T HE PONDICHERRY UNIT of the Party organised a convention titled “Pondicherry Needs A Leftward Shift”. The convention was preceded by a fortnight long intensive propaganda. Addressing this convention, Dipankar Bhattacharya strongly condemned the latest communal attack on Muslims in Gujarat. He said that fascism is a major threat to democracy and cultural diversity. He also said that the recent judgments by various courts in the country suggest not ‘judicial activism’ but judicial despotism.
The convention passed resolutions demanding a special assembly session to address workers’ problems, comprehensive legislation for agrarian labourers, local body elections that were not held for more than 30 years and also against ‘Special Economic Zones’ and ‘Free Ports’ where labour laws will not be applicable.
The convention was also addressed by V Shankar, CCM, and party leaders from Pondicherry, as well as Cuddalore and Villupuram districts. The convention was presided over by Balasubramaniam, State Secretary of the Party in Pondicherry.
At Chennai, a convention was organised on the theme “Democratic agenda and the role of the Left”, which was addressed by Dipankar Bhattacharya. Central Committee members S Kumarasami and Balasundaram also addressed the convention, among others, and appealed to fight back the authoritarian Jayalalitha regime. C. Mahendran of CPI and Narayanasami of SUCI also agreed that the left forces should come close on people’s issues and to combat the twin danger of economic reforms and fascist threat. People from different walks of life, especially workers, participated in the convention. Comrades from Tiruvallore and Kanchipuram districts also participated in the convention.
On Nov 5 a convention was held by the Andhra Pradesh unit of the CPI(ML) at Vijaywada on “Democratic Agenda and Role of the Left in Andhra Pradesh”. CPI(ML) General Secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya was the main speaker of the convention.
Party’s AP State Secretary N. Murthy presided over the convention which was also addressed by CPI State Council member Subba Raju, CPI(M) State Committee member Uma Maheshwar Rao, K. Rama of New Democracy, Dr. P. Jaswanth Rao of Kanu Sanyal group, K. Venkateshwar Rao of ML Committee, SUCI State Committee member Subba Reddy and CPI(ML) Central Committee member B. Bangar Rao. More than a thousand people attended the convention. An impressive rally was also held on the day.
Addressing the Convention, Comrade Dipankar Bhattacharya said that the people of the state are fed up with Naidu’s reign of death and deception and are eagerly looking for an opportunity to say ‘good riddance’ to this puppet regime of the World Bank and the Sangh Parivar. Starvation deaths and suicides, encounter killings and lock-up deaths have become the hallmarks of Andhra Pradesh under Naidu’s tenure.
“Naidu’s Vision 2020 has proved to be an out and out Vision 420 for the state with hundreds of farmers under distress being driven to committing suicide by consuming Tic-20", he added.
The Andhra Pradesh unit of CPI(ML) will intensify the people’s movement against the Naidu government’s attempt to dismantle the public distribution system and seek the cooperation of all other Left organizations in the state to confront the Naidu government’s disastrous anti-people agenda with a powerful people’s movement insisting on an immediate democratic agenda of the people. The Party has also appealed to the Left ranks in the state to reject any kind of electoral understanding with the Congress and fight for establishing the Left as a powerful and independent political force vis-à-vis both the BJP-TDP combine and the Congress.
The Orissa unit of the Party held an impressive “Save Democracy rally” held on November 7 at Bhubaneswar and resolved to intensify people’s struggles for a starvation-free, developed Orissa. The rally was addressed by Dipankar Bhattacharya along with Party State Secretary Kshitij Biswal and member of the Central Committee Malleswar Rao.
Comrade Dipankar said in the rally that while the entire KBK region (comprising Kalahandi, Bolangir and Koraput districts) has become internationally notorious as a starvation zone, the BJP-BJD government in Orissa and the NDA government at the Centre remain completely indifferent to the plight of the starving adivasis and rural labourers. The devastating floods this year in Orissa have added to the misery of the people and the governments have failed to ensure even a semblance of rehabilitation for the flood victims.
Attacking the central and state governments’ conspiracy to evict the tribals from forests by describing traditional forest-dwellers as encroachers, he said that the Navin Patnaik government is serving as an accomplice of the BJP in furthering the communal fascist agenda of the RSS. While outfits like the VHP and Bajrang Dal are being given a free hand to carry out their mischievous communal agenda, adivasis and other sections of the rural poor and youth fighting on the issues of land, wages, dignity and democracy are being subjected to indiscriminate harassment and repression.
