Six die in fights with Bengali Communists

[Devrim]

Any comments on this?


Originally posted by The Guardian
Six die in fights with Bengali Communists


Randeep Ramesh in New Delhi
Tuesday November 13, 2007
The Guardian

A bloody standoff between Communists committed to emulating China's economic success and farmers opposed to the establishment of a vast industrial zone in eastern India ended yesterday after leftwing activists stormed a series of villages - leading to accusations of murder and rape.

At least six people were left dead after locals fought with Communist party workers in Nandigram in India's West Bengal state over the weekend. Many local women ended up in hospital where they complained they had been raped and their houses destroyed.

The central government had drafted in a 1,000-strong paramilitary force, who looked on as Communist party workers beat up reporters covering the story. In Kolkata, West Bengal's state capital, cable television services were switched off for part of the day. "It is just a naked show of red terror," said Rudrangshu Mukherjee, political columnist with Kolkata's Telegraph newspaper. "The government could have called out the [paramilitary] or the army. They could have done so in March when this trouble started. But they did not want to disarm their own cadres."

Since the beginning of the year villagers have blocked roads and built barricades to keep out the local administration, which, they complained, had been determined to sell off farmland at cheap rates so that a petrochemical hub could be set up. West Bengal has been run for three decades by the Communist party, which has become increasingly business friendly. Returned to power for a seventh term last year on a programme of industrial expansion, Communist leaders have taken their cue from China to attract foreign corporations.

Political opponents yesterday vented their fury by smashing up buses and calling for a state-wide strike that saw trains and taxis shut down. The central government in Delhi, run by the Congress party, has been silent for fear of antagonising the Communists, whose support is crucial for their survival.

Writers and artists had staged a sit-down protest in Kolkata, embarrassing West Bengal's government as an international film festival had begun. Police baton-charged a procession of writers and poets near the Academy of Fine Arts, arresting prominent film actors who carried placards denouncing the violence in Nandigram. "There was a time when the Communists stood for the poor people. Now they commit atrocities upon them. It is unbelievable," Shirshendu Mukhopadhayay, a celebrated author in Bengali, told Indian television.

[Dros]

Clearly Bourgoisie propaganda. I want to hear the Communist and the peasent side of this story.

[Cheung Mo]

Bengal's "communists" have dealings with Indonesian private interests who helped Suharto do his dirty work back in a day.

*Waits for the inevitable "trot" accusations*

Alan Woods and many of the other people behind Hands-Off Venezuela exposed these reactionary scoundrels for the treasonous butchers that they are. Remember that at the national level, they've had a history of helping both Congress and the BJP sell off India to the highest bidder.

[Dros]

Originally posted by Cheung [email protected] 13, 2007 11:18 pm
Alan Woods and many of the other people behind Hands-Off Venezuela exposed these reactionary scoundrels for the treasonous butchers that they are. Remember that at the national level, they've had a history of helping both Congress and the BJP sell off India to the highest bidder.
I didn't know that at all.

But what does that have to do with the article.

[Cheung Mo]

Originally posted by drosera99+November 13, 2007 11:22 pm--> (drosera99 @ November 13, 2007 11:22 pm)
Cheung [email protected] 13, 2007 11:18 pm
Alan Woods and many of the other people behind Hands-Off Venezuela exposed these reactionary scoundrels for the treasonous butchers that they are. Remember that at the national level, they've had a history of helping both Congress and the BJP sell off India to the highest bidder.
I didn't know that at all.

But what does that have to do with the article. [/b]
It's about the same economic reforms and the same atrocities committed by these "communists" in order to implement them.

[Devrim]

Originally posted by [email protected] 13, 2007 11:15 pm
Clearly Bourgoisie propaganda. I want to hear the Communist and the peasent side of this story.
It is funny that you talk about bourgeois propaganda, and then want to hear the 'Communists' side of the story. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) is clearly completely integrated into the bourgeois state. The 'left front' has been the government of West Bengal for the last thirty years.
Devrim

[Devrim]

Here is the latest on this. It seems that Chomsky has joined the supporters of the West Bengali government.

Originally posted by The Guardian
Left at war in wake of communist raid on Indian village


· Western authors' letter highlights risks of split
· Signatories ignorant of facts, says historian

Randeep Ramesh in New Delhi
Thursday December 6, 2007
The Guardian

Attempts by India's communist party to rebrand itself has sparked a war of words between leftwing intellectuals in India and those abroad after a violent attempt by the party to seize paddy fields in West Bengal to be turned over to big business.

When armed communist cadres raided the village of Nandigram last month, killing six people and raping several women, thinkers and writers from across India decried the violence as a "bloody capitulation to globalisation and imperialism". Houses were burnt and thousands fled to refugee camps.

Article continues
But the party has received support from fellow travellers in the west, notably academic Noam Chomsky, historian Howard Zinn and writer Tariq Ali, who put their names to a letter in the Hindu newspaper highlighting the dangers of splitting the left at a time "when a world power has demolished one state (Iraq) and is now threatening another (Iran)".

This foreign intervention, which was reproduced in the mouthpiece of the Communist party of India (Marxist), has not been welcomed by critics in India.

Indian historians, artists and writers including Arundhati Roy wrote a letter warning that "history has shown us that internal dissent is invariably silenced by dominant forces claiming that a bigger enemy is at the gate. Iraq and Iran are not the only targets of that bigger enemy. The struggle against corporate globalisation is an intrinsic part of the struggle against US imperialism."

Sumit Sarkar, a leftwing historian, said the western authors had an "ignorance of what is happening in India. They have no idea of the on-the-ground facts."

West Bengal is the seat of the world's longest serving democratically elected communist government. But in recent years the CPI(M) has been busy rebranding itself.

It began its Chinese-style reforms five years ago, with the most controversial policy being the establishment of special economic zones that would cut red tape, slash taxes and relax labour laws for foreign companies who wanted to invest. It also snuffed out dissent with a ruthless campaign to silence critics of the new policies.

It had ordered the Nandigram paddy fields to be turned over to a special economic zone for an Indonesian-owned petrochemical complex.

For detractors the communists have begun to betray the very people - the poor - they were supposedly dedicated to helping. Led by Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, a silver-haired playwright with a penchant for Harold Pinter and the novels of Gabriel García Márquez, the communists say their actions were justified.

But Prof Sarkar said that many were now disillusioned with the policies of the government in Bengal.

"When they were first elected in the 1970s there was great enthusiasm for them. We saw land reform and a number of other good policies. But now we see farmland forcibly grabbed for capitalists and multinationals. It is a kind of fetish that Stalin used to have."

Independent observers say that the fight for the soul of the party has left the rest of the country bemused.

"Words like neoliberalism sound like pointless abuse to me," said Ramachandra Guha, a historian and writer. "I am not an economist but many intellectuals do not really understand economics. Yet in India they are happy to argue endlessly over it. The real issue is that the thinking left nurses a deep sense of betrayal over events in Nandigram."

Devrim

[IronColumn]

Tut tut on Chomsky for supporting a Leninist party.