In this Issue
Re-establish Peace, Defend People’s Movements and
Resist the Crackdown on Rural Poor in Punjab
Punjab is burning once again in the flames of sectarian frenzy, sparked off by the murder of a Sikh spiritual figure, the vice-chief of the Dera Sachkand in Vienna. The supporters of the Dera – mostly Dalit Sikhs, are enraged by the murder, which appears to have been perpetrated by a radical Sikh outfit.
Meanwhile, hidden from the eye of the mainstream media, Punjab’s agricultural labourers and rural poor – mostly Dalits – are facing an unprecedented – and continuing –crackdown, with several hundreds, including a large number of women and children, being jailed – in the course of a struggle for NREGA job cards and homestead plots promised by the SAD-BJP State Government. CPI(ML)’s entire state leadership is also behind bars, and Comrade Swapan Mukherjee, General Secretary of the All India Central Council of Trade Unions (AICCTU) was released on 25 May after being in jail for four days. The SAD-BJP Government launched this offensive immediately following the Lok Sabha elections, where the results reflected the disenchantment of the rural poor with the government.
In Punjab, where agriculture is highly mechanised, rural poor often get very few days of employment a month –whereby the failure of the administration to provide NREGA job cards became a major issue. The Akali-BJP Government had moreover reneged on its promise to provide homestead plots for all rural poor and agricultural labourers. Against this denial of basic rights of livelihood and housing, agricultural labourers of Mansa district, led by the Mazdoor Mukti Morcha and CPI(ML), occupied a portion of panchayat/commons land allotted to be leased to workers. One-third of panchayat land is meant for agricultural workers on lease for cultivation – it was this land that they used to build hutments.
This movement for land and work began during the elections, and Akali-BJP Government waited till the elections were over, to begin an all-out crackdown. The agricultural workers had begun a peaceful dharna on 17 May (which is still continuing) and held a massive Rally on 19 May, which put enough pressure on local officials to effect an agreement to ensure job cards and house plots to all within three months. The very next day, hundreds of people attending the dharna were arrested. The ostensible excuse for the arrests was the need to vacate the so-called “illegal occupation” of the panchayat land – but the arrests have continued even after the forcible eviction of the poor from that land, and the demolition of their makeshift homes.
Since then, hundreds – including a very large number of women and children – have been picked up from the dharna site, from raids on their homes and on the Mansa office of the CPI(ML). Women who were in their homes built on the occupied panchayat land bore the brunt of a severe lathicharge. Defying the terror, hundreds continue to come to the dharna spot daily, in a planned way – knowing full well that they will be arrested. Virtually every CPI(ML) activist in the district is being targeted and arrested.
In Punjab, when rich farmers habitually occupy common land, land allotted for waste disposal, etc. the government never lifts a finger against them. It is a shame that the same government, having blatantly broken its promises of housing and livelihood, has unleashed severe repression when poor rural workers are demanding fulfilment of the government’s own promise.
The expanding conflict between one or the other Dera and the Sikh orthodoxy – sparked off in 2007 by the Dera Saccha Sauda controversy and this time by the murder in Vienna – has an important social dimension. The various Deras are sects enjoying the support of a huge mass base of dalit Sikhs – overwhelmingly rural workers. The Sikh orthodoxy usually enjoy upper caste support and are backed politically by the Akali Dal, while some of the Deras are known to support the Congress. This time, a little known radical Sikh outfit, the Khalistan Zindabad Force, has claimed responsibility for the murder. The facts of the murder, however, remain shrouded in mystery. We demand a thorough probe into the murder, and stern punishment for the perpetrators.
The Dera-Akali clashes reflect and express a very real social and economic oppression inflicted on dalit workers by upper caste rich farmers in daily life, and condoned by ruling political forces, the Akali Dal and Congress alike. The religious fundamentalism and frenzied violence unleashed by the Akali-backed dominant social forces on Dera supporters is also highly condemnable. The Congress and Akali both have a vested interest in making sure this conflict is expressed only in terms of religious frenzy and inflamed sectarian passions – the better to suppress the more direct anger, simmering below the surface, at social and economic deprivation.
In the 70s, the Akali-Nirankari conflict fanned up by Congress and Akali Dal, plunged Punjab into an era of tragedy and bloodshed. We appeal to the people, especially the rural poor of Punjab to maintain peace while demanding justice in the case of the Vienna murder, remembering that the fires of religious frenzy can only harm their own struggles for rights and dignity.
