Inquilab Rally: The Red Wave Rises
The streets were lined with festoons and several hundred thousand people with red flags and banners from—Assam to Ajmer, Bhojpur to Gujarat, Uttrakhand to Tamil Nadu—marched towards the Rally ground in an unceasing wave to reassert that Bhagat Singh’s dreams were not wasted, the blood of the ordinary people battling the British imperialists before and after 1857 not washed away by parasitic rulers of the country and that the vision of the call for the final break from slavery given at Naxalbari would guide the struggle ahead.
The rally ground a splendid expanse of red – a tribute to those who have stained the flag with the colour of their blood against every act of oppression – determined to uphold the flag that was being betrayed by the CPM goons in Singur and Nandigram with their ghastly crimes against the poor and marginalised; the betrayers pretending to be the bearers of the red flag while acting as mercenaries of the big capital.
On one corner was the stage adorned like the rest of the rally grounds with banners and festoons. The cultural convergence of resistance that began on 21 March culminated at the Rally Ground around 12.30 in the afternoon with a salute to the martyrs and Politburo member, Ram Naresh Ram welcoming the vast expanse of people from across the country who had arrived bearing immense difficulties to participate in the Rally to express their dissent to the ruling class’ betrayal and assert the rights of the poor and the marginalised of the country. A pledge to reaffirm the anti-imperialist and revolutionary legacy of past struggles in the movements of the present and the future was read by Central Committee members Ramji Rai and Srilata Swaminathan (see cover for the text of the Pledge).
Several speakers addressed the rally. Central Committee member Meena Tiwari observed about the nature of women’s struggles in the neo-liberal times and the inspiration for resistance in the historical struggles where the mass of women participated. AIALA President and Central Committee member Rameshwar Prasad said that the brunt of the current crisis was being borne by the agrarian poor and pointed out how NREGA had become a platform for launching massive struggles in the rural areas as contradictions between what the government claimed and what the government did came to the forefront.
Akhilendra Singh, Politburo member and State Secretary of Uttar Pradesh noted the renewed aggression of the communal forces during UPA government’s rule. He pointed out that contrary to Rahul Gandhi’s claims that during Nehru-Gandhi rule communalism had been held in check, the events in Babri Masjid was evidence of their covert participation in the communalisation of the social fabric – the installation of the statue inside the Masjid took place during Nehru’s rule while the locks of the Masjid were opened during Rajiv Gandhi’s regime. Further, Manmohan Singh himself does not belong to the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty – can this fact explain away the communal acts condones by Congress today?
The guests attending the rally addressed the enormous surge of people. Bhagat Singh’s nephew Jagmohan said that the revolutionary task of Bhagat Singh was for the radical forces to fulfil and that the CPI(ML) must safeguard the red banner of Bhagat Singh in its own hands, given the exposure of the official Left. S. P Shukla, former bureaucrat and Convenor of People’s Campaign against WTO said that the SEZ Act was the most dangerous weapon of the WTO, and that Left must unequivocally declare ‘Scrap SEZs’ and not merely talk of ‘modification’ in the Act.
Uday Bhatt, leader of the Lal Nishan Party (Leninist) said that CPI-M’s betrayal of the left movement was shameful and declared that true communists must stand alongside struggling people and uphold the rights of the people. Tarsem Jodha, CPI-ML leader, earlier an MLA of CPI-M from Punjab, Bahadur Oraon, CPI-ML leader and earlier an MLA of JMM from Jharkhand, Ruldu Singh, leader of the Punjab Kisan Union also addressed the Rally.
Bant Singh from Mansa, Ashish Maiti from Nandigram (an activist of CPI who recently joined the CPI-ML), and a woman activist from Singur were felicitated for their spirited resistance.
Reassert the Anti-Imperialist and Revolutionary Legacy of 1857, Bhagat Singh and Naxalbari!
Channelise the anger against Nandigram carnage into mass resistance against corporate land grab and state repression!
