Farcical Fiats Will End in a Fiasco

“Shiv thakurer aapon deshe, aain-kanoon sarboneshe (the laws are a disaster in the land of Lord Shiva),” wrote Bengal’s greatest satirist poet Sukumar Ray. Of late the high priests of ‘judicial activism’ in India have been working overtime to enrich Shiv thakur’s law manual with more and more arbitrary clauses. Closure of ‘polluting’ industries, eviction of tribal ‘encroachers’ from their traditional habitat, banning of bandhs and strikes, honouring public dissent over the judiciary’s role with prison sentences to save the courts from being held in ‘contempt’ – the list of farcical judicial fiats is getting longer by the day. And now as the biggest annual festival fever of Bengal gripped Kolkata, the city High Court came up with an ‘order’ that would make even Lord Shiva blush.

If the Kolkata High Court is allowed to have its way, there can now be no processions in the city on weekdays between 8 AM and 8 PM. The court has sought to justify this outright ban on processions of the people by citing the prevalent restrictions on the movement of goods and trucks! This blanket ban is accompanied by a loaded rider that is intended to bring additional cheers to the litigation industry. Rally organisers will henceforth have to pay a hefty security deposit while seeking permission for rallies so that compensation could presumably be paid to citizens whose interests are adversely affected by such rallies. And if ‘rally victims’ are denied compensation, they can of course file lawsuits which will have to be disposed of mandatorily within a period of three months. Is this the litigation mafia’s lucrative model of functional Americanisation?

The corporate bosses, the trader lobby and the car-borne ‘middle’ class of Kolkata have of course welcomed this ‘landmark’ judgement. The people at large and political parties, trade unions and other mass organisations have however all opposed this autocratic fiat and resolved to take to the streets to voice their disapproval. The Left Front government has appealed for a judicial review, but a two-member vacation bench of the High Court has refused to stay the order while making concession for ‘religious’ processions. Instead of viewing the Kolkata judgement in the context of growing authoritarian trends, the chairman of the Left Front, Biman Basu has however chosen to trivialise the entire issue by singling out the judge in question (Amitabh Lala) and asking him to leave Kolkata if he could not stomach the ethos of Kolkata!

Biman Basu is at a loss to figure out how somebody who ‘belonged’ to Kolkata could issue such an ‘alien’ verdict. Well, comrade, this is the new Kolkata you have shaped and courted so assiduously over the last quarter century. Day in and day out your leaders and ministers tell the world that Bengal could turn a new leaf only by shedding the ‘baggage’ of revolutionary ideology and mass agitations. They take pride in building union-free ‘free’ trade zones and preaching ‘industrial peace’ to the workers of closed and locked out industries. Your chief minister is the new darling of the corporate world and the upwardly mobile new ‘middle’ class who are going gaga over this ‘revolutionary’ judgement. This is the class basis and real essence of the ‘emerging identity’ of CPI(M)-ruled West Bengal. The chickens of your own reforms are now coming home to roost, comrade! Stop cringing, it is too late to cry foul!

Democracy is government of the people, by the people, for the people. That was the good old dictum of Abraham Lincoln in the early days of capitalism. The era of imperialist globalisation has produced its own new discourse: democracy is governance over the people, beyond the people, against the people! The Indian globalisers are all schooled in this new gospel – they want to replace the vibrance and colour of mass politics with the tyranny and monotony of the electronic and print media. But worldwide, the anti-globalisation anti-war movement has announced an emphatic revival of mass politics. Sanitised debates and empty panel discussions on corporate television channels are paling into insignificance in the face of massive and powerful mass demonstrations. The street has begun to overtake the studio. The attempts to ‘discipline’ Indian democracy and snuff out protests through farcical fiats – judicial, executive or legislative – are bound to end in a fiasco.

Long Live the Glorious Legacy of Comrade Nagbhushan

Five years ago the legendary revolutionary Comrade Nagbhushan Patnaik breathed his last on 9 October, 1998. But the words he reiterated from his death-bed in Chennai “In life and in death, I am meant for the Party and the revolution” ring till date in our ears and will continue to infuse energy and vigour into our souls in our march towards fulfilling his unfinished task.

