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Friday, December 31, 2010
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TEESTA SETALVAD WRITES ON THREE-DAY SYMPOSIUM ON BABRI VERDICT SINISTER: POLITICS LEADS TO SUBVERSION OF JUSTICE
THE September 30, 2010 verdict in the Babri Masjid-Ramjanmabhoomi case, that began as a dispute over a title suit but escalated into a full blown politico-religious conflict --- one that legitimised the criminal assault on a 450 plus years old mosque and also targeted minority life and property --- has raised serious issues for the future of Indian democracy, given the fact that the verdict was erroneously based on issues of contested faith and disputed histories.
Commemorating the 18th anniversary of
ASSAULT ON CONSTITUTION
Over three days, many speakers made the point that the recent Ayodhya judgement is actually an assault on the Indian constitution and the foundations of a secular democratic state. The Ayodhya verdict, moreover, implicitly justifies the 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid and related criminal acts and, if upheld, it will have serious consequences for the future of our democracy.
Systematic decimation of the basic rational principles of the rule of law as laid down in the Indian constitution, and of historiography, archaeology and logic, are the critical features of the infamous Ayodhya verdict of September 30, said speakers Justice P B Sawant, Justice Hosbet Suresh, Justice S H A Raza and Justice Rajinder Sachar, economist Professor Prabhat Patnaik, and historians Professor Irfan Habib and Professor Shireen Moosvi, during the three-day symposium on Faith and Fact: Democracy after the Ayodhya Verdict that concluded in Delhi on December 8. Elucidating on the social composition of
From December 6 to 8, over three days of intense sessions at the symposium, the issues that were discussed included (1) the consistent failure of the criminal justice system, including non-investigation of the FIR registered on the vandalism of the Babri Masjid on the night of December 23, 1949; (2) the systematic dilution of the criminal cases against the masterminds who instigated the criminal conspiracy behind the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992; and (3) the motivated maligning of historians and archaeologists who testified with evidence during the pendency of the Ayodhya dispute before the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court. All these were held to be the collective reason for the passage of a verdict that has seriously shaken the faith of the common Indian in the administration of justice.
The deliberate and conscious absence of any substantive mention of the criminal acts of 1949 and 1992 by the two majority judges while dealing with the title suit was, in the words of advocate Anupam Gupta, counsel for the Liberhan commission for over 12 years, the singular injustice in this verdict. The judgement goes into thousands of pages over mythology and faith, but ignores the criminal incursions into the Babri Masjid under law. Even worse, the evidence presented by historians and archaeologists in court was formally recorded in monosyllabic answers to deliberately curtail and hide the explanations that are critical in explaining historical theory and evidence. Today, archaeologists and their publishers face contempt notices served by the
Professor Prabhat Patnaik, who spoke in the inaugural session, outlined the intense need for institutions of democracy to justly adjudicate without being influenced by the politics of power, aggression and violence. The judiciary, especially in a seasoned democracy, needed to stay aloof and distant from the unabashed efforts to influence courts in the deliverance of justice.
FLAWED HISTORIOGRAPHY, FLAWED ARCHAEOLOGY
Professor Irfan Habib, senior historian from the
A significant point made in the critique is as below.
Justice Sudhir Agarwal aimed in his judgement to prove that the Babri Masjid was built not during the reign of Babur, in 1528, but only under Aurangzeb (died 1707). Relying on a little known traveller, Fr Joseph Tieffenthale, who visited Ayodhya between 1740 and 1765 AD, and quoting from him about the memory of the mosque being built over a demolished fortress called Ramcot (Tieffenthaler’s words), Justice Agarwal has rubbished the authenticity of the inscriptions over the mosque.
The judge has interpreted the inscriptions as later forgeries made between, say 1760 and 1810, despite the fact that these inscriptions have been accepted and relied upon as genuine by practically every historian and epigraphist until now, and by Fuhrer A S Beveridge and the Epigraphic Indica, Arabic an Persian Supplement, 1965 (an official publication of the Archeological Survey of India).
The judge, in his voluminous judgement, uses harsh words to dismiss this official publication and the evidence brought in there of the inscriptions over the mosque, entitled Inscriptions by Emperor Babur. Dr Z A Desai, the then Superintendent, Persian and Arabic Inscriptions, ASI and a great authority among
This inscription remained in position at the entrance of the mosque until
Here, Justice Agarwal also overlooks the fact that about 90 years before the Epigraphia Indica, A & P Supplement, 1965, both the gate and the pulpit inscriptions of the Babri Masjid had been mentioned in The Gazetteer of the Province of Oudh, edited by W C Benett, issued as an official publication in 1877-78, Vol I, pp 6-7, Plates 1-2.
