alone excitedly spew forth wisdom in defence of my past and present and in reply Ani retorts in oblique repartees. I greedily keep staring at Ani’s sharp youthful face as though I were seeing it for the last time. ‘Having come so far, if I were to falter now my comrades wouldn’t forgive me.’ ‘I will send you away to Delhi’, I suddenly howl madly. For a while he stares at me with profound sympathy. His serene gaze makes me feel as if I were Ani’s son. At once I admit the natural defeat of fatherhood. He says, ‘You would not be able to save me, baba. If they run into me in the street, the police will shoot me dead. If I stay at home, the chaps of the other parties will attack and kill me. And if I plan to take up a job and so on, my friends won’t leave me alone. You’d better not try to do anything for me, baba.’ Ani gets up. I close my eyes. When I open them, Ani is gone. The next few days I don’t read newspapers, I don’t listen to the radio, I run away from the places where they talk politics.

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And I don’t spare efforts to do what people usually do in such circumstances, drink, for example. But my senses are so acute that the namby-pamby nonsense of drowning my grief in booze makes my flesh creep. I am often subjected to wise effusions about the responsibilities of being a guardian. Some of my relatives come round and bitterly reproach me for my political past. All this leaves me utterly unmoved. For, I can by no means escape the future which is like an inexorable unalterable fate. A well-wisher of mine advises me to get my son arrested by the police so that his life may be saved. But I am not in favour of such an escape. It may bring a kind of temporary reprieve, but I am certain that this would not ultimately help save Ani. On the other hand, such a course of action would result in the snapping of all my ties with Ani. Besides, these Bengali young men treading the path of blood and fire have indeed inherited our legacy. Ani and the others like him have been carrying the triumphant flag of those unnumbered young men who are no more. If Ani has chosen the path of suicide and self-annihilation, I have nothing to say. At least I have managed to latch on to this much: it does not lie in my mouth to preach. If you want to preach, you’ll have to take the plunge and join the battle. And come to grips with the questions raised by Ani without sidestepping them by quoting gospels and brushing them under the carpet. I do not have the ability to do that and I am not aware if anybody does. Hence, I am blind though I have eyes and deaf though I have ears. That day the phone rings as soon as dawn breaks. The police have permitted me to collect Ani’s dead body from the morgue. I was prepared for the phone call. I distinctly remember that my voice did not shake when I picked up the receiver and asked, ‘Did Ani throw bombs at the police?’ And without waiting to hear the reply I asked a second question, ‘Did the police shoot him dead?’ I went cold and stiff because it was not only Ani’s death, it was the death of my dreams of socialism, the death of my Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tse Tung. I was jolted only when a voice rang out, ‘Ani the felon, the thief—chor Ani, has anybody from his family come?’ I violently start to my feet. All along I had the notion that it was impossible to distort or corrupt the name Anirban Mukherjee or turn his nickname into Harey or Guley. But I can’t resist admiring

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this magical skill in changing names. My companion is a ballistics expert. He goes ahead, examines Ani’s wound and coming back tells me, ‘He was shot point-blank’. But how can one say anything standing before their own corpse? Turning my head, I look out of the window. Plastered all over with cow dung cakes of fuel a stunted neem tree basks in the sunlight of early winter. Out there a couple of shaliks (common myna) are locked in a fight on a narrow piece of yellow earth. I am reminded of the line of verse I spotted long ago in Ani’s note book: ‘It is just that I wish to sit on the grass of Bengal’.

nineteen CHAPTER

Midnight Knock Tapabijoy Ghosh

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t is a kind of clattering noise which wakes up Bhudharbabu. Without opening his eyes and holding his breath he wants to figure out what it is. At first it occurs to him that that the electric fan overhead at times makes a rattling noise. Opening his eyes he peers up into the darkness. Next it seems that the noise is coming from under the cot. Rats? Under the cot it is a hole cluttered with a motley assortment of old utensils, boxes and trunks, tins of rice and wheat. Rats have the run of the place and when they collide with a tin or trunk, such collision produces a variety of noises which disturb Bhudharbabu in his sleep. Due to aging, acidity and indigestion, he sleeps only in fits and starts these days. Sleep is not easy for him to come by. And if it is disturbed, he is likely to spend sleepless hours on end. But he rules out rats. Now that he is fully awake, it seems that somebody is knocking at a door. Where? Can it be one of the rooms on this third floor? Or the first? Suddenly his ability to hear seems to grow exceedingly acute, all his sense organs acquire a high degree of sensitivity. It seems that somebody is striking the front door on the ground floor with the knocker out in the street. The metallic clatter of a strong hand hitting the door with the knocker goes reverberating round the rooms, veranda, and walls of this very old house penetrating rather feebly inside Bhudharbabu ’s bed room past the closed door.

Translated from Bengali by Subhransu Maitra. Tapabijoy Ghosh, ‘Kapatey Karaghat’ (Midnight Knock), Collected Short Stories of Two Centuries, Netaji Subhas Open University, Kolkata, West Bengal; May, 2008; Baisakh 25, 1415 (1st edition).

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Who’s knocking out there? What’s the time now? Anxious wrinkles appear on his aging forehead. His brows are furrowed. He tilts up his head a little more above the pillow and then, kind of scared, he directs his fearful gaze at the seamless darkness in the room and the light bluish sparks being emitted from the circular upper part of the electric fan. He also tries to guess the time—the hour of the night by peering through the small window on his right out and up at the sky outside. It was eleven o’ clock when he went to bed after the evening meal. He hasn’t had a wink of sleep for the next couple of hours. So it’s the small hours now, perhaps half-past two or three. Now who on earth could be knocking out there at the closed front door of this silent house at this eerily quiet unearthly hour? Who has turned up out of the blue? Bending a little Bhudharbabu tries to look at his wife. Hemaprabha is sleeping like a log. After the daylong grind she’s fast asleep— unperturbed. Listening to her dense breathing he understands that unless she is pushed and shaken, she won’t wake up. At a loss what to do next—to wake her up or not, Bhudharbabu carefully listens to the noise for a few more moments. It has been going on so long but nobody bothers to answer. The chaps who live on the ground floor—are they all dead or what? Sasanka Hazra’s room is by the front door. His old mother has asthma and unable to sleep she sits up through the night panting and gasping…— As these thoughts cross his mind, suddenly he seems to sense fear! He shakes with fright. Precisely at this moment somewhere in the dark a lizard ticktocks in a sinister fashion and the rats noisily run riot under the cot. This rattles him all the more, his weak aging lung jolts a little, his hands and legs go limp and exhausted. Turning over on the bed he calls ‘Hemaprabha!’—in a low tense tone—‘Hello, do you hear…’ No reply from Hemaprabha. Bhudharbabu remains still for a little while, then annoyed and flustered he drags himself on his back towards his wife and lays his hand on her, ‘Hello-ei…’ Shaken but still asleep, Hemaprabha groans and turns over. Her groan sounds so macabre and hideous to Bhudharbabu in the quiet room that he is more scared now and tries to clap his hand over her mouth. However, afraid that in that case she may break into louder

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groans and screams, he hastily pulls back his hand and bringing his mouth close to her ear he calls again, ‘Do you hear—you! Drat, drat! —Get up, can’t you...’ It appears that the words have sunk in and Hemaprabha has managed to hear because she says something like ‘oo’ in a normal tone and her deep exhalation is heard—it fades and scatters. Bhudharbabu confides chokingly, ‘They’re knocking at the door!’ She at once jolted up awake, as if the news was monstrous, as if a quake had struck the world outside or a flood tide had surged into their room. Sitting up, overwhelmed, she asks, ’Who’s knocking? And which door?’ Bhudharbabu cautions, ‘Hush, quiet!’ Hemaprabha blanches, ‘Knocking at our door?’ ‘No, downstairs, front door. Now listen…’ Hemaprabha pricks her ears. She, too, is trembling a little. Her hands and legs seem to lose all strength and motion. She lowers her voice, ‘Knocking pretty long?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Do you think the police have come?’ ‘Yes, it looks like when they came last time…’ Hardly the words are out when Hemaprabha clutches Bhudharbabu’s leg below the knee in utter fright. Suddenly Bhudharbabu’s entire blood stream loses its momentum growing cold and hard like a rock. This is exactly what he’s been thinking, exactly what he is afraid of. And when his wife gives vent to the same fear, he seems to have been robbed of all his strength and petrified like a puppet. The knocks at the front door grow louder, stronger! It seems that as the furious impatient knocks continue, somebody is shouting something, though it is not clear what is being said. Surely none of the residents is staying out so late at night. They are not supposed to, either. The city has fallen on evil days. Curfew, combing operations, firing occurring all over the place. As soon as evening comes, the police pounce on this or that neighbourhood. Dead men lie here and there in the streets. As darkness descends, the city shudders with fright. All its noise, resonance drains away even before it’s 10 o’ clock in the evening. Trams and buses hurtle past

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at breakneck speed. The alleys of this neighbourhood lie snaking like dead, inert pythons. When a footfall is heard and that too, rarely, the folks in the neighbouring houses are startled. Even in such sweltering summer heat they do not dare to leave the doors and windows open and go to bed. Mothers do not dare to call aloud their sons by name at night. Residents of this old three-storey house—a warren of rented rooms and passages-get back home well before ten o’ clock. A little later the front door is bolted. It’s a tough sturdy and stout bolt made of wood. Previously it was not like this. The door stood wide open and people would pop in and out till midnight. Due to disuse and lack of maintenance one part of the broad door had fallen apart, the hinges had started rusting. After a couple of murders had taken place in the neighbourhood, the residents were afraid. When the third murder took place close by the walls of this house, their fear turned into real fright. One day Manohar Das, a resident on the ground floor, takes Anil Das, the pharmacist who lives on the first floor into confidence, and whispers in his ears, ‘Strangers turn up here in the courtyard at night. They stand in a huddle and talk.’ Blood drains away from Anil’s face, ‘Who are they?’ ‘How would I know? I’m so afraid I dare not step out and stay indoors.’ Vrindaban works as a domestic help for Sarojbabu who lives on the second floor. He also bears this out, ‘The other day I also saw them. They stood in a circle in the courtyard and talked’. ‘Were they empty-handed or carried anything in their hands?’ ‘No, babu. They were carrying things in their hands. I couldn’t exactly make out what….’ As they hear all this, both Manohar and Anil freeze with fright. There is no time to ascertain or verify whether all this is true or false. Word gets around and everybody learns that taking advantage of the front door which stays open at night, encourages strangers to intrude at dead of night. They sit in a circle on the cement floor of the courtyard and talk hatching plans. The glow of burning cigarettes

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lights up their faces and eyes. By them lie—ready at hand-big iron rods, guns, sharp swords… The residents are shocked, and frightened out of their wits, ‘We are ruined! The cops will come, raid every room and blow our brains out.’ Sarojbabu’s wife asks, ‘Why, what’s our fault?’ Anil Das hollers from below, ‘They’ve stopped judging who’s guilty and who is not, boudi [brother’s wife]. The police have got blanket orders to arrest and kill without sparing even women and children.’ Bhudharbabu is the senior most person in the house. He will retire from service before the year is out. He has married off his daughters. Thanks to the great trouble he’d taken, his son has earned his degree as a doctor and works in a health centre in the district of Murshidabad. He is respected by all the residents and his prudent counsel is sought by them on a variety of matters. Having heard everything concerning this case, Bhudharbabu suggests, ‘You had better get the front door repaired. Go for a strong door bolt, and bolt the door at half past ten every night.’ All of them see eye to eye with what Bhudharbabu says. The building is designed in such a way that once the front door is closed, there is no other way to go in. On all sides mouldering brick walls stand upright with tiny old windows punched into them. Since there is a terrace above the door, this side is safe, too. It’s not possible to climb over the wall. They approach the landlords asking them to have the damaged door repaired. But the brothers who are the landlords are now pitted against each other in litigation and the property is administered by a receiver appointed by the High Court. The residents go and buy hinges and a bolt with their own money. The inside of the house is decrepit—the walls are peeling, chunks of plaster come off crashing, the windows and doors shake and rattle when strong gusts of wind blow. Never mind the inside, let’s fortify the front door. These are calamitous days now. Arrangements must be made to ensure that external mischief does not intrude here. Otherwise nobody will be safe; life, dignity, property-everything is in jeopardy now.

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It is arranged that Vrindaban will close the door at 11 o’clock. Then he will sleep on the terrace of the staircase. If anybody knocks, he will first make sure that they are indeed residents of this house and only then open the door. He will get extra money every month for rendering this service. The residents will themselves contribute to raise the money. A few weeks pass by harmlessly. Meanwhile a notorious local goonda is killed in the neighbourhood allegedly because he was a police spy. His body lies for a long time close by the decrepit Shiva temple. Neither an ambulance nor a police van comes along to pick it up. A couple of hours later the military descends on and cordons off the whole neighbourhood. A combing operation gets under way. Before they leave, they round up several lads from a local students’ hostel and take them away. The next morning their dead bodies are discovered dumped in Bhavani Mitra lane by the side of the high road. A couple of days after this, the knocker is struck loudly on the front door of this house. Just waking up Vrindaban calls out from the terrace, ‘Who’s there? At this hour of the night?’ The reply comes across from outside in a searing stream of abuse, ‘Tere baap bey bahenchod. Jaldi khol, nehi to tod denge!’ (Your dad’s calling you sister-fucker. Open at once, or we’ll smash it in.) As the voice and the language assail him, Vrindaban scrambles to his feet, unable to decide what to do. Harish Samanta who lives upstairs, sometimes comes home dead drunk at the dead of night and starts banging the front door. If there’s some delay in letting him in, he grows abusive, ‘Which swine has closed the door? On whose orders? Do I live here gratis! Abhi kholo darwaja.’ But the men outside the door do not seem to be befuddled drunks like Harish. He can hear the clatter of heavy boots in the street. Through the chinks in the timber of the door flashes the glow of powerful torch lights. Vrindaban inches closer to the door, but doesn’t open up and he stands gawping instead, scared out of his wits! Meanwhile kicks delivered by booted feet against the door grow more furious and angry. Flashes of torch lights beamed upward

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fiercely stab and dart past the windows and doors of the house. Seeing the unhindered sweep of those strong clear rays everywhere Vrindaban slowly retreats step by step, then knocks first at Ramdas’s door, then at Manohar’s and says, ‘Babu get up—get up quick…’ He can’t knock up Ramdas who with his children sleeps like a log at night. Manohar opens up and steps out, ‘What’s up? Who are they?’ Vrindaban says, ‘Police! Can’t you hear the clatter of their boots…shall I open the door...’ ‘Open? Well, open the door. What have we done? What’s our fault?’ ‘All right, then I’m going to open up?’ ‘Yes, go on! What have we done…’ ‘Please, stay here a little babu…’ ‘Me? Stay? Okay I’m here, go on…open the door.’ Taking courage in both hands Vrindaban proceeds to open the door. Manohar is behind him. No sooner does he unfasten the bolt than a part of the double door is flung back, crashing on his face twisting his nose to one side and smiting his forehead. The hurt instantly swells up like a little rubber ball. Giddy from the blow Vrindaban is about to sink to the ground when a violent kick in the abdomen altogether floors and flattens him. Seeing what’s unfolding Manohar tries to run back to his room. A harsh voice rings out— ‘Saala, why take so bloody long to open the door!’ and someone hammers the butt of his rifle down on his head. Manohar can himself see drops of blood dribbling from his wound in a flash of torch light. Now all hell breaks loose everywhere in the rooms, passages and verandas of the house. Even before one could properly understand what’s happening, they find that they are made to stand, hands up, eyes closed, shaking with fright-facing the barrels of rifles and powerful torches. Mothers, daughters, wives—the women were fast asleep—their clothes somewhat disordered, they awaken and are too shocked to straighten their clothes up. Nibaran’s paternal aunt gags the baby with a firm hand to stop it from crying—gagging so hard that the baby chokes, goes blue in the face and almost stiffens.

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A booted foot kicks Nilmoni’s pet cat sending it flying through the air from the first floor and it falls straight down in the courtyard. And a cage with a bird in it plunges through the air from the second floor, hits the courtyard and the bird starts screeching hideously. A few moments later the cops burst into the flat of school teacher Bhuban master on the second floor and drag his elder son out grabbing him by the hair. Bhuban is violently flung aside and topples over as he tries to stop them. His wife can’t even get out of her room, a cop’s big hairy hand roughly thrusts her back in and shuts the door fastening it from outside. As she screams, shrieks and keeps striking her head on the closed door till she collapses unconscious, the policemen, full of sadistic, fiendish glee, proudly stride out of the house dragging along the twenty-two-year-old lad, through a crowd of residents terrified pale and drawn, like a beast being hauled away to the slaughter house. In the morning, after that diabolical night, the body of the boy, shot dead, is discovered lying on a plot of land between a pond and a meadow about a mile away in the southern suburbs along with the body of another boy of about the same age. For days on end the house is hushed and overwhelmed, petrified with grief, mourning, fear and misery. They turn on the radio for the daily news, not for songs or music. Nor do they assemble in Sasanka’s flat in the evening to play cards. Manohar had decided to splurge a little and celebrate the weaning ceremony of his baby son, but puts it off now. Sarojbabu sends away his elder son to his maternal uncle’s place. Bhudharbabu suffers a huge relapse of chest pain—an old ailment, stops going to office and goes on leave. He wants to but resists writing to his son in case he returns to the slaughter house which is called Calcutta. The house is generally quiet in daytime, but at night they can hear the cries of Bhuban’s wife rising and falling, sailing about the house—wafting across the walls doors windows and furniture. A pall of mournful gloom envelops all the families. All these days Bhudharbabu cannot get a wink of sleep till the cries subside. Tears well up in Hemaprabha’s eyes, too. Vrindaban lets the residents know that he won’t sleep downstairs any more to guard the door at night even if he is offered ten times

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the money he’s getting now. Surely money isn’t greater than life! If he could afford to give up the job and return to his village home, he would do so at once because life has lost all its value here. At last, through Bhudharbabu ’s mediation it is decided that Sasanka will close the door before going to bed. If there is a knock at night, only the resident whose guest is knocking will go and open the door and not anybody else. But none of the residents stays outdoors after 11 o’ clock at night. Even Harish who gets drunk as a skunk now gets home by ten, huffs and puffs for a while and then falls asleep. Sasanka’s neighbour Bistu who works third shift in a factory, now sleeps in the factory after work instead of coming home late at night. When a bomb or cracker explodes or a rifle goes off with a deafening report, the residents, awakened and startled along with their wives and children, begin to calculate behind closed doors the approximate distance between the house and the place where the blast has taken place. And realizing after a few moments’ muted silence that there’s as yet no thud-thud of regimented heavy boots out there around their door or brazen knocking, they long to go back to sleep feeling relatively more safe, yet harbouring deep inside a suspicion, a dread. Though their experience has taught them that that door is not at all safe for them, they nevertheless seek to ease their minds by somehow relying on it helplessly, weakly. A number of days have passed. The knocks are again coming tonight. The noise booms through the rooms of the old house. Perhaps they’ve all got up by now and heard it, but not a soul is stirring anywhere. At the dead of night the whole house seems to have grown colder still and more austerely silent. Only the metallic roar is heard in the midst of this silence devoid of any life… Bhudharbabu suggests in a low tone, ‘Shall I turn on the lights?’ Hemprabha stops him, ‘No, there’s no need to.’ ‘I want to see the clock.’ ‘What’s the use? Keep quiet and don’t talk.’ Bhudharbabu keeps mum…Perhaps a dog is moaning somewhere close by. Its moans recall a sick child’s tremulous sobbing voice. If cats and dogs start caterwauling in the middle of the night, it bodes ill for all. Pestilence hits the villages, famine hits towns and the

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householders who hear it come to grief. Bhudharbabu feels as if a storm is raging inside his breast. It is getting on his nerves. The veins are pounding in his forehead and his throat is parched and dry. He does not dare ask Hemaprabha to bring him some drinking water. Then she will have to switch on the light and a clang will be heard when she pours water from the container into a glass. They don’t want to switch on the lights at this moment or make any noise. The cops gave Harish the drunkard a severe hiding last time because the lights were on in his room, he was allegedly awake and yet he didn’t open up. It’s true that drunks don’t recognize one another. Having kept quiet for a while Hemaprabha whispers again, ‘Well, nobody’s saying anything.’ Bhudharbabu counters, ‘Who do you think is going to?’ ‘They will smash the door open and come in.’ ‘Actually smash it open?’ ‘Yes!’ Both of them again fall silent. They are once more reminded of what happened last time—reminded particularly of what’d happened to Bhuban’s son. The dead body was recovered from a meadow and brought home—a blood-spattered, hideous, mangled, mutilated body. It seemed as if his flesh had been torn off with tongs, locks of hair violently pulled off and an eye gouged out. Last but not the least, the gaping bullet wound across his chest. Seeing it Bhuban master went unconscious. Bhudharbabu, too, was reeling and sinking to the ground, Manohar caught hold of him just in time and escorted him upstairs. To this day Bhudharbabu does not know why the boy had to die, what offence he had committed! Of course, he’s heard a lot on the grapevine. But almost all the residents suspect that the boy got thick with those who go about looting guns and kill landlords– jotedars–zamindars and policemen. Now for the first time he gets to know that a couple of months ago the boy had gone missing for about a month and that of late he was not staying at home at night. Though Bhuban master maintained all along that his son was innocent, not at all guilty of anything, but a victim of mere suspicion and circumstances. And he repeated it even on the last day he spent in this house. The next day he moved house…

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Nobody knows what the truth is, though. Neither does Bhuban master. Only assumptions, presumptions and hearsay. Had a trial taken place, perhaps it could have laid bare something and shed some light on the facts. But that didn’t happen. He was not prosecuted with the help of depositions and documented evidence. A young man in his prime was slaughtered without a trial or a shred of evidence against him. And slaughtered precisely by the hands of those who are supposed to secure conviction in a court of law by proving the guilt of the accused. How did this happen? And why? Ever since the boy’s death, Bhudharbabu has been looking for an answer to these questions. But no answer is to be found. And as a result of this, he has, in his old age, somehow grown alarmed and fearful of the police. Whenever he sees a policeman armed with a rifle, fear assails him. He can by no means persuade himself to believe that it is they who are responsible for the security of the life and property of a citizen like him. These days he regards every rifle-carrying policeman as a cold-blooded living killer. Otherwise he is not the kind of man to be afraid of the police. He had four maternal uncles and there was a time when two of them were members of revolutionary terrorist groups. In those days the police of the British government would oftener than not raid their house. They never managed to arrest his elder uncle. His younger sibling was caught. The trial lasted three years. He was sentenced to imprisonment for ten years. But he was treated as a political prisoner. He is still living and receives every month a freedom fighter’s pension of a few rupees. And when the pension fails to arrive, he occasionally writes to Bhudharbabu asking him to go and make enquiries. Bhudharbabu had spent many childhood days with his maternal uncles. He had gone a couple of times to the court, too, while the trial was on. And the country hadn’t yet gained independence. But what calamitous, evil laws have now come into force in this free independent country! They can round up and bump off anybody merely on suspicion without any evidence, without a trial… That dog can still be heard whining. What a coarse doleful whining! Is an epidemic—a pandemic coming to strike the villages and towns? Or a terrible transformation!

