Mera Bharat Mahan
by sahi on Mar 19, 2007 06:23 PM Permalink

You are familiar with Singur & the state violence there.
Now it has happened at one more place - Nandigram. There
is a petition @ http://www.petition online.com/ nandigra/ petition. html
Please sign.
Swati http://www.calcutta web.com/nandigra m.shtml
That Night
in Nandigram Soumitra Basu, Editor, Anyaswar
Published in : www.guruchandali. com
(in Bengali)
It is a story of that horrific night. The night of 14th of March, 2007.
After the completion of "Operation Nandigram" in broad day light, CPM
called a local 12 hour strike (bandh) in Nandigram. A bandh was called
in the evening hours in such a remote place where people mostly keep
themselves indoor after sunset. Why was that called then? After the
first bout of police action in the daylight when the news came that
around 60 were killed, the second phase and the most horrendous phase
was waiting to happen. Meanwhile, the number of casualties as stated by
media gave rise to enough confusion. Dainik Statesman (the Bengali
Statesman) put the number to 31. The TV channels [private] displayed
18. The sole BBC correspondent Amit Bhattashali first stated 32 and
then declared that as per the instruction from the Government to BBC,
they are bound to quote only the Government version and therefore he
was putting the number as 11. TARATV correspondent Gourango, who was
apprehended by the police and was handed over to CPM goons and then (on
live TV) was thrashed and foul-mouthed by CPM, puts it off the record
as 100 and on the record as "could not count". TARATV correspondent
Subrata put the number as "uncounted" as he explained no one could say
and knew the exact figure. The state government spokesperson (Mr Vora)
went back to the number 6 and then said that is what he was informed
and he would inform the press some time later! Subrata and Gourango of
TARATV were in the field. This is the horrendous facts that they had to
say. They put self-imposed censorship on themselves as - "I have
stopped telling the media what I saw and ought to have told them; there
is no chance people and our viewers would believe. Their is a limit to
human belief. They will take me as a mad babbler! I myself am not
convinced of what I saw, heard and went through. It was like a nightmare
and I wish all that I saw and heard was simply a delirium." As a
matter of fact, they vomited several times in the hotel they stayed,
not because of the threats by the CPM goons but because what they saw
and heard and the language of threats by the CPM goons who besieged them
in CPM party office in Nandigram. "Bands of CPM goons aided by
platoons of Eastern Frontier Rifles and Commando forces were entering
every village and paras [mahallas]. They brought the men out of home,
they took no prisoners, no witnesses, they shot them, bayoneted them,
ripped apart their stomachs and then laid them down the canal to the
sea and confluence. They then brought out the young girls, gathered
them in open space, raped them multiple times till the girls collapsed,
they then tore their limbs, in some cases cut them to pieces and let
them down the Haldi river and/or Talpati canal. They made sure that
there were no witnesses. And even if there were some, they know that the
young girls in traditional Medinipur would never come out to say what
really happened and who will believe. Nobody will corroborate and those
who will speak out will be killed and tortured again. CPM and police
then wrapped the entire village with their red banners showing that the
area was secured and their writ will run. Those who fled the villages
were mostly apprehended on the outskirts or on the boundaries and no
one knows what happened to those poor souls. We could hear these facts
only from those who could crawl the whole way out through fields and
forests. Even that is difficult now as the fields are all dried up and
the crops have already been reaped. Anyone running is easily visible.
Even though innumerable, official count of rape could be obtained as
six, because these are the ones who survived to tell their tales and
they are around middle aged women who somehow were spared from being
butchered and minced to pieces. The process followed in villages after
villages and to our utter astonishment the process continued till next
morning. All the correspondents were removed. Sukumar Mitra, a
journalist from Dainik Statesman ran his way out amidst flurries of
bullets. He was specifically hunted and somehow could manage to sneak
out. The ferocity of this attack was so grizzly that the residents of
that area was simply not believing anyone to open their gab. Fear is
made a weapon for a social-censorship. Haripur is a nearby subdivision.
This area is earmarked for nuclear power plant. People of that region
has also come up in protest. Most of them are fishermen. They have
stopped going to the confluence and the sea. They feel that human
bodies are everywhere in the confluence and the worst is that the
crocodiles,gharials and sharks are now rushing towards that spot from
far away Sunderbans. These animals rush for fresh blood. The fishes will
be eaten away by these reptiles and there is a high possibility of
these getting netted instead of fishes. The Haripur will be out of
livelihood for at least a week or so, and this was premeditated by the
CPM administration to teach Haripur a lesson. Haripur is the place
which shooed out even Central teams and even bigger police forces. This
