Police firing at Nandigram splits West Bengal intelligentsia

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

Kolkata, Mar 29 (UNI) The March 14 police firing at Nandigram that left 14 villagers dead has split West Bengal's intelligentsia and drawn political battle lines.

Academics, writers, singers, artists, actors, who had long been together sharing a common belief in Left philosophy, suddenly found themselves under different banners and hurling jibes at one another from opposite camps.

The list of such elites joining the fray is long: from Jnanpeeth award winning writer and social activist Mahasweta Devi to celebrated actor Soumitra Chatterjee, from film maker Aparna Sen to author Sunil Gangopadhyay.

A few of them have even chosen to share dais with political leaders to air their voice against 'state terrorism'.

While almost all of them condemned the police firing, what left a yawning rift among the once comrades -in-arms was not only the government's land acquisition policy but also the Opposition's role that allegedly triggered unrest in Nandigram.

Amid the heat of a strident campaign against taking over of agricultural land, launched by the Trinamool Congress-led Krishi Jami Raksha Committee, a galaxy of luminaries from various fields grouped together under the 'Forum of Artists, Cultural Activists and Intellectuals' and held a convention much before the March 14 incident. Present among those who accused the Left Front Government of coercing farmers and gagging the voice of dissent were Medha Patkar, Aparna Sen, historian Sumit Sarkar, theatre personality Saoli Mitra, poet Tarun Sanyal, singer Kabir Suman, educationist Sunando Sanyal and former GSI Director Subrata Sinha.

In her column in a Bengali daily, Mahasweta Devi, who has been in the forefront of the intellectuals' movement, protested against the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee Government, while leading a number of processions and speaking at street meetings, often organized with the active support of the National Alliance for People's Movement(NAPM), an organisation of which Ms Patkar is a member alongwith various other groups with avowed radical left leaning.

However, after March 14 : Manoj Mitra, Ashok Mukhopadhyay, Bibhash Chakraborty, Kaushik Sen, Meghnad Bhattacharya and Bratto Basu, few names that Bengali theatre takes pride in resigned en masse from ''Paschim Banga Natya Academy'' while veteran poet Sankha Ghosh and academic Sukumari Bhattacharyay stepped down as members of ''Bangla Academy'', an organization set up by the West Bengal Government for the promotion of Bengali language and literature.

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