A Terrorising Government Can't Last Long!

For the past five months that the contemptible ordinance POTO has been in force, the country has witnessed countless demonstrations nationwide against this black statute. But the government simply turned a deaf ear to the vox populi. From the day one a minority community was made the target of this obnoxious weapon, and soon the "Maoists" were brought within its range. Malicious intentions of the Government were thus clear from the very beginning and if there was any trace of ambiguity left, the clamping of POTO selectively on "suspected perpetrators" of Godhra carnage but not on those responsible for the genocide in Ahmedabad and elsewhere in Gujarat against the minority community finally clarified it. Whom then Mr. Advani was trying to dupe by pleading in the Rajya Sabha that at least the bona fides of the government should not be questioned?

There were no takers in the Rajya Sabha for Advani's plea and the bill got defeated there. Although subsequently the government pushed through the bill in the joint session extraordinaire of Parliament held on 26 March, debate and the consequent voting proved that the lawmakers were clearly divided, reflecting the divided will of the country on this questionable piece of legislation. In fact the government further exposed its vulnerability to the pressures both from Sangh Parivar as well as from the USA, when it stuck to the fascist preference of arming itself with such a Draconian law on the basis of a so broadly divided polity. Notwithstanding the tall claims of Mr Vajpayee, he reiterated in his brief speech his commitment to the Sangh Parivar, and almost all the defenders of the bill brazenly bore witness to the fact that there was a mounting external pressure to frame such a law.

Not only this precedence does not augur well for the already fragile democracy we have in this country, it strongly confirms our apprehensions that the law will be utilised by the powers that be against their political adversaries and especially the movements of the dissatisfied downtrodden strata of the society. For it is quite clear from the recent budget exercise as well as from the daily pronouncements of various ministries that the government is bent on steamrolling the reform process and the workers, peasants, unemployed youth, even middle class who are finding themselves at the receiving end will soon be left with no choice but to fight back. There should be not the least doubt nurtured regarding the fact that the government which has taken no lessons from its resounding defeat in the recently held assembly elections will be willing to do anything to curb these movements so as to please the domestic moneybags and foreign multinationals.

No sane person would contest the fact that the country is facing the menace of terrorism. And we do acknowledge the fact that the spread of terrorism is detrimental to the cause of popular movements. We have witnessed terrorist attacks on Parliament and Jammu & Kashmir Assembly. But we have also witnessed terrorist attacks in Ayodhya and Orissa Assembly. We have also witnessed terrorism in Ahmedabad, where the number of persons belonging to the minority community killed by Hindutwa terrorists surpassed the number of people died during Kargil conflict. But the BJP-led government is selective in identifying a terrorist. Secondly, the experience of our own country, for example in Punjab, proves that terrorism can be rooted out only with popular support. But the government has closed its door to the option of winning over the people and has instead chosen to try strong arm tactics. This course will only serve to fuel terrorism, it can never extinguish the fire.

And that is why this government has proved itself to be the most destructive regime since independence. It is indeed a terror-producing and terrorising government. And the hidden agenda of the government is to quell the mass movements that are bound to raise their head against its anti-people policies. Well, the people of this country cannot be fooled for long. They have read through your designs, Mr Vajpayee. And be sure, a terrorising government cannot and will not be allowed to last long.

Long Live Com. Tapan Chakravarty

On March 19, Com. Tapan Chakravarty, member of Party's West Bengal State Committee and Secretary of Darjeeling District Committee succumbed to the injuries received in an accident on March 15 while returning from a protest procession held in Siliguri against 'shila pujan'. He was 56.

Com. Tapan joined left politics since his student days in the '60s and was Secretary of Hooghly District BPSF (CPM's student wing). Around Naxalbari uprising he was a member of Tribeni-Magra Zonal Committee of CPI(M) in Hooghly District. After joining CPI(ML) he worked in Durgapur-Raniganj industrial area. He played an important role in building the Party in West Bengal during the setback period, particularly following Com. Charu Mazumdar's martyrdom. In 1977 he was sent to North Bengal area and was inducted in the reorganised Central Committee as an alternate member. Along with Com. Vinod Mishra, he was one of the six comrades encircled by police at Barpathu Jote village adjacent to Siliguri. He was arrested there while trying to save other comrades from police firing. Returning from jail, he resumed work in Darjeeling. He was well versed in painstaking work of organising peasants and tea-workers there and had founded "Tarai Struggling Tea Workers Union" of which, he was acting president till last.

Party CC deeply condoles the demise of this veteran comrade and shares the grief with his family members. Let Com. Tapan's memory inspire us forever!

