CPI(ML) HOME Vol.10, No.21 22-28 MAY 2007

The Weekly News Bulletin of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)(Liberation)

U-90, Shakarpur, Delhi 110092. Tel: (91)11-22521067. Fax(91)11-22518248

 
In this Issue

Investigate Terror Targeting of Mosques,
Punish the Unconscionable Police Firing in Hyderabad
Restore Peace, Reassert People’s Movements in Punjab

Andhra Pradesh and Punjab are both emerging centres of people’s resistance – against SEZs, against farmers’ suicides, and against other anti-people economic policies. Undoubtedly, the recent attempts to whip up communal tension in these states are aimed at distorting the people’s struggles.

The targeting of the Mecca Masjid at Hyderabad appear to be part of a larger and more sinister pattern of attacks on mosques – coming as they do after the blasts at Jama Masjid in Delhi and Malegaon in Maharashtra. The police and Governments, rather than ensuring security of the Muslim community, have rather rendered the community even more vulnerable through witch-hunting and firing.

In Hyderabad, it is shocking and unforgivable that the disoriented and panicked crowds outside the mosque, instead of receiving sensitive help in locating their near and dear, were instead subjected to police firing that claimed several lives. It is difficult to imagine police firing on crowds outside a temple following blasts. Clearly the communal bias of the police and State Government led them to treat people in a state of justified shock and anger as criminals rather than as victims.

It is also strange that the same police that lacked the intelligence information required to prevent the blasts, could come up with the name of the outfits responsible for the blasts with suspicious haste, with barely a pretence of investigation! The Sangh Parivar outfits, who given their track record ought to be natural suspects in any such assault on mosques and Muslims, seem to have been absolved of guilt even without an investigation.        

Investigation into the previous blasts have been equally unsatisfactory. Prior to the Malegaon blasts, a blast in a house at Nanded had revealed Sangh activists making bombs, and fake beards and Pathan suits were found on their premises. Despite such suspicious indications of a possible Sangh hand in the blasts, the police insisted from the start that a Muslim fundamentalist outfit was implicated. During investigations, Muslim youth have been picked up and harassed, without any convincing evidence of guilt.

We demand a thoroughgoing national probe into the emerging pattern of terrorist attacks on Muslims and mosques – and punishment for those responsible for the unconscionable police firing in Hyderabad. 

In Punjab, the frenzied conflict between the Dera Sabha Sauda sect and the Sikh orthodoxy has dangerous and explosive potential. History has shown us how the Akali-Nirankari conflict of the late 70s, fanned up by the rival Congress and Akali Dal, had tragic consequences for the people of State. Now once again, Congress and the Akali Dal are stoking the fires of religious sentiment and playing with the fire of fundamentalism and sectarian conflict. The Dera is known to have worked for the Congress in the last elections, and the ruling Akali Dal-BJP alliance too sees the potential for communal mobilization. It is urgent that the people of Punjab refuse to become fodder for such ploys.

2007 is the birth centenary year of Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh. We are confident that the people of Punjab will uphold his legacy of revolutionary anti-imperialism, and of resolutely rebuffing communal chauvinism and religious provocations.

Punjab and neighbouring Haryana are the scene of very significant peasant resistance to the imperialist policies of SEZs and farmers’ suicides, and also of the rural poor’s resistance to feudal assaults on the dignity and rights of Dalits. This movement in both the states stand threatened by the conflict that followed in the wake of the Dera Sacha Sauda controversy. We appeal to the people of Punjab not to allow sectarian provocations or chauvinism to deflect from the people’s movements, and to recognize and rebuff the political vested interests that are cynically seeking to unleash forces that can once again trap Punjab in a spiral of violence.

1857: Then and Now

On May 10, 2007, India’s Parliament held a brief special session to mark the 150th anniversary of 1857, the country’s First War of Independence. Many MPs, including several Ministers, were conspicuously absent, and the meeting did not bother to remember the great martyrs of 1857. But what was even more striking was the President’s choice of this occasion and forum to advocate a two-party system for India in order to tackle the challenge of the proliferation of political parties in the country! Could there be more manifest evidence of the deep disconnect between the great people’s revolt of 1857 and the agenda and vision of the ruling elite of 2007?

