Democratic exploitation needs a culture of violence. Unless you practice violence you cannot get hold of all pervasive State power to oppress and exploit the common citizens of democracy and abuse them to benefit the political party and the politicians elected to continue democratic exploitation. If you are in power, you launch violence to scare citizens away from supporting any opposition political party. If you want to grab power, you as opposition party must be capable of organizing counter-violence to scare away citizens from further support to ruling political party. And, violence must be exercised before the elections so that citizens without political support stay away from polling booths and citizens with political support can be assured of no risk of being affected by counter-violence by rival political parties and vote for the party which has established their terror without any opposition in the territory concerned.. Thus before the elections democratic political parties must establish their unofficial zamidaries in different areas so that most areas are controlled by the terror of one or the other political party, and only a few remains for violent battle grounds for the political parties.
Even before the elections, the capturing of territories by political parties settle who is going to win the elections. The Communist Party of India Marxist or CPI(M) or simply CPM led left front in West Bengal has been in power for the last 34 years on the relatively greater capability of capturing territories through violence in most of the areas, thus ensuring that they get the votes they want to win the elections.
The Election Commission of India has been trying to eliminate the intensity and spread of violence during the elections and offer a peaceful climate for fair and manipulation free elections for the last 10- 15 years and has been increasing successful but not yet been able to eradicate violence for access to democratic power of the State in many areas. The partial success or failure of the Election Commission in curbing the impact of political violence on citizens access to free and fair elections and on election results is due to the fact that most violence takes place much before the election day.
So, violence continues to be an important instrument of securing votes to get into power.
But, how does one organize violence. The political leaders themselves cannot get directly involved in physical violence except occasionally and in dire need. So, the political system has to have a process of organising violence without the political leaders directly participating in violence so that leaders can remain free to enjoy the fruits of power brought through violence by their supporters and recruited muscle men. Over the last 50 years the leftists have perfected the process of democratic violence organisation and processes. The other parties where they have to fight the CPM and the leftists also adopts the same strategy of winning first the violent political battles in various territories before they can hope people to cast their votes in their favour.
In West Bengal, this violence strategy was practiced in selected cases. Little known people got through to win elections in the early 1950s with the help of leaders of criminal gangs. The criminals proficient in murders, looting and extortion worked for selected leaders before and during elections against payment of large sums of money to force voters to come to booths and vote for the political leader who commissioned them to terrorise the voters and capture polling booths and stamp the ballot papers as per their desire. But this was not an efficient method for a political party for various reasons and risky for even a single political leader.
The strategy of violence to power developed in a more organised and professional manner during 1970-1990, with the cues from the dissident Naxal groups in the late 1960s and 1970s. The Naxals were, just as the Current Maoists are, breakaway communists. The Naxals of the 1960s were dissatisfied with the slow progress of the communist movement to bring the communist revolution to the fore and capture State power and also with the addiction of the elderly, non-adventurous gentlemem type leaders' ambition to capture State power through democratic elections and keeping the date of the Communist Revolution of the Soviet or Chinese style at bay for indefinite period. The young Naxalites in the city of Kolkata wanted immediate recognition as famous revolutionary leaders which the CPM old guards denied because they sensed that that they could win the elections given the public frustration over the incompetent Congress Rule that allowed other States in India to march ahead in economic development at the cost of the State of West Bengal in the name of balanced development. The ruling Congress Govt. fought the armed Naxals with armed police, but the CPM had to hold its territories of influence by fighting the Naxals on the streets with the help of recruited cadres of musclemen. That was the begging of the leftists' conscious efforts to induct and foster violence capability within their political organisations.
By the end of the 1970s, the violence capability strength of political parties had considerably increased and just needed a link to the State security administration network. With the home/ police department under ministers, it was just a matter of time for political parties to build up a virtually unbeatable violent terror cadre to ensure that the political party wins each and every election through political terror and violence to nip all opposition forces in the bud. The rogue ruffians and criminals were as much part of the organisation as were the police and administrative forces. They had to be coordinated by the loyal party leaders at various levels. Not everyone can be leader capable and trained to deal with the effective implementation of the strategy of violence and terror. The leaders had to be groomed from their young stage. The political parties recognized the need to converted all their trade union units and their student units into centres of breeding leaders capable of dealing with the violence-terror strategy. The schools, colleges and universities became the nursing ground for future political party leaders. As a potential leader you must not merely be a follower of the party's professed ideology, but lead and expand student organisations and take active part in violence with appropriate links with the local police to remain unaffected and provide protection to the supporters and recruits deployed in the violence and terror actions. As you go up the ladder with success your active involvement in terror and violence would reduce but given the grass-root level experience and networking, you should be still in remote control of the violence and terror activities of the party in territories you are made responsible for. When you are about to join the higher levels of party leadership and ministerial positions, you must have a clean record and appear as a peace-loving, honest gentlemen with no connections with any criminal activity. But you continue to have remote control over the violence-terror establishment of the party.
This matured state of violence and terror based political democracy had been reached by 1995 or so. But not all parties are equally strong in this regime and hence only the best gets elected to power. The formation of Trinamool Congress was probably based on this recognition of the highly evolved mechanism of democratic politics in West Bengal. It has made substantial progress in acquiring the qualities needed to wrest power in a State accustomed to politics based on violence and terror. And, no wonder, it has continued to win elections in the State at Parliamentary, panchyat and municipal elections. Now they are about to fight for the State elections. Before that the college student elections must be won to provide the party with potential future leaders who can deal with the strategy of violence and terrorism on a comparable footing with the ruling political parties. The outbreak of violence in recent weeks at different colleges are nothing but the preparation by the political parties for the State Assembly elections in 2011. After a long time, the State will witness an election where major rival parties are more or less matched by their violence-terror strength/ potential. This may be the beginning of the end to violence-terror strategy of politics in West Bengal and the parties may soon be in search of alternative strategies to get into and retain State power. Or, am I dreaming? This may be just the beginning of heightened political terror and violence before the state of despair after Kurukshetra with all parties and the society nursing grave wounds and losses to life and property.
