The same sort of savagery had now been occurring in West Bengal for the best part of two and a half years. And the most terrible retribution was apt to fall not upon landlords and moneylenders, but upon those who had left the Naxalite cause for some other form of political action. There was a man called Kamakhya Banerjee, a peasant farmer in a small way, who had once been a member of CPI (M) but who had later joined the Naxalites and become a district leader near Siliguri. He subsequently rejoined the CPI (M) and one day in December 1969 he disappeared while he was harvesting his paddy. His body was later found by the railway line just outside Naxalbari; they had tied him to a bamboo pole and they had disembowelled him before cutting his throat. In Calcutta the Naxalites were now said to be responsible for many of the killings with bomb and with knife that were increasing in the city. It was very difficult to prove this, usually. There were so many people with other allegiances using the same tactics and in a city where it has always been comparatively easy to hit and then run into the crowd, more often than not a culprit was not caught. Eventually, more and more of the violence in Calcutta was to be blamed upon the Naxalites, partly through police incapacity to track down those responsible, partly because there were good political reasons for placing the blame in their quarter even when it did not justly belong there.
Openly they demonstrated whenever they had a good excuse. Frequently they would converge upon the Soviet Consulate or the Soviet Information Centre, bearing their placards of Mao Tse Tung, shouting their slogans which lumped Russian and American imperialism together. When Durga Puja arrived, they set up their propaganda stalls among all the other pandals around the Maidan and hoisted portraits of Mao alongside posters advising the people to take the path of armed struggle. In College Square, near the University, it was a little difficult to decide whether the Naxalites or the CPI (M) or one of the other parties in the United Front were responsible for the portraits of Ho Chi Minh and Lenin, for the posters displaying comments on the Vietnam war by Bertrand Russell and U Thant, for the banners telling how obscene books sponsored by the CIA, together with American films and bourgeois newspapers, had so corrupted the immaculate youth of Calcutta that people were actually dancing in a Western manner during the Puja. But if, at any time, portraits of Mr Kosygin, Mr Nixon and Mrs Gandhi were publicly burned together, then you could be fairly sure it was the Naxalites who had put torches to them. The police were fairly sure that it was Naxalites who smeared the statue of Mahatma Gandhi with tar one night in October, such a desecration that an armed guard cordoned that hallowed corner of the Maidan for several days afterwards; and this was only a hint of what was to come. Within a month or two many other statues in Calcutta had been attacked, not even Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose was spared, and from time to time the citizens would wake up in the morning to discover that yet another Bengali hero had lost his stone or metal head, which was later dredged out of the nearest water tank.
There was a brisk circulation of the Naxalite journal Liberation, with its regular articles by Charu Mazumdar, and one issue in the New Year was to be a manual of guerrilla tactics. It advocated secrecy in the formation of units, which must never consist of more than seven men. The unit should be kept secret from those among the local people whose vigilance has not yet reached the required level, and even from those party units which have not yet fully mastered the methods and discipline required for illegal work. The method of forming a guerrilla unit has to be wholly conspiratorial. No inkling of such conspiracy should be given out even in the meetings of the political units of the party. This conspiracy should be between individuals and on a personal basis. The petty bourgeois intellectual comrade must take the initiative in this respect as far as possible. He should approach the poor peasant who, in his opinion, has the most revolutionary potentiality, and whisper in his ears ‘Don’t you think it a good thing to finish off such and such a jotedar?’ This is the way the people must be roused and emphasis must be put on liberating their own villages …’ The condescending author of this advice (presumably neither ‘petty’ bourgeois nor poor peasant) suggested that the guerrillas should not rely on firearms at this stage in their campaign; the use of spears, javelins, sickles and choppers would do very well for their purposes at present. ‘The petty bourgeois intellectual cadres and those leaders who have to travel far and wide may, however, carry small pistols with them to frighten away, disperse or kill the enemy if they find themselves suddenly surrounded by him. But we should never give unnecessary importance to it, because that might encourage us to put our reliance not on the people, but on weapons, which is dangerous.’ As for the slightly more than short-term aims, Liberation had this advice to offer. ‘We must never be impatient or hasty, especially so in case of the first attack, which has the greatest importance, We should rather be prepared to make several attempts than make a hasty attack and fail. It may be difficult, in the first few actions, to raid the house of the class enemy and confiscate his moveable property. So, it would be better to lay more stress only on killing him. Later, when the masses are roused and take part in various kinds of work and the attacks become regular, easier and more powerful, the enemy can be killed even in his stronghold and his property confiscated. The conditions will gradually become so favourable that after carrying out a guerrilla action, the guerrillas themselves will be able to address the masses, explain before them the importance of such actions, and with arms in their hands, even inspire the masses by making fiery speeches.’
