The Marxist, XXXI 2, April–June 2015
The Left movement in West Bengal – the most powerful contingent of
the Left movement in India – today faces intense repression by the State
Government led by the Trinamul Congress (TMC) and by the ruling classes in
general. Dr. Surjya Kanta Mishra, member of the Polit Bureau of the
Communist Party of India (Marxist), holds the two crucial positions of Leader
of the Opposition in the West Bengal Legislative Assembly and and Secretary of
the State Committee of the CPI(M). Dr Mishra gave this interview on the state
of political repression in West Bengal to Madhav
Tipu Ramachandran on May 19, 2015. The interview was conducted over
three hours, during a journey by car from Kolkata to Nadia. In the interview,
Dr Mishra speaks on what he characterises as a three-pronged attack on
democracy and the people in West Bengal, an attack whose victims go beyond the
Left and Left parties; on the attack on Left forces in the State; on comparing
the current repression with the period of semi-fascist terror in the State in
the 1970s; and on the need and prospects for a resurgence of the Left in the
State and in India.
MTR: What is the nature of political repression in West Bengal
today?
SKM: The repression
that we have been facing in West Bengal today, four years after the changing of
the government, is a multi-pronged one. There have been three types of attack
against the people of the State: first, an attack on democracy and democratic
institutions; secondly, an attack on peoples’ livelihoods, and thirdly, an
attack on secularism in the State.
Concurrently, there has been a concerted and violent attack on the
CPI(M) and the Left Front.
MTR: What has the Left had to confront?
SKM: Around
170 comrades have
been killed during
this period. More
importantly, thousands of comrades have been brutally attacked and
denied hospital treatment, their complaints have not been registered, and many
of them — more than 5000 by my estimate — will be physically handicapped for
the rest of their lives.
More than 1500 offices of the Party, the Left Front and mass
organisations have been attacked, and either captured and converted to Trinamul
Congress (TMC) offices or put under lock and key.
More than 100,000 comrades have been implicated in false cases.
Many people have been forced out of their places of residence, more
than 51,000 at the last count. When people return to their places of residence
after a certain period of time, say one or two years, they are not allowed to
speak to anyone, not allowed to leave their houses, their mobile phones and
landlines are taken away, and they are not even allowed to drop letters into a
post box. They are forced to pay fines to goondas, often to the tune of several
lakhs.(our estimate is that Rs 50 crores have been taken in total by means of
extortion in the State)
MTR: How does the extortion take place?
SKM: The money is taken
after threats and leaving no paper trail, although we do have a few documents.
Where persons who have been forced to leave their home do not return, members
of their families are sometimes tortured. The goons say: “Tell him (or her) to
come back, live here, pay the fine; send him (or her) the message that
otherwise their family will not be allowed to live here in peace.”
MTR: You described the first kind of attack as on democracy and
democratic institutions.
SKM: What I have
described is part of the larger attack on the forces of democracy in society.
It is said
that in parliamentary
democracy, the House
belongs to the
Opposition, that is,
the Opposition must take the lead in addressing issues within the
Legislature. In West Bengal, we publish an account every year of how many
questions we asked, how many remained unanswered, how our adjournment motions
were rejected, how no time was spent on non-official discussion and
non-official resolutions, how resolutions were passed solely by the Government
— no one else — and how our resolutions were thrown out.
The Press Corner in the Assembly is no longer open to the Leader of
Opposition when the House is not in session.
MTR: What exactly is the Press Corner?
SKM: During our time in
Government, we organised that a Press Corner be opened, in order that any
member of the House be able to meet the Press and discuss policies and open
issues to debate. As a Government, we believed in keeping ourselves accountable
to the people via the Press. We used to regularly go to the Press Corner and
discuss our policies.
The Press Corner
usually has to
close by 5
p.m., and one
day, a few
months after the
new Government had come to power, an accusation was levelled against me
to the effect that I had exceeded the deadline by five minutes. Although I am
sure that I did not overstep the time limit, even if I had, it is hardly cause
to close the Press Corner to the Leader of Opposition. They have closed down
the Press Corner for three and a half years now, and whenever the Assembly is
not in session, I have to arrange Press Conferences in the street outside
(although I can, of course, hold them in the Party office as well). Ministers
can hold press conferences in their offices, but ordinary MLAs of any political
party should have the right to speak out to the press, which is why the Press
Corner was built in the first place.
MTR: There have been other incidents in the Legislative Assembly.
