Naxalbari (West Bengal): They still get agitated by political unrest. Their eyes light up at the thought of another people’s movement sweeping the state of West Bengal, but 50 years later they know the Naxalite movement which swept the region and rewrote the politics of West Bengal is on its last legs.

It began as a protest by farmers from three villages adjoining Naxalbari in North Bengal against landlords. The state government crackdown proved to be the trigger setting in play class struggle through violence.

Today, on the 50th anniversary of the Naxalite movement, even survivors like Shanti Munda don’t even visit the party office.

Septuagenarian Munda, who lives on the outskirts of Siliguri, was once a firebrand leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)—or the dreaded CPI(ML)—when Naxalbari was on the boil in 1967. She was a close aide of Kanu Sanyal, one of the founders of the party, who killed himself seven years ago.

Since Sanyal’s suicide, Munda has distanced herself from the party because of her differences with the current leadership of the CPI(ML), but she still participates in protest marches. She rues the fact that the current generation has failed to throw up inspirational leaders like Sanyal and Charu Majumdar. Ironically, the movement these two revolutionary leaders initiated in Naxalbari—the designated ground zero for the Naxalite movement—was stricken by internal differences from the very beginning. The CPI(ML) they founded splintered after the Naxalite movement failed to live up to expectations.

Sanyal, who remained politically active till his death in 2010, was seen opposing the West Bengal government’s coercive acquisition of farmland in Singur to build a small car factory. But, by then, Sanyal and his CPI(ML) had long lost their leverage over the state’s politics.

Still, the likes of Sanyal and Majumdar continue to inspire thousands of Left-minded students to give up studies to pursue an egalitarian, classless society. They wish to bring about the revolution, but not with guns.

Only the outlawed CPI (Maoist) continues to follow Majumdar’s line of “annihilation" in its struggle against land grab and exploitation of the underprivileged. But following the killing of CPI (Maoist) leader Koteswar Rao in a police encounter in 2011, months after Mamata Banerjee took office as the chief minister, Left Wing Extremism in West Bengal suffered a body blow.

The regions that the rebels previously controlled have now been transformed through infrastructure development denying the ecosystem to such extreme politics.

Most recently, in January, a faction of the party led an agitation in Bhangar in the suburbs of Kolkata against forcible land acquisition for power substation. And sympathizers of the Naxalbari movement such as Munda and Majumdar’s son Abhijit Majumdar took to the streets in far off Siliguri as a show of support.

Bhangar showed Banerjee is no different from “feudal oppressors", says Abhijit Majumdar, a political activist who works with tea garden labourers. There are enough instances to inspire a merger of the various factions of the CPI(ML) to form a strong front, says Majumdar.

Rajagopal Dhar Chakraborty, a professor of south and southeast Asian studies at the University of Calcutta, concurs. He believes the circumstances in West Bengal are ripe to inspire a mass movement “of a moderate kind".

Clearly, not the idea inspired by Naxalbari 50 years ago.

Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter.

Share Via