INSCRIPTIONS & DATE OF CONSTRUCTION
“In two places in the Babri Mosque,” it says, “the year in which it was built, 935 H, corresponding with 1528 AD, is carved in stone along with inscriptions dedicated to the glory of the Emperor.” It will be noticed that this is much older than Fuhrer’s reading of the inscriptions, but is quietly ignored in Justice Agarwal’s summary of the reports on the inscriptions (para 1650).
Benett’s statement is confirmed in H R Nevill’s Fyzabad District Gazetteer, with a Preface dated 1905 (volume reprinted, 1920). On page 179 we are told: “The Mosque has two inscriptions, one on the outside and the other on the pulpit and bears the date 935 Hijri.” Of the authenticity of the inscriptions there can be no doubt. Thus two official reports clearly say that the inscriptions on the entrance and the pulpit gave the date 935 Hijri (=1528 AD) and that they belonged to the reign of Babur. One of them goes on to attest their undoubted authenticity.
In reaching the conclusion over the allegedly later construction of the Babri Masjid, Justice Sudhir Agarwal ignores the crucial issues relating to the date of the building such as architectural design and technique of construction. In the critique presented at length by the Aligarh Historians Society, what emerged was not only that a judge of the High Court has based a substantive part of his 5,000 page judgement on a narrow understanding of faith but has, worse, misrepresented historiography and archaeology, especially with relation to Indian medieval history --- a specific target of Hindu communal forces since the early 1900s.
Not only does the judge remark on Babur himself whom he views as a man with “a completely Islamic person and (so?) lacked tolerance to the idol worshippers” (para 1563); his is also a distinctly flawed understanding of medieval Indian history as a whole:
“Another surprising aspect was that the Indian subcontinent was under the attack/invasion by outsiders for almost a thousand or more years in the past and had been continuously looted by them. Massive wealth continuously was driven off from the country” (para 1611). This sentence suggests a rather one-sided view of the history of medieval
Dr S Ali Nadeem Rizvi’s erudite presentation on the evolution of mosque architecture over the several hundred years of Mughal rule shows a distinction in the architecture between the times of Babur and Aurangzeb. It can easily be established, by the style and technique employed in a building, whether it was built in the pre-Mughal or early Mughal times or later.
FARCE OF RECORDING
The Babri Masjid was recognisably built in the Sharqi style of architecture (seen noticeably at Jaunpur) with the characteristic form given to the propylon. The domes, though large, are very heavy. This style became obsolete soon after; and well before Aurangzeb’s time, light (even bulbous) domes with free standing minarets became the hallmark of a mosque.
One of the most critical failures of the entire process of litigation undertaken by the High Court was brought out eloquently by eminent historian Dr Shireen Moosvi who pointed out how the process adopted by the court of recording evidence from expert historians and archaeologists had been reduced to a farce. Propositions, often rather complex, of historiography and archaeology need to be answered/explained in a couple of sentences. Yet by insisting that such expert witnesses testified only in monosyllabic “yes” or “no,” the court reduced the business or process of recording expert evidence within the court to a farce. In Indian criminal law too, each witness has a right by law to record explanations after his/her answer and the High Court’s refusal to allow this basic legal process has subverted the course of justice. Two publications Archaeology after Demolition and Archaeology after Excavation, authored by world renowned archaeologist D Mandal, faced contempt proceedings initiated by the very bench that delivered the Ayodhya verdict. The deliberate act of the higher judiciary in curtailing the academic thought and freedoms of independent historians and archaeologists by using a colonial and archaic Contempt of Court’s Act was evidence, if any was ever needed, of the sinister politics behind the process of subversion of justice in this case.
Whereas Justice Agarwal has high praise in his judgement for the team of ASI officials set up by the BJP driven NDA regime in destroying the valuable portions of the historical Babri Mosque including what survived after the demolition, the judges have failed to go into the politics behind this excavation unleashed by a virulently communal BJP led NDA regime in which the architect of the bloody rath yatra that has been castigated by Justice Liberhan in his report was led by L K Advani who later became India’s home minister and deputy prime minister and Dr Murli Manohar Joshi who later became the minister for human resource development. Far from questioning the politics behind the motivated excavations, the judge reposes full trust in the ASI’s subsequent doctored report that has also not in full form been made available for study by experts. Professor Irfan Habib pointed out that the present government at the centre was complicit in allowing a flawed report of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to stand.
