Bengalis are not particularly known for their fondness or capacity for meaningful change. Politically, nothing reflects this as clearly as the long reign of the Left. It is not unusual, therefore, that signs of change come in Bengal accompanied by confusions and even violence. Look at the chief minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, who has tried to usher in some changes in order to move in step with the liberalized economic milieu. His government succeeded in redeeming for the state some of its lost image. Businessmen and investors, who had long shunned Bengal as a lost case, agreed to give it another chance. But the decadent politics which the chief minister and his party, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), represent reasserted itself at Nandigram. The result is the current spell of political turmoil that may reconfirm Bengal’s old reputation as the land of despair. Mr Bhattacharjee’s fall from public esteem is largely of his own making. Since 2001, when he first led his party and the Left Front to victory in the state elections, The Telegraph has warned him repeatedly against allowing his party to enter into the affairs of governance. The tragic events at Nandigram showed that his commitment to governance was at best half-hearted. His allegiance to the party’s cause has been more important to him — with grievous results not just for Nandigram but for Bengal’s future.

The prospects look bleaker when one thinks of the many agitations that the Opposition parties have planned for the weeks and months ahead. Mamata Banerjee’s agitational methods are not exactly Gandhian. The latest evidence of the Maoists’ armed intervention in the battles in Nandigram is bad news for Bengal. What is a worse signal for Bengal’s politics is that the Trinamul Congress allowed this role for the Maoists at Nandigram. Three districts of the state close to its borders with Bihar and Jharkhand have had the Maoists’ murderous presence for some years. If mainstream parties join hands with armed rebels in order to settle partisan scores, it could take Bengal back to the violence and anarchy of the Seventies. Rural polls early next year could heighten the tensions.

The only flicker of hope has perhaps come from the candles that were lighted by apolitical people and organizations to protest against the government’s failures in the Rizwanur Rahman case and at Nandigram. There is also no mistaking the quintessential message from the intellectuals’ rally in Calcutta earlier this week. All these protests have been against a political culture that has violence at its core. They have reflected the people’s desire to break free from the status quo and from the oppression by the so-called political classes. If the threat of a gathering political storm is ominous, this message of change has come as new hope. If governments and politicians will not learn, the people must, in order to live in a civilized society.