The police in Calcutta were not quite helpless in the face of such incitement to violence, but by mid-summer they were rapidly becoming demoralized. They could scarcely be expected to know whether they were coming or going in any direction, given the behaviour and the utterances of the Minister in charge of police affairs. While the state and civic constabulary lumbered around the city in their heavily meshed trucks, with steel helmets on their heads and floppy shinpads on their legs, with their shields, their lathis, their tear-gas and their rifles at the ready for the next fatal riot, Jyoti Basu continued icily to wield his portfolio with some indifference to the disturbance it was causing. Occasionally his personal intervention caused a gherao to be lifted, as happened one day in October after the Shipping Master in the Port of Calcutta had been confined for seven hours by some seamen. But only a few weeks before that, Basu had calmly announced that, since March, 1,010 criminal cases had been withdrawn on the Government’s instructions because it was felt that the situation would improve if thousands arrested during ‘democratic movements’ were released; and he was candid enough to add that political considerations alone had been taken into account. He seemed to be in complete control of the Government, and the United Front as a whole was almost reduced to announcing collectively that West Bengal would observe a holiday to mourn the death of Ho Chi Minh in September. In fact, the Government had been riddled with internal dissent for some time and it was now on the threshold of disintegration again.
There had been occasional straws in the wind. In April a fight had broken out in one of the ministerial rooms in the Writers’ Building, between supporters of the Bolshevik Party and members of the Socialist Unity Centre, both of which were part of the United Front, over policy on the rehabilitation of refugees. In August, while the CPI (M) leaders were in Delhi for a meeting of their Politbureau, a number of their partners in the Government demanded that there should be a redistribution of portfolios, of which the CPI (M) had held the biggest share since the election. But there had been nothing to prepare city and state for what followed on 8 October. The Bangla Congress, with Chief Minister Ajoy Mukherjee presiding, passed a resolution which stated that inter-party clashes in the field, gheraos, repressive measures in educational institutions, forcible occupation of land, police inaction, a general deterioration of law and order, activities of anti-social elements protected by various political parties, indignities suffered by women and the indifference of the administration had all combined to create a deep sense of insecurity and uncertainty among the pe
ople. The resolution named no names, but everyone in Calcutta knew which politician and which party the Bangla Congress and its remarkable president had in mind.
Mukherjee and Basu met shortly afterwards and declined to say what had passed between them for ninety minutes. Next day the entire United Front held a meeting (which a headline in The Statesman described as ‘Infructuous’) at which virtually every other party in the Government accused the CPI (M) of being at the bottom of West Bengal’s current troubles. The general secretary of the Bangla Congress produced a list of relevant incidents; according to this there had been 378 murders since the Government was elected, in September alone there had been 40 inter-party riots, 36 head teachers had been forced to resign after persistent gheraos, and in 292 cases of riot the police had remained conspicuously inactive. The leader of the CPI said that the CPI (M) wanted to annihilate other parties. To all charges Jyoti Basu replied that the Bangla Congress figures were a fabrication, though he conceded police inaction, this being partly because he had been waiting for the United Front to draw up a code which would facilitate his own work.
