CPI(ML) HOME Vol.9, No. 39 26 SEP - 2 OCT 2006

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

Bhagat Singh

Birth Centenary Year
28.09.06 - 28.09.07

"We believe that freedom is an undeniable birth-right of all people, that every man has the inalienable right of enjoying the fruits of his labour, and that every nation is indisputably the master of its resources. If any govt. deprives them of these primary rights, it is the right of the people — nay, it is their duty — to destroy that govt. Since the British Govt. is a negation of these principles for which we stand, it is our firm conviction that every effort made, every method adopted to bring about a revolution and to destroy this Govt. is morally justified. We stand for a change, a radical change in the existing order of affairs in social, political and economic spheres, and the complete replacement of the existing order by a new one rendering the exploitation of man by man impossible and thus guaranteeing full liberty to all the people in all the spheres. We feel that unless the whole social order is changed and socialistic society is established, the whole world is in danger of a disastrous catastrophe."

(Statement made before the Special Tribunal, Lahore Conspiracy Case, Lahore, 5 May 1930).

Congress Sheds Crocodile Tears even as Suicides and Blasts Continue to Rock the Country

Addressing a conclave of Chief Ministers of Congress-ruled states at Nainital, Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh have called for greater care and sensitivity in handling the issues of agrarian crisis and terrorism so that peasants and Muslims do not feel alienated. The Congress evidently believes that these are merely a matter of public relations and occasional expression of concern and periodic announcement of certain cosmetic measures will help the party avert the kind of disastrous denouement that befell the earlier ‘reform regimes' headed by Narsimha Rao and Vajpayee. On the eve of the forthcoming round of Assembly elections, the Congress therefore chose the Nainital conclave to launch yet another PR exercise to ‘reassure' the growing army of angry farmers and aggrieved and alienated Muslims. The country has thus been treated to yet another spectacle of speeches and assurances, the only ‘concrete' assurance being a promise to reduce the interest rate charged on cooperative loans advanced to farmers in a few states!

The sheer futility of the exercise was brutally exposed once again by reports coming in from Vidarbha. Even as the Congress High Command and the party's Chief Ministerial brigade were busy confabulating over national security, newspapers reported 11 more suicides from the districts of Buldhana, Yavatmal, Amravati , Wardha, Washim and Akola . This meant 97 suicides in the region in the first three weeks of September alone and 298 suicides since Manmohan Singh's highly publicised visit to Vidarbha and announcement of the great Vidarbha package in July (Hindustan Times, 25 September, 2006)! Maharashtra is the home state of Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar and in Dehradun Sonia Gandhi reassured the whole country that the “agriculture minister is working in an extremely effective manner ... (and) the minister and the PM are doing their best” (The Indian Express, 25 September, 2006).

Evidently, over the last two and a half years the Congress has failed to even scratch the surface of India 's deepening agrarian crisis. In fact, the policies of the Congress-led UPA government have only led to a further aggravation of the crisis. Any serious attempt to stop the suicides should have started with a reversal of the present agricultural policies, a complete moratorium on recovery of past loans, provision of subsidised inputs and easy and adequate interest-free credit, and massive hike in public investment in agriculture. The government does not have the will or courage to do any of that; instead it is busy delivering further blows to agriculture by pursuing the same killer policies much more aggressively, importing food grains at rates way above the support prices and robbing farmers of their lands in the name of creating Special Economic Zones. Along with suicides, starvation deaths are also continuing unabated, testifying to the utter failure of the much publicised National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and ‘Targeted' Public Distribution System.