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Furious kicks now continue to batter the door. Are they going to break it down? And not a soul woke up? What if they really knock the door down and enter…what if they gang up, climb to the first floor, second floor and come storming on to the third floor… As he thinks, the veins sub-veins jangle inside him. Overwhelmed, he peers helplessly across at the door of his room which is closed. His eyes smart because he can see nothing in the dark. A strange pain racks his brain. They have been continuously preyed upon by fear for such a long time that now it seems as if the very feeling of fear was blunted. The sensation grows in him that the dog’s coarse whining and the formidable knocks on the door out there have combined to create a dreadful noisy orbit of crescendo in the air of the room which is gradually diminishing in size and rushing down like a hurricane to engulf both him and Hemaprabha. As if in self-defence Bhudharbabu stiffens his body. He clenches his fists and opens them again. Then he suddenly leaps down from the bed, reaches the switchboard and turns on the lights. Frightened, Hemaprabha shrieks, ‘What are you doing? Quick-turn off the lights-turn off…’ He doesn’t say anything in reply. He gives Hemaprabha’s terrified face a onceover and next eyes the radiance of light filling the entire room. Then he again pricks his ears to listen for the noise of knocking… Hasn’t anybody heard it yet? Are all the residents deaf and dumb? Why the hell don’t they all open their doors and stand up facing what is coming? If all the residents had stood their ground last time instead of hiding like cowards behind closed doors with lights switched off in room after room, if they had joined hands and gone with the boy to the police station, demanded proof and insisted that he should be prosecuted in a proper court, would he not have been living now instead of perishing like that? At any rate everything would have been made public. And who are they knocking for tonight? Whose son have they come to take to the slaughter house today? Which family? Which mother? He is again reminded of the blood-caked face of Bhuban’s son. Simultaneously his son’s face sails into his mind. Bhudhar glances

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at the wall. A framed photo of Amal is hanging from the wall. Amal is wearing his black convocation robe and clutching the rolled-up certificate in his hand. His youthful soft cherubic face. He is still looking when he hears the wailing cry of Bhuban’s wife, ‘Oh-they have ruined me….’ With a strong, firm hand Bhudharbabu opens the door of his own room. Terrified, Hemaprabha gets off the bed, gets closer to him and says something which he cannot hear. Instead, retaining the door bolt in his hand he rushes on to the veranda outside and calls out—a restless agitated cry! ‘Who is knocking at the door? Who is it?’ ‘It’s me—Bhudhar calling, come on, wake up, all of you, wake up…’

twenty CHAPTER

Corpse Worship Saibal Mitra

T

he floor is flooded by the light from two powerful spotlights blazing overhead in the middle of the room and dazzling the eye like a fire. At one end of the room Suman is sitting on a bench. It is dark where he is sitting. He can be seen dimly through the foggy darkness. Two tables—somewhat apart—stand right under the powerful lights. An iron rod rests across the tables. Bratati is hanging suspended head down from the rod as if she was doing shirshasan (headstand). The rod has been inserted between her folded knees. Her ankles are bound tight to her thighs to prevent her tumbling off the rod. Rolled into a crumpled ball her sari lies on a table. Bratati is wearing only a petticoat now and she is unconscious. Suman is well and his usual self, unharmed. He hasn’t suffered so much as a scratch. Inspector Samaddar knows jolly well that beating won’t produce results in a case like this. Four hours ago, taking his posse of policemen Samaddar went and caught Suman. The blighter is like a slippery eel and he’d slipped through their net a number of times in the past. Samaddar is bristling with fury. However, fury can wait for the time being. Right now, he needs a breakthrough—the vital information. He must get hold of the dope before dawn. If the news of Suman’s arrest gets about, the big game will get wind of it and slip away. He is the high priest of the gang. Nab him he must. And it is Suman who can really give him a lead about his exact whereabouts and lead Samaddar to him. That is why they have Translated from Bengali by Subhransu Maitra. Saibal Mitra, ‘Shabasadhana’ (Corpse Worship), Collected Short Stories of Two Centuries, Netaji Subhas Open University, Kolkata, West Bengal; May, 2008; Baisakh 25, 1415 (1st edition).

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had to round up and bring here Suman’s wife Bratati within an hour flat of his arrest. Desperate situations require desperate remedies. It has been a complete run through the mill for the inspector as he got to learn these tricks of the trade. He has been on his feet far too long. Now he goes and sits on the chair placed by the door with a fan spinning overhead. Mopping the sweat off his forehead with a handkerchief Samaddar darts a glance across at Bratati. Then at Suman. He pulls open the drawer of the table before him and fishes out of it a bottle of rum which is all but empty. He puts it to his lips and takes a swig, then another. These days his throat does not burn when he drinks rum. When he was in school he had his first go at the bottle and was caught drunk by father. And the licking that followed! He’d made a bloody pancake of his face, his lips. Yet father himself would go and get blind drunk all the seven days of the week. A strange fury makes Samaddar bristle with rage. He again downs the rum from the almost empty bottle. Then he stands up from the chair and swishes the cane inscribing an arc in the air with a sharp whistling noise. Suman notices him but doesn’t look at Bratati. Samaddar is confident that in another five minutes Suman will begin to crack. Then he will be only too eager to crawl before him. It’s about 1.00am now. And everywhere it is quiet and dark. Only these two halls on the second floor of this massive red building are well-lit. The noise of a car or two darting down the street below. Inspector Samaddar goes and stands before the open window. Out there, smoke and fog blend in a matted, compressed darkness. Darkness suits them better. Jobs of this kind can’t be done till it gets dark. As night advances, men and women grow tired and the nerves and veins go limp, inert. Then it does not take long to grind down a stubborn mind or a stern faith. Besides, people fall asleep at the dead of night and a dumbness—silence fills the houses and streets. A living man dreads this silence as much they dread the face of a dead man. Samaddar returns to the chair. Bratati is dangling from the tables. A rope bound round his waist, his hands shackled—Suman is sitting near the door as if he was a shadow. He is being guarded by two sentries who bury their hands in their pockets clutching tight

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the butts of their revolvers even as they stand over him. Samaddar is inclined to laugh at them. Craven fear! It seems as if he alone is alive and kicking in this dark silent world. Only the other day someone among his colleagues was saying jovially that at midnight the outside of this hall looked like a blazing pyre at a dark funeral ground. As he recalls this, Samaddar can’t resist laughing. He tells himself, I am keeping the funeral ground awake and performing shaba sadhana—corpse worship. I am the Kapalik (skull-man) of this red building. He is again reminded of his father. Father, too, used to describe himself as a Tantra worshipper—a Tantrik, a Kapalik. Sometimes in a fit of drunkenness he would recite the mantra of Shatchakraveda. He was a mere boy then and could make nothing of mantras and mumbo-jumbo of that sort. But he still remembers the scene at their village home—his father sacrificing a he-goat, pantha, during Kali puja, the big heavy chopper, ramda, smeared with vermillion in his father’s hands, father wearing a round mark of vermillion and oil paste on his forehead. Neither can he forget great spurts of blood bursting from the headless goat. Samaddar looks at his wrist watch. The sentries are scared stiff. Why the hell do they take up police jobs! They’re so afraid of these insects! In the last one year and a half Samaddar has killed them off just like insects and flies. He also tries to add up the total on his fingers. But how can he count so many killed only on his fingers? His father was a famous hunter who missed his target only very rarely. Due to boozing and all that he looked a little off-colour in his old age and his hands shook. Samaddar gets to feel that right now he is a hunter, too. But the mojo of this kind of hunting is a different ball game altogether, more irresistible. He often wonders what he will do when all this trouble ends. Wander about restlessly all day long—he will! He does not want to go back home in the evening these days. Wife, daughter, home’s a crashing bore. Disgusting. There’s nothing exciting in his life. If he stays at home during the day now, he feels like clobbering his wife and daughter. So, as soon as he gets home at night, he goes to sleep. When you are asleep, you feel somewhat safe and confident.

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Screams from the next room. Two more blighters are being grilled in there. Inspector Samaddar lights up the cheroot again and notices that Bratati has come to. He cuts through the air once with the cane, then thwacks her several times on her upturned feet leaving her groaning in a voice now gone hoarse. ‘She is pregnant’, says Suman in an undertone from his darkness. The inspector halts abruptly. Then he says, ‘Why didn’t you tell me before? What a shame!’ Samaddar upbraids himself severely. There is a note of remorse in his tone. But Bratati is not removed from where she is dangling suspended between the tables. He takes his notebook and pen from his pocket, advances a few steps toward Suman and tells him: ‘Poor thing! She’s suffered so long through no fault of her own. Now let’s have the address.’ Inspector Samaddar peers at him. No reply comes from Suman who is absolutely still and motionless. His face is like a figure hewn out of stone. In the hazy darkness the inspector cannot see if there are any lines on his face. A rage is now surging up inside him. ‘Who did this to your wife?’ The inspector mockingly asks Suman. As always, Suman remains silent. Samaddar cannot figure out if he is asleep or awake. Silently he utters an imprecation cursing Suman. Bloody swine will be crawling before him now, thinks the inspector. What he says now is specially intended for Suman: ‘It is now clear that the baby she is carrying in her womb is not yours. If it was, you would be more caring, more kind.’ The sentries have now gripped Suman’s shoulders with their hands. They must make him keep gazing at the blazing light. If one keeps gazing at a strong light from inside darkness, their heads, eyes begin to swim after some time and resistance crumbles. The inspector roars: ‘You make sure he doesn’t look away.’ Bratati is hanging unconscious now. Her petticoat has receded, it’s hanging around her knees. Her eyes are half-closed and the red lines behind the eyelids are visible. The inspector draws on the cheroot. He tries to persuade Suman: ‘You have a responsibility as husband and father.’ He pauses for a second and then adds: ‘However, I don’t know if you yourself are the father or not.’

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Suman does not give any reply. Holding the burning cheroot between his teeth the inspector goes, stands by the table and presses the burning end to the sole of her feet. A groan wells up in her throat. Then Bratati falls silent. The inspector understands that Bratati has passed out. Suman is looking at this illuminated table. His face and eyes are bathed in a shadowy faint light. He very much resembles a statue made of bronze. Instructing the sentries to sprinkle water on Bratati’s face to bring her around, the inspector resumes his seat in the chair and knocks back the rest of the rum. He hasn’t yet managed to get pretty drunk today. The goddamn lad over there is giving him too much trouble. He has dealt with a couple of cases of this sort. Most of them are no better than cattle, contemptible cowards. It hardly takes five minutes to break them. Glaring eyes and angry growls do the trick bringing them to their knees. Nobody ever before dared and defied him like Suman now. Samaddar wipes beads of sweat from his forehead and face with a handkerchief stealing a glance at Suman. There he sits holding his neck erect. What cheek! What nerve! He carefully eyes Suman’s tough, protruding jaws, sharp nose, broad wrists. It seems as if the lad is all made of iron. There are a few fellows of this type in their party—ordinary, innocent looking yet formidable, razor sharp. The repressed fury inside him now starts bellowing like a wild beast. He mutters to himself, ‘You are challenging me, aren’t you? Want a fight with me?’ A glance at Bratati tells Samaddar that she has regained consciousness. Her eyes are open and she is breathing normally. ‘Do you want to speak to your husband?’ The inspector asks. Bratati cannot make any sense of the question asked by the inspector. There is a blank unseeing stare in her eyes. ‘You’re going to be a mother. Why didn’t you tell me before this?’ Samaddar sounds sympathetic as he asks Bratati. Bratati remains speechless. The bunch of meaningless inscrutable sounds evokes no response in her consciousness. She keeps staring at Inspector Samaddar in the same blank dumb way. The inspector is infuriated and concludes, these two—husband

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and wife—are trying to embarrass me, humiliate me. And that’s not going to happen. He savagely orders the sentry on duty: ‘Go on, turn her round and round.’ Grabbing her by the back the sentry turns and spins her round the rod—once, twice, thrice. Bratati is spun around. A low groaning noise comes from her. But the inspector achieves nothing. Samaddar goes berserk and tears apart Bratati’s blouse and bra. She has nothing on now, except her petticoat. He takes a few quick puffs at the cheroot and now jams the flaring end into Bratati’s bare soft breast. Once, twice thrice. Bratati crumples, gets hiccups. Clots of blackish blood wet her petticoat streaming down on the floor. ‘She has suffered a miscarriage, I am afraid,’ says the inspector in a loud voice. But who is it intended for? As he eyes the bench, inspector Samaddar discovers that Suman is not there. ‘Pahara,’ hoarsely bellows the inspector, alarmed. ‘Ji saab,’ the sentries reply. Hallucination. The sentries are sitting with Suman—gripping him firmly as before. Nothing has gone wrong. Yet Samaddar is at a loss why he has had such a hallucination. Inspector Palit comes in from outside. Taking a careful look around he walks over to Bratati and asks, ‘Is the girl dead?’ ‘No,’ Samaddar replies, ‘These types don’t die so easily.’ ‘I’m afraid it’s not the right thing to do,’ Inspector Palit observes gloomily, ‘There’s no point in dragging the culprit’s wife into this business instead of the culprit himself.’ Palit has the nasty habit of always throwing a spanner in the works. That is why Samaddar hates to have him as partner while on duty. Though fuming inside, Samaddar keeps his cool and says darkly pointing at Suman, ‘These steps have to be taken to make him talk.’ Inspector Palit stands apart—silent, annoyance writ large on his face. Darkness and silence seem to thicken. There’s no noise in the next room either. Suman’s stubbornness and Palit’s meddling make Samaddar angry. Leaving Bratati alone Inspector Samaddar instructs the sentry on duty, ‘Go down and tell them to bring the van along.’ ‘Going out?’ asks Inspector Palit. ‘Yes.’

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Inspector Palit hesitates for a couple of seconds, then goes over and stands by Bratati. He has Bratati taken off the rod. She is now laid on the table. Palit takes her crumpled sari and covers her body with it. ‘Full of the milk of human kindness, eh?’ Samaddar reflects bitterly, ‘feigning kindness, trying to score over me?’ The thought of defeat, failure at once rears its head at the back of his mind. The very thought of a mere lad, badass defeating, making a mockery of all his efforts makes him burn with rage. No, I must not admit defeat, if I do, I’d be a laughing stock and these colleagues would laugh at me. Bratati hasn’t yet come round. ‘Where are you off to?’ Inspector Palit wants to know. ‘To get some fresh air,’ Samaddar replies exhaling cheroot smoke. He makes Suman sit between the driver and himself on the front seat of the black van. It’s an autumn night. And there is a sliver of the moon of the dark fortnight in the sky. A little bit of smog hovers in the street. The inspector notices that Suman is staring straight ahead with stony, rock-like eyes. He is eying neither the street nor the sky, but something else. What makes him stare like that? Is he blind? Is he looking for a chance to escape? Gusts of cold wind rush through the window. Samaddar feels chilly. He did have a plan when he boarded the van with Suman. But now things somehow go awry. He pokes Suman in the ribs with the revolver in his pocket. Then he begins, ‘All this is very bad business. Trust me, I don’t like it a blind bit. But the things you’ve been doing…Nothing can be achieved in this way. It’s nothing but a passing fad, a craze. What good does it do if the boys get together and raise hell? Nobody stands up for you. Nobody wants you.’ Half way through his spiel the inspector suddenly gets to feel that nobody is sitting by him. The place is empty, it’s as if Suman has just dissolved in the thin air. His heart stops beating. He fidgets sideways and comes into contact with Suman’s body. Suman is sitting ramrod straight. Light from the street lamps dapples across his protruding chin, sharp nose and broad wrists. Though Suman is sitting by him, he does not seem to belong in this world. Something akin to cold wind is exuding from his body. Filaments of this cold wind now condense like ice all around him.