For a month there was an uneasy peace round the Writers ‘Building. The new Governor of West Bengal, S. S. Dhavan, lately Indian High Commissioner in London, was at this stage telling the Indian Institute of Management at Barrackpore that those who counselled the working class to wait for better days did not even have the merit of practicability; for himself,’ I hate to be a Governor of a State of slaves’; and he wondered how anyone could expect Communism to be halted under the existing state of affairs in West Bengal. At almost the same moment, the friends of the British Council in Calcutta were carrying, by thirty-one votes to twenty-one, a motion regretting the disappearance of the gentleman from their society; a fact observable, some of them suggested, from the scarcity of males who now opened the door for females, or offered their seats to women on public transport. Ajoy Mukherjee had gone to Delhi, where he was telling a press conference that although there was a feeling of insecurity to life and property in West Bengal, he was in no position to relieve Jyoti Basu of the Home portfolio and its control of the police. Nor was he willing to invite intervention by the Central Government. As for the possibility of resigning himself, he said, ‘I do not like that the Government should fall just now.’ He had one positive announcement to make. Together with 42,000 Bangla Congress supporters in his state, he would shortly be taking part in a satyagraha, a peaceful demonstration with fasting, in the grandest tradition of Mahatma Gandhi.
The three-day public fast began on 1 December at 104 different places in West Bengal. The Chief Minister held his own in an elaborate tent in Curzon Park, where Lenin’s statue was shortly to be placed. He had the telephone installed and he brought his ministerial work with him from the Writers ‘Building, as the Minister of Industries did in the canvas compartment alongside him. Thus fortified with Government files, with blankets, pillows, mosquito nets and buckets, the most distinguished part of the state-wide satyagraha began at eight o’clock in the morning, to the chanting of Vedic hymns and recitations from the Koran. It was not a peaceful demonstration at all. Thousands turned up to file respectfully past the Chief Minister, to garland him with flowers and to make their dutiful bobs to him. A journalist who went along reported that ‘The Chief Minister was at times seen disposing of office files.’ But at noon a mob arrived, cut the telephone lines, smashed tables and chairs, tore down curtains and flung a variety of missiles around, two of which hit the Chief Minister in the face, before police came and peace was restored. There was more violence outside the tent the next day and Ajoy Mukherjee told a crowd of friendly demonstrators that the police in the state who were not in the good books of the administration were either being transferred or dismissed. On the third day in Curzon Park, when it was reckoned that 800,000 had visited the ministerial tent, Mukherjee told a great gathering at dusk that ‘If the people of West Bengal think that the present state of lawlessness should continue we shall silently bid them farewell. We shall quit. We shall never be a party to the prevailing barbarism.’ As Chief Minister, he said, he had tried his best to resolve the differences at various levels, within the Cabinet and within the United Front. Again and again it had been pointed out that the United Front image was being tarnished. There had been prolonged discussions and pious resolutions on resolving the inter-party disputes. But the agreement was looked upon as a scrap of paper to be thrown into the dustbin. It had turned out to be a great hoax. The police were made inactive and then violence was let loose. ‘I could have appreciated their guts,’ he said, ‘if they had confronted the police while launching their campaign. Let the people judge if the charge of barbarism made by me is correct or not.’
