Nandigram : Tradition of Resistance
``What is the Left, then, in West Bengal? I would suggest that the very long and rich tradition of the Left politics and culture has survived ... in the amazing resistance of peasants, among poor people who cling to their urban dwellings and livelihood ...'' - Tanika Sarkar in April 2007 issue of Hardnews.
The resistance of Nandigram has become the symbol of humble people's defiance, protest, militant resistance and sacrifice against the globalising local state. The poor rural peasant and his woman have come forward to lead the resistance against neo-liberal globalisation in form of eviction of the masses from the roots. They have broken the `cultural silence' - the stupor, apathy, cynicism and mute opportunistic compliance defining the intelligentsia and middle classes. There are reasons why many of the critical tensions of our time have found a volcanic mouth in Nandigram which lies in the East Midnapur district of West Bengal (formerly undivided Midnapur). It has been the crucible of the Civil Disobedience Movement (1930), the Quit India Movement (1942) and the Tebhaga Movement (1946-47) in the pre-colonial era. Nandigram is located around 150 km from Kolkata, on the south bank of the Haldi River, opposite the industrial city of Haldia. The area falls under Haldia Development Authority which consists constituencies of Nandigram, Patashpur, Panskura (West) and Tamluk. There are three blocks, Nandigram I, II, and III dominated by Muslims and lower caste Hindus. Although it is on the other bank from the industrial city of Haldia, the people of Nandigram survive by engaging themselves in garment industry, agriculture and estuarine fishing. The residents of 38 villages are mostly a peasant population, predominantly poor and middle class farmers. One hears about the Jellingham Project at Nandigram Block 1, where about 400 acres of land had been acquired in 1977 for ship repairs. Although one hundred and forty two families lost their land in the process, the project stopped functioning after five years and the site today lies deserted.
Civil Disobedience Movement (1930)
The history of peasant resistance in Midnapur began with the Civil Disobedience Movement in 1930 with the march of Gandhi from his Sabarmati Ashram to the Dandi sea coast on 12th March and a call for nationwide violation of the Salt Act issued on 6th April. Midnapur being a coastal district, had a rich tradition of salt manufacture as late as the nineteenth century. Defiance of authority signified a quintessential element in political involvement and consciousness among the people there. With the arrest of the leaders from about 12th April, waves of volunteers sustained the movement. The authorities opened a plethora of torture: volunteers were dipped into boiling salt, there were frequent floggings, arrests, caning, assaults (even of women) and firing. ``The spectacle of unarmed unresisting Satyagrahis standing up to abominable torture aroused local sympathy, respect and involvement as nothing else would ever have done ...The process of martyrdom was enacted at a pitch of such emotional intensity that the very act of watching became an act of participation.''1
The No-Chowdikari Tax agitation began in July 1930 and persisted until the close of the year. Preparations for it began in Contai in Midnapur long before Congress instructions came from above. As resistance and repression reached new heights in Midnapur, women became increasingly important as fully politicised and active members in the movement. The first woman martyr from the district was Urmibala Paria2. There were frequent floggings of women, detentions, houses and crops and granary gutted, granaries and houses looted, all moveable property distrained. Since there were few pre-decided norms of resistance imposed from above, a remarkable variety of techniques and collective initiative was developed by villagers on their own.
The Sub-Divisional Officer, Midnapur Sadar wrote: ``I never expected an organization which seems to have been worked with the greatest care and caution ... the entire thana was not willing to pay a single pice. I was informed that all the villages had been converted into good forts-cutting up village paths, filling them with loose earth, thorns and rough sharp shells ... also barricades of huge bamboo trees and houses barricaded with thorns, removal of bamboo bridges and trenches dug in the middle of fields.''3
The high point in grassroots resistance and violence occurred in the first week of June at Chechuahat under Daspur thana in Ghatal subdivision. On 2nd June when Sub-Inspector of Daspur, Bholanath Das and his assistant Aniruddha Samanta went to Chechuahat to arrest volunteers mobilising people for Civil Disobedience, whistles blew and the crowd rushed straight towards the police shouting ``Vande Mataram'' and ``Maro Maro''. The Sub Inspector was lynched to death. On 5th June Additional District Magistrate and Additional Superindent of Polic of Midnapur, accompanied by a large police party with British sergeants, sixteen armed constables and sixteen ordinary constables went to Chechuahat to investigate the incidents of 2nd June. On the next day, there was an encounter with the crowd of several thousands of villagers who attacked the police who in panic fired twenty two rounds in which fourteen men were killed. Such popular consensus and the spectacle of uncontrolled rural initiative and violence, attacks on police unnerved the police and administration in general. Governor Jackson wrote: ``The spirit of disobedience and defiance is much too rife ... I feel that another British Division and a warship off the main ports would prove an assistance.'' District Magistrate Peddie ordered: ``I am issuing orders to say that there should be no hesitation whatsoever in using guns ... the best thing that could happen would be to have more shootings.'' 4
- 1Tanika Sarkar, Bengal 1928-1943 The Politics of Protest , Delhi, 1887, pp. 85-86.
