Author: Editorial
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: May 9, 2009
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/comrade-goon/456474/
Introduction: Two years ago, cadres disgraced
the CPM in Nandigram. Why is still letting them run riot?
Polling in West Bengal is never violence-free.
And the hitherto unassailable Left Front's nervousness - discernable ever
since the Congress-Trinamool tie-up was announced - manifested itself viciously
on Thursday, making the party's cadres intimidate and forcefully prevent a
woman, allegedly raped by their own members during the November 2007 Nandigram
violence, from casting her vote. That this happened at Satengabari (one of
the few remaining pockets of CPM dominance in Nandigram, and where the woman
was still registered as a voter although she had to flee her home there in
2007), at once testifies to the unease among the party's ranks and their inability
or unwillingness to think twice about getting their way by any means. Later,
her brother was killed in post-poll violence - at whose Satengabari house
she had taken shelter for the polling day.
It is difficult to sunder Bengal from its
reputation for poll-related violence. But, by the state's own standards, polling
this time round has been visibly much less violent. Yet, in an ongoing general
election where - barring the Naxalite attacks and stray violence in certain
states - polling has been almost wholly peaceful nationwide, voting in Bengal
has been comparatively much less so. At least five people, including a child
in Nandigram, were killed in violence in the second phase of polling in Bengal,
with the Trinamool and Congress accusing the CPM, and the CPM accusing them
back of killing each other's supporters. The major incident of violence was
in the Asansol constituency where armed men entered a booth, firing indiscriminately
and hurling bombs, injuring police personnel and killing a supposed Trinamool
supporter. Houses and vehicles were set on fire and polling had to be suspended
for over an hour. In Murshidabad, a supposed CPM supporter was killed by a
crude bomb. And yet, compared to the recent panchayat polls in the district
that left 14 dead, polling in Murshidabad was "peaceful". More deaths
were reported in post-poll violence on Friday.
For all the gory drama in Bengal's recent,
failed attempt to rebuild its image under its reformist chief minister, little
has changed in its politics. And little will change if the CPM and Trinamool
do not break the preponderance of the cadre culture. In a democratic election,
there is no role for the armed and murderous.