SYSTEMIC RESPONSE TO ILLEGAL ACTS
Advocate for the Liberhan commission for about a dozen years, Anupam Gupta spoke passionately on the history of this litigation that had conspicuously failed to deal with the illegal actions of criminal trespass into the mosque on the night of December 23, 1949 and placement of the Ram Lala idols within --- an action that could not be reversed despite repeated written communications and directives of
During the much publicised and widely watched karseva on December 6, 1992 that took place in violation of the undertakings made before India’s Supreme Court by the then Uttar Pradesh chief minister Kalyan Singh, interestingly the frenzy displayed by karsevaks under the leadership of L K Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharati --- that was also celebrated by mediamen Chandan Mitra and Swapan Dasgupta present at the spot --- did not extend to destroying the idols that were placed surreptitiously within the mosque, in 1949. These were carefully removed and brought back to the spot four days later.
Speakers also commented upon the role of the then central government headed by Narasimha Rao. Though the centre had deployed central paramilitary forces on the spot, these stood by and watched as a mob unleashed criminal acts there.
Journalist Manoj Mitra detailed the deliberate dilution of the criminal cases related to the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, especially during the NDA regime. Of the 49 FIRs lodged at the time, 47 related to attacks on journalists. Of the other two, one related to the criminal conspiracy and mob attack on the mosque in which L K Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi had been named as the masterminds, and the second related to the venomous hate speeches delivered before, during and after the act of demolition. During the five years of the NDA regime, the central government deliberately deleted the names of three top leaders of the BJP as master conspirators though they are now arguing that a headless mob had performed the illegal act. Now the two cases are being heard separately, deliberately weakened by partisan interference by the executive.
Interestingly, the Supreme Court has itself not pursued the contempt case against the Bharatiya Janata Party’s national and state level top leadership that consciously and shameless broke their undertakings to the apex court of the country.
A screening of Ram ke Naam with a discussion by filmmaker Anand Patwardhan brought live to the audience the aspects of the narrative that were deliberately made to vanish from public consciousness. The sudden, brutal and unexplained murder of Baba Laldas in 1993 ---the court appointed Mahant of the disputed site after he had openly criticised the politics of the VHP and BJP --- was one of these aspects. Another was the similarly mysterious murder of an IAS officer carrying valuable documents from the Faizabad Collectorate to the Liberhans commission in the late nineties. None of these crimes have been investigated.
Acharya Jugal Kishore Shastri and Magsassay award winner Sandeep Pandey spoke at length on the manner in which democracy, dissent and syncretic worship have been stifled at Ayodhya. The murder of 17 Muslims on December 6, 1992 while the demolition was on has gone uninvestigated, as has the deliberate arson of over 300 Muslim homes and businesses while the Babri Masjid was being brought down in 1992.
POLITICS OF THE JUDICIARY
Justices P B Sawant retired from the Supreme Court, Justice Hosbet Suresh retired from the Bombay High Court and Justice S H A Raza from the High Court, Allahabad and Lucknow, spoke extensively on the politics within the higher judiciary related to the Babri Masjid dispute as also majoritarian Hindutva politics in general.
A panel that dealt exclusively with the implications of a spate of election petitions emerging from Bombay High Court in the late 1980s elucidated how a bench of the Supreme Court had, in one of these, legitimised the politico-religious movement of Hindutva and deliberately confused it with Hinduism, thereby consciously or unconsciously according judicial weight to the politics of aggressive majoritarianism symbolised by the emergence of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) with over 90 seats in India’s parliament. Election speeches made by Shiv Sena leaders Subhash Desai, Ramesh Prabhu and Manohar Joshi, during state assembly elections, invoking a politically aggressive Hindutva and accompanying these with derogatory statements against India’s religious minorities, had been uniformly held by the Bombay High Court. As we know, these speeches violated sections of the Representation of People’s Act, as they blatantly misused religion for political ends. Unfortunately, however, while upholding the High Court rulings in two of the cases, the Supreme Court legitimised in Manohar Joshi’s case the election of the man who had by then become the Lok Sabha speaker.
Since then, in two cases, Abhiram Singh v/s CD Commachen and Ors and another, the Supreme Court has held that these contentions made in the Hindutva judgement (December 1995) needed to be placed before a five member or seven member Constitution Bench and reassessed. However, the apex court has since not found time to constitute a larger Constitution Bench for these cases.