We demand an immediate end to the repression, harassment and witch-hunt being unleashed on the rural poor by the Punjab Government, immediate and unconditional release of all arrested activists and leaders of the Mazdoor Mukti Morcha and CPI(ML), and fulfilment of the basic and inalienable demands of agricultural labourers for land, housing and jobs.
Protests against Punjab Arrests
The CPI(ML) Delhi State unit and AICCTU held a protest demonstration at Jantar Mantar on May 25 to protest the ongoing crackdown in Punjab and demand the unconditional release of all arrested leaders and workers. They submitted a memorandum to the Home Minister demanding his intervention to release the arrested activists and end the spree of repression.
The protest was led by CPI(ML) Delhi State Committee member Ravi Rai and AICCTU Secretary Santosh Rai along with many others.
Meanwhile, a delegation consisting of AIALA National President Comrade Rameshwar Prasad, Co-convenor of the All India Kisan Sangharsh Samiti Comrade Prem Singh Gehlawat and CPI(ML)’s Rajasthan State Secretary Comrade Mahendra Choudhary met the Punjab Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal on May 25 to demand the release of arrested CPI(ML) and Mazdoor Mukti Morcha leaders, agricultural workers and women. The delegation was assured that the arrests would end and the arrested would be released. However even after this assurance fresh arrests continue.
AIPWA has condemned the arrest of the agricultural workers in Punjab, including a large number of women and children. Expressing concern over the fact that the children have been separated from their parents and placed in juvenile homes and Nari Niketans, while the parents are scattered in jails in several districts of Punjab, the AIPWA demanded immediate release of all the arrested workers, including women and children.
Excerpts from Political Resolutions
from CC Circular
The Party Central Committee met in Delhi on 24-26 May to review the overall outcome of the 15th Lok Sabha elections and our performance. The meeting also took stock of the situation in India’s neighbourhood, particularly in Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Nepal. CC deliberations and decisions are summarised below.
1) Review of overall poll outcome
i) Defying predictions of a hung Parliament, the Congress and its pre-poll allies managed to win a near majority and easily form government with support from several independents and parties like SP, BSP, RJD etc. Even though the vote share of the Congress increased nationally only by a modest 2%, the Congress managed to win as many as 206 seats, thanks to a favourable division in non-Congress votes. Parties like DMDK, PRP and MNS in Maharashtra that failed to win any seats but polled substantial votes facilitated the victory of Congress and its allies in several seats in TN, AP and Maharashtra respectively. By the same token it should also be recognised that the AUDF was instrumental in ensuring defeat of the Congress in several Assam seats (the AGP-BJP combine won five seats in Assam).
While the Congress and its allies retained the upper hand in almost all Congress/UPA-ruled states (with the sole exception of Jharkhand), gains for the Congress and its pre-poll allies accrued from almost all corners of the country and at the expense of all its major rivals and contenders. The Congress gained significantly at the expense of the BJP/NDA in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Punjab, wrested some thirty additional seats from the CPI(M) and its partners in West Bengal and Kerala, and even won 21 seats in Uttar Pradesh by halting the onward march of parties like the SP and BSP.
In an overall sense, the results therefore indicate a countrywide revival of the Congress and a relative national preference for the Congress and its allies against the backdrop of a deepening economic crisis and growing uncertainty and turbulence in various spheres of our national life as well as our immediate neighbourhood. While the pro-corporate pro-imperialist policies of the UPA government are squarely responsible for the current crisis, the Congress rhetoric of the aam aadmi and measures like NREGA, forest land rights, loan waiver etc. did succeed in containing and even somewhat defusing the mass resentment against the government.
ii) The BJP’s attempt to project LK Advani as a decisive and strong leader failed quite decisively, and the simultaneous projection of Modi and the rise of Varun Gandhi as the latest icon of the BJP variety of hate politics queered the pitch for the BJP and the NDA. Chhattisgarh apart, the NDA’s best performance was registered in Bihar and this must be viewed not so much as a preference for the prospect of an Advani-led NDA government at the Centre as for Nitish Kumar in Patna in contrast to the legacy of the Lalu-Rabri years of misrule and stagnation.
