POLITICS

Five Massacres That Every Indian

Communist Must Be Reminded Of
by Anirban Ganguly - Aug 12, 2015, 2:32 pm 5.8 K
SHARES

A recollection of the totalitarian and violent regime of Communists in Bengal.

Communist paradises of proletarians have essentially been backwaters of violence
and victimization with stagnating waters of cultural, educational and ethical
degeneration. While the story of Communist violence in the state of Kerala is now
being told – with the launch of an exhibition curated by the Forum for Justice and
Development, in Delhi, the sordid saga of Communist atrocities in West Bengal is yet
to be narrated in its entirety.

It is imperative that that saga be narrated not only to highlight the shackles that
Communism had bound over the spirit of Bengal but also to reveal how the
institutionalization of violence in Bengal politics was a singular contribution of the
Communists and of how, now that tradition and political habit continues with the
TMC. Democratic opposition was never tolerated by the Communists in Bengal and
violence became the prime instrument resorted to by the comrades to dissolve in
the Bengali political space.

In West Bengal, in three decades that it was in power, the Communists have in icted
violence on the common people, especially those who have politically opposed
them. In fact, the CPI-M and other Communist parties continue to stick to the cult of
violence and whenever an occasion arise resorts to it. Their character is “anything
between a fascist party and a Ma oso.”

Ever since it came to power in West Bengal in 1977, the CPI-M, for example, used
murder as a political instrument in an organised manner. Ironically, on the one hand
it nurtured and created a web of committed intellectuals who were often party card
holders and were proli c in their literary and intellectual output, on the other hand it
perpetrated violence as to control and regulate, especially the lower strata of
society, the hapless farmer, the sherman, the small trader, the refugee, who had
to, perforce, become a member of the party and toe its line.
A brief list will reveal that the rule of Communists in West Bengal was one of the
bloodiest episodes in democratic India’s history. The urban intellectuals, of course,
kept silent throughout until it became politically incorrect to do so…but by then the
cult of violence had been ingrained and cemented in the body politic of West Bengal.

Five violent episodes shall always remain the hallmark of Communist rule and de ne
its violent politics in West Bengal. These episodes, among the many undocumented
thousands, express the essentially anti-democratic spirit of Communism in India

1. Sainbari Killings (March 1970)

Much before they came to power heading the Left Front Government in 1977, the
CPI-M leaders started experimenting with murder as a political instrument. Way
back in 1970 CPI-M cadres murdered two important Congress leaders belonging to
the Sain family of Burdwan. The level of bestiality that they stooped down to was
evident by the fact that they made the mother of the two Sain brothers eat rice
drenched with the blood of her dead sons. The shock made the mother lose her
mental balance and state from which she never recovered till her death a decade
later. Those communist cadres who perpetrated this violence went on to become
ministers and MPs under the Left-Front government and were never brought to
book.

The case which came to be known as the “Sainbari murders” has come to symbolise
political violence in West Bengal. It is ironical to see the Congress depend for
cerebral and political oxygen on the CPI-M today.

 
2. Marichjhapi Massacre (January 1979)

On Saraswati Puja Day, the Jyoti Basu-led Left front Government red, starved, shot
and killed Bengali Hindu refugees from Bangladesh, who had trooped into the state
and had taken shelter in the Sunderban area. These refugees, largely Dalits who had
escaped persecution in Bangladesh and sought shelter in India, were about 60,000
in number and “were taken in by the Left Front’s poll promises and had come over
from the rehabilitation centre provided by the Centre in Dandakaranya (Odisha)” to
Marichjhanpi in Suderban. Tear gas, blockade, ring, burning of camps were the
methods used by CPI-M cadres and state police under Left front to disperse the
refugees.

Many, while trying to escape, fell in the sea to be eaten by crocodiles; many bodies
were dumped in the sea as well. Children – 8 years old, 12 years old, women and
their babies, men and women in their seventies and eighties were killed in the ring.
Till date, the exact number of deaths has not been known.” How many refugees died
in police ring and how died when their boats sank while tried to escape will never
be known. The refugees were hunted down just because a CPI-M government, led by
proletarian leaders decided that they must be ousted. The CPI-M does talk of human
rights and of the need for protecting it, but that talk is only reserved in favour of
terrorists like Yakub Memon. Nor have those worthies now protesting at the FTII or
their predecessors have ever made a documentary on the Marichjhapi pogrom.

3. Ananda Margi Monks Burnt Alive (April 1982)

Ananda Margis from all over the country were headed to an “educational
conference” at the Tiljala centre in the southern suburbs of Kolkata when CPI-M
cadres led by city leaders struck and burnt them alive. The party was wary that the
Anand Margis would emerge as formidable force arresting their growth in the state.
The procession wound its way was through what is now known as Bijon Setu in the
Ballygunge area of south Kolkata.