Advocate B A Desai from Mumbai, who was instrumental in getting one of these cases referred for review before a Constitution Bench, attended the symposium and spoke at length on the distinction between Hindutva and Hinduism.
Teesta Setalvad, co-editor of Communalism Combat, presented her conclusions in a paper titled Hate Speech and Indian Courts. She pointed out how the judiciary in general and the higher judiciary in particular had been markedly lax in developing a sound jurisprudence on hate speech. Offences under Indian criminal law related to sections 153a, 153b, 505 and 295 of the CrPC and related to words and speech, written or oral, meant to foment violence and hatred against sections of the population. In regard to Bal Thackeray’s rantings in Saamna in 1992-93 at the height of the post-Babri Masjid violence, while the Bombay High Court justified the venom used against
In the S R Bommai v/s Union of India case that dealt with the dismissal of the BJP governments by the centre following the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992 and nationwide violence against minorities, a landmark judgement passed by a larger, nine member bench of the Supreme Court (based on Justices Pandian, Ahmadi, Kuldip Singh, J S Verma, P B Sawant, K Ramaswamy, S C Agarwal, Yogeshwar Dayal and Jeevan Reddy) had in 1994 had held secularism to be the basic and inalienable feature of the Indian constitution. However, this judicial landmark was ignored by the Hindutva judgement passed a year later in 1995.
FALLOUT OF THE POLITICS OF FAITH
Participation of vibrant panels from the states of Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh,
The serious contestation over the Baba Boodangiri shrine in Chikmagalur district of Karnataka has been averted by a vibrant movement of the Karnataka Communal Harmony Forum (Karnataka Koumu Souharda Vedike) since 1998. A decade after mass mobilisations in the district to contest the violent mobilisation by the BJP and rest of the Sangh Parivar, the Veddike and Citizens for Justice and Peace moved the Supreme Court against the illegal actions at the local level. Though the Supreme Court granted a stay on these acts, subsequent moves by the government of Karnataka and the Collectorate of the district where the shrine is located, amounted to contempt of court but the Supreme Court has not seriously or severely commented upon them.
This and other matters, filed under the Places of Worship Act 1991, have failed to evolve a robust jurisprudence with the reluctance of the higher judiciary to curb and censure criminal and illegal acts. Teesta Setalvad pointed out how, in May 2003, Communalism Combat had reproduced a list of 30,000 temples the Bharatiya Janata Party and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) had listed and mentioned for illegally seizing them, though they are at present minority or syncretic places of worship. In
A vibrant citizens’ initiative from the minority community since 2005 has managed to curtail the hate speech of Swami Adityanath in
The intellectually stimulating and rich discussions over three days covered professional historiography, archaeology, activism, legal and judicial precepts, and the rule of law. The real motive and intent behind the politics of the Ramjanmabhoomi movement was not for a temple in the name of Lord Ram, but to misuse the language and discourse of faith to politically mould the country academically and otherwise into a majoritarian state.
Source: www.pd.cpim.org/
YEMEN IN THE LINE OF FIRE - YOHANNAN CHEMERAPALLY
THE
The Al Qaeda in the
Many European countries were quick to ban cargo emanating from
Yemen, along with Somalia, has emerged as the latest threat to the West. Islamists opposed to the American presence in Arab and Muslim lands, have gained a foothold in
Since the beginning of the year, the Obama administration has been piling on the pressure on the Yemeni government to take decisive action against the AQAP and other groups opposed to the presence of foreign troops on the
YEMENIS FEEL THREAT IS EXAGGERATED
Before being arm twisted into cooperating with the
The people of
President Saleh is reluctant to openly involve American forces in counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency operations inside
YANKEE GAME-PLAN
The killing of innocent civilians as a result of American drone attacks and counter-insurgency operations has contributed to the growing anger of the people against the
In fact the AQAP has been careful in keeping out of local Yemeni politics and keeping their fire concentrated on the “far enemies” — a code word for the West. The “near enemies” in al Qaeda lingo are the regimes having close security ties with
The
Source: www.pd.cpim.org/
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Sunday, December 5, 2010
THWART THE ANTI-DEVELOPMENT POLITICAL CONSPIRACY OF THE OPPOSITION: JYOTI BASU
IN a long interview published in Ganashakti daily on March 28 , former Bengal chief minister Jyoti Basu has spoken on various issues concerning development and opposition to it.