- 2Gopinandan Goswami, Medinipurer Shahid Parichay, Midnapore, 1977, p. 24.
- 3Tanika Sarkar, Bengal 1928-1943 The Politics of Protest, Delhi, 1887, p. 89.
- 4Tanika Sarkar, pp. 92-95.
Quit India Movement (1942)
Quit India Movement also called the `August Revolution' which tragically merged in this area with the Bengal famine, saw unparalleled heroism and militancy from the common people. Using the pretext of the war, the Government used draconian measures and suppressed even basic civil liberties and political activities.5 Gandhi was convinced that the time was ripe for struggle. The Wardha Congress of 14th July, 1942 accepted the idea of struggle ratified on August by All-India Congress Committee. The resolution passed by the Bombay session of the AICC on 8th August 1942 clearly stated: ``A time may come when it may not be possible to issue instruction or for instructions to reach the people, and when no Congress committees can function. When this happens, every man and woman who is participating in this movement must function for himself or herself within the four corners of the general instructions issued. Every Indian who desires freedom and strives for it must be his own guide.''6 Gandhi in his uncharacteristic manner declared on the same day ``... I am not going to be satisfied with anything short of complete freedom ... Here is a mantra ... that I give you ... `Do or Die' - We shall either free India or die in the attempt; we shall not live to see the perpetuation of our slavery.''7 In anticipation of the AICC's passing the Quit India resolution, instruction for arrest and suppression had gone out to the provinces. In the early hours of 9th August, all top leaders including Gandhi were arrested and taken to unknown destination. For the first six or seven weeks after 9th August one saw the spontaneous and elemental popular outbursts and mass fury all over the country. People took recourse to various modes of protest-hartals, strikes, attacking police station, post offices, courts, railway stations and other symbols of Government authority. National flags were forcibly hoisted on public buildings in defiance of the police. Railway tracks were physically removed, bridges were blown up, telephone and telegraph wires were cut, students boycotted schools and colleges. Gandhi refused to condemn violence of the people because it was retaliation against the much repressive violence of the state.
A significant feature of the Quit India Movement was the emergence of parallel government in some parts of the country. In Tamluk sub-division of Midnapur district, the Jatiya Sarkar came into existence on 17th December 1942 and lasted till September 1944 with an organised an armed `Vidyut Vahini' mostly of students and a `Baghini Sena' consisting of women. Satish Samanta was the first `Sarbadhinayak' of the `Tamluk Jatiya Sarkar' and Sushilkumar Dhara was the last one. Between 28th and 30th September a well-planned simultaneous attack was launched on communications and police stations in Khejuri, Bhagabanpur and Patashpur in Contai sub-division and Tamluk, Mahishadal, Sutahata and Nandigram in Tamluk sub-division. On 29th September Sutahata thana was actually captured, but else where there was blood-bath. In the operation against Tamluk police station, at least 10 people were killed including 73 year old Matangini Hazra (1869-1942) the famous `Gandhi Buri' and a humanitarian. When the police opened fired, a bullet hit her arm. Undaunted she went on appealing to the police not to shoot at their own brethren. Another bullet pierced her forehead. She fell down dead, holding aloft the flag of freedom in her hand along with two children-Laxminarayan Das and Purimadhav Pramanik. In the clash in Mahishadal with about 12,000 people attacking the police station, 13 people lost their lives. The next day 10,000 people attacked Nandigram police station which again took 13 lives. The civic administration of these two sub-divisions were completely paralysed with government offices being burnt down, telephone and telegraph lines being disconnected, roads being cut off to keep the police at bay.8 As for official atrocities, a Congress source listed 74 cases of rape in Tamluk sub-division, including 46 in a single village on 9th January 19439.
