Lalgarh is tragically living up to its name as a red fort in a sanguinary way. Although the West Bengal Marxists re-entered the area after the central forces had driven out the Maoists, the CPI(M) cadres evidently continue to remain there in a state of high tension. As much was evident from the latest round of bloodshed which left eight villagers dead. Initial reports suggest that they were fired on from the house of a CPI(M) apparatchik, which was also an arms training centre. The villagers who had assembled before the house were said to be protesting against the CPI(M) diktat that each family in the village must send a young man to receive such training. The outbreak has sparked off another round of war of words between the CPI(M) and the Trinamool Congress with the former accusing the latter of being involved in the violence along with the Maoists. On her part, Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee has been using the evocative word, harmad (which seems to inflame the Marxists), to describe the Lalgarh attackers. The fact that some of the dead had bullet wounds on their backs has been grist to her propaganda mill. Her latest practice of taking out processions of those killed in such partisan warfare through the Kolkata streets has made the West Bengal scene highly volatile. The CPI(M)’s suspicion that Union home minister P Chidambaram and the state’s governor, M K Narayanan, are tilting in Mamata Banerjee’s favour with their critical comments against the state has not helped to cool the political temperature. While Chidambaram has asked Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to come to Delhi, which the chief minister has refused to do, Narayanan has called upon the state government to act because “no civilised society can tolerate such wanton disregard for human lives”. Narayanan’s predecessor in the Raj Bhavan, Gopal Krishna Gandhi, had expressed similar outrage over the tandav of political violence. Caught between the two warring camps, the people of the state with long memories are likely to note that just as the rise of the Marxists in the mid-1960s was marked by inter-party clashes, their declining fortunes today are blood-stained. There is also the disturbing possibility of the violence continuing till election day, which is still a few months away, and during the polling. How fair the contest will be in such circumstances is open to question.