‘Left are fascists in the garb of being socialists’

“The 40-minute English video documentary film aims to bring this people’s movement to the world for everyone to see how human rights are being violated and many other socio-economic issues completely mauled.

“It is the result of six-month camera-eye on the crisis and is an effort to bring out the peasants’ voices to the world,” Mukhopadhyay said from Kolkata.

“The Left parties swear by Marxist ideology and claim to be the well wishers of the labourers and peasants. But in West Bengal, the way the government has quelled farmers’ protests using force — first in Singur and then in Nandigram, only shows that the Left are fascists in the garb of being socialists,” he said.

“The film is a story about Singur villagers whose protests to save their farm land from being acquired by the state government of West Bengal for a car manufacturing factory by an industrial giant is suppressed with brutal force,” the director said.

“Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya had said that there would be no forced suppression of protests. But he failed to keep his promise in Singur and again in Nandigram,” Mukhopadhaya said.

“The government banned news reports on the real crisis, using the media as a propaganda tool. The real voice of the people is not being allowed to be heard. The government was using police and para-military forces to brutally quell any kind of protest by the farmers and others,” he said.

The issues are made even more interesting by the fact that the state government is run by a coalition of Left parties and the fact that India is supposed to be the world’s largest democracy. But the world should now know that reality is something else, he said.

The documentary has deplored the Left action and wants to arouse response from people against the undemocratic brutal action of the government.

“I accept that there has to be development. But the progress has to be holistic. Complete socio-economic development would only lead to progress. But for this, more time is needed,” said the filmmaker whose film Between Darkness and Light on Tagore’s paintings was selected and screened in the National Panorama (IFFI, 2006).

His Nandigram: This Land is Mine has been screened in the International Film Festival in Rome this year.

“For ages, people have been told that they have complete authority over their land. Suddenly, the government wakes up to the need of development and begins snatching away their lands by paying pittance as compensation to those who agree to give their land and forcefully snatch from those who don’t accept it,” he said.

“I hail from a family which has embraced Leftist ideology. Hence I am too a supporter of socialism. But I don’t subscribe to the actions by the Left front in Singur and Nandigram,” the director said.

Later, taking to reporters at Panaji, the documentary’s Executive Producer, Swati Chokraborty, said, “we tried to screen the documentary in Kolkata film festival but we could not.

She said the documentary’s director, who is a famous personality in West Bengal and whose films are even bought by the state government, was not invited for the Kolkata festival.

“There were lots of problems over special economic zone (sez) issues during the festival inside and outside the venue,” she recalled.

Chokraborty, who herself was a part of the shooting crew for the documentary and was working on a different project with Centre for Indian Languages in Singur when trouble broke out, said “the film is a strong statement on violation of human rights and is based on a real life story.

“Post-Singur, there were troubled days in Nandigram and the entire team went to shoot there. It was not so easy to shoot in Nandigram. We encountered several difficulties,” she recalled.

However, Chokraborty is happy with the response the documentary received at IFFI 2007. “The response has been really nice,” she said, adding that documentaries and non-feature films which do not see the light of cinema halls, should be promoted by state governments.

“At the most you can make two to three movies out of passion but you can’t go on,” she said, suggesting that non-feature films and documentaries too have enough audience, if screened at public places.