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Inspector Samaddar just can’t make anything of it. All his plans fall to pieces. The pain of defeat, of being demolished rankles inside him. He lights the cheroot and instructs the driver, ‘Take us to the Maidan.’ The black van pulls up on the Maidan alongside the Race Course. The sentries make Suman get off the van. The inspector puffs away, then tells Suman, ‘There is still time. Think it over.’ No reply comes across from the other side. Only the inspector’s voice resounds through the empty ground. A rope lashed around him, his hands shackled, Suman stands barefoot in the moist grass and looks at the moon of the dark fortnight in the sky. The sentry slinks away from Suman’s side and the inspector pulls the trigger of his revolver. A little later a sentry comes back to the van carrying the rope and the handcuffs. Climbing in Samaddar sits by the driver and lights the cheroot which had gone out. When the van starts moving down the dark road, it seems to the inspector as though Suman is sitting between him and the driver enclosed by a cold ice wall. A cold wind is blowing—piercing cold. Suman is increasingly pressing him towards the door of the van. The inspector slides away on the seat. The van is hurtling down quiet empty streets at high speed. The driver slides him a sideways glance and warns, ‘Jara samalke.’ Pulling himself together Samaddar shifts from the edge back to his place by the driver. He’s not keeping well of late. Samaddar feels he needs a few days’ leave. ‘Go fast,’ Samaddar tells the driver. He is reminded that his father was mown down by a train, it was an unnatural death. Samaddar keeps drifting along the seat and ends up almost on the driver’s lap—thoroughly unwilling to leave even a chink between the driver and himself. The van returns to the dark empty courtyard of the large building. Inspector Samaddar goes up to the same room on the second floor and stands there. Bratati is not there. Perhaps Inspector Palit has consigned her to the care of a doctor. His eyes ache in the powerful light after his sudden arrival in the room. He picks up the bottle of rum from the table and downs the rum. The bottle is empty. The moment he looks ahead, he discovers Suman seated on the bench near the door. Protruding jaws, intent gaze, staring at the

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bright lights. Samaddar shakes with fear. He takes aim and hurls the empty bottle at Suman. The shattering noise of glass breaking fills the air. But where is Suman? Samaddar rubs his eyes with both the hands and sees that the bench is empty, there’s not a soul anywhere. Suddenly a breath of that cold air wafts across his neck and Samaddar jumps. And lands in the pool of blood lying before him. He slips, almost tripping. Regaining his balance Samaddar scrapes his feet across the floor to wipe off blood stains from his shoes. As soon as he scrapes, that icky, sticky, partly congealed blood spreads across the whole room like alta—liquid lac dye. The blood stains refuse to go. Stamping his feet and stomping all over the place Samaddar tries to wipe the stains off his shoes. But the stubborn stains remain. The ground under the inspector’s feet heaves like the belly of a pregnant woman. Samaddar darts across to the window and stands there. The same icy, cold, dense darkness out there. Frightened out of his wits Samaddar bellows, ‘Pahara….’ From the cornice running along the walls on the second floor of the red building a black owl sails away into the dark.

twenty-one CHAPTER

Human Gems Debesh Roy

T

hirty-nine dead bodies have been found till the date of enquiry. The number is so reliable, so credible that you are not inclined to round it off to the fullness of forty by adding one or subtracting one and pegging it at the near fullness of thirty-eight. It is as if the number stands at thirty-nine at the end of the day in spite of the rigorous search and all the efforts of those responsible for ferreting out dead bodies. But the government is impartial and has ordered an enquiry. The ministers who are in charge have repeatedly asserted that the guilty—whoever they might be—would be brought to justice though a member of the Lok Sabha, perhaps the youngest one, has already stated that so many people perished as a result of a mass upsurge. Therefore, for the time being it may appear from this statement that in terms of politics there is a difference between a mass upsurge and man slaughter. But first as a lawyer, second as a judge and third as a former judge, I am at present not aware when an offence exceeds and goes beyond organized rioting and murder and merits to be considered a mass upsurge under the provisions of the Indian penal code and the Indian constitution. And how many men are required to perpetrate the murder of how many men—to attract the label of mass upsurge under these provisions. Yet it has been asserted that the guilty will be punished the moment they are found out. The responsibility of any failure to find out and identify the guilty will recoil on the investigating former judge. In that case the Translated from Bengali by Subhransu Maitra. Debesh Roy, ‘Manushratan’ (Human Gems), Collected Short Stories of Two Centuries, Netaji Subhas Open University, Kolkata, West Bengal; May, 2008; Baisakh 25, 1415 (1st edition).

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almost unquestionable impartiality, integrity of the Indian judicial system will be tainted and compromised. Therefore, the reputation, the honour of the administration which depends on the judicial system and the Lok Sabha assemblies and ministries which in turn depend on the administration, all hinges on the apprehension of the guilty person or persons. I am aware that this sequence or order of dependence is open to debate. There are many who believe that the judicial system is dependent on the administration. I have no objection to this, either. Lock, stock and barrel or barrel, stock and lock—let stock remain at the centre. But I am somewhat embarrassed as far as this case is concerned. Indeed, though the embarrassment is mine alone at the moment, at the end of the day it besets all and sundry. The minister-in-charge happens to be a lawyer, too. He has said that the moment guilt is unearthed, punishment will follow. Had he said that punishment would follow the moment guilt was proved, it would have been more in conformity with the ethos of the legal fraternity. But the lawyer happens to be the minister-in-charge, also. Hence, he has used the impersonal language of the law in a more tangible, comprehensible way. In a very rigorous analysis, however, such usage vitiates the impersonality and impartiality of the law. The unquestioning allegiance to justice and ethics, the scientific inquisitiveness to unearth guilt degenerates into a sheer personal or collective or neighbourhood witch-hunt to track down the guilty. An accused person has no distinct value as an individual before the law. He has only his social identity and its definition has been precisely laid down again and again in the clauses and sub-clauses of the penal code. As a lawyer it is none of my business to find out the culprits. My responsibility is to establish where the guilt exactly lies. Those who run the administration will smoke out the culprits by following the direction of the clauses and sub-clauses of the law. The honourable minister has blurted out that he will punish the guilty once they are found out perhaps because he is also lumbered with the task of unearthing them. Because he happens to be a minister too, and in charge of it as well. There may be differences of opinion about the methods of crime detection as well. When she lost the bank nationalization case in the

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Supreme Court, the prime minister had said, ‘The courts should be aware of the hopes and aspirations of the common people’. Later, during the mid-term Lok Sabha elections that followed, one came across a poster which said, ‘Courts cannot halt the triumphant march of fifty crore people’. It drew this comment from a certain judge, ‘The law of the land cannot be interpreted according to the advantages and disadvantages of the government’. Again, in this case the minster-in-charge has said, ‘The guilty will be punished the moment they are found out’. On the other hand, a member of the Lok Sabha belonging to his party, perhaps the youngest one, has asserted, ‘It is a mass upsurge’. It means that I will have to adopt either of these two conflicting views as my principle. The trouble is that the fall from sociability, the violation of the social code on the part of an individual lies in the jurisdiction of the courts; but it is not clear in which jurisdiction the fall of society from sociability or its violation of the social code lies. And more specifically, it is not clear whether the trial of this social failure lies in the jurisdiction of the governor or the minister-in-charge or the combined jurisdiction of both during a spell of the President’s rule in a state. After the country-wide debacle suffered by the Congress Party in the general elections of 1967, whoever was installed in power to fill the resultant local vacuum everywhere ended up believing that only they were the basic force driving social change in that region and no one else. In West Bengal the circumstances were such that the governor Dharamvira himself suddenly emerged on the scene as the agent of social change. Consequently, it seems as if the total fall from social change, this entire failure of society lies in the jurisdiction of the government. As if the government can by itself shatter the stasis of an inert stable society by staging a bandh and then a dharna or by breaking it up altogether so that a new society and a new order can be built. Again, when instead of organizing a bandh (strike by general public to stop work) or dharna (sit-in protest) someone decides to take up lethal arms to kill or wants to lie low in a dark, secret hideaway prior to perpetrating a secret murder in order to subvert or destroy the inertness of a stable society, it is again the government which can safeguard the society. The self-identity of Srikrishna as both preserver and

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destroyer revealed in the chapter entitled ‘Viswaroopadarshana’ in the Gita has devolved on the government and in that connection on the political parties as well under this constitution of party rule. Of course, analogy should not be made to do the work of logic and reason. But then, nothing should be left vague, ambiguous in a judge’s enquiry or inquest report. This preserver-destroyer-rolledinto-one image belongs not only to Srikrishna, it often belongs to Kamalekamini as well or perhaps Chamunda, too. Hence, though I jolly well understand my image as the preserver thanks to the name-plate visible outside, tour programmes, and the way in which my personal assistants, always address me as ‘Sir’ and so on, I am afraid I’m not yet perhaps aware whether I am devouring my own head as destroyer! Only after its stool examination will it be known exactly what history cannot digest. Altogether thirty-nine dead bodies have been found. Neither forty, nor thirty, nor thirty-five. Thirty-nine only. This is enough to prove that the police of 24 Parganas and Calcutta made special efforts to find out the right dead bodies. Again, the object of the inquest is of course the detection of the cause of death and the apprehension of the killer/s, if possible. Deciding the question as to whether the police, after receiving information without any delay, exerted themselves at all to prevent these deaths also falls within the purview of my enquiry. But I intend to begin at the end of the murder and work my way back to the origin of the crime. Before I move on to consider whether the murders were preventable by the police, my primary concern should be to determine how the bodies of those killed were collected by the police. According to the police testimony, as soon as they received information on the night of the incident, they went. The diary of the police station or thana contains records of four messages received over the telephone on the night of the 12th, entries in the log book also show that the police cars made frequent trips. Of course, on the basis of this one cannot conclude that the police rushed to the scene as soon as they were tipped off if the news of the 13th means this particular incident in which a group of infuriated people reportedly collected, then fanned out, hunted down and killed a number of men over twelve hours and disappeared leaving the dead bodies.

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The diary of the police station further shows that on the 13th two more incidents of rioting, three murders and four thefts also took place in the area under the jurisdiction of this thana (hereinafter referred to as No. 1 for my convenience). A girl, too, had gone missing but later her father reported that she had returned home. So the police might have gone to investigate these complaints too. Perhaps these complaints are really different parts of the incident being investigated. It is possible that those who informed the police had thought that these were isolated incidents not related to one another. Perhaps those incidents of rioting, murder and theft were really inseparable parts of the original incident under investigation. When, after the whole incident had taken place, all kinds of dead bodies surfaced or were discovered in all manner of places necessary for leading social lives in Calcutta, namely, lanes, by-lanes, alleys, verandas, rooms, street corners, on the shores of the Ganga, around the neighbourhood shop at the corner, slums of factory workers, or the path along the rear of the slum leading to the strand of the Ganga—it became clear that all this added up to a single incident. Till then those who died, died thinking that only they were perishing and those who killed, killed thinking that they alone were killing. The realization that only one incident and not two or three had taken place irrespective of whether the number of corpses was thirty-nine or nineteen—sank in twelve or thirteen hours later when all the corpses were seen together in the morning. Thus, the question arises as to whether the different pieces of information and news that the police received on the night of the twelfth pertained to only one incident or different incidents and whether the police made repeated sorties on that night to deal with only one incident or several incidents. If we rephrase the question a little, then it can be asked: did the police conclude on that night itself that only one incident was taking place or did they believe that different, scattered incidents which were not connected to each other were taking place? Answering these two questions brooks no delay whatsoever. We have inherited our police directly from the British and the police did not receive and were not inspired by any political education. The police department was in the hands of leaders with progressive political views during the term of the second

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United Front Government and thus certain beginnings of political awareness were noticed among policemen. Consequently, it may well be that the authorities of Thana No. 1—when information reached them—were able to unearth the link underlying and uniting all the stray incidents. Were they encouraged by their trust in the inexorability, inevitability of history which implies that no state is powerful enough to resist it when different isolated eruptions of resentment acquire a coherent, organized form? Or were they apathetic, indifferent to the different isolated incidents as was the centre of power? I hope that when the proper authorities consider this report of mine, they will conduct a survey on the subject of the thana authorities and the course of history. Irrespective of whether they were informed or not, the authorities of both thanas 1 and 2 ran around a lot. Otherwise it would not have been possible for each police vehicle to bring in a dead body at the end of a sortie before setting off on a new sortie. It could have happened on the morning of the 13th or at the end of the incident. But this is the reason behind the discovery of the dead bodies. While trying to find out the number of dead bodies brought in by each police vehicle, I was disappointed. Neither the drivers nor the policemen could shed any light on this because many of them said that at first they had brought in the corpses found by them lying by the wayside to the thana and when they went out again, they came across more corpses on the streets. Consequently, it was simply impossible to determine who had brought in how many bodies when and whence. Indeed, some of the drivers and cops went to the extent of claiming that they themselves had brought in all the dead bodies. A psychological explanation of this could be that the sordid experience of carrying dead bodies bred in each of these men a kind of fixation that he had brought in all the corpses that were there. Another explanation could be that since both the thanas were guilty in any case, perhaps some of them were trying to take advantage of the opportunity of saving their jobs and securing a couple of increments in the favourable assessment of the government by coming out first in the business of recovering dead bodies. How else does one account for the fact that the number of bodies claimed to have been recovered by all is three times the actual number?

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Then is it possible that the police went to collect dead bodies knowing well that people had died and that corpses lay in the streets? Or did they rush forth to save lives and come back with a load of the dead? Were those whose dead bodies gradually piled up liable to be protected by the police? Did the motley pile of dead bodies—when they were living—enjoy the protection of the police and the state? These questions, too, brook no delay, either. When Arjuna rushed back from one sector of the battlefield to save Abhimanyu in Kurukshetra, the latter was already dead! If a dead body is found, it is not the business of a thana to go and pick up the body from the street. A constable sits by the corpse guarding it while the police photographer and the Doms (undertakers of the so-called low castes) are sent for, who then take it to a morgue. It is understandable that arrangements were made to keep all the corpses in the veranda of the thana with all the constables in attendance in the unusual circumstances prevailing possibly because the corpses outnumbered the constables fit to mount guard and it wasn’t safe either for a single constable to sit by a single dead body. But it is not always possible to adjust the law as the thana authorities did in this instance. That is why differences arose between thanas 1 and 2 in a few cases. The real reason is that both the thanas wanted to remain on the right side of the law. Indeed, the thanas didn’t see eye to eye because these were dead men, the question being which jurisdiction the corpses belonged to. Living people can and do naturally move from the area of one thana to another. But, if at the time of dying a man happens to straddle both jurisdictions—his head lying in one area and the torso lying in another—what on earth can the thana authorities do except exchange correspondence leaving the dead body alone! For example, the police received information at thirty-five minutes past twelve, went and found the dead body of a young man with bullet and knife wounds. Some people who were present there said that quite a few dead bodies were floating in water some way off. It took the police half an hour to reach the water-logged place. Police from Thana No. 1 found three dead bodies of young men afloat, their hands tied behind, throats slit and bullet holes

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in the head. The water-logged field with the dead bodies floating in it was in fact the site for a cooperative housing scheme for LIC employees who had bought the land. A sign board stood on it; it said ‘Site for Housing Scheme—LIC Employees’. The bodies were afloat like the bamboo and straw structures riding on the water— unnecessary, redundant after the immersion of the images following the conclusion of a Puja—only to dissolve and melt away in water. The police from Thana 1 saw the corpses from the street bordering the housing site. The street marked the limit of their jurisdiction on the western side. The housing site lay in the jurisdiction of Thana 2. In fact, thanks to this vacant plot which lay between them, Thanas 1 and 2 never got into an altercation regarding the limits of their jurisdictions. But now the flooded plot awash with the corpses created an administrative problem. A boat with hired hands would have been needed to recover the bodies. But Thana 1 couldn’t justify the expenses because the plot of land lay in the jurisdiction of Thana 2. The Auditor General of West Bengal would have raised objections. In these circumstances what else could Thana 1 do except inform Thana 2? Thana 2 said in reply that the dead bodies lay in a position close to the street marking the western boundary of Thana 1. Hence there was a strong possibility that the murders had been committed in the area of Thana 1 and the corpses were later dumped in the field. After all, the murders could not have taken place in water deep enough for adults to drown. So, Thana 2 concluded in reply, it was the responsibility of Thana 1 to retrieve the dead bodies. Thana 1 suggested that the river police be informed. But did a field which remained dry for the best part of the year except a month or two of water-logging due to monsoon fall in the jurisdiction of the river police? And with its sign board ‘Site for Housing Scheme’ too? The question could only be decided by the home department and it would have taken ages. In the end sub-inspectors from both the thanas supervised the recovery of the dead bodies. At present our thanas are overburdened. The population has soared, too. But the number of personnel in a thana hasn’t proportionately increased. If under these circumstances dead bodies are found lying in areas of ill-defined jurisdiction, it will result in an administrative deadlock. Hence my recommendation is that

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the government should issue an order stating that from now on irrespective of how suddenly dying or killing takes place, both the killer and the killed must make sure that the dead body—the whole of it—lies in the jurisdiction of one thana only. If the Soviet Union can make its Sputnik land precisely on a wee spot of land— previously determined location, why can’t we fell a three-and-a-half cubit long human body inside the large area under the jurisdiction of a thana? If deemed necessary, the government should introduce special physical training to ensure that people do not mix up or straddle different thana areas while falling dead or killing. It is impossible to decisively answer the question as to whether the thana authorities went to quell trouble or pick up the dead bodies off the streets. It is quite possible that though they went apparently or legally to quell disturbances, their real intention in going out was to collect the dead bodies. It is also likely that this or that officer had formed the impression that the disturbances would stop as soon as the corpses were removed. Therefore, recovering dead bodies and going to quell trouble are not contrary, mutually opposed propositions. There is no need to investigate the mode of recovery of each of the thirty-nine corpses and divide them into two groups—twentytwo and a half for Thana 1 and sixteen and a half for Thana 2—in order to divide three dead bodies floating in a field awash with rain water into two parts of one and a half each for the two thanas. But a few of the incidents referred to by the police in their deposition may be mentioned. Both newspaper reports and the widely shared popular view suggest that the police arrived on the scene only after the disturbances had stopped, that is, only after those who had come out to commit murders or stage a mass upsurge in an organized manner went home having perpetrated their crimes. In that case the murderers or the organizers of the upsurge, now scattered, were sleeping or kicking up their heels back in their homes; the corpses too, lay scattered all over the place. It seemed as if removing the dead bodies was the only thing that remained to be done. But the evidence shows that it did not pan out exactly like that. For example, sub-inspector Sikdar says in his evidence that

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hearing shouts and an uproar he rushed in his car towards Kalupara crossing and backing his car down a side road he at once saw a dead body lying face down in the hollow of the walls of House No. 18. Therefore, he had to take the corpse back to the thana. Only then he could and did proceed to Kalupara. In the end he could not go to Kalupara or he was not required to. Disorderly torn clothes, a pair of rough feet clad in tough trousers from the waist down armed with five toes clutching the earth, dust under those dead feet looks somewhat uncanny, miraculous like patches of irrelevant colour, inevitably red, here and there on the empty bare street at about two or three in the afternoon on the day of Holi, or like illusions of birds active at night, or leaves falling or a wisp of cotton or a bit of torn rag in moonlight on a spring night along balcony like streets! There’s no solitariness like that of a lonely man lying dead. If the length of the almost straight road from the Ganga to BT Road can be imagined, is it likely to grow so vast that three dead bodies appear to be very small sums! Sub-inspector Sikdar has of course said that dead bodies are always found in threesomes, never fewer. But if the word human, human, human is endowed with its chief meaning before the straight length of the road from the Ganga to BT Road is imagined, then the number three, three, thee becomes kind of illimitable. I have been asked to investigate the circumstances, the incidents in which these thirty-nine men perished. But the investigation cannot make any headway because nobody has turned up to represent them. It is the police who have managed to identify a few of these dead men. And judging by the identity provided by the police it does not seem likely that even if they had been alive now, they would have spoken before a court or the government or a former judge like me. Nor can any conclusion be drawn from how and where the dead bodies were found. For example, take Nimai Sanyal, did he go huddle himself in the hollow of the walls in order to attack somebody or prevent an attack on himself? The majority of the dead bodies lay on their faces on the ground. On this point the testimony of physiology experts says that this is the result of the loss of balance and equilibrium of the limbs of the body. Also on this point a certain expert adduces a quotation from Darwin’s

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‘The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex’ and states that according to Darwin our ancient ancestors—the primary apes lived in trees, they had erect ears, a coat of hair covering the entire body and both males and females were bearded. The copy of this evidence is attached to this report of mine (Annexure 2). Here I give a translation of the gist of it. Our nearest forebears were the anthropoid apes. And the specimens, the examples he found led Darwin to mention the Driopithicus species. When their normal habitat suffered alteration, forests and jungles dwindling, these forefathers of ours were compelled to change their lifestyle and drifted to living in grassy wooded regions. Later they moved to more and more open spaces and set up homes. This major change brought about a qualitative transformation in their gait, too. Giving up their semi-quadruped, semi-biped gait, they grew fully bipedal in their gait. It must have been a pretty long evolutionary process but they acquired the ability to keep their hands free from maintaining the balance of heavy bodies while walking and gaining this freedom had far-flung ramifications. Man could only be born of an animal whose hands were fee and brain very highly developed. According to Darwin, the human foetus re-enacts its historical evolution of countless years in the ten months spent by it in its mother’s womb. When a few weeks old, it displays the characteristics of a fish. Often such characteristics are found in human beings, for example gills connected to the gullet. After a few months a foetus reflects the reptilian stage in the formation of its brain and the movement of its body parts. And the strength of ear muscles, the ability to move the ears and so on are signs of the mammal stage. After its birth a newborn human baby is seen holding its hands as if trying to grasp something. If the twig of a tree is inserted in the palm of a newborn baby, it will be seen that the fingers are bent exactly like those of one grasping and hanging from a tree branch and its fists are curled. Darwin says that certain specific traits such as a highly developed brain, the different conformation of the front and rear fingers and the ability to stand upright have made the transition from monkey to man so much the easier. In Darwin’s opinion, our ancestors, in order to survive, descended from trees and walked on earth on all fours, or using two legs. Sir A. Keith affirms that