ON INDUSTRIALISATION DURING JYOTI BASU’S TENURE AS CHIEF MINISTER AND PROSPECTS:
Bengal could reach its present position overcoming a lot of obstacle. We must occupy the prime position in industrial development in the country soon. Despite our efforts, we have had to confront and overcome a series of obstacles. The obstacles principally comprised central policies including freight equalisation policy, license raj, and the discouragement shown to industrialists about investing in Bengal.
The central government would not invest directly in Bengal as an example of discrimination. Discrimination was also evident in the acts of the planning commission and of the all-India financial institutions. The central government would cooperate with but a few selected states. Discrimination was made against Bengal as against Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and the north-eastern region.
From its inception, the Bengal Left Front government gave priorities to land reforms, agricultural growth, decentralised rural democracy through the Panchayat system, seat reservation in the Panchayats for women, voting rights for those 18 years of age, improvement in agri-production, emphasising on cottage and small scale industries. We have underwritten the interests of the poor, the khet mazdoors, and the share-croppers. We have redistributed land among the landless.
Our Left Front government would never run from the Writers’ Buildings—we move forward taking along all workers, employees, officers, and above all, the mass of the people in all our endeavours. Decentralisation of administrative and financial powers has been done to ensure the involvement of every section of the people with the act of development. What became an obstacle was the policy of discrimination and deprivation of the union government.
We can cite examples of such obstacles. We had to wait for 11 years merely for the permission to set up the petro-chemicals complex at Haldia. In addition, when we approached prime minister Indira Gandhi for the electronics complex at Salt Lake, the response after a period of one year was that permission could not be given because it was near the Bangladesh border. We then went ahead on our own to allot 300 acres of land for the complex to be set up. Today more than 30 thousand young men and women work at that complex.
PRIORITY AREAS FOR INFRASTRUCTURAL DEVELOPMENT:
We had reckoned with the existing problems and had started work on setting up new industrial areas. Problems included that of power, and this was because all the agencies, including the planning commission and the central government itself had erred. The typical response of the then Congress-run union government to our request for improvement in power generation was that there would not be any further demand for power in Bengal. Then we came to office and set up the Bakreshwar plant and the Kolaghat plant. CESC set up plants at Budge budge and Titagurh. Slowly the power situation took a turn for the better. A better ambience for industrial investment was created. There was a problem of navigability in the Ganges River because of silting. We have repeatedly drawn the attention of the union government in this regard.
We set up several townships like at Rajarhat and Siliguri where land acquisition was never a problem. Kolkata has several flyovers with planning, participation by and loan from Japan but without conditionalities. The conditional World Bank loan we had refused. The ADB gave us loan without conditionalities.
Following the changes wrought in the union government’s policies, license system was scrapped and the freight equalisation policy partially withdrawn in the new economic policy of 1991. I would urge upon the entrepreneurs and industrialists to invest in Bengal. I would ask the workers to enhance production. The workers must struggle for their hard-earned rights. They must also look to the interest of the industry itself.
In the past, some industries had grown during the Congress regime when Dr B C Roy was the chief minister. We had not posed any opposition to the initiatives. Durgapur went into a depression but now a fresh wave of investment has appeared.
POST 1994 INDUSTRIAL POLICY SCENARIO:
The Left Front government declared its industrial policy in 1994. The issue was discussed in the Party and was approved at the 1995 Chandigarh Party Congress. The capitalists invest for profit. Industry is needed for development. We welcome foreign investment and technology in mutually beneficent and appropriate sectors. We welcome indigenous investment without forsaking or weakening state sector and joint sector. We have travelled across USA, England, and Japan explaining our stand. The investors there had shown interest.
There was a negative propaganda against Bengal. We have had to face questions at places like the London School of Economic, University of Berkeley, and Oxford. We had to iterate that there was good work culture in Bengal. Over the years, the misgivings have gone. I have also gone to Holland and Germany. Siemens could be brought back. In the past, Bengal had been at the top of the list of industrialised states. We must get back to that position. From the efforts put in by the present chief minister and his colleagues, this will be a possibility sooner rather than later.
