Save India from Becoming a Strategic Pawn of US Imperialism!

Intensify the Battle for Self-Reliance and Democracy!!

The political emission triggered by the Indo-US nuke deal can now be felt quite clearly. The battle-lines have become sharper and it is time for every communist and every sincere democrat and patriot to stand up and be counted.

The American voice is predictably quite loud not only inside the US and in the IAEA but also right within India....Full text

Bad News for Bush

For the lonely man counting his days in the White House, the fortnight after 9/11 was not a happy one. As if the latest Laden tape was not enough, arch-rival Putin detonated the “dad of all bombs” and arrogant Iran launched a new breed of deadly aircrafts while loyal aide Abe bade adieu following failure of to serve his American patron well enough. ...Full text

‘Ram Setu’: UPA Government’s Calculated Capitulation to Saffron Agenda

The BJP’s covert roll back of its opposition to the Indo-US Nuke Deal had exposed its own surrender on the question of defending the nation’s sovereignty. In the wake of this surrender, the BJP has sought to shore up its sham of ‘nationalism’ by whipping up a storm over the so-called ‘Ram Setu’ bridge....Full text

Crackdown on Journalists: Contempt for Judicial Ethics and Accountability

It is now an established fact that sealing in Delhi has very little to do with planning, unauthorised structures or even efficient retailing. Sealing turns out to have been nothing but a real estate scam, clearing the shops to pave the way for malls. How did neo-liberal capital get this scam going? Very simple.....Full text

Sarvajan Regime Silences Dissent

UP i s in a state of undeclared emergency. The Mayawati Government has banned student union elections on campuses. Students and youth who are on the streets protesting against this ban are having criminal cases slapped on them and are being sent to jail....Full text

Indo-US Nuke Deal: Cleanest, Cheapest, Safest Answer to India’s Energy Needs?

In an attempt to create consent for the Indo-US Nuke Deal, its proponents have launched a concerted campaign to project nuclear energy as the panacea for all India’s energy problems. They make out that scientific good sense is all in favour of the Deal; and that any opposition to the Nuke Deal is merely politically motivated and predetermined by the anti-US-ism of the Left. Liberation takes a closer look to find that there is more to these tall claims than meets the eye....Full text

Learn from Bhagat Singh the Communist Pioneer

Bhagat Singh’s birth centenary year is approaching an end. Throughout the year we have celebrated it -- the highpoints being the 23rd March Delhi rally and the 28th September celebrations -- as part of a broader campaign to observe also the 150th anniversary of India’s first war of independence and the 40th anniversary of Naxalbari uprising. For us it was a campaign to reclaim our history, our country, or freedom, our rights from the clutches of imperialists and their indigenous agent...Full text

Sardar Ajit Singh: Hero of the ‘Pagdi Sambhal Jatta’ Movement

Shaheed Bhagat Singh’s family, which had a rich political heritage of resistance to colonialism, had a deep influence on his development. His great grandfather, Sardar Fateh Singh was one of the valiant Sikhs of Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s army who had fought bravely till the end against the British in the Anglo-Sikh war wages to defend Punjab from imperialist attack....Full text

When the spectre of 1857 haunted Lyallpur…

(Excerpts from Sardar Ajit Singh’s autobiography, Pagdi Samhal Jatta ton Azadi Talak, in which he describes his campaigns among the peasantry. – ed/.)

…Excessive land revenue increase in Rawalpindi districts Doab Beri Act and Colonisation Act provided us ground to arouse public feelings against the British rule in India in the Punjab and to launch a campaign of agitation to exploit these acts for using them against the government...Full text

Brutal colonial butchery paraded as ‘bravery’

In September, a team of retired British Army officers and descendants of British Army officers who suppressed the revolt of 1857 came on a tour of various sites of the 1857 war. It was no private mourning – it was a brazen public attempt to celebrate the British Empire’s ‘victory’ over the ‘mutineers’ of 1857. At Meerut, where the war first broke out, they attempted to erect a plaque in memory of the “bravery and distinguished service” of the 1st Battalion of the 60th King’s Royal Rifle Corps between May 10 and September 20, 1857....Full text

