The past few weeks have witnessed an
extraordinary frenzy of media attacks on the Left – and in particular,
on the Left Front government in the state of West Bengal. These attacks
have been so sharp, so abusive and so based on partial or total distortion
of facts, that they may even be unprecedented in the history of independent
India. And the attacks are coming not only from the mainstream media which
is now well-known for its anti-Left propensities, but from non-mainstream
and relatively new sources such as internet blogs. So what exactly is
going on?
The focus of all this is the relatively small block of Nandigram in East
Medinipur district of West Bengal, which has now been a political hotspot
for about a year. The protest against the possibility of land acquisition
for a chemical hub in the early months of 2007 turned violent, forcing
the local peasants and workers associated with the ruling party (the CPIM)
out of their homes.
The protest was led by the Bhumi Ucched Pratirodh Committee (BUPC) a motley
combination consisting not only of some local people, but also outsiders
especially from the opposition Trinamul Congress and some Maoist groups
including from Jharkhand. Even after the state government had retracted,
promised that the chemical hub would be located elsewhere and that there
would be no land acquisition in Nandigram, the protests continued, apparently
inexplicably, and the peasants who had been displaced by the January violence
were unable to return to their homes.
The effort by the state government to bring these people back to their
homes led to the shocking and deplorable incident in mid-March, involving
an incident of police firing which killed several people. Shaken by that
incident, the state government withdrew police from that area, effectively
allowing it to become a "liberated zone" with road blocks, barricades
and even land mines preventing the entry of the state administration and
not even allowing basic public health services to be provided within the
area. Meanwhile more than 3000 refugees continued to live in makeshift
camps without access to their own homes, fields, or means of livelihood.
Yet all this time, when there were thousands of displaced people living
in distress, there was no attention at all from the national media, and
certainly no concern from any national politicians other than those from
the Left parties. Throughout this period, the media did not ask any of
these basic questions: Why is this protest still going on when all the
demands were met by early March? Why are the displaced residents not being
allowed back into their homes? Why is the state administration not being
allowed to enter? Who is leading and orchestrating this, and what are
their real aims, given that the sufferers on both sides are poor peasants
and labourers?
In early November, the displaced peasants once more sought to return.
This time they were able to do so, and clearly violence ensued, involving
both sides. It is certainly correct to criticise the police for doing
nothing – but nothing is also what they had done in January when the BUPC
first violently threw out those villagers, and nothing is what they had
done (with the exception of the tragic incident in March) over these past
nine months as the BUPC established control based on physical force over
the area.
The state government in West Bengal repeatedly requested the CRPF to come
in to restore order in the area in October, and there is no doubt that
if these forces had arrived in time, instead of after it was all over,
much violence would have been avoided and many lives would have been saved.
Yet the media has not noted this fact. Instead it has been deeply critical
only of the last incident, rather than criticising the ineffectiveness
of the police over this entire period and the late deployment of the CRPF.
But these notable silences are nothing compared to the shrill hysteria
that has accompanied the reportage of the recent events. There are two
features that must be noted: the gross and even malicious distortion of
facts that has accompanied the completely one-sided media coverage; and
the false and extremely dangerous analogies that have been made comparing
this to the Gujarat genocide in 2002.
The extent of the distortion of facts is startling even to those who have
grown weary and cynical about the role of the media. Take only one example.
In a programme on 12 November 2007, a national television channel showed
horrifying images of a villager being shot at in cold blood, followed
by images of a dead body being wrapped in polythene sheets by a few people
in what appeared to be an attempt to dispose of the body secretly. The
commentary announced that CPI(M) cadres were responsible for these gruesome
acts, and proceeded to ask the viewers "Does the CPIM have blood
on its hands?" (The answer emerging from the sms poll was overwhelmingly
"yes", which is unsurprising given the images and attribution.)