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the earliest beginning in the direction of walking on two legs was made when our ancestors used to stand erect on their heels on a lower horizontal branch of a tree while grasping a branch overhead. Darwin writes that it is only human beings who walk on two legs. And surely humans are indebted to their forefathers, the monkeys for this, whose hands and legs evolved in a different tree-friendly manner. As soon as man acquired the ability to stand upright, his legs began to evolve chiefly as supporting limbs in a manner different from a monkey’s half-grasping half-supporting legs. And the million-year old history of developing the upright stance, of learning to stand erect is repudiated, rejected when a man lies face down on the ground. And if a man is fatally struck while standing, he is sure to start spinning and fall face down as soon as the brain shuts off. Perhaps he wants to run away from death on all fours with horizontal swiftness, perhaps the ancient habit of wedging his neck between the two legs comes alive. Perhaps exactly when he is dying, a man longs to recover that vitality of life which has enabled him and his puny thin body to survive all the direct onslaughts of nature and wild animals and come this far down millions of years. Then can we decide whether the dead men wanted to escape or kill? And how can we when it is not known whether the men—now dead and scattered, lying in streets, fields and water-logged plots of land—were smoked out and stabbed, skewered to death or killed in battle fighting. Fighting and self-defence have ceased to be separate and become one and the same thing. Therefore, all the dead bodies were sent for post-mortem. But this, too, led to an administrative glitch. The morgue assigned to Thana 1 was located in Mominpur while Thana 2 had its morgue in Medical College, the oldest in Calcutta. The three corpses recovered from a water-logged field by the joint team of both the thanas and included as one and a half in the report of each thana posed a problem. The morgue which hardly handled thirty-nine dead bodies in the course of a whole month could not by any means be expected to conduct the post-mortem of thirty-nine dead bodies in a day. Hence, all the dead bodies were sent to the Medical College morgue. But this arrangement would result in a procedural problem. The memo of evidence regarding this incident would be

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provided by Thana No. 1 while the doctor-witness would record his evidence in the reports of Thana 2. However, it is expected that the proper authorities would deal with this issue in proper time. The post-mortem report has arrived and it is attached to this enquiry report (Annexure 5). But I propose to include certain parts of this post-mortem report in my primary report because I have made certain recommendations based on these parts. I urge the authorities concerned to attach special importance to this medical evidence while considering my recommendations because the former may inspire the government or the proper authorities to arrive at certain decisions capable of producing a far-reaching impact on society. At the very outset the doctors have stated in their report that medicine is concerned with living beings and not the dead. Perhaps in the interests of the living people post-mortem has been provided for in the law for death in mysterious circumstances to enable the apprehension of criminals if they are involved. And dissection can certainly be performed for scientific purposes to gain knowledge of the human body which can help prolong and save human life. Nowadays there are corpses galore. Almost every day the morning newspapers talk of death and dead bodies. It is certainly highly suspicious if instead of notifying people first and then dying in public view one goes and dies and lies dead in an obscure place at the dead of night. Perhaps—why perhaps, it is certainly necessary to find out the cause of these deaths and nail the murderer. The penal code mentions the need to conduct post-mortem to find out the cause of such deaths. That is why whenever dead bodies are found, these are at once sent to the morgue. Then an undertaker takes away certain bodies, their relatives turn up and take away some more and now and then a procession comes along and takes away its dead body. But if dead bodies keep pouring in and morgues are obliged to conduct an ever-increasing number of post-mortem examinations every day, the dead will take up all their time and doctors will not be able to look after those who are living. What can the poor doctors do if nine dead bodies lie all night at Barasat, ten at Diamond Harbour, seven each at Berhampore and Noapara and so many more at Krishnanagar, Kharagpur and Jalpaiguri? As it is, there are

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too few doctors for all the patients in the hospitals and if, on top of it, dead bodies are brought along and admitted to hospitals, won’t the ratio of doctors available to the combined number of the living patients and the dead simply go haywire? That’s why doctors are demanding that either the provisions making post-mortem mandatory in case of death in suspicious circumstances be removed or it should be suitably amended. And after all, most of these deaths aren’t so mysterious to be sure. There is no room whatever for suspicion or mystery when a man is struck a blow on the neck with an axe or shot through the body with a pipe gun—the victim will certainly die. If there is any mystery, it is about the killer. Post-mortem does not reveal the identity of the killer. Nor does it come under the scope of medicine. So where is the need to rush all such dead bodies to the morgue? But when death is an inevitable, irresistible yet unknown force, it is necessary to be familiar with it, know and understand it. Where’s the necessity to cut open the skull or abdomen to determine the cause of death when the blade of a knife makes it certain, an axe blow makes it inexorable or a bullet fired by a gun of some kind or the other renders it intense? Society is changing but the law isn’t changing accordingly—that’s why the provision for post-mortem or the schedule of duties to be performed following the discovery of a dead body has not changed in any way. Such a change is now a crying need. Provisions may be put in place as a result of which post-mortem itself will become redundant, unnecessary. It has a social purpose as well. Take, for example, the dead bodies which have to be draped with flags and carried in a funeral procession. These dead bodies have to be taken first to a morgue where a quick post-mortem will be carried out. Then the chaps from the neighbourhood will have to be brought in the vicinity of the morgue to form the procession; many of them don’t want to come so far away, consequently without them the procession grows smaller. Next the procession has to be brought back to the para or neighbourhood stopping before clubs and libraries before it proceeds to the burning ghat. Due to all this a lot of trouble ensues, there’s traffic jam, people experience a lot of inconvenience and there’s no telling who reaps the benefits of post-mortem! If, on the other hand,

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post-mortem isn’t mandatory in such cases, people can quickly snap up the dead man off the street, organize a procession to take him to his funeral and after that go their several ways home. And the goal of modern life is to ensure that whatever is to be done gets done faster, is it not! So the provision of post-mortem should be abolished to make it more convenient for social people to get on with their work. It is not very difficult to find out what goes awry inside the body as a result of death or the disorders that cause death, anyone can do it. Therefore, the doctors want to disseminate certain essential facts about the human body and death. If the government insists on retaining a list of those who died on the streets, anyone can, following this method, go and submit a notice at a thana or a municipal office. Now people are dying so suddenly, so abruptly that they don’t get a chance to transition from the physical and mental condition in which they happen to find themselves immediately before being dealt the single fatal blow causing instant death. If a man on his way home after the daily round of shopping for greens and groceries is struck such a blow while absorbed in adding up the expenses incurred, this absorption will outbalance the suddenness of the blow. Adding up the shopping expenses is a far more difficult physical-mental exercise than being killed by a single blow. Thus, if an unbiased scientific research is carried out at the post-mortem examination of someone killed in these circumstances, the conclusion will follow that he was busy adding up when he died. Let’s take another example. On the day of Saraswati Puja a policeman clad in holiday clothes, dhoti and Panjabi [kurta], was out for a stroll down the familiar streets holding his daughter’s hand as he walked. Suddenly a hail of bullets fired by pipe guns cut him down. His post-mortem will reveal the existence-not of the poison of the bullets which felled him—but of the affection and parental love in the glandular secretion and in the veins and sub-veins of his brain—affection and love drawn forth in him by his daughter and Saraswati Puja. The reason is that there are many specific zones or centres in the human body to register the sensations of touch, cold, warmth, but none to register the sensation of pain. There is no arrangement

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to convey the information of pain to the nerve centre. The human body isn’t indeed designed at all to receive pain. A sensation map of the skin of the human body can be drawn to show these zones (Diagram 6). Man does not, cannot feel the same amount of touch in all the parts of his body. Given below is a chart which shows the lowest pressure thresholds needed per millimetre to cause sensation of touch in various body parts. Body part

Lowest pressure threshold

Nose

2 grams

Buttocks

2.5”

Finger tips

3”

Back of finger

5”

Inside of arms/thighs

7’

Back of hand

12”

Hollow of feet, neck

16”

Abdomen

26”

Fore foot/bottom of feet

28”

Shoulders

33”

Waist

48”

It is mind-boggling to contemplate how terrible might be the impact of a single powerful blow on the abdominal region which requires only 26 grams of pressure per millimetre in order to sense touch or on the neck which requires only 16 grams per millimetre. There are no nerves in the human body to transmit the sensation of pain. Only those synaptic membranes which lie outside the network and are not directly associated with the spinal cord mainly transmit pain. The body has certain parts which can only be subjected to pain, such as certain parts of the skull. These loose membranes of nerves convey all kinds of pain perceptions—cold, warm, chemical, mechanical-to the nerve centre, the only condition of transmission being that the physical impact must be strong. Perhaps pain is a common sign of all such stimulations—pain is meant to hurt. Hence pain also activates instincts for self-defence.

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The perception which makes us feel pain also makes us prepared to defend ourselves. Man has a minimum pain threshold which is occasionally raised and then he can take a lot of pain. Occasionally it dips too, and then he can’t take pain at all. When a man is dealt an axe blow or shot or about to be hit, he shouts or grabs something or hardens because these acts increase his ability to take pain. By examining these signs present in the dead body it’s possible to find out whether the person was aware that he was going to perish before he died. One pain somewhat blunts the pangs of another pain. This is why when a horse is shod, a knot is tied around its nose. This is why it is suggested that if a permanent pain can be induced—if not in all the residents of Bengal, then certainly at least in the residents of the most trouble-prone areas—by means of an injection, maybe they will grow oblivious of death pangs under the influence of the permanent pain induced. Extremely severe tooth ache, stomach ache or pain in the knees can drown the pain of death. Of course, someone may raise the objection that inflicting pain isn’t a doctor’s business, but alleviating, relieving pain, is. But a doctor is sometimes compelled to use drugs based on poison to treat a severe ailment; this proposition should be considered in the same spirit. And indeed, doctors should have no moral compunction about inducing minor pains such as tooth ache or stomach ache in order to make people oblivious of the more intense pain caused by the blow of an axe, a stabbing knife or a gunshot wound. Be that as it may, for the convenience of the people the government should issue a notification clearly stating and mentioning those parts of the human body which are incapable of feeling pain even if struck. The fact of the matter is that dying doesn’t pose any problem, the pain preceding dying or death is what matters. If the pain isn’t felt, no serious exception should be taken to the death of people not aware of approaching death. When people are killing and dying in any case, the government should take steps to make killing and dying so much easier. Hence a draft notification is given here for dissemination among the people. It is pertinent to point out that this notification should be published in the newspapers under private ownership as well as the progressive political newspapers. Small

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posters and bills like those advertisements which say ‘Get rid of hydrocele without pain or surgery’ can also be stuck on the walls everywhere in the city.

NOTIFICATION OF KILLING AND DYING West Bengal has seen a gradual increase in murders and violent deaths. The government is aware of this. The subject has been repeatedly discussed at all-party conferences and more discussion will follow. The government expects that a solution acceptable to all will certainly emerge from these parleys. But in order to ensure that people encounter no inconvenience or difficulty in killing and dying till a solution emerges, the government is recommending certain steps and procedures based on consultations with experts. The experts have informed the government that the internal organs located in the torso from the heart to the belly are incapable of feeling any kind of pain. No pain is felt in the innards if the intestines, liver, stomach or heart is cut through, burnt or pressed. Viscount Montgomery was taken to the monarch Charles I who saw and pressed the former’s transparent heart but Montgomery felt no sensation of touch though he was the only man fortunate enough to have received a king’s touch on his heart. Hence the government urges those intent on killing to deliver only one blow with a sharp-edged weapon on the innards—from the heart to the belly—of the victim so that even before he can feel the minor pain of the skin being ruptured or pierced, the stomach or the intestines or the heart already painlessly hit will cause instant death. The government further urges people not to wear anything stiff or hard by the way of underwear or vest which is likely to resist or impede the blow or thrust of an axe or knife. The government hopes that people will cooperate with it by accepting and following these expert recommendations on painless killing and dying until the advent of a unanimous decision arrived at through the all-party conference. The doctors have further observed that man faces a physical and mental difficulty in the business of killing and dying. He does not want to die—over millions of years the longing has been ingrained in his nature. This explains why a man can’t admit defeat and fade

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away like an ailing vulnerable huge old tusker who is defeated by a new challenger, deserts his numerous female elephants and helplessly suspending the trunk he penetrates deeper and deeper into the more solitary parts of the forest only to die. Why can’t a man go to his death like that? When an elephant breathes his last, he lays his pair of white tusks on the ground in his last salute to the earth. Like a dying elephant, why can’t a man similarly stand upright with his head held high-his small head with a 24-inch radius and two billion nerves, veins and sub-veins packed in an area of 220,000 square millimetres and tell the world as he goes to his end—only this much is mine, mine alone—this upright posture and this brain. The reason is, man has become human. Drifting far away from the animals, h/she has reached such a lonely eminence and splendour of glory that h/she tries to brave nature armed only with his almost hairless smooth skin, his body has an average length of three cubits and a half (157/8 centimetres) only and yet he seeks to master earth, air and water! Is such a puny body strong enough to resist a bullet or an axe blow! On the other hand, a cat or a crow is rarely hit by a stone tossed by a human hand. How a man dies when struck a blow—inevitably, irrevocably in broad daylight—let alone the odd hours of the night! So he dies. Alas, drifting further and further away from self-defence he has landed himself in a state of acute helplessness. In the transition from the remote primitive stage to the human stage he has lost a hell of a lot! He’s lost his acute sense of smell—so he can’t be on the alert or guess when his assassin is ready. He’s lost his coat of padded hair and now bullets fired by a gun do not ricochet off his body, nor do axe blows bounce or slip off the target. He’s lost his swollen muscles, the prehensile conformation and articulation of his feet as well as the ability to sprint and race away on his toes. In its place he has gained the physical ability to express mental avidity and eagerness—the sharp thrust of the chin, the blooming lips in the middle, the little gap between the nose and the upper lip to accommodate a big kiss—a gap eloquent with beautiful women’s beads of sweat and the upright posture—so that he can no more spring to attack on all fours and pounce on his enemy. And he has got his brain with its two billion nerves and soft

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grey matter. This brain can’t resist or repulse anything, nothing! A single blow of a hammer can shatter this brain to pieces which contains, in addition to two billion nerves, uncounted fibres. This puny head mounted on two legs is itself the human being who is utterly fragile, liable to go to pieces and perish at the slightest blow. There is only one way to save man from this cerebral vulnerability and liability. Experiments successfully conducted by the famous scientist Goltz show that if its cerebral cortex is removed, an animal very quickly loses temper and grows angry. A dog which has undergone this surgery, for example, always barks and growls baring its teeth. Indeed, the cerebral cortex acts as the main buffer against this outburst of anger, this proneness to hold the body in readiness only to attack. In fact this proneness to fury, outburst of rage or menacing attitude represents a reaction in which blend both fear and anger. An animal whose cerebral cortex has been removed goes berserk at the slightest touch. That is why the doctors have recommended that a special programme of cerebral cortex removal surgery be undertaken for the people of West Bengal on the line of the vasectomy programme for birth control. As a former judge enquiring into these deaths I wholeheartedly approve this recommendation. I further propose that in order to encourage and motivate people to accept and participate in this programme, rewards should be offered to them. A person undergoing the cerebral cortex removal surgery should be awarded a transistor radio and a person who successfully motivates another to undergo this surgery should be awarded a ten-year savings certificate worth two hundred rupees. I further recommend that this programme should get off to a head start with the top brass of the political parties of West Bengal first undergoing this surgery because the examples thus set by them will encourage, stimulate the people. If we—each of us—manage to get rid of our cerebral cortex, if we can fly into a rage, snarl baring our teeth, if in exchange for the cortex we can retrieve all the traits of our forefathers that we lost, if we can act naturally and normally in self-defence, if each of us can manage to kill—then, by virtue of

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our experience, in some later age we will be able to find a way to prevent killings. For the time being, in order to save man’s head, it is imperative to behead him. I further recommend kkk kkk kkk kkk I further recommend ungungung engengeng nnn shshsh I further recommend jhjhjhjhjhjhjhjhjhjhjhjhjhjh I further recommend chhchhchhchh gggggggg oooooooo *t f d n k l n n s h j p l r r t d u n d h t h j h t d h r aa bha gha

*Translator’s Note As society sinks back into lawless savagery, this inexorable regression is vividly brought home to the reader by the loss of language suffered by the narrator. He now commands nothing more than a limited repertoire of inchoate, incoherent sounds. But no words.

twenty-two CHAPTER

Homecoming Ashim Ray

H

e has been gazing at the mosquito on the wall for the last fifteen minutes. And he wishes this situation to go on. Can’t it go on another fifteen minutes, fifteen hours, another fifteen days, fifteen years—can’t it go on all life long? A couple of years ago his life had seemed to acquire a tremendous significance, his thoughts had blossomed magnificently and things like duties, responsibilities had taken off chairs and tables and spreading wings landed on his shoulders and sent him soaring to the lanes of Sealdah, Howrah, Kasba, Ballygunge Place, College Street and a motley assortment of houses in the city and its suburbs. At present mosquito-gazing is of the highest significance. ‘And how long do you propose to spend in the bathroom-eh? We too need a bath, don’t we?’ It’s Nada, his elder brother, calling. Tapan came back home last Monday and has managed to dodge Nada and stay out of his way the last six days. But he may not be able to dodge him today which is a holiday. He can guess that Nada’s need of a bath is but a trick, a pretext. What he really wants is a conversation with him, to talk about his future, whether he will return to their normal social world or whether this homecoming is a mere tactical ploy—all this has to be dealt with at once, this very moment. Tapan turns on the water tap full blast over the bucket which is full of water. He goes back to mosquito-gazing. Translated by Subhransu Maitra. Ashim Ray, ‘Ghare Phera’ (Homecoming), Collected Stories of Ashim Ray, Dey’s Publishing, Kolkata, West Bengal, September, 1994; Bhadra, 1401 (1st edition, 2 volumes).

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‘Do you have to be an anti-social element simply because you’re into politics? In your China before they eat, they share a piece of bread among themselves.’ Tapan chuckles all by himself as he recalls the expression of frozen horror in Nada’s face he had seen when he set foot on the threshold of the house last Monday. ‘You are alive!’ Nada had taken so enormously long to say these few words that Tapan sensed for the first time that he had himself become an object of such monstrous horror. ‘We’d thought…. It was as though the horror that filled Nada’s face was cast in bronze. Even after the words were spoken, the muscles in his face were horror-struck. ‘You guessed right. Medical student Tapan Sarcar did figure on the list of boys to be shot by the police. That is surely my name. But there was another Tapan Sarcar at RG Kar Medical College. The poor chap died.’ ‘So you managed to get away alive?’ The way Nada’s query and soliloquy blended in these words, Tapan could not help but laugh. ‘Well, what would you have me do? Drink poison and kill myself?’ Embarrassed, Nada replied, ’No no, I’m not saying anything of that sort. All that I am trying to say is that we have to live and bring up our children.’ By now he’d recovered his usual cunning. ‘Do you want to know whether I will again get into politics?’ ‘Why not, why not? But is there no other kind of politics except the politics of killing, murdering—khatam?’ Tapan suddenly fell silent. It was as if the endless mental ardour and reckless daring that went on for the last two years and the very heavy toll it had taken of his health combined to overwhelm him. He’d sensed that a conflict would ensue the moment he tried to come home. But he had not reckoned that the task of picking up the flowers of the garland which he had torn up and tossed away in the street and threading each flower diligently patiently back to make the garland over again would thus return so soon to him. He had thought that he would after all escape the clutches of Nada—his elder theoretician sibling. Or he’d openly debate the question with

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him: Was not the self-sacrifice of several hundred young men, the incarceration of several thousand and the torture inflicted on them in prison cells enough to earn him a little peace? Thud-thud. Blows land on the bathroom door. Nada isn’t going to let him off today. He has managed to dodge him the past six days, but not today. ‘How long do you think this middle-class romanticism is going to last?’ Nada does not want to take any chances and directs his shouts at the bathroom door itself which is shut. The noise of water falling inside the bathroom stops. Abruptly opening the door Tapan steps out—as if his contempt is transformed into a snake’s poised threatening hood—and stares sharply at his dada (older brother). There is boundless derision in his stare. Nada doesn’t speak or holler any more. Collecting the towel dangling froma string he throws it around his shoulders and enters the bathroom. After this another seven days pass by. The next seven days Tapan seldom stays at home, also skips meals often enough. He showers himself at once after drinking tea in the morning and goes out. Returns home at the dead of night, eats the meal kept ready for him or eats out before coming home. And on holidays the bathroom turns into his only sanctuary if Nada happens to be at home by any chance. And wonder of wonders! The mosquito seems to be waiting for him. There are times when it disappears, but emerges inevitably into view on holidays. It is not large enough to attract the notice of the others. But its presence on the sparkling white wall is a great aid to achieving mental concentration. A foul brown circle on a vast sparkling white wall. As far as the last two years are concerned, his memory presents a sparkling blank white sheet. And he is looking for some kind of support like this brown circle so that from this centre he can re-launch himself into life. The life surrounding him? In other words, the market place, office, marriage, a job. Physical existence. The first thing that he hears as he goes into the neighbouring tea shop after a pretty long time is the exclamation—‘Incorrigible boozer though he is, Romuda has wangled an increment of forty rupees and he’s a boozer still’. Then, in order to allay the suspicions of the neighbouring boys he queues up twice in the same week to buy tickets to Hindi

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movies. Bottom glued to bottom, he keeps standing for hours on end clutching the ticket to recover normal life. Like heaps of young men around him he laps up with his eyes the smutty songs sung by the heroine of the Hindi movie, how she swings her buttocks for no reason, bobs her bosoms up and down, up and down, laughs at the clown’s hackneyed jokes, he even completely lumps it when the hero stridently advertises his self-sacrifice. But nothing helps. An overwhelming emptiness engulfs him to such an extent that he cannot extricate himself from it by any means. Another face-off with Nada takes place exactly when he is in this frame of mind. Nada is a successful journalist in the world of newspapers. He isn’t exactly a drudge who toils away at the news-desk, he himself partakes of the fruits of the toil in sufficient quantities. He writes editorials for a famous English newspaper in twenty minutes flat, delivers talks on India on the TV programmes of Egypt, the Scandinavian countries and the USA. He is seen drinking with Picasso in a photograph. Previously though, he used to feel an anguishabout this celebrated sibling of his. But now it has ebbed away altogether. He had thought that by now his Nada had left their old home in Shyambazar and moved into a high-end flat in south Calcutta or the anglicized Punjabi-dominated parts of the city. But Nada is really a latter-day king Janaka who has a foot in both camps. Internationally famous Nada also takes his turn at adda—tête-à-tête with neighbours and pals perched on the raised terrace outside their decrepit residence in Shyambazar—and this is perhaps the greatest success of his life. When Nada begins holding forth on the Cultural Revolution in China, Tapan displays no emotion, remains impervious. ‘What’s wrong with you guys? This Lin Biao affair—it’s happening right under your eyes! Will you still keep your eyes shut and go about chanting your mantra?’ (‘Did not chant mantra shutting my eyes, nor do I chant it now, and that’s exactly what troubles me. That’s why I have grown disabled. I’m not thinking China, something’s gone wrong somewhere—I’m afraid. Believe me, it doesn’t make a blind bit of difference to me whether Lin Biao is dead or alive.’)