Nation-wide Anti-POTO Campaign on March 26

Soon as Vajpayee government announced its decision to go for a joint session of Parliament to push through POTO bill following its defeat in the Rajya Sabha, CPI(ML) Central Committee decided to observe Mach 26 as "Anti-POTO Campaign Day". On this day, marches and demonstrations were organised by the Party in all important centres and at several places effigies of POTO, the Prime Minister and the Home Minister were also burnt.

In Delhi, CPI(ML) State Committee staged a "March to Parliament" to launch protest against the Central Govt.'s condemnable move to hold the joint session of Parliament to get an already discredited POTO passed by hook or by crook. Hundreds of marchers were stopped by the police at Parliament Street where a mass meeting was held and effigies of Vajpayee and Advani were burnt. Marchers were led by Party's CC member Swapan Mukherjee and Delhi State Secretary Rajendra Pratholi. Speakers at the meeting held that POTO was but a step to legalise fascist acts being pursued by the BJP-led govt. and it should be resisted by all the forces in the interest of peace, harmony and integrity of the nation. Speakers also included Delhi state committee members VKS Gautam, Sunita, Rajiv Dimri, Santosh Rai and AISA National President Kavita Krishnan.

In Kolkata, a march was taken out from Subodh Mullick square to Esplanade East, where a meeting was held. The march was led by Party State Committee Secretary Kartik Pal and other state leaders. An effigy of Advani was also burnt there. In Bhilai town of Chhattisgarh, a demonstration was held under the leadership of Central Committee member Com. Rajaram and others. The agitators tried to burn an effigy of POTO-Vajpayee, but police forcibly snatched it away.

PUHR Team Visits Gujarat

A 3-member PUHR team consisting of Pranay Krishna, ex-President JNUSU, Shubhra Nagalia, AIPWA leader of U.P. and Arun Khote toured Gujarat from 19 to 25 March on a fact-finding mission into the recent spate of violence. According to their findings, even after 20 days of state-sponsored violence in the aftermath of Godhara killings which has claimed more than 2000 lives in Gujarat, uprooted minorities are too scared to come back home. The terror still persists and despite the fact that the scale of violence at present seems low, the continuous minority bashing by the ruling party, threats being issued to the people running relief camps, the chief minister attending VHP programmes and sustained efforts at engineering riots in those minority dominated areas which remained peaceful during the worst days of violence, the situation can worsen any day.

The team witnessed that the recruitment of the VHP cadres in the police at the level of constables and inspectors, bulk recruitment of VHP and Bajrang Dal cadres in Homeguards, Police Sahayaks and Gram Suraksha Dal has reached a point where these forces take orders directly from the political bosses belonging to VHP/BD and the police bureaucracy fails to command them.

Even after the genocide, the team observed, the police now refuses to write named FIRs against activists and leaders of the ruling party and Sangh outfits and threatens people of dire consequences if they insist. The whole exercise of whitewashing the crime and destroying the evidences is on at a large level. While combined and unnamed FIRs are being registered for the entire area where the minorities have suffered, individual and named FIRs are entertained in the cases of losses suffered by the majority community so that statistical parity of the losses can be established.

In Ahmedabad, the extent of terror is such that despite a Congress-man at the mayor's post, he cannot dare to disburse even that paltry sum at his disposal to the victims. Even an attempt by Congress to organise a meeting to muster relief at a posh hotel in Ahmedabad had to be shelved after the organisers were threatened of mob violence, a few days back. The relief camps are mostly run by the minority institutions or group of individuals with the help of a few NGOs, no help is coming from rest of the country since the looting and burning of vehicles, buses and trucks belonging to the minority community is still on.

CPI(ML) Welcomes NHRC Initiative

CPI(ML) has welcomed the timely intervention of the NHRC into the gross human rights violation in the state of Gujarat. NHRC Chairman, Justice JS Verma has criticized the Narendra Modi government for inaction and the gross inefficacy of the police department in failing to either maintain law and order or containing the violence. Demanding a "comprehensive report" on the issue within 4 or 5 days from the Gujarat government, he has stressed on "restoration of peace and harmony" in the State, and a "fair, impartial and thorough inquiry" needs to be conducted into the development and it ought to be seen that "no distinction between victims on the basis of religion" is made.

