Blood Island

by Deep Halder

  ‘West Bengal government’s chief secretary, Amiyo Kumar Sen, had been here and asked the refugees if they would consider going back if the problems – for which they left Dandakaranya and came all the way to Marichjhapi – were solved. The refugees shouted a clear “no”. He then suggested that maybe a team of refugees should accompany government officials to Dandakaranya to see the current living conditions. He got his reply from an old widow; she said that instead of sending them to Dandakaranya, why doesn’t he just drown them in the river. When Sen was returning to his launch, the refugees pleaded with him: Sir, it is okay if you give us no relief. But at least make arrangements for drinking water.

  ‘Some refugees told me that eventually they would have to leave Marichjhapi, as they had heard that the state government had spent a lot of money on coconut plantation in the island. They said they would not want to disturb the flora and fauna.

  ‘Next to Marichjhapi, in between Kapura khal and Sarsa river, there is fifty acres of forest land. Locals call it the Jhupi jungle. The jungle is dense but the trees and shrubs are small in height. The refugees started clearing this jungle to build huts. The leaders got a map of this place from Calcutta’s survey office. They were trying to determine the height of this place from the sea bed; they had plans to build a pond to harvest drinkable and sweet rain water.

  ‘At night, they slept around fires and spoke loudly to keep wild animals away. They took turns to guard their fellow men and women. Their leaders were strong in body and spirit. They told me that while they had made the island their home, they would not harm the coconut plantation; they hadn’t cut even a single coconut tree. Even the forest officials praised the discipline of these men.

  ‘When my dispatch from Marichjhapi was published in the Anandabazar Patrika, people of West Bengal got to know that a new habitation had been set up in a remote land. The government’s Home Department, Intelligence Bureau, the police, and even journalists from other newspapers asked me how I reached Marichjhapi.

  ‘The fact that I did not make up the story was proven not just by the pictures that were published with the report but that on 22 May 1978, when I was at Marichjhapi, Amiyo Kumar Sen saw me there. He had reached the island in an ESTHAR launch and asked me how I got there.

  ‘I told him that the refugees had no drinking water, and that he should make arrangements. Along with Sen was the commissioner of presidency division, Pen Antony, and an engineer. Sen asked me to go back with them in the government launch, but I stayed back with the BSF men.

  ‘By the month of June, almost 45,000 refugees had left Dandakaranya for West Bengal. But, by July, the West Bengal government had made plans to not let any more refugees enter the state. The state police held back thousands of refugees at the Howrah station. They were taken to a place called Kashipur near Burdwan.

  ‘On 22 July, these refugees fought with the police. That particular area was under Congress leader Bhola Sen. Sen himself called up the Anandabazar Patrika office to say that the police had opened fire in the Kashipur camp, where refugees who had been detained on their way to Marichjhapi were. However, the government did not issue a press note. So, Anandabazar Patrika sent a reporter to Burdwan to find out what had happened.

  ‘On 23 July, Anandabazar Patrika published a news item, saying that on 22 July nine had been killed in a clash between the police and refugees from Dandakaranya. One of them was a thirty-eight-year-old police constable, Kushodwaj Mandal, who had been slain by a tangi; the others were all refugees. But till the time of going to press, there was no official confirmation on the number of the dead. The police had fired fifteen rounds and arrested five. Section 144 had been imposed on the area. The clash had started when the refugees were asked to board trucks that would take them back to Dandakaranya. Refugees said they were being forced into trucks and the police claimed that while most of the refugees were going on their own, a group of them attacked the police and set a van on fire. The superintendent of police, Amiya Kumar Samanta, said they had opened fifteen rounds but had no idea if anybody had died in the firing.

  ‘The refugees said eight people died from their side but could only identify four, namely Jagadish Halder [from Mulchora, Maharashtra camp], Pabitra Sarkar [Chandaghop, Maharashtra camp], Ankur Mandal [Sur Ghoja, Ambikapur, Madhya Pradesh] and Amulya Gharapi.

  ‘They could not identify the remaining four, who they claimed had also died in the firing. They also said they had not handed over their dead to the police but buried the bodies behind the camp. Later, Samanta gave a statement that maybe three refugees had died in the firing.

