pratirodh

Atal Bihari Vajpayee And The Evolution Of The Indian Right

noreply@blogger.com (दुःखदीन) — Fri, 17 Aug 2018 07:12:00 +0000

Former Prime Minister Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee passed away today.

Vajpayee commanded the greatest stature and prestige among Right-Wing politicians in India. He led the politics of the RSS in the parliamentary arena since the Jan Sangh days through the Janata Party phase to its culmination in the BJP. His flirtations with Gandhian Socialism remain a forgotten phase of BJP history. But it was Vajpayee who was chosen as the governance face of the BJP after the party had emerged as the largest party under Advani’s aggressive Hindutva campaign.

In the memorable phrase used by RSS ideologue Govindacharya to describe him, he was the liberal mask – mukhauta – while Advani represented the BJP’s unvarnished character. He was among the BJP’s most prominent representative in an era when the party needed to mask its communal fascist politics. For allies in the NDA coalition who were squeamish about supporting Sangh ‘hardliners’ like Advani or Modi, Vajpayee’s genial and gentlemanly persona provided the proverbial fig-leaf.

To play the role demanded of him in the era of the first NDA Government, Vajpayee had to soften his own political lexicon. As we hear Modi’s and Amit Shah’s poisonous propaganda about immigrants today trying to communalise the NRC issue, we should remember how Vajpayee made an inflammatory election speech in Assam in 1983, saying, ‘Foreigners have come here; and the Government does nothing. What if they had come into Punjab instead, people would have chopped them into pieces and thrown them away.” Soon after that, 2000 Muslims were massacred at Nellie. The BJP then felt the need to distance itself from that speech. In 1992, Vajpayee was among those strategically picked by the Sangh to leave Ayodhya on the eve of the Babri Masjid Demolition, after giving a speech in which he – always a master of language – hinted in coded language to an audience of kar sevaks that naturally demolition implements were needed because the ‘ground needs to be levelled.’ The roars from the appreciative audience – which went on to demolish the mosque the next day – suggest that his euphemism was understood.

As Prime Minister, Vajpayee obliquely rebuked Modi for failing to uphold ‘rajdharma’ in the Gujarat 2002 communal violence, even as he allowed Modi to continue as Chief Minister and did nothing to ensure safety of Gujarat’s Muslims during and after the violence. He maintained a posture of civility and debate – even as he called for a ‘debate on conversions’ after Christian people faced communal violence at the hands of the Sangh machinery in Gujarat on the pretext of opposition to conversions. In 2004 the Vajpayee-led NDA suffered a comprehensive defeat in the wake of the Gujarat genocide and the collapse of the India Shining fiction.

Today, the BJP, NDA and their Government are in a very different era. No longer is any mask needed – it is Modi and Yogi who make no secret of their communalism, who are now the BJP’s stars. Lynchers can now be garlanded by Ministers, Sangh outfits can embrace a man who burnt a Muslim alive on camera as their hero: the BJP no longer needs any ambiguous-sounding call for a ‘national debate’ on ‘cow slaughter’ or ‘love jehad’. The BJP leaders of Vajpayee’s era, including his colleague who complemented his role in the NDA, Advani, have been summarily put in their place – the ‘advisory’ shelf.

Vajpayee represented the illusion of the Indian ruling classes and rightwing intelligentsia that the BJP could become a conservative rightwing party without a communal fascist core. Long before Vajpayee’s physical demise, that illusion had begun to fade.

Today, Atal Bihari Vajpayee remains a key reference point in India’s rightwing political history; a yardstick that will help us assess the vicious intensity of the current phase of fascist offensive through the continuum and contrast between the Vajpayee era of yesterday and the Modi era of today.

– Issued by CPI(ML) Liberation on 16 August 2018

बाजपेयी और भारतीय दक्षिणपंथ की विकास यात्रा

noreply@blogger.com (दुःखदीन) — Fri, 17 Aug 2018 07:11:00 +0000

पूर्व प्रधानमंत्री श्री अटल बिहारी बाजपेयी का गुरुवार को देहान्‍त हो गया.

भारत में दक्षिणपंथी राजनेताओं में वे सबसे बड़े कद और सर्वाधिक प्रतिष्‍ठा वाले नेता रहे हैं. संसदीय अखाड़े में जनसंघ और जनता पार्टी के दौर से गुजरते हुए भाजपा तक उन्‍होंने राष्‍ट्रीय स्‍वयंसेवक संघ की राजनीति का नेतृत्‍व किया. गांधीवादी समाजवाद के साथ संम्‍बंध का उनका संक्षिप्‍त दौर अब भाजपा के इतिहास में एक भूला बिसरा पन्‍ना बन चुका है. आडवाणी के आक्रामक हिन्‍दुत्‍व वाले अभियान की परिणति में भाजपा के सबसे बड़ा दल बनने के बाद ये बाजपेयी ही थे जिन्‍हें शासन के प्र‍मुख चेहरे के रूप में भाजपा ने चुना था.

आरएसएस के सिद्धांतकार गोविन्‍दाचार्य ने उन्‍हें भाजपा का उदारवादी ‘मुखौटा’ कहा था, जबकि आडवाणी भाजपा का असली चेहरा थे. वे एक ऐसे दौर में भाजपा के सर्व प्रमुख प्रतिनिधि थे जब भाजपा को अपनी साम्‍प्रदायिक फासीवादी राजनीति के लिए एक मुखौटे की जरूरत थी. प्रथम राजग गठबंधन सरकार के सहयोगियों के लिए जिन्‍हें आडवाणी या मोदी जैसे ‘कट्टर’ माने जाने वाले संघियों को समर्थन देने में असुविधा हो सकती थी, बाजपेयी का मुखौटा उनके लिए उपयोगी था.

राजग की पहली सरकार के दौर में उनसे जिस भूमिका की मांग थी उसे निभाने के लिए बाजपेयी को अपनी राजनैतिक भाषा को थोड़ा नरम बनाना पड़ा. आज जब हम मोदी या अमित शाह द्वारा एनआरसी के सवाल पर आप्रवासियों के बारे में जहरीले प्रचार को सुनते हैं तो हमें 1983 में असम में एक चुनावी भाषण में बाजपेयी के उस वक्‍तव्‍य को भी नहीं भूलना चाहिए जिसमें उन्‍होंने कहा था ‘‘विदेशी यहां घुस आये हैं और सरकार कुछ नहीं करती. अगर वे पंजाब में घुसे होते तो लोगों ने उनके टुकड़े-टुकड़े करके बिखरा दिये होते.’’ ठीक उसके बाद ही असम के नेल्‍ली में 2000 मुसलमानों का जनसंहार किया गया था. 1992 में बाजपेयी उन नेताओं में थे जो संघ की रणनीति के अनुरूप बाबरी मस्जिद विध्‍वंस की पूर्व संध्‍या पर ही अयोध्‍या छोड़ कर दिल्‍ली आ गये थे. अयोध्‍या छोड़ने से पहले बाजपेयी ने इशारों वाली भाषा में – वे निस्‍संदेह भाषण देने की कला के दिग्‍गज थे- कारसेवकों से कहा था कि उनके लिए विध्‍वंस के औजारों की जरूरत होना बिल्‍कुल स्‍वाभाविक है क्‍योंकि ‘जमीन को समतल करना जरूरी है’. इस भाषण के बाद श्रोताओं की उन्‍मादी गड़गड़ाहट से उसी क्षण स्‍पष्‍ट हो गया था कि उनका इशारा वे समझ गये हैं – अगले दिन कारसेवकों ने बाबरी मस्जिद को बाकायदा समतल कर दिया था.

प्रधानमंत्री के रूप में बाजपेयी ने गुजरात में 2002 में हुई साम्‍प्रदायिक हिंसा के लिए मोदी को राजधर्म निभाने की ‘नसीहत’ दी थी. पर साथ ही उन्‍होंने मोदी को मुख्‍यमंत्री की कुर्सी पर बने रहने दिया और गुजरात के मुसलमानों की दंगों के दौरान और उसके बाद सुरक्षा के लिए कुछ भी नहीं किया. वे शिष्‍टाचार और बहस की हिमायत करते थे; पर गुजरात में धर्म परिवर्तन का विरोध करने के बहाने संघ द्वारा ईसाइयों के विरुद्ध की गई साम्‍प्रदायिक हिंसा के बाद उन्‍होंने ‘धर्म परिवर्तन पर बहस’ का आवाहन किया था. गुजरात जनसंहार, और इण्डिया शाइनिंग के जुमले के धराशायी होने के बाद 2004 में बाजपेयी नेतृत्‍व वाले राजग को भारी पराजय मिली.

आज भाजपा, राजग और उनकी सरकार एक बिल्‍कुल ही दूसरे दौर में हैं. अब उन्‍हें किसी मुखौटे की जरूरत नहीं रह गई है – भाजपा के दो स्‍टार प्रचारक मोदी और योगी अपने साम्‍प्रदायिक मंसूबों को छुपा कर नहीं रखते हैं. मंत्रियों द्वारा आज भीड़-हत्‍यारों को हार पहनाये जाते हैं, कैमरे के सामने एक मुसलमान को जिन्‍दा जलाने वाले को संघ के संगठन अपना नायक कहने में नहीं हिचकिचाते. ऐसी घटनाओं के बाद भाजपा को अब ‘गौ हत्‍या’ और ‘लव जेहाद’ पर घुमा-फिरा कर यह कहने की जरूरत नहीं रह गई है कि ‘राष्‍ट्रीय बहस’ चलनी चाहिए. आडवाणी समेत, जो बाजपेयी दौर में राजग के भीतर उनके पूरक की भूमिका में थे, उस दौर के भाजपा नेता ‘मार्गदर्शक मण्‍डल’ में भेजे जा चुके हैं.