Yet it turns out that the news channel had absolutely no evidence to back
its claim that this footage was of CPIM cadres. This became evident in
an interview telecast later that night, with the photo-journalist who
had shot the footage. In fact, it has been suggested that the circumstantial
evidence is that it may actually have been BUPC activists engaging in
these ghastly acts. This did not stop the channel from repeatedly showing
this footage as example of the horrific violence unleashed by the CPI(M)
on innocents in the area. In general TV channels have been replaying a
few images, some of them even from the incident of March rather than November,
to drive home this point of violence by the CPIM.
This is not to say that there has not been violence in the area or that
it should not be condemned. Obviously, there has been violence, especially
since lives have been lost (at least 27 of whom were Left Front supporters)
and there was clearly a breakdown of law and order in that area for the
past nine months. All incidents of violence since January must be fully
probed and the perpetrators must be brought to justice. But it is important
to recognise that there has been violence on both sides, in a conflict
that was no more about land acquisition at all but was essentially about
destabilising the government through controlling that particular area,
and that the poor local peasants have been pawns in this cynical game.
The apparently intentional distortion of facts by the media has been accompanied
by extremely biased commentary in the press, in which all sorts of wild
allegations have been made and analogies have been drawn that can only
be described as both completely wrong and deeply irresponsible. The most
dramatic of these is the comparison that is being made between these events
and the communal violence in Gujarat in 2002.
It should be obvious to the meanest intelligence (although it is apparently
not so for the more deliberately cynical or the more currently hysterical
observers) that there is absolutely no way the two situations can be compared.
First of all, the violence in Nandigram was not communal but fundamentally
a political struggle between groups. Even though cynical attempts have
been made to introduce a communal flavour into the events, especially
recently, it should be remembered that West Bengal has an exemplary record
of communal harmony over the past three decades when many other states
have faced communal violence of different sorts.
Secondly, in Gujarat what occurred was the attack on innocent Muslims
across the state supposedly "in revenge" for the Godhra train
fire, which not only involved deaths of thousands of people but also forced
displacement of the minority community into camps and subsequent ghettoisation.
All this was aided and abetted by instruments of the state government,
in a state which has an unfortunate history of communal violence and also
a systematic build-up of anti-minority sentiment.
In contrast, in Nandigram it was actually the supporters of the Left Front
government who were forced to live in refugee camps for the past nine
months, who have only now been allowed into their homes. Of course, there
was displacement again in early November, this time of BUPC supporters,
when those earlier displaced returned forcibly. But at the time of writing,
almost all the people who had fled their homes in early November have
returned to their homes, and the aim is to ensure that everyone is allowed
to live peacefully in their own homes without displacement.
But then the question must be: why is such a ridiculous comparison being
made at all, when it is so evident that there is no similarity? While
the motivations for such a comparison may not be clear, the results of
making it certainly are. This comparison serves to muddy the waters significantly,
creating great confusion about what is to be opposed and where. It even
serves to legitimise the pogrom and continued suppression of minorities
in Gujarat, by implying that such things happen in other places. It makes
a mockery of determined secular opposition and divides the secular forces
so comprehensively that even Mr. Narendra Modi could not have wished for
a more satisfactory outcome. So it is more than just foolish – it is deeply
dangerous.
One last question still remains in the mind: why is the media currently
so particularly fierce, so determinedly anti-Left and so blatantly partisan
to the extent of even blocking out the truth when their own correspondents
might accidentally provide it? Here again, the answer is fairly obvious.
The establishment in the country, as well as the media that supports it
and is heavily financed by internal and external capital, has been smarting
at the inability to push through the Indo-US nuclear deal. This could
be stopped so far only because of the opposition of the Left parties,
and so the current media attack also reflects rage at being so constrained
and the desire to damage the Left so that it cannot provide such a concerted
opposition to the deal in future.
So once again, while motives of the various attackers of the organised
Left may not be clear, the implications of the current frenzy of criticism
are only too clear. It damages the Left and reduces its ability to mobilise
against an international alliance that is clearly in the interests of
imperialism. The only hope, unfortunately, is that the media ultimately
matter much less to the politics of the country than they think they do.