Taxis carrying monks and sanyasins were intercepted at three separate locations, by
CPI-M cadres the monks, two of whom were women, were doused in petrol and
kerosene, and set on re. At least 17 Margis were charred to death; several others
were severely injured. The lynching was carefully planned and executed by Marxist
cadres over a land dispute with the Marg. No CPIM leader has been brought to book
till date.

4. Nanoor Massacre (July 2000)

CPI-M cadres and local leaders killed 11 landless Muslim labourers just because they
were supporters of the opposition party and were resisting encroachment and land
grabbing on July 27, 2000. The prime witness was also attacked and injured by CPI-M
goons. The Statesman in an editorial wrote, “The sole purpose in attacking the prime
witness in the gruesome Nanoor massacre of July 2000 in which 11 supporters were
slaughtered by armed CPI-M cadres was to shield those responsible and abort their
trial, by hook or by crook. The irony is that although ve years have elapsed since
the occurrence of the horrendous killings by the Marxists, the trial of their 79
accused comrades had not begun”.

The CPIM’s bike-riding “Harmad Bahini”, spread terror in the region, as it did over
the years in areas where the Communist might was politically challenged. The
pattern was to intimidate the women, burn huts, beat up and at times hack at the
men and set re to the collected grains before leaving. Often the villagers were
compelled to leave the village and live in camps in neighbouring villages or had to
leave the state altogether.
5. Nandigram Massacre (March 14, 2007)

The CPI-M-led government of the “poor and the peasants” tried to forcibly acquire
10,000 acres of agricultural land for a foreign company in Nandigram, in Purba
Medinipur district. The farmers having formed a Bhumi Raksha Committee resisted
the snatching of their lands. They were rst attacked by CPI-M’s Harmad Bahini, who
threatened and set re to the villagers’ huts and prepared the ground that led to
ring which saw over 14 farmers die and over 70 getting injured. The real gures will
never be known, people saw piles of farmers’ bodies dumped. The government of
the proletariat, which derived its strength from farmers and from landless labourers
and from the poor, did not think twice while mowing them down.

While inaugurating the exhibition on Communist violence in Kerala, BJP president

Amit Shah was right when he observed how “wherever BJP activists talk on ideology
and development; the CPI-M workers commit murderous attacks on them” and that
this was “not just happening in Kerala, but was “happening everywhere where their
governments have been in power or in those areas where they are e ective.”

In fact, this murderous method has been practised by the CPI-M and Communist
parties against anyone who has spoken for or worked to strengthen India or the
nationalist discourse. On every occasion, Indian Communists come out loudest,
serving homilies on the correct approach to governance, correct conduct in public
life and the need for an e ective policy framework to tackle India’s myriad problems.

In reality, such a shallow talk is a smokescreen to hide their own active complicity in
turning parts of our democratic polity into wastelands of con ict, violence and
death. While it is hoped that scholars would someday take up the study of the saga
of Communist violence in the country, aspirational India is increasingly rejecting
such a regressive ideology and political method – that in itself is a sign of hope.

Anirban Ganguly is a scholar of Indian civilisation-history-culture. He is also a director of Dr.

Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation

Tags: TMC, Nanoor Massacre, Nandigram Massacre, 5.8 K

Ananda Margi Monks, Marichjhapi, Sainbari, CPI(M), SHARES

West Bengal, Communist violence,

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Comments

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Mangal May Gupta 27 Feb 2019 at 3:12 PM

SECULARISM (a discarded principle by today's research scholars BUT TIGHTLY EMBRACED

by fake seculars of india) , THAT TOO CHEATING HINDUS ON THEIR HABITED LANDS,
MINORITY APPEASEMENT & SHOWING SPECIAL FAVOURS FOR KASHMIR DRIVING OUT
KASHMIRI PUNDITS are inexcusable blunders by congr See More...

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Pisharikovil Dilip 7 Nov 2018 at 6:30 PM Edited

People of Kerala work hard in gulf countries and bring progress.. LDF and UDF take credit
for all developments, otherwise Kerala would have been another West Bengal. Now people
have started realizing the truth. LDF is in quick sands due to too much minorities
appeasement, which ends up actions again See More...

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Sankhojit Chatterjee 2 Sep 2018 at 3:20 PM

Please do not live I n fantasy world which is no body's truth .Above mentioned article is
about facts which is everybody's truth

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Aravind 1 May 2017 at 12:16 PM

Shameless article.. Not an iota of truth. Sympathies for the friends and family members of
this nasty liar.

Like Reply Share

Pisharikovil Dilip 7 Nov 2018 at 6:27 PM

Aravind , are you sure?? Then why in Nandigram farmers died when CPM police
red with play guns..

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 Sudipta Dey 16 Jun 2019 at 1:16 AM Edited

@unde ned What not an iota of truth? Anandamargi murder, Nanoor and
Nandigram happened before our eyes. The other two incidents as happened I was
not yet born and I heard about them from the elders. I am from Bengal and i still
remember those days. Terror was such that, everybody feared to criticize the left
See More...

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