Thundering Spring Recalled

Thundering Spring Recalled

Indian Holocaust My Father`s Life and Time - One Hundred and Sixty Two

Palash Biswas

May 25 is considered the birth anniversary of Naxalism. Thundering Spring recalled again!

Shaheed Minar, situated in the heart of Kolkata was the Centre of Rural Indian Resistance today as The Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) organized an anti-SEZ rally to extend support to people of Nandigram and Singur.ept away from the talks after getting invitation, the CPI(ML) Liberation has said the party is skeptic about the success of the peace process.
The rally was to protest against the Central and State Governments for using the SEZ Act 2005 and Land Acquisition Act 1894 to "reverse" land reforms and initiating "corporate landlordism", CPI(ML) General Secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya, who was here to attend a convention, told reporters yesterday. The convention was part of CPI (ML)'s initiative at spearheading a countrywide campaign demanding complete scrapping of the SEZ Act and strict implementation of land reforms and rural employment measures.

Singing and dancing folk artists from South and north, East and West set the stage on fire!


The Kolkata rally also marks the 40th anniversary of the famous 'Naxalbari peasant agitation', he said. Replying to a query, CPI(ML) national general secretary Dipankar Battacharya said that the party was not against development, but the "model of industrialisation of the 21st century cannot be a xerox copy of the 19th century." The developmental model must be subject to rigorous environmental benefit analysis and cost analysis. It should generate rural employment too.

"India can ill afford a development model that is an elitist model, benefiting a few," he said.

The creation of SEZs only had resulted in transfer of capital from non-SEZ areas to SEZ areas, leading to government forcibly acquiring agricultural land for SEZs and releasing current industrial land for real estate developers. The party, which has a current membership of 10,000 in the State was concentrating on areas like Bellary, Bangalore, and Davangere to spread its campaign, he said.

The Congress-led UPA Government and its allies, including the Communists, are striving their best to create a ‘corporate landlordism’ by implementing anti-peasant Special Economic Zones in the country, said CPI(ML) national general secretary Dipankar Battacharya here on 21st May last in TIRUNELVELI.At a press briefing before the party’s convention here for effective implementation of land reforms and against the government’s policy on SEZ, Battacharya came down heavily on the Tamil Nadu Government accusing it of playing a political gimmick with the free distribution of 2-acre land scheme.


Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Communism Portal
The Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) was formed by the All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries at a congress in Calcutta in 1969. The foundation of the party was declared by Kanu Sanyal at a mass-meeting in Calcutta on the 22nd of April (Lenin's birthday).

[edit] History
CPI(ML) advocated armed revolution and denounced participation in the electoral process. The party leaders were Charu Majumdar and Kanu Sanyal, both of whom had belonged to the left-wing within Communist Party of India (Marxist) in northern West Bengal. Majumdar and Sanyal had mobilized a revolutionary peasants movement in Naxalbari, which evolved into an armed uprising of the mostly Santhal tribal inhabitants. CPI(ML) saw Naxalbari as the spark that would start a new Indian revolution, and the movement came to be known as 'naxalites'. In several parts of India, for example Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, different parts of West Bengal and in Srikakulam in northern Andhra Pradesh CPI(ML) organized guerilla units. The party got moral support from China, which actively encourages the attempts of CPI(ML) to launch revolution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_India_(Marxist-Leninist)

Naxalbari
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?Naxalbari
West Bengal • India
Naxalbari
Coordinates: 26°25'N 88°08'E? / ?26.41, 88.13
Time zone IST (UTC+5:30)
Area
• Elevation
• 152 m (499 ft)
District(s) Darjeeling
Coordinates: 26°25'N 88°08'E? / ?26.41, 88.13
Naxalbari is the name of a village and a region in northern region of the state of West Bengal, India, in the district Darjeeling not far from Siliguri. To the east, across the border river Mechi lies Nepal. The area, which is mostly farm land, covers an area of 121 km² and the two largest villages are Hatighisha and Naxalbari. It is famous for being the site of a revolutionary peasant uprising in 1967, which began with the "Land to tiller" slogan and inspired similar revolts in other parts of the India.[1]

