This is not communism! It is state terrorism!
Revenge-seeking by one party against another has nothing to do with communism. The conduct of CPI(M) has nothing to do with the ideology of Marxism. For a party to use violence against its political opponents is against all norms of democracy… What happened in Nandigram is not an aberration or excess. It is the inevitable consequence of the complete merger of the CPIM with the political system and process in India through which the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is exercised in our country, and its use of the very same instruments and methods to keep the working class and peasantry divided and suppressed as done by other bourgeois parties.
This is not communism! It is state terrorism!
Violence and terror have been unleashed in Nandigram, West Bengal, by the Communist Party of India (Marxist). In a pre-meditated and planned act, a brutal assault has been carried out on the peasants living in Nandigram, by the party in power in the name of “recapturing” this area. While the police and CRPF were instructed to stand by, CPI(M) openly deployed a heavily armed force of criminals and musclemen, using hundreds of innocent villagers as human shields, to carry out this “recapture”. They butchered men and raped women and girls. This is state terrorism of the worst kind.
Communists work to establish the rule of the working class, in alliance with all the oppressed classes and excluded strata of society. Communists justify the use of force only when it is deployed in self-defence or to break the resistance of the exploiting classes to the forward motion of society. In Nandigram, the ruling CPI(M) has deployed force to break the resistance of people to their party’s rule and policy of land acquisition in the interests of big capitalists. This cannot be called revolutionary violence. It can only be called state terrorism, which is the most dangerous form of reactionary violence, in the interest of the ruling bourgeoisie.
The fact that the guilty party calls itself communist must not be allowed to obscure the truth. It is state terrorism, and the guilty deserve to be punished.
The leadership of CPI(M) has been trying to justify its crime by accusing other parties and ‘Maoists’ of organising the people of Nandigram against its rule and policies. This is not qualitatively different from the arguments used by the Chattisgarh government to justify state terror in the form of ‘salwa judum’. It is also not different from the argument of US imperialist chieftain George Bush that the bombing and armed occupation of Iraq is justified because Saddam Hussein was evil.
Buddhadev Bhattacharya, the Chief Minister of West Bengal and a member of the Central Committee and Politbureau of CPI(M), has declared that the opponents of his party have been “paid in their own coin”. He is trying to present the terrorist crimes of his party as a justified act of revenge!
Revenge-seeking by one party against another has nothing to do with communism. The conduct of CPI(M) has nothing to do with the ideology of Marxism. For a party to use violence against its political opponents is against all norms of democracy. For a government to attack some and protect others, depending on their party affiliation, is in violation of the principle that the State is duty bound to protect all citizens. The conduct of CPI(M) is an insult to the name of Karl Marx and to the communist movement. It deserves to be condemned by all communists and all women and men of conscience.
What happened in Nandigram is not an aberration or excess. It is the inevitable consequence of the complete merger of the CPIM with the political system and process in India through which the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is exercised in our country, and its use of the very same instruments and methods to keep the working class and peasantry divided and suppressed as done by other bourgeois parties. Nandigram shows that one must not have any illusion about the CPI(M) led government in West Bengal being a factor in favour of the working class and peasantry. On the contrary, this Left Front Government is a factor that favours the ruling bourgeois class. It is a factor that harms the interests of the working class and peasantry, and the cause of socialism and communism.