The Telegraph
February 02, 2007
This piece is being written not from anger.
It is occasioned by sorrow, despondency and,
one must add, a sense of humiliation.
Like a bad coin, the Tata small car project
in Singur, in the district of Hooghly in West
Bengal, keeps turning up in the news. Controversies
continue to rage over the procedure of acquiring
land for the purpose of setting up the plant,
the justness or otherwise of the amount of compensation
paid for the individual holdings taken over,
the terms negotiated by the state government
with the Tatas concerning the fate of those
displaced from the land and, finally, whether
the re-industrialization of West Bengal would
have to be entirely dependent on the magnanimity
of those who had de-industrialized it in the
first place, the state filling the role of only
a complaisant spectator.
These controversies need not detain us at this
moment. What however does is a curious event
that took place in Singur on January 21 last.
On that day, a bhoomi puja was arranged there
to signal the start of the small car project.
It is not altogether clear who sponsored the
ceremony. The corporate group of the Tatas is
dominated by members of the Parsi community;
it would be somewhat extraordinary on their
part to organize a Hindu ritual as an integral
part of any of their enterprises. Research concerning
the matter has not progressed very far; what
would be interesting to know is whether, in
the course of the past one century of their
being around, the Tatas ever commenced the operations
of a project with the observation of the quintessentially
Hindu religious observance, bhoomi puja.
There is something of more serious import. According
to statements made by spokesmen of the state
government, the 997 acres of land on which the
project is supposed to come up have been acquired
by the state on behalf of the West Bengal Industrial
Development Corporation. The entire land is
supposed to continue to be in the possession
of the corporation; the Tatas are merely being
offered the privilege of establishing the factory
on its expanse. Were the Tatas keen to have
a bhoomi puja, it should therefore have been
obligatory on their part to seek the formal
approval of the WBIDC. Was such permission sought
and granted? Assuming the response to the query
to be in the affirmative, did the state industrial
corporation seek the views of the Left Front
government in the matter? The corporation, after
all, is wholly owned by the state government.
The question of permission apart, a number of
other facts too deserve to be taken note of
in this connection. The puja ceremony on January
21 was reportedly attended by top-ranking representatives
of the state administration, including the district
magistrate and the district superintendent of
police; the managing director of the WBIDC was
also present. The entire ceremony was evidently
conducted under their patronage, and the state
administration, one cannot abandon the feeling,
took a leading part in organizing the puja,
including taking care of such details as renting
the services of a pujari or fetching from the
market the coconut shell which was split into
two as part of the religiosity. The Tata officials
in attendance were from outside the state and
would not have been in a position to take charge
of these things.
Whatever manner the issues involved are analysed,
one particular conclusion is inescapable. It
was bhoomi puja performed on what is claimed
to be still government property; it was organized
by government officials qua government officials.
And this is precisely where anguish begins to
seize the mind. The multitude of its supporters
and admirers look up to the Left Front government
in West Bengal as the repository of secular
ideals; they pin their faith on it to act as
vanguard in the relentless fight against the
fundamentalists and religious obscurantists.
They consider the left as the only effective
countervailing force to crush the conspiracy
launched in the Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled
states, like Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, to
Hinduize secular India. As they view it, India
is a secular republic; the country's Constitution
says so. The commitment of the Constitution
must be honoured and, where necessary, defended
till the last drop of blood is shed; only the
left,
millions across the country have been accustomed
to think, could be trusted with this assignment.
Now they will be in a state of shell shock.
Secularism does not imply, as leaders of the
Indian National Congress have trained themselves
to assume, embracing all religions with the
same fervour. It should, on the other hand,
mean that the state maintains equal distance
from, and shows equal indifference to, the different
religions. The secular-minded in the nation
cannot but be devastated by the tidings of the
bhoomi puja at Singur sponsored by the Left
Front government. It would be of little use
for higher-ups in the state government to pretend
that they are not supposed to know of happenings
at the base of the system. Singur has been a
sensitive political issue for months; the suggestion
that important officers belonging to the state
government could have participated in the ritual
without the knowledge of their political superiors
is beyond belief. Nor is there any report that
any disciplinary proceedings have been started
against these officers for the outrageous breach
of secular principles they have committed.
Put on the defensive, the West Bengal ministers
may admit, sheepishly, that what took place
was because of an oversight. That would hardly
wash. For the BJP government in Gujarat, presided
over by Narendra Modi, could similarly claim
that it was not possible for them to keep track
of the genocide in Baroda, Ahmedabad and elsewhere
in their state during those grisly days in 2002.
No point in beating about the bush, it is a
great let-down. India is currently a battlefield
where religious fundamentalists are making every
attempt to capture positions of vantage so that
they could drag the country back to the Dark
Ages. Those confronting them in different parts
of the country and in different spheres used
to
refer to the Left Front regime in West Bengal
as the guardian angel, protecting the ramparts
of secularism founded on the bedrock of rationality.
The Left Front will henceforth be diminished
in their eyes. In the process, it itself will
feel diminished. More than a quarter of the
population of West Bengal belongs to denominations
other than Hindu. Some of the land taken over
in Singur belonged to members of such denominations.
What frame of mind would these people be in
once they are told of the Hindu ritual observed
on the land they once owned and has since been
taken over by a government which avows to follow
secular principles?
Finally, there is the issue of right to information.
Is it a part of the formal or informal arrangements
the state government has entered into with the
Tata group that the latter should be allowed
to do a bhoomi puja on the land temporarily
transferred to them? Or is it the state government's
point of view that, unless the Tatas were permitted
to do the puja, they would have refused to invest
in West Bengal and moved to some other state?
If the latter be the case, would that not be
a bit like, say, the government of India arguing
that if Goa was not converted into the snakepit
of a sex resort, no foreign direct investment
would come to the country and travel elsewhere?
