People's Democracy

Big Rallies Held At Nandigram

Samar Baora addressing the rally in Khejuri

B Prasant

THROUGHOUT April 19, Nandigram witnessed rousing rallies of the mass of the rural people at Nandigram. The rallies were held even deep inside the areas where the Trinamul Congress-Naxalite-SUCI combine continues to terrorise residents of villages, extorting money, looting houses, beating up CPI(M) workers, and ejecting people from their hearth-and-home as well as livelihood.

BIG RALLIES

The rallies also covered Khejuri that abuts Nandigram. The specific spots where the rallies were organised were at Tekhalibazaar, Samsabad, Daudpur, Debipur, Bhekutia, Chandipore, and Rayapara. The right-ultra left combination continues to launch attacks on the rural people at Tekhali (including on the relief camp situated there), Samsabad, and Bhekutia. Presence of women and children at the rally was quite remarkable and it was clear that the rural masses were no longer ready to be cowed down by the gun-culture and terrorism of the reactionary elements.

CITU leader Dipak Dasgupta and AIKS leader Samar Baora addressed rallies deep into areas where the Trinamul Congress and its running mates have recently run riot. The rallies clearly showed how the rural people themselves are gradually organising themselves and hardening their stance against the elements of anarchy and misdeed. 

People it seemed were no longer afraid of guns and knives, bombs and swords. Dipak Dasgupta told how emotional he felt and how inspired when he visited the Tekhali camps and saw at first hand the brave way the people there were putting up a struggle to survive away from their hamlets.

The CITU and AIKS leadership said that democracy had different connotation for lumpens in the pay and protection of the Trinamul Congress and Naxalites who would go in for destruction, anarchy, mayhem, and murder. The basic target was the Left Front government of Bengal. The anarchists were not interested about kisan welfare, or about agricultural growth.

IMPORTANCE OF INDUSTRIALISATION EMPHASISED

Their single-point programme was to embarrass the Bengal LF government in the state and outside of it. To the Left Front, democracy meant development for the rural masses and the urban poor. Democracy connotes the decentralisation and devolution of power, administrative and financial, right down to the grassroots’ levels.

Industrialisation would bring in a surge in employment generation. Investment worth Rs 78,000 crore was in the pipeline besides the projects already sanctioned and begun. The forces of reaction were keen to stall the process, indeed, the development of the state itself. In this, they are always in receipt of help and guidance from the forces of imperialism. 

Recalling history, Dipak Dasgupta said that earlier in the 1990s, the same forces had tried to create chaos and mayhem in the Keshpur-Garbeta localities of Midnapore. Their designs were ultimately defeated by the rural people themselves, rooting out the evil elements from the entire area. History would be repeated in Nandigram in the days and weeks to come.

ATTACKS ON CPI(M) WORKERS CONTINUE

Elsewhere, the Trinamul Congress and its running mates continued with impunity bombing and shooting at the relief camps near the Bhangaberia. Night-long shooting took its toll on Rashmoni Das, a woman of 80 who suffered a heart attack from sheer terror and died before help could be brought in across what is now a difficult terrain what with road communications completely cut off. At Dinabandhupur, a CPI(M) worker was chased, brought down, and beaten up mercilessly. The youth, Netai Jana has had to be admitted to a nearby hospital with kidney and abdominal injuries. 

At Brindabanchak, Trinamul Congress goons accosted CPI(M) worker and former Panchayat Samity member Prabodh Manna and called upon him to produce Rs 10,000 and 10 quintal of rice. When Prabodh expressed his inability and his unwillingness to obey, he was kidnapped, taken to a lonely place, and mercilessly beaten up, and left for dead. Prabodh survived and he has been in hiding since. The same gangsters also beat up CPI(M) worker Tosharaf Hussein. Tosharaf recovers in a nearby health centre. 

Thus, even as the attacks continue the protests, too, have become stronger, and the rural masses more voluble in condemning the acts of vandalism and hooliganism of the Trinamul Congress, the Naxalites, and the SUCI in and around Nandigram.