  ‘In August 1978, and also later in September that year, West Bengal was flooded by heavy rain. Marichjhapi receded to the background in the city’s collective memory. Till October, there was no news or even much interest in the brave refugees of Marichjhapi, busy as we were covering the floods across the state. We later heard that leaders of the Revolutionary Socialist Party [RSP], a constituent of the Left Front government in West Bengal, helped the refugees during the floods.

  ‘Politically, this was a time of much subterfuge and significance. Minister Ram Chatterjee, who had visited Dandakaranya and told the refugees to come to West Bengal, had not gone to Marichjhapi even once after they arrived. However, Suhrid Mullick from his party, the Forward Block, visited the island a few times and met refugee leader Satish Mandal. Opposition leader Kashikanta Maitra had meanwhile raised a storm about Marichjhapi in the State Assembly. Also, the fact that RSP workers had helped the refugees at Marichjhapi during the floods did not go down well with the CPI(M).

  ‘To disarm Kashikanta Maitra in the State Assembly, Jyoti Basu decided to approach Prime Minister Morarji Desai. Desai, in turn, asked West Bengal Janata Patry President Prafulla Chandra Sen to look into the matter. Sen advised Jyoti Basu to talk directly to Kashikanta Maitra. Instead, Jyoti Basu met Janata Party leader Fajlur Rehman. Rehman also asked Basu to take up the matter with Kashikanta Maitra. Adamant, Basu told him they had already discussed the matter in the Assembly.

  ‘I had cordial relations with Fajlur Rehman. I asked him if Jyoti Basu was trying to make him speak against the Hindu refugees because he himself was a Muslim. There’s an interesting backstory here. On 5 March 1966, some Hindu refugees had set Rehman’s three-storeyed house in Krishna Nagar on fire. On hearing my question, Rehman held me in a tight hug and said, “I have forgotten that day. And you had seen my house burn as a reporter. I was not there. It is true that Jyoti Basu was trying to make me speak up against the Hindu refugees in Marichjhapi, but I advised him instead to visit Dandakaranya with the prime minister and see for himself the plight of the refugees.”

  ‘It was not my intention to bring up Rehman’s Muslim identity or the fact that Jyoti Basu was trying to play the religion card. But it is true that after 1977, the CPI(M) had built up a powerful Muslim lobby in various pockets of West Bengal, especially in the Basirhat-Hasnabad region where Muslims, for historical and economic reasons, were not favourably disposed towards the Hindu refugees of Marichjhapi.

  ‘During November–December 1978, West Bengal police infiltrated the areas around the Marichjhapi island, specially the neighbouring Kumirmari. They got local boatmen to spy on the refugees. I got to know that the West Bengal government was looking at ways to stop every kind of economic activity in the island. It was time for another visit!

  ‘In the last week of December 1978, I got on a BSF steamer and reached their outpost in Bagna village, opposite Marichjhapi. But I did not enter the island in the light of day. As dusk fell, I took a boat to the island. Some refugees who were guarding the island recognized me and took me to a school building they had built. I met Satish Mandal and warned him that the government was planning something sinister. Mandal told me he’d had a hunch. On my way back, I saw that the refugees were trying to build a port. They were also building boats; ten to twelve boats had already been made. My photographer, Devi Prasad Sinha, wanted to take a few photographs, so a few hazak lanterns were bought so th
at those pictures could be taken. Those were published with my report in the Anandabazar Patrika. I was amazed to see how this motley bunch of nowhere men and women had transformed the island.

  ‘My fears came true. There was a law to protect forests, and the West Bengal government imposed that law on Marichjhapi. So, on 26 January 1979, an order was passed that no one could take food items, drinkable water and medicines to the island. A hundred-odd police launches and boats surrounded Marichjhapi. Thus began government action on the island, which would culminate into the forceful clearing of the entire place in May 1979, the death of many and the burning of Phonibala’s breasts. I have witnessed many horrors in my reporting life but all these years later, when I close my eyes at night, I still see her scars and the horror in her dying eyes.’