As for the alienation of the Muslim community (actually the Congress is worried about the growing alienation of the party from the Muslim electorate of which Sonia Gandhi had a first-hand personal experience during her recent post-blast visit to Malegaon), this too is a product of the Congress policies and not the outcome of any isolated incident. The Congress has tagged the UPA's anti-terrorist campaign to the US-led ‘global war on terror' and the Bush brigade continues to demonise Islam in the name of ‘Islamic terrorism' and ‘Islamic fascism'. The so-called Anti-Terrorism Squad in Maharashtra is operating in a fashion that seems to have been copied straight from the American or Western practice of ‘racial profiling' and ‘communal targeting' – harassing, humiliating and terrorising Muslims on every possible pretext. And the police force does not operate in a political vacuum; it obeys the political commands of the ruling establishment. It was Sonia Gandhi who started the business of describing the anti-imperialist anti-Bush protests of the Indian people as an act of ‘Muslim appeasement'. Long before the recent blasts, Muslims in Malegaon have been systematically targeted and persecuted by the state and communal forces for boycotting American goods. Not content with slandering anti-imperialism as Muslim communalism, the UPA government has also gone to the extent of once again subjecting Muslims to the RSS-dictated test of ‘patriotism' by ordering countrywide celebration of a fictitious centenary of Vande Mataram.

The defeat of the NDA in May 2004 was the upshot of an electoral earthquake triggered primarily by the twin phenomena of farmers' suicides and the Gujarat genocide. The BJP had failed to anticipate this earthquake as it was busy ‘carpet-bombing' itself with the propaganda blitzkrieg of India Shining! The Congress is pursuing the same policy-format with a different PR packaging – it has replaced India Shining by Bharat Nirman, moistening this propaganda quite liberally with periodic outpourings of crocodile tears! But truth is not only stranger than fiction; it is also stronger. Vidarbha and Malegaon could always play spoilsport for the crocodile conclave whether in Nainital or Delhi .

Let us Observe Bhagat Singh's Birth Centenary in a Befitting Manner!

Let us Discover the Future of India together with Bhagat Singh!!

The birth centenary year of Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh begins on 28 September, 2006. Today's Indian rulers, the ‘brown sahibs' whom Bhagat Singh knew pretty well, seem to be blissfully ignorant of this fact of history. Busy as they are celebrating a fictitious centenary of Vande Mataram, our rulers also seem to be unaware of the fact that we are currently living in the 150th anniversary year of the Great Rebellion of 1857, India's First War of Independence. We might as well grant them their right to amnesia – after all they have completely abdicated all moral right to pay homage to our great martyrs – as long as we do not allow them to trap us in their conspiracy of silence. Bhagat Singh can be an inspiring icon only for the revolutionary people of India and they shall celebrate his birth centenary to uphold his lustrous revolutionary legacy.

Bhagat Singh's political awakening began at a time when the British colonial rulers had perpetrated the infamous Jallianwalabagh massacre in a barbaric bid to drown the first Gandhian attempt at mass awakening in sheer blood. Yet Gandhi had gone on to withdraw the non-cooperation movement to reprimand the ‘erring' peasants of Chaurichaura in Uttar Pradesh who had answered the British policy of repression by resurrecting the spirit of 1857 and burning down a police outpost. Bhagat Singh had also clearly noted the fact that Gandhi and his ‘ism' consciously discouraged any attempt to politicise the working class. The class character of Gandhism and the Congress – defined by the centrality of the interests of capitalists, traders and landlords and the political marginalisation of the overwhelming majority of Indians, the workers and peasants – was thus quite evident to Bhagat Singh from the very beginning.

Equally evident to him was the growing hobnobbing and integration between Indian capitalists and their dominant foreign partners, and the utter hesitation of the Congress to voice the demand for complete independence. When Bhagat Singh and his comrades raised full-throated slogans for independence and inquilab , most of the Congress leaders were still confined, conceptually and practically, to various legal variants and degrees of colonial slavery, and many including Gandhi openly and repeatedly condemned the revolutionaries. Yet Bhagat Singh never dismissed Gandhi or the Congress, never hesitated to acknowledge their contribution in terms of triggering a mass awakening while joining issue with the Congress leadership over both the substance of freedom and ways of achieving it. In his initial writings, one can see a certain inclination to anarchism and terrorism, but he was quick to recognise and grasp the superior revolutionary essence of Marxism and the absolute indispensability of an organised communist party and communist politics for any real political headway towards independence and socialism.