The BJP’s ‘strong leader’ fiasco is part of the BJP’s overall identity crisis – the more it tries to hide its aggressive communal agenda behind a generalised platform of social conservatism, economic liberalisation and tough governance, the more it finds itself confused and torn between its attempted new look and its old and original face. The BJP is also finding it difficult to resolve the issue of second generation leadership and retain its existing allies.
iii) If the NDA suffered a decline, the so-called ‘third’ and ‘fourth’ fronts fared quite poorly. The grand alliances in Tamil Nadu and Andhra failed to click, the CPI(M) and its Left front partners put up their worst ever poll performance, and Mayawati’s ambitious scheme got aborted right in the BSP heartland of UP. Of the three “Fourth Front” parties, only Mulayam Singh’s SP could retain some strength on the basis of a reinforced OBC consolidation while Lalu Prasad and Ram Vilas Paswan were reduced to pale shadows of their past.
The marginalisation of the RJD and LJP in Bihar and the reverses suffered by the SP and BSP in UP point to the advent of a new political phase in these two crucial Hindi belt states. The so-called Mandal-Kamandal momentum seems to have petered out, and with new issues taking centre stage, new patterns of social mobilisation have also begun to take shape. If the Congress is now on a revival trail in UP and Bihar, revolutionary communists can also fight back and march ahead by developing struggles on basic issues and reinforcing the threads of worker-peasant solidarity.
iv) The CPI(M) put up its worst ever electoral performance winning only 16 seats – a steep fall from its highest tally of 40-odd seats in the 14th Lok Sabha and three short of even its 1967 tally when the party was in its formative phase. While no CPI(M) leader is willing to admit the main reason behind the debacle, the whole world knows that the debacle has been propelled by the CPI(M)’s Singur-Nandigram misadventure in West Bengal and the coercive attempt to crush the peasant resistance and larger social protest through massacres, state repression.
Allegations of corruption against the CPI(M) Secretary in Kerala and the protection provided by the national leadership have only further discredited the party in the eyes of not only larger democratic forces outside the CPI(M) fold. Instead of making any corrective intervention in West Bengal and Kerala, the CPI(M) central leadership only defended the blunders with absurd arguments. The election-eve attempt to project a dubious “Third Front” as an alternative only made the CPI(M) further discredited. It failed not only in its own strongholds like West Bengal and Kerala, but also in Tamil Nadu and Andhra where it banked on the strength of its alliance partners.
v) It will be wrong to see the West Bengal result itself as a rejection of the Left and resurgence of the right. In many ways, the West Bengal outcome reflects a huge popular punishment meted out quite deservingly to the ruling CPI(M) for all its accumulated misdeeds. It is significant that the issues of land, livelihood and liberty – central to any meaningful Left agenda – have figured most prominently in West Bengal, and the forces of the Right have had to adopt a largely Left posture and rhetoric to defeat the ruling Left Front.
Yet the overwhelming victory of the Congress-TMC combine has definitely provided the ruling classes with a handle to mount a sharp anti-Left offensive. Armed with a security doctrine that identifies Maoism/Naxalism/Left extremism as the biggest threat to internal security and an electoral outcome which has handed out the worst ever electoral drubbing to the parliamentary left, the ruling classes have launched a comprehensive assault on the Left as a whole.
While mobilising more and more people against the new government on the basic issues of people’s livelihood, democracy, development and dignity, we must resist the anti-Left ideological-political offensive with all our might. In other words, we must boldly uphold the clarion call of our 8th Congress: “people’s resistance, left resurgence.”
2) The CPI(ML) welcomes the belated release on bail of Dr. Binayak Sen, on the order of the Supreme Court. Dr. Binayak Sen’s incarceration in jail on trumped up charges without a shred of evidence, under the draconian Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act, and the denial of bail for two whole years, is a dark chapter for Indian democracy. The granting of bail is a victory for the democratic forces that had been fighting an uphill battle for justice and civil liberties. The CPI(ML) demands that the baseless charges against Dr. Binayak be dropped.
3) The Sri Lankan Government’s war on Tamil people has culminated with the extermination of the top LTTE leadership, including LTTE chief Prabakaran. The killing has been followed by a humiliating display of the slain leader’s body, and a state-sponsored ‘celebration’ which is nothing but a calculated and humiliating assertion of the subjection of the Tamil minority. The CPI(ML) demands UN intervention to ensure that President Rajapakse be tried as a war criminal for the heinous assaults on Tamil civilians. The Sri Lankan President cannot claim that the massacre and continued brutalisation of Tamil civilians is an ‘internal matter.’ We condemn the complicity of the Indian Government in Sri Lanka’s war on Tamils, as also the shameful opportunism of Indian political formations who tried to make unprincipled political capital on the Tamil issue. We also demand the release of Indian human rights activists who were arrested while resisting the army convoys suspected of supplying arms to Sri Lanka. The Tamil struggle for self-determination in Sri Lanka cannot be washed away in a military bloodbath and demands a political solution.