In 1971 activists from Naxalbari were instrumental in staging a similar uprising in Nepal's southernmost district Jhapa, which borders on Naxalbari. Today Naxalism is the name of a revolutionary movement which has grown to rising strength.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naxalbari

Naxalite
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Map showing the districts affected by the Naxalite movementNaxalite or Naxalism is an informal name given to radical, often violent, revolutionary communist groups that were born out of the Sino-Soviet split in the Indian communist movement. Ideologically they belong to various trends of Maoism. Initially the movement had its epicentre in West Bengal. In recent years, they have spread into less developed areas of rural central and eastern India, such as Chattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh through the activities of underground groups like the Communist Party of India (Maoist).[1] The CPI(Maoist) and some other Naxal factions are considered terrorists by the Government of India and various state governments in India.[2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naxalite
Remembering May 25, Naxalbari Day


The Naxalbari peasant uprising, “the Spring Thunder”, reasserted the focus on the agrarian revolution; brought to the fore the tremendous potential of the rural labour and the poor peasant not only as a force of revolutionary peasant uprising but also as a core force of revolutionary power. The movement which spread like “a prairie fire” throughout the country has passed through many ups and downs since then. And, today, we are again on the verge of a new spate of peasant movements.

Side by side with the counter-revolutionary onslaught, the ruling classes experimented with ‘Green Revolution’, ‘White Revolution’ and a host of measures dictated and sponsored by the troika of IMF-World Bank-WTO. In the name of globalisation, imperialism has unleashed an unprecedented campaign to penetrate every single village: “Har gaon aaj mutthi mein” (Every village is within our grip). This has facilitated and strengthened a wider nexus of feudal-kulak-moneylender-contractor-smuggler-mafia forces with its vicious grip over power.

Agriculture and the overwhelming majority of the agrarian population have on the other hand been pushed into a state of serious and chronic crisis. Drawn into a vicious debt-trap, kisans (peasantry), the much-publicised “pride of the nation,” are condemned to such unbearable circumstances that unable to find any way out of their problems many have started committing suicides. The agricultural and rural labour, the largest contingent of the working class and comprising the largest segment of the weaker sections of our society – dalits, adivasis, most backward castes, national and religious minorities as well as women – who are not even recognised as workers but produce for the whole nation and feed the entire population, are condemned to hunger and consequently easy victims of starvation deaths.
http://www.cpiml.org/liberation/year_2005/JUNE/naxalbari_day.htm

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Rewind to 1967

Some memories are like fireflies gently twinkling in the dark. But for Paban Singh of Bengaijote village, memories of that sunny May afternoon are like pieces of a broken mirror. The shards each telling their own story. It's a tale that goes back to May 24 when hundreds of peasants and tea garden workers, agitating for land ownership in the Naxalbari region, killed a police inspector with arrows in Boro Jhorojut village, barely seven km away.

The next day women activists, says Paban, had organised a secret meeting by the Mechi river on the Nepal border. "Some informer must have told the police because when they came back to Prasadojote village, the police was waiting," recalls Paban, who was in neighbouring Bengaijote village, just a kilometre away.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Rewind_to_1967/articleshow/2061941.cms

Hush falls on Nandigram as ray of hope comes under a cloud Villagers gun for ‘selfish’ politicians
OUR CORRESPONDENT

A woman and her child at the CPM’s Khejuri relief camp. (File picture)
Nandigram, May 24: Up at the crack of dawn, Sushmita Samanta hurried through her chores this morning. She wanted to be in time to catch the “live telecast” of the all-party meeting that could decide her fate.

The mother of two from Sonachura village — the site of the March 14 police firing — now lives at the Bhangabera camp, where word had spread that Doordarshan would be showing the meeting live.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070525/asp/bengal/story_7826578.asp


CPI(ML) plans campaign against SEZs

http://www.hindu.com/2007/05/23/stories/2007052302100400.htm

Bangalore: The Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) will launch a campaign against the setting up of special economic zones (SEZs) in June, which will culminate in a rally in August.

Party general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya told presspersons here on Tuesday that State Governments and the Centre were using the SEZ Act and the Land Acquisition Act to reverse the process of land reforms and initiate what he termed corporate landlordism in the country. He demanded the abolition of all SEZs, which were gobbling up the fertile land of farmers.