History did not give Bhagat Singh the opportunity to found the communist party of India, but the draft revolutionary programme he had prepared in the last days of his life and which was published in parts only after his martyrdom must be recognised as the first effective blueprint of a revolutionary communist programme and tactics in the history of Indian communist movement. In sharp contrast to the one-sided and fragmented vision of most of India's national leadership, and the erratic fluctuations of the early communist leadership, Bhagat Singh's writings convey a far-sighted and holistic vision, and a consistent and comprehensive revolutionary approach that are so rare even today.

He was acutely aware of the nuisance and havoc that communalism could play and insisted on strengthening class solidarity as the basis of people's harmony and strict separation of religion from the state in particular and politics in general. At the same time, his sensitive and sharp analytical gaze also pierced through the brutal Indian reality of caste oppression. He did not stop at condemning untouchability, he also exposed the double standards of the so-called reformers and uplifters and most importantly, he issued this clarion call to the socially oppressed: “You are the true proletariat ... Get organised. Arise and revolt against the existing system. ... Reforms in small doses will not give you anything. Bring about a revolution with your social movement and gird your loins for radical political and economic transformation. You are the main base of this country, the real force. Sleeping lions, rise up and rebel!”

Beyond Gandhi and Nehru and defying the Advanis and Manmohans, and the Bushes and Blairs, the future of India is still waiting to be discovered. In the mission of transforming the present and discovering the future, Bhagat Singh remains and will remain most relevant both as a guide and as an inexhaustible source of energy and inspiration for every fighter for genuine freedom and democracy for India and her toiling millions. In the centenary year, let us make concerted efforts to carry Bhagat Singh's ideas and ideals to every nook and corner of our beloved country.

Inquilab zindabad!
Down with imperialism!!
Forward to a Genuinely Free and Democratic People's India !!!

Dipankar Bhattacharya
General Secretary
Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)

CPI(ML) Activists Face Crackdown in UP

With Assembly polls round the corner, a desperate Mulayam Administration has launched an assault on democratic movements led by CPI(ML) activists. In Pilibhit, CPI(ML) CC Member and National VP of AIALA Krishna Adhikari, Advocate Kishan Lal who is a member of the Zila Panchayat, Manohar Lal who is AIALA District President as well as over 100 CPI(ML) activists have been sent to jail on September 20, on a range of serious criminal charges. Their crime? They were leading an agitation for providing BPL cards to the poor. Based on their own survey of corruption and irregularities in issuing BPL cards in 60 villages of Marouri Block, they had submitted a report to the BDO/ SDM demanding BPL cards for all poor families and cancellation of the card illegally issued to those who are not poor. To press for these demands, they began an indefinite dharna on September 14 at Marouri Block HQ. During negotiations, the Administration gave a written assurance to issue BPL cards to the poor families in 20 villages. But it backtracked on this assurance. CPI(ML) and AIALA leaders pressed for its actual implementation in at least 10 villages.

Refusing to respond to dialogue, the Administration resorted to a lathicharge on the protestors, injuring many activists. The first lathi fell on the widow of Narayan Haldar, who had committed suicide of hunger. The charges include various sections of IPC and the Seventh Criminal Law Amendment Act. The Assam Road was blocked on September 23, and an indefinite dharna began on the same day at the District HQ. on 24 September, women under the banner of AIPWA will protest while a State-wide protest of CPI(ML) has been announced to take place on 25 September. CPI(ML) is planning a state-wide protest against the continuing spate of attacks on democratic movements of the rural poor for proper implementation of development schemes.

This brutality triggered widespread protests in the district, and the next day witnessed a militant road blockade at Puranpur town by hundreds of angry people and another hundreds held a protest demonstration at DM office in Pilibhit, demanding immediate release of the arrested people.