A Sharp Indictment

"What the National Human Rights Commission chief, JS Verma, has to say after a visit to the riot hit areas of Gujarat constitutes a stern rebuke to the State administration ... it also amounts to a stinging rebuff to the official claim that normality was restored within 72 hours. Telling indeed is Mr Verma's testimony that three weeks after the gruesome episode he found a pervasive "sense of insecurity" and "fear psychosis" still haunting the people affected by the communal rage, and this surely cannot add up to the 'normality'. Rebuffed by him is not merely the discredited Narendra Modi regime... The snub he has delivered is as much to the Centre which has had little compunction in giving a clean chit to Mr Modi.... There has been a pile of credible evidence to suggest that behind the so-called 'inaction' and 'ineptitude' on the part of the administration was, in most cases, a sinister design aimed at serving the partisan cause to which the political establishment is committed. Nothing else can explain the stark reality that saffron brigades and their associates had a free run for two full days and more, going on a spree of barbaric revenge under the very nose of -- and sometimes with support from -- the guardians of law." (Hindu, 27 March, 2002)

Bhagat Singh and the Metaphor of Revolutionary Resistance

Bhagat Singh's 71st martyrdom day makes us re-live the vision of nationalism that revolutionaries like him had laid down their lives for. The narrow, chauvinistic Hindutva code of nationalistic conduct calls for the posing of revolutionary offensive and at this critical juncture of Indian history, what better metaphor of resistance could we have than the ideals of a visionary like Bhagat Singh! The communal cultural onslaught is eating away at the very secular, democratic edifice of the nation-state and the Gujarat carnage is only an incident in the chain of violence perpetrated and perpetuated by the 'Hindu rashtra' bandwagon from its very inception in the pre-independence years. Forces like the VHP, RSS and Bajrang Dal need to be outlawed as other religious fundamentalist organizations are so that their nuisance value in propagating rabid ideologies can be curbed. The Indian youth has to re-define its role and aim at fostering the spirit of creative cohesion through a secular democratic offensive in the lines of what Bhagat Singh practised and preached.

Dissatisfied with Gandhian ideology, Bhagat Singh in his formative years groped for revolutionary alternatives. Being an avid student of the European revolutionary movement, Bhagat Singh found intellectual mooring in the teachings of Marx and Lenin at a later phase of his life and this is what that transformed him from the political position of revolutionary terrorism to Marxism. He argued for a "radical change" in society and felt that it was "the duty of those who realize it to reorganize society on the socialistic basis" and for it, the "establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat" is necessary (ed. Shiv Verma, Selected Writings of Shaheed Bhagat Singh, New Delhi, 1986, p.74-75). In quite lucid terms, he had defined what revolution is.

"By revolution, we mean that the present order of things, which is based on manifest injustice must change. The peasant who grows corn for all, starves with his family; the weaver who supplies the world market with textile fabrics, has not enough to cover his own and his children's bodies; masons, smiths, and carpenters who raise magnificent palaces, live like pariahs in the slums. The capitalist and exploiters, the parasites of society, squander millions on their whims". [Quoted from a joint statement made by Bhagat Singh and B.K.Dutt in connection to the Assembly Bomb case on 6th June 1929].

It is this comprehensive vision of struggle that defines Bhagat Singh's polemics of revolution and change. Fired with the zeal for a radical alternative, where there any limits to his courage and fearlessness to forge ahead tirelessly to fulfil the role what history demanded of him!

If there any lessons to be drawn from history, if there is any need for a critical evaluation of our own roles, we have to re-orient and re-align ourselves to the demands of the times we live in. With the draconian laws like POTO the democratic space suffers further constriction. The structural adjustment programme and the second generation reforms have led to a total capitulation of the state in the hands of transnational finance capital - the fall-out effects of which could be seen in the suicide of farmers in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, or in the rapid close-down and sell offs of the PSUs or in the informalisation of the organized industrial sector. An interesting parallel of this can be found in the biographical history of Bhagat Singh himself. The HSRA action and the consequent Parliament bombing on 8th April, 1929, when discussion on the Trades Disputes Bill was on, was a planned action of protest against the repressive measures of the British government. "It takes a loud voice to make the deaf hear," said Bhagat Singh quoting the words of a French Anarchist martyr Valliant uttered on a similar occasion to justify the action of HSRA. On behalf of the suffering millions Bhagat Singh in a pamphlet to the nation wrote before the Parliament bombing: "We want to emphasize the lesson often repeated by history that it is easy to kill individuals but you cannot kill ideas. Great empires have crumbled while ideas have survived. The Bourbons and the Czars fell, while revolutions marched triumphantly over their heads. Long Live Revolution."

The logic of communalism and cultural nationalism is a natural counterpart to globalisation and the economic subservience to market forces. With this new kind of colonization that is taking place, is it not time to wage another struggle for independence? And what are the weapons in our arsenal to fight back this neo onslaught of global capital? For a peoples' offensive against transnational finance capital and its cultural logic of communal vendetta, what better metaphor of revolutionary resistance can we have from our own history than the teachings of Saheed Bhagat Singh?