May 25 marks the Naxalbari Day. ...

What is the real meaning and significance of Naxalbari? Naxalbari means a mass uprising of the poor and labouring peasantry. It does not mean isolated squad actions here and there or some sensational armed exercises. Nor does it mean raising revolutionary storms over tea cups in Kolkata, Delhi or Mumbai. However much various groups may abuse us to hide their own failures, the fact remains that such mass peasant awakening on the lines of Naxalbari is going on only in Bihar and it is our Party that is leading it from the forefront.
Naxalbari symbolises the rise of a revolutionary current in national politics on the basis of such a peasant awakening. Mere fulfilment of a few local economic demands of the peasantry is no Naxalbari. All claims of building an alternative political current by building ‘red army and base areas’ in hills and jungles have proved hollow. It is not politics that is in command of those guns; on the contrary, it is a case of gun-power dictating politics.
http://www.cpiml.org/liberation/year_2007/May/naxalbari_now_then.html
In Naxalbari (West Bengal), at his humble mud house here in north Bengal, Kanu Sanyal battles senility, age and a blurring eyesight. But the fire of revolution he and others lit in 1967 has not dimmed in his heart although he no longer supports his own anarchist past.The recent peasant activism in West Bengal's Singur and Nandigram areas, where thousands protested the takeover of their farmland for industry, has only given a new lease of life to his revolutionary ideals.


Even as the bachelor 78-year-old founding leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) continues to believe in the ideology that led to what came to be known as the Naxalite movement in 1967, he abhors violence unleashed by today's Maoists though he passionately hates the mainstream communists as well.


'Terror campaign cannot solve problems. A single conspiratorial killing cannot bring change. Such actions only will cause harm to the movement and alienate the masses,' said Sanyal, who was once a key leader behind a peasant insurrection in this village 40 years ago.


But Kanu Sanyal wants to correct some misconception about the date.


'May 25 is the martyr's day because on that day in 1967 the police shot dead seven women and a child to avenge the incidents a day before when the farmers attacked landlords. So May 24 is the birthday of Naxalbari movement,' Sanyal told IANS.


The peasant uprising in Naxalbari village - until then an unknown spot on West Bengal's northern map - became a revolutionary affair when radical members of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) broke away from the party in support of the revolt and two years later formed the CPI-ML.


In the communist world then where China and the Soviet Union never saw eye to eye, the Chinese promptly came out in support of the Naxalbari uprising, giving a new word to leftwing dictionary: Naxalites.


In no time, the Naxalite movement spread all over the country. Maoist groups even in neighbouring countries came to known as Naxalites. Sanyal was the right hand of CPI-ML's founder general secretary Charu Mazumdar, who died while in police custody July 28, 1972. By then, the Naxalite movement was in tatters.


Today, the dominant Maoist or Naxalite group goes by the name of the Communist Party of India-Maoist.


While Sanyal, now the general secretary of one of the factions of CPI-ML, shuns the violence adopted by Maoists in states like Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh, he never regrets the path adopted 40 years ago.


Again and again he harps on the 'injustice' done to the poor set to lose land in places like Singur.


'Singur, where the government is bent upon handing over land to the Tatas by grabbing it from the farmers, proved the real face of CPI-M, which believes in capitalism. Both in Singur and Nandigram the CPI-M is following the path of America which grabbed land from Red Indians,' said Sanyal.


'While the Naxalbari movement was in the model of French revolution, the CPI-M is a follower of the British and American ways of land grabbing,' he went on.


'CPI-M is a party of the corrupt. Once (former West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu) asked us to return to the party, but I said: 'We have burnt out bridges in 1967, we cannot go back.'


'The CPI-M did good work only in its first five years of ruling West Bengal and never after that. Actually, the CPI-M or the CPI (Communist Party of India) do not believe in total land reforms,' he said.


Sanyal also admits the mistakes committed by his party.

'The CPI-ML formed in 1969 was communist in name but anarchist in deeds just like the CPI-M which is communist in name but revisionist (modification of Marxism-Leninism) in deed,' he said. 'The CPI-ML I lead now is not the one of 1969.'