SKM: These are
manifestations of the new regime. When we moved an adjournment motion in the
house for a discussion about the Sarada chit fund scam, a few of our MLAs were
beaten up and injured inside the House by ruling party MLAs. The injured
included a woman, Debalina Hembram, a former Minister, who was thrown between
bench and desk in the Treasury benches. The other injured MLA, Gauranga
Chatterjee, our State Committee member, sustained a fracture in the skull, but
the government hospital to which he was admitted said that there was no injury,
and refused to admit him. He was then admitted to a private hospital and the CT
scan he undertook subsequently revealed his fracture clearly. Nothing further
could be done about this, for if something happens within the House, the Police
will not take action and so nothing was done.
Thus, even the legislature, which is said to be the place where the
Government in a parliamentary democracy is accountable to the people, has
failed to discharge its constitutional responsibilities.
MTR: Are these attacks directed solely at the Left?
SKM: No, the attacks
that were first aimed at us are now aimed at the entire Opposition — as well as
at members of the ruling party itself. I told the Chief Minister that at least
50 people of her party have been killed by her own people, and I believe they
do not even have a record of them.
The historical experience is that when the attack on democracy
begins, nobody is spared, not even members of the ruling party. In the chit
fund case, TMC MPs and other ruling party loyalists are now being disowned or
being forced to leave by the party as its leaders believe that these people may
have divulged sensitive information to the CPI(M), or to the courts or police.
MTR: What about other democratic institutions?
SKM: All of them are
under considerable pressure. The local bodies and all the authority they had
are under attack. Elections are rigged, people outside the ruling party are not
allowed to submit nominations, and even if they do manage to submit them, are
then forced to withdraw their candidatures. Co-operatives are similarly
besieged (have been
“captured”) – no
elections are held,
and they are
run by “administrators.” There is
no campus democracy for students or teachers. Student elections are under
attack, and the right of students to form unions denied. The right of workers
to strike has been taken away.
Other democratic organisations, such as the constitutional bodies,
are under attack. There is no Chairperson of the Human Rights Commission (HRC),
because when the Commission delivered certain judgements or
recommendations unpalatable to the government,
they found a way to
remove its Chairman. Thereafter,
they appointed the former Director General to the HRC, an appointment that I
opposed as a member of the Selection Committee. I stated that never has a
police officer with several human rights violations sub judice been appointed
to a Human Rights Commission. He now acts as de facto Chairman of the
Commission – which is a reflection the state of human rights in our State.
The State Election Commission has not been spared either, as the
government’s war with the State Election Commission on the issue of holding
panchayat elections showed. A Sessions Court judge has had to come to us for
safety and security, which shows that there are members of the judiciary who
are under personal threat. The Central Bureau of Investigation has had to ask
the High Court to transfer the case out of Alipore court, since they did not
expect justice from the Alipore court.
MTR: You described the second kind of attack as being one on
people’s livelhoods.
SKM: People are denied
wages after working on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee
Scheme, denied work when funds are available, and sometimes denied employment
on the basis of political loyalty, anyone but a supporter of the ruling party
being unacceptable for employment. Wages are sometimes withheld for six months
or even a year, thus violating the terms of the law.
Farmers are not paid the procurement prices declared by the
Government, and mechanisms for output procurement are not in place. The
agrarian situation is deteriorating every day. There have been farmer suicides
in West Bengal, as had not occurred in the 34 years of Left Front rule
preceding the period in power of this Government.
MTR: Are the issues of livelihoods singularly issues of rural
areas?
SKM: No, in recent
times, the industrial sphere has been characterised by closures in traditional
sectors (for example in the tea and jute industries) and in other sectors, and
by a failure to start new industries. People are thrown out of employment
because factories are being closed and because of the hooliganism of the ruling
party in the factory sector. Today’s newspaper says that the Chief Minister has
announced that seven jute factories are to reopen. These mills had become
unviable and unable to function because hooligans of the ruling party had
demanded ever greater amounts of money as extortion. The Chief Minister has
ultimately had to ask them to see that the factories reopen. A temporary change
in the situation does not, however, reflect what is happening every day
everywhere else; her words in this case are nothing more than lip service, with
nothing actually changing in the field.