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‘Why do you keep mum? But then what else can you do if not keep mum? You went on parroting what they taught you. Now those who taught you are finished and you keep drifting about like wraiths.’ Tapan keeps his head down. He does not laugh, does not huff nor pull a long face.He is a wraith indeed. Purely due to a quirk of fate—a misunderstanding he has survived physically, but the real fact is that he does not have a body! A body that does not have a mind, does not register emotions—can anyone award marks on this sparkling white sheet of paper? In the past, when they confronted each other, Tapan would snigger conveying an oblique challenge. And Nada would feel daunted by his snigger. His huge success in the material world would suddenly appear deflated, shrivelled. But now it seems as if Tapan isn’t really listening to him though apparently he is listening. Once it occurs to Nada: is his younger brother going off his head? ‘Hullo, what makes you keep mum?’ (‘I keep mum because I have no answer. If you think thousands of young men courted all this misery and pain only because they were playacting, well, so be it. Now everybody is preaching to us and naturally you’d preach, too.’) ‘What can I say?’ Tapan says after a long time as if waking up from sleep. ‘I know what is at the back of your mind. I have bought a plot of land in New Alipore and I’m building a house. Perhaps you’ll say all this, won’t you? You will say I am feathering my own nest and preaching noble thoughts in newspaper columns. Go on, say it. It doesn’t matter. Parliamentary democracy has failed in the entire region of south Asia. Only India manages to stay afloat in this ‘pralayapaodhijale’—vast calamitous deluge. I’ve been saying this and I will go on saying it for ever and ever.’ ‘Now you are talking the language of newspapers.’Tapan’s face quirks with a slight grin. ‘Yes—I am. Isn’t the language of newspapers a kind of language at all? Language only means the bulletins of your party, is it so? What do you say?’

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Once more Tapan seems to fall asleep. Sleeps on his feet before his dada. He smiles a weird kind of smile. Suddenly the timepiece catches his glance and he says, ’Please let me go, Nada, I’m getting late.’ ‘Where will you go? Have you anywhere left to go?’ ‘I’m going to the cinema.’ ‘Oh dear! Where is it?’ Tapan mentions the cinema hall and Nada is shocked. ‘My god! Even I will be ashamed to go there.’ Tapan tears himself away and darts off as Nada, bewildered, looks on. As Nada had put it, he carries on his ghostly existence, drifting about wraith-like all over the city. A few friends of his had their lodgings in the city and he used to go and hang out with them. But now these places resemble the crumbling mud walls of homes ravaged by floods after the water has receded, which keep standing only to collapse sooner than later. And the places which escaped police raids have been invaded and absolutely pulled to pieces by suspicion and distrust. Amid all this Tapan is now and then reminded of one man. Sometimes he wonders if this person cannot become the brown circle of a mosquito across the white wall of his mind and act as a kind of hook for him to dangle from and hang on to life. It was because of him that he was studying medicine. Shibuda of the neighbourhood, the crazy surgeon of the medical fraternity who, for all his reputed British medical degrees, provides medical treatment to a lot of people, free. Though this attracted Tapan and drew him towards Shibuda’s consulting room, he has come away without looking in. For everything is gospel truth--gospel words devoid of any life; the tremendous attraction of gospel led him to fling his life away in a dust-bin like a paper carton. Nada’s spiel about the ‘vast calamitous deluge’ is just another version of this gospel and Shibuda’s idealistic talk yet another. Having shilly-shallied quite a few days, he goes to see Shibuda one evening. Precisely at this moment the phone rings. Shibuda’s hair has greyed a good deal more than his age. Bending his white head on top of his powerful frame Shibuda speaks into the phone, ‘And you didn’t think fit to inform me?’

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Overcome with profound fatigue Shibuda hangs up and looks up at Tapan. The look in his face does not alter and he says, ’I operated yesterday. It’s a moribund case. But they should have at least informed me. And how about you? You have come home. You also came this way, then went back. I got the news. Man is very fragile. This business of staying alive is the greatest wonder of all. Isn’t it?’ ‘Yes,’ says Tapan, recalling perhaps his own case. ‘Man’s birth, death, old age—shall we ever be able to control these things? You know what happened to my left eye? It was operated upon when I was in England. The best surgeons did it. But it could not be saved. Those who say that everything will turn out right are actually quacks. It is nature that sets everything right. We can only help.’ Shibuda does not talk politics. He doesn’t rub salt into the wound. He tells him stories of his patients, hospitals. The human body and the human mind present eternal problems which demand constant study and monitoring through ceaseless efforts, diligence and experiments. Shibuda is trying to strike a chord somewhere and as he goes on trying, it may well ring out. Tapan is horrified. Once again, he will have to begin from the scratch, pick up the garland torn to shreds with the worn-out thread hanging loose, mug up on medicine from fat medical books, he will have to decide again that man’s problems will be solved if he is only given some physical relief. Shibuda suddenly tilts his head towards his former disciple and says, ‘Tearing yourself apart, aren’t you? Taking revenge on yourself because you could not tear society apart? But we are all fragile, Tapan, very fragile; so there’s no need to tear yourself apart.’ Tapan jumps to his feet. Though Shibuda knows he will not come calling again, he says, ‘You will come again, won’t you?’ Tapan did not go again. Nor does he go looking for a hook to dangle from to cling to life. He goes about with a mind white as a sheet with no memory in it. Wraith-like, he drifts about the nooks and crannies of the city. He has done just one thing only. By getting away alive and surviving he has proved that he is dead.

twenty-three CHAPTER

Release Them Tapabijoy Ghosh

W

e demand release! We demand the release of all political prisoners! We demand the release of all political prisoners locked away in prison cells across the rumbling country—exiled, persecuted, known or unknown, convicted, under trial or jailed without any kind of a trial—preys, victims of bestial despotism, hands and feet shackled, thousands barricaded behind prison walls, barbed wires—their bodies riddled with wounds, dripping with blood all over! We demand the release of all prisoners! We demand the release now of unnumbered prisoners—sons, daughters near and dear ones, held in innumerable prisons all over the country! We demand the unconditional and immediate release from jail of all political prisoners!

*** The sun has not come out since dawn. The sky is cloud-rimmed--grey coppery clouds shot with solitary streaks of red here and there. The wind has dropped and the sultry heat is unbearable. Most probably a storm is brewing somewhere. This is what the morning newspapers report and the weather forecast over radio Translated from Bengali by Subhransu Maitra. Tapabijoy Ghosh, ‘Mukti Chai’ (Release Them), 1977. Collected Short Stories of Two Centuries, Netaji Subhas Open University, Kolkata, West Bengal; May, 2008; Baisakh 25, 1415 (1st edition). [A literal English translation of the title would be: We Demand Release. The title is changed just a little in my translation to convey the horror and poignancy of the events of 1972-77 in Bengal without altering its character in any way.]

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broadcast. An area of deep depression has formed somewhere over the south-western bay and a cyclone with a velocity of 60 kilometres per hour is rushing on its way from Paradwip. If it does not alter its course, it is certain to strike the Gangetic delta in the evening accompanied by torrential rain. The city will be overwhelmed by both gale and rain. When one goes out on a day like this, they will need a raincoat or a brolly which will take care of the rain, though not the storm. Even so, it is needed on a day like this. And a brolly was exactly what Labanyaprabha was looking for. After rising in the morning, she took her bath as usual, cooked daal and rice on her kerosene stove. Now she has had her meal and is dressed in sari and blouse and ready to go to work. But what became of the brolly? Did she take it to the school yesterday and leave it by mistake in the teachers’ room? Or somewhere else? Calling the young woman who works as domestic help in her house Labanya asked her, ‘Did you see it, Taramoni?’ ‘What’s it, Ma?’ ‘My brolly! I can’t find it! Please go and look for it, dear, go!’ And where could she possibly look for it? It was not to be found in the house. Perhaps she had left it behind at the school after all, yesterday or the day before. It wouldn’t be very unlikely for her to leave it on a bus or tram either. These days she cannot at all keep track of things—both essential and not so essential. She can hardly remember if she left them somewhere by mistake or stuck it between other things or gave them to somebody else—she can hardly remember anything these days! Her mind has died inside her. Now everything goes wrong, everything goes awry. Suman, the progeny of her womb, has entirely unhinged her nerves, her memory. For instance, this happened only the other day. She had put a sari of Murshidabad silk in a paper box and taken it to the laundry around the corner. It was an expensive colourful thing with an embroidered red border. She had worn it for a few days after she got married. Now she wanted it to be washed so that she could go and give it to her younger brother’s wife. She would not need it anymore for herself.

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Then she forgot all about picking it up from the laundry. A couple of months later the owner of the laundry himself stepped out of his shop and on to the street and stood in her way, ‘Didi, that sari of yours—’ ‘What sari?’ Labanya was taken aback. She wears ordinary white saris with black borders to work. The washerman at home does the laundry. Which sari from her wardrobe had made its way to this smart and elegant shop? For what appeared to be a long time she was groping in the dark. Then she seemed to recall, ‘Oh yes, that Benarasi sari—’ The owner corrected her, ‘Not exactly a Benarasi though, a silk sari—’ Labanya was further embarrassed, ‘Oh yes. Now I remember. Of course, I’ll come along and collect it tomorrow itself’. Her wrist watch stopped working and acting on a lady colleague’s advice she went to an upmarket shop around Esplanade to get it repaired. Then she put the receipt somewhere and was unable to find it again. And it was not a neighbourhood shop where she’d be at once recognized as Suman’s mother. Labanya looked everywhere for the receipt. Unable to find it, she nevertheless visited the shop one day. It was a busy shop, always a bit crowded. The elegantly dressed handsome owner pronounced very testily, ‘Impossible. Every day we receive anything like one hundred to one hundred and fifty watches for repair. How on earth can I find yours from among the rest? Please go home and look for it everywhere. The receipt is what is absolutely needed’. Labanya’s face fell as she came away. Finally, she got her watch back without the receipt after doing a great deal of running around, arranging witnesses and taking a lot of trouble. Only a few days ago her elder brothers had handed her a deed of succession concerning their decrepit, ancestral house. Since the brothers were at loggerheads, the rooms would be partitioned among them. Labanya, too, was required by law to sign the document giving her right to the property. As he handed over the document to her, Badada—her eldest brother had said, ‘I’m leaving it with you. Go through it carefully and sign it’.

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And this valuable document bearing a court seal had also been misplaced by Labanya or she’d left it somewhere by mistake. Several visits later, one day Badada wondered acidly, ‘Well, Labanya, tell me-what are you really up to? Do you want your share of the house?’ Ashamed and stung to the quick, Labanya went white as a sheet in the face and looked at her elder brother giving him a deep cold stare for some time. Then she said very slowly in a choking voice, ‘Dada, what shall I do with my share of half a room in that peeling house? And who shall I do it for?’ Badada, however, recovered very quickly and pat came his reply— ‘None of that, Labanya, none of that, please. I will have another deed drawn up and bring it over for you to sign. Now, tell me, how is Suman? When did you see him last? And which jail have they now lodged him in?’ Suman! The son of her womb, heir of her flesh and blood. He was twenty when he went to jail and he’s going on twenty-seven now—having spent the last seven years in jail. It is this Suman who has most thoroughly ruined her. Otherwise even now Labanya isn’t so old as to make a mess of everything as old people are prone to do. Nor is it true that she has lost her mental balance because her contented life of longing and fulfilment went on the rocks as a result of her husband’s death in the prime of her youth. She managed pretty soon to overcome these blows of bereavement and poverty. To tell the truth, at this point of time she cannot indeed recall with clarity when—long years ago—her husband had passed away. Let alone the minutiae of his once familiar gait, his carriage, his conduct and conversation—even the intense profound moments and scenes of warmth and affection—blurred intimate moments—have now completely misted over. Even from her in-laws’ side of the family, nobody was alive who might have looked after her. Though her father and maternal uncles were there to guide her. All of them had appealed to her in one voice, as it were, ‘Labanya, you pull yourself together. You look at your two children and steel yourself’.

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Looking at two-year-old Jhuma and five-month-old Suman she had indeed steeled herself. She had gone to the extent of removing the beautifully framed photograph of her husband and herself which was taken shortly after their marriage and hung on the wall for all to see. She went and took it off after some days and carefully tucked it away in a steel trunk in which the things it contained were set out with utmost care—the benarasi sari for her wedding, a few pieces of jewellery and only three letters very legibly written with their covers retained all of which ended in the same unabashed fashion—‘a million kisses and caresses for your tender lips and round chubby cheeks—’ Her maternal aunts objected to the removal of the photograph. Her elder brothers were not exactly pleased, either, because devoted widows live by the memory of their departed husbands. When she pulled out a living strand of that memory by removing the photo, perhaps it disturbed their traditional beliefs and raised fears of some kind. But Labanya stood her ground firmly and maintained, ‘Let Jhumu-Sumu grow up and come of age. Then we will hang the picture on the wall. If they see it now, it will make them sad. And that’s not good’. In fact, from their very childhood she had been careful to ensure that their immature minds did not fall a prey to any acute sense of void. And she had a long history of never lowering her guard—maintaining it rigorously and with immense affection. It was the history of a young widow with two children holding her own and surviving in spite of want and poverty, in spite of favours and condescending kindness, never betraying any weariness, any anguished helplessness to halt or break down, never committing a mistake, always taking one wary step at a time—very carefully, after meticulously taking into account all possibilities. As soon as her children grew up a little, she set up her own house. She had the intelligence to understand that her children were unlikely to have a proper upbringing if they became a burden to their poor middle-class relatives irrespective of the status she enjoyed. In that case they would lose self-esteem, feel that they were unwanted. Hence a separate home and a separate family. She also managed to get a job in a school. She was in the second year at college

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when they had got married. After her husband’s death she got hold of the books to be studied all by herself and passed the BA examination. She worked hard with consummate skill to put the once devastated family back on its feet with her own earnings even as she was bringing up her son and daughter little by little. Later Suman started going to college and she had her daughter married off. Or it would be more proper to say that Jhumu herself chose her groom. Labanyaprabha didn’t object much. She had no more the frame of mind to insist that there was something seriously wrong with marriage that was based on love. On the other hand, long years of teaching in a school, mingling with people in the world at large and joining many teachers’ movements had helped to emancipate her mind from many prejudices. Once long time ago, she had stepped into a new family as the fragile tender wife of a man she did not know from Adam; once that dream was lost, she wanted to live as the mother of two children. Later still, as she entered the complex orbit of a working woman, she also acquired a distinct personality of her own. And the slight reservations that she had about inter-caste marriage did not at all crystallize thanks to Suman who was just a slip of a boy with a hardly visible line of moustache, thick black hair and sharp bright eyes. And he got into an argument with his mother and what an argument it was! He argued as if he knew all the complexities of the Hindu caste system and all the mysteries of falling in love inside out, as if he had at his fingertips all the details of the expenses and incomes of the family, as if he were the guardian of this family-supposed to have the last word in all its affairs. He was not cheeky, but firm; he was unwavering, but not impatient. For his age, he displayed a remarkable degree of rationality both in his thinking and conversations. Labanya saw that she was no match for him. Accepting his logic, she conceded that those who had no money power should have more than usual will power. And since the boy of her daughter’s choice was eligible in all respects, sufficiently well-educated and earning a good living, the marriage could hardly be prevented simply because their castes and varnas didn’t match. Labanyaprabha conceded complete defeat to Suman and like a demure obedient girl accepted his tutelage in the family. And though

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she wasn’t aware of it, the promise of a delightful well-being and security filled her heart. Now that Suman had come of age, was sensible enough and educated enough to shoulder responsibilities and wonderfully sensitive, too, to the wants of the family, its joys and sorrows and a thousand other things, Labanya felt she could safely think of taking a little break, or go on a short sabbatical because she had found a refuge to fall back on. Though she had conceded defeat to her son, tears of joy seemed to mist her eyes. Shortly afterwards the huge iron gates of Alipore Central Jail screeched open on both sides-acquired the diabolical shape of yawning shark jaws and swallowed Suman into its maw.