CPIM slams Mamata

CPI(M) slams Mamata for walking out of all party meet called to restore peace in Nandigram, saying her decision was "highly condemnable." Senior party leader Sitaram Yechury said the need of the hour was to restore peace in Nandigram and in West Bengal. "The fact that Mamata Banerjee walked out of the all party meeting was unfortunate and highly condemnable," he added. He also criticised the Congress for entering into an alliance with the BJP and Trinamool Congress for civic polls in Panskura in the state. "The party's so-called secularism has become clear now," he said, adding "that is the politics in West Bengal."

Pranab Presidential bait is working fine in West Bengal. But the Left is puzzeld as Mayawati keeps UPA guessing.Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister has not applied her mind to today’s most pressing political question: Whether the BSP will extend support – conditional or otherwise – to the UPA’s presidential nominee. Mayawati, fresh from her electoral victory, today took repeated digs at the media, chiding it for making "discoveries" like in the exit polls and said it was time for introspection.The BSP supremo is not making any commitments until having discussed the matter in detail at a meeting of her party’s national executive.


Suicide in Singur

In the second such suicide since March, a farmer hanged himself in Singur, the area in West Bengal that has been witnessing unrest over land acquisition for a Tata Motors project.
Prasanta Das' family members allege that he took the extreme step Thursday night as he had been depressed since his land was acquired for the small car project. His body was found in the wee hours of Friday. Das, 40, was a member of the anti-land acquisition Singur Krishijami Raksha Committee.He hanged himself from the ceiling, senior police official Kalyan Mukherjee confirmed. Mukherjee, however, refused to comment on the reason behind the death.

Earlier on March 13, farmer Haradhan Bag had committed suicide in Singur. Anti-Tata project activists had claimed that land loss was behind that death too.


Fresh tension is brewing at the site of the upcoming Tata Motors' small car unit in Singur. On May 20, hundreds of Singur Krishjami Raksha Committee members clashed with police who had to fire teargas shells and charge with batons to disperse the mob that seemed determined to reclaim their lands acquired for the project.Over 997 acres of land in Singur have been chosen by Tata Motors for its small car project. The issue has triggered a violent face-off between the government and farmers led by civil society groups and parties like the Trinamool Congress.


The dead farmer was a resident of Khaserveri area in Singur, about 40 km from Kolkata in Hooghly district. Das' land was acquired by the government for the Tata Motors small car factory coming up in the area and he was suffering from depression since the forcible acquisition, Becharam Manna, the leader of the committee, told IANS.

'He was depressed. He had not been able to till his land for one year and was worried about the future of his two daughters. He had refused to accept money as compensation for the Tata project and was an active member of the movement,' Manna said.

Adivasis to hold rally in Kolkata

Statesman News Service
MIDNAPORE,May 24 : The Sara Bharat Adivasis Mahapatra, a CPI- affiliated organization, will organize a rally in Kolkata on 16 November protesting against neglect of the Scheduled Tribe people in the state. At least 100,000 ST people across the state will attend the rally.
Later, they will meet the chief minister and submit a memorandum in support of their 20-point charter of demands, Mr Sib Charan Munda, the newly elected general secretary of the Mahasabha, told a Press conference here after the three-day state conference of the organisation which ended here on Saturday.

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New Delhi: A Transparency International report released recently says that 77 per cent of respondents in a survey in India believe that the judiciary is corrupt.

According to the Global Corruption Report 2007, the perception of corruption is higher in India and Pakistan in comparison to Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. In Pakistan, 55 per cent of the respondents said the judiciary was corrupt.

http://content.msn.co.in/News/National/NationalHT_250507_0901.htm

Who the hell do the COWARD MURDERERS Buddhu and Beimaan think they are - Maharajahs of Bengal - too high and mighty to join mtg.s with the Opposition ?