भारत के शासक वर्गों और दक्षिणपंथी बुद्धिजीवियों की उस वैचारिक मरीचिका के प्रतिनिधि बाजपेयी रहे जिसके अनुसार भाजपा बगैर फासीवादी कोर के एक नरम दक्षिणपंथी पार्टी बन सकती है. बाजपेयी जी के देहान्‍त से बहुत पहले ही यह मरीचिका धुंधली हो गयी थी.

भारतीय दक्षिणपंथ के राजनीतिक इतिहास के लिए आज अटल बिहारी बाजपेयी एक महत्‍वपूर्ण संदर्भबिन्‍दु हैं, एक ऐसा पैमाना जिससे हमें कल के बाजपेयी युग और आज के मोदी के दौर के बीच की निरंतरता और फर्क को समझ कर वर्तमान फासीवादी हमले की तीव्रता को मापने में मदद मिलती है.

- भाकपा(माले) लिबरेशन

16 अगस्‍त 2018

भारत में घटने के बदले बढ़ रहा है कुपोषण

noreply@blogger.com (दुःखदीन) — Sun, 09 Jul 2017 13:15:00 +0000

बाल विकास के मामले में भारत अब भी दूसरे देशों के मुकाबले काफी पिछड़ा हुआ है। सरकारी योजनाओं पर करोड़ों खर्च के बावजूद देश में कुपोषण की समस्या गंभीर बनी हुई है। पूरी दुनिया के बच्चों के स्वास्थ्य, विकास, सुरक्षा और अधिकारों पर काम करने वाले संयुक्त राष्ट्र बाल कोष (यूनिसेफ) ने अब भारत से कुपोषण की समस्या के खात्मे के लिए अलख जगाई है। इसी सिलसिले में पिछले दिनों फरीदाबाद में यूनिसेफ की ओर से तीन दिवसीय वर्कशॉप आयोजित हुई। उस दौरान विशेष तौर पर भारत भेजे गए यूनिसेफ के कंसल्टेंट रॉयस्टन मार्टिन से रमेश ठाकुर ने बातचीत की। पेश हैं मुख्य अंश:

• भारत में कुपोषण की समस्या कितनी गंभीर है? इस पर आप की राय क्या है?

यूनिसेफ की रिपोर्ट इस बारे में बिल्कुल स्पष्ट रूप में कहती है कि हालात बेहद गंभीर हैं। भारत में कुपोषित बच्चों की संख्या घटने की जगह बढ़ रही है। आदिवासी समुदाय व ग्रामीण क्षेत्रों में टीकाकरण की स्थिति चिंताजनक है। हिंदुस्तान में जन्म से पांच साल तक के बच्चों को वे सभी जरूरी टीके मुहैया नहीं कराए जाते जिनसे विभिन्न बीमारियों को रोका जाता है। यूनिसेफ की ताजा रिपोर्ट में कहा गया है कि भारत अपने बच्चों को पोषण मुहैया कराने के मामले में बांग्लादेश और कांगो से भी पीछे है। इस संबंध में स्वास्थ्य मंत्रालय को गंभीर होने की आवश्यकता है। टीकाकरण को लेकर भारत सरकार को आंगनबाड़ी या आशा वर्करों पर ही पूरी तरह निर्भर नहीं रहना चाहिए। पोलियो की तरह कुपोषण के लिए भी जनजागरण की जरूरत है।

• आपकी नजर में हिंदुस्तान में कुपोषण की मुख्य वजह क्या है?

कुपोषण और भुखमरी गरीबी से जुड़ी हुई चीजें है। विश्व स्तर पर लाख प्रयासों के बावजूद गरीबी, कुपोषण और भुखमरी में कमी नहीं आई। यह रोग लगातार बढ़ता ही गया। इसका एक कारण कारण अन्न की बर्बादी भी है। गरीबी और भूख की समस्या का निदान खोजने और जागरूकता बढ़ाने का प्रयास किया तो जाता है लेकिन सिर्फ कागजों में। यह बहुत जरूरी है कि हम सब भोजन की अहमियत समझें और इसे किसी भी सूरत में बर्बाद न करें। आधी दुनिया आज भी अपनी मूलभूत आवश्यकताएं पूरी करने की चुनौती से जूझ रही है और काफी हद तक भुखमरी की शिकार है। वैश्विक समाज के संतुलित विकास के लिए यह आवश्यक है कि हर व्यक्ति को संतुलित भोजन की इतनी मात्रा मिले कि वह कुपोषण के दायरे से बाहर निकल कर एक स्वस्थ जीवन जी सके। इसके लिए जरूरी है कि विश्व में खाद्यान्न का उत्पादन भी पर्याप्त मात्रा में हो।

• टीकाकरण जागरूकता को लेकर यूनिसेफ की भारत में क्या योजना है?

यूनिसेफ पिछले 70 वर्षों से भारत में यहां की सरकारों के साथ मिलकर काम कर रहा है। यहां के बच्चे अपने अधिकारों से पूरी तरह से वंचित हैं। जन्म से पहले और जन्म के बाद बच्चों को मिलने वाले टीके उनका मौलिक अधिकार हैं। सभी बच्चों का टीकाकरण सही समय पर हो इसके लिए यूनिसेफ की ओर से भारत में जागरूकता वर्कशॉप का आयोजन किया जा रहा है। यूनिसेफ की नई रिपोर्ट के मुताबिक पांच साल से कम की उम्र में दम तोड़ देने वाले सबसे ज्याादा बच्चे भारत के हैं। हमारे शरीर में टीके की महत्ता का अंदाजा कम होती शिशु मृत्यु दर से लगाया जा सकता है। टीकाकरण को लेकर जागरूकता फैलाने के लिए हमने फरीदाबाद में एक वर्कशॉप का आयोजन किया है जिसमें कुछ लोगों को प्रशिक्षित कर उन्हें टीकाकरण की जिम्मेदारी सौंपी है। भारत में यूनिसेफ अपने स्तर पर टीकाकरण कराना चाहता है।

• मगर टीकाकरण को ही लेकर भारत सरकार ने भी इंद्रधनुष योजना की शुरुआत की है...

25 दिसंबर, 2014 को शुरू किए गए मिशन इंद्रधनुष में 2020 तक 90 फीसद बच्चों को टीकाकरण के दायरे में लाने का लक्ष्य है। निःसंदेह योजना बहुत अच्छी है। लेकिन क्या इस पर ठीक से अमल हो पा रहा है/ शायद नहीं। स्वास्थ्य मंत्रालय से हमने इस बारे में जानकारी मांगी, पर नहीं दी गई। भारत में बच्चों के अधिकारों और उनकी सुरक्षा के लिए यूनिसेफ ने बड़ी योजना बनाई है। हमारी टीम ने पिछले साल तक टीके की 2.5 अरब खुराक खरीद कर करीब सौ देशों में पांच साल से कम उम्र के बच्चों तक पहुंचाया है। इन प्रयासों की बदौलत यूनिसेफ दुनिया में बच्चों के लिए टीकों का सबसे बड़ा खरीदार बन गया है।

• लेकिन भारत सरकार देश में बच्चों की स्थिति पर यूनिसेफ की रिपोर्ट से ज्यादा इत्तफाक नहीं रखती। सरकार का मानना है कि भारत में स्थिति नियंत्रण में है। क्या कहेंगे?

सरकारी अमला इस तल्ख हकीकत को स्वीकार करके उसका हल खोजने के बजाय आंकड़ों की बाजीगरी से जमीनी हकीकत को झुठलाने में ज्यादा रुचि लेता है। बावजूद इसके, यूनिसेफ किसी सरकार पर कोई आरोप नहीं लगा रहा। पूरे संसार में आज भी हर साल करीब 15 लाख बच्चों की मौत उन बीमारियों से होती है जिनकी रोकथाम करने वाले टीके बाजार में उपलब्ध हैं। भारत में भी ऐसी रिपोर्टे हैं कि टीका उपलब्ध होने के बावजूद बच्चे टीके से वंचित रहते हैं। टीकाकरण से डिप्थीरिया, खसरा, काली खांसी, निमोनिया, पोलियो, रोटावायरस दस्त, रूबेला और टिटनस जैसी लगभग 25 तरह की बीमारियों से बचा जा सकता है। भारत सरकार को थोड़ा गंभीर होने की जरूरत है।

(नवभारत टाइम्स संपादकीय पेज से साभार)

Obama Gets Re-Elected with Reduced Majority

noreply@blogger.com (दुःखदीन) — Tue, 17 Sep 2013 10:47:00 +0000

FOUR YEARS of Obama’s presidentship was nothing more than a continuation of the rule of his Republican predecessor, Bush. Though a major part of the US forces in Iraq was withdrawn as he had assured, it was almost compensated with the deployment of large forces and drones in Afghanistan and to Afghan-Pak border. Obama has repeatedly proved that he is no way less belligerent than Bush with the bloody intervention in Libya, manipulations in Egypt and West Asia where the Arab Spring had challenged the comprador regimes, through the threats against the

Iranian and Syrian regimes and through the hegemonic policies around the world.
He could not do anything to reduce the cascading consequences of the crisis of the global finance capital system which has led to change of governments in majority of the governments in capitalist countries, especially in Europe. He could not do anything to lessen the economic dissatisfaction and unemployment sweeping across US also. Rather, under his regime the differences between the Democrats and Republicans further disappeared. The continuing similarity in approach to all basic imperialist hegemonic policies between them became more glaring during last four years. So the presidential race between Obama and Republican Romney became practically a non-event as reflected in the debates between the two, which was less serious than those organized in schools.
So the re-election of Obama is also a non-event, another typical election result under the bourgeois democracies where no basic issues ever become a point of contention. Though he has promised to do many things to better the living conditions of the people of US, he has not proposed any changes in the economic policies which has led to the ever intensifying crises faced by the global imperialist system. So these promises shall remain almost totally unfulfilled. At the same time, in order to prove his credentials as a staunch advocate of Pax-Americana, during his second term he may prove as more belligerent than Bush. to transfer the burden of the US crisis to the shoulders of world people, by even resorting to aggressions against Syria or Iran or any other country depicted as the ‘centre of evil’ by the US and comprador propaganda machine, as Iraq and others were depicted earlier. His administration shall also try to intensify the trade war with China and provoke conflicts around China in the Asian region. The possibility for sharpening of the rivalry between US and China is also more. The way prime minister Manmohan Singh has lauded r-election of Obama, there are all possibilities for more subservience of the comprador regime of India to the US imperialists also. So the re-election of Obama will only enthuse compradors like Manmohan Singh. The working class and the oppressed peoples of the world have nothing to get enthused by it.