  December 2017, Belgachia, Kolkata

  4

  Niranjan Haldar

  N

  iranjan Haldar’s apartment at Bose Pukur in Kolkata’s southern fringes reminds me of the CPI(M) party office in the northern end of the city. Books and documents are piled on the divan where Haldar manages to make a little space for himself, offering me one of the few colourless plastic chairs he’s surrounded by.

  These are not books and documents you will find at the party office. Most of Haldar’s study material is critical of the Left Front rule in West Bengal and a few of them document arguably their worst misdeed – Marichjhapi.

  Refusing to remain shut on Marichjhapi has stunted Haldar’s career. The veteran newsman has been a friend of the family and one of the most prolific writers on Marichjhapi. The communist government in West Bengal retaliated by arm-twisting the management of newspapers he worked with to put him on ‘desk jobs’. The bylines dried up, but Haldar never stopped digging into the whys and hows of Marichjhapi. This eighty-six-year-old is considered a living Wikipedia on Marichjhapi in Kolkata’s research circles.

  Sidelined by a communist government’s ‘dirty tricks department’, Haldar, interestingly, was a communist once. ‘I came to India in 1949 from East Pakistan. I was running away from the police after they got a warrant out in my name for being involved in students’ movements. Communism lands you in all kinds of trouble. You should remember your college days,’ he laughs.

  I am embarrassed at this unexpected reference to a chapter from the early days of my life wasted in futile sloganeering and little else, and offer Haldar a sheepish smile.

  ‘So, tell me, how far has your Marichjhapi research taken you?’

  I tell Haldar of my travels to Madhya Pradesh’s belly and to Mana Camp in Raipur, Chhattisgarh. I tell him how I met Manoj Kharati, a BJP Yuva Morcha leader in Betul district’s Chopna village in Madhya Pradesh, which is one amongst the thirty-six villages where there are only Bengali refugees. These are men and women who were sent to Dandakaranya after they landed in West Bengal from East Pakistan. The camps are gone but these people have stayed on, their next generations dimly aware of Marichjhapi. Many have not even heard of the place.

  But there are some, like Kharati’s father, fifty-eight-year-old Khitij Chandra Kharati, BJP worker, farmer and shopkeeper, who had made the journey to Marichjhapi but had returned before disaster struck.

  ‘Do they remember Marichjhapi?’ Haldar is curious.

  I tell him they do. Khitij Chandra Kharati had broken down before me during the interview, recalling how mothers put dead babies in the river, babies who died due to disease, malnutrition or both. He was in the first lot that had reached Marichjhapi from the Dandakaranya camps, cut goran trees to make huts, stayed up nights to guard shelterless companions from wild beasts and taken boats to neighbouring islands to bring back essentials. But he had given up on fellowmen and the Marichjhapi dream in the end.

  Today, he blames not just the CPM government, but also the refugee leaders for the tragedy. They had become arrogant, he told me. Refugee leader Raiharan Barui had welcomed a CPM leader on the island with a garland of shoes! The government of the day was bound to hit back.

  Haldar sighs. ‘There has been no end to suffering for this luckless lot,’ he tells me. ‘As a student in Bangabasi College, I was a part of the Saranarthi Seva Dal [Refugee Relief Group]. We used to go to Howrah station and fill out forms with information of refugees that would help the government allocate them to various camps in and around Calcutta. The refugees got dole and were not allowed to work elsewhere; however, the financial aid they got wasn’t sufficient for a decent livelihood. They started to take matters in their own hands and began jami dokhol [land occupancy] wherever there was empty or unoccupied land. My sympathy was for the refugees; I was involved with their movement. So you see Marichjhapi was not the only instance where refugees tried to settle somewhere of their own volition.

  ‘That there was movement from Dandakaranya refugee camps to Bengal was known to us; that their destination was Marichjhapi was unknown. As was their resolve to fight with the government.

  ‘My mejda [older brother] was staying in Hasnabad, where many refugees sought shelter before they moved on to their final destination in Marichjhapi, and he wrote to me about their plight. It was through his letters that I came to know that children were dying of hunger by the dozens, exactly like Kharati told you.