As Comrade Vinod Mishra recalled in his speech delivered at the funeral of Comrade Nagbhushan Patnaik: Comrade NBP had been sentenced to death in the ’70s. But in the face of powerful protests by democratic and progressive forces throughout the country the President of India was compelled to commute the sentence to life imprisonment. On his part Comrade Nagbhushan never begged mercy of the state. On the contrary, he wrote to the President, “In case anybody happens to plead compassion for me, let it be on record that I’m totally against any such move.” Yet the pressure of democratic forces was so high that the President had to reduce the sentence. While serving life imprisonment he was kept in solitary confinement and subjected to various tortures with an eye to killing him bit by bit. But Nagbhushan refused to die. He carried on his battle. Under the tremendous pressure of democratic opinion, once again a historic decision had to be taken - this time by the Supreme Court. Comrade Nagbhushan was released on indefinite parole. Technically, he was a prisoner till his death. The demand for his release had become the rallying point of the post-Emergency democratic rights movement and gradually Nagbhushan had grown into the conscience of democratic forces.

Way back in 1980 Comrade Vinod Mishra had promptly responded to Comrade Nagbhushan’s fervent appeal for a revolutionary communist unity appearing in Frontier under the title “A Few Questions”. In his warm response Comrade VM had written: “Nagbhushan Patnaik is the name of an Iron Man, of a brave proletarian fighter and a worthy Party leader. And therefore, in spite of his serious sickness which has brought him close to death, he remains a constant source of fear to the enemy.” Responding to Nagbhushan’s call for unity he had written “You can rest assured Unite We Shall”. That was the beginning of the interaction of the reorganised CPI(ML) with Comrade Nagbhushan. And towards the end of his life, Comrade Nagbhushan, while attending the inaugural session of CPI’s 17th Congress, appealed, “Political cooperation among all sections of the Left must become the primary agenda today and this cooperation must now enter a decisive phase of popular political assertion of the united Left. I know, our differences will not go away in one day, but that must not prevent us from marching together with mutual respect and striking together with all our combined strength against our common enemy.”

Comrade Nagbhushan, who always held that “Our Party has a bright future”, was an epitome of struggle, of steadfastness, of dedication and sacrifice, and of unity. On the fifth anniversary of his momentous departure, we pay our homage to this great revolutionary hero and pledge to redouble our efforts to realise his dream.

CPI(ML) Polit Bureau Meeting

The CPI(ML) Polit Bureau met in Kolkata on October 3-5 and took stock of the latest developments in the national situation. We reproduce the major points of deliberations as below:

1. Following the submission of the ASI report and the verdict of the Rae Bareli special court, the Sangh Parivar has intensified its temple campaign. While the Parivar’s internal contradictions and differences have also been aggravated by the differential treatment meted out to Advani and Joshi, all the affiliates of the RSS are at one in their attempt to step up the Hindutva offensive around the issue of the temple. The response of the bourgeois opposition to this campaign is however by and large defensive, the dilemma being most pronounced on the part of the SP in Uttar Pradesh with Mulayam Singh Yadav welcoming the Rae Bareli verdict and refusing to take any initiative to press the charges against Advani. However, we must note that despite the Parivar’s attempts there is little frenzy this time among any section of the masses whether in Uttar Pradesh or the rest of the country on the issue of Ayodhya.

Against this backdrop, the PB has called upon the Party to step up the Save Democracy, Save India campaign to strengthen our propaganda and agitational efforts on the burning demands of the people and counter the BJP’s temple politics with a powerful democratic agenda of the people.

