Lalgarh’s PCAC: tribal resistance or Maoist front?
Crucial to the telling of the Lalgarh story is the role of the People’s Committee against Police Atrocities (PCAPA) led by a man called Chhatradar Mahato.
When you turn to print media or the Internet, what you believe about what provoked Lalgarh will depend on how you view the PCAC, says SEVANTI NINAN. Pix: Tehelka
Depending on which media angle you choose to believe, at the heart of the Lalgarh story is the CPM- Trinamool rivalry, or a tribal resistance movement sparked by atrocities upon tribal locals by the CPM and the state police, and hijacked by the Maoists. Then there is non-media angle, carried in various media outlets--the views of various citizen¿s fact finding committees, and those of security analysts. The former give rather more credence to the citizen¿s resistance movement than the media or security types. The latter, the security analysts, see this as a Maoist face-off with the Indian state, be it the state or the Central Government, which has been in the making for a while.
Crucial to the telling of the Lalgarh story is the role of the People¿s Committee against Police Atrocities (PCAPA) led by a man called Chhatradar Mahato. The Bengali name for the committee is Pulishi Santrash Birodhi Janasadharoner Committee (PSBJC). What you choose to believe about the siege of Lalgarh depends on where you get your information. From the TV channels which have reduced it to a tale of jungle warfare, with recurring footage of security forces running around in green forests, and captions like "Lalgarh mein Ladai" (India TV). TV reporters across channels go into the area with the security forces and serve up a mish mash of violent footage, with a background track of screams. On this medium this is "recapturing territory from the Maoists" story, with no time to go into finer details about tribal resistance groups.
But when you turn to print media or on the Internet, what you believe about what provoked Lalgarh will depend on how you view the PCAC. The the mainstream press is fairly consistent in the way it describes the committee: it sees it as a front for the Maoists. Whether Lalgarh is one more Naxals against the state story, or something a little different, depends on the People¿s Committee is projected.
An Internet mailing list, CGnet which sends out a daily summary of Chhattisgarh-related news as well as news from nearby tribal areas in the mainstream media as well as articles on websites, provides the basis for comparing a variety of depictions of the PCAPA and Mahato. We will juxtapose some versions of the reasons for Lalgarh¿s violent standoff simply to showcase how many facets there can be to the "facts" about a major civil conflict.
Mainstream media versions
A ghost town with masked faces: The Telegraph June 27, 09
Lalgarh, June 26: A mud hut and a tin shed, with a dish antenna and TV set that look rather incongruous in these surroundings. This is the only office of the People¿s Committee Against Police Atrocities in the entire Lalgarh region.
Barapelia, a Maoist stronghold 4km north of Lalgarh town, is where the police expect the first major resistance when they march to Ramgarh via Kantapahari. But the committee office there is almost deserted today.
Only a few young men are watching the news on the security forces¿ operation on the TV set. Now they too are ready to leave. They quickly climb onto their motorbikes to relay the news to their "leaders" hiding in the nearby jungles.
"We are committee supporters," explains Subhas Tudu, face covered with a piece of cloth. "We know a police attack is imminent. So we are tracking police movements on the channels and conveying it to our leaders."
… The police believe that these clusters are where the Maoist guerrillas are also billeted. "We have information that once we march ahead, the Maoists will crawl out of the jungles to attack us," an officer said.
IANS,
Lalgarh offensive: Security forces reclaim Ramgarh from Maoists
A tribal body, People¿s Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCAPA), backed by the Maoists, had since last November established virtual control over 42 villages in Lalgarh and surrounding areas where hundreds of Maoist extremists had virtually taken over the role of the state administration.
The troopers have already re-established the writ of the state in a majority of these villages.
Meanwhile, PCAPA chief Mahato addressed a large meeting at Kantapahari, another Maoist den close to Ramgarh, and urged the villagers to resist the forces without fleeing their homes.
Lalgarh: is it liberated or ruled by fear? by Praveen Swami, The Hindu, June 26, 09.
Backed by the Maoists, Trinamool Congress leader Chhatradar Mahato —the brother of the principal accused in the November 2 bombing — setup the Police Santras Birodhi Janaganer Committee (PSBJC), or People¿s Committee Against Police Atrocities.
The PSBJC activists blocked roads, shut off police access to the area, and attacked CPI(M) workers.
Prior to this year¿s Lok Sabha elections, the Maoists even initiated protests insisting that the police not enter the villages of Boro Pelia, Chhoto Pelia, Dalilpur Chowk and Khas Jungle — all areas where they had a substantial armed presence.
Hindu edit, june 19,09
Either directly or indirectly, the Police Santrosh Birodhi Janashadharaner Committee or the People¿s Committee against Police Atrocities, which spearheads the agitation, has drawn sustenance from the opportunism of the Trinamool Congress, and its junior partner in the State, the Congress.
