By Sujoy Dhar, IANS
Kolkata : For three days after police firing in West Bengal killed five Forward Bloc supporters, it was all quiet on the Mini Front, the group of three smaller Left Front allies forged in the aftermath of the Nandigram atrocities to take on their “wayward” big brother Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M).
When on Friday the Mini Front finally broke its silence to demand a judicial probe into the Dinhata police firing, it seemed too late, too little and too laboured to paper over their facile non-CPI-M unity and the hunger for the CPI-M leftovers in governing West Bengal.
A barking dog seldom bites. The adage sits like a steady crown on the heads of All India Forward Bloc (AIFB), Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) and Communist Party of India (CPI). The CPI, however, seldom barks.
Tuesday’s police firing on supporters of the AIFB, the second largest Left Front constituent in West Bengal, has left the cracks in the unity armour of the Mini Front, forged in the aftermath of the Nandigram atrocities, out in the open.
Demanding a judicial probe, the Forward Bloc, RSP and the CPI wanted punishment for the officers responsible for the firing though Bloc patriarch Ashok Ghosh had not asked for any probe into the firing earlier since he “has little faith in probes”.
CPI – and more surprisingly – the acerbic RSP were keeping a stoic and not too mysterious silence since the firing but on Friday after a Mini Front meeting at the Bloc office, its leaders once again indicated their compulsion to keep the marraige with abusive CPI-M on while demanding a judicial probe.
“We urge Left Front chairman Biman Bose to call an immediate meeting of the front to resolve the bitterness among partners,” RSP state secretary Debabrata Bandopadhyay.
Soon after the firing as AIFB barked, their allies RSP and CPI cowered behind a shield of indifferent statements, laying bare its facile and fragile unity, forged to tame the CPI-M.
The Mini Front had in November last officially condemned the violence perpetrated in Nandigram by the CPI-M cadres to regain control of the trouble-torn East Midnapore region stating “the CPI-M and not Left Front was solely responsible for it”. After their own cadres were killed the anger surprisingly was muted and the meeting of the allies Friday many said came after some pressure from the Bloc’s Cooch Behar unit, the district where the firing took place.
While the total strength of Left Front in the West Bengal assembly is 235, the CPI-M alone accounts for 176 seats. The Bloc is the second largest Front partner with 23 seats. RSP and CPI have 20 and eight seats respectively. The mini-front partners know well that CPI-M is capable of pulling off a show all by itself.
The Trinamool Congress, which is trying to woo Left constituents like the Forward Bloc and RSP, has 30 seats in the assembly, but the impulsive Mamata Banerjee may not be a safe company when it comes to electoral arithmetic.
While rival Trinamool Congress, the Socialist Unity Centre of India (SUCI), a communist party outside Left Front, and even Congress lent quick support to the 24-hour shutdown called by the AIFB the day after the firing, the Front partners surprisingly cold-shouldered their bleeding partner.
“Yes, we have heard about the firing. It is unfortunate,” this was the first reaction of West Bengal PWD Minister and RSP leader Kshiti Goswami hours after the police firing which left five Bloc activists dead and several injured at Dinhata, about 800 km from here, during a law violation programme.
Goswami, who only recently almost pulled out of the Left Front government to protest the Nandigram recapture by the marauding CPI-M cadres and became a rebel of sort, was cold in his response this time.
RSP took a long time to lend even moral support to the shutdown while opposition leaders like Mamata Banerjee immediately called press conference to announce her party’s active support to the agitation.
Goswami strikes a balance when he said “if the Bloc decides to continue on the confrontation path and the CPI-M refuses to mend fences, it will throw us in a crisis”.
The CPI, which is traditionally known as a hanger-on to the CPI-M, and the RSP are evidently unhappy with the Bloc, which of late was taking unilateral decisions to attack the CPI-M or part ways.
In Left Front ruled Tripura, Bloc has decided to go alone in the forthcoming assembly elections, not much to the liking of parties like RSP or CPI.
CPI leader and state minister Nandogopal Bhattacharya was in loss of words when his party’s stand on the shutdown was asked.
CPI, in fact, has opposed the shutdown and Bhattacharya acted as an emissary of the CPI-M Tuesday to request AIFB to call off the shutdown and instead settle for a judicial probe to the firing punishment to the guilty.
When his role as a broker for the CPI-M was asked by a TV channel, he chided the correspondent for “reporting his initiative” instead of a candid reply.
But perhaps the biggest dichotomy was of the Bloc itself.
While Udayan Guha, the Bloc secretary of Cooch Behar unit, said continuing within the Left Front spearheaded by the CPI-M would be like cheating the people of the state, the party’s patriarch Ashok Ghosh in Kolkata chose to strike a balance again.
“We are in the Left Front out of political necessity. So long as the necessity is there, we are with the front and will continue to be a part of it,” AIFB general secretary Ashok Ghosh said.
As smaller partners of the CPI-M hid behind words and half-baked statements, it was evident in the aftermath of the Dinhata firing that the political behemoth that is CPI-M would continue to dictate terms in Left politics and dominate smaller partners torn between ideological debates and political opportunism.