Anti-Caste Movement Launched

noreply@blogger.com (दुःखदीन) — Tue, 17 Sep 2013 10:05:00 +0000

The two day seminar on various aspects of the beginning, present condition and problems confronting the annihilation of the caste system started well with the Inaugural Session at 10 am to 01 pm on 20th April at Garhwal Bhawan, New

Delhi, with over hundred delegates from different organizations coming from different states participating. Inaugurating the Seminar and Convention, com. K.N.Ramachandran, General Secretary of the CPI(ML), called for coordinating the efforts at all India and South Asian level to launch a powerful anti-caste movement in the present context when the caste system, a unique and heinous specific characteristics of this region has taken more barbarous and vicious forms under the neo-liberal offensive by the imperialists and their lackeys. While evaluating the experience of the movement from the days of the renaissance movement, he called developing the theoretical understanding and practice according to present conditions when the caste divisions has spread to all religions and are increasingly utilized to perpetuate the reactionary ruling system. It is in this context the significance of the joint move initiated by the CPI (ML), NDPI, Anti-Caste Forum of Delhi and AINUS-Mulpravah to launch the Anti-Caste Movement by forming a preparatory committee and organizing the two day Seminar to be followed by Anti-Caste Convention on 22nd April to be seen. He called for a dedicated, determined and united effort by all like minded organizations to launch this joint movement with the perspective of annihilation of the very caste system itself in order to serve the intensification of the revolutionary advance towards people’s democracy and socialism. Com. Arun Maji, General Secretary of NDPI, presided the inaugural session while com. Mrityunjay of ANF welcomed the leading comrades from different organizations and delegates.
The session was addressed by comrades D.Prempati from NDPI, Thakur Kanal pf Mulpravah, Jaiprakash of ACF, P.J. James of CPI(ML), Aloke Mukherji of CPI(ML)-Janasakthi, Venketeswar Rao of MLC-AP, Arjun Prasad Singh of PDFI, N.T.Desai from Gujarat, Anand Acharya of Daffodam, Partha Sarkar of CCI-Bihar , Kusum of Students for Resistance and Digambar Upadhyay of Desh-Videsh Patrika. While touching on various aspects of the caste system and the growing danger posed by it, all comrades appreciated this timely initiative and called for launching a powerful anti-caste movement at the earliest.
The successful inaugural session was followed by the First Session of the Seminar on: Caste, Class and Patriarchy and Caste, State and Imperialism, on which papers from comrades Aloke Mukherji, Sarmistha Chowdhry and P.J. James were presented followed by a lively discussion on the relation between caste and class and how imperialist intervention from the colonial times to present neo-colonial days intensified the caste divisions, conflicts and caste-based oppression and plunder. This session was presided by com. Brij Bihari of CPI(ML), co-convener of the Preparatory Committee.
In the second session of the Seminar on Political Parties, Caste Based Parties/ Organizations and NGOs on Caste Question, from 9 am to -1 pm on 21st April, papers were presented by comrades Brilbihari, Alok Mukherjee and Thakur Khanal. I t was presided by com. Jaiprakash. Once again this session also witnessed active discussion which led to the orientation that the anti-caste movement should keep the NGOs, ruling class parties and all those who compromise with the ruling class parties.
In the third and last session of the Seminar on Caste, land relations, mode of production and way to annihilation of the caste system papers on various aspects of this subject were presented by comrades Budhesh, P.J.James for R. Manasayya, Umakat for Anand Phadke, Arjun Prasad Singh, Kumar Sanjay, Thomas Mathew and for Krantikari Lok Adhikar Sanghatan and Jati Virodhi Andolan. There was an active debate on mode of production prevailing in the country and on the approach towards annihilation of the caste system. As more than 20 organizations and a large number of progressive individuals committed to annihilation of the caste system actively participated with the attendance in the Seminar reaching more than 150, the debate on the various subjects provoked heated but healthy discussion and this final Session concluded by 07 pm creating enthusiasm among the participants. The Seminar concluded with enthusiastic slogans pledging to intensify the struggle for the annihilation of the caste system starting with resistance to all forms of caste based oppression and exploitation.
The Anti-Caste Convention on 22nd April started at 10 am with about 50 delegates representing more than 20 organizations participating. The Discussion on the draft Proposal for building Anti-Caste Movement was actively discussed. The Preparatory Committee agreed to develop the draft including all positive suggestions and amendments put forward by the delegates in the meeting which will be sent to all participating organizations by 15th May to be finalized in the 10th June meeting of the All India Coordination Committee of the Anti-Caste Movement which was constituted in the Convention. The Convention unanimously decided to launch the Anti-Caste Movement with the objective of annihilation of the caste system. The long term and short term programs including the campaign programs shall be discussed and decided by the 10th June Meeting. Campaigns against caste based oppression and exploitation, caste discrimination, untouchability in all forms, superstitions etc , campaigns in support of struggles for revolutionary land reforms based on ‘land to the tiller’, launching of necessary publications including the publication of the papers presented in the Seminar etc shall be taken up. Apart from the four members of the Preparatory Committee, thirteen more organizations expressed their readiness to become part of the movement and the All India Coordination Committee was formed including all of them, while three organizations informed that they will inform their readiness after discussing in their organizations. The participating organizations agreed to contact other like minded organizations at all India level to include them also in the Movement. The Convention adopted three Resolutions on : the Brahmanical order of the Patna High Court setting free the killers of Bethani Tola, against the slum demolitions in Kolkata, Delhi and other places and on other atrocities against dalits, adivadis and other oppressed sections. The Convention concluded in a militant atmosphere with the raising of slogans pledging to carry forward the movement till the caste system is abolished.

Healthcare : For Patients or Profits?

noreply@blogger.com (दुःखदीन) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 17:24:00 +0000

(In India, the UPA Government is on the point of enacting a National Health Bill that promises health care ‘reforms’. Will the ‘reforms’ ensure access to healthcare of a uniform standard to all, irrespective of wealth? Or will it take us a step closer to a US model of health care – with the poor left at the mercy of the markets? Interestingly, the US too has recently passed a Health Reform Bill after intense debate. Padma looks at the recently enacted US Health Bill to see if it offers any substantial ‘reform’ of the privatised and unequal healthcare model prevailing in the US; while Indira Chakravarthi looks at the UPA’s Draft National Health Bill to assess its agenda. Dr. Debashish Dutta, President, People’s Health (a W Bengal-based organisation of health activists) shares the experience of the impact of privatisation of health care in West Bengal. While history is witness to the fact that existing healthcare provisions have been won by Left-led working class struggles the world over, and countries like Cuba, in spite of their economic weakness still boast better healthcare than their mighty superpower neighbour, it is unfortunate that West Bengal ruled by the CPI(M)-led Left Front has also capitulated to the neoliberal prescriptions as have most other Indian states.- Ed/-)

Draft National Health Bill:
Health ‘Reforms’ for Markets, Not People

Indira Chakravarti

In January 2009 the Indian government put out a working draft of a National Health Bill “to provide for protection and fulfilment of rights in relation to health and wellbeing, health equity and justice, including those related to all the underlying determinants of health as well as health care; and for achieving the goal of health for all; and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto”.
The Preamble admits that the persisting inequities, denials and violations in the matter of health in the country are cause for concern to all. Hence “the need to mandate, enable, authorize, guide, and where necessary, limit, health policies and actions (emphasis added) by all the relevant stake-holders, including the communities/ civil society, within a rights based approach, so as to lead to actualization of right to health for all”. According to the draft Bill there is also the need to (i) set a broad legal framework for providing essential public health services and functions, ……… principally through the State and local public health agencies, in collaboration with others in the public health system….; (ii) to have an overarching legal framework and a common set of standards, norms and values to facilitate the Governments’ stewardship of private health sector as a partner (emphasis added).
Section II lays down several general obligations of central and state governments towards realization of health and well-being. Such as the general obligation “to provide free and universal1 access to health care services and ensure that there shall not be any denial of health care directly or indirectly, to anyone, by any health care service provider, public or private….”. However, the nature of healthcare services that will be “free and universal” is not clearly defined anywhere. If one were to go by the mention in the preamble of the need for a legal framework to provide essential healthcare services, one can assume that it will be only these essential services that will be free and universal. This is an area of grave concern, because the Bill will end up institutionalizing, making irreversible the ideological shift that has taken place since the 1980s in provision of welfare services by the state. There has been a shift from provision by the state of comprehensive health services2 through a publicly funded, universal, national health system, to free provision of just a minimum, essential package of services only to those identified as poor by the state.