*** Clouds rumbled in the sky. The rumble resembled a lion’s deafening roar. Gradually daylight waned and a sad shadowy darkness came on. Taramoni had finished doing the dishes. Wiping her hands on the border of her sari she said before she left, ‘Ma, you had better not go to work today.’ Labanya looked at her face and she also understood the meaning of her warning. Then she looked up at the sky and declared, ‘There’s still time. I’ll reach the school before the storm breaks.’ Taramoni cautioned, ‘If you go, you won’t be able to come back.’ Labanyaprabha smiled, ‘I will come back all right.’ As she said it, she seemed to shake inside, as if she was suddenly reminded of something, as if she could hear a voice like a faint distant murmur sailing across to her through the deep silent night— drifting almost all the way from the remote galaxies‘Don’t you worry, ma, I’ll come back all right—’ Seven years ago these words had been spoken one day by Sumanher son, the first light of dawn breaking around them when he left this house for the last time. He did not return. Nobody could tell if he would ever return alive from the prisons of this state—

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Labanya suppressed a deep sigh in her heart. What on earth should she be afraid of! A spot of rain and storm and inclement weather could do her no harm! She would return all right to this empty house. She locked the door and crossing the courtyard shared by all the tenants of this tenement emerged into the lane outside. As she stepped out, it at once occurred to her that perhaps she hadn’t turned off all the fans and lights in her rooms because a power cut caused by load shedding was on. When it came on, a light was burning and a fan was on, too. In case the supply was suddenly restored at midday— Labanya went back. While turning off the switches she noticed that a wick of the kerosene stove was flickering. She blew it out. As she was fastening the lock again, she reflected that though formerly she had been too careful to mislay even a hairpin or an oyster button, she was now so prone to error—making so many mistakes. The sky was increasingly clouding over when she reached the high road. The sultry heat was gone; the wind was veering now in one direction, the next moment in another. Perhaps it was raining somewhere not far off. It seemed that the streets were a little less crowded due to the approaching storm and rain. However, the trams and buses were jampacked as usual with office-goers hanging on to them like leeches. If she so wished, Labanya could have gone on leave—casual leave taken due to inclement weather or some other reason. But what would she do if she were to go on leave? Sit back in the darkness of her closed room and count down to the arrival of the cyclone? And listen to the noise of the cloudburst and the torrential rain pouring down? Or watch the terrible enchanting scene of how nature—the sky and the winds went berserk over this megalopolis hit by a cyclone? Was she in a congenial frame of mind to watch all this? Rather Labanya was now afraid of having to stay quietly cooped up inside the four walls all by herself on such days. It gave her gooseflesh—a nasty unsettling fear. On such occasions the sensation grew in her that the invisible tentacles of a hairy muddy yellow conspiracy emerging from she knew not where spread everywhere and then gradually closed in around her body as if to engulf her. In the grip of a pallid fear all her faculties, feelings

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and consciousness trembled, grown weak and fragile. She did not know why, but the feeling unaccountably grew that on such days, or on the more frightful nights when the sky was overcast, peals of thunder rent the air, when flashes of lightning, bright as bursts of fire struck, when the storm rushed madly around and a deluge threatened to drown the earth—they set out in hordes to look for prey at such abnormal calamitous moments of crisis in nature in the midst of the violent frenzied dance of rain and storm. To mow down the hearts of men in this killing field of the largest democracy of the world! Because such circumstances afforded them the finest and safest hour to pounce on their prey like wolves, to tear apart like jackals and gorge on the flesh like dogs. Now, in this country, away in the total darkness of those high-walled jails— In fact, now, at such terrible overwhelming moments Suman’s mother Labanyaprabha thinks of the massacres of prisoners in the jails. Not that such thoughts are out of place or irrelevant. Ever since Suman’s journey to jail, numerous incidents of prisoners being killed inside the jails have taken place one after another over the last seven years in the prisons of the state in Kolkata, Howrah, Baharampore— If a carnage claims ten lives today, fifteen or eighteen are slaughtered in another massacre a couple of days later— Murder of unarmed helpless undertrials. The newspapers have brought home the news of such barbarity in the morning. Lurid details have spread everywhere by word of mouth. As she eyes the names in the list of casualties published, it freezes her blood. A blindness descends over her eyes and seems to black out everything-the entire familiar world-as if the whole page of the paper has been smudged over with dark ink. She chokes, gasping for breath-her heart pounding faster she wants to scream with all her strength, ‘Suman….my Suman…’ While people are murdered and butchered everywhere at night all over the state, the police and the military carry out sealing and combing operations. To cap it all, this business of slaughtering prisoners inside jails has stretched her nerves to the breaking point, completely sucked off all her mental strength reducing her to a nervous wreck. Consequently, she imagines impossible mountains

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out of insignificant mole hills. And then helplessly caught in the vortex of her own imagined things she gradually sinks in the depths of pain, fear and gloom. She always thinks that any moment she will get the news of Suman’s death. How long her Suman will survive in the jails of the country where shackled and chained undertrials are shot dead for no reason is anybody’s guess. One cannot tell if this night will turn out to be the last night of his twenty-seven-year old life! These days she often sits up on the bed jolted out of her sleep at the dead of night when a fire engine rushes down the street-its bell clanging aloud to fight a large fire somewhere. Her whole body, hands, feet go so limp that she cannot collect courage enough to even switch on the light. In the darkness it seems as if that dreadful noise is engulfing the whole world and rushing down to her. The fearful thought never seems to leave her that in a jail somewhere close by a siren is continually wailing-its coarse pitiless note, its metallic ferocity tearing apart the sky, heavy hob-nail boots are furiously storming about on the cement of the courtyard, the smooth barrels of double-barrelled guns and the sharp ends of steel bayonets are flashing like the eyes of a predator in the dark—and the frightened alarmed prisoners have suddenly woken up at the dead of night to face a murderous attack out of the blue, there is stunning amazement in their eyes. Driven by the primitive urge to defend themselves they run back and forth from one end of the closed room to the other like birds beating their wings cooped up in a cage hanging in a house set on fire letting out their dying screams loaded with furious disdain. And he is among them, too-the son of her womb, Suman—the fatherless child whom she gave all her caring love and attention and reared to manhood little by little over the years– The alarm bell of a fire engine can be heard no more, but the siren of a jail keeps ringing ceaselessly with fierce ferocity—keeps ringing all night through the pallid horrified shuddering consciousness of a middle-aged widow mother…. Labanya now finds her empty rooms unbearable. It seems that outside of the confined desolation of her rooms a sinister conspiracy is being silently plotted everywhere in this vast land, in this territory against Suman. If she stays indoors, she will not be

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able to get any wind of it. Nor will she ever have any inkling of how her unfortunate 20-year-old son who has now become twentyseven years old shuttling from one jail to another suddenly, silently perished last night or this morning in this free country as he was being beaten into a pulp of flesh and blood in course of receiving the last drubbing of his life at the hands of the police—more free than the free state. Nowadays Labanyaprabha prefers staying outdoors because she gets to see a lot of people, can locate a lot of news, a lot of warmth, a lot of courage in the flowing current of collective life. It is indeed human beings who keep fellow human beings alive and kicking by coming closer and holding on to one another. As she finds herself in the midst of hundreds and thousands of people on the move, she derives from it a strange kind of self-confidence. Why, everything is going well in the city, trams and buses are plying, children wearing colourful uniforms are going to school, young men of Suman’s age are loitering in the streets without a care in the world-hanging out here and there-gossiping. Even now so many people-so many children and young men are living normally in the city. Labanya feasts her eyes on all this to her heart’s content as if from these scenes of living human beings she also seeks to pluck the trust that Suman is alive—the assurance of life from life itself.

*** That is why even the great menace of imminent rain and storm cannot make her stay back indoors. As on other days she’s on her way to school and boarding a double-decker she drifts down the crowded bus towards a ladies’ seat. She has a long way to go. Labanya does not know if her colleagues in the school are aware that her son is in jail. At least nobody has ever asked her anything about it. The school is far off, the teachers also come from distant suburbs. Usually they talk about the wants and scarcities encountered in daily life, the prices of things; they talk a little about politics, too. But nobody asks whether someone else’s son, brother or sister has been serving their sentence in jail. Besides, the environment at the school isn’t very good, either. The president of

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the managing committee is himself engaged in politics and apart from his special kind of politics, severely frowns upon any talk of the other kinds. On top of it, an emergency has now been slapped on the country. Nobody dares to voice any opinion in the teachers’ room. Nor are they inclined to trust each other. At present here in this school—in its classrooms, veranda, teachers’ room—one can safely and fearlessly holler about only one personality—she is the sun of freedom shining over Asia, she is India, this is Bharat…..Labanyaprabha is not into politics. She is connected to nothing outside the teachers’ movement. The intricacies of politics, the clash of conflicting theories, the divergence of opinions—all this lies beyond her experience. But now she understands this much: her son Suman was out to do the impossible, and was sucked into a deadly life-and-death game. They wanted to destroy the administration of the ‘legitimate government established by law’ root and branch, wanted to root up the old tree and plant a new sapling in its place. It is dangerous, unlawful, terrible! In spite of being his mother, Labanya wasn’t aware that her son was secretly involved in such a fatal venture. When she did become aware of it, catastrophe was at hand and after he once said to her, ‘I’ll come back’, Suman had disappeared. Labanya could not find him, but the police started turning up at her house often enough looking for him, day in, day out—cops in plain clothes or uniformed and armed. Her house was searched and turned upside down in the process. She was frequently summoned to the thana or police station, her fault was that she was Suman’s mother. And one day the saddened, anxious, frightened mother was stunned to hear this at the police station, ‘If you can’t give us the whereabouts of your son within seven days flat, we’ll thrust you, too, in the lock-up—you old slut!’ The fifty-year-old teacher Labanyaprabha was petrified to hear this language. She recalled that towards the end Suman often used to exclaim impatiently, ‘Ma, this country’s now been turned into a cage by the police, we live in this cage like rats, move about like rats—’ Her twenty-year-old son of slender build, shock-haired and bright-eyed-also used to say excitedly, ‘This system of state must

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be replaced, ma, if our wants, our miseries are to be removed, if we are to live a life of human dignity both at home and abroad—’ Labanya had quietly come away from the thana. But that day she had also understood with absolute clarity the enormity of Suman’s offence against the law of the land and the implacable fierceness of the fury of the state against him! Since then she has clammed up. She also stopped making enquiries about his whereabouts lest somebody somewhere pounced on a clue! The police have put a tail on her, she is followed even to the school. Her son has been playing with fire; being his mother how can she escape the searing heat! ‘The mother of a dangerous son is herself dangerous, too.’ This bit of common sense has persuaded her not to let anybody else into her secret. Otherwise, this might jeopardize her job, too. After Suman’s arrest a Bengali newspaper printed the names of those arrested, including Suman’s. One of her colleagues once asked her, ‘Labanyadi, your son’s name is Suman, isn’t it?’ A shudder ran through her as she replied, ‘Yes, that’s right. But at present he’s been living with his sister in Allahabad’. Yet she failed to keep it absolutely secret. At least one of them got to know all about it. Banbeharibabu— Banbeharibabu is the oldest employee in this girls’ school. He is clerk-cum-accountant-cum-typist, all rolled into one. He commutes from quite far away. He started off on a salary of thirty rupees, now almost sixty he earns a monthly salary of two hundred forty rupees. Formerly a junior school, this institution has gradually developed into a high school and his salary has also increased little by little. Banbehari has no right to ask why the rate of increase has been so small because in the first place, in terms of qualification, he didn’t even pass the Matriculation Examination of the old days and secondly, he has never been in the good books of the school committee. Tall, lanky and thin, with hollow cheeks, the crew-cut grey and black hair on his head sticking up like the bristle of a brush, soiled panjabi and dhoti that also need mending—the very image of the man cries out for pity. He works his guts out from morning till evening in the school to save his job. Yet it’s this man who is always at the receiving end of criticism.

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The same old down-at-heel Banbeharibabu one day asked her on the sly, ‘Didi, can I ask you something?’ The office room on the ground floor was now empty with only Banbehari toiling away with a fat ledger lying open before him. The room was lit by a bulb hanging overhead. And there was a poster typical of the Emergency period stuck on the wall close by which said, ‘There is no alternative to hard work.’ Labanyaprabha had come in to find out something about the Provident Fund. Taken aback by Banbehari’s query she wondered, ‘What is it?’ Banbeharibabu craned his neck to get a better view of the room and the veranda outside and then said, ‘Which jail have they lodged your son in, Didi?’ Labanya was alarmed. The lines in her face hardened, she became suspicious and looked sharply at him. Without blinking Banbehari stared across at her face and read its meaning. Lowering his voice even more he replied, ‘No, don’t be afraid, Didi. My second son has been rotting in jail all of these five years—’ Hardly the words were out when Labanya was startled by this revelation. The lines in her face softened, her eyes blurred. Helplessly she kept staring at the old man’s face, her eyes rounding with agony. His face shrivelled and shrunk, Banbehari explained, ‘I know you will understand my misery. There’s not another soul to talk to in this place. If they got wind of it, they would fire me instantly. All our bosses are maharani’s flunkies licking her boots. I know everything, understand everything. It’s five years now since my son went to jail. He’s ill-clad, ill-fed, left to fend for himself even if he is sick. And they beat him at the drop of a hat. A couple of years ago they’d produced him in a city court. Then the laws were changed and changed in such a way that they’ve now altogether dropped the ritual of courts and trials—’ Forgetting all about the Provident Fund Labanya asked in a weak voice, ‘What did your son do?’ ‘Ask me as if I knew! The police have framed him—charged him with all kinds of offences from murder to smuggling leaving out nothing….’ Banbehari seemed to be troubled, excited. But the very next moment he checked himself and lowering his voice again he

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went on, ‘You see, I went to great lengths and got him a job in a glass factory. Now he joined a labour union, the union of red flags. They went on a strike. Black legs tried to break up the strike and used knives pistols bombs, the cops coming in their cars behind them. You can’t expect the other side to remain quiet, can you? It was a life-and-death struggle. In the flap and trouble that followed, the police nabbed Shibu…. That’s the boy who used to look after the family a little. Seven mouths to feed at home. The few rupees I earn…. He’s been in jail for five years and it’s been ages since I last saw him, Didi. Who knows how he’s keeping these days!’ There was a catch in his voice as he finished and his deep-seated eyes seemed to mist over a little. Labanyaprabha seemed to suffer from a state of nervous weakness. And in her breast too, a shudder struck. She, too, had not seen her son for long years, had no means of knowing the condition he was in or if he was doing well at all— Deep in her heart a name continued to be noiselessly enunciated, ‘Suman….my Suman…..’

*** It had already started raining when Labanyaprabha arrived at school. There are flashes of lightning in the sky, a stormy wind is blowing, the clouds in the sky are growing darker still and increasingly filling the earth with darkness. It seems as if evening has descended at high noon. Nobody’s coming to school on a day like this! Labanya is slightly drenched with rain. Wiping her face dry with the border of her sari she goes down the veranda towards the staircase. She does not find anybody around except a handful of the girls studying in the higher classes. She finds only Banbeharibabu in the office room next to the staircase. The man commutes all the way from Panihati or Madhyamgram or some such place a long distance away. Today, too, he has arrived without fail. He has turned on the ceiling light and is sitting crouched in his chair, reading the newspaper, perhaps. As she mounts the stairs, Labanya can see the upper half of his lanky frame drenched to the skin like a crow caught in the rain.

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The headmistress has herself failed to turn up. The assistant headmistress Kamaladi arrives thoroughly drenched and at once gives instructions, ‘How can the school function on a day like this! School’s over, ring the bell’. So the school closes even before the midday recess or ‘tiffin’. A few of her colleagues who live not far off and have managed to come to school express their anxiety about Labanya giving vent to anxious effusions such as what made her travel such a long distance to come to work on such a day, how she will get back home and of course she must leave at once because trams and buses may stop plying any moment. They leave one by one. Now Labanya is alone in the large teachers’ room. There are several chairs in a row, an enormous long table, a stand with a number of maps rolled up in its notches, bookcases and pictures of Subhas, Nehru, Rabindranath hanging on the wall along with that of Indira Gandhi—showing her partly veiled beaming face. Right below the picture a huge tri-colour advertisement celebrating the quick progress made by the country on the path to prosperity is pinned on to a wooden display board…in the midst of all this she is absolutely alone, without any company…. She glances helplessly all around looking for her brolly. If she left it here by mistake, the maid Subhasi who works in the teachers’ room would keep it for her. But she, too, is absent today. Deciding to look for it herself, Labanya takes a few steps towards a bookcase. At once thunder crashes with an earth-shattering roar. The roar is so sinister and dreadful that Labanya shakes violently. It is as if a massive hill came crashing down on the rooftop of the building and an intense flash of fire sweeps across the door-almost singeing her. And suddenly off go the lights of the entire school building. Even in daytime the lights were on everywhere in the rooms and the veranda, the ceiling fan was spinning away in the middle of the teachers’ room. As everything becomes stilled, silent due to the abrupt power outage, the entire teachers’ room sinks into a shadowy darkness as if transformed into the discarded, decrepit room of an old uninhabited house. Outside there is torrential rain, violence of wind. Perhaps the tremendous cyclone rushing up from Paradwip has by now

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unleashed itself over the Gangetic delta. And suddenly storm and rain, thunder and lightning combine to trigger a maddened, uncontrollable turmoil of nature. Suddenly Labanya feels very sick in the solitary lonely room. Slowly she reaches a chair and slumps down in it. She was so badly startled by the crash of thunder that her hands and feet are still shaking. A warm restlessness troubles every part of her breast and the bloodstream though all her nerves seem to go limp. She is looking unblinkingly at the turmoil erupting outside just like a terrified, dazed little girl. And inevitably she is now being reminded of Suman whom she can’t forget even for a moment. Where is he now-perhaps shut up in an iron cell nobody knows where—amidst this vast turmoil of nature, fatal lightning strikes and crashing thunder? How is he?...Suman dear, you have iron shackles on your hands, on your feet. Please don’t go near the rain, stand back a little, baba, iron attracts lightning—’ Someone silently comes in at the door. A thin gangling man wearing threadbare clothes. It is Banbeharibabu clutching a ladies’ umbrella under his arm. Entering the room, he slowly walks towards Labanya and stands before her. He puts down the brolly on the table and explains, ‘You left it here yesterday. Subhasi asked me to keep it for you’. Labanyaprabha looks up at Banbehari’s face as though she has heard nothing or understood nothing even if she heard, as if this is the first time that she has encountered the man. Banbehari can make something of it as he notices the lifeless, cold, frozen, terrified look in her eyes. Bending towards her he asks in a tender voice, ‘What’s on your mind, Didi? Thinking of your son, aren’t you?’ Labanya does not even try to conceal her feelings from this old man and slowly nods in agreement. Yes, she is thinking of him. The violent drumming noise caused by the downpour can be heard outside. The gusts of wind are wafting in the spray of the rain. Banbehari remains quiet for a moment or two, then reaches into the pocket of the torn panjabi he’s wearing and fishes out a fat envelope which is wet around the edges. As if trying to suck out the moisture, he rubs it dry with his hand displaying utmost care.

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Then taking a quick, careful look around, he opens the envelope and pulls out a paper. A certain text is printed in the upper half of it, the lower half is blank. Banbeharibabu pushes the paper forward before her eyes and asks hesitantly, ‘Would you care to sign it, Didi?’ ‘What is it for?’ ‘For the release of all the prisoners now in jail—’ Labanyaprabha stays quiet at first, then snatches at the paper with a trembling hand and holding it up close to her eyes she tries to read what is printed on it. Taking another look at the door Banbehari confides in a voice heavy with misery, ‘I’m afraid my son may not live long, Didi—’ Labanya’s heart thumps in her breast. She glances up at once. Banbehari continues, ‘I’ve learnt he is bleeding through the nose and mouth, he can’t even stand upright. Even now they beat him with lathis; that’s what I’m told. I sent in an application for an interview—just to see him once! The maharani’s minions turned it down—’ Banbehari chokes on his words, but Labanya can see that an intolerable resentment and agitation now hardens his worn-out frame and sets his hollow cheeks, aging face, protruding jaws like iron. With great difficulty he’s trying to pull himself together. The gale wind is moaning outside and now lashes the room. Yet another pulverizing peal of thunder. The same diabolical, dreadful, earth-shattering roar is heard again. Once again Labanyaprabha feels weak and exhausted. Suman…my Suman…is he also bleeding through the nose and mouth…spurts of warm blood churning up through his fragile chest-ribs and bones… Seeing that Labanya has said nothing so far, Banbehari urges her, ‘Please sign, Didi. Many, many people have already signed it— lawyers, doctors, teachers, clerks. If we cannot mount pressure all at once and get them out, they won’t let a single one of them live. They’ll kill them inside the jails’. Kill them—not let them live! Suman, my Suman…they won’t let him live, either…one day she, too, will have to bring back her son’s dead body from a jail or morgue…a bundle of flesh and blood pounded to jelly…its arms smashed, its breast and eyes gouged out.

