Tracking The Singur Peasant Movement

On 18 May 2006 the Chief Minister,Buddhadev Bhattacharya declared – land will be given to the Tata company at Singur for constructing factory for producing small motor cars.
The farmers, panicked at the declaration, called an emergency meeting on 21 May 2006, under the leadership of the local Trinamul MLA Rabindranath Bhattacharya, Panchayat member Dipak Adhikari, and the peasant leader Becharam Manna.
When on 25 May quite a few executive officers, flanked by local CPI(M) leaders of Singur, came to survey the site for the proposed factory at Bajemalia the panicked farmers expressed their protest; the aggrieved peasants prostrated before the convoy of the Tata officers in front of the New Ujjal Sangha Club of Gopalnagar Paschimpara. They raised the slogan—‘Not an inch of farmland for factory!’ Indeed, it was on 25 May 2006, that the Singur peasants’ movement started, as the leaders of Singur Farmland Defence Committee claim.
On 27 May Rabindranath Bhattacharya, Becharam Manna, et al came to attend , on behalf of the peasants of Singur, the all-party meeting convened by the District Magistrate. They vehemently opposed the plan of setting up the Tata industry on the farmland. On the very same night there had been a meeting of farmers unwilling to part with their land at Gopalnagar Ghoshpara of Singur.
On 4 June 2006 the fullfledged Singur Krishijamiraksha Committee (Singur Farmland Defence Committee) was formed with the Trinamul MLA Rabindsranath Bhattacharya as president, Sanjib Bhattacharya(SUCI), Bikashranjan Bag(BJP), Haren Singha Roy(Congress) as vice-presidents, Bacharam Manna(Trinamul) and Shankar Jana(SUC) as joint conveners. The committee took 113 members to start with. The committee was framed in the house of Dipak Adhikari, The Panchayat member of KDG village.
On 18 June Mamata Bandyopadhyay came to address the peasants’ convention on the Hospital ground of Singur Bajemalia . It was a huge gathering, in which the large number of participants—both men and women– from peasant families, share-croppers and farm-labors was particularly remarkable. In the convention the farmers took the pledge not to surrender a single inch of their farmland.
On 25 June a huge procession was taken out by farmers at 2 pm from the vicinity of Singur Daluigacha hotel; it was a protest march against the appropriation of farmland for factory. In the procession of nearly 6000,the farmers carried sticks, brooms, sickle, ladle and stirrer and equipments used on farmland.The marching peasants roared out, threatening a stiff resistance movement against attempts to usurp farmland.
Again, on 3 July the farmers took out a long procession. The police of the Singur PS declared the procession illegal and framed Rabindranath Bhattacharya and Becharam Manna in police cases.
On 13 July around 1250 farmers came to the District Magistrate’s office at Chunchura to submit their written declaration against surrendering their land.
On 17 July around 6000 farmers gathered at the District Magistrate’s office and submitted memorandum indicating their refusal to surrender their land.
On 18 July Mamata came to Singur. As a token of protest against the ban on cultivation of the Aman crop (of rice) within the proposed area of the factory she planted Aman sapling on the land.
On 23 July three more forums joined the Singur Krishijamiraksha Committee; these were Mazdoor Kranti Parishad, CPI-ML(Naya Ganatantra), and Khetmazoor Samiti.
On 24 July the farmers, the members of the movement against the government decision for forcible occupation of farmland for industry staged a road blockade on Durgapur Expressway for four hours.
On 27 July the peasant women took out long processions. These peasant women, unwilling to part with their land, took out three processions from Gopalnagar, Bajemelia and Khaser Bheri on that day. The strong determination against surrendering their land was pronounced in their expression.
On 2 August and 8 August the farmers gathered at the Panchayat Office of KGD and Gopalnagar villages respectively, and presented memorandum appealing to the Panchayat office not to accept the government notification towards land acquisition.
On 14 August the employees of the Block Land Reform office came to the villages to distribute the notice of land acquisition; but on facing stiff resistance from the village farmers they did not proceed and went back from the fringe area of Beraberi Santoshima Tala.
22 August was the day fixed for seeking the opinions of farmland owners regarding the proposed land acquisition at Singur B.D.O. office. Through the whole day, several thousands of unwilling farmers staged a sit-in at the office and voiced their grievance.
On 24 August local CPI(M) leader Srikanta Chattopadhyay came to campaign in favour of land acquisition for the purpose of industry, and was instantly chased off by the peasant women of Gopalnagar Kolepara locality.
On 26 August about a thousand students of the Singur Block—including both boys and girls—took out a long procession protesting against the farmland acquisition for industry.
On 1 September the employees of Land Reforms Department again came to serve notification of land acquisition, and went back from Beraberi Santoshi Ma Tala in the face of strong demonstration of unwilling farmers. On that day the peasant women had been holding brooms and sticks.
On 3 September the peasants took out a long procession shouting slogans of protest. In the procession that started from the club ground of Kamarkundu Bharati Sangha the angry peasants burnt the effigy of the chief minister.
On 7 September the peasants met in a huge gathering in front of Daluigacha D.D.Bharati Bidyalaya and took pledge for defending farmland. It was on this day that the farmers planted black flags in their own land in protest against the government decision.
