August 17, 1998

Does India have any jurisdiction over West Bengal?

Swapan Dasgupta

When a US Air Force plane nuked Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, Josef Stalin was both angry and jubilant. Angry because he didn't have this latest weapon of mass destruction, and jubilant because the devastation gave him the opportunity to grab some of imperial Japan's territory. This, of course, is history, a history that the lost intelligentsia, now dancing attendance to the Indian Left, is anxious to gloss over. Selective indignation and spurious moralising were, after all, at the heart of last week's Hiroshima Day demonstrations that so enthralled the editors of Star News.

To be fair, images of innocent schoolchildren and rootless intellectuals joining hands to press for a nuclear-free world are calculated to move ordinary people. However, the CPI(M) politburo wouldn't readily remind the younger generation that it went gaga over China's "socialist bomb" and the Soviet Union's "workers' bomb". Unlike genuine pacifists like the Quakers, the Left's quest for peace is a matter of convenience. Twenty years ago, unilateral nuclear disarmament was a slogan that served Moscow; today's objective is less grand -- the removal of the BJP-led Government at the Centre.

It is not an illegitimate goal. The BJP won't exactly be oozing peace and goodwill if Jyoti Basu becomes the rajguru of Sonia Gandhi's Government and it is unfair to expect the CPI(M) to play the loyal opposition to Atal Bihari Vajpayee. But there is a crucial difference. Traditionally, the Congress, BJP, Janata Dal and the regional parties have made a distinction between opposition to the Government and obligations to the state. This awareness has kept Indian democracy and federalism going, except during the 19 months of Emergency. Now, the CPI(M) threatens to disturb the balance.

The issue is more complex than routine political grandstanding. The West Bengal chief minister is entitled to give civility a go-by when referring to the BJP Government, thereby confirming Ashok Mitra's old assertion of a communist not being a bhadralok (gentleman). He is even entitled to pretend that the CPI(M)'s Bengali sub-nationalism is a cut above the BJP's Hindu nationalism. However, he is not entitled to perpetuate the fiction that the writ of the Centre does not run in Calcutta. That, tragically, is what Basu has been doing. More distressing, Vajpayee and L.K. Advani have been allowing him to get away with impunity.

First it was the visit of a team sent by the Union Home Ministry to inquire into the violence that accompanied panchayat elections. Basu and his deputy, Buddhadev Bhattacharya, refused to meet them, thereby setting an unwholesome precedent. Second, the Left Front Government encouraged its stormtroopers to forcibly prevent the deportation of illegal Bangladeshi migrants from Mumbai. It was the Left's arrogant announcement that it would continue to run a parallel immigration policy in defiance of the laws of India. By the home ministry's admission there are at least one crore illegal Bangladeshi immigrants. The CPI(M) says they are all Indians.

So far, all governments in Delhi have treated Basu's constitutional subversion with kid gloves. This has allowed him to become more brazen by the day, so much so that the Left is now in effect promoting a spurious (undivided) Bengal-India divide. It is time the Centre reminds the CPI(M) that West Bengal is a part of India. It will be pleasantly surprised by the positive response from genuine Bengalis.

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