Prelude to elections

The reports surface with uncanny frequency. The last one came with the bland headline — `Two CPI-M/Trinamool activists dead’. Tags attached to corpses, it doesn’t matter which one. Anonymous men/women–you will probably never hear their names–killed in group clashes.

Killed by lynch-mobs–those supposedly `spontaneous’ formations of violent groups that spring up unexpectedly, from nowhere–are not simple eruptions in the civil order. It is violence that strives to justify itself, behind the cloak of `collective’ action–in villages of Midnapore, Birbhum, Hoogly, Bankura–although the mob lacks the characteristics of an organised group.

Because it has no form, the notion of culpability that would normally be attached to perpetrators in ordinary acts of violence gets diffused over an anonymous pack. Which often, post-violence, acquire political colour. Just as those dead.

Back in Calcutta, the parties involved blame each other. It is part of the game. That the 24-year Left rule in West Bengal has stretched `political stability’ beyond all utility is probably true. Stability has become synonymous with stagnation, and the crisis is palpable at all levels of the society. Thus the ear-splitting build-up to the West Bengal assembly elections early next year provides evidence of deep embitterment and bottled-up emotions.

The form of release it is currently seeking — faceless, rootless mob fury erupting ever so often — is an aptly gloomy background for the firstreally serious challenge the Left is facing in a quarter century.

In the form of Trinamool Congress, headed by Mamata Banerjee, who Jyoti Basu likes to describe as “that violent person”.

“Violence has always been tacit in West Bengal’s political culture. What is happening now is that suppressed violence looking for target, is finding expression in political clashes. Mob-violence or lynching is part of a largerscenario where violence in the air. One must remember that the state has not seen any communal or caste riots for a long period,” says social-scientist Ashish Nandy.

True, West Bengal has not witnessed, for a long time, caste or communal violence of the sort common in its neighbourhood. Yet, violence is the overriding leitmotif in the state: Lynchmobs descending even on petty thieves in the urban and semi-urban pockets, villageful of women and adolescents toting around countrymade guns with nonchalance in Keshpur, Midnapore.

The CPI-M leadership, of course, would like to source the recent spat of rural violence in the land-reform programme (Operation Barga for the landless labourers) they carried out in the last two decades. “The bigland-holders, that is the jothdars, who were effected by our land-reform policy are Mamata’s natural allies. They have an old-score to settle with the Left Front Government and are being given political protection by the Trinamool Congress leader,” says Biplab Dasgupta, CPI-M Rajya Sabha member, by way of explanation.

As for the land-reform programme, what the CPI-M Government achieved was a modification of the old form of tenancy. “New arrangements have emerged under which tenants enjoy almost permanent leases on land… Both the area under cultivation and the number of farmers cultivating large landholding have declined,” Atul Kohli, in an essay (titled: `From Breakdown to Order: West Bengal’) on the process of political dominance, points out.

The reason why violence — whether it is land-oriented as the CPI-M claim or is a fallout of the very `Left misrule’ as Mamata Banerjee and her allies in Delhi put it — is not caste-based in West Bengal simply because there is no single caste that can be considered dominant statewide.

What is the genesis of crisis? Running down the Left analysis of theland-being-the-origin of the growing mob-violence in both the rural and the urban parts of the state, Nandy says, “It is too late in the day for the erstwhile jothdars and zamindars to take their revenge on the Left forces. If they are taking to recourse to political violence, it should be seen as self-assertion of the common citizen. No more or no less.”

Industrial stagnation and unemployement have largely contributed to the recent scenario which Mamata’s allies-of-the-moment at the Centre love to describe as “law and order failure”.

The fact is the CPI-M rule has given rise to a `new class’ of privileged members who are resented by those excluded from the `perks of power’. “Any party which is in power for a long period, attracts two sections of people — the powerful and the extra-social. The locally powerful groups which have gravitated towards CPI-M and invested in the party are not ready to give up. And Mamata is the first serious challenge to their power. Hence the recurring violence,” says Nandy.

No doubt, the bitter pre-electoral turf war and the subsequent political mobilisation is giving rise to a chaos reminiscent of the 60s. A chaos where even the police is accused of being partisan. “Mamata is a Cabinet Minister, the police official coming from the Central cadre owes allegiance to her,” says Somnath Chatterjee, CPI-M’s leader in Lok Sabha.

“That shows they are no longer in control and should therefore resign,”says Trinamool MP Sudip Bandyopadhyay. Even as the verbal match between the Writers’ Building and the Railway Ministry go on, West Bengal villages get ready for another bout of blood-bath.