COVER FEATURE

Reassert the Anti-Imperialist and Revolutionary Legacy of 1857, Bhagat Singh and Naxalbari!

Channelise the anger against Nandigram carnage into mass resistance against corporate land grab and state repression!

(The following is an abridged text of CPI(ML) General Secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya's speech at the Inquilab Rally.)

Comrades,

The red wave is here again. From all corners of the country you have reached here defying distance and all sorts of difficulties, repression and terror. You have faced such brutal and barbaric state-sponsored violence in Nandigram. In the hills of Assam cowards have killed our brave leader Comrade Langtuk Phangcho. Yet you have made it to Delhi in such large numbers. Red salute to your revolutionary determination and courage!

Today is a historic day. The martyrdom day of Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev. This year is a historic year – 150 years ago, peasants and soldiers of our country had rebelled against the barbaric British rule and unfurled the flag of freedom. This is the centenary of Bhagat Singh's birth and the 40th anniversary of the great Naxalbari uprising. These are chapters of history that still make our rulers and their imperialist masters shudder in fear, while filling us with indomitable courage and inspiration.

This history is particularly relevant for us at this present juncture. It tells us what great strength and power lies in our peasants to resist the corporate land-grab campaign and massacres like Kalinganagar and Nandigram. It tells us that cutting across religious divisions, the people of India can march in unison to foil every communal conspiracy. We know that today's youth can also follow the ideals of the great role model, Bhagat Singh, and join hands with workers and peasants to wage and win a decisive battle against imperialism. We know that when self-styled communists unmask themselves as the most loyal defenders of the ruling classes and butchers of unarmed peasant women and children, the rural poor and the progressive intelligentsia can reject this line of degeneration with all the contempt it deserves and hold high the red flag and reaffirm the glorious Tebhaga-Telengana-Naxalbari legacy of peasant resistance.

We are meeting here at a time when the rulers are desperately trying to rob us of whatever resources and rights we have. New economic policies have catapulted the Ambani brothers among the richest top twenty individuals in the world, but in terms of human development index India does not even figure among the first 125 countries in the world. Our big capitalists are sitting on top of mountains of profit, but vast areas in our countryside are turning into graveyards. Ratan Tata can shell out Rs. 50,000 crore to buy a steel company in Europe and Kumar Birla can spend Rs. 25,000 crore to buy an aluminium plant in Canada , but our governments do not even spend Rs. 10,000 crore in rural employment programmes even as they talk of providing ‘guaranteed' employment to every rural job-seeker.

The Congress has once again come up with the ‘garibi hataao' slogan and it is being implemented by first statistically limiting the number of the poor and then removing the poor from even those truncated BPL (below poverty line) lists. And all voices of protest are being sought to be silenced by batons and bullets – from Gurgaon to Dadri and Kalinganagar to Nandigram, governance and rule of law have become a euphemism for unmitigated repression and state-sponsored violence. And in states like Kashmir and Manipur, the armed forces have literally been given ‘special powers' to rape and kill at will.

‘Special powers' for armed forces and ‘special economic zones' for big corporate capital have a ‘special' echo in India's foreign policy – strategic partnership with the US complete with an Indo-US nuclear deal. Right in front of our eyes, a key Asian country like Iraq is being systematically destroyed under US occupation and its deposed President has been hanged by a kangaroo court – yet far from uttering a word of protest, Indian rulers are busy jumping on to the bandwagon of Washington's global war on terror and inviting US capital to every corner of our national economy.

We have assembled here today to tell our rulers that they will never be allowed to destroy our country, divide us on communal lines and play with our lives and rights. We will go back from this rally and intensify countrywide struggles on all the basic issues. We will stand firmly by peasants all over the country in their fight for saving their farm lands. The government will have to scrap the SEZ Act and repeal the Land Acquisition Act of 1894. We will intensify the struggle for land reforms, guaranteed employment and higher wages, for social security and subsidised supply of all essential commodities of mass consumption. And we will mobilise the people in ever-larger numbers in all these struggles.

We are meeting here at a time when the entire country is rightly condemning the CPI(M) leadership and the Left Front government of West Bengal for the Nandigram carnage. In this country generations of communists have built up the communist movement through the fight for land and liberty. Agrarian revolution has always been recognised by communists as the axis of our revolutionary quest for a new democratic India . Today the CPI(M) has turned against the interests of the labouring peasantry and it has no hesitation in letting loose the police and hired killers to drown the protesting peasants in rivers of blood.

A similar thing had happened in Naxalbari forty years ago. Naxalbari had challenged the old order of oppression by unleashing the revolutionary initiative of the landless poor. The CPI(M) had then just assumed power in Bengal and it chose to collaborate with the Congress-ruled Centre to crush the Naxalbari rebellion by brute force. Today, Nandigram merely wants to save its land and agriculture, but a CPI(M) in power for three decades is not ready to tolerate any sign of peasant protest or any expression of democratic dissent in support of the peasants. It therefore orders mass slaughter of people who have been voting for the CPI(M) and the CPI in election after election, right down from panchayats to the State Assembly and the Lok Sabha.

Genuine communists all over the country are shocked by this utter ideological derailment and political degeneration. Today when Nandigram has become the disgraceful hallmark of the CPI(M)'s model of ‘Left governance' and its model of ‘movement' is characterised by its opportunist collaboration with the Congress and UPA, it is time to reject this opportunist line with all our strength and reaffirm the revolutionary legacy of Indian communists by boldly upholding the interests of the labouring peasantry and advancing the agenda of people's struggles. The CPI(M)'s model of Left unity has also suffered a major setback. All its partners have accused it of taking them for granted and unilaterally dictating terms.

Naxalbari had signalled the first clear rupture between the revolutionary and opportunist currents of Indian communists and soon CPI(ML) began its historic journey. Today in the wake of Nandigram, the rank-and-file and well-wishers of the Left expect the CPI (ML) to play a decisive role as the rallying centre of the Left movement in the country. We must live up to this expectation and make all-out efforts to fulfil the demands of the situation. We must reassure all our friends that the party of revolutionary martyrs will remain as dedicated as ever in holding high the red banner and marching forward against all odds.

Inquilab Zindabad!