was a lesson to teach both Nandigram and Haripur together. No sign of
any dead bodies would ever be found, no proof of rape will be there.
The real number of casualties can only be revealed at least three
months after, and that too if peace comes into stay, and if the
residents could come back and then count the missing. But after CPM has
"secured" and "liberated" those areas, the evicted will not be allowed
to come back and these properties will be given to the CPM goons from
Keshpur and Garbeta and neighbouring places. The permanency of mopping
up strategy is how CPM will ensure that Nandigram and Haripur will be
secured for electoral battles in the future." This is more horrendous
than partition story. The journalists all are aware of this but they
cannot come out with these stories. CPM will ensure that these
journalists are hunted down and wiped out of existence. They have
already started to threaten all journalists and intellectuals who have
gone against them. Let us not draw parallels from the history! I do
not know who will believe how much, but I have mentioned the sources
and you all are welcome to verify them through the references I have
provided.
Soumitra Basu, Editor, Anyaswar
Published in : www.guruchandali. com
(in Bengali)
'Nandigram was more shocking than Jallianwala Bagh'
http://timesofindia .indiatimes. com/Nandigram_ was_more_ shocking_ than_Jall
ianwala/articleshow /1774467. cms
KOLKATA: Returning the highest
literary awards bestowed on them by the West Bengal government, eminent
Left historian couple Sumit Sarkar and Tanika Sarkar on Saturday said
Nandigram was more shocking than the Jallianwala Bagh massacre because
it happened in a Left-ruled state. "Jallianwala massacre happened in
colonial India but what happened in Nandigram is shocking since it
happened in a Left-ruled government in independent India," said Sumit
and Tanika Sarkar in an interview. "Jallianwala Bagh was the outcome
of one single man's action (General Dyer ordered the firing on hundreds
of people on April 13, 1919) but here the entire CPI-M (Communist Party
of India-Marxist) machinery and the government were involved in the
killings," they said. "What happened in Gujarat in 2002 did not
amaze us as much because it was a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
government but in a Left-ruled state this is astounding," Tanika Sarkar
said. The couple returned their Rabindra Puraskars - the highest
honorary literary award given in West Bengal - to register their
protest over the killings of 14 people in police firing at Nandigram
and decided to donate the award money to the Nandigram Relief Fund.
"I received Rs.50,000 in 2004 and Sumit received Rs.25,000 in 1998. We
are giving away the money to Nandigram Relief Fund," she said. "We
are shattered. All this has happened and there is not a word of shame
or apology from the CPI-M central committee or state committee," she
said. Sumit Sarkar, former professor of history at Delhi University,
is a prominent Indian social historian who in his "Writing Social
History" sought to combine an empirical study of themes in
late-colonial Indian history with an intervention in current debates
about the extent and nature of Western colonial domination. Tanika
Sarkar's work focuses on the intersections of religion, gender, and
politics in both colonial and postcolonial South Asia, in particular on
women and the Hindu Right. "What happened inside Nandigram that day
(March 14) no one knows," said the Sarkar couple who were distressed
since the controversy in Singur over takeover of farmland for industry
broke out. "As a lifelong Leftist, I was deeply shocked by recent
events in the countryside of West Bengal. On Dec 31, a group of us went
to Singur, spent the whole day there, visited four out of five most
affected villages and three things became very clear, because of which
the West Bengal government's version cannot be accepted," said Sumit
Sarkar. "One, the land, far from being infertile or mono-cropped, as
has been stated repeatedly, is extremely fertile and multi-cropped.
Two, there is no doubt that the vast bulk of the villagers we met are
opposed to the take-over of land and most are refusing compensation.
Three, we found much evidence of force being employed, particularly on
the nights of Sep 25 and Dec 2 last year," he said. "The West Bengal
government seems determined to follow a particular path of development
involving major concessions both to big capitalists like the Tatas and
multinationals operating in SEZs (special economic zones). Yet the
strange thing is that these, particularly the latter, are things which
Left parties and groups as well as many others have been repeatedly and
vehemently opposing," he said. "Is this SEZ model that implies
massive displacement and distress really the only way? If the West
Bengal government thinks so, then it also has to accept that the
inevitable consequences are going to be a repetition of Nandigram
across the state," Sarkar said.
* Two women of Nandigram allege rape by security personnel

* CBI recovers arms near Nandigram, 10 arrested

* CPM goons abduct 3 in Nandigram

* Nandigram violence: WB CM owns responsibility

* Left historians return awards to West Bengal government

* 16 killed, scores injured after bus falls in ditch in West Bengal

* LF bows to pressure, stops land acquisition at Nandigram

* The Bengal Paradox

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