4) The CPI(ML) expresses concern over the fresh crisis for Nepal’s fledgling republic. The basic democratic principle of supremacy of civilian government over the military is crucial to the process of building any republic, and it was on this question that the principled resignation of Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ from the post of Prime Minister has taken place. We hope that the change in government does not weaken the republican resolve and derail the process of republican transition, or allow external forces including India to meddle or effect a backdoor restoration of royal vestiges.
5) The CPI(ML) expresses concern over the situation in the Swat Valley of Pakistan’s autonomous regions, where thousands of civilians are forced to flee in the face of the Pakistani Army’s offensive against the Taliban forces. The re-intensification of the US ‘war on terror’ on Pakistan’s soil is the outcome of the Obama administration’s so-called ‘AfPak’ strategy – a new incarnation of the Bush era policy of shifting the war theatre from already occupied Afghanistan and Iraq towards Pakistan’s tribal territories. The US’ continued meddling and dictation to Afghan and Pakistan Governments only provide more fodder to the fundamentalists. The fight against fundamentalism and terrorism has to be anchored in a powerful rejection and expulsion of the forces of US occupation and meddling in this entire region, and in an assertion of the forces of democracy and sovereignty in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. The CPI(ML) demands that the Indian Government resume dialogue with its Pakistani counterpart, and take a stand against US interference and presence in the region.
6) The CPI(ML) condemns the communal overtones of a recent Supreme Court verdict where a Muslim student’s plea to keep a beard in school was rejected on the grounds that this would amount to ‘Talibanisation.’ The fact that the highest court in the land echoes the communal conflation of Islam itself with fundamentalism or terrorism reveals a deep-seated communal bias and deserves the highest condemnation. Students in Indian schools are as a rule allowed to display markers of Hindu or Sikh identity – there is no cause why a Muslim student should be denied a similar right. The CPI(ML) demands that the Supreme Court heed the student’s review petition and urgently correct this objectionable verdict.
AIPWA Condemns Colonial Attitudes in Corporate Hospitals
The AIPWA has condemned the victimization of nurses in a prominent corporate hospital in the capital, who were forced to resign for speaking in a language other than English. The Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals recently asked two nurses to submit their resignations for speaking in their “native tongue” – Malayalam – inside the hospital premises. The hospital’s nursing superintendent said it was the hospital’s policy that employees must speak, since “We cater to an international clientele…speaking in native languages might jeopardise patient safety; we avoid talking in any language other than English while inside the hospital premises.”
The ‘rule’ smacks of colonial attitudes, which considers the ‘natives’ and their culture to be inferior. The notion that Malayalam could be injurious to patient’s health is laughable. It is an insult to the large number of Malayalam-speaking nurses on whom nursing care in India is largely dependent.
AIPWA demands restoration of the sacked nurses’ jobs, payment of compensation to the victims of discrimination, and penalization of the hospital and its corporate management for the discriminatory and offensive rule they have tried to impose. Corporates seeking to create colonial enclaves within the country must face stern punishment.
On Naxalbari Day,
Resolve to Resist the Assaults on Democracy and Intensify the Revolutionary Struggle of India’s People!
On Naxalbari Day, May 25 this year, ironically, Dr. Binayak Sen, jailed on charges of abetting ‘Naxalism’, was granted bail after two long years. On the same day, in Punjab, the wholesale arrests of agricultural workers struggling for homestead land continued. Meanwhile one of the first steps taken by PM Manmohan Singh in his new tenure has been to introduce harsher centralized measures to tackle terrorism and ‘Naxalism.’
For the democratic forces as well as the revolutionary left, Naxalbari Day this year has been an occasion to intensify the resolve to tackle the growing authoritarianism of the state, resist draconian measures and crackdown on democratic rights and movements of the poor in the name of curbing ‘terror’, and strengthen the struggles of the workers, rural poor and peasants in the face of impending intensification of the neoliberal offensive and suppression of democracy.
|