2. The sudden change of guards in Uttar Pradesh has unmistakably affected the balance of political forces in the non-BJP camp. The BJP has been instrumental in dislodging the BSP-BJP coalition government and bringing Mulayam Singh Yadav back to power in Uttar Pradesh. In the process, the party has been successful in saving its own legislators from crossing over to the SP and also in pushing the BSP into its most serious crisis in recent years. While the BJP and SP formally remain in opposite camps, the SP has already begun to adopt the stance of a pro-NDA government like the TDP government in Andhra or the AIADMK regime in TN. The growing political stock of the SP has also posed an implicit challenge to the idea of a Congress-led secular front as advocated by parties like the CPI-CPM, RJD and LJP. Together with the NCP and JD(S), the SP may now well revive the idea of a third front. The recent by-elections and municipal elections in Orissa have also exposed the exaggerated notions of a grand revival of the Congress.

This turn of events has placed us in a favourable situation to conduct a vigorous exposure campaign against both the pro-BJP opportunism of the BSP and SP and the CPI-CPI(M) line of pro-Congress tailism while building a popular campaign in Uttar Pradesh to force the Mulayam Singh government to fulfil its populist promises.

3. The BJP is trying to project the collapse of the WTO’s Cancun summit as a great victory and as the ultimate swadeshi certificate to whitewash the party’s disgraceful pro-US record in terms of both economic and foreign policies. We must make it clear that Cancun has merely managed to avert additional blows and buy some extra time. Not a single measure of the WTO has been reversed or rolled back. Even this has been achieved not by the so-called bargaining strategy of India but by the active opposition put up by the least developed countries of Africa. The Government of India did not even dare raise the basic national demand to secure India’s right to impose effective quantitative and other restrictions to stop or discourage imports that have an adverse impact on India’s domestic industry and agriculture.

While exposing the government’s false claims concerning WTO, we must also sharpen the struggle on the foreign policy front. The visit of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon evoked strong protests among democratic circles all over the country. The policy of a growing partnership between India and Israel is fraught with disastrous implications for peace and security in South Asia. It has already given a jolt to the process of normalisation of Indo-Pak ties and antagonised India’s traditional friends in the Arab world. With the arms race getting intensified, the threat of border-skirmishes between India and Pakistan is also increasing. A government faced with growing popular anger is bound to seek political salvation in a jingoistic climate and the democratic movement must be alert and powerful enough to block such an escape route.

4. Under popular pressure and judicial censure, the government has been forced on the defensive on certain major issues like the trial of some of the perpetrators of the genocide in Gujarat, and disinvestment of public sector oil companies. The government is however trying every possible means to sidetrack this opposition and push through its agenda. Despite the Supreme Court’s express ban on HPCL/BPCL disinvestmnent without parliamentary approval, the government has now declared its intent to privatise the Indian Oil Corporation, one of the biggest profit-making PSUs. The trade unions must go all out to oppose this policy of disinvestment and privatisation and assert their right to collective bargaining and mass strikes.

Judicial verdicts in recent times reflect the conflicting pulls and strong divisions that exist in our polity and society on almost all basic issues concerning the country’s future. Instead of being deterred by adverse judicial pronouncements, the democratic movement must squarely combat autocratic tendencies in every sphere of the state and society.

5. The PB strongly condemned the brutal incident of police firing on tea garden workers in Assam. Tea workers demanding their rightful bonus have been greeted with bullets by the Congress-led government of Assam. While the Congress government seeks to silence the just voice of the tea workers at gunpoint, the pro-Congress INTUC union continues to backstab the workers’ struggle for their livelihood and basic rights. The Assam unit of our Party and the tea workers’ union led by our comrades are carrying on a vigorous campaign against the concerted onslaught on the tea workers of Assam. After a series of successful agitational programmes, the Party and the tea workers’ union are now contemplating a statewide bandh (on 17 October) to press the movement forward.

6. In Bihar, the August 21 bandh has been a great success and the movement against criminalisation of politics and murder of democracy in Bihar has entered a new phase of militant mass assertion. In Darbhanga, the AISA-RYA programme of a black flag demonstration against LK Advani’s visit grew into a sustained popular movement which exposed the anti-democratic character of the Laloo-Rabri regime and eventually succeeded in forcing the government on the backfoot. The conviction of our comrades in Jehanabad under TADA and the invoking of sedition charges on the protesting activists of AISA-RYA in Darbhanga have been condemned widely by the intelligentsia both within and outside Bihar. The PB has congratulated all concerned organisations and individuals on the victory of the Darbhanga movement and called for a still bigger and more powerful mobilisation of the public opinion in defence of democracy.