(The following is an abridged text of CPI(ML) General Secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya’s speech at the Inquilab Rally.)
Comrades,
The red wave is here again. From all corners of the country you have reached here defying distance and all sorts of difficulties, repression and terror. You have faced such brutal and barbaric state-sponsored violence in Nandigram. In the hills of Assam cowards have killed our brave leader Comrade Langtuk Phangcho. Yet you have made it to Delhi in such large numbers. Red salute to your revolutionary determination and courage!
Today is a historic day. The martyrdom day of Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev. This year is a historic year – 150 years ago, peasants and soldiers of our country had rebelled against the barbaric British rule and unfurled the flag of freedom. This is the centenary of Bhagat Singh’s birth and the 40th anniversary of the great Naxalbari uprising. These are chapters of history that still make our rulers and their imperialist masters shudder in fear, while filling us with indomitable courage and inspiration.
This history is particularly relevant for us at this present juncture. It tells us what great strength and power lies in our peasants to resist the corporate land-grab campaign and massacres like Kalinganagar and Nandigram. It tells us that cutting across religious divisions, the people of India can march in unison to foil every communal conspiracy. We know that today’s youth can also follow the ideals of the great role model, Bhagat Singh, and join hands with workers and peasants to wage and win a decisive battle against imperialism. We know that when self-styled communists unmask themselves as the most loyal defenders of the ruling classes and butchers of unarmed peasant women and children, the rural poor and the progressive intelligentsia can reject this line of degeneration with all the contempt it deserves and hold high the red flag and reaffirm the glorious Tebhaga-Telengana-Naxalbari legacy of peasant resistance.
We are meeting here at a time when the rulers are desperately trying to rob us of whatever resources and rights we have. New economic policies have catapulted the Ambani brothers among the richest top twenty individuals in the world, but in terms of human development index India does not even figure among the first 125 countries in the world. Our big capitalists are sitting on top of mountains of profit, but vast areas in our countryside are turning into graveyards. Ratan Tata can shell out Rs. 50,000 crore to buy a steel company in Europe and Kumar Birla can spend Rs. 25,000 crore to buy an aluminium plant in Canada, but our governments do not even spend Rs. 10,000 crore in rural employment programmes even as they talk of providing ‘guaranteed’ employment to every rural job-seeker.
The Congress has once again come up with the ‘garibi hataao’ slogan and it is being implemented by first statistically limiting the number of the poor and then removing the poor from even those truncated BPL (below poverty line) lists. And all voices of protest are being sought to be silenced by batons and bullets – from Gurgaon to Dadri and Kalinganagar to Nandigram, governance and rule of law have become a euphemism for unmitigated repression and state-sponsored violence. And in states like Kashmir and Manipur, the armed forces have literally been given ‘special powers’ to rape and kill at will.
‘Special powers’ for armed forces and ‘special economic zones’ for big corporate capital have a ‘special’ echo in India’s foreign policy – strategic partnership with the US complete with an Indo-US nuclear deal. Right in front of our eyes, a key Asian country like Iraq is being systematically destroyed under US occupation and its deposed President has been hanged by a kangaroo court – yet far from uttering a word of protest, Indian rulers are busy jumping on to the bandwagon of Washington’s global war on terror and inviting US capital to every corner of our national economy.
We have assembled here today to tell our rulers that they will never be allowed to destroy our country, divide us on communal lines and play with our lives and rights. We will go back from this rally and intensify countrywide struggles on all the basic issues. We will stand firmly by peasants all over the country in their fight for saving their farm lands. The government will have to scrap the SEZ Act and repeal the Land Acquisition Act of 1894. We will intensify the struggle for land reforms, guaranteed employment and higher wages, for social security and subsidised supply of all essential commodities of mass consumption. And we will mobilise the people in ever-larger numbers in all these struggles.