In less than two hours the most hyped so called all-party peace initiative, aimed at restoring normalcy in Nandigram, fell flat on its face at Mahajati Sadan thursday afternoon. After a series of heated exchanges, Miss Mamata Banerjee walked out with her party colleagues protesting Mr Subhas Chakraborty’s attempt to justify the 14 March firing as the administration’s bid “to establish rule of law”. The meeting got started with a twist when Miss Banerjee suggested that silence be observed “in memory of the victims of the 14 March genocide”. Only Mr Ashok Ghosh nodded in consent. Mr Subhas Chakraborty refused to accept it. He referred to the 3 January incident in which a police jeep caught fire. Miss Banerjee alleged that the CPI-M was never serious about the peace talks. “Otherwise they wouldn’t have sent people who have no say in the administration. Moreover, they were talking of reaching a consensus. How could we reach a consensus when we are outnumbered by the ruling parties?”.

Two months have been wasted since Nandigram dueing which the CP-M has tried its usual tricks to derail the inquiry by CBI which on the day after the massacre had arrested CP-M gunmen red - handed.
A day after the empowered Group of Ministers (eGoM) came out with its observations on the Special Economic Zones to be set up in the country, Mamata Banerjee slammed the Centre and said that the UPA government was playing with fire by not protecting the interests of the farmers in its latest recommendations on SEZ.According to Mamata, the recommendation of the eGOM was an eye-wash and its suggestions were nothing new since most of what the GOM had proposed on Thursday already exists in the Special Economic Zones Act 2005.

“I guess the UPA government is in a hurry to clear some SEZs as the UP elections are close. But let me tell you they are playing with fire. No protection has been recommended for the owners of the farmlands and the homesteads, whose lands would be acquired for the SEZ. What’s more, it says nothing about the archaic Land Acquisition Act of 1894,” argued Mamata.

Mamata said she still stood for the abolition of the SEZ in the country. For, Mamata believes the SEZs would affect the business opportunities of the small-time and medium entrepreneurs seriously in the long run. She argued if the Centre really believes that farmlands should not be taken for SEZ then the UPA government should ask the Left Front government in Bengal to immediately return the lands of the farmers in Singur where the Tata Motors is setting up their plant.

“I am not against globalisation and economic reforms, but it should not be done at the cost of the farmers and the poor people, and their few decibels of land. We want industry and agriculture to go hand-in-hand, but for that it is imperative for a State government to have a land bank, land map and land-use plan,” said Mamata.

“But this Left Front government has nothing. Instead it is using cadre force and police to displace the farmers from their lands. Even now people of Singur are demonstrating there and in Nandigram, the CPI(M) has again started firing at the innocent people from the border areas,” alleged Mamata.


Although the meeting got adjourned, it appeared that Left Front allies might convince Miss Banerjee to sit for further talks. “I am willing to talk to the RSP, CPI or the Forward Bloc anytime. But the CPI-M has to be serious about our demands. Those responsible for the genocide and rapes should be punished. Police should start fresh case against those who were arrested from a brick kiln by the CBI but not chargesheeted by the state CID”, Miss Banerjee said. She alleged that the CPI-M today tried to justify its misdeeds before an all-party forum while its cadres smuggled eight new rifles and cartridges into Khejuri yesterday.

The convener of the meeting, Forward Bloc secretary Mr Ashok Ghosh said: “Miss Banerjee and her party leaders said everything they had to say”, it was apparent that the CPI-M and its allies would not agree on certain issues that Miss Banerjee has raised ~ using the word “genocide” being one.

“We will discuss the issue of genocide.” Mr Ghosh told reporters keeping open the issue. But Citu state president Mr Shyamal Chakraborty, who attended the meeting, said : “We did not concede that any genocide occurred on 14 March at Nandigram and any children were killed and women raped on that day”.