(Speech delivered by Dipankar Bhattacharya in the convention at Chennai )
Comrades and Friends,
We are now in the midst of a countrywide “Save Democracy - Save India” campaign. This slogan “Save Democracy, Save India” has two parts, and you can hear many people utter the last part: Save India. There are different perceptions about what ails India and accordingly different solutions are bandied about by different people. If one were to ask George Bush, chances are he would say that the CIA has spotted Bin Laden in some corner of India and the only way to save India is to deploy American troops and set up permanent US military bases in India. The RSS says India can only be saved by transforming her into a Hindu Rashtra blessed by Bush and Blair. Arun Shourie wants to save the country by privatising it as soon as possible. The MNCs and their Indian collaborators want to save the country by making more profit at the expense of a labour force that should be cheap and docile. And if you ask some of our judges they would say that the country is not safe till the right to strike or even right to hold rallies and processions is completely done away with.
We too talk about saving India. And we want to save India from all these spurious and disastrous solutions. India cannot survive without democracy and diversity, and hence the first part of our slogan: Save Democracy. Strangle democracy and you strangle India. Promote democracy and you nourish India. Today rulers of all varieties want to restrict and deny democracy, they want us to conform to codes of conduct designed by them, whether in matters of economy or politics, education or culture. We want more democracy for the broad masses of the people so that people can secure and exercise their rights, they can determine their own futures and the future of the country.
Parliamentary democracy in India has crossed fifty years. A lot of change has taken place in these five decades and not all these changes have been for the better. Communal violence has assumed ominous proportions. Not only are riots breaking out with a much increased frequency killing people in much larger numbers, what is more disturbing is that the state machinery is increasingly becoming a partner in these crimes, and political power is passing into the hands of rabidly communal forces. Men like Togadia are now working out a most macabre kind of mathematics. If a person who demolished Babri Masjid and engineered riots that killed more than a thousand people could become the Union Home Minister in six years and a Deputy Prime Minister in another 3 years, if a person responsible for genocide that killed three thousand people in just three days could get reelected to become Chief Minister of a state – Togadia is just calculating the number of people that he must have to kill to become the Prime Minster of India someday. Such cruel, brutal calculations for capturing political power are something new to India and it is essential that we defeat such calculations.
These forces also pose a great threat to India’s independence and sovereignty. Our freedom struggle has a 200 years long glorious history. 1857 saw the first war of independence. Bhagat Singh gave the Indian youth the slogan “Inquilab Zindabad”. Gandhi initiated the Quit India movement. Communists led the heroic struggle of Telengana. But today, we are ruled by forces that do not have any sense of belonging to this chequered history of India’s struggle for independence. Their only role during the anti-colonial struggles was that of collaborators and police informers, looters and arsonists who engineered riots and disrupted the people’s anti-imperialist unity at every available opportunity. They are aliens having no root in our tradition of struggle for independence. And today they are busy mortgaging our hard earned independence to their new-found master, the American Imperialists. There was a time when the British imperialists used to boast that the sun did never set in their empire. Now, George Bush is dreaming of a global American empire and Advani and Vajpayee want India to be reduced to a mere cog in the wheel of this global US empire. The chant “Jai Shri Ram” is only for public consumption, the real mantra is “Jai Shri Bush”, keeping Bush ‘khush’ or happy! The country has to wage a renewed war of independence to thwart this neo-colonial threat.
While the state is happy making more room for the advancing imperial interests, internally it is arming itself to the teeth to crush every voice of dissent. Indian state today is a TADA-POTA state. Only the other day, Delhi High Court acquitted a Delhi University lecturer and a woman who had been booked under POTA in the wake of the December 13, 2001 attack on Parliament on absolutely frivolous charges. Were they not acquitted they could well have been hanged or at any rate spent a whole lifetime behind bars. Already they had spent almost a couple of years before being acquitted. The Raja Bhaiyas of course are rarely booked and invariably released with a change in regime. But what about the ordinary people, radical political activists and people belonging to minority communities, dalits and adivasis, who are condemned to languish in jails for years together despite regime changes? What about the people who are routinely killed in fake encounters and in police custody? Now in Assam, a former Chief Minister has admitted that his government organised secret killings at the behest of the central government.
Then we have the judiciary handing out verdict after verdict that contradict the basic tenets of a functional democracy. During the recent Tamil Nadu government employees’ struggle, the Supreme Court gave a verdict saying the government employees had no moral or ethical right to strike. In metropolitan cities courts order closure of factories and eviction of hawkers and slums endangering the livelihood of millions of people. Adivasis are dubbed encroachers and ordered to be evicted from their traditional dwellings in forest areas. Recently, the Calcutta High Court banned processions between 8 AM and 8 PM on all working days. Do they want us to hold processions during midnight? Is this judicial activism, or sheer judicial despotism? Fascism is fascism even if it is sought to be legislated by Parliament or legitimised by judiciary.