Historical Significance of Comprehensive Healthcare & National Health Services

Since the early 20th century, when medical care began to be provided as a public service on a large-scale3, the provision of such services has been characterized by a debate on the role of the state - should it directly provide the services, or should it only finance the provision, or should it only address the needs of the poor leaving the rest to be provided for by the private providers? Only few countries (such as UK and Cuba) adopted the National Health Service (NHS) system of the then Soviet Union – namely direct provision by the state of as complete a health service as possible4. It is the working class struggles of the late 19th-early 20th century that made profound contributions towards this concept of collective responsibility for provision of basic welfare services, and especially regarding the provision of health services.
In India, around 1947 many eminent doctors and planners for health were influenced by the Soviet and British National Health Systems (NHS). The oft-quoted Bhore Committee of 1946 framed a blueprint for provision in the country of comprehensive health services through a national health system. Given the need then for a vast health service for the vast rural population and the difficulty faced in attracting medical practitioners to the countryside, it concluded that “the most satisfactory way of meeting the situation was to provide a whole-time salaried service, which would enable government to ensure that doctors are made available where their services are most needed”. These were the recommendations that were adopted in the post-colonial period by the Indian state. Several other Committees later made valuable recommendations to achieve these goals. These were implemented to an extent, and some progress made in terms of creation of infrastructure in the initial five year plan periods.
However, the public health services in India did not grow as envisioned due to factors such as lack of political will; inadequate budgets; pressure from international agencies such as WHO to implement vertical5 programmes for population control and against specific diseases such as malaria; corruption; and reluctance of doctors and specialists (trained in urban medical colleges oriented to western standards) to work in the rural health facilities. At the same time the private healthcare sector in India got subsidies and concessions, and conditions favourable for its unimpeded, unregulated growth, giving rise to a ‘passive privatization’ process.
Several events of the 1960s and 1970s, including the failures of vertical programmes, led to the Alma Ata Declaration of 1978 and the goal of achieving Health for all by 2000 AD6. The Alma Ata declaration, to which all WHO members including India were signatories, re-incarnated the importance of national health systems, although in a tortuous manner through the concept of comprehensive Primary Health Care (PHC). Implementation of PHC had socio-political implications, where governments had to address the underlying social, economic and political causes of poor health, and also build their national health systems.
Many governments, including India, did not implement it seriously. Instead a ‘selective PHC’ approach was advocated by the group of World Bank (WB), Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, USAID, and UNICEF. These institutions argued that the comprehensive PHC of Alma Ata was too unrealistic and costly7; if health statistics were to be improved, high risk groups must be targeted with carefully selected, cost-effective interventions for a limited number of diseases; that, until health care systems are adequately resourced and organized, it is better to deliver a few proven interventions of high efficacy at high levels of coverage, aimed at diseases responsible for the greatest mortality. ‘Selective PHC’ also promotes a biomedical orientation to disease & ill-health: it relies on delivery of ‘medical technologies’ amenable to vertical programmes. Just as smallpox was eradicated through a concerted global effort, for instance, it is argued that diarrhoeal disease, malaria and other common diseases can be tackled in a similar way. It is such ‘selective’ interventions that are largely being delivered as the minimum, essential package of services.

Health Sector Reforms – the Trojan Horse

The inefficiencies of the public sector healthcare system, arising largely from its deliberate neglect, have been used to justify imposition of a series of health sector reforms (HSRs) by many governments, as part of conditionalities of WB loans. The WB has been advocating that governments in poorer countries should focus their scarce public resources on providing a free ‘basic’ or minimum package of preventive and curative services for the poor, while withdrawing from the direct provision of other services. It argues that by encouraging the relatively rich sections of society to use the private sector, the public sector will be able to redirect its resources to those most in need. The assumption is that it is more efficient and equitable to segment health care according to income level – a public sector focused on the poor and a private sector for the rich. This is a major departure from the concept of universal, comprehensive healthcare services.
There is no evidence that such a system is better, more equitable or efficient. On the contrary, the private sector draws on a limited pool of health professionals, and takes away more health care resources than it relieves the public sector of workload8. Segmentation is attractive to private investors, as they can provide health care as a profitable, commercial product to those who can afford it. This is true especially for countries like India, where there is a huge private healthcare sector, as well an upper- and middle-class market to sustain the development and financing of the private health sector.
One finds that the draft National Health Bill intends to provide a legal framework for such a segmented system of healthcare services, thus re-inforcing the inequities and inequalities. Nowhere in the draft is it mentioned that the deficiencies of the existing public healthcare system will be rectified, and that it will be transformed into an universal, efficient, effective and accountable system as envisioned, catering to needs of all sections.
It is not surprising that the National Health Plan (NHP) 2002 shall be one of the plans guiding the National Health Act until other policies and plans are specially notified.
The NHP 2002 is quite emphatic about the need to move towards private provision of health services. According to this policy, “The health needs of the country are enormous and the financial resources and managerial capacity available to meet them, even on the most optimistic projections, fall somewhat short……….. In the context of the very large number of poor in the country, it would be difficult to conceive of an exclusive Government mechanism to provide health services to this category. It has sometimes been felt that a social health insurance scheme, funded by the Government, and with service delivery through the private sector, would be the appropriate solution”. It welcomed the participation of the private sector in all areas of health activities – primary, secondary or tertiary, and said that “The contribution of the private sector in providing health services would be much enhanced, particularly for the population group which can afford to pay for services”. The Policy also encouraged the setting up of private insurance for increasing the coverage of the secondary and tertiary sector under private health insurance packages. In keeping with the selective PHC concept, it prioritized TB, Malaria, Blindness and HIV/AIDS, and called for separate schemes to cater to health needs of women, children, tribals and other socio-economically under-served sections.
The National Health Bill provides for a National and a State Public Health Board (Sec IV) for implementing and monitoring of the Act. The functions of the State Board include: developing mechanisms for initiating public-private partnership in implementation of public health programmes that ensure equity and quality of health care services. Thus, while the centre will continue to deliver certain minimum services for the poor, through the existing infrastructure of peripheral institutions (sub-centres, primary health centres (PHCs), and community health centres (CHCs), the state governments can deliver other services through public-private schemes. The private sector, through direct provision and insurance, will cater to the affluent. Once again, the draft Bill, like the NHP 2002, holds out promises of regulation of this sector.
Questions to be asked
The government’s claims that finances, infrastructure and managerial capacity are insufficient are not very convincing. Is there actually a shortage of financial resources? Or is the ‘shortage’ due to the abysmally low allocations to health in the central and state budgets, despite promises to increase it? Secondly, since the mid-1990s loans were availed from World Bank for health system strengthening (Health Systems Development Programmes -HSDPs), in nearly a dozen states – Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, Uttaranchal, Rajasthan, and Tamil Nadu. In almost all states the loan amount is of several hundred crores rupees, repayable at 11-12% interest. The loans were exclusively for: constructing / improving infrastructure at secondary levels; development of management skills; policy reforms; and improving the performance of the healthcare system. What is the outcome of these programmes?
Several irregularities have been reported by the Controller Auditor General (CAG) of India in the HSDPs in almost all the states. Apart from corruption in states like Orissa, what is of major concern is that while the buildings and equipment are there, they are not being utilized due to lack of human resources, shortage of doctors and other staff, and acute lack of specialists, such as surgeons, anaesthetists, and paediatricians. Why are state governments not employing doctors and utilizing this infrastructure effectively? On one hand, we actually have a large number of doctors passing out each year and either leaving the country or joining the private sector. On the other, there is no genuine effort to create favourable conditions to recruit and retain doctors for the public health services. Under the reform measures and WB prescriptions, many appointments are either contractual or ad-hoc, or under specific programmes, or specialists are contracted in as and when required. The general policy of cuts in staff and freeze on recruitments has severely affected public health services in several states. Thus, loan money is being wasted and not utilized for the purpose for which it is being taken.
Together, all this raises questions about the sincerity of the government’s intentions to fulfill (and protect) people’s rights regarding healthcare, and about the objectives of the reforms it is implementing with assistance from WB and other international agencies. While public health services are in dire need of improvement, the on-going HSRs and the proposed National Health Act are ‘reforming’ it, not with interests of the common people in view, but that of commerce and markets.

1 Services for all on the basis of citizenship, rather than ability to pay or insurance scheme criteria.
2 Services covering and meeting all kinds of healthcare needs, from infancy to old age; and not just for specific illnesses or physical illness only, but also preventive and curative.
3 Initiated in Russia in the 1860s through district assemblies.
4 In this system medical and public health services are provided by salaried physicians and other health personnel who work in government hospitals and health centres, the entire population is covered by such services, practically all services are included, and provided free of charge
5 Vertical programmes refer to exclusive programmes for specific diseases, with separate planning, management and implementation structures.
6 The Alma Ata Declaration has to be seen also in the context of the Cold War politics. It was an attempt to deflect the proposals by USSR in the early 1970s that WHO should support developing countries in developing their national health services, instead of supporting vertical programmes.
7 The Cuban health system belies such arguments.
8 The US experience of public funding and private provision shows that it actually increases administrative expenses.

Ilyas khan Baloch

noreply@blogger.com (दुःखदीन) — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 02:38:00 +0000

Dare to raise your voice for the inevitable socio-political change in India, to empower the People, the country belongs to.Since the creation of India the people are left at distant from the corridor of power so that the ruling elite can do what they wanted to do in favors of their interest, leaving the people at the mercy of circumstances. As this policy is denial of right of people to rule their country according to their aspiration and desire to build. which can provide equal opportunity to all without any discrimination for the establishment of welfare society. The society base on tolerance, equality and justice can be the real guarantee for the prosperous and dignity of India, there for your intent is invited to the current government policies, which could be the point of distraction or disaster.We have already passed a considerable time in a hope to get the power and be a part of system. But to save the centralized sole power, the ruling elites will not let you in. They want to exploit the resources of the country. The current system, where in transparency and accountability can not be established, is responsible for all this mess, they let the country face much internal chaos which can break the country in part then allowing the masses to rule this country democratically. In reality they have divided the poor and oppressed people in to religion, region, and ethnical basis. In the present circumstances the ruler again dragging our sovereignty at stake for the external interest in the name of national interest, instead of our interest. The centralize sole power in the name of democracy remain in the hands of one or few of them is the real evil responsible for injustice, discrimination. The division within the society will help the exploiter to strengthen their grip on the power, where as the unity amongst poor, worker, farmer, youth, intellectuals, oppressed small nationality, nationalist and progressive forces will provide the guarantee for the real change. The way out of these crucial circumstances is to empower the common Indian at grass route level i.e. the change of system. This change is inevitable for the prosperous country. Along with to provide basic guarantees for the creation of welfare state, where in public representative and institution shall be answerable and accountable to the मस्सेस....