Members of the business community have begun to complain that they
are unable to run businesses because they have to pay this ‘extortion fee’. The
insurance scheme that we introduced while in Government has not been
implemented properly. The Government is not paying the premium amount to which
it is committed, and a sum of to Rs 69-70 crores has been left unpaid by the
government in the last four years (a substantial proportion of this relates to
crop insurance). Government employees and teachers have not been paid their
dearness allowance; up to 48 per cent — a proportion almost unheard of — of
their wages remain unpaid, and the failure to pay wages now affects around a
million people.
MTR: You described the “third prong” of the attack as being on
secularism.
SKM: There has never
been any serious incident of communal tension in this State since Partition.
During the 34 years of Left Front rule, whenever there was communal tension in
the country, the army was swiftly deployed and political steps were taken to
ensure that such tension did not flare up in the State.
For example, when anti-Sikh riots swept the country after Indira
Gandhi’s death, not a single case was registered in West Bengal. Similarly,
after the Babri Masjid incident, the firm secular stance of the government
prevented communal violence here in West Bengal. Our political ability and the
mobilisation of people ideologically and organisationally against communal
violence made sure communal forces were unable to raise their swords.
A dangerous situation is now developing in the State, with the
ruling party at the Centre taking the Hindutva line and the ruling party in the
State giving shelter to Jama’atul Mujahideen fundamentalists from the other
side of the border. The government in Bangladesh is in pursuit of them and they
find protection here under the ruling party and its administration. With
respect to the incidents at Khagragarh, subsequent to the investigation carried
out by the intelligence agencies, the political people who sheltered the guilty
have not been apprehended; in fact, the administration has gone into denial
mode and has destroyed evidence of the blast in Khagragarh. No one in the
ruling party has been booked. There is a tacit understanding between the two
ruling parties, with the ruling party at the Centre and the ruling party in the
State taking opposite sides, thus further polarising the two communities. It is
one of the greatest dangers of the present time that, in a State that had not
seen political parties taking the side of this or that community for so long,
the left and democratic and secular forces are attempting to be made
irrelevant, and that the people are being divided along communal lines. Even
during the semi-fascist terror of the 1970s or during the days of the
Emergency, this sort of communal tension was never seen in West Bengal.
MTR: How would you characterise the differences between the present
situation and the semi-fascist terror in West Bengal in the 1970s?
SKM: There are many
differences between the two periods of political repression. The 1970s were a different
time, the situations at the State, national, and international levels were
different — and history does not repeat itself. The attack then came at a time
when the CPI(M) and associated Left Parties were growing very fast. In terms of
electoral performance, we had 40+ Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) in
1967, 80+ MLAs in 1969, and 110+ MLAs in 1971. It was a fast growing force that
came under sharp attack during the semifascist terror, notwithstanding the
rigged 1972 elections. After 1972, we boycotted the State legislature for five
years, a period during which we depended solely on extra- parliamentary
activities. We won only 14 seats after that election, down from around 114; the
election of 1972 was an one that made the term “rigging” enter the political
lexicon in a new way. When elections were held in 1977, the Left Front achieved
a majority of almost two-thirds; it had great popular support, and remained in
power for 34 years, its share of the popular vote always remaing between 40 and
50 per cent. In the 2009 and 2011 elections, we saw a definite decline in the
Left vote-share. The elections of 2009 and 2011 were not rigged as were the
elections of 1972. These two elections gave the popular mandate to the ruling
party; in other words, we were not, in 2009 and 2011, a growing party as we had
been in the 1970s.
MTR: Are there other differences? What about the number and method
of deaths? Are they similar?
SKM: The number of
casualties now is not comparable to the number in those years since the nature
of the attack has changed: more attacks, fewer deaths, more handicapping
injuries than fatalities — a change, therefore, in the tactics of attack. The
attack is also much more extensive or widespread than in the 1970s. The
semifascist terror was concentrated in urban areas in a few districts and in
certain select rural areas. The current political repression is mostly in rural
areas and covers all districts barring one or two, more repression though in a
different form.
The international contexts are also different. The Vietnam war
ultimately succeeded, all of South Vietnam and Saigon were taken over by the
National Liberation Front, and the socialist camp and the international
community had not been overwhelmed by imperialism as they have been now. That
was the time of the Bangladesh liberation movement, and the Indo-Soviet Treaty
signed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi brought a certain unity to the fight in
Bangladesh.
MTR: And you mentioned the issue of the State’s secular fabric.
SKM: Yes, in spite of
the attacks of the democracy, communal forces did not gain ground. In Bengal,
the entire people were united behind the liberation forces in Bangladesh,
irrespective of which side of the border they were on. Whether a person was
Hindu or Muslim, the shared the opinion that the Razakars were the enemies of
the people. The situation has changed. The erstwhile Razakars, now part of the
fundamentalist forces, are crossing over and being provided shelter on this
side of the border.
