Dear Buddhada: We are writing to you with some questions about what is happening in Bengal. No, our questions are not about you as a person, even though we must admit that we are shocked to hear you, a refined and cultured bhadralok, justify the ‘action’ in Nandigram. Our questions are not even about your role as CM, although we were shocked when you as the constitutional head of a state invoked the categories of ‘us’ and ‘them’ while celebrating the ‘recapture’ of Nandigram.Our problem is that we cannot fathom why your party, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), seems unable to foresee the consequences of its government’s actions in Nandigram. The Nandigram peasantry resisted the acquisition of their land. Like many of us ordinary mortals, they put their own interests above the ‘public good’ when faced with the danger of losing their homes and livelihoods. You might have found their decision hard to swallow, but it should not have surprised you.Yes, we understand that jobs have to be created. Yes, we understand that the middle class is important to you and has to be kept happy. But the protests by intellectuals in Calcutta should leave you in doubt over how the middle class has reacted to the violence in Nandigram and the crude and oft-repeated criticism of the governor by your party. Can the damage be undone by taking out a counter-procession or by creating 5,000 more jobs at Salt Lake? We think not.Many middle-class people remain wedded to the Left all their lives but do not join active politics because they shrink from the seamy side of party politics. They know that your party has to maintain a network of ‘dadas’ who can mobilise 10,000 people at a day’s notice, or change the course of an election at the snap of a finger. Until now, they fondly believed that the people who control this ugly ‘machinery’ are not the ones who take critical party decisions. Not any more. Nandigram has shown everyone the power of this party within your party. Look at the way it started. The land acquisition notice was the handiwork of people who were confident that they could ‘control’ any adverse reaction. Look at the way it ended. The poor farmers of Nandigram who waited for 11 months to get back their homes would surely have waited two more days for the CRPF to come? Why could you not wait? Was it because their return under government supervision would not carry the message that your “boys” had recaptured at least some of the ground that they seemed to have lost recently? You think you have paid them back with their own coin? Turn that coin over, Buddhada, and see whose face it carries.
