| 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.
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