Taking a Gandhian Approach to Avenging the Horrors of Singur and Nandigram

As Indians, and, by extension as South Asians, we tend to be emotional people, quick to respond with empathy to others' suffering. This has been exploited both in a positive sense by some of the region's leaders and negatively by others. On the balance, though, I am, perhaps, arrogant to believe that it is this trait that has prevented the kind of bloody wars and pogroms in the region, for example, that have typified European history for example, the massacres at Partition being a possible exception though historians and vested interests might claim other incidents from the region's long history to be additional examples to the contrary. There is, though, the example of the man whom Indian governments have done their best to revere as a “Father of the Nation” while neighboring countries have been negatively critical of, though the man and his methods were undoubtedly responsible for freeing a substantial body of people from the clutches of a parasitic British Empire that ruled over them through intimidation, deceit and economic exploitation.

It was a trait of the Mahatma's that has been criticized by his detractors, that, in my opinion, was a measure of his political genius – both British as well as South Asian detractors of the man have been happy to use his “baniya” status against him, suggesting that his ability to negotiate and bargain was somehow derived from his accidental birth into his caste. If, indeed, there is truth to this, there is the very canny understanding of the reason why the British were in India that the Mahatma came to and which he used so successfully against them that deserves to be applauded. Britain's lead in the industrial revolution had given the country a vast system of industrial production that could supply vastly larger populations than lived on that country's tiny island territories. The smallness of the islands also meant that raw materials for Britain's industries would have to be sourced from outside. There was no option, then, for the Brits but to go out and colonize the world just to keep their industry going. And this was where the Mahatma struck. In convincing Indians to boycott British products, he denied the British a raison d'etre on the Subcontinent. Two disastrous wars that the British won by the skins of their teeth with support from the Americans the first time and the even more substantial support of the Soviets the second, wars that damaged British industrial infrastructure to an extent that that country has never really recovered from, only hastened that country's exit from India and later from other colonies.

We now find a similar exploitative process in India itself, and in the country's longest standing “workers' paradise” in particular. The Communist government of West Bengal and its socialist Congress allies in New Delhi seem determined to exploit Indians in much the same manner that the British did, taking their land and livelihoods away to support, this time, Indian industrialists and some foreign ones like the controversial Indonesian Salim Group and the equally obnoxious American financier George Soros.

In Singur and Nandigram, poor farmers have easily been displaced from their lands, beaten, killed and driven out by a combined force of Communist cadres and the local police. It has been easy for the state government to do this and for the Center to sanction this. In 1978, India did away with the Right to Property, making Eminent Domain absolute in the country, ostensibly to take land away from the zamindari classes and hand it over to laborers. This lie is now clearly evident in what is happening. The only people losing their land are the poor and underprivileged, those who lack the clout to influence the government into letting them hold on to their property. If, in 1857, minor Indian kingdoms fought the first war of Independence because their lands were colonized by the British under their swindling Doctrine of Lapse, a full century and a half later, equally obnoxious Indian laws are being used to deprive Indians of what they own.

Surprisingly, a fightback would be as easy today as it was when the Mahatma first set his methods into motion. The Tatas, the chemical units that the Salim Group plan to promote, the businesses that use Soros' money – all are where they are to make money. A boycott of their products would hit them as hard, perhaps harder, than the boycott of British mill fabrics, for example, hit our erstwhile rulers. The Tatas, for example, make all kinds of products from table salt to food products, air conditioners, cellular phones and land line connections, cars, optical lenses etc. If, even a 20% drop in sales of these products were to take place, how long would it be before they literally keeled over? Not very, I am sure. Similarly the other companies who would like to participate in the murderous land grab. They are certain to be smaller than the Tatas in India and they could be hit even harder if they were boycotted, or, in case they sell to other businesses instead of to consumers, if those businesses were targeted. This is a process that needs to take place if those who were butchered by the CPM and the West Bengal police are to be avenged.