We are meeting here at a time when the entire country is rightly condemning the CPI(M) leadership and the Left Front government of West Bengal for the Nandigram carnage. In this country generations of communists have built up the communist movement through the fight for land and liberty. Agrarian revolution has always been recognised by communists as the axis of our revolutionary quest for a new democratic India. Today the CPI(M) has turned against the interests of the labouring peasantry and it has no hesitation in letting loose the police and hired killers to drown the protesting peasants in rivers of blood.
A similar thing had happened in Naxalbari forty years ago. Naxalbari had challenged the old order of oppression by unleashing the revolutionary initiative of the landless poor. The CPI(M) had then just assumed power in Bengal and it chose to collaborate with the Congress-ruled Centre to crush the Naxalbari rebellion by brute force. Today, Nandigram merely wants to save its land and agriculture, but a CPI(M) in power for three decades is not ready to tolerate any sign of peasant protest or any expression of democratic dissent in support of the peasants. It therefore orders mass slaughter of people who have been voting for the CPI(M) and the CPI in election after election, right down from panchayats to the State Assembly and the Lok Sabha.
Genuine communists all over the country are shocked by this utter ideological derailment and political degeneration. Today when Nandigram has become the disgraceful hallmark of the CPI(M)’s model of ‘Left governance’ and its model of ‘movement’ is characterised by its opportunist collaboration with the Congress and UPA, it is time to reject this opportunist line with all our strength and reaffirm the revolutionary legacy of Indian communists by boldly upholding the interests of the labouring peasantry and advancing the agenda of people’s struggles. The CPI(M)’s model of Left unity has also suffered a major setback. All its partners have accused it of taking them for granted and unilaterally dictating terms.
Naxalbari had signalled the first clear rupture between the revolutionary and opportunist currents of Indian communists and soon CPI(ML) began its historic journey. Today in the wake of Nandigram, the rank-and-file and well-wishers of the Left expect the CPI (ML) to play a decisive role as the rallying centre of the Left movement in the country. We must live up to this expectation and make all-out efforts to fulfil the demands of the situation. We must reassure all our friends that the party of revolutionary martyrs will remain as dedicated as ever in holding high the red banner and marching forward against all odds.
Inquilab Zindabad!
Resolutions Taken at Inquilab Rally
1- This gathering condemns the cold-blooded genocide by CPI (M) cadres and the Left Front government’s police force of peasants protesting against corporate land grab and SEZs in Nandigram. We hold the West Bengal Chief Minister responsible for the massacre and demand that he resign immediately. We demand an impartial enquiry into the massacre to identify the role of the police officials, as well as CPI(M) leaders’ complicity’ and demand punishment for all those found guilty.
2- Burdened by debt and hit by the pro-liberalisation policies of the Central and State Governments of food grains import and refusing to guarantee Minimum Support Prices, farmers are committing suicides in huge numbers especially in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Punjab. While the government are busy cutting agricultural subsidies and refusing to waive debts for suicidal farmers, the same governments are eagerly subsidising corporates and waiving taxes for them under SEZs. SEZs are foreign territory on Indian Soil, where the legal and democratic rights of Indian citizens will be suspended. The colonial Land Acquisition Act 1894 is being used to grab land and evict farmers, and those who resist face batons and bullets— from Kalingagar to Dadri to Nandigram. We demand that the Central and State governments take steps to waive debts, stop imports, ensure Minimum Support Price. We also demand that the SEZ Act 2005 and the Land Acquisition Act 1894 be scrapped immediately.
3- We condemn the hanging of Saddam Hussein as an arrogant act of colonial murder by the imperialist occupier USA, and demand immediate withdrawal of all imperialist troops from Iraq. We condemn the UPA government’s shameless foreign policy of seeking out the imperialist and genocidal embrace of the USA. We demand that the humiliating and anti-national Indo-US Nuke Deal be scrapped and that India develop warmer and more democratic ties and closer cooperation with the nations of Asia and Latin America.