 The unease of our rulers with the meaning and spirit of 1857 is also as old as 1857 itself and its reasons are not difficult to understand. 1857 was a massive popular uprising, it was truly India’s first war of independence, but while signalling the rise of Indian nationalism it also revealed the early signs of class realignment in colonial India. Let us just remember who were indifferent and even inimical to 1857 right when it was happening.  India’s budding capitalist class, considerable sections of landlords and most of the princely states, and the emerging ‘renaissance’ intelligentsia of Bengal, the foremost centre of colonial education and indoctrination in 19th century India, were all afraid of 1857 even as half of our soldiers, large sections of peasants and artisans and small traders and a small section of feudal and princely aristocracy closed ranks in a series of rebellions.

 While British colonialists surpassed their own past records of barbarity to crush 1857, they encouraged the sections of Indian society ranged against 1857 to gradually organise themselves. Thus was born the Indian National Congress twenty-eight years after that great people’s revolt, and the British rulers back then were firm in their belief that the Congress would serve as a safety-valve and save ‘British India’ from exploding again on the lines of 1857. Indeed, some half a century later, the Congress was to prove instrumental in facilitating the British game plan of bifurcation of India, which completed the British conquest of 1857. How on earth can the Congress ever feel comfortable with the spirit of 1857? When Manmohan Singh recently thanked Britain for making India modern, it was not a slip of a careless tongue, but a candid comprador confession from a grateful loyal heart.

Manmohan Singh is of course not alone; he has LK Advani as his colonial cousin, if not twin ‘nationalist’ brother, who now invokes Savarkar’s writings on 1857 in a vain attempt to forge some teleological links with that great Indian uprising. But if anything, 1857 remains the strongest refutation of Advani’s entire thesis of communal nationalism. The pseudo-patriotic doctrine of the Sangh brigade, which defines patriotism as an exclusive trait of whoever is born in India and follows a religion which is also born in India – the so-called identity between fatherland and holy land – while followers of any religion originating from any other part of the world are allowed to live in India only as ‘paying guests’, second-grade citizens and voiceless immigrants, falls flat before the united glorious march of the Indian people in 1857! Take any aspect of 1857 and it defies strict religious categorisation, it is impossible to separate what was Hindu about 1857 and what was Muslim.

 The Congress and the BJP, the two self-proclaimed custodians of Indian nationalism who now compete among themselves to curry favour with their American bosses, have no roots in 1857. Their ‘nationalism’ of the comprador and communal varieties emerged historically as an antithesis of that great Indian insurrection. But the spirit and mission of 1857 also kept growing simultaneously; its legacy of popular uprising was not to be lost in the labyrinth of colonial history. The people of India, especially the peasant masses, kept up the tradition of revolts and rebellions against injustice and oppression, responding energetically to every major call of the freedom movement, no matter how much Gandhi rebuked them for their militancy. And in ideological-political terms, the mission of 1857 was carried forward by the Gadar movement and subsequently by Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekhar Azad, Ashfaqulla Khan and their comrades, and this is what laid the true foundation of the communist movement in India.

 It is a remarkable fact of history that while the march of 1857 was on in India with all its popular vigour and militant anti-colonial spirit, Marx and Engels were chronicling that advance of history live from faraway London. They followed that insurrection as keenly as they followed many revolutionary battles across the world throughout their lives, and especially the Paris Commune some years later, and they had absolutely no hesitation in recognising and welcoming the true meaning and great potential of 1857 as an emerging battle for national liberation in the colonial world. It is a tragedy of the Indian communist movement that many of its leaders, ideologues and historians failed to imbibe this communist attitude and analysis and fell prey to the prejudices and ambivalence of colonial historiography. This only emboldened the progeny of the traitors of 1857 to deliver sermons on nationalism to the real heirs of 1857!

 Forty years ago, when Naxalbari happened, it not only resurrected Telengana on the limited terrain of land struggle and radical agrarian reforms. It also challenged the ideological descendants of the traitors of 1857 and tore apart their patriotic pretensions. It forcefully articulated the need to revisit our history and recognise our real national heroes and people’s leaders. It inspired whole new schools of historical studies that have since given us new insights into our past. It armed a whole new generation of communist revolutionaries with the courage and strength of history to oust the rulers from all the positions they have occupied by forcible and fraudulent means. In short, it placed the contemporary agenda of class struggle on the firm grounding of class struggle in the past.

