Nandigram’s spectre

Away from Ground Zero, the political shadow-boxing has thrown up a parallel. Is Nandigram 2007 like Gujarat 2002? Such comparisons deceive. Every crime is horrifying in its own way. Yet there is something outrageous about the way in which the CPM is trying to evade acknowledgement of the enormity of the wrong committed in Nandigram. The lumpenism of party cadres as they killed and raped and “reclaimed” territory, the abdication by the police as they retreated and watched, and the solidarity expressed at the highest echelons of government with the brutes not the brutalised, must be confronted. Computing the exact degrees of separation that lie between Nandigram and the communal carnage in Modi’s Gujarat five years ago is a tawdry exercise, best left to those who have the stomach for it. But the moral superiority that has for so long been the CPM’s best weapon against the likes of Modi, stands dimmed.

The CPM, along with other Left parties, insists that the unchecked violence in Nandigram is to do with ‘law and order’, which is a state subject and therefore cannot be discussed in Parliament. This follows the virtual barricading of Nandigram earlier — it was several days before mediapersons were allowed access. The CPM may have got the formal language right, but can it seriously pass the test of the spirit that pervades India’s Constitution? Can it make a case based on constitutional morality for shielding from public view those who are guilty of rendering thousands homeless, and now huddled in relief camps? On Friday, this paper carried the chilling account of Sabina Begum. Hers is the first officially confirmed case of gang-rape, allegedly by armed CPM cadres on the night of November 6, during ‘Operation Recapture’ in Nandigram. The mother has said her daughters were raped as well before they were abducted. They are still missing. So far the party of government in West Bengal has offered Sabina Begum, and others like her, no hope at all that the men she has been so courageous to name will be brought to book.

The Calcutta High Court has just pronounced the March 14 police firing in Nandigram unconstitutional. It has ordered the West Bengal government to pay adequate compensation to those who were raped, molested and killed on that day and directed the CBI to continue its inquiry. There is a well-timed lesson in this for the CPM. As Gujarat 2002 highlighted, when one institution fails, another will step in. In the long run, democracy and justice will prevail over those who seek to undermine our faith in it. The CPM must decide which side it is on in Nandigram.