For the next few weeks the Chief Minister was busy touring the country around Calcutta, making the same points again, with a number of embellishments. In Krishnagar he said he had been reduced to the role of silent onlooker in Government, that neither the police nor the district magistrates would obey his orders. In Durgapur he said that fifth-grade CPI (M) workers were dictating orders to policemen. In Howrah he invited Jyoti Basu and his party to sue for defamation. Basu, meanwhile, was keeping his own counsel for the most part. He told his constituents that any attempt to form an alternative Government without the CPI (M), which had just happened in Kerala on the subsidence of another United Front for superficially different reasons from those now plaguing West Bengal, would have serious consequences. He thought that in the Bangla Congress’s concern for law and order could be heard ‘the voices of the jotedars and the big bourgeoisie’. Curiously, almost nothing was heard from any of the other political leaders in Calcutta, although the Congress leader P. C. Sen had artfully tried to make some capital out of the satyagraha by congratulating the Chief Minister on his ‘purificatory fast’ while observing that he could scarcely shirk responsibility for the failure of law and order in the state. But from a dozen party bosses in the United Front there was silence now. It was as though they were waiting to see what outcome there might be between two gladiators, the ineffectual politician who could bank on considerable moral support from the public in the land of Gandhi, and the supremely skilful politician who in this jungle stood or fell in the end upon the strength of his own political machine.
If some kind of truce had been implicitly called, it had not much farther to go. But before it ended there was a moment which in any other context would have been glorious farce. The state Assembly was due to sit again, after its mid-winter break, for a Budget session in the third week of January. It was proposed that the week before there should be an informal meeting of the United Front for the settling of differences. The CPI leader had insisted that, as a matter of party prestige, the meeting should be held at the CPI offices. Several hours before it was due to begin, some party leaders decided that it should be held at the offices of the Lok Sevak Sangha party instead, and instructed the convenors to see to the change of plan. Unfortunately the message never got right round the United Front; it had rather a long way to travel, after all. Five o’clock came with Ajoy Mukherjee and representatives of the Gorkha League, the Forward Bloc and the Socialist Unity Centre sitting with their hosts of the CPI, while Jyoti Basu, together with members of the Revolutionary Socialist Party, the Workers’ Party of India and the LSS, were gathering in another building at the other side of the city. A handful of Bolsheviks, members of the Samyukta Socialist Party, Revolutionary Communist Party of India and Forward Bloc (Marxist) had managed to distribute themselves in roughly equal proportions at both meetings. And there, for the next hour or so, the two groups sat, looking at their watches, wondering what new plot had now been hatched, consuming tea and toast (at the CPI office) or more seasonable Bengali delicacies (on the premises of the LSS).
There was to be no more fun and games in Calcutta for a long time, now. The Budget session began with the Chief Minister having to fight his way along the corridors of the Assembly, through a mob demonstrating against police interference in a riot at a sc
hool in Beliaghata the night before. It had scarcely started to debate West Bengal’s collapsing economy than Mukherjee and Basu were making public two long letters they had written to each other, extraordinary documents of perhaps ten thousand words apiece, in which a variety of British politicians from Winston Churchill to Harold Wilson were cited. Mukherjee’s share in this correspondence was first into the public prints, accusing Basu of giving away state secrets about a recent intervention in police affairs by the Chief Minister, who had cancelled an order made by the Home Department for the withdrawal of eight criminal cases and for the transfer of a police officer. Basu’s reply was that it had been necessary to make public some facts because of the Chief Minister’s objectionable propaganda and that ‘Your dissertation on the provisions of the Constitution will do much credit to a schoolboy.’
No hope remained of healing the breach between the two leaders after this windy exchange or, by extension, of saving the United Front. Mukherjee’s response to Basu’s letter was to warn him of the legal consequences that could follow the violation of a ministerial oath of secrecy. A week later, in the Assembly, the Chief Minister repeated that his Government was now uncivilized and barbarous, and when a member of the CPI (M) jeered at him he turned in his temper and thrust an old Congress grudge at the Communists. ‘Don’t you feel ashamed?’ he shouted. ‘I was in politics before you were born. When we fought for freedom, you were acting as agents for the British.’ Somehow, the Assembly stumbled onto even harsher facts of life in Calcutta and West Bengal. Mukherjee himself was obliged to announce that the Budget Estimates showed a deficit of Rs 405 millions. The United Front had inherited a deficit of Rs 250 millions twelve months before but now, he said, unless production in the state could somehow be increased, ‘we shall have little to distribute except poverty’.
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