Pratap Bhanu Mehta's ‘Kolkata chromosome’ has spelt out the dangers of giving in to the kind of communalised agitation which Kolkata saw on Wednesday. What of the dangers of leading such an agitation? By giving a religious face to the anger against the ruling party in West Bengal, the Jamait-ul-Ulema and the all India Minority Forum —and their (Congress?) backers-are compromising on the seriousness of the original issue.

Reams have been written on Nandigram, but not once has the religion of the villagers been mentioned — on either side. And why should it? The Nandigram agitation has attracted attention beyond political parties and state boundaries, because it concerns a conflict that lies at the heart of globalisation and its fall-out in developing countries today, as well as the tactics used by a ruling party that swears by Karl Marx.

Nandigram has been remarkable in another way, too. For decades, urban social activists, agitating on human rights issues, from undemocratic laws to freedom of expression, have bemoaned the lack of Muslim participation. Whenever Muslims have joined their campaigns, it has only been because their community has been targeted, either by the state or Hindu groups. Even then they have rarely accepted that the state targets other categories too: adivasis, workers, dalits. And here’s Nandigram, one of the biggest grassroots movements against the state today, with Muslims as much a part of it as Hindus, not asking to be treated as a special category whose victimhood is somehow deeper than that of Hindus.

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