 Today, 150 years after 1857, when the peasants of India fight heroically against the neo-colonial designs of corporate landlordism and the Indian people reassert their historical bonds of shared unity and renew their anti-imperialist quest for freedom, revolutionary communists rededicate themselves to the great revolutionary mission of the Indian people as the true inheritors of 1857. 

Anti-SEZ Campaign

A series of anti-SEZ Conventions were held in various centres in Orissa, Andhra, Tamilnadu and Karnataka, in which CPI(ML) General Secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya participated. A brief report.  

Orissa

“We are ready to be killed but not to part with our land,” these were the words with what the 40 years old  Mrs Pratima Tarai, welcomed the delegates of CPI(ML) Liberation to the infamous POSCO area  on Wednesday. And that was not the only voice in the area. Hundreds of people who had come from Dhinkia, Nuagaon and Gada Kujanga gram panchayats of the coastal Jagatsinghpur district, where a Korean Steel giant, Pohang Steel (POSCO) is threatening to evict entire villages.

On 16 May a delegation of CPI(ML) Liberation, led by the general Secretary Dipankar Bhatacharya, arrived at the entrance of the village Dandasahi. Here a huge bamboo gate has been erected by the people to keep police out. Sankarsan Palai, a local resident of Dhinkia said that “the villagers have erected eight gates like this as a part of their road blockade programme. They have also cut all the connecting roads to these three villages to check the movement of heavy vehicles. People are patrolling twenty four hours all over the area. They blow whistles when they see any outsider inside the area and people gather immediately. Recently two officials of the company who entered the area were kept hostage for around 10 hours.

This is an area once represented by popular CPI leader and former MLA Loknath Chowdhury. The people here have already had a bad brush with eviction in the early 90s, when the Indian oil wanted to acquire land for a refinery. Faced with people’s rejection, the refinery was eventually set up 5 km away.

Inside the villages people showed Comrade Dipankar their ‘pan baraj,’(betel leaf vines), drumstick trees, the fertile land that produces plenty of paddy and green vegetables. They showed the wild Jatropha plants from which they extract juice and earn substantially. All these resources will be no more with them if POSCO takes nearly 4000 acres of land in this area. It also wants to grab land near Jatadhar Muhan (a place where nine rivers’ of the district meet the sea and a place which provides foods and earning to nearly 10,000 fisher folk) to build its own captive port for export of minerals. Though the state government (IDCO) says that a major chunk of the land belongs to the government, the fact is that on this land farmers have their betel leaf vines, paddy land, and vegetable farms. Now the villagers say that if Posco will take this land then they will lose their livelihood without a single pie as compensation, “because land is not in the name of the farmers,” said Mahendra Parida, a social worker of the state.

Hundreds of women gathered at Patnahat Padia where Comrade Dipankar, Abhay Sahu and others addressed a public meeting under the shade of old banyan trees.

In the evening Comrade Dipankar addressed a huge gathering at the historic Shaheed Bhawan of Cuttack city. Nearly a thousand people took part in the anti-SEZ Convention organized by the CPI(ML). In the convention presided over by Mr Khitish Chandra Biswal, the State Secretary of Orissa unit of the CPI(ML), participants included CPI(ML) activist and former MLA Comrade Radhakanta Sethy, as well as eminent citizens of the state like Prof Birendra Nayak (Utkal University), Mr Prafulla Das, hexagenarian freedom fighter and writer, Rajendra Sarangi (Lok Pakhya), Yudhisthir Samantray, Editor, Lal Lahar, Sudhir Pattanaik, Editor, Samadrishti, Prafulla Das, POSCO Birodhi Sangram Samiti, Gananath Patra, and leaders of CPI(ML)ND. Mr Dhanuj, a young Lawyer of Orissa High Court gave a vote of thanks.

Other programmes in Orissa included a Convention at Parlekhamundi in Gajapati district, in which prominent participants included Jagannathan, the secretary of a Srikakulam-based human rights forum, as well as veteran Communist leader Gananath Patra.