And finally, we have the relentless onslaught of the market. The limits of bourgeois democracy are always decided by the needs of capital, and today big capital is on a rampage. Lincoln had described democracy as government ‘of the people, for the people and by the people’. In the era of globalization, it has become government ‘of the market, for the market and by the market’. And the market, as we all know, is a slave of the rich. In terms of the working people, Indian democracy today is government ‘over the people, beyond the people, against the people’. The economy is systematically robbing the people of their livelihood. In many parts of the country starvation deaths and distress-driven suicides are the order of the day. Look hard beneath the gloss and glamour of IT and you will find the stark reality of starvation and workers and farmers committing suicides by hundreds. Vajpayee had promised to produce ten million jobs a year, he has only produced ten million jokes.
Going by the government’s own statistics, the schemes supposed to provide hundred days of guaranteed employment to the rural poor have not even succeeded generating one additional manday for every agricultural labourer. The public distribution system and most centrally sponsored schemes are being increasingly targeted to reach only the people living below the poverty line. But for the poor of this country even to get identified and recognised as poor is like winning a lottery. The Chandrababu Naidu government had commissioned a survey to identify the poorest of poor. The survey has identified 5 million such people, but the government wants to prune it overnight to 2.5 million.
While the people are being robbed of their livelihood, they are also being banished systematically from the political arena. The role of big money in elections is growing bigger and bigger and the law is sanctifying it in the name of reducing political competition and discouraging ‘non-serious’ elements. Corporate funding has been legalised and made more lucrative with attendant tax exemptions, the ceiling on poll expenditure has virtually been ended and now the government is contemplating doubling the security deposit for candidates. A concerted effort is on to impose an effectively two-party system if only in the form of two coalitions. Black laws and black money are being used to the hilt to politically insulate the system from the intervention of the people.
What do we communists do at such a juncture? The answer is obvious, we must boldly confront the system with our own agenda, the democratic agenda of the people. Let them talk about temple, cow-slaughter and conversion. We must insist on land reforms, right to employment and minimum wages. Livelihood, diversity and democracy are the key themes that we must defend and fight for. If the BJP can grow by systematically pursuing its agenda, why can’t communists do the same? Why can’t we pool the might of the country’s workers, agricultural labourers, poor peasants, students, women and youth on a democratic agenda of the people? The slogan “Save Democracy – Save India” is a slogan of the toiling masses, it is meant to organise the masses on their immediate agenda and use the momentum generated through popular grassroots mobilisation and initiative for a powerful communist intervention in national politics.
If they want to reduce politics to a two-party or a two-coalition affair, and if regional and centrist parties vie among themselves to fit in, we must assert as the real alternative, as the genuine third force, as the voice of the exploited, oppressed and persecuted people. Parties like the TDP and ADMK have clearly shown that they can even be more ruthless than the BJP and the Congress when it comes to curbing democratic rights and implementing pro-rich policies. They have also made it clear that they have absolutely no qualms for hobnobbing with communal forces or even appropriating the communal agenda. Laloo Prasad is already in league with the Congress and his rule in Bihar has become synonymous with limitless loot, criminalisation and systematic murder of democracy. The BSP is paying heavily for its alliance with the BJP and now Mulayam Singh Yadav is also treading the same path, going markedly soft on the BJP.
This is the time when the working people of the country want the Left to assert as a powerful alternative. The red banner of the Left remains the only reliable banner of struggle against communal violence and capitalist onslaught, against corruption and criminalisation, against the endless lies and deception that have become the staple diet of bourgeois politics. But the two old communist parties want to ally with the Congress in the name of checking the BJP. This tactic has just not worked, rather it has proved thoroughly counterproductive – the CPI tried it during the Emergency and the RSS-BJP have had a phenomenal growth since then. Yet no lesson seems to have been learned from this tactical blunder. In Tamil Nadu, there are talks of a grand alliance with the DMK and the Congress, even in Andhra where eight Left parties waged united struggles on a whole range of people’s issues for the last four years, leaders of the CPI and CPM are dying to have electoral adjustment with the Congress.
The argument given is that we are weak and the enemy is too strong. But the time has come to make a merciless review of our experience. Has this opportunist policy made the Left any stronger or the enemy any weaker? If the Congress got weakened, the space was occupied by the BJP and now we are talking about strengthening the Congress to weaken the BJP! How long can the Left go on playing second fiddle? The drive for a powerful intervention and independent assertion has to start here and now. There can be no idle wait for an ideal tomorrow. The weak can grow strong, a small force can become a powerful current, but we must have the will and determination to grow in the first place. The time is ripe for communists to come closer and lead the country and the people out of the present crisis. Let us bring the people and their agenda to the fore. Once the people are on the march, no force on earth can stop them. The people united shall never be defeated.