The Popular Momentum that Propelled Obama into US Presidency

noreply@blogger.com (दुःखदीन) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:57:00 +0000

The emphatic victory of Barack Obama in the US Presidential elections has generated a great deal of interest and enthusiasm, a veritable ‘Obamania’, across the world. There are indeed several special aspects to this remarkable victory. That he is the first black person to be elected to the highest political office in the US; that his campaign emphasised ‘hope’ and ‘change’ at a time when the US is passing through an extremely gloomy period in its history, and, above all, that his arrival marks the much-awaited end of the hated Bush Presidency, and a decisive popular rejection of its hallmarks, have all added up to make this probably the most memorable election in recent American history. For political observers watching this election from afar, the most encouraging aspect perhaps has been the passionate popular participation that made this election an energised extension of not only the fight against racism but also the wider anti-globalisation, anti-war campaign.
Liberal sociologists in India have already begun reducing Obama’s victory to a sanitised sign of the ‘greatness’ of American democracy and the ‘maturity’ of the African-American community. But, racism in the US is not just a shocking memory of a cruel past; it is still very much a continuing social reality. For large sections of the American working class and the poor, race and class combine, reproducing conditions of systematic discrimination and deprivation. And the African-American community’s sustained struggles against racism have shaped the polarisations of US politics over decades and centuries, from the Civil War through the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the radical Black Power movement in the 1970s and up until the present. If Obama’s eloquent oratory tapped into the depth of an entire community’s yearning for justice, the silent tears of Jesse Jackson, noted US civil rights campaigner and himself a Presidential hopeful of yesteryears, beamed live into television sets across the world, reflected the sense of vindication that Obama’s victory has generated in millions of American hearts.
But what kind of change will Obama’s Presidency bring to the US and its policies? The American ruling elite sees Obama as a political bailout package for the crisis-ridden establishment. Parallels are being drawn between Obama’s promised platform of change and Roosevelt’s New Deal that had rescued the American economy from the ravages of the Great Depression. Through his famous New Deal Roosevelt had translated the Keynesian doctrine of large-scale state intervention (socialisation of investment) into a policy paradigm and the whole thing got a boost from World War II and its outcome that favoured the US and its allies. However desperately the US may need another Rooseveltian rescue act, it is not easy for Obama to replicate that experience in the present juncture in which the US is faced with not only an unprecedented financial crisis but acute political and military challenges.
The early transitional signs emanating from Team Obama indicate more continuity than change in matters of both economic and foreign policies. The political team is dominated heavily by recycled Clinton era strategists while the 17 members of his Transitional Economic Advisory Board are drawn mostly from among top corporate bosses and financial barons. The choice of someone like Rahm Emanuel – a leading member of the rightwing Democratic Leadership Council and a known neo-liberal fundamentalist and pro-Israeli hawk – as the chief of staff can hardly be interpreted as a sign of any salutary change. Obama’s foreign policy pronouncements have been replete with warnings against Iran and Pakistan and his occasional suggestions of withdrawal of US troops from Iraq have been tempered by his emphases on sending fresh military reinforcements to Afghanistan. In the domestic domain, Obama and his managers have already begun to emphasise the need to lower expectations and temper hopes of bringing about the change promised all through his election campaign, notably signalling a slower pace for the reform of the healthcare system, which had been emblematic of the campaign’s rejection of the callousness of neo-liberalism.
While in no way dismissing or underestimating the great importance of Obama’s victory and the possibility contained in the present juncture, progressive forces in the US must keep up the popular momentum that has led to such an emphatic victory for Barack Obama with his promised platform of change. Obama must now be held accountable and the people must find ways to prevail over the well-entrenched forces and designs of corporate and imperialist betrayal. The same also holds for anti-imperialist forces in other parts of the world. Instead of losing our way in the spectacle of Obamania, we must all doggedly pursue our anti-imperialist and socialist agenda, grabbing with both hands the opportunities opened up by the present crisis and the end of the Bush era.

Clarion Call of the CPI(ML)’s Kolkata Congress: People’s Resistance, Left Resurgence

noreply@blogger.com (दुःखदीन) — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 16:29:00 +0000

The Eighth Congress of the CPI(ML) has been held successfully in Kolkata. Held in the 150th anniversary of the First Indian War of Independence and the birth centenary of Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh, the 8th Congress boldly underlined the glorious anti-imperialist legacy of the Indian people. On the morning of December 10, a delegation of Congress delegates and guests from abroad went to Barrackpore to pay homage to the memorial of Mangal Pandey, the first martyr of 1857 and then returned to Kolkata to garland the statue of Bhagat Singh, whom the Congress recognised not only as rashtra nayak, the ever-inspiring national hero of the Indian people but also as a great communist pioneer. And then on the eve of the Congress, delegates and guests all assembled in a mass convention that denounced imperialism as a “War on Freedom, Democracy and Development” and resolved to resist imperialism in every sphere of life. Attended by more than 1200 delegates, observers and guests, the 8th Congress was much bigger in scale than all the previous Congresses of the Party, four of which had to be held in extremely challenging underground conditions. Apart from discussing and adopting the Political-Organisational Report placed by the outgoing Central Committee, the Congress also adopted three specific resolutions dealing with the current international situation, developing national situation and the raging agrarian crisis. The Congress also updated the Party’s General Programme as well as the Agrarian Programme after fifteen and twenty-five years respectively and thus enriched the Party’s strategic understanding regarding the Indian society and the ongoing pattern of narrow and predatory capitalist development overshadowed by both stubborn feudal remnants and imperialist dictates and interests. Several key themes have emerged from the Congress deliberations. In order that the CPI(ML) can intervene more powerfully in the deepening agrarian crisis it was resolved that the Party must now pay more attention to the peasant front alongside the core revolutionary agenda of mobilising the rural poor in militant struggles. If neo-liberalism is wreaking havoc in the countryside, impoverishing and expropriating sizeable sections of the peasantry and pushing people to suicides and starvation deaths, revolutionary communists must organise and lead a powerful counter-offensive by these victims of neo-liberalism. Signs of a massive rural unrest are already visible in almost every corner of the country and the 8th Congress of the CPI(ML) has called upon the entire Party to prepare in every way for the impending storm of people’s resistance. The Congress also discussed other major aspects of the current situation – large-scale destruction of jobs and livelihood in urban India, the growing shadow of US imperialism on India’s foreign policy and the systematic assault on democracy by every organ of the Indian state. The closure of old labour-intensive industries, the growing corporate takeover of the entire service sector, and commercialisation and privatisation of key sectors like education and health have pushed large sections of the urban population into a life of growing hardship and insecurity. And as real life becomes more miserable and insecure for more and more people across the country, the ruling elite keeps selling the ‘dream’ of turning India into a US-sponsored regional power riding high on nuclear energy and a soaring Sensex! The more the people are deprived of their basic democratic rights and divorced from resources that belonged and must belong to them, the louder gets the rhetoric of democracy and empowerment!
Such a situation definitely calls for a powerful Left and democratic movement in defence of land and livelihood, liberty and dignity – individual as well as national. But the growing derailment and degeneration of the CPI(M)-led government in West Bengal, especially the arrogance and audacity with which the CPI(M) leadership have sought to justify their policies and conduct regarding Singur and Nandigram have tarnished the image of the Left and may push the democratic forces away unless there is a resurgence of the real Left. The successful conclusion of the Kolkata Congress and the massive turnout at the December 18 rally has sent out that message of Left resurgence at a most appropriate juncture. The Congress did not merely symbolise ideological, political and organisational consolidation of the CPI(ML), it held out the promise of a resurgent Left forging closer ties with broader democratic forces to save India from becoming a neoliberal laboratory and a strategic pawn of Washington.

The Indian State’s Killing Squads

noreply@blogger.com (दुःखदीन) — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 02:50:00 +0000