MTR: What are the tasks – the battles — that confront a new
political generation today?
SKM: It is a new
experience that the present generation is going through, and an important one.
Our generation had the experience of fighting semi-fascist terror and working
during the Emergency. The young today must gain experience in fighting in the
new global situation and the new correlation of world forces in favour of
imperialism, of confronting globalisation and neoliberalism and their impact on
national policies, identity politics, and reactionary post-modernist
philosophies that are being propagated on a global scale. There is thus a great
change in the situation — our generation did not have the experience of
confronting these challenges simultaneously. The younger generation faces a
multi-pronged challenge, difficult and complicated at every level, globally,
nationally and in individual States. I believe they will gain more experience
than we did during our lifetimes.
MTR: And what, in that context, are the prospects for a resurgence
of the Left?
SKM: I shall not go into
the global dimensions of this question, although the fundamental objective of
establishing a socialist and democratic order in the country is associated with
the international situation and what other countries are going through — and
there is much need to learn from each other’s experiences. I believe that there
are objective conditions for a successful resurgence of the Left, whether
globally or in the State of West Bengal.
MTR: What would you say about West Bengal in particular?
SKM: We first noticed
the erosion in our support base after the panchayat elections of 2008 (that is,
even before the Lok Sabha elections of 2009). In spite of the changes that have
taken place in elections thereafter, we believe that there has been no
fundamental change in the correlation of the forces in the State since then.
Notwithstanding some erosion, the ruling party continues to have majority support
in terms of its popular base. Now they have taken to force, and are rigging the
elections to distort the actual correlation of votes in the State out of the
fear that if there is a free and fair election, their vote share will decline
substantially and the Left Front’s share will increase, and although they would
probably not lose the majority of votes, their margin of victory would
decrease. They are apprehensive particularly in the areas where the Left are
strong and able to offer some resistance.
MTR: What are the positive developments in this regard?
SKM: The phrase that
the bourgeois press loves to repeat — “The Left continues to bleed” – can no
longer be made to appear self-evident, because, going by the municipal election
results, in terms of popular support, the Left have been able to stop the
erosion. Siliguri, but not Siliguri alone, has shown that it is possible to
counter the terror and beat the TMC. That is the positive development, and has
happened for the first time after four years.
MTR: What about the threat of the BJP’s rise in Bengal?
SKM: That is the other
important development, and manifested in the municipal election results. about
a year back, there was a campaign that the BJP was emerging as the real
alternative to the TMC in the State. We said firmly at the time that there is
no alternative to the Left, and that statement has been vindicated by the
municipal election results. The threat of the BJP emerging as the alternative
to the TMC has been proved beyond doubt to not be the case, as the BJP has
suffered a considerable erosion in support. Be it Congress or BJP, the other
parties remain behind the Left in terms of vote share — that is the other
important fact to have been established.
But when all said and done, the situation is so complicated and
difficult that one should not become complacent as a result of the reduction in
the BJP’s vote share. One must perceive that communal forces continue to pose a
great threat to the unity of people and to secularism, and that that threat should
never be underestimated, for communalism cannot be gauged just by vote shares;
it has the potential to do severe damage to the state’s secular fabric.
MTR: What do you conclude from these recent developments?
SKM: Our conclusion is
that, in spite of its complications, the present situation is one in which
there is potential for the Left to forge ahead and grow further. This is
evident from the mood of the people, and the successful resistance to attack in
the last municipal elections, the attack itself having been launched by the
ruling party in connivance with the local administration (with the State
Election Commission pleading its helplessness). It is also evident from the
fact that resistance is something that has developed almost spontaneously, with
women at the forefront of the struggle.
So objective conditions that have developed that are favourable for
the Left to project itself as the real alternative in the battle for democracy
and for secularism and against the increasing attack on people’s livelihoods.
What we consider our most important task is to see that the subjective
conditions are focused on organising local and broad-based struggle, uniting
the Left and the people, and people and parties associated with the secular and
democratic struggle, to build up organisation and not to depend solely on
spontaneity. The objective situation occurs independently of individual human
will; at the same time, the subjective can be used to take advantage of the
situation and overcome the complexities of the objective situation — and that
depends on our effort and our will. It is the Left and only the Left only that
can provide the alternative in this battle for democracy.