On 10 September the peasants formed ‘human chain’; holding hand in hand they stood encircling the land, while raising the slogan, ‘We will save the land.’
On 25 September the cheque issued in the name of an unwilling farmer was appropriated by another through forgery; at this angry, aggrieved farmers gherao-ed the Singur B.D.O. office. Several thousand peasants—men and women—demonstrated till night. The District Magistrate and police officers remained gherao-ed. In the meantime Mamata Bandyopadhyay arrived at the B.D.O.office in the evening. She insisted that the government must cancel its decision of farmland acquisition. Around 1-30 am at night the peasants were dispersed by the combined attack of RAF and Combat police. Large number of men and women were injured by the severe police thrashing. Mamata was beaten up, and dragged up into a police van and so sent to Kolkata. 79 people were framed by the police and thrown into the prison. Among them 42 women , including Payel Bag ( a two and a half years’ kid from a peasant family) were framed under the provisions of the Arms Act.
The following day the police again lathicharged a peasants’ procession.
In protest against farmland acquisition the organizers shut down six public Durga pujas at Singur.
During Dewali the farmers lit no candle in villages like Gopanagar, Bajemelia, Beraberi, Khaser Bheri, Dobandi, Singher Bheri, Rupnarayanpur, etc.
At the fall of October the farmers abstained from cooking and observed ‘arandhan’( no cooking as a mark of protest). They further observed the ‘lajja dibas’(the day of shame).
On 27 October the public hearing at Singur was attended by social worker Medha Patekar, writer Mahasweta Devi, et al.
On 26 November Mamata came to Singur and planted potato saplings. The farmers also launched three camps for guarding the land. As soon as the police entered the village the women would blow the conch and thus warn the men. The police came to set up a temporary camp but being chased off by the farmers beat retreat.
At midnight on 30 November 144 Cr.P.C.(Section 144) was clamped down by the administration. The police came down severely on the farmers’ camps and broke them up. Singur became turbulent with endless protests.
Then came that black cursed day of 2 December. The police came down upon the rebellious people, unwilling to part with their farmland, by severe torture; in order to take possession of thousand acres some thousands of police carried their operation into the heart of the villages. The police unleashed hell in the villages for four hours at a stretch from 11 am to 3 pm, with unrestrained lathicharging, bursting tear gas shells, firing rubber bullets. Houses were racked. A large number of farmers—women and men—were injured. The farmers’ resistance was battered down. On this day Medha Patkar, on her way to the village, was detained by the police. She broke into tears at seeing the torture upon these peasants. In protest against the torture the peasants started continuous fast. The women too joined.
18 December was another black day. On this day Tapasi Malik, the teenage daughter of a peasant, was raped and burnt alive; subsequently her burnt body was dumped inside the proposed factory area. Singur was again turbulent demanding punishment for the murderers. The peasant women shouted in tears and anger. [Mamata Bandyopadhya started a historic fast in protest which continued through the month of December 2006]
On 15 January 2007 the angry peasants stopped the convoy of Tata officers at Gopalnagar Sanapara. In the face of the situation the officers fled. Towards the end of January , even as 144 Cr p.c. was continuing, the protesting peasants– who had by now been already dispossessed of their land—wrenched up the wooden pillars holding the barbed wire, tore apart the iron net. The dais raised by the Tatas for offering bhumi puja (a ritual of offering worship to the deity of the land prior to any construction) was destroyed.
On 4 and 5 February 2007 Singur was again turbulent with peasants’ movement. They launched a synchronized offensive from various corners of the village and pulled up the boulders demarcating the proposed factory area in order to get back the possession of their own rightful land . They set fire to a police jeep. Banashree Malik, a girl of six, and the daughter of a peasant—Pashupati Malik – was so beaten up by police that she had to be hospitalized. The peasants dug up the roads. Mamata, Medha came to Singur. The peasants started mass fasting alongside the fence demanding the return of their land. Medha was assaulted by the police.
In March 2007 the peasants lighted lamps in front of the Kali temple at Gopalnagar in the memory of the murdered in Nandigram, and in sympathy for the injured. Mamata and others were present on the occasion.
On 11 March, Haradhan Bag committed suicide by consuming pesticide; he had lost his land, was one of the frontrunners in the movement, but could not bear any more the grief of dispossession. He passed away in the early morning of the following day. People of Singur mourned the death.
On 6 April, Bimala Khamaru, a farm labour, died of depression and semi-starvation. Since the acquisition of the farmlands, the members of her family could not get work on the land as they used to, and have been nearly starving.
On 21 May 2007, on the eve of completion of one year of the movement the peasants had taken out a procession remanding restoration of their farmland; the police again throttled the movement ruthlessly with lathi, tear gas and rubber bullets.
On 25 May 2007 another active member of the Singur peasant movement , Prashant Das, committed suicide by hanging himself. Prashant was only 43, but after his plot of land was forcibly acquired by government he found it increasingly difficult to cope with the prospect of bleak future, and eventually succumbed to despair. Singur is stunned with grief, boiling in anger.

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