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Suman…my Suman!...perhaps a siren’s screaming somewhere in the rain and storm outside…this is the hour, the finest and safest hour to go hunting and tear out men’s hearts…. Inside her heart, inside her blood an utterly mournful, forlorn cry rises and falls then rises inconsolably like the rumbling progress of a night train through a long tunnel under a hill, like the wobbly siren of a ship lost in a stormy sea—its continual wailing cry filling the air and the sky. When the terrible turmoil of nature has right now sucked off all normalcy out of nature today, who knows what’s happening to her only son who has spent the last seven years in jail, who knows whether he is still alive or already dead or dying as he is subjected to the last drubbing of his life in the dark prison cell….it is as if the heart of a mother inside her is torn apart with immense pain for the twenty seven year old son whom she hasn’t seen for the last seven years and her voice choking with tears rips apart storm rain sky and air-her cry welling up with all her might, ‘Let them go! Release them! Please don’t clobber the prisoners in jail like this! R—e—l—e—a—s—e….’ Then, as she prepares to sign the paper, Labanyaprabha breaks into uncontrollable sobs, the mother of Suman who is in jail— We demand release. We demand the release of all political prisoners. We demand the release of all political prisoners exiled and persecuted, known or unknown behind bars in the resentful land. Convicted, under trial or held without trial, victims of bestial despotism…. we demand the release of each one of the countless prisoners–sons daughters near and dear ones–held now in this country in the innumerable prisons and jails across the land. We demand the immediate, unconditional release of all political prisoners!

twenty-four CHAPTER

Reportage

Amritabazar Patrika, 29 March 1951 Refugee Movement. (Courtesy: Nehru Memorial and Museum Library)

Jyoti Basu at a bhuk michil, or hunger march, during the Food Movement of 1959 – https://www. frontline.in/static/html/ fl2703/stories/20100212270302000.htm. (Courtesy: Calcutta Research Group Archives)

528 REPORTAGE 4 September 1962: Activists of the CPI’s student wing burnt trams in Calcutta over a rise in tram fares. A police lathicharge left 220 injured. (Courtesy: ABP Archives)

A tram on fire during a clash between police and students and teachers in Calcutta, 1954. (Courtesy: ABP Archives)

General strike in protest against second class tram fare increase, 1953. (Courtesy: ABP Archives)

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Advertisement for Utpal Dutta’s play Kallol (1965) in Jugantar 15 July 1965. (Courtesy: Calcutta Research Group Archives)

Satyajit Ray’s comments on Utpal Dutta’s play Kallol (1965) in Jugantar 15 July 1965. (Courtesy: Calcutta Research Group Archives) – Translation below. Satyajit Ray on ‘Kallol: ‘Having written and staged the play Kallol set against the backdrop of the Royal Indian Navy Mutiny of 1946, Utpal Dutta has shown signs of uncommon courage and achievement........... In the stage-setting of Kallol the unison of classical and modern style is particularly noticeable. There is remarkable use of technique in the stage presentation, but technique alone cannot be given the credit, because technique by surpassing content can never become more important. In the end like the rest of Utpal Dutta’s plays the overall acting in Kallol can be liberally praised. In one word Kallol is a successful play.’ Satyajit Ray 21/6/65

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Red flag hoisted on the roof of Presidency College by a group of Naxals, 1970. (Courtesy: ABP Archives)

Nurul Islam’s death during the Food Movement of 1966, reported in Jugantar, 19 February 1966. (Courtesy: Calcutta Research Group Archives)

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Beheaded statue of Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar at College Square, 1970. (Courtesy: ABP Archives)

Beheaded marble statue of Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar at Metropolitian School on Creek Row, Kolkata, 1970. (Courtesy: ABP Archives)

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Jayaprakash Narayan talking to Naxal members, 1975. (Courtesy: ABP Archives)

Martyrs’ Column on Bhavani Dutta Lane. (Courtesy: Uponita Mukherjee)

REPORTAGE

Frontpage of Hindusthan Standard, dated 11 February 1954. (Courtesy: ABP Archives)

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Frontpage of Hindusthan Standard, dated 4 September 1959. (Courtesy: ABP Archives)

Frontpage of Hindusthan Standard, dated 14 March 1969. (Courtesy: ABP Archives)

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Comrades Kesho-Sahato-Jiut – http:// cpiml.org/library/report-from-the-flamingfields-of-bihar/appendix/the-roll-ofhonour-martyrs-immortal/ (Courtesy: Calcutta Research Group Archives)

Students and teachers being teargassed by the police, 1954. (Courtesy: ABP Archives)

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Calcutta University ViceChancellor's room ransacked by Naxal students, 1969. (Courtesy: ABP Archives)

Graffiti on the wall of Jadavpur University ViceChancellor's office by Naxal students, 1970. (Courtesy: ABP Archives)

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Naxal Movement, 1968-69. (Courtesy: ABP Archives)

United Left Front meeting at Maidan on Food Movement, 1966. (Courtesy: ABP Archives)

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Kanu Sanyal, Naxal leader, being released from Darjeeling Jail, 1969. (Courtesy: ABP Archives)

Charu Majumdar at the police lock-up in Lalbazar, 1972. (Courtesy: ABP Archives)

ANNEXURE

1

Report on the Peasant Movement in the Terai Region Kanu Sanyal

[From Liberation, Vol. II, No. 1 (November 1968), translated from the Bengali original, which first appeared in the weekly Deshabrati, 24 October 1968. Notes were in the original text published in Liberation.1 – Ranabir Samaddar]

A

fter about 18 months, we, the Communist revolutionaries of the Siliguri sub-division,2 met at a convention on 15 September 1968 under quite unfavourable conditions. Why am I speaking of unfavourable conditions? This is because during these 18 months attempts have been made to crush the revolutionary peasant movement of the Siliguri sub-division and to annihilate the Communist revolutionaries there through ‘encirclement and suppression’ campaigns. Who started the campaigns of ‘encirclement and suppression?’ On 22 May 1967, the leaders of the 14-party United Front government led by Ajoy-JyotiHarekrishna-Biswanath3 threw hundreds of peasants and workers

1 Presently can be accessed at – http://web.archive.org/web/19980220183027/ http:/www.blythe.org/mlm/misc/india/cpiml/Reports/1.htm#one (Accessed on 1 June 2018). 2 Naxalbari lies in this sub-division under the Darjeeling district of West Bengal. 3 Ajoy Mukherji, a veteran Gandhite, anti-communist reactionary, and chief minister of the former UF government; Jyoti Basu and Harekrishna Konar, neo-

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into jail and inflicted physical torture on them, had their homes looted by the police and shot, bayoneted and killed 18 peasants including men, women and children with a view to crushing the revolutionary peasant movement. The leaders of the 14-party United Front were unable to prevent their fall even though they had submitted slavishly to Indira Gandhi, the political boss of the comprador-bureaucrat bourgeoisie and the feudal landlords and jotedars. This is because the Congress Party, the political organization of the comprador-bureaucrat bourgeoisie and landlords, toppled the 14-party UF government after having made that government do what it (the Congress Party) needed. It dismissed the UF Government4 in order that it might use the UF again whenever necessary to serve its purpose. The ‘encirclement and suppression’ campaign that the reactionary UF leaders had started on 25 May 19675 against the revolutionary peasant struggle is being followed up by the regime, of Dharam Vira, the governor, as clearly shown by the murder of Comrade Babulal Biswakarmakar, who was shot dead on September 7 this year. We met at a convention under unfavourable conditions like these with a view to assessing the experience of the revolutionary peasant struggle of the last 18 months and carrying this struggle forward firmly along the path illumined by the thought of our beloved leader and great teacher, Chairman Mao. Naturally, we shall place our views before the comrades on the basis of the lessons that we have drawn from the heroic struggle of the Terai peasants. revisionist chieftains, deputy chief minister and minister for land and land revenue respectively, and Biswanath Mukherji, a leader of the Dangeite clique and irrigation minister in the UF government. 4 The nine-month old reactionary UF government in West Bengal was dismissed by the Central government in November 1967. 5 On this day the reactionary police of the UF government shot down in cold blood nine peasant women and children in the Prasadujote village near Naxalbari, at the instance of the reactionary and neo-revisionist leaders of the UF, who co-operated closed with one another in suppressing the peasant struggle of Naxalbari.

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We have not yet been able to learn well the thought of Chairman Mao. So there will be shortcomings in our views. We shaft learn anew from the discussions of the comrades.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE PEASANT QUESTION The greatest Marxist-Leninist of our present era, Chairman Mao, has taught us: ‘The present upsurge of the peasant movement is a colossal event. In a very short time, in China’s central, southern and northern provinces, several hundred million peasants will arise like a mighty storm, like a hurricane, a form so swift and violent that no power, however great, will be able to hold it back’. Chairman Mao further teaches: ‘Every revolutionary Party, every revolutionary comrade, will be put to the test, to be accepted or rejected as they decide. There are three alternatives: To march at their head and lead them, to trail behind them, gesticulating and criticizing, or to stand in their way and oppose them? Every Chinese is free to choose, but events will force you to make the choice quickly’. The truth of these words of Chairman Mao, of every single word of it, has been fully borne out once more in the struggle carried on in our area. Why has the peasant movement in the Terai region proved to be an event having more far-reaching consequences than even an earthquake? Ours is a semi-colonial and semi-feudal country, 80 per cent of whose population live in the villages. The contradiction between the people of our country and feudalism is the principal contradiction. The comprador-bureaucrat bourgeoisie, the landlords and the jotedars have been carrying on their rule and exploitation through their political organization, the Congress Party, by protecting fully and developing imperialist interests and by covering up the basis of feudalism with legal coatings. So the peasants are the basis and main force of the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal struggle. Unless the peasants are liberated it is impossible to achieve the liberation of all other oppressed classes. The Terai peasants are a part of the peasantry of our country. Seventy per cent of the Terai peasants are poor and landless, 20 per cent are middle peasants and

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10 per cent are rich peasants. These heroic peasants dealt merciless blows to the obsolete and rotten feudal elements – the jotedars, landlords and usurers. The State apparatus of the compradorbureaucrat bourgeoisie, landlords and jotedars is preserving the feudal system by force and carrying on an armed rule. Inspired by Chairman Mao’s teaching, ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun’, the heroic peasants opposed this armed rule with armed revolt. The peasants of Terai not only dealt a fierce blow at feudalism, they also expressed their intense hatred for the imperialist exploitation of India, specially the exploitation by US imperialism, swept into the dust the political, economic and social authority, dignity and prestige built up in the villages by the landlords and jotedars, who represent feudalism, and established the rule of the Peasant Committee in the villages through their armed revolt. That is why the Naxalbari struggle has shown the path for the liberation of India’s oppressed classes. We have seen how the criterion for judging political events changed as soon as the struggle of the heroic peasants started and thus proved how true the teachings of Chairman Mao are. The struggle made it clear as daylight who in a semi-colonial and semifeudal country like ours is a revolutionary and who is a counterrevolutionary, who is progressive and who is reactionary, who is a Marxist and who is a revisionist, and which political party wants to advance the cause of democratic revolution, that is, the agrarian revolution, and which party wants to cover up the semi-colonial and semi-feudal system in order to preserve it. Starting from foreign radio broadcasts and newspapers which uphold the interests of the bourgeoisie and the imperialists to the man-in-the-street in the cities and the villages – everyone chose sides on the issue of the peasant struggle in Terai. Not even one of the political parties, which never tire of talking about workers, peasants and Marxism could maintain its previous position. The struggle of the Terai peasants tore open their masks and forced them to take sides. The struggle of the heroic peasants showed that all the leaders of the 14 ‘Left’ parties including the so-called Marxist party, who had managed to secure ministerial guddis for themselves, were serving the

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state of the comprador-bureaucrat bourgeoisie and landlords, like the Congress Party. The struggle made it clear that, like the Congress Party, the leaders of the 14 ‘Left’ parties including the Dangeite clique and Sundarayya & Co. are enemies of India’s democratic revolution, that is, agrarian revolution. The struggle of the Terai peasants proved that the agrarian revolution can be led to success only by waging a relentless and uncompromising struggle against them. The struggle of the Terai peasants acted as a midwife in the revolutionary situation prevailing in India. That is why a single spark of the Naxalbari struggle is kindling widespread forest-fire everywhere. In a word, the struggle of the heroic peasants has brought to the forefront quite forcefully the role of the peasants in India’s democratic revolution overcoming the fierce and active opposition put up by all the reactionaries and revisionists.

ESTABLISH THE PEASANT COMMITTEES AND GET ORGANIZED The Siliguri sub-division peasant convention gave out the call to (i) establish the authority of the peasant committees in all matters of the village, (ii) get organized and be armed in order to crush the resistance of jotedars and rural reactionaries and (iii) smash the jotedars’ monopoly of ownership of the land and redistribute the land anew through the peasant committees. The convention further declared that the peasants’ struggle against feudalism would have to face the repression of all reactionaries, be it Indira Gandhi’s government in New Delhi or the UF government in West Bengal. So, all their repression must be resisted by force of arms and by carrying on a protracted struggle. The call of the sub-divisional peasant conference instantly created a stir among the revolutionary peasant masses. How did the revolutionary peasants of Terai translate this call into action? To put this call of the conference into effect the revolutionary peasants first of all laid stress upon the task of creating armed groups of peasants in the villages. In every village we heard the words: ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun’. This is because every single struggle, however small, whether

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for stopping usury or on any other issue, has been invariably met with lathis and guns. That is why this call worked like magic in organizing the peasants. Almost all the villages got organized during the period from the end of March to the end of April 1967. Whereas, previously, the membership strength of the Kisan Sabha could not be increased beyond 5,000, the membership now jumped to nearly 40,000. About 15 to 20 thousand peasants began to do whole-time work and built up peasant committees in villages. The young men of the villages who had never before been seen in the front ranks of the Kisan Sabha now occupied the place of veteran peasant cadres. With the speed of a storm the revolutionary peasants, in the course of about one and a half months, formed peasant committees through hundreds of group meetings and turned these committees into armed village defence groups. In a word, they organized about 90 per cent of the village population. This action of the peasants completely changed all our old ideas about organization. Chairman Mao teaches us: ‘The masses have boundless creative power. They can organize themselves and concentrate on places and branches of work where they can give full play to their energy’. We came to realize more profoundly the significance of this teaching of our great teacher Chairman Mao from this action of the Terai peasants. The great Lenin said: ‘Revolution is a festival of the masses’. What it means in reality was witnessed by us during the struggle of the Terai peasants. While the so-called Marxist pundits, Indira Gandhi and all and sundry were rending the skies with loud talks of national integration, we found how the revolutionary activities of the peasants united all the peasants irrespective of their nationality, religion, language and caste. The revolutionary peasants, through their actions, made their decrees the law in the villages: 1. A blow was dealt at the political, economic and social structure in the villages based on monopoly of land-ownership, which dragged the peasants more and more into the depths of pauperization. ‘No, not the deeds and documents – what is required is the order of the peasant committee’, declared the

544 REPORT ON THE PEASANT MOVEMENT IN THE TERAI REGION

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

peasants. They marked out all the land in Terai with their ploughshares and made it their own. They declared that all land which was not owned and tilled by the peasants themselves was to be re-distributed by the peasant committees. By carrying this out in practice, they struck a blow at the main political and economic basis of the jotedars. The old feudal structure that had existed for centuries was thus smashed through this action of the peasants. All the legal deeds and documents relating to the land had been used to cheat them. They held meetings and burned all the receipts, acknowledgments, plans, deeds and documents. The jotedars and money-lenders, taking advantage of the poverty of the rural folk, got them committed to unequal agreements relating to the mortgage of land and bullocks. The peasants declared all such agreements as well as the huge burden of interest imposed on them null and void. The hoarded rice which is used as capital for carrying on usurious and feudal exploitation was confiscated by the peasants and distributed among themselves. Apart from this hoarded rice, other things like oil, atta [coarse flour], bullocks, cows, a huge number of domesticated animals owned by the jotedars, agricultural implements, even articles meant for their personal use were confiscated and distributed. All jotedars in the villages who were known for a long time as oppressors and those who tried to oppose the peasant struggle were all subjected to open trial and sentenced to death. The wicked, ruffian elements and flunkeys who are used to preserve the political, economic and social authority of the jotedars in the villages and those who co-operated with the police were all brought to open trial. In some cases, death sentence was given; in others, the fellows were paraded through the village streets with shoes strung around their necks and with fools’ caps on their heads, so that they would not dare commit crimes in future. Realizing that their struggle against the jotedars, the landlords and the money-lenders would be subjected to armed repression by the state apparatus, they armed themselves with their

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traditional weapons like bows and arrows and spears as well as with guns forcibly taken away from the jotedars, and organized their own armed groups. 8. Lest the general administration of the villages should suffer, they arranged for night watch and shouldered the responsibility of running the schools in a smooth way. The peasant committees announced that severe punishments would be awarded in cases of theft and dacoity, and took measures to inflict such punishments in some cases. 9. In every area they created regional and central revolutionary committees and established the peasants’ political power. 10. They declared the existing bourgeois law and law courts null and void in the villages. The decisions of the regional and central revolutionary committees were declared to be the law. In addition to these ten great tasks the peasants also did many other things which wiped out of the villages the old feudal system that had existed for centuries. How intense was the class hatred of the peasants can be seen from the fact that during a raid on the houses of two jotedars, which lasted for two days, they not only ate up the cooked food of the jotedars but also helped themselves to the meals prepared with all other foodstuff left there. In this struggle we witnessed the festival of the revolutionary peasants overthrowing feudalism. Whenever the peasants became conscious of any shortcomings during these revolutionary actions, they at once came to the peasant committee for their rectification. This means that the peasant committees were not something imposed on them. On the contrary, these committees were wholly their own. That is why the struggle of the heroic peasants of Terai was able to hit the jotedars and the vested interests. The leadership of this struggle was, naturally, in the hands of the landless peasants, who are the most militant section of the peasantry. The reason why these revolutionary actions could become so farreaching and so vast in their sweep is that the leadership of the struggle was in the hands of the poor and landless peasants, who constitute 70 per cent of the peasantry. After the conference, it was

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the poor, landless peasants who realized before all others that the resolutions of the conference were beneficial to their own interests more than to anyone else. It is only because of this that the work of organizing the movement assumed such a broad and militant form. From the experience of their own lives the poor peasants realized that any compromise with feudalism would make their future even more miserable than before. That is why, in their fight against the jotedars, the money-lenders, the ruffians and the police it is the poor peasants who have not shrunk from making sacrifices ever since 24 and 25 May 1967. The truth of this is being proved even today through struggles. Just after the conference, the middle peasants, who constitute 20 per cent of the peasantry, looked with suspicion at the call given by the conference. So, they were not active in the first phase of the struggle. It was only when they came to realize that their interests would be served by the struggle and that the main target and enemy of the struggle was the jotedars, landlords and money-lenders that they came forward. With the participation of the middle peasants the sweep of the struggle increased manifold and it grew even more intense. The rich peasants, who constitute only 10 per cent of the village population, at no time thought the declaration of the conference and this struggle to be beneficial to their own interests. Rather, they, particularly those rich peasants who carry on feudal exploitation in considerable portions of their land, apprehended that it meant danger for them. So, after the conference they took the role of critics and opposed the struggle in the first phase and sometimes even acted as spies for the jotedars. But as soon as the middle peasants joined the poor peasants, their movements underwent a change. After the jotedars and the wicked people had been punished and they had fled to the towns and business centres, the rich peasants gave up the path of opposition and criticism and began to demand justice from the peasant committees. And the peasant committees considered every case on its merit and did justice to them. As a result, the rich peasants generally became neutral and even took an active part in the struggle in quite a few instances. The small jotedars split into two sections in the course of the struggle. One section comprising those jotedars who were able

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neither to develop themselves as they desired owing to the oppression by the government of the comprador-bureaucrat bourgeoisie and the landlords nor to maintain their existing standard of living, took part in the struggle. Another section, comprising those who realized that it was not possible for them to resist, turned inactive hoping to take revenge in future. The struggle of the heroic peasants of Terai demonstrated through practice how to build peasant unity though, it must be admitted, the task was often found to be not at all easy. Real peasant unity can be built only by not making any compromise with feudalism, only by intensifying class struggle against it and by directing the spearhead of attack against it. The peasants proved this in practice. A look at the past and the present revisionist Kisan Sabha convinces one that intense class struggle against feudalism can never be developed by convening such conferences as the ‘jute cultivators’ conference’ or by avoiding class struggle for the sake of unity. A vigorous class struggle against feudalism not only helps to build peasant unity but also guarantees the establishment of the peasants’ political power through such peasant unity. This we have learnt from the peasants of Terai. All the so-called Left parties joined the Congress Party in their mad crusade to vilify the struggle of the heroic peasants of Terai. But all their vilification can never hide the fact that the peasants of Terai have overthrown feudalism root and branch, a feat which could not be done through any legislation or any other thing during all these hundreds of years. Our great teacher Chairman Mao teaches us: ‘I hold that it is bad as far as we are concerned if a person, a political party, an army or a school is not attacked by the enemy, for in that case it would definitely mean that we have sunk to the level of the enemy. It is good if we are attacked by the enemy, since it proves that we have drawn a clear line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves. It is still better if the enemy attacks us wildly and paints us as utterly black and without a single virtue: it demonstrates that we have not only drawn a clear line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves but achieved a great deal in our work’. The truth of these words of Chairman

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Mao has been vindicated through practice during the struggle of the heroic peasants of Terai.