Andhra Pradesh

On May 5, a convention was organised at Sundarayya Vigyan Bhavan, Hyderabad with the slogan ‘No To Sez -- Kalinganagr, Nandigram Never Again’. Comrade N Murthy presided over the Convention. Retired Professor of Andhra Agricultural University KR Chowdhury addressed the Convention, at which Comrade Dipankar was the Chief Guest. Others who participated in the convention were Comrades D P Buxi, D Harinath, P Satyanarayana, K Ranadhir, S Swamy and R Nagamani.

On May 7 a Convention was held at Visakhapatnam at Ambedkar Bhavan. Here nearly 800 villages have been demanding Fifth Schedule status, and the leader of this movement, agrarian labour leader Ajay Kumar participated in the Convention. Also, apart from Comrade Dipankar, other participants included P Srirammurty of the APCLC, Comrade Bangar Rao, N.Murthy, M.Malleswar Rao, B.Vasudeva Rao, R.Simhachalam, Y.Arjun Rao, B.Viplav Kumar and K Ratnakumari.   

Tamilnadu

An anti-SEZ Convention was held at Chennai on 18 May (presided over by Com. AS Kumar), on May 19 at Kumbakonam (presided over by Com. Gunasekaran), 20 at Tirunelveli (presided over by Com. Sankarapandian) and 21 at Dharmapuri (presided over by Com. K Govindarajan). Comrade Dipankar as well as CCMs Comrades S Kumaraswamy and Balasundaram addressed these Conventions, joined by activists of workers’ and people’s movements. At these conventions, participants pointed out that SEZs are accompanied by reversal of land reform. Karunanidhi had made a poll-time promise of ensuring two acres of cultivable land for each landless family. Now he pleads that there is not enough land available to deliver on this promise. But while he can’t find land for the landless, he is handing out hundreds of acres for SEZs. Apart from scrapping of SEZs, the Conventions demanded reduction of land ceiling to 5 acres, and redistribution of benami land. Participants at the Tirunelveli Convention included Ganesan of the Forum against Koodamkulam Nuclear Project, C S Mani of the anti-Coke Federation, and Fr.Tilltus of Kanyakumari District Environment Protection movement. 

  Brick Kiln Workers' Struggle for Wages in Punjab

Brick Kiln Workers in many towns of Punjab are on the struggle path under the banner of 'Lal Jhanda Punjab Bhatta Mazdoor Union' affiliated to AICCTU. In Moga district, the union called for a strike on May 1 after the brick kiln owners' association refused any negotiation with the representatives of the thousands of workers in nearly 170 brick kilns. When almost seventy percent of the workers went on strike, the owners' association signed an agreement with a minority union backed by the CPI(M) and tried to break the workers' unity. When this move failed criminal cases were lodged against the District President of the Union and he was arrested of flase charges followed by a heavy deployment of police at all brick kilns. At many places police threatened and even beat up workers on strike. The strike still continued. This was followed by a direct attack by a handful of CPI(M) backed union's goons on CPI(ML) leaders who were holding a meeting in a village. Ironically, the police lodged one more complaint on behalf of those goons against striking union leaders under various criminal sections. One of the leaders named in this second FIR was already lodged in jail. The police also started massive searches to arrest the leaders and tried to spread a reign of terror among the workers. But this move also failed to yield results in the face of the striking workers' resolve. On the contrary, the owners' association itself got divided after fifteen days of struggle and one faction came for negotiations at the DLC office resulting in an agreement with 12 % higher wages amounting to an increase of Rs. 250 per month. While the militant unity of the workers led to the victory, the CPI(M) backed opportunist union totally collapsed.

A similar struggle was fought and won in Barnala district, the only difference here was the owners' backed union was affiliated to NTUI. In Mansa district, almost 90% workers went on strike for almost two weeks. An agreement was also reached in Ropar district in a similar manner. These struggles were started in the first week of April from Ludhiana where nearly 25000 workers went on strike for a week forcing the owners' association to go for an agreement.

Edited, published and printed by S. Bhattacharya for CPI(ML) Liberation from U-90, Shakarpur, Delhi-92; printed at Bol Publication, R-18/2, Ramesh Park, Laxmi Nagar, Delhi-92; Phone:22521067; fax: 22518248, e-mail: mlupdate@cpiml.org, website: www.cpiml.org

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