RYA Observes Bhagat Singh's Martyrdom Day

RYA organised a seminar on Bhagat Singh's martyrdom day, March 23 at Ramasray Park in Kanpur on the theme "Bhagat Singh and Communalism". Main speaker Com. Lal Bahadur Singh, Gen. Secy. of RYA asserted that in order to end the menace of communalism Bhagat Singh's ideas of developing class consciousness and separation of politics from religion are very much relevant today. The seminar was also addressed by veteran left leaders Shiv Kumar Mishra and Anant Ram Vajpayee, and Party and mass organisations leaders including Vijay, Hari Singh, Shivani Verma, Prabha Dixit, Vidya Rajwar, etc.

In Lucknow, the martyrdom day was observed by Nirman Mazdoor Union and RYA jointly on March 24. It was devoted to the theme "Challenges of foreign domination and communalism: Bhagat Singh's legacy". Apart from Lal Bahadur, Jan Sanskriti Manch Gen. Secy. Ajay Singh and several Party leaders attended it.

RYA and AISA observed March 16 as statewide protest day against the sad demise of 23 youth during army recruitment test. A dharna was staged in front of UP Assembly to demand high level judicial probe into the incident and proper ex-gratia compensation to the families of the deceased.

AISA-RYA Hold Militant Protest Dharna

On March 14, during the budget session of the Assam Assembly, AISA and RYA jointly organized a militant dharna in front of Assam Assembly on demands related to education, employment and development. Around 300 students and youth from different districts of the state gathered at Ganeshguri Chari Ali near Janata Bhawan, Guwahati and marched towards the Assembly with red placards in hands, shouting slogans. Defying police cordon they crossed the last gate of Dispur and shouted slogans there. They demanded free distribution of text books to the students, filling up the vacant posts in different government departments, withdrawal of anti-people budget, withdrawal of anti people reform committee report. Later they were arrested by police.

Protest demonstration was held in different parts of Assam mainly in Guwahati, (on 9th March) Tinsukia (11th) and Borgang (9th March) demanding ouster of Gujarat Govt., imposing ban on VHP and punishment to culprits of Gujarat riot. Memoranda to the President of India were sent through respective Deputy Commissioner of the said districts.

Dharna in Bhilai

On 9 March a dharna was staged by CPI(ML) at Bhilai Power House, Ambedkar Chowk defying Sec.144 and a memorandum was sent to the President of India. On 14 March, a dharna was staged by AICCTU at Boria Gate of Bhilai Steel Plant protesting anti-labour policies.

Fact-finding Team Visit

A fact-finding team led by Com. Prem Singh, incharge Haryana Party unit visited Loharu town of Bhiwani district where mosques and houses of Muslims were burnt by the Hindutwa brigade. The team found that the police and administration had connived with the rioters and consequently Muslims who had fled have not yet returned. The team demanded that Surendra Jain, leader of Bajrang Dal who had led the attack and justified the act later publicly, must be brought to the book and the guilty officials should also be punished.

Massive Left Demo in Rome

Around 2 million Italians streamed into Rome on 23 March responding the union leaders' calls to protest Silvio Berlusconi's government's reform that would make it easier to fire workers. Central Rome was blocked off to all traffic and there was a heavy police presence as more than 900 buses and 60 trains had brought members of Italy's largest union, the Communist led the CGIL, to the capital. Anti-globalisation protesters too mingled with the unionist and non-unionist marchers. The boulevard lining the river Tiber was a sea of red caps and swirling red flags as the demonstrators marched.

Although the recent killing of a Govt. advisor Biagi by militants had heightened social and political tension, the marchers while condemning terrorism fearlessly rose to defend their rights.

Brazil Peasants Invade President's Farm

Hundreds of peasants with Brazil's Landless Workers Movement invaded a farm owned by President Fernando Henrique Cardoso's family on 23 March seeking land, credit and agrarian reform.

Calling it an act of terrorism, the government ordered army troops to the site to help federal police at the Corrego da Ponte farm in Minas Gerais state Federal police have surrounded the property but the occupiers resisted the attempt to shift them by force. The families have brought enough food with them to last for a month. They said that they occupied the farm after the authorities refused to discuss demands to be given other areas of land and to have electricity and water connected to existing landless settlements. The movement advocates the occupation of unused farmland for poor rural workers in this country of 170 million people, where a handful of rich own the vast majority of arable land.

U.N. Summit Protesters Hit Streets

Protesting against the International Conference on Financing for Development held in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey, the demonstration held on 25 March drew protesters angry about everything from globalization to local land disputes. They carried signs reading "Go Home Yankees," and "Die Puppet Leaders. A student wearing an Uncle Sam mask, who gave his name only as Marcos, said that if there is violence "it will be because the government has provoked it, not the protesters." Mexico sent 3,500 soldiers and police to Monterrey to protect the conference from anti-globalisation protesters.