The parallel government had various portfolios - defence, finance, revenue, home affairs, police, foreign affairs, judiciary, agriculture, health, education and publicity.10 It undertook cyclone relief work amounting to 79,000 after the devastating cyclone on 16th October 1942, gave grants to school and set up a postal service. It also set-up arbitration courts which claimed to have settled 1681 cases and distributed surplus paddy of the well-to-do hoarders and profiteers to the poor and distressed people. 11 This movement marked a new high in terms of popular participation in the national movement and sympathy with the national cause. The Bhagini Sena consisting of Kumudini Dakua, Giribala Dey, Makhanbala Das used choppers, knives, sickle, and crowbar to resist the miscreants. A significant feature of the pattern of peasant activity was its total concentration on attacking symbols of British authority and a total lack of any incidents of anti-zamindar violence. The practising Gandhians from Nandigram like Abani Giri, Sathishchandra Khatua, Sudhirranjan Mondal, Rabindranath Giri, Gunadhar Mondal felt that in the larger interest of an independent country, it was the right path to take recourse to violence against the brutally oppressive colonial regime.12 The parallel government was disbanded on and from 1st September 1944 at Gandhi's orders, after he was let out of jail as he felt that a violent mass uprising could not be the path to democracy.
- 5Bipan Chandra, et al. (eds.) India's Struggle for Independence 1857-1947, Delhi, pp. 457.
- 6Bipan Chandra, et al. (eds.), p. 469.
- 7Bipan Chandra, et al. (eds.), pp. 459-460.
- 8Gautam Chattopadhyay (ed.), Bharat Chharo Andolan: Biplabider Mukhomukhi, Calcutta, 2002, pp. 8-9.
- 9Satis Samanta et al., August Revolution and Two Years’ National Government in Midnapur, Calcutta, 1946, p. 40.
- 10Gautam Chattopadhyay, p. 15.
- 11Sumit Sarkar, Modern India 1885-1947, Delhi, 1983, pp. 400-401.
- 12Gautam Chattopadhyay, pp. 20-21.
Tebhaga (1946-47)
In 1946 Krishak Sabhas began to be established in various parts of the district of Midnapur like Mahishadal, Sutahata, Nandigram, Kharagpur, Tamluk, Ghatal, Kanthi, Bhagabanpur, Keshpur. In late 1946, the share-croppers (bargadars, bhagchasis or adhyar) of Bengal began to assert that they would no longer pay a half share of their crop to the jotedars but only one-third and that before the division of the crop, it would be stored in their own khamars (godowns) and not that of the jotedars. In September 1946, Bengal Provincial Kishan Sabha, gave a call to implement through mass struggle the Floud Commission (Bengal Land Revenue Commission) recommendation of tebhaga. In many places, peasants tried to remove the paddy already stored in the jotedars' khamars to their own and this resulted in innumerable clashes. Communist cadres including many urban students went out into the countryside to organise bargadars, who had become a major and growing section of the rural population. The poor peasants lost land through depression and famine and were pushed down to the level of share-croppers as they constituted 60% of villagers in some pockets which became tebhaga strongholds. The movement caught on from the harvest time in November, with the central slogan nij-khamare dhan tolo: share croppers taking paddy to their own threshing floor and not to the jotedar’s house. Jan dibo tabu dhan dibona was another battle cry.
The movement received a great boost in late January 1947 when the Muslim League Ministry led by Suhrawardy published the Bengal Bargadars Temporary Legislation Bill in the Calcutta Gazette on 22nd January 1947.13 The jotedars appealed to the Government, and the police came in to suppress the peasants. The main centres of movement were Dinajpur (Thakurgaon sub-division), Rangpur, Jalpaiguri, Maldah, Mymensingh (Kishoreganj), Midnapur (Mahishadal, Sutahata and Nandigram), and to a lesser extent 24 Parganas (Kakdwip) and Khulna.14 Jotedar and police violence was sought to be countered by volunteered with lathis. In Nandigram, Sutahata and Mahishadal of Midnapur District, Bhupal Panda, Ananta Majhi, Pandit Jana lead the movement by cutting of crops and gathering it in the threshing ground of the bargadars. Many of these areas were converted into Sangram Anchal or Muktanchal (Free Zone) as the government machinery failed to function there.