Fading Crimson Flaming Anger, cover story, Tehelka, Shantanu Guha Ray
From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 6, Issue 26, Dated
But, unlike anti-Maoist operations elsewhere, the Lalgarh face-off is complicated by several factors. On one side is the state government, which abdicated its responsibilities by leaving Lalgarh in the hands of its opponents for more than six months. On the other side is the TMC, which is ready to sup with the devil — or, in this case the Maoists — in order to harass and humiliate the Left. What has queered the pitch for the Left Front government is the fact that the vacuum in Lalgarh has been filled not only by the Maoists, but also by a "People¿s Committee Against Police Atrocities," set up after the state police bungled, as in Nandigram, in its high-handedness after the landmine blast.
(No further mention of the PCAPA in the story.)
The People, The Enemy?, Outlook
Smita Gupta, Dola Mitra
The LF knows that Lalgarh was of its own making, an over-reaction to the landmine blast in Salboni—the site of a new Rs 350-billion Jindal steel project—last November. CM Buddhadeb and then Union steel minister Ram Vilas Paswan had escaped the attack narrowly. Tribal youths from Lalgarh, 40 km from Salboni, were indiscriminately picked up which had led to protests, initially led by tribal elders who formed the Bharat Jakat Majhi Marwa (BJMM). The BJMM later reached an agreement with the government but it was challenged by a rival group—which is how the PCAPA took birth under Chhatradhar Mahato. Mahato, curiously, was a TMC member till two years ago when he was "expelled"; his brother, Sasadhar Mahato is a Maoist leader, and the prime accused in the Salboni incident.
… Today, villagers in the area refer to Chhatradhar as the "loudspeaker" of the Maoists. In Malida village, Sontu Soren, a Santhali who collects and sells firewood for a living, talked of his "fear of the Maoists": "They will kill us if we disobey. If they tell us to boycott the police, we have no choice but to do that. If they tell us to attend meetings, we have to listen to them." Clearly, in his mind the Maoists and the PCAPA are now one entity.
Bankura tribals move into Lalgarh, Times of India
Jayanta Gupta & Falguni Banerjee, TNN ,
LALGARH: Hundreds of tribal youths from Bankura district moved into Lalgarh in the wee hours of Thursday, reinforcing the ranks of pro-Maoist civic resistance force People¿s Committee against Police Atrocities (PCPA).
"Forget the Maoists. It is we, the common villagers, who will prevent the police from entering the villages," said a youth clad in a T-shirt and trousers. Though the mass mobilization may appear to be a spontaneous one, sources said the strategy to let PCPA supporters hog the limelight would allow Maoists to retreat. On Thursday morning, the familiar scene of youths carrying firearms was missing. Instead, traditional weapons bows and arrows, pickaxes, sticks were out on display.
Citizen¿s fact finding reports
1. An All-India fact-finding mission consisting of ten members, including a former ambassador, a Supreme Court Lawyer, human rights activists, economists, journalists, and writers, visited Lalgarh, and Belpahari on the 10th and 11th of April, 2009. The team talked to the police, political party members, community leaders and local people. In addition, we attended meetings and witnessed rallies.
Another remarkable feature of the movement has been the new forms of
participatory democracy and gender equality that it has generated. The entire movement was without conventional leadership, and the villages that have been touched by this movement have done away with all traditional political leaders and tribal elders and elected a People¿s Committee against Police Atrocities comprising five men and five women. All decisions are taken at public meetings attended by all men and women. Political parties are not welcomed. The movement has been completely non-violent and democratic, as it has depended on mass
mobilizations of tribal people, and it has been difficult for the state to brand them as ¿Maoists¿.
2. A Fact Finding Report dated
By a fact finding team of students from
We heard through various media and other sources that massive state repression had been underway in Lalgarh and other adjacent areas since November 2008, after the attempted mine blast on the convoy of Buddhadeb Bhattacharya. We had learnt of the incidents of rampant police atrocities after this land mine blast, especially on women and school children in the area. Following this the people there had formed the Pulishi Santrash Birodhi Janasadharoner Committee (PSBJC) or the People¿s Committee against Police Atrocities and have blockaded Lalgarh and other adjoining areas from police and other administration.
The Committee was formed against police atrocities but has also been carrying out alternative developmental work inside Lalgarh in the past seven months. These areas are marked by extreme poverty and backwardness. Agriculture is dependent on rainfall which is scanty. We saw the dysfunctional government canal, which is lying dry. They showed us the pathetic condition of roads which become completely inaccessible during the monsoons. The Committee on its own has made 20 km of roads with red stone chips (?morrum¿), with villagers volunteering their labour. They have repaired several tubewells, and have installed new ones at half the price than the panchayat. They have also started constructing a check dam in Bohardanga to fight the water crisis. Two major works undertaken by the committee is the process of land distribution and running a health center in Katapahari. The government was supposed to distribute wasteland among the landless, but never did so. Now the Committee is taking initiative in Banshberi and other villages to distribute the wasteland adjacent to the forests to the landless people. We witnessed the distribution of the patta in one village. The Committee has also turned a dysfunctional building in Katapahari into a health center, which attends to more than 150 patients every day. Doctors from Kolkata and other regions visit there thrice a week.