4- This gathering demands an immediate end to the systematic and widespread human rights violations, ‘disappearances’ and fake encounters by armed forces and police in Kashmir. We demand the immediate withdrawal of the Army and scrapping of the AFSPA from the region as a necessary precondition for a political solution to the Kashmir issue.
5- The AFSPA is an Act that gives the Armed Forces impunity to assault and kill ordinary civilians, and is being deployed against the people of the entire North East region. Despite massive movements against this Act in Manipur and Nagaland, and despite the recommendations of the Jeevan Reddy Committee that the Act be scrapped, the UPA Government has refused to scrap the AFSPA. This gathering demands the immediate repeal of the AFSPA.
6- This gathering condemns the abduction and assassination of Comrade Langtuk Phancho, a leading activist in the movement for autonomous statehood in Karbi Anglong and North Cachar Hills’ and in the struggle for rural democracy and rights in these regions. Despite repeated appeals to the highest authorities—President, Prime Minister and Home Minister by concerned citizens, there was shocking apathy and inaction on part of the UPA Government and the Congress Government of Assam. Comrade Langtuk Phancho was left to be killed by the UPDS which is in a ‘ceasefire’ agreement with the Government. This gathering demands autonomous statehood for the hill district of Assam—Karbi Anglong and North Cachar Hills, and punishment for the killers of Comrade Langtuk.
7- One year after the NREGA came into existence, it is clear that its implementation on the ground has betrayed the aspirations of the rural poor for employment, and even against the spirit of the Act itself. The fund allocation itself is highly inadequate and insufficient in comparison with the number of job-card holders. No penalty has been meted out for the panchayat and district administration officials who are misappropriating funds and preventing employment from actually reaching the rural labour. Further, instead of cards and jobs, the rural poor agitating for implementation of NREGA have got false cases and severe repression instead. We demand that all false cases on people struggling for NREGA be withdrawn immediately. We demand that the NREGA be amended to ensure that job-card holders are not forced to apply for jobs, rather the onus of intimating job-card holders about available employment be on the district administration. We also demand universal implementation of NREGA in all districts all over India.
8- The UPA Government is reviving the old Congress slogan of ‘Garibi Hatao’, but in order to project a false picture of liberalisation having reduced poverty, it is removing the poor from the ‘Below Poverty Line’ lists. Further, in the BPL lists of various states, the names of the rich are to be found while the poor are excluded. We demand that all poor families be included in the BPL lists, and under XI Five-Year-Plan, the UPA government put a stop to the attempt to artificially reduce poverty by eliminating the poor from BPL lists.
9- Starvation deaths and hunger are fast becoming a regular feature of the rural countryside all over the country. At such a time, it is criminal and inhuman that the UPA Government is pursuing policies that encourage hoarding of essential commodities and consequent skyrocketing prices of food grains and other essentials. At the same time, the shrinking of the Public Distribution System (PDS) in the name of ‘targeting’ has effectively evicted the poor from the PDS. We demand universalisation of the PDS and immediate steps to check price hike.
10- Migrant workers have been the victims of violent regional chauvinism and police harassment— in Assam, in Mumbai, Punjab and elsewhere. In most cities including the capital city of Delhi, they are repeatedly and forcibly evicted from their slums in the name of ‘beautification’ of the cities. This gathering condemns the assaults on migrant labour and demands that their safety, security and shelter be guaranteed.
11- Despite the repeal of draconian laws like TADA and POTA, prisoners charged under these Acts continue to languish in prisons. 13 comrades of CPI (ML) are in jail (while one comrade died within the jail), convicted under TADA for struggling for the rights of the rural poor. We condemn the use of TADA and POTA against the rural-dalit poor, as well as the discriminatory targeting of minorities and oppressed nationalities under these Acts. We demand that all TADA and POTA detainees be immediately released and the charges against them under these repealed laws be withdrawn.
