Chapter 6 Lalgarh Insurgency and Political Society: How Eastern India Erupted in Anger Against the Left Front Government

• Pages: 130-155
• Author: Rajanya Bose

Lalgarh Insurgency and Political

Society: How Eastern India

Erupted in Anger Against the

Left Front Government

Rajanya Bose

Back to TOC

131

Lalgarh Insurgency and Political Society: How Eastern India Erupted in Anger Against the Left Front Government

Lalgarh village in the West Midnapore district1 of West

Bengal (WB), an eastern Indian state, created its niche in the national

consciousness in November 2008. Then, it lent its name to an uprising

by hundreds of thousands of people, spread across multiple villages in

the district, in response to brutal assaults by police. In the three years

after the beginning of the uprising, 264 lives of members of the ruling

political party, militants, and the police force were lost in the area. The

movement’s trigger was horrifying police atrocities against the villag-

ers in Lalgarh and its adjoining villages. This came after a landmine

attack on the convoy of WB Chief Minister2 Buddhadeb Bhattacharya

and Union Minister for Steel Ram Vilas Paswan on November 1, 2008.

At the time, they were returning from the inauguration of the Jindal

Steel Works special economic zone (SEZ)3 nearby. West Bengal was al-

ready in the midst of two other major land conflicts. The combination

of these conflicts had significant political and economic ramifications

for the state. They led, in 2011, to the democratic demise of the Com-

munist Party of India (Marxist; CPIM), the longest bastion of the Par-

liamentary Left, after being in power for 34 years.

I first visited Lalgarh in 2013, as a graduate student, to write my

dissertation on the insurgency. I collected much of the data for this

chapter during the summer months of 2013 through ethnographic

fieldwork, which included in-depth interviews of participants of

the movement, political leaders from different political factions, and

1 A district is an administrative division carved out of the states or territo-

ries in India. India’s 28 states and seven territories comprise about 600 districts.

2 The elected heads of the individual states in India. India comprises 29

states, each with its own elected head of state government or chief minister.

3 Set up in India by the Special Economic Zones Act, 2005, Special Econom-

ic Zones are meant to increase foreign investment and boost employment

through growth in exports. The passing of the act led to a drastic increase in

land acquisition by state governments on behalf of private capital, frequently

leading to aggravated land conicts in India.