7. The PB termed the recent verdict issued by a judge of the Kolkata High Court banning demonstrations and rallies in the city during weekdays as an outright mockery and negation of the constitutionally guaranteed fundamental democratic rights of the people. Viewed with the recent Supreme Court pronouncement against state government employees’ right to strike and similar judgements issued by several other courts imposing all sorts of restrictions on the people’s basic rights like the freedom of assembly, freedom of speech and freedom of expression, the Kolkata High Court verdict is symptomatic of a larger trend of judicial despotism and must be countered by every defender of democracy. While welcoming the widespread resentment expressed by almost all Left and democratic forces in West Bengal, the PB has also underlined the complicity of the CPI(M)-led government of West Bengal in promoting an anti-democratic anti-worker climate in the state which is now demanding its pound of flesh from the Left Front Government and the people of West Bengal by imposing increasing restrictions on democracy.

8. The PB described the PWG’s bid to assassinate Chandrababu Naidu as a desperate act of terror detrimental to the basic interests and purpose of the democratic movement. Such acts, however sensational, can never hide the singular failure of the PWG to offer any credible political opposition to the Chandrababu government and its blatantly anti-people policies. Such acts of despair only end up giving a new lease of political life to reactionary politicians while facilitating their repressive designs. The PB has called upon the activists, supporters and well-wishers of the PWG to see through the shortsighted and counter-productive nature of such acts.

On PWG’s Assassination Attempt on Naidu

On Oct 1, the People’s War Group (PWG) attempted in vain to assassinate Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Mr. Chandrababu Naidu through a landmine blast at Tirupati. Though apparently very sensational this is a thoroughly stupid act. Individual acts of terrorism would only weaken the revolutionary movement. And this senseless act isolated from people’s movements is also bound to strengthen white terror and rebound on PWG with several times greater intensity. The ruling classes cannot be overthrown through individual assassination of their leaders in terrorist acts. Such acts have nothing to do with Leninism. Lenin fought uncompromisingly against Socialist-Revolutionaries who were the counterparts of PWG in the then Russia. To quote Lenin: “Because the Socialist-Revolutionaries, by including terrorism in their programme and advocating it in its present-day form as a means of political struggle, are thereby doing the most serious harm to the movement, destroying the indissoluble ties between socialist work and the mass of the revolutionary class. No verbal assurances and vows can disprove the unquestionable fact that present-day terrorism, as practised and advocated by the Socialist-Revolutionaries, is not connected in any way with work among the masses, for the masses, or together with the masses; that the organisation of terroristic acts by the Party distracts our very scanty organisational forces from their difficult and by no means completed task of organising a revolutionary workers’ party; that in practice the terrorism of the Socialist-Revolutionaries is nothing else than single combat, a method that has been wholly condemned by the experience of history.” (Revolutsionnaya Rossiya, No.7, p.4)

Lenin further said: “In their naivete, the Socialist-Revolutionaries do not realise that their predilection for terrorism is causally more intimately linked with the fact that, from the very outset, they have always kept, and still keep, aloof from the working-class movement, without even attempting to become a party of the revolutionary class which is waging its class struggle.” [Revolutionary Adventurism, Vol. 6, LCW, p.187]

“Anarchism is a product of despair. The psychology of the unsettled intellectual or the vagabond and not of the proletarian. Failure to understand the class struggle of the proletariat. Absurd negation of politics in bourgeois society. Failure to understand the role of the organisation and the education of the workers. Panaceas consisting of one-sided, disconnected methods. What has anarchism, at one time dominant in the Romance countries, contributed in recent European history? No doctrine, revolutionary teaching or theory; fragmentation of the working-class movement; complete fiasco in the experiments of the revolutionary movement (Proudhonism, 1871; Bakuninism 1873); subordination of the working class to bourgeois politics in the guise of negation of politics.” [Anarchism and Socialism, Vol.5, LCW, pp.327-328]

Of late, the PWG has been losing several of its comrades in a series of encounters. Many of its members, including some leaders, have been surrendering to the police. In sheer desperation the PWG has resorted to this assassination attempt. But this cannot stem the tide.

