By Soroor Ahmed, TwoCircles.net,
If Comrade Charu Majumdar’s arrest from his hide-out on July 16, 1972 and subsequent cold blooded murder in the custody of Calcutta’s Laal Bazar police station on July 28, 1972 provided the West Bengal administration an opportunity to brutally suppress the Naxalite insurrection in the state, will the November 24 killing of Mallojula Koteswara Rao, or Kishanji, a top Maoist leader––in what many believe fake encounter in the jungle of West Midnapore––pave the way for similar elimination of the ultra-Left outfit from the state?
It is not that the state machinery had not been taking on the Naxals before the arrest of Charu Majumdar in 1972. Efforts were made to crush them earlier too, but due to political uncertainty and lack of political will the then government was not in the position to wipe out ultras, who were getting material and moral support from across the northern border of the country, that is China.
Between 1967 and 1972 West Bengal had been facing a sort of political chaos and the Naxals fully capitalized on the situation. The 1972 election ended that uncertainty and Congress, under the leadership of Siddhartha Shankar Ray, came to power on March 19, 1972. Four months later Charu was killed and the entire Naxal war-machine was systematically destroyed in the later months. Many leading lights of the movement went into hiding while others took shelter in neighbouring Bihar, where Naxals gained ground in 1980s.
Though there were instances of human rights violation yet the ruling Congress fully took advantage of bonhomie created after the victory of country in war with Pakistan and liberation of Bangladesh on December 16, 1971.
In between 1967 and 1972 the state had two United Front governments and a couple of phases of President’s Rule. The first United Front government came to power on March 15, 1967. It was an alliance between the Bangla Congress, a breakaway group of Indian National Congress and Left parties. Within a couple of months of its coming to power the Naxalites rose in revolt in May 1967 in Naxalbari sub-division of Darjeeling district. Soon the movement spread to south in Calcutta. But by November 1967 the Congress got the United Front government dismissed. Indira Gandhi as Prime Minister did what she, as the Congress president, got it done from her father in case with E M S Namboodoripad government in Kerala in 1959. Though Namboodoripad was elected as the first Communist chief minister of the world in 1957 his government was dismissed in 1959.
However, in West Bengal Indira did not succeed initially. Another election in 1969 helped the United Front emerged more powerful. But 13 months later the government collapsed on its own contradiction in March 1970 as the Bangla Congress accused the CPI (M) of playing Big Brother. This was followed by another President’s Rule.
The present situation in West Bengal somewhat resembles those tumultuous years of state politics. Mamata Banerjee’s government got rid of Maoist leader Kishanji six months after coming to power. Like the United Front government in the past the Left Front lacked the guts to take directly on him. Though the state government machinery as well as Marxist cadres had been fighting the Maoists––till recently considered close to the Trinamool––they failed to dislodge them. If there was political uncertainty and chaos in the state during the United Front rules the Left Front outlasted its utility after ruing the state for over three decades. This emboldened the Maoists in the state.
Mamata came to power in the state promising to bring Maoists to the negotiation table. But, unlike the Left Front, and very much like Siddhartha Shankar Ray, she is in better position to adopt carrot and stick policy towards the ultras.
If Indira Gandhi acquired the status of Durga and Ray emerged as the darling of Bengali masses for the role they played in Bangladesh struggle Mamata got brute majority and was in better position to take on the Maoists than Left. Since it was the same party or alliance government in Delhi and Calcutta both in 1972 and 2011 it was much easier for the Congress or Trinamool-Congress combination to take on the ultras. The Left Front was not sure of full support from the Centre on the fight against the Maoists.
The problem with the Maoists of today is that they draw their support from the tribal masses. While the Naxals of the early 1970s fired the imagination of many college youths and turned them revolutionary the new era Maoists of West Bengal lack the intellectual support of that kind.
Though Kishanji was a Telugu from down south he commanded the outfit in a very intelligent manner. But the Maoists committed several mistakes. At places they antagonized the tribals and promoted the non-tribal Mahtos in the organizational hierarchy. With Mamata offering peace there was always a lurking fear of desertion. And this happened in jungles of West Midnapore, Purulia and Bankura districts of south-west Bengal.
Only time will tell whether Kishanji’s killing is a setback to the Maoists or not. Unlike in the distant past they have, in the recent years, repeatedly proved their potential to bounce back to reckoning after every such incident elsewhere in the country.