12- Communal violence by the Sangh Parivar has once again raised its ugly head in Gorakhpur and Bangalore, while communal fascist repression of religious minorities continues unabated in Gujarat. The UPA government has repeatedly refused to act to check the communal forces, rather it has on several occasions resorted to ‘soft’ Hindutva tactics. Taking advantage of the UPA’s soft-pedalling, as well as harnessing the popular resentment against the UPA Government’s anti-people policies of price hike, corporate land grab, etc…, the saffron forces and NDA have had a good showing in recent elections—from Mumbai’s Corporation polls to the Assembly polls of Punjab and Uttarakhand. We demand that the UPA Government respect the anti-communal mandate by implementing the Srikrishna Commission Report regarding Mumbai 1993 riots and punishing the guilty, and also make public the findings of the Liberhans Commission which has investigated the Babri Masjid Demolition.
13- The UPA Government like the NDA Government before it is hell-bent on privatising and commercialising the entire social sector—education, health, social security, power and even basic necessities like water. The ruling establishment’s policy of FDI in retail is endangering the livelihood of scores of small entrepreneurs and shop workers. This rally demands an end to these policies of privatisation of social sector and FDI in retail that are devastating the common people.
14- We condemn the horrific gang-rape and mass murder of a Dalit family at Kherlanji in Maharashtra, the ongoing social boycott against Dalit agrarian labourers in Punjab and UP, the murderous assault on Bant Singh, the burning of homes in Gohana and Jhajjar, and hail the valiant movements against discrimination and feudal oppression of Dalits. We demand stern action against the perpetrators of such atrocities and ensuring of the rights and dignity of Dalits.
15- We condemn the apathy and complicity of the police in the horrific massacre of children in Nithari in Uttar Pradesh and declare that the people of this country will never forgive the killers of Nithari. We condemn the increasing violence against women, be it in the form of rapes, communal violence, state repression, or ‘honour’ killings; the continuing discrimination against women in wages and employment; the refusal of the various Governments to pass the Women’s Bill for 33% Reservation in Parliament, and demand a guarantee of the dignity and political rights of women. We resolve to intensify the movement for the genuine social, economic and political emancipation of women.
Cultural Convergence of resistance at the Inquilab Rally
As a precursor to the 23rd March Inquilab Rally, many cultural troupes arrived in Delhi for celebrating resistance and assertion of the struggling people at a two day All India Cultural Meet on 21-22 March. This two-day assembly of theatre artists, musicians and dance troupes saw performances depicting the struggles, aspirations and hopes of the people. The gathering — called Aaj ke Naam, after Faiz’s well-known song Intesaab that pays tributes to ordinary workers, peasants, rickshawallahs, women and other marginalised section of society—remembered the sacrifices of the martyrs of people’s struggle and celebrated their dreams for a better society. The 21st March evening began with the martyr’s song Karavan Chalta Rahega and Samay ka Pahiya by Hirawal, from Patna. The Paschim Banga Gana Sanskritik Parishad, Jharkhand Jan Sanskriti Manch, Gurusharan Singh, veteran theatre artist from Punjab, along with his team, a dance-drama troupe from Karbi Anglong, Yuvaniti from Ara, JSM team from Begusarai, Sangeeta Gaur and her team from ‘Asmita’ and Sadao Asom Gana Sanskritik Parishad presented their performances. Bant Singh, agrarian labour leader who had to pay for resisting oppression, rendered Sant Ram Udhasi’s songs. ‘Jan Sanskriti Mandali’ teams from coastal Andhra and Srikakulam performed ballets on the life of the martyr’s and rendered ballads and dances in their honour. Manager Pandey, President of Jan Sanskriti Manch addressed the massive audience and the programme was conducted by JSM General Secretary, Pranay Krishna and Uttar Pradesh Secretary Ashutosh Kumar. Ramji Rai, Central Committee member and chief editor of Janmat spoke about the cultural elements of political resistance and the politics of culture. At the Parade Ground, where several thousand people were arriving to participate in the Inquilab rally, several cultural teams joined the people to put up performances. The programme which began early in the evening of 22 March continued till the morning of 23 March