Move to Privatise Indian Oil

The NDA Government’s Cabinet Committee on Disinvestment (CCD) met on 3 October 2003 to take the decision to shelve the Privatization of HPCL/BPCL for the time being because of the Supreme Court ruling and instead put the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) on block. With this decision, the whole process has taken a bizarre turn. Newspapers have reported that one of the options being considered is splitting the IOC into smaller units and then selling some portions of it. True to its colours, loss-making refineries are proposed to be foisted on BPCL and HPCL, whereas the cream in the form of Retail Network will be given to favoured corporates at cheap rates. The government has revealed its intentions of disregarding Parliament at all costs even if it means going back on its earlier stand of not selling IOC, ONGC and GAIL. In this way the NDA govt. has shown its contempt for the Parliament and national opinion represented through it.

Reports from UP

The UP State Committee of the CPI(ML) will hold a 'Jan Adhikar Rally' in Lucknow on October 16. The illegal detention and arrest of comrade Ishwar Dayal, who was picked up from his house by Majhgawan police in Chandauli district and sent to jail after putting him to severe torture and implicating falsely under arms act, has been widely condemned.

Comrade Lal Sahab Ram, Party's state Standing Committee member and District Secretary of Balia was attacked by BSP goons in Balia on Sep 30. He was returning after addressing a mass meeting in a nearby dalit locality as a part of the campaign for the October 16 rally. While police is trying to hush up the whole incident, it has revealed the growing frustration among BSP ranks in the region. A demonstration and gherao of thana was held on Oct 4 in protest of this incident.

B R I E F S

Udaipur unit of AIPWA held its first District Conference on Oct 5. The problems facing women, especially the lack of drinking water in the villages and severe unemployment, were highlighted and a programme to fight for these and other demands was decided on.

The Rajasthan Nirman Mazdoor Sangathan afiliated to AICCTU took out a rally of construction workers on Sep 30 in Jaipur to demand the enactment of the central law for construction workers to be implemented at once in Rajasthan.

A memorial meeting was organised by the CPI(ML) to commemorate the martyrdom of Shankar Guha Niyogi on Sep 28 in Bhilai.

CPI(ML) held various programmes during Uttaranchal Bandh called on Oct 2 by Uttarakhand Sanyukta Sangharsh Morcha. A torchlight procession, public meeting and road blockade was organised in Srinagar. Street corner meetings were held in Haldwani while joint demonstrations were held at Ramnagar, Dehradun, Rudrapur and other cities.

Shahabuddin Gang Kills Party Activist in Siwan

The Shahabuddin gang opened indiscriminate firing on Comrades Kamlesh Singh, Achhelal Kushwaha and Naimuddin Ansari when they were passing through Simaria village of Mairwa block in Siwan on a motor bike in the morning of October 2 killing Comrade Kamlesh while other two are struggling for their lives.

Shahabuddin, this time operating from inside the Siwan jail, had earlier conspired to send Comrade Naimuddin, member of Siwan District Committee of CPI(ML) and Mukhia of Gambhirpur panchayat, to jail in a false land-mine case as he fears that the latter may pose a challenge to his 'unchallenged' leadership among minority community.

Party organised statewide protests next day on Oct 3 which witnessed massive participation by the people including the protest that took place at Mairwa of Siwan where many thousands took part.

Bihar State Committee of CPI(ML) has reiterated its demand for transferring notorious Shahabuddin to a jail outside Siwan and to conduct his trial outside Siwan. The Party has said that honest and democratic sections of society will remain under threat till Shahabuddin is not removed from the jail in Siwan. CPI(ML) pays its sincere tributes to martyred comrade Kamlesh Singh and pledges to intensify the movement and to give his murderers a befitting reply.