Nandigrab

The CBI report on the March 14 police firing at Nandigram would appear to confirm a disturbing aspect of the story so far in West Bengal: the perceived climate of impunity within which CPM cadres operate. Amid the CBI’s set of allegations: that CPM cadres in khaki joined the state police in firing on protesters; and that party activists hampered investigations by harassing and assaulting witnesses for deposing before the CBI. The matter will be decided in court, but the evidence in the public domain so far seems to underline that the real message from the tragic events in Nandigram — be it the firing on March 14 or ‘Operation Recapture’ conducted by rampaging cadres on November 6 — is not to do with the pros and cons of the industrialisation policy, after all. It concerns the degrees of separation that must necessarily be maintained between party and state under the rule of law.

Admittedly, only the politically naive would have been unaware that the party has invaded spaces of government and administration in West Bengal. It is well known that the Communists have perfected the practice of electoral mobilisation and institutional take-over and honed it into an art in the state they have ruled for long decades. No major institution in West Bengal is exempt — not the university, nor the panchayat and certainly not the police. Even so, as the CBI alleges, if CPM cadres donned khaki before they joined the police to fire at witnesses, they made this phenomenon — of the blurring of lines between party and state — inescapably vivid.

Nandigram has highlighted a question that the CPM cannot turn away from if it wants to remain a legitimate force in a democratic polity. Where does the party stop and the state begin? And, which is sovereign? Today, the CPM may be tempted to postpone the moment of reckoning. After all, it is buoyed by an influence disproportionate to its numbers at the Centre after the 2004 elections. But in the long term, the ghosts of Nandigram must be laid to rest. Else, they will return to haunt.