Commemorating 58 Years of the Chinese Revolution

[October 2007 marks the 58th anniversary of the Chinese Revolution. On this occasion, it is refreshing and instructive to read D D Kosambi’s early observations and assessment of the Chinese Revolution, written in 1957. Kosambi took a keen interest in the Chinese revolution and had visited China several times. Kosambi’s positive assessment of the Chinese Revolution contrasts with the hesitation and reluctance of the CPI leadership to recognise, let alone learn from the Chinese experience. Despite the CPI’s stance, there were voices within the CPI and the broader communist movement in India who were keen to see the positive lessons the Chinese revolution might have for India. In Maharashtra, for instance, one of the issues raised by the Lal Nishan Party when it split from the CPI in 1942, apart from opposition to CPI’s decision to oppose the Quit India Movement, was over the assessment of the Chinese Communist movement. The essay below appeared in Exasperating Essays: Exercises in the Dialectical Method, PPH New Delhi, first published 1957.- Ed/.]

On the Revolution in China

No honest and reasonably alert visitor to China can fail to be impressed by the remarkable changes in the country and the people. The material advances shown by the new system since so recent a year as 1952 leap to the eye. New factories, mines, oil fields, steelworks, dams, co-operatives, roads, buses, hospitals, schools, cultural palaces, theatres have sprouted virtually overnight...Full text

Gang Rape in the Name of Combing Out ‘Naxals’

Just a few days after the 60 th anniversary of India’s ‘tryst with destiny’ - on 20 August to be precise - eleven tribal women were raped in Visakha District of Andhra Pradesh. Why does it come as no surprise that the perpetrators were twenty-one policemen from Andhra’s crack anti-naxal squad - the Greyhounds? It comes as even less of a surprise that till now, not one of them has been arrested!...Full text

The Collapse of the Public Health System:Disastrous fallouts in Orissa

The elitist and rootless Chief Minister of Orissa, Mr. Navin Patnaik, is being rated as an ideal CM by corporate houses and MNCs. He is not only known for the heinous killings in Kalinganagar while championing the interest of the Tatas, but also for ensuring the rampant loot of huge mining resources in Orissa, and the exploitation of cheap labour for the MNCs. He has also been instrumental in dismantling essential public services, particularly health and education....Full text

Rally for Food Security and PDS in Delhi

Corruption in the PDS system and erosion of food security for the poor is a burning issue, not just in the rural areas but even in the capital city of Delhi. As part of the Delhi unit’s year-long campaign on the question of Public Distribution System, a big rally and mass meeting against Central Government was held on 19 September 2007....Full text

Unorganized Workers’ Rallies in Tamil Nadu

The government is ready to give enormous tracts of land to corporate houses. But it is not ready to allot even 5 cents of land for the toiling masses to have a foothold.’...Full text

Angry Protests against arrest of popular mass leader and former MLA Comrade Mahbub Alam

The surreptitious abduction and arrest of popular peasant leader and former Barsoi MLA Comrade Mahbub Alam by the Katihar Police, in violation of all legal norms, from a meeting in Kushida Hatia, West Bengal on September 1 has enraged the people of Barsoi....Full text

ASHA Workers’ Conference held in Patna

ASHA women health workers organized to raise their voice against the Government through a conference held in Patna...Full text

Brutal Lathicharge and Molestation of Women at Workers’ Dharna in Rudrapur

Workers of factories under the SIDCUL industrial area (of State Industrial Development Corporation of Uttaranchal Ltd.) were brutally lathicharged on September 18. Women (mostly family members of the workers) who had joined the peaceful dharna were molested; several male policemen would attack women protestors together, tear off their clothes and abuse them....Full text

CPI(ML) Bihar State Cadre Convention in Patna Towards 8th Party Congress

Intensifying the preparations for the 8th Party Congress, scheduled to be held in Kolkata from 10 to 18 December, the Party’s Bihar State Committee organized a state level cadre convention in Patna...Full text

Leading Bolivian Organisers Speak

The struggle in Bolivia has significantly intensified in the last few months. While the Bolivian oligarchy is plotting a coup against President Evo Morales in cahoots with the United States of America (USA), the people have taken to the streets. In the first half of September 2007, 100,000 people from various streams including peasants and indigenous movements converged on Sucre, the judicial capital of Bolivia, for a Social Summit in defence of the Constituent Assembly...Full text