14 November 2007. The streets of Calcutta reverberated with the sound of the protesting footsteps of 60,000 ordinary citizens. The mammoth rally was organised to condemn the violence that had been unleashed by the state government on the peasantry of Singur and Nandigram. West Bengal's civil society, lulled into slumber by 30 years of Left Front rule, finally appeared to be waking up. At the colourful mahamichchil (great rally), with lips sealed with black bands and wearing badges crying Shame!, the citizens of Calcutta stood up for the assailed victims of Singur and Nandigram – a direct reflection of this re-awakened conscience.
The poets-litterateurs-artists-playwrights-filmmakers and intellectuals began voicing their protests, one by one. Many of them gave up comfortable, relatively laid back lives after three long decades to come out onto the streets. Many others, who till now had stayed far away from rallies and meetings, agitations or political debates, became active in the civil-society movement, expressing solidarity with the fighting farmers. Overnight, various platforms sprouted, all of which took place without a political party or bloc lending a hand, and unsupported by any political ideology. This citizens' uprising appeared spontaneous, bypassing the winding alleys of party politics.
Even without understanding the reality of Singur-Nandigram, or never having been face-to-face with the cops and cadres, civil-society leaders can evidently become great symbols of protest. Television channels will gladly send vehicles to bring them to their studios – for the media, too, is a part of this civil society sans politics, sans action plan. The inaction of 30 years will be covered up just as easily. In spite of being nurtured by global capital and enjoying all the fruits of globalisation, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Battacharya's industrialisation-development policy can be trashed; professional politicians can be ruthlessly flayed; kings and knights can be checkmated with sweet words and clever arguments.
The Singur-Nandigram resistance will, no doubt, draw courage from this kind of muscle-flexing by the civil society. But will the movement really spread, will it discover a new path on which to move ahead? Where the struggle is against the establishment and the ruling party, and where the axe has to aim for the very roots of the social system, the practice of politics must necessarily intrude if society is to transform. And yet the civil-society leaders insist, We will not be smeared by politics. In making such a sectarian declaration, they confound the movement and make it unilateral. It is almost as though the ordinary citizen has no responsibility for the prevailing opportunism, lack of ideals and political bankruptcy; it is as if the blame lies solely with the political leaders and parties. Apparently, it is only by shedding their political responsibilities that civil society's movers and shakers can hold up their innocent, unblemished faces to public scrutiny.