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Bengali Left: From Pink to Saffron?
With his
government's failure to stem retrenchment in the industrial field, sustain
its few achievements in the countryside, and provide basic amenities and a
clean administration for all its citizens, the picture is indeed bleak in
West Bengal. In order to explain away this failure, the CPI(M) has today
found a scapegoat – the Bangladeshi infiltrators. But such a choice has
ominous implications – given the tense communal situation in the country
today, as well as the historical background of Hindu-Muslim relations in
West Bengal.
By Sumanta Banerjee
There
is a competition among all political parties to surpass the BJP in upholding
the agenda of the Sangh parivar. The trend was set recently by the Congress
in Gujarat, when it fought the elections on the plank of soft Hindutva,
claiming that it was no less Hindu than the RSS. Then the Congress chief
minister of Madhya Pradesh Digvijay Singh went a step further by launching a
campaign against cow slaughter, asserting that he was more of a Hindu than
Vajpayee. Soon after, members of Mulayam Singh’s Samajwadi Party jumped on
the bandwagon by organising a demonstration in Dehra Dun raising slogans
like ‘Ban Cow Slaughter’ and ‘Hindu Unity’.
The
Marxists are not left far behind either. While in the cow belt in central
India the Congress and other parties are trying to hijack the ‘go-mata’,
in the Left belt in the east where the cow cannot be turned into a
sacrosanct icon since beef is the cheapest source of protein for the poor as
well as favourite among middle class Bengali Hindu gourmets, the CPI(M)
cannot afford to join Digvijay Singh in demanding a ban on cow slaughter. It
is seeking instead to usurp another programme from the parivar’s agenda to
demonstrate that it is as patriotic a Hindu organisation as the VHP or the
Bajrang Dal. It has picked upon the Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants whom they
brand as ISI agents to be expelled immediately – an issue very dear to the
heart of home minister Advani and his musclemen in the parivar. In fact, at
the state chief ministers’ conference in Delhi in early February, the two
CPI(M) chief ministers from West Bengal and Tripura – Buddhadev
Bhattacharya and Manik Sarkar – bent over backwards to exhibit their
allegiance to Advani. Bhattacharjee said: “…on the question of dealing
with illegal infiltrators from Bangladesh, our state government is in
agreement with the government of India that whenever such infiltration is
detected, the foreign nationals should be pushed back forthwith”. His
party comrade from the neighbouring state of Tripura, chief minister Sarkar
literally echoed Advani’s paranoid fears about every Bangladeshi being an
ISI agent, when he asserted that the ISI, and “possibly Al Queda”, were
operating from Bangladesh.
One
could argue that both West Bengal and Tripura, being border states, are
really facing the problem of illegal immigration from Bangladesh through the
porous borders. Some among these immigrants could indeed be subversive
elements associated with fanatic Islamic groups based in Bangladesh. In
fact, the Bangladesh government is reported to have banned early February
one such group called Shahdat-e-Al-Hikma, based in Rajshahi which claims
West Bengal is part of Bangladesh. But should this be a ground for
suspecting all the poor Bangladeshi Muslims who, driven by poverty, come
here to eke out a living, as ISI agents and crack down upon them? Besides,
many among those being driven out are said to be Bengali Muslims living in
West Bengal for generations. In fact, some years ago when the Shiv Sena-backed
police rounded up Bengali-speaking Muslims in Mumbai branding them as
Bangladeshi infiltrators, most of them turned out to be West Bengal Muslims
who had gone to Mumbai to earn a living after having been displaced from
their homes in West Bengal by industrial projects. Trans-border movement of
labourers from one nation state to another has become an accepted reality in
today’s world of globalised economy where it makes little sense to try and
control the movement of people. While it is ‘illegal’ in the eyes of the
authorities, they turn away their eyes from it since it helps their economy
– through the availability of cheap labour. In West Bengal itself, most of
the Bangladeshi immigrant women are hired as domestic helps by middle class
householders who find them less expensive than the locals.
Further,
what is lost in all this din about ‘infiltrators’ is the fact that along
with Muslims, a lot of Hindus have also illegally entered West Bengal and
other parts of India. They had been driven by fanatic Islamic persecution in
some parts of Bangladesh that followed in the wake of the demolition of
Babri masjid in India. Like their Muslim counterparts, they are also staying
here without valid papers. If it is a question of ‘illegal
infiltrators’, why is the CPI(M) silent about the Hindu
‘infiltrators’? The BJP, true to its ideology, makes a distinction
between Bangladeshi Muslims and Hindu immigrants. While they denounce the
former as ‘infiltrators’, they sanctify the latter as ‘refugees’. Is
the CPI(M) also veering round that view?
Muslim
‘Infiltrators’
In
such circumstances, the CPI(M)’s hue and cry about only Muslim
infiltrators from Bangladesh dovetails perfectly with the anti-Muslim
campaign of the Sangh parivar’s. By abetting in the inhuman attempts of
the BSF to push all Muslims – both immigrants and indigenous – into
Bangladesh, the West Bengal Left Front government is virtually implementing
the agenda of the Sangh parivar which wants to cleanse India of all Muslims.