ARMED STRUGGLE – NOT FOR LAND BUT FOR STATE POWER The struggle of the Terai peasants is an armed struggle – not for land but for state power. This is a fundamental question, and the revisionist thinking, which has been prevailing in the peasant movement for the last few decades, can only be combated by solving this question. From the bourgeois parties and newspapers to the leaders of the so-called Marxist party, all have been saying the same thing that it is quite just for the peasants of Terai to struggle for land but that the acts like arming the peasants and the forcible taking away of guns are dragging the struggle into a wrong path. By making this one statement all the bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties, including the Congress and the so-called Marxist Party, have ranged themselves on the same side and made themselves agents of India’s ruling classes. We all know that every class struggle is a political struggle and that the aim of political struggles is to seize state power. Chairman Mao teaches us: ‘The seizure of power by armed form, the settlement of the issue by war, is the central task and the highest form of revolution. This Marxist-Leninist principle of revolution holds good universally, for China and for all other countries’. In our country also, we can succeed in overthrowing the regime of the comprador-bureaucrat bourgeoisie and landlords only by arming the peasants and by building up guerrilla groups and a regular armed force. The peasants of Terai have taken up exactly this work, and this is the reason why all the bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties including the Congress and the so-called Marxist Party have become so furious. The so-called communists dressed up as Marxists have unmasked themselves by hitting away at this. They want to keep the antifeudal struggle pegged to the question of mere distribution of land. Like all other bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties the so-called

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Marxist Party also looks at the question of land distribution from the standpoint of social injustice towards the peasants. This is what they have been doing in reality, whatever may be their subjective motivation. That is why they become panicky whenever they see armed peasants, or hear the slogan ‘Vietnam’s path is our path’. And they stage like a true bourgeois the farce of setting up committees with pro-jotedar bureaucrats in order to distribute land. It would be relevant to mention here what our respected leader, Comrade Charu Majumdar, had told us. He said: ‘Whatever little concessions the UF government may be able to give to other classes, it is not possible for them to give any concession whatsoever to the peasants’. We set down this statement in our local election review but were not able to realize its significance at that time. But later the peasant movement in Terai has cleared up our thinking. As in the other states of India, the peasants of Terai also are victims of oppression under the regime of the comprador-bureaucrat bourgeoisie and feudal jotedars. And this oppression is carried on in the villages by preserving the political, economic, social and cultural structure that serves the jotedars and through feudal exploitation. The heroic peasants are every day realizing this in their lives. That is why they accurately hit at the proper place. The first thing the peasants of Terai did was to arm themselves and then carried out the ten great tasks and thus wiped out at a stroke the old feudal system that has continued for centuries. Furthermore, relying on the armed revolutionary strength they established a new political power, that is, the rule of the revolutionary peasant committees in their area. By carrying out these ten great tasks the heroic peasants have taught us that the struggle of the peasants is not merely a struggle for land. On the contrary, in order to end the monopoly of land ownership and feudal exploitation by the landlords in the villages, which are being preserved by the Congress Party, the political party of the comprador-bureaucrat bourgeoisie and the landlords, with the help of the political, economic, social and cultural structure that serves the landlords, a new political, economic, social and cultural structure must be created by establishing a new political power. This political power can be established by arousing and arming the

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peasants, by organizing guerrilla groups, by creating liberated areas, by building a regular armed force, and by protecting and expanding this force. Such a political power, no matter in how small an area it is established is the embryo of the future people’s democratic state power in India. It is never possible to overthrow the rule of the compradorbureaucrat bourgeoisie and the landlords, who have come to terms with imperialism, without arming the peasants in the anti-feudal struggle, without leading their struggle courageously, without building their guerrilla and regular armed forces. This is so because in our country, the feudal landlord class is the main social base of the imperialist and comprador-bureaucrat bourgeois exploitation, and the peasants are the main force and the basis of this struggle. Herein lies the distinctive feature of the Naxalbari path, that is, the Naxalbari struggle. It is precisely because the Naxalbari struggle is not merely a struggle for land that it could not be stamped out. Without this consciousness, any struggle for land, no matter how militant it may be, is militant economism. Such militant struggle for land generates opportunism in the peasant movement and demoralizes the majority of the fighting section as happened during the struggle for seizing the benami lands. Such militant economic movement leads one into the blind alley of revisionism. This means, in other words, becoming, consciously or unconsciously, a bourgeois reformist. The bourgeoisie tries to gain this object of theirs, sometimes through their laws and sometimes through a Vinoba Bhave. When they fail in this, they depend on the presentday social-democrats who disguise themselves as Marxists. Marxism has nothing in common with this. In short, the question of making the agrarian revolution victorious in our country is not the same as the question of ensuring social justice to the peasants.

UNITED FRONT AND ITS LEADERSHIP IN THE ANTI-FEUDAL STRUGGLE An important aspect of the struggle of the heroic peasants of Terai is its success in gaining the support of the tea-garden workers and other toiling people and, thus, intensifying the struggle still further

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by building a united front in the anti-feudal struggle. This is the most important task. The struggle of the heroic peasants of Terai has solved this problem. The Terai peasants began their struggle against the compradorbureaucrat bourgeoisie and the landlords, who have come to terms with imperialism, have prettified feudalism and are carrying on their rule and exploitation through the Congress Party, which is their political organization. The fact that the reactionary leaders of the so-called United Front were able to install themselves on the ministerial gdddis did not change the class character of the state. While the heroic peasants of Terai were smashing the foundations of feudalism in the villages by performing the ten great tasks, the tea garden workers realized from their innate class consciousness that this class struggle was a struggle to overthrow the rule of the Congress Party, which represents the comprador-bureaucrat bourgeoisie and the landlords. That is why the tea garden workers could not be kept away from the struggle of the peasants in spite of the fact that the unions of tea-garden workers were mainly controlled by the so-called communists. From their own experience of class struggle the tea-garden workers of Terai realized that the peasants were their most faithful friend and ally. That is why they not only participated in the struggle of the peasants but were in the forefront of that struggle. They went on strike and arming themselves they have taken part in every struggle since 24 May 1967. The struggle of the Terai peasants helped the tea-garden workers to come out of the mire of trade unionism and economism. This happened in spite of the fact that the so-called communist trade union leaders were opposing the struggle. And from this anti-feudal struggle there grew up a genuine worker-peasant alliance under the leadership of the teagarden workers. At the present time every anti-feudal armed struggle is certain to be opposed by imperialism. There are many instances today to bear this out. In the propaganda being carried on by the bourgeois papers representing different imperialist interests, by the Voice of America and by BBC, we are witnessing this opposition in an embryonic form. The object of their propaganda is to crush the struggle without

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delay, and the reactionary UF leaders are diligently working to this end under the leadership of the Congress. As soon as the anti-feudal struggle of the workers and peasants of Terai grows more intense, it will have to face direct opposition from imperialism. All the antiimperialist strata and classes will then naturally join the alliance of workers and peasants. The struggle of the heroic peasants of Terai has taught us the lesson that a united front of all anti-imperialist, anti-feudal elements that can be united can be built only on the basis of the workerpeasant alliance carrying on armed struggle. This united front of workers and peasants can never be built through any so-called ‘turn to the villages’ or by taking a few demonstrations towards the villages. Any other front that can be built is the United Front of AjoyJyoti-Harekrishna-Jatin 6, which can function as ministers or bureaucrats within the existing bourgeois structure but which is unable to give leadership to the People’s Democratic Revolution. The question of leadership of this front has also been solved. No so-called Marxist can lead this struggle or this front. This front will be led by the political party of the proletariat – a party which is armed with the theory of Marxism-Leninism, Mao TseTung’s thought, the highest development of Marxism-Leninism in the present era – a party having its own army and able to build a united front of workers, peasants and petty bourgeoisie and of all those who can be united. Only such a party can successfully lead the anti-imperialist anti-feudal struggle.

OUR DEVIATIONS AND THE LESSONS WE LEARNT Taken as a whole, internationally and nationally, the revolutionary situation in our country is excellent. The armed struggle of the peasants of the Siliguri sub-division has begun after the fourth general elections at a time when Anglo-US imperialism, specially US imperialism, finds itself in an acute crisis and the quarrel between 6

Jatin Chakravarty, a reactionary trade union bureaucrat belonging to the RSP, a petty bourgeois party within the UF.

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the imperialists has become bitter, when US imperialist capital is unable to rely fully on the influence of the Congress Party in matters of investment, when all the hoax of economic planning of the Congress Party, the organization of the comprador-bureaucrat bourgeoisie and landlords, is falling into pieces, when the people are suffering from the effects of an acute economic crisis and when people’s lack of confidence in the Congress has become even more pronounced, as reflected in the ending of the monopoly rule of Congress ministers in eight states. We know that we must adopt an offensive tactic in our struggle when the enemy is beset with crisis and internal quarrels, and must adopt the tactic of advancing our struggle gradually when the enemy has gained some stability. Judged from this standpoint, the struggle of the peasants of Terai is just, timely and beyond reproach. Why have we failed, though temporarily, to advance the struggle of the heroic peasants of Terai? The reasons are: lack of a strong party organization, failure to rely whole-heartedly on the masses and to build a powerful mass base, ignorance of military affairs, thinking on old lines and a formal attitude towards the establishment of political power and the work of revolutionary land reform. We must always bear in mind Chairman Mao’s teachings in discussing these matters. He teaches us: ‘New things always have to experience difficulties and set-backs as they grow. It is sheer fantasy to imagine that the cause of socialism is all plain sailing and easy success, without difficulties and set-backs or the exertion of tremendous efforts’. By the lack of a strong party organization we mean absence of a party which is armed with the theory of Marxism-Leninism and its highest development in the present era, Mao Tse-Tung’s thought, which is closely linked with the masses, which does not fear selfcriticism and which has mastered the Marxist-Leninist style of work. It is true that the revolutionary comrades of the Siliguri sub-division led by our respected leader, Comrade Charu Majumdar, were the first to rise in revolt against the revisionists. But this does not mean that we fully assimilated the teachings of our great teacher Chairman Mao. That is, while we accepted the teachings of Chairman Mao in words, we persisted in revisionist methods in practice. Though it is

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true that the worker and peasant Party members of Terai were in a majority inside the Party and that there was Party organization in almost every area, yet in reality the worker and peasant comrades were led by the petty bourgeois comrades and the Party organization in every area actually remained inactive. The Party members were all active at the beginning of the struggle but they were swept away by the vast movement of the people. We did not also realize that the Party had a tremendously significant role to play in advancing firmly the struggle of the heroic peasants. As a result, whatever might be the role the Party members played spontaneously at the beginning of the struggle it was afterwards reduced to nothing in the face of white terror. To belittle the role of the Party in the struggle is nothing but an expression of the old revisionist way of thinking. The Party played no role in matters like deciding what are the needs of the struggle at a given moment, giving political propaganda priority above everything else, advising the people about what they should do when the enemy attacks, preparing the people politically to meet the moves of the enemy, and developing the struggle step by step to a higher stage. We did not even politically assess, nor did we propagate among the people, the significance of the ten great tasks performed by the heroic peasants. As a result, there developed among us opportunism and escapism; and even the fighting comrades began to show signs of a lack of firmness. So, we are of the opinion that we must carry on a sharp struggle against the revisionist way of thinking and fulfil certain definite tasks. These tasks are: to form a Party unit in a given locality and elect its leader; to train these Party units, which must be armed ones, to observe secrecy. The tasks of the Party unit will be to propagate the thought of Chairman Mao in a given locality and to develop and intensify class struggle in that locality; to act as a guerrilla unit and attack and eliminate class enemies by relying wholly on the people; and, whenever possible, to take part along with the people in the work of production. We have now started implementing the above programme. We were unable to raise the struggle firmly to a higher stage because we failed to rely wholly on the people and to build a

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powerful mass base. We now admit frankly that we had no faith in the heroic peasant masses who, swift as a storm, organized themselves, formed revolutionary peasant committees, completed the ten great tasks and advanced the class struggle at a swift pace during the period from April to September 1967. We did not realize that it is the people who make history, that they are the real heroes, that the people can organize themselves and can amaze all by their own completely new style of work. We failed to realize that comrades like Tribeni Kanu, Sobhan Ali, Barka Majhi, Babulal Biswakarmakar and the ten peasant women of Naxalbari are the real heroes and organizers, and so we failed to move forward. Though we repeatedly recognized this in words during the period from April to September 1967, in reality, however, we, the petty bourgeois leadership, imposed ourselves on the people. Whenever the heroic peasant masses took the initiative and wanted to do something, we of the petty bourgeois origin opposed them. The reason is, we did not understand, nor did we even try to understand, the actions of the masses. On the contrary, under the influence of old revisionist habits we arbitrarily set limits as to how far they should go. This resulted in thwarting the initiative of the masses and blunting the edge of the class struggle. Having worked in a revisionist party, we were used to bourgeois laws and conventions and so, tried to convince the masses about what was right and what was wrong. So, when the people wanted to attack the police, we prevented them on the ground that our losses would be heavy. We looked at the people’s attitude towards the jotedars and the police from the angle of bourgeois humanism. As a result, we failed to organize the large masses who numbered more than 40,000 and were thus unable to build a powerful mass base during April and May 1967. Therefore, during the second stage of our struggle, we have resolved that we must link ourselves with the needs and wishes of the people, go to the people with boundless love and respect in our hearts and integrate ourselves with the people. We must learn from them and take the lesson back to them again through practice. In other words, we must not impose anything from above. Mistakes may be made owing to this, but it is possible to correct

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such mistakes. The most important thing is – never to allow the initiative of the masses to be suppressed. Our duty is to develop their initiative.

IGNORANCE OF MILITARY AFFAIRS AND OLD WAYS OF THINKING The struggle of the heroic peasants of the Siliguri sub-division was not a movement to realize certain demands in the old sense. This was a struggle to establish a new political power, the peasants’ power in the villages after abolishing feudalism there. So, we shall discuss the reasons for our failure in this struggle both from the political arid the military viewpoint. Chairman Mao teaches us: ‘All reactionaries are paper tigers. In appearance, the reactionaries are terrifying, but in reality they are not so powerful. From a long-term point of view, it is not the reactionaries but the people who are really powerful’. If, in any struggle, we happen to overestimate the enemy’s strength politically, it will never be possible to gain victory in that struggle. In other words, if we do not have, from the strategic viewpoint, the courage and firmness required to defeat the enemy, we shall inevitably face defeat. If we fail to realize that in the final analysis it is the people who are powerful, we shall not be able to achieve victory in any struggle. It is this consciousness that lends firmness to the struggle, urges one to make supreme sacrifice without fear and teaches one to undergo all kinds of hardship in order to win victory. We believed that we had assimilated this teaching of Chairman Mao. But the course of the struggle made us realize how superficial our understanding was. Today, our continued participation in the struggle makes us feel with every passing day that this teaching of Chairman Mao has to be realized anew every day, every moment and this realization has to be tested through our own practice. The day when this realization is translated into reality, we shall be able to shatter the much boasted strength of the armed forces of India’s reactionary government and march forward undeterred. The encounters with the police on 24 and 25 May 1967 and the action of the people in coming forward undauntedly both during

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and after the shooting down of unarmed peasant women by the police, and the boundless heroism and self-sacrifice of Comrades Tribeni Kanu, Sobhan Ali and Barka Majhi - how can we explain all these things if not by the fact that they are the expressions of that realization? And we of the petty-bourgeois origin failed to recognize this very thing and so, at times, either under-estimated or over-estimated the enemy’s strength. In the first stage of the struggle we under-estimated the enemy’s strength and thought of everything in the old way, and being in a revisionist party we indulged in idle day-dreaming. Sometimes we imagined that ‘the UF cannot go so far or that it will be difficult for it to go so far’. On the one hand, we viewed the revisionists from a purely petty-bourgeois standpoint while, on the other, we underestimated the enemy’s strength and kept the people unprepared in the face of the enemy, that is, we did not prepare the people regarding the measures that the enemy was likely to take. This is nothing but revisionist attitude. Again, when the people were ready to launch attacks on the enemy, we over-estimated the enemy’s strength and subjectively magnified the likely effects of such attacks. The people fought with determination and created model heroes whose heroism we belittled. As a result, the people found themselves in disarray in the face of widespread terror, the intensity of the struggle diminished and escapism increased. Comrade Babulal Biswakarmakar, by sacrificing his life on 7 September this year (1967), has enjoined us to advance along the path pointed out by Chairman Mao. This is a struggle to seize state power and, as such, it demands of us to prepare the party and the people militarily to the fullest extent. Chairman Mao teaches us: ‘Without a people’s army the people have nothing.’ We have come to realize the truth of this teaching of Chairman Mao deeply through the struggle in Terai. Though we had known that as soon as this struggle started it would be met with suppression by the Central government and the reactionary leaders of the West Bengal UF government, yet we failed to take the programme of action which should have been taken. We had a wrong understanding of Chairman Mao’s teaching in that we turned strategic defence into passive defence.

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When all the population armed themselves, the jotedars, the vested interests and wicked persons fled from the villages, and so we concluded that we had already created a base area. We mistook the armed people for the armed force and adopted the tactic of resisting and attacking by means of broad mass mobilization as the main tactic of our struggle. The one or two small armed groups which were formed to take away forcibly guns from the jotedars were not recognized by us as the main instrument of struggle. On the contrary, we assumed that guerrilla groups would eventually arise on the basis of the spontaneous actions of the broad masses. In many cases, fooled by the display of revolutionary ardour in vagabonds, we made them leaders for organizing armed groups. Again, when we found armed rich peasants and a section of small jotedars by the side of armed poor peasants and middle peasants we concluded that together they constituted the united armed force of the entire peasantry. We totally forgot that the rich peasants and that section of the small jotedars could desert to the enemy at the first opportunity. We learnt in the course of the struggle that a few rich peasants and small landowners might take an active part in a big struggle that was raging. But as soon as counter-revolutionary terror started, these people would desert to the enemy camp spreading fear among the poor and middle peasants. In short, our total ignorance of military affairs is the root cause of the temporary set-back in our struggle. What we have learnt from the struggle of the Terai peasants is that we must deeply study the political and military theories of Chairman Mao, apply them in practice and then study them again. Our greatest responsibility is to make arrangements for our worker and peasant comrades to study the thought of Chairman Mao. Furthermore, we have learnt from the experience of our struggle that the armed groups formed after arousing the people in the villages and arming them will become the village defence groups. We must acquire knowledge of guerrilla warfare by arming the peasants with conventional weapons (bows and arrows, spears, etc.) and by organizing assaults on the class enemies. We are to build up liberated zones gradually by forming peasant guerrilla groups and by carrying on their activities. It would not be possible either to form guerrilla groups or to carry on their activities

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for long, if we do not, at the same time, persevere in building liberated zones also. We must keep in mind the fact that only the liberated zones or those areas which can be transformed into liberated zones form the rear of the guerrillas. We must lay utmost stress on building a people’s armed force. To build a people’s armed force we must form centrally organized groups of armed guerrillas. These, we think, will be the embryo of the people’s armed force. In some other areas, again, we may try to organize armed peasant revolts and build the people’s armed force comprising those armed peasants who have risen in revolt. In forming the guerrilla groups or the central guerrilla group we must lay utmost stress on the class standpoint. We have come to realize that only the poor and middle peasants must be the basis for forming the guerrilla groups. Our failure in establishing the revolutionary political power and in carrying out revolutionary land reforms blunted the edge of the class struggle both during and after the struggle. The revolutionary peasants accomplished two tasks through mass mobilization. They are: formation of central and zonal revolutionary peasant committees and distribution of land. And we turned exactly these two things into a most formal affair. Our petty bourgeois daydreaming was at the root of it. We never seriously considered how deeply significant were these two tasks. Had we treated these two tasks seriously and carried on political explanation campaign among the masses about their significance, had we been able to develop the initiative of the people to participate in carrying out these two tasks by educating them, they would have remembered for a long time the gains which they themselves had won through struggle, and would have fought unflinchingly in order to retain those gains. As regards distribution of land, our policy was to confiscate the land fully and distribute the same entirely. We did not give any importance to this work also. As a result, in many cases the rich peasants prevented this task being carried out under various pleas. In many other cases, the top section of the middle peasants, being in the leadership in some cases, managed to divert the emphasis from the confiscation of land to making raids

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on jotedars’ houses, and thus deprived this work of its importance. In some other cases again, there developed acute contradictions between the poor peasants and the middle peasants in matters of the distribution of land. In spite of all these mistakes, the people have been defending heroically the fruits they won through their struggle. Therefore, we have taken the decision that, of the ten great tasks of the peasants, we must attach the greatest importance to these two tasks and turn them into a weapon for our propaganda.

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