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Nandigram massacre: Leading Indian intellectuals condemn West Bengal’s Stalinist-led government
The March 14 massacre at Nandigram perpetrated by West Bengal’s Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front government has been forthrightly condemned by some of India’s best-known historians, authors and artists—many of them longtime, prominent public supporters of the Left Front.
Last Wednesday, on the orders of the Left Front government, more than 4,000 heavily armed police stormed the Nandigram area with the aim of stamping out protests against the West Bengal government’s plans to expropriate 10,000 acres of land for a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) to be developed by the Indonesian-based Salim Group.
The police shot dead at least 14 villagers and wounded 70 more.
The wanton massacre of peasants on behalf of a transnational corporation infamous for the cozy relations its founder developed with the murderous Suharto dictatorship has provoked an outcry across India. For a section of artists and intellectuals who have long considered the Left Front and the Stalinist CPM (Communist Party of India—Marxist) to represent a progressive alternative to the venal Indian bourgeoisie and its corrupt, communalist and caste-ist political representatives, the Nandigram massacre has come as a cruel shock.
The most trenchant critique of the West Bengal actions to come from this milieu to date are the statements made by Sumit Sarkar, arguably the most respected historian of twentieth century India and a self-avowed Marxist, and his wife and fellow historian Tanika Sarkar.
To protest the massacre at Nandigram, the couple has returned to the government the Rabindra Puraskars, West Bengal’s highest literary reward, while donating the Rs. 75,000 cash award to the Nandigram Relief Fund.
The Sarkars have said that the Nandigram massacre is more shocking than the British colonial state’s gunning down of hundreds of unarmed demonstrators at Jallianwala Bagh (a park located in the city of Amritsar, state of Punjab) on April 13, 1919. The Jallianwala Bagh massacre is etched in popular memory as one of the key turning points in the development of mass opposition to British colonial rule.
Their telephone interview with the Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) is worth quoting at length.
“Jallianwala massacre happened in colonial India, but what happened in Nandigram is shocking since it happened in a Left-ruled government in independent India.”
They continued, saying: “Jallianwala Bagh was the outcome of one single man’s action [referring to General Dyer who issued the order to open fire] but here the entire CPM machinery and the government were involved in the killings.”
More
http://wsws.org/articles/2007/mar2007/beng-m19.shtml
The police shot dead at least 14 villagers and wounded 70 more.
The wanton massacre of peasants on behalf of a transnational corporation infamous for the cozy relations its founder developed with the murderous Suharto dictatorship has provoked an outcry across India. For a section of artists and intellectuals who have long considered the Left Front and the Stalinist CPM (Communist Party of India—Marxist) to represent a progressive alternative to the venal Indian bourgeoisie and its corrupt, communalist and caste-ist political representatives, the Nandigram massacre has come as a cruel shock.
The most trenchant critique of the West Bengal actions to come from this milieu to date are the statements made by Sumit Sarkar, arguably the most respected historian of twentieth century India and a self-avowed Marxist, and his wife and fellow historian Tanika Sarkar.
To protest the massacre at Nandigram, the couple has returned to the government the Rabindra Puraskars, West Bengal’s highest literary reward, while donating the Rs. 75,000 cash award to the Nandigram Relief Fund.
The Sarkars have said that the Nandigram massacre is more shocking than the British colonial state’s gunning down of hundreds of unarmed demonstrators at Jallianwala Bagh (a park located in the city of Amritsar, state of Punjab) on April 13, 1919. The Jallianwala Bagh massacre is etched in popular memory as one of the key turning points in the development of mass opposition to British colonial rule.
Their telephone interview with the Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) is worth quoting at length.
“Jallianwala massacre happened in colonial India, but what happened in Nandigram is shocking since it happened in a Left-ruled government in independent India.”
They continued, saying: “Jallianwala Bagh was the outcome of one single man’s action [referring to General Dyer who issued the order to open fire] but here the entire CPM machinery and the government were involved in the killings.”
More
http://wsws.org/articles/2007/mar2007/beng-m19.shtml
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