Letters to the editor

This refers to the editorial, ‘Nandigram bandwagon’ No doubt...

What Bengal needs

•This refers to the editorial, ‘Nandigram bandwagon’. No doubt, the Buddhadeb government has bungled in Nandigram. The CPM was under the impression that since it gave land to the tillers through land reforms, the new land owners would leave the land at its behest. A peasant develops an attachment to his land even if the return from it is meagre. Selling the land and getting employment in the industries going to be set up there would be more profitable in the long run; but the logic seldom sinks in where emotional relationship is established. Opposition of all hues — the BJP, Trinamool,

Naxalites, Muslim fundamentalists and last but the least, the Congress — have ganged up to take advantage of the situation. They instigated the peasants to take the law into their own hands. And the CPM, instead of using the law and order machinery, asked its cadre to teach the peasants a lesson. The pity is, the media, intellectuals, human rightists, all saw only the end of the drama to reach their conclusions. Of course, everyone was happy to see the CPM, which was dictating terms to the government, lick the dust in Bengal. However, they do not realise that the number of persons killed, both peasants and CPM cadres, in Nandigram is less than the number recently killed by Naxalites, a constituent of the unholy alliance.

To compare Nandigram with 1984 Delhi and 2002 Gujarat is stupid. Ultimately, the state requires rapid industrialisation to solve its problems.

— N. Kunju Delhi

Violent regime

•The occurrences in West Bengal over the last few months, from Singur to the Rizwanur Rahman case, have really exposed Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee who I strongly feel is transforming the communist cadre into the stormtroopers of Narendra Modi. I feel if secularism, a fundamental feature of the Constitution, was violated in Gujarat, basic fundamental rights like the right to life, the propagation of one’s political beliefs without any fear, free movement and much, much more was being violated in Nandigram every single day.

— Vitull K. Gupta Bhatinda

Gujarat incomparable

•I read Pamela Philipose’s carefully crafted column, ‘Naroda Patiya to Nandigram’. There are wrongs and there are wrongs. All wrongs are not equally evil. I appreciate the distinctions and similarities she has drawn in her piece. While what happened in Nandigram cannot and should not be condoned in a democratic civil society, the press should condemn it and help in the effort to call the perpetrators to the bar of justice. Equating it with the widespread and carefully planned pogrom in Gujarat, as many Hindutva brigade writers are trying to do, is to whitewash one of the most evil deeds done by a legally constituted government.

— Mirza Akhtar Beg

Tuscaloosa, Alabama

Bar as arbiter?

•The theory being floated after the recent blasts in the courts is that it was the handiwork of some Muslim terrorists who wanted to avenge the denial of justice to their comrades languishing in UP jails by the lawyers who were not ready to even take up their case. If this version can be trusted then such acts of violence are highly condemnable. Violence is definitely not the way forward even if you are denied justice. But one should understand that even criminals and the so-called terrorists have a right to a lawyer and to fight their case in judicial courts. If the lawyers deliberately do not take up their case, it clearly means that they have already been convicted for their crime without the matter even being put up in a court of law.

— Sandeep Ghiya Mumbai