CPI(ML) has demanded immediate release of all arrested leaders and withdrawal of cases against them; to issue red cards to all BPL families; and to punish the officials responsible for the brutal lathicharge. Party has also demanded to lift the ban on the movement in Sitapur district, where party leaders were subjected to brutal torture by the police and administration when raising demands of the rural poor, especially the implementation of the NREGS.

REPORTS

One more incident of suicide:

One more suicide would have been prevented if NREGA was implemented in village Basoha Sunah of Hardoi district. Kamlesh ended his life as he was unable to feed his family. He was heavily indebted and his agricultural land was mortgaged. He was not provided the red ration card (Antyodaya card) and there were no foodgrains available in his home at the time of his death, but the authorities 'promptly' issued a back dated red card on 4 September, after his death. A Party team led by State Committee member Ramesh Singh Sengar and Hardoi in-charge Om Prakash visited the family of the deceased on Sept. 4.

Other Briefs:

A dharna was held at Sikandarpur block of Unnao on Sept. 15 by CPI(ML) and AIALA to demand job card, red card, loan waiver, and to end police repression on popular movements.

A three-day dharna was held at Mallawan block HQ of Hardoi district from 18-21 Sept. with the demand to return the land to the peasants acquired in the name of constructing a sugar mill ten years ago, but the mill has not yet built.

A dharna was held by UP Kisan Sangharsh Samiti at Karnalganj block in Gonda district to press for various issues of the peasantry.

CPI(ML)'s Bandh Call in Three WB Districts

CPI(ML) called for 12 hour Bandh at North & South Dinajpur and Malda districts on 20 September with the demand to declare these districts as drought affected. Due to failure of monsoons the peasants are facing a hard time. The LF government is showing an apathetic attitude even in providing 100 days of employment and job cards to the rural poor. The CPI(ML)'s bandh call was a total success.

Party has condemned the state Govt. for arresting of hundreds of activists during the bandh. CPI(ML) demanded adequate compensation to the affected peasants and to implement the NREGS in these districts.

Padayatra at Singur

The CPI(ML) Liberation, Kanu Sanyal faction of CPI (ML) and CPI (ML) ND jointly organised, along with AICCTU, a protest demonstration and padayatra at Singur in protest against the acquisition of agricultural-land by LF govt. in the district of Hooghly on 5 Sept. The padyatra began from Kamarkundu station at noon and marched through many affected villages around Singur. The fear of loosing lands among the scared villagers so acute that they initially surrounded even the marchers suspecting them to be the people came to acquire their lands, but after realising that the march was held to support their cause they offered them full help and support. The leaders of participant organisations and AICCTU delivered speeches at different spots during the march.

Hike in Ministers' Allowances Opposed

CPI(ML) has opposed the Bihar Govt.'s decision to increase the pay and other allowances of ministers and said that in a state where people are facing drought and large-scale starvation further increasing the perks of the most priviledged section is a cruel joke on the people.

Party's Bihar State Secretary Ramjatan Sharma has said that the state government has failed in implementing the welfare and other development schemes meant for the poor in Bihar, one of the most backward state in the country with a very large contingent of unemployed, and fails to rejuvenate the closed industries on the pretext of non-availability of funds and surrenders before the World Bank, this step has only exposed that the issues of good governance and development are not on its agenda.

Seminar by AISA

All India Students' Association organised a seminar on "Bhagat Singh in our times", at Mansa. Prof. Jagmohan Singh, nephew of Shahid Bhagat Singh, spoke as the main speaker and shed light on different aspects of life and thoughts of the martyr. Speakers called upon the students to follow Bhagat Singh's ideology and make effective intervention into the political process in the crisis hit Malwa region of Punjab by giving a concrete shape to the rising discontent among agricultural workers and poor peasantry against the government's anti-people policies. They called for a direct involvement of students in the struggles of the rural poor. Comrade Kanwaljeet Singh, AISA State Secretary Nikka Singh Samaon and many others spoke in the seminar. The seminar was concluded with the cultural performance by the students and singing of revolutionary songs by Iqbal Udasi.

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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