Contents

Stand by Bathani Tola in the Battle for a New and Just Bihar 

Nearly 16 years ago Bathani Tola had shocked and shamed the nation as yet another site of a gory massacre in Bihar. An obscure sleepy hamlet in Sahar block of Bhojpur district in Bihar, Bathani Tola experienced a brutal feudal assault on a fateful July afternoon in 1996....Full text

Bihar ‘Centenary’: Official Myth and People’s Reality

Dipankar Bhattacharya

22 March, 2012 marked the first centenary of Bihar as a separate administrative unit. After the British colonial rulers were forced to undo the partition of Bengal, they shifted the capital from Kolkata to Delhi and downsized Bengal by according the status of separate states to Bihar and Odisha. Before quitting India in 1947, the British colonialists of course saw to it that Bengal was partitioned into not just two states but two countries. The march of history and the process of administrative reorganisation have however not stopped with the exit of the British....Full text

Expose and Punish the Private-Public Partnership in Defence Scams

Even as the Army Chief indicated a massive defence corruption scandal, alleging that a retired army officer had offered him a bribe over the purchase of trucks, a massive Defence Expo was underway in New Delhi, with international armaments giants vying for arms deals....Full text

Life Sentence for Rupam Is Life Sentence for Women’s Resistance to Rape

In a gross miscarriage of justice, a special CBI Court in Patna passed a life sentence on Bihar school teacher Rupam Pathak, holding her guilty of culpable homicide of Bihar’s Purnea MLA Raj Kishor Kesri....Full text

Who Is the Real Killer of Comrade Chandrashekhar?

On 23 March this year, a court in Patna passed a sentence in the case of the murder of former JNUSU President Comrade Chandrashekhar, and his fellow CPI(ML) activist Shyam Narain Yadav. The sentence came 15 years after Chandrashekhar and Shyam Narain were shot dead at JP Chowk, Siwan. The court, acting on evidence provided by the CBI investigation, convicted three men - Dhruv Kumar Jaiswal; Sheikh Munna and Illiyas Warsi - for the murder, and sentenced them to life imprisonment....Full text

Justice for Bathani Tola

Massacred by Ranveer Sena in Laloo’s Bihar – Massacred Judicially in Nitish Regime!

After a gap of four years, Jawaharlal Nehru University students voted on March 1 to elect their union, and the verdict could not have been more emphatic in favour of AISA, the flag-bearer of radical student politics in the campus. For the second successive term, AISA candidates swept the central panel. What was more, they all won by a thumping margin with the Presidential candidate polling more than 2000 votes leaving her SFI rival way behind, and for the first time AISA also secured a clear majority in the council, its candidates dominating the three biggest centres accounting for the largest number of students in the campus....Full text

Feature

From Nandigram to Nonadanga : The Change That Never Happened  

The TMC regime came to power in West Bengal with a promise of ‘Poriborton’ (change) from the policies of state repression and eviction of the poor pursued by the erstwhile CPIM-LF Government. But the promise of change is unraveling fast, and all sections of the people in West Bengal are witnessing all-out fascist assaults on democratic rights....Full text

Nonadanga Movement  Changing face of Paribartan

Dwaipayan

“There is no place for poor people in Didi’s London” - Purna Das, victim and protester of KMDA’s eviction drive in Nonadanga.

After 10 months of ‘paribartan’ (meaning change in Bengali), the TMC government has done a volte-face on the issues of land-grab, displacement, and government’s brutal reaction to an anti-eviction movement. In their election manifesto they had promised to build 10 lakh housings for slum dwellers and other downtrodden urban poor. “The evictees will get justice, and social infrastructural support”, read another promise in the same manifesto....Full text

Reading Marx’s Brumaire in Mamata’s Bengal

Arindam Sen

Exactly as we had forewarned before the 2011 assembly elections, the new government in West Bengal has started baring its fangs. In sync with a series of backtrackings and betrayals on electoral promises and an utterly inhuman, irresponsible attitude towards shocking developments like farmers’ suicides, baby deaths in hospitals and growing violence on women (see our August 2011 and March 2012 issues) it is out to unleash wanton attacks on popular struggles and democratic dissent. The recent incident of beating up and midnight arrest of a Jadavpur University professor has unleashed a wave of angry protests throughout the country, but as we have shown elsewhere, the trend started pretty earlier....Full text

Update

Jharkhand State Conference

he fourth Jharkhand State Conference of CPI(ML) was held at Koderma on 23-25 March. The town had been rechristened Comrade Mahendra Singh Nagar, and the Conference venue was named after Comrade Ibn-ul Hasan Basru.....Full text

Message from the CPI(ML) to the 21st Congress of the CPI

Dear comrades,
It is a great pleasure to see the oldest communist party of the country hold its 21st Congress here in Patna and I feel honoured to have this opportunity to address the open session of this important event. Thank you for your comradely invitation. On behalf of the Central Committee and the entire membership of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), I extend warm revolutionary greetings to all of you assembled here and convey our best wishes for the success of the Congress.....Full text

Abductions and Political Degeneration among Maoists in Odisha  

Khitish Biswal

(The abduction episode in Odisha is still unfolding as we go to press; BJD MLA Jina Hikaka is yet to be released, while the two Italian tourist hostages have been released.)

Social transformation calls for an organized revolutionary mass struggle, which is naturally much harder to achieve than the politics of kidnapping and abductions. The Maoists, having little faith in the painstaking task of mass mobilization and mass movements, have for long had a one-sided emphasis on militarized actions. The increasingly common acts of abduction by Maoists are essentially measures to bargain for some temporary relief like release of some comrades. While the abductions are accompanied by lofty rhetoric and some demands on people’s issues, it has been seen time and again, that the negotiations hinge essentially on release of their own cadres from jail....Full text

Cover

The Call of April 22, 2012 :
Intensify the Battle against Corruption and Corporate Offensive!
Launch all-out Preparations for the Party’s 9thCongress!

Recent times have seen a great worldwide upswing in popular struggles and India is surely no exception. The country continues to pulsate with powerful struggles against mega corruption, land acquisition, mining loot,and arrogant, autocratic governance ...Full text