  ‘To be honest, I was opposed to their coming to West Bengal in hordes. That the conditions in those camps were beyond deplorable was unknown to me. I got a reality check through Saibal Gupta, ICS, who had visited the Dandakaranya camps on the instructions of the West Bengal government. After seeing the conditions there and the central government’s apathy, he quit his job. He also held lectures on the disastrous Dandakaranya Refugee Rehabilitation Programme. I happened to attend two such lectures and realized what a fool I had been in thinking they should turn back.

  ‘I spoke to Gour Kishore Ghosh, the then editor of Anadabazar Patrika, and Saibal Gupta’s writings on Marichjhapi were published. Through those articles, readers got an inkling of what the living conditions were like in Dandakaranya camps.

  ‘Few know this, but the refugees had once tried to come in groups from Dandakaranya in 1975 and the West Bengal government [then under Siddhartha Shankar Ray] had sent them back from the Jhargram border. Ironically, there was a meeting held against this decision at the Communist Party office [the same Communist party that would later order the Marichjhapi carnage], but the Emergency was on and nothing much could be known about refugees and their predicament at that time.

  ‘The activists involved with the refugee movement at Dandakaranya were all locked up in keeping with the Maintenance of Internal Security Act during Emergency. I re-established connection with the refugee movement via Sakti Sarkar, a Janta Party MP from the Sundarbans, who was a close friend. Most of the refugees were from the socially and economically backward Namasudra caste, Bengal’s largest Dalit caste. Sarkar himself was from a backward caste and was sympathetic to them and wanted their resettlement, unlike most of the top tier Left leaders who were well-settled, educated and upper caste East Bengalis. When he couldn’t convince his own comrades about the refugees’ fight for building homes in Bengal [despite earlier promises by the CPM], Sarkar took a few intellectuals and reporters with him to Marichjhapi in a launch. I wasn’t there with them at that time. My visit to the island came later, under worse circumstances.’

  I ask Haldar what the stand of the Left Front government towards these refugees immediately after they came to power was.

  ‘“Mere tarao” [drive them away by force]. That’s how the government regarded the homeless. See, there were refugees settled elsewhere, too, in West Bengal. Jadavpur in south Kolkata is a refugee resettlement colony. But these people were CPI(M) supporters; they were part of the Left’s voter base, and hence the government had no trouble with them.

  ‘I was involved with the organization Citizens for Democracy; Saibal Gupta was the president for West Bengal, Jayaprakash Narayan was the All-India president and V.M. Tarkunde was its secretary. I used to attend meetings organized by Sakti Sarkar held for the
Marichjhapi refugees and I was aghast at the atrocities committed against them by the government.

  ‘After economic restrictions on Marichjhapi settlers in January 1979, many of them died of starvation. Those who wanted to extend relief to these refugees were asked to leave by the government; they were prevented from carrying out relief work. Children were the worst affected. Their bodies were thrown in the river. Fishermen caught bodies in nets, instead of fish!

  ‘Mejda [Haldar’s brother] was the secretary of Matsayajibi Samiti [Fishermen’s Committee],so he was aware of these goings-on. He used to write to me regularly about Marichjhapi. Noted writer Sunil Ganguly also wrote about the atrocities against islanders in various magazines. Their very will to fight was broken by depriving them of food; at times they remained without food for as many as four days at a stretch.

  ‘A report by renowned Gandhian social activist Pannalal Dasgupta created a stir. He was asked to accompany the refugees who had been forcefully evicted from Marichjhapi back to Dandakaranya. He wrote that when kids died during travel, their bodies were just thrown off trains with no compunction for the bereaved mothers. This report came out in the paper Jugantar. Pramod Dasgupta, a top Left leader, threatened to cancel all advertisements in the newspaper if they continued to publish Pannalal Dasgupta’s reports on Marichjhapi; all reportage stopped. I got sidelined myself. Apart from The Statesman, no one published any article on Marichjhapi anymore. When national publications tried to delve into the issue, their owners were approached by the West Bengal government officials who asked them not to publish anything, saying all this was a conspiracy against the Left in West Bengal.’

  I ask him how he interprets the Left’s volte-face after coming to power. Haldar says the reason was politics, not ecology.