The presence of the Maoists within Lalgarh was one of the most contended issues during our visit. Our team observed the presence of Maoists and that they had mass support of the people in this area. Their posters could be seen everywhere. We were informed by the villagers that Maoists have held meetings attended by thousands of people. The people seemed pretty clear about the need for an armed resistance in the face of the regular joint attacks by the CPM and the state. The restriction on carrying traditional arms by them is a clear signal by the state to debilitate this movement.
This team was witness to the genuine anger and suffering of the people. Therefore, we do not agree with many sections sections of the media which brand the resistance there as ¿anarchy¿. We also believe that the police, administration and CPM are solely responsible for the current situation in Lalgarh.
Security experts versions
Outlook.com, Power Games In The Name Of People, Ajai Sahni
The hijacking of the tribal protests by the Maoists is of crucial interest. Initially, the protests against Police action (exaggerated reports of ¿atrocities¿ were to be fabricated later, but the dispute was essentially over the arrest of seven tribal youth) were led by the Bharat Jakat Majhi Marwa (BJMM), a body of tribal elders, which imposed a blockade in Lalgarh. On
The PCPA immediately expanded the demands initially articulated by the
BJMM, to include several that were, by clear intent, impossible to satisfy. These included the demand for the release of all tribals arrested over the preceding 10 years; the withdrawal of all Police posts and camps from the area; an apology by the Superintendent of Police, West Midnapore, by doing "sit-ups holding his ears"; and a demonstration of contrition on the part of the Police, according to which every Policeman in Lalgarh would have to crawl from the Dalilpur to the Chhotopelia village.
Outlook.com, Countering Maoists, B Raman,
The continuing inability of the government --whether at the centre or in the states-- to counter effectively the spread of the activities of the Maoist insurgents-cum-terrorists has once again been demonstrated by the temporary control established by the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and its front organisation called the People¿s Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCPA) over 17 out of 118 small villages spread across some 300 square kilometres in the Lalgarh area of the state of West Bengal ruled by a coalition headed by the Communist Party of India (Marxist).
The People¿s Committee, with the backing or at the instigation of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), exploited local anger over alleged police excesses against the tribals following an alleged Maoist attempt to kill the Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee through a landmine blast in November last year.
Finally, a web media version
¿Maoists were allowed to take over so they could crush our movement¿
Mahato, whose estranged brother is apparently a guerrilla, heads what is called the People¿s Committee Against Police Atrocities in Lalgarh. Most news media refer to it simply as a front for the Maoists, an overground advocacy group. Mahato is at pains in this interview to stress the difference. This difference may be genuine, but at some junctures they certainly acted in concert.
Talking intermittently to Asia Times Online correspondent Santwana Bhattacharya for two days, he tried to spell out, in black and white, the simple demands of the adivasis (aboriginals) of
He explained how and why they had to protest against the coercive state machinery - in this case, the Left Front government - to get themselves heard. He called the Lalgarh movement - "hijacked by the Maoists" - a popular uprising after 300 years of colonial exploitation and 60 years of being ignored by the elected governments of "free"
Of having to live like a pariah in one¿s own land; of an existence in which every outsider responded to tribal territory with stereotypes and bureaucratic disdain; of surviving in a situation of terrifying confrontation where Maoist leaders called the shots, only to vanish into thin air when the police came, leaving the ordinary tribals to bear the brunt.
Amid the chaos, he said, the demands of his people were quite simple:
an apology from chief minister Bhattacharya, withdrawal of police cases against his brethren, compensation for those subjected to police brutality (men who have lost their eyesight; and women, their unborn children). For the long term, the demands could not be more legitimate: implementation of the Forest Rights Act and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS). Is the new messiah of the poor and the downtrodden, the ruling Congress party¿s rising star Rahul Gandhi, listening?
CM: We have our own voice. This was a non-violent movement. The Maoists first infiltrated, and then hijacked our movement. This kind of resistance cannot happen without real and massive support from the
people. The Maoists have never seen this kind of popular support. That is why they came to take it over. We have reasons to believe that they were allowed to come, allowed to bring some of their weapons ...
SB: Allowed? What do you mean by "allowed"? Allowed by whom?
CM: Allowed by those who wanted to break our legitimate, popular
movement by calling it a Maoist uprising. The Maoists were allowed to come in and take over. So that they could call the central forces to crush us to death, to kill our genuine demands. So that they could put a cover over the atrocities they¿ve committed on us. This is a struggle for the development of the tribal area, not a Maoist struggle. They [the Maoists] came later, like the other people who are supporting us ... But they were allowed to come in and allowed to disappear.
The mainstream media and the security experts take the PCAC¿s role as a front organization for the Maoists as a given. Other versions are significantly different.
Subscribe To The Newsletter