In the familiar pattern, within hours of the Mecca Masjid blasts, the police miraculously tell us which militant groups are involved. Almost every day our media obediently beams out images of ‘terrorists’ triumphantly displayed by their captors. For years since 2002, IPS officer Vanzara similarly displayed his trophies – young men and women (Sameerkhan Pathan, Ishrat Jehan, Javed from Kerala, Sohrabuddin Sheikh…) killed in supposed attempts to target Modi or other top Sangh Parivar leaders. Now we have an admission that one of those killings was staged (and linked to it, a trail of other murders of Sheikh’s wife and another eyewitness). Vanzara has defended all the killings as an act of ‘deshbhakti’ – a sentiment well in line with the notion of patriotism that scripted the 2002 pogrom in Gujarat.
But the issue goes beyond the one-dimensional tales of good cop-bad cop, and far deeper than the question of communalization of the State machinery by BJP Governments.
To refresh our memory:
The first recorded fake encounter is said to date back to the repression on the Telengana peasant movement. In the 60s and 70s, custodial and extra judicial killings of Naxalites became standard police practice. In the days of insurgency in Punjab, thousands of youth were similarly butchered.
In counter-insurgency operations in all the states of the North East and Kashmir, in the anti-naxal operations in Andhra Pradesh, fake encounters became routine. In a rare candid moment, ex DG, BSF EN Rammohan has admitted that …”In Kashmir, only a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (of the sort South Africa set up after apartheid ended) will enable India to make peace with the Kashmiri people.” (HT, May 4, 07)
The recent massacre of tribals in Chhattisgarh who, according to the police, were ‘naxal sympathisers’ recalls to mind the Bhawanipur massacre of March 9, 2000, after which the DIG (Mirzapur) told the PUDR/APDR team that ‘it is justified if they die or get killed. They are criminals’. The 16 agrarian labourers shot dead at Bhawanipur were not even charged with any crime, let alone convicted; they were ‘criminals’ because they dared to organize for their wages and rights. These are examples of the familiar phenomenon of the police policy of “shoot and label the corpse posthumously as naxalite”. And lest we think Left-ruled states to be better off – the Left Front-ruled Tripura Government (which implements that excellent cover for killers in uniform - AFSPA) faces allegations of 103 tribals killed in fake encounters since 1993. (Zee News, May 16)
Given the long history of encounter killings in India, naturally an entire discourse has developed to defend summary executions by the police and armed forces. Some of its pet positions are as follows:
“Do it but don’t talk about it”
On December 30, 1991, VG Vaidya, director, IB, wrote a letter to the then Punjab DGP KPS Gill regarding some press interviews in which police officers had defended and given detailed accounts of staged encounters to the international press.
“Their professional compulsions in executive action should not get reflected in their public utterances, which should be correct and responsible,” Vaidya wrote. (HT, May 4, 07) In other words, he was saying murder is a ‘professional compulsion’, but the killers must be discreet rather than boastful.
“If we insist on human rights for terrorists, the police cannot fight terror or organized crime”
There are many who argue that Kauser Bi’s killing was somehow worse than that of Sohrabuddin’s; and many media reports have harped on the fact that Sohrabuddin was a ‘criminal’ who extorted money from marble dealers, not an ‘innocent man’, and that therefore the police was justified in killing him. BJP’s deputy leader V K Malhotra said that Sohrabuddin and others gunned down by police were not “innocent” and should not be “glorified” so. (HT, April 27) One wonders: would it be ok by Malhotra if Babubhai Katara, caught red-handed committing crime, was gunned down? Why bother with fair trial and proof and the right to appeal and benefit of doubt, Mr. Malhotra – we know he’s guilty, let’s just execute him. Ok, we can make a concession and torture him first to make him confess to trafficking and a sex racket and rape to boot – and then shoot him. We can always say he was escaping, or that he attacked the police.
Torture and murder in uniform, and the convenient habit of branding dissenters as ‘terrorists’, gets legal sanction through a host of laws past and present – TADA, POTA, AFSPA, MCOCA, et al. Take the case of the Chhattisgarh Public Security Act – which has been deployed recently to arrest the veteran civil liberties activist, PUCL Vice President Dr. Vinayak Sen, who had been exposing the fake encounters and state terror in the wake of the ‘Salwa Judum’ in Chhattisgarh. In a recent interview KPS Gill suggests that to tackle insurgency and terrorism, the police can’t afford to have their hands tied by considerations like human rights. So, he laments that laws like TADA and POTA are opposed – forcing the police to opt for staged encounters. In other words, according to Gill, we need laws that can brand people as criminals/terrorists and execute them…so that the police can keep things legal! (Outlook, May 14, 07)
This sentiment is echoed by none less than West Bengal CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharya who chose World Human Rights Day to declare that “human rights need not apply for terrorists”. (Indian Express Kolkata Newsline, December 11, 2006) Without custodial torture and the special licence to kill, how would convenient confessions be extracted and culprits punished? It helps when you know in advance that an entire social section or ideological group is by definition “terrorist” and “anti-national” – then you can draft confessions in advance and pin them onto likely candidates picked at random. It helps if courts are not too fussy about things like ‘evidence’ and ‘human rights’ where terrorism cases are concerned.
In a recent instance, a young man Arun Ferreira, a bright graduate of St. Xavier’s College Mumbai, was picked up from a meeting at Deekshabhoomi in Maharashtra. According to the police, literature relating to SEZs and Khairlanji, as well as ‘pamphlets carrying excerpts of an interview of Arundhati Roy’ were found on his pen drive and person – clear indication that he is a Maoist with malafide intentions! A raid on his wife’s home revealed – horror of horrors- 24 sociology textbooks – further proof of guilt no doubt. When he was produced in court in Nagpur, there were lacerations on his body and he complained that the police placed ice on his genitals. The Magistrate took no notice of this, and gave permission for him to be subjected to the dubious method of ‘narco-analysis’. This latter form of torture allows the police to suggest things to the victim in a sub conscious state, and then rest their investigation, quite literally, on whatever the subject dreams up. Of course, the police can do the dreaming too, and edit or sex up the dreams to suit their needs. Once a person is branded as ‘guilty’, prior to any investigation, based on political beliefs, or social identity, our system, including in most cases the courts, gives an almost unlimited free hand to the police to extract confessions and concoct criminals to fit crimes. Small wonder if this extends to a license to indulge in staged ‘encounters’.
“Encounters are a form of vigilante justice, filling the vacuum caused by the failure of judicial justice”
“Extra-judicial killings are akin to murder,” says former Punjab and Mumbai police Chief Julio Rebeiro. (HT, May 4, 07)
But in the same interview, Ribeiro suggests that extra-judicial killings get public and political support because of judicial delays in justice, and that if speedy justice were possible there would be no extra-judicial killings. KPS Gill, master of encounter murders in Punjab, elaborates this position without any apologetic note: “When the conduct of judges themselves is questionable, the police officers begin to think, who will implement the laws, who will protect society.... “And in this noble mission of “protecting society, “in fighting militancy and organised crime, mistakes are bound to happen. Take the (May 1997) shootout case in Delhi’s Connaught Place where two businessmen were mistakenly killed by the police; the cops are still facing trial for it. A similar thing happened in London after the 7/7 bombings, when an innocent Brazilian immigrant, Jean Charles de Menezes, was shot by the police. Nobody raised a hue and cry over that incident, and the officers responsible have subsequently received promotions and there is no stigma attached to their action. It’s important that the intentions and motives of the officers are correctly assessed in such cases.” (Outlook, May 14, 07)
Well, in this view, what better “intentions and motives” could Vanzara have – it was “deshbhakti”, after all, that spurred him to eliminate potential terrorists. And if one “innocent” anti-national got killed …what’s one Muslim more or less?
But the nature of the killings does not support this thesis of a few excusable ‘mistakes’ in a well-intentioned quest for justice. Despite all the propaganda, ‘encounters’ are not a form of vigilante justice spawned by righteous frustration of the failure of speedy judicial justice. They are not comparable to a vigilante hero taking law into his hands and eliminating a threat to society because ‘the system’ will not deliver. Rather, fake encounters, custodial torture and branding of dissent as “terrorism” in order to justify violation of rights – these are the system. After all, if frustration with legal delays and failures are a justification for vigilante justice, who has better right to it than the victims of the massacres by police at Arwal or Hashimpura, for whom justice has either been delayed for twenty years or denied? The judicial enquiry into the Kalinganagar firing has now been dissolved midway – on the pretext that the Supreme Court forbids sitting Judges from heading commissions of enquiry. The court has backed out from its promise of justice for the victims of Nandigram. Would Gill and Co. support, or at least excuse, the people of these areas if they lost faith in the legal process and decided to become agents of justice?

It just isn’t enough to nail a stray police officer in Ganderbal or Gujarat and pat ourselves on the back for justice done. Not police officers alone but political forces that rule must be held accountable for every police or army murder. At the very least, we need a comprehensive National Truth and Reconciliation Commission – to acknowledge and investigate each and every act of torture, murder, massacre by the state machinery.

Beleaguered Bush: Heightened Opposition at Home and Abroad

noreply@blogger.com (दुःखदीन) — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 19:27:00 +0000

The death sentence for Saddam was meant to be an orchestrated high point in the War on Terror for the Bush Administration – but instead it has invited widespread global outrage and coalesced with a range of shocks for the Bush regime. The electoral blow to the Republicans in the recent mid-term polls was widely seen as an indictment of the US policy in Iraq, while the election of Ortega in Nicaragua and the build-up of a militant and popular uprising in Mexico all served to deepen the crisis for the Bush regime. In this feature, we have articles analysing the implications of these developments not only for Bush but also for the anti-imperialist struggle.