The peasant women had no economic independence or right to property in spite of their involvement in production process and were relegated to the drudgery of household chores. Though doubly subjugated, they underwent a silent revolution within them during this movement. The zamindar and the jotedar exerted their rights over the women of the family of the bargadars and sexual and economic exploitation was carried out hand in hand. They at times married women from the family of the bargadar so that they could get their agricultural work done without wage.15 Perhaps to defy such subjugation by the state and the patriarchal society, the women broke all norms of modesty and feminity prescribed for them and came to the forefront of the movement taking up whatever the domestic confines provided them - broomstick, sickle, chopper, stick to protest against the repression of the police and save their men folk and their crops which gave them the dignity to live. They themselves fought for their rights to be members of the Volunteer Bahini of the Krishak Sabhas against the patriarchal leaders who bore exclusivist attitude. They at times autonomously decided upon the course of action and led militant attacks on the authority that were not been decided upon by the party or the Krishak Sabhas and the Mahila Atmaraksha Samiti formed after the famine of 1943.16 The new mode of resistance and forms of participation of the peasant women of Muhammadpur and Nandigram spread like wild fire and it was replicated in other areas.17 They helped establish communication surreptitiously, guarded secret meetings, protected crops in the fields, were appointed village guards and kept vigil on police action and alerted the peasant folk, barricaded police entry. The moment they caught sight of the police force, they blew conch shells and beat kansar (the bell-metal gong), shouted `Vande Mataram' to make aware all and sundry. They even sacrificed life while trying to prevent police from entering villages and arresting fellow activists in Dinajpore, Jalpaiguri, 24 Parganas, Hooghly, Howrah.18 They also formed Jhanta Bahini (A group wielding broom stick) in Jessore district and Gayen Bahini (A group wielding rammer used for threshing) in Rangpur District. In Nandigram, Bimala Majhi organised the women folk. In every village, along with the Volunteer Bahini of men existed a Nari Raksha Bahini.19 The editor of the bi-monthly magazine Kanailal Das wrote how a jotedar of Kendumari brought in armed police when the bargadars tried to remove crops from his field to the godown of the panchayat. With the police camp being set up every where, the communist leaders called for a meeting in Kendumari. Women displayed unprecedented courage and militancy as there arose within them a silent revolution-a mass socioeconomic consciousness. Bimala Majhi came forward with her Nari Raksha Bahini with sickle, banti (a sharp instrument used to cut vegetables), broom in their hands and dust, salt and chilly powder tied on their clothes and hurled them at the police. Bhupal Panda, Ananta Majhi, Ramesh Jana with 88 others were arrested.20 The poor peasant women perhaps being the most unorganised participants of the Tebhaga movement gave resistance which was mostly spontaneous and autonomous was most militant and of unequivocal leadership.21
- 13Bipan Chandra et al. (eds.) India’s Struggle for Independence 1857-1947, Delhi,1989, pp. 352-353.
- 14Sumit Sarkar, Modern India 1885-1947, Delhi, 1983, p. 440.
- 15Kunal Chattopadhyay, Tebhaga Andolaner Itihas, Calcutta, 1987, p. 103. Adrienne Cooper, Sharecroppers and Landlords in Bengal, 1930-50: The Dependency Web and its Implications in Journal of Peasant Studies. vol. 10, no. 2-3, January/April 1983, p. 248.
- 16Peter Custers , Women in Tebhaga Rising :1946-1947 ,Calcutta, 1987.
- 17Kunal Chattopadhyay, pp. 105-107.
- 18Susnata Das, Abibhakta Banglar Krishak Sangram: Tebhaga Andolaner Artha-Rajnaitik Prekshit-Parjalochana-Punarbichar, :Calcutta, 2002, pp. 173-190.
- 19Kunal Chattopadhyay, p. 106.
- 20Jayanta Bhattacharyya, Banglar `Tebhaga' - Tebhaga Sangram, Calcutta, 1996, p. 88.
- 21Jayanta Bhattacharyya, p. 112.
Resistance 2007
The disturbed times starting from January 2007 found Nandigram once again being rocked by
resistance by the peasants and their women against land acquisition by the State Government for
Special Economic Zone (SEZ). Casting off fear and obedience to the formidable party-police
nexus the men dug up roads, cut small concrete bridges, blocked roads with tree-trunks, huge trees,
boulders and bricks all through the villages to dissociate the area from administrative interference.
The women stood by their men folk in protecting both farmland and residential land by night-vigil
to resist the invaders, blowing conch shells alerting about intrusion. Just as
it had been under the
colonial Government, ironically in our present time too, we find the democratically elected West
Bengal Left Front Government using brutal police force and sponsoring party terror to silence the
dissenting voices of the unarmed villagers. The women once again shed their prescribed
sensibilities and inhibitions evoking the latent strength in female psyche and stood defiant and
rebellious before malicious power of the state. When the patriarchal society
thought that it had
violated the women of the household by physically assaulting them, to the women themselves this
was no loss of dignity and modesty but corporeal subjugation and forceful infringement of deeply
personal rights. The inversion of order and active protest and resistance to the extent of sacrificing
life forced the Government to withdraw police force from Nandigram systematically and issue a
notice on behalf of East Midnapur District Magistrate stating that no further land acquisition would
be held in Nandigram
