The July 28 Mudigonda massacre in Khammam district of Andhra Pradesh has once again drawn the country’s attention to the actual state of democracy in rural India. For the last few months, Andhra Pradesh has been witnessing the rise of a statewide popular land struggle. Instead of heeding the demands of the land movement which is led by almost the entire spectrum of Left forces from the CPI and CPI(M) to the CPI(ML), the Rajshekhar Reddy government has responded by framing and arresting activists in large numbers. On July 28 the state was having a united Left-sponsored bandh to demand the setting up of an autonomous land reforms panel and withdrawal of repressive measures unleashed by the state government. The Reddy government chose to meet the bandh with brutal repression, gunning down eight unarmed persons, including a woman, in Mudigonda village of Khammam district.
The Andhra incidents clearly tell us that land remains a central demand for the rural poor and that whenever the landless poor forcefully assert this demand the state sheds all democratic pretensions and answers with cold-blooded murder. Almost all state governments have begun to reverse in practice, if not also overtly in terms of legislation, whatever land reforms had been implemented in the early decades after Independence. While a small house site or an acre of cultivable land remains a distant dream for millions of landless agricultural labourers and poor peasants, the powers that be are busy promoting a new form of corporate landlordism in the name of developing Special Economic Zones. Andhra Pradesh is a tell-tale example of this stark contrast and the Reddy government has opened fire both on Visakhapatnam fisherfolks opposing SEZ and Khammam peasants demanding land redistribution.
The developing land struggle in Andhra has also upheld the real content of Left unity – unity in the field of struggle, unity on the basis of the interests of the toiling masses. Earlier during the TDP regime, a similar kind of unity had begun to develop in the state against the neo-liberal economic reforms. Yet instead of carrying forward the process of unity and raising it to a higher political level, the CPI(M) leadership chose to backtrack and enter into a partnership with the Congress during the elections. Once again prospects of unity are developing in Andhra Pradesh, and the CPI(M) is uncomfortable about it. When the CPI(ML) put forward a proposal for a joint demonstration in Delhi against the Mudigonda massacre, the CPI(M) leadership turned it down citing political differences. The CPI(M) can work together with the Congress in spite of massacres like Mudigonda, but it cannot join hands with the CPI(ML) in the battle for justice for the Mudigonda victims!
The CPI(M)’s sectarianism on the question of any kind of joint action with the CPI(ML) stems perhaps from its own internal dilemma and contradiction. In a state like Andhra where the CPI(M) is not in power, it takes up issues like land reforms and has to face state repression in the process. In West Bengal, where the party has been uninterruptedly in power for three decades, its government is bent upon relaxing and reversing the land ceiling legislation and has no hesitation in massacring anti-SEZ protesters in Nandigram. How does the party now reconcile Mudigonda with Nandigram? The party is perhaps also wary about the future of its relations with the Congress. Just as Nandigram is passé for the CPI(M) leadership, it would also like to treat Mudigonda as a passing aberration and not let it sour its growing partnership with the Congress.
The battle for land and democracy is however too basic and urgent to obey the CPI(M)’s narrow pragmatic calculations. All the forces of the Left who wish to advance the people’s movement and develop mutual unity and understanding on the basis of such a shared struggle on a shared agenda will surely draw inspiration and appropriate lessons from the incidents in Andhra Pradesh. Red salute to the peasant martyrs of Mudigonda and to the heroic fighters of Andhra Pradesh!