It has raised up the issue as a bogey which is supposedly ruining all the
ambitious plans of the Left Front government in West Bengal! Chief minister
Buddhadev Bhattacharya for instance, soon after his earlier speech in Delhi,
addressing a police parade in Kolkata said that fundamentalist and terrorist
organisations from “our neighbouring country” were trying to destabilise
India which had led to a spurt in criminal activities in the state. Criminal
activities have no doubt gone up in West Bengal. But who are responsible?
May I remind Bhattacharya of at least two such major incidents that rocked
West Bengal early this year, and neither of which could by any stretch of
imagination be traced to ISI-backed Bangladeshi infiltrators? The
accusations in both the incidents, according to his own administration, may
cut close to his bone.
The
first involved a young policeman Bapi Sen, who while trying to save a girl
from being molested by a group of drunks in Kolkata was killed by them. The
killers turned out to be policemen in mufti – employees of the West Bengal
government! The incident created a stir in the state confirming the popular
suspicion that there is no place for honest people in the Left Front’s
police force as long as Bhattacharya is in charge of the home department.
The second incident took place in Nadia district, where a bus was attacked,
its passengers looted and women molested by a gang of miscreants – who
were found to be professional dacoits employed by a local CPI(M) leader to
settle scores with his rival in the party.
One
can understand Bhattacharya’s dilemma. He has inherited from his mentor
Jyoti Basu an administration that had been riddled with corruption, and a
party organisation that had been criminalised by lumpen cadres. Both were
needed by the party to establish its hold in West Bengal. It preferred
these short-cut means to the more toilsome efforts of building up a base
through good governance, social reforms and ideological education of the
cadres.
The
initial achievements of Operation Barga, land reforms and the three-tier
local self-governments have been eroded by political nepotism and criminal
intimidation by the ruling party members who have emerged as a new class of
vested interests in the countryside threatening the poor. While their
allegiance to the CPI(M) has given them political clout, the devolution of
financial powers under the panchayati system has provided them with enough
monetary resources to siphon off a large part of them to their own coffers.
According to a report prepared by the West Bengal government’s own land
reforms department, about 3.02 per cent of the bargadars have lost land due
to eviction by these powerful interests. More than 13 per cent of the
pattadars have been dispossessed of ‘patta’ land, many of them forced by
poverty to sell their plots. Although numerically small, such figures should
cause concern. Even after 25 years of rule by a professedly pro-poor Left
Front, the state has 35.66 per cent of its population below the poverty
line, which is hardly better than the national average of 35.97. In rural
West Bengal, nearly 85 per cent of the population do not have pucca houses.
It is only in the field of literacy that the government can claim some
improvement with 69.22 per cent in 2001 – which is slightly better than
the national average of 65.20 per cent, but still far behind Kerala which
claims 90.92 per cent. (These figures are from the Human Development Report
of the Planning Commission.)
The
colour of what was once known as the red state has faded into pink. But this
pink is not the rosy sign of a healthy economy claimed to be brought about
by Buddhadeb Bhattacharya with his much acclaimed (by the industrial houses)
policy of liberalisation and privatisation. What with his government’s
failure to stem retrenchment in the industrial field, sustain its few
achievements in the countryside, and provide basic amenities and a clean
administration for all its citizens, the picture is indeed bleak in West
Bengal. In order to explain away this failure, the CPI(M) has today found a
scapegoat – the Bangladeshi infiltrators!
But
such a choice has ominous implications – given the tense communal
situation in the country today, as well as the historical background of
Hindu-Muslim relations in West Bengal. The VHP is already quite active in
the state, organising its network in the border villages, directing its
offensive against Muslims by branding them as ISI infiltrators from
Bangladesh. If the CPI(M) hopes to take the wind out of the VHP’s sail by
repeating the same slogan, it will only saffronise itself and melt into the
cauldron of Hindutva.
As a
footnote, let me add a piece of news that may be dismissed as an isolated
instance by my CPI(M) friends, but indicates the trend of saffronisation
that is creeping into its base, among its supporters in West Bengal. In
1993, a Muslim girl Tehmina Khatun, married to a Hindu called Sukumar Mitra,
from Barasat in north 24-parganas, applied for admission at a college in the
same district. In the admission form, she struck out the column where she
had to mention her religion. The governing body of the college refused her
admission. Out of its members three were CPI(M) supporters and two RSS
members. All insisted that she should mention her religion as Hinduism and
write her name as Tehmina Mitra! It was only after a 10-year long case that
went up to the Calcutta High Court that she won her battle. Her comment on the entire
affair: “I did not mention my religion because I do not believe in
religion, but in humanity and humanism – but is that reason enough to deny
me an opportunity for higher studies in progressive West
Bengal?”
Courtesy http://www.epw.org.in
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