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Forty Years of Naxalbari:

The Continuing Long March for a New India

May 25, 2007 marks the 40th anniversary of the great Naxalbari peasant uprising, the uprising that had blazed a bold new trail for a new democratic India with agrarian revolution as its core. Today as rural India reels under a deepening agrarian crisis, as peasants and agrarian labourers fighting for their land and livelihood face the brutal onslaught of the state, and students and intellectuals express their open and active solidarity with the fighting peasants, Naxalbari once again evokes a powerful resonance in the public mind. And the resonance gets stronger when we once again hear the CPI(M) cry foul against the Naxalites!
Back in those stormy years of the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Indian state tried all the means at its command to crush the uprising and suppress the new Communist Party – the CPI(ML) – that had emerged in its wake. Illegal detention and third-degree torture, fake encounters and organised massacres – every method of repression was freely practised by the state in its war on Naxalism. With the custodial killing of Comrade Charu Mazumdar in Kolkata’s Lalbazar lock-up (28 July, 1972), the Indian state heaved a huge sigh of relief and triumphantly claimed to have eliminated the ‘scourge of Naxalism’.
This military war was of course coupled with an aggressive political strategy. The Congress led by Indira Gandhi, and backed by sections of old communists, went all-out to whip up a triumphant nationalist frenzy following India’s victory over Pakistan in the Bangladesh war (young Rahul Gandhi has recalled this as his family’s historic contribution to the breaking up of Pakistan) and spread socialistic illusions with slogans like ‘Garibi Hataao’ and measures like bank nationalisation and abolition of ‘privy purse’. By June 1975, this politico-military strategy of the Congress had culminated in a full-scale reign of Emergency.
The myth that Naxalbari had been buried for good was however soon exploded when the iron curtain of Emergency was lifted and the whole country came to know about the rebirth of Naxalbari in Bihar. Since then the revival and reassertion of the CPI(ML) has been a growing and undeniable political reality, especially in the Hindi belt where the CPI and CPI(M) have steadily been reduced to pale shadows of their past. But in West Bengal, the original land of Naxalbari, the CPI(ML) is admittedly yet to regain its lost ground while the CPI(M) has been in power for a record uninterrupted period of thirty years.
In fact, till the other day, a smiling Buddhadeb could often be heard saying that there was no Naxalite left in Naxalbari! When a well-known retired Naxalite leader began hobnobbing with the Left Front in the late 1990s, the CPI(M) fielded him as a Left Front candidate from a losing constituency in Kolkata and claimed that all right-thinking and enlightened Naxalites of yesteryears had sided with the CPI(M). But after Singur and Nandigram, the CPI(M) has once again started blaming Naxalites for all its troubles. Even after thirty years of uninterrupted rule, the CPI(M) clearly has no respite from the spectre of Naxalbari!
The reason why the CPI(M) is harping on the ‘Naxalite’ refrain is quite clear. This is the basis on which it can hope to mobilise the support of most bourgeois parties and cover up the true dimensions of the Nandigram carnage, if not ‘legitimise’ the carnage itself. This is how it can try and divert the whole debate, paint the whole thing as a conspiracy to defame and destabilise the CPI(M)’s ‘Bengal citadel’ and thus suppress the internal dissent within the CPI(M) and the Left Front. But in the process the CPI(M) actually exposes its mortal fear of any kind of mass movement against its government, especially of the ‘danger’ that such struggles could give a fresh fillip to the revolutionary Left and unsettle the CPI(M)’s ‘settled leadership’ over the Indian Left movement.
This streak of paranoia is not new to the CPI(M). In the early 1990s when agricultural labourers in certain pockets of Bardhaman district in West Bengal began opposing the CPI(M)’s corrupt and pro-kulak local leadership and turning to the CPI(ML), the CPI(M) responded with a brutal massacre of six agricultural labourer comrades – Manik Hajra, Som Kora, Hiru Malik, Dilip Pakre, Ratan Mol, Sadhan Roy Khoira – within hours of the 1993 panchayat poll (May 31, 1993). In protest against the massacre several more CPI(M) activists joined the CPI(ML) under the leadership of Comrade Abdul Halim of Kalna, a popular SFI leader. He too was attacked by CPI(M) goons and gunned down right inside the Kalna sub-divisional hospital (March 27, 1994). As protests continued and the CPI(ML) went on expanding its influence, the CPI(M) struck again and this time four agricultural labourer comrades were crucified at Nadanghat block of Bardhaman district (22 December, 1994).

As activists and well-wishers of the Indian Left movement try to find answers to the questions raised by the Nandigram carnage, it is important to grasp the real contention between the CPI(M)’s so-called ‘Bengal model’ and the revolutionary legacy of Naxalbari.