PROBLEMS OF INDUSTRIALISATION AND THEIR RESOLUTION:
For long periods, we have had effective success in agriculture. We have secured complete self-dependency in food production. We are not out-of-our mind that we would destroy our agriculture and build industries. The principal is to set up industries where there is fallow land. If such land were not available in quantities, we would go in for single-crop, and later multi-crop land. The Tata motors were shown land parcels for the automobile factory elsewhere and they chose Singur. The industries minister has explained the terms and conditions involved. There has been provision made for compensation and rehabilitation. Other proposals for investment are in the pipeline: Jindal’s steel project at Salboni, Videocon in north Bengal. There are no problems regarding land in these projects. We want an even growth in the state. Big players in info-tech are coming: Wipro, IBM, Cognizent etc. We need land for industries and we must enhance the level of consciousness. We must tell them that industrialisation is needed to tackle the problem of unemployment. We had not anticipated the reaction of the people that would occur in this way. We should have taken steps earlier to increase the people’s consciousness. Some amount of perplexity has persisted. This state-of-affairs will surely pass.
OPPOSITION TO DEVELOPMENT AND TACKLING THE ISSUE:
The opposition is engaged in political sabotage to deter the developmental efforts. They are not able to fight politically. They have all banded together—the Trinamul Congress, the Maoists, the Naxalites, and the SUCI. The extreme right has joined hands with the extreme left. The role of the Congress is not at all good. The chief minister has repeatedly said that if the people of Nandigram do not want industries, there would be no industry set up there. Nevertheless, peace would not return even then and certain developments occur! We have to be more careful about land acquisition. Land maps have been created now and we have to move according to the maps. A huge amount of lies are uttered in campaign of disinformation against us about Nandigram, and such campaign had taken place in the past as well especially in 1967 and 1969, and after 1977. We must take to the streets and through campaign, profile the real picture before the people.
THE MISUNDERSTANDING AMONG LF PARTNERS:
There should not be a front within a front. We exhort upon the constituents not to forge such fronts. This will weaken the LF and give advantage to the opposition. The United Fronts of 1967 and 1969 broke up and yet, it was through campaign-movement that Left Front grew up later. The LF fought the 1977 elections and won. One or two members of the LF raise the issue that they are not able to know everything that goes on. If there is such lack of coordination, we have to acknowledge it and take corrective measures. The process of discussion must go on. There should be bi-partite discussions held as is being done now, and later the discussion carried onto the LF meetings. The people must realise that it is the government of the Left Front and not of the Party alone. The core committee must be made more active. However, all problems must be tackled at the level of the Left Front. Separate meetings would hardly be of any use.
LEFT FRONT AND LEFT FRONT GOVERNMENT:
The major principals of the LF government must be decided at the level of the Left Front. The LF must take decisions based on discussions. The LF government would then take the next steps based on the principal decisions taken at the LF. There would be a review later on regarding the steps taken. The implementation process must be further accelerated. The work of the various government departments must be reviewed. The ministers of our Party must review the work of the departments they run. Similarly, the ministers of the constituent parties running their respective departments must review their work. Review must be made of pending developmental projects like the Teesta project of the irrigation department and the road projects. Through such efforts, the successful implementation of the state LF government’s projects would be ensured.
TASK OF THE PARTY WORKERS NOW:
There had been some misunderstanding over the recent developments including that in Nandigram, among our LF constituents, and within the Party. We have held state committee meetings. We have taken a united decision to tackle the present situation. The opposition is indulging in lies and misleading the people. At the same time, they are murdering our Party workers, and ousting them from their places of residence. These are all works of sabotage. This had happened earlier in Keshpur in Midnapore. We had said then that they must return to their places of residence before the autumn festival.
At Nandigram, several thousands of people have been rendered homeless. Normalcy must be returned as soon as possible. We have learned from the Keshpur experience. We shall not allow anarchy to happen in the state. The big responsibility on our Party workers is to tackle the situation unitedly.
IMPLEMENTATION OF THE LF GOVERNMENT’S PROGRAMME IN THE DAYS AHEAD:
The LF government works within an ambience of limitation. The LF government is not in a position to set up Socialism. It will try to safeguard and advance the people’s interests within its limited capabilities, to the greatest extent possible. The power of the LF government lies in its pro-people outlook. Running such a government within the parliamentary system is an example, here in this country, and abroad. We have received a massive support from mass organisations of workers, peasants, students, youth, women, refugees, et al.
I retired from government on the eve of the formation of the sixth LF government. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee then deputy chief minister, assumed the responsibility of the chief minister. The government has worked with success. We had gone deep amongst the people in the run up to the last Assembly elections, and we had explained the pro-people policies of the Left Front government.
Source: “People’s Democracy” dated 01-04-2007
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