2006 US Mid-Term Elections: Blow for Bush Administration

THE Democratic Party in the 2006 US elections won a comfortable majority in the House and a narrow majority in the Senate. They also secured a majority of the state governorships. The mid-term elections take place every two years in November to elect representatives to both the House and the Senate. Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, was elected to the Senate from Vermont - the first self-described socialist to do so.
Even if the Democrat victory cannot be expected to usher in serious changes in imperialist policies and even domestic policies, the elections have been a major setback to the section of the ruling elite led by the Bush/Cheney administration.
Crisis of Imperialism
This election year Iraq was the main reason that the US electorate voted against the Republicans. Since the Democratic Party did not have an alternative peace plan either, it was largely a negative vote. The cumulative effect of lies about weapons of mass destruction, torture at Abu Ghraib, detention at Guantanamo Bay, secret CIA prisons, no bid contracts to Halliburton and Bechtel, billions of dollars of missing cash and latest attack on habeas corpus became too difficult to manage.
According to recent estimates, more than 655, 000 Iraqi people and 3000 US soldiers have died and more than 20000 US soldiers have been wounded. General Maples testified that in Iraq, the attacks on occupation troops have increased from 70 per day in January to 170 per day in September to 180 per day in October [1]. This made 2006 October one of the deadliest months since the occupation started. The forecast for 2007 is worse for not just Iraq but also Afghanistan.
Drawing parallels with the Vietnam War right wing columnist Tom Freidman of the New York Times said “what we’re seeing in Iraq seems like the jihadist equivalent of the Tet offensive.” General John Abizaid, top American military commander for the Middle East, has warned of the possibility of occupation going out of control. The incoming Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee accused the Bush administration of ignoring the reality that ‘‘we’re getting deeper and deeper into a hole’’ in Iraq. As the Iraqi resistance and anti-war movement intensify, the imperial crisis deepens and the occupation becomes untenable.
The US ruling elite is now hard at work in an endeavour to formulate a strategy for ‘success in Iraq.’ Several potential presidential candidates including Republican John McCain and Democratic Hillary Clinton and John Kerry have called for more troop deployment. Despite massive public opinion against the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, before the elections, the Senate passed (100-0 vote) the record $447 billion US military budget along with a supplemental $70 billion bridge fund for the next six months of occupation. The entire ruling class establishment is in it together.
The first casualty of the elections was Defense Secretary “shock and awe” Rumsfeld. Bush chose his father’s CIA director Robert Gates as the replacement. Before his appointment, he was also a member of the Iraq Study Group (ISG), the ‘bipartisan commission’ co-chaired by Republican James Baker, former Secretary of State, and Democrat Lee Hamilton, former Chairman of House Committee on Foreign Affairs. Both Republican and Democratic leadership are working closely with the ISG. It has been meeting with numerous political and military leaders, including George Bush, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. The ISG is slated to release its ‘policy recommendations’ to prevent the US Empire from sinking in the Iraqi quicksand.
The unpopularity of the Iraqi occupation in the US and the anti-imperial resistance of the Iraqi people have forced the ruling class to rethink its Iraq strategy. This pressure is also being felt by elected politicians who are part of the Democratic Party’s Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) with about 71 members. They have introduced the “End the War in Iraq Act of 2005” that would prohibit further use of Defense Department funds to deploy United States Armed Forces to Iraq. Since both the Republican and Democratic parties are not interested this bill is gathering dust.
Jobs and Scandals
Iraq was however not the only issue. Although gay marriage was banned in several states but in South Dakota a referendum to ban virtually all abortions was easily defeated. After Enron, the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal maligned the Republican elite in a major way. The Center for Public Integrity reports that lobbyists spent $4 billion in 2004. The organic relationship between big business, lobbyists and politicians was exposed. Most politicians connected with the scandal either resigned or were defeated in this election. Flooding after Hurricane Katrina was on everybody’s mind too, especially people of colour.
The economy was also an important issue. Millions of jobs have been lost in the last few years. In Ohio alone 200,000 manufacturing jobs were lost since Bush came to power; it was the decisive factor there. Nationally, with people spending $1.1 trillion more than they earned, the negative personal savings rate is unprecedented since the Great Depression. This when the total 2005 US debt was nearly three and a half times the US’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) that is close to world’s GDP of $44 trillion [2].
Even though the official unemployment rate in July 2006 was 4.8 percent it is estimated that more than 8 percent of the potential labour force is underemployed or unemployed [2]. The minimum wage of $5.15 an hour has not been increased for more than 10 years. Six states that had a referendum to raise the minimum wage overwhelmingly voted to raise it. The main labour unions played a major part in this. They spent more than $100 million and had 100,000 volunteers to increase voter turnout in the election for the Democratic Party [3]. This nexus with a party of the ruling class has been an impediment in building a more militant labour movement.
Challenging the System
History informs us that progressive legislations, in a capitalist political system, are the fruits of a vigorous movement. They have never been a gift. Now is the time to connect the struggles against exploitation in the US with the occupations abroad to re-energize this movement. These will include the struggles of workers, people of colour, undocumented immigrants, gays and women for an egalitarian and just society.
Progressive forces have called for anti-war marches on Washington in January and March. Momentum is building to demand universal health coverage, minimum wage increase, investigation of war crimes, impeachment of Bush, worker’s right to organize, Katrina victims’ right to return and ending the occupation from Iraq to Palestine. Active duty soldiers are also resisting the occupation by becoming conscientious objectors. This should also be the time for the anti-imperialist struggles to introspect on protest tactics and movement strategies to intensify the struggle.
It is clear that the invasion of any country, corruption of politicians, reign of big business and attack on the working class will not end with this election. These problems are endemic to the capitalistic political system. It cannot be reformed. A new society has to rise from the ashes of imperialism and capitalism. Building a movement which does just that is the challenge.
End Notes
1. Michael Gordon and Mark Mazzetti, General Warns of Risks in Iraq if G.I.’s Are Cut, New York Times, November 16, 2006.
2. Fred Magdoff, The Explosion of Debt and Speculation, Monthly Review, November 2006.
3. Steven Greenhouse, Labor Movement Dusts Off Agenda as Power Shifts in Congress, New York Times, November 11, 2006.

2007: A Time to Reclaim Our Country, Our History, Our Freedom, Our Rights

noreply@blogger.com (दुःखदीन) — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 18:57:00 +0000

The year 2007 marks the 150th anniversary of India’s First War of Independence. It is also the centenary year of Bhagat Singh’s birth, and the fortieth anniversary of the Naxalbari rebellion. The Central Committee of the CPI(ML) has called for celebrating the confluence of these three great anniversaries with a countrywide “Our Country, Our History – Our Freedom, Our Rights” campaign. A big Inquilab rally has been planned in Delhi on 23 March, the day Bhagat Singh and his comrades Sukhdev and Rajguru embraced martyrdom seventy-six years ago with the clarion call “Inquilab Zindabad! Samrajyavad Murdabad!” (Long Live Revolution! Down with Imperialism!). The campaign will be aimed at rekindling this spirit of history in the midst of the ongoing popular struggles of the present and for this purpose the campaign will highlight a ten-point people’s charter comprising the key demands of these struggles.
Why is it important for us to celebrate this history? The current Indian ruling elite is afraid of, and at any rate uncomfortable with, this history and this is why they want us to forget this history or know it only in a distorted and mutilated manner. So celebrating this history is not just remembering the past but waging a struggle against the present-day rulers who have a different historical inheritance and who want our history to remain subordinated to their history.
British colonialists had dubbed 1857 as a case of ‘sepoy mutiny’ when fanatic Indian soldiers driven by blind religious passion and hatred had attacked their European officers and other British civilians. They would like us to believe that the mutineers had no sense of what they were doing and were just a bunch of killers who had to be and were brought under control by the superior military and ‘civilisational’ might of British colonialism. Western historians today are also tempted to see 1857 as a case of ‘Islamic jehad’ against Christianity and Western civilisation. The official Indian history today does recognise 1857 as the First War of India’s Independence, but it does its best to try and suppress the distinguishing features – the militant anti-colonial spirit, the popular participation and the emerging national character – that made the war of 1857 so greatly remarkable.
The insurrection of 1857 had certainly been initiated by the soldiers from the barracks of Bengal, but in no time it had spread not only among armed regiments across the country but most importantly among peasants, small traders and other sections of the Indian people. It was not a revolt of a few disgruntled kings and feudal rulers – rather many kings and feudal rulers collaborated with the British and helped them put down the rebellion. It was not an attempt to restore Muslim rule in India, much less was it an Islamic jehad against Christianity. The majority of the soldiers and the peasants and traders backing them up were Hindus and it was they who got an old and reluctant Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal ruler, to provide a symbolic leadership to the revolt. And the revolt was characterised by its conscious and concrete expressions of unity between the two communities with the rebels defining themselves as ‘Hindus and Muslims of Hindustan. In fact, an integral aspect of the new strategy of control forged by the colonialists in response to 1857 was the deliberate fomenting of communal hostilities.
The revolt did not succeed in its goal of overthrowing the British rulers, the mutineers obviously did not have the kind of organisation and preparation needed for that kind of victory, and the objective conditions too were not ripe enough. But the fact that they succeeded in holding on for nearly two years in different parts of the country clearly shows that the revolt was far from being just a sporadic or accidental outburst of mass anger. History tells us that the mutineers had their own committees which issued directives for the people, they had their own song which emphasised people’s unity and the goal of freeing the country from British plunder. The soldiers most of whom were essentially peasants in uniform struck a chord of ready resonance with the peasantry and this gave the whole revolt a powerful peasant content and ensured popular participation on a significant scale. Even militarily the war of 1857 moved on from regular warfare to guerrilla warfare with the British Army holding in large parts of the country “nothing but the towns” while the insurgent armies gradually dissolved into “smaller bodies of from two to six or eight thousand men, acting to a certain degree, independently of each other, but always ready to unite for a short expedition against any British detachment” (Frederick Engels, July 6, 1858). 1857 thus went much farther than being merely a reaction of pre-modern India to British occupation and plunder, it gave us the first glimpse of a modern India in its embryonic stage.
Let us not forget that we are here talking about a period that was indeed quite early for the kind of powerful national liberation struggles that eventually ended the colonial era in the 20th century or the revolutionary battles of the working people that the world saw in the form of the Paris Commune in 1871, or the workers’ and peasants’ soviets that appeared in the course of the Russian Revolution in February-November 1917. For colonial India in the mid-19th century, the revolt of 1857 had indeed reached an extraordinary height and given the British rulers their first major shock. Benjamin Disraeli who went on to become Prime Minister of Britain in the 1870s told the British parliament on July 27, 1857 that what had been happening in India was far more than a military mutiny, it had all the signs of a national revolt prompting him to deliver a long speech on his “considerations on the decline of the Anglo-Indian Empire.”
The British rulers were quick to learn their lessons from the shock of 1857. The East India Company was abolished, changes were made in the mode and method of British rule in India, and in the form of the Indian National Congress the British developed a safety valve mechanism so that India did not explode ever again. From the high of armed insurrection, India had been brought down to the lowest political level of petitioning for petty relief and reforms. For sections of the Indian elite, political awakening may have its genesis in the art of petitioning taught by the British, but the great majority of the Indian people had already made a political beginning with the national revolt of 1857 and all the local revolts that preceded and followed it. In subsequent years, this difference between these two trajectories grew often into sharp contrasts between the revolutionary and reformist schools within the freedom movement.
The difference was not confined to the question of methods of movement, it pervaded the entire understanding of the vision of India, the definition of India’s national identity. While the insurgents of 1857 rose against the colonial plunder of India, the Congress essentially saw British colonialism as the harbinger of modernity in India. It saw the plunderer as nurturer and Manmohan Singh acknowledged as much during one of his recent speeches at Oxford University. The ideological predecessors and founders of the Sangh Parivar went one step further and they saw British occupation in terms of liberation of so-called Hindu India from centuries of perceived Islamic domination. This is why the RSS kept aloof from the entire quest for India’s independence. This umbilical cord of dependence, this craving for imperialist blessings, continues to define the Congress-BJP attitude to today’s American empire-builders, they cannot think of an Indian future beyond the strategic umbrella of American domination, let alone throwing up any kind of resistance or challenge to US imperialism’s campaign of global war and global plunder.
The insurgents of 1857 would never brook such bankruptcy that equated independence with a shameless surrender to and collaboration with imperialist powers. It would have never allowed communal division to determine the history, geography or politics of the country. Bhagat Singh and his comrades resurrected the spirit of 1857 and gave it a firm socialist, anti-imperialist orientation, completing the conceptual transition from Gadar to Inquilab (revolt to revolution). They visualised independence as a combination or convergence of political liberty and social emancipation and when they saw the dominant Congress leadership waver and betray on both scores, they warned us against the consequence of the bhure Angrez or the brown sahibs usurping power and monopolising the fruits of freedom for a few robbing the majority of their resources and rights. Today the brown sahibs in power are naturally mortally afraid of the memories of 1857 and the trail blazed by Bhagat Singh and his comrades. It is not surprising that a police official in Maharashtra should see even the act of selling the books of Bhagat Singh as a criminal offence and act of sedition.
Neither the British nor the Indian rulers could however ever destroy the spirit of 1857 or the legacy of Bhagat Singh. Following Gandhi’s withdrawal of the movement after the Chaurichaura incident, peasants have repeatedly organised and revolted under the communist banner. From Tebhaga in Bengal, Telengana in Andhra to Punnapra-Vayalar in Kerala, the history of India’s freedom movement was full of glorious instances of peasant power and militancy. The people also never forgot the military tradition of 1857 and just before the British left they were once again confronted with the great naval mutiny of Bombay and the heroic campaign of the Azad Hind Fauj or the Indian National Army. The tragic communal bloodbath and partition of 1947 and the consolidation of a pro-imperialist bourgeois-landlord rule in post-colonial India did mark a setback for the quest for real freedom and democracy, but powered by the relentless and determined struggles of the peasants and workers, the Indian people did not allow the rulers to dictate terms and kept up the revolutionary banner of anti-imperialist resistance and radical social transformation. Forty years ago, Naxalbari signified the most concentrated and courageous expression of this revolutionary quest in post-colonial India.
Like 1857, Naxalbari too did not succeed in winning ultimate victory in the revolutionary campaign it had unleashed, but the fire lit by Naxalbari has definitely turned into a new light for the Indian people to challenge the darkness in which the rulers want to drown the country. It was Naxalbari which taught us to look at the oppressed people not as victims but as fighters and heroes, and rediscover the history of the people by rejecting the history of the rulers.
Today when the rulers have teamed up with the US imperialists and are waging a desperate joint war on our resources and rights, it is surely time for us to rediscover our glorious history and rekindle the great spirit of people’s resistance against loot and oppression, injustice and imperialism, Let the imperialists and our rulers tremble before our history, we are here to reclaim our country and our history, secure our freedom and win all our rights. Let us welcome 2007 in all its glory.
Ten-Point Campaign Charter
The people’s charter to be highlighted in the course of the campaign will comprise the following major points:

(i) scrapping of SEZ policy and defence of peasants’ inalienable right to cultivable land;
(ii) stopping peasant suicides and starvation deaths (iii) strict implementation of NREGA, and its extension to the whole of the country on improved terms;
(iv) legal guarantee for right to education, right to work and right to health;
(v) restoration of alienated tribal land and rehabilitation of all project-displaced people;
(vi) embargo on indiscriminate entry of foreign investment, especially in sectors like education and retail trade;
(vii) regularisation of unorganised workers and guaranteeing their basic rights;
(viii) end to violence and discrimination against dalits, adivasis, women and minorities and ensuring greater opportunities for all disadvantaged sections;
(ix) scrapping of black laws like Armed Forces Special Powers Act and end to state-sponsored violence against the people like Salwa Judum in Chhatisgarh;
(x) scrapping of Indo-US nuclear deal and reversal of pro-US foreign policy.

Opposing US Designs on South Asia is the Best Way to Tackle Terrorism

noreply@blogger.com (दुःखदीन) — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 18:23:00 +0000

There is a growing clamour among US policy-makers these days for a stronger American role in South Asia in general and Pakistan in particular. The latest US National Intelligence Estimate report released in July 2007 talks of an Al Qaeda safe haven in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas. In a press conference following the release of the NIE document, Frances Townsend, homeland security adviser in the Bush administration went on to say that the US could well consider unilateral strikes against suspected Al Qaeda or Taliban targets inside Pakistan. This has also been echoed by Nicholas Burns, US Under Secretary of State: “We want to respect the sovereignty of the Pakistani government. … If we have … certainty of knowledge, then of course the US would always have the option of taking action on its own, but we prefer to work with the Pakistani forces…”

Only last year, the Rand Corporation had released a document entitled “War and Escalation in South Asia”. The study, commissioned by the US Air Force, suggested “how and where the U.S. military might play an expanded, influential role” in South Asia. It advised the US Department of Defense to create “a new combatant command for South Asia” and go in for intensified security cooperation with India and Pakistan and increased intelligence production on the region. In short, the report called for intensified involvement of Washington in the region, devoting “the resources necessary to become more influential with the governments within the region.” The study also recommended that a part of the U.S. military be shaped in a way it could “meet the potential crises emanating from South Asia, just as the United States once shaped its military presence in Western Europe for the contingencies of the Cold War.”

Along with heightened military operation, the US intelligence community is also calling for assigning a greater role for the CIA. “Bring in the CIA” ran the caption of an article published in the Times of India on July 25 – the article was originally written for the New York Times by Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, two former members of the US National Security Council. They argue that the US military planning has failed to destroy Al Qaida or even prevent it from acquiring safe havens and so it was now time to bring in the CIA and develop the paramilitary capacity needed for “highly mobile, lethal counterterrorism operations.”

Whichever way the US design may exactly unfold, it clearly spells great danger for the internal security of South Asia and sovereignty of South Asian nations. The Indo-US nuclear deal can only be seen in the context of the US vision for an expanding American role in the region. Even in the limited context of the economics and politics of atomic programmes and energy generation, experts have warned against the serious adverse implications of the nuclear deal. But the main danger emanates from the larger context of India’s strategic integration with – and hence dependence on, and vulnerability to – the American geo-political agenda.

The question of terrorism too cannot be delinked from this dominant context. If the US resorts to unilateral strikes against ‘suspected targets’ in Pakistan, India could not possibly remain insulated from such strikes. The next NIE could well be talking about safe havens in India followed by threats of unilateral or joint strikes against ‘suspected targets’ in India. Already so much is being said about the so-called Indian links in the chain of international terrorism. Even as the case of Dr. Haneef has shown beyond doubt that the accusations of ‘terrorist connection’ are often based on stupid conjectures, imperialist arrogance and racist prejudices, political opinion-makers in India are loosely talking about the proliferation of terrorism in India. It seems the CPI(M) too has begun competing with the BJP and the Congress on this subject.

The July 15 issue of People’s Democracy, the CPI(M)’s weekly central organ editorially called upon the Government of India to “extend all cooperation to the British and International authorities in cracking down on terrorism.” It expressed grave concern over the fact that until recently “the country was mistakenly led to believe that India does not harbour any Al Qaeda jehadis thanks to the famous so-called introduction of prime minister Manmohan Singh by US president George Bush to his wife saying that, “He is prime minister of a country of nearly 200 million Muslims and not one is with the Al Qaeda.”.” It is indeed heartening and instructive to note that when the PD editorial was taking great pains to convince its readers how Indian doctors and engineers were turning into terrorists, many in Australia were challenging and condemning the racist treatment being meted out to Dr. Haneef by the Australian government.

The PD editorial endorsed Dr. Manmohan Singh’s call for creating an environment where terror could not possibly take root and mentioned the need to erase “oppression and associated perceptions of injustice”, but it failed to identify the biggest factor that is fuelling terrorism the world over – the US-led war on terror. Consequently instead of calling for delinking Indian foreign policy from the US-led global war, it actually called for extending all cooperation to “the British and International authorities” (what about the ‘supreme’ power among all these ‘authorities’?) to combat terrorism. It is this misguided common sense that Washington seeks to consolidate in its bid to sell its global war to the Indian public. The PD editorial displays a shocking innocence of the real international environment that is breeding terrorism on such a huge scale.

The Global Opinion Trends Survey 2002-2007 released recently gives us an interesting insight into the threat perceptions of the South Asian people. It showed that while three-quarters of Indians express concerns about Pakistan, 64 percent of the Pakistani public views the US as the greatest threat. 46 percent Indians on the other hand appeared to look to the US as the most dependable ally – the highest rating for the US among all the 47 countries covered in the survey. The more India walks into the strategic trap laid by the US, the greater will be the distrust between India and Pakistan. Contrarily, the more India and Pakistan are able to delink their domestic and foreign policies from American interests and calculations, the closer they can move towards bilateral and regional cooperation and that can indeed be the best antidote against terrorism in the whole of South Asia.

Corporate media outraged: Venezuela expands free speech

noreply@blogger.com (दुःखदीन) — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 06:21:00 +0000

- Stuart Munckton

On May 27, the 20-year concession to broadcast over the state-owned Channel 2 airwave, which had been granted to multi-millionaire Marcel Granier’s RCTV, expired. The Chavez government made the decision, in accordance with laws established by a pre-Chavez government, not to renew RCTV’s concession, but instead to use the channel to establish a new public TV station, Venezuelan Social Television (TVes).

The new channel, which began broadcasting just after midnight on May 27, has been set up via a loan from a state-run bank. However it will quickly be required to become self-funded. The government will have no say over the content of the new station, which will purchase programs made by independent producers.

RCTV will be able to continue broadcasting via satellite or cable, and station heads have indicated they intend to do so. In case the station uses the non-renewal of its concession as an excuse to lay off workers, the Venezuelan government has guaranteed all of RCTV’s work force jobs at the newly created station.

The government has explained that its decision is a direct result of RCTV’s repeated violations of the law. RCTV has been responsible for more than 600 violations of Venezuela’s broadcasting law, including regularly broadcasting pornography, and has refused to pay fines for such infractions. It has also been accused of non-payment of taxes. The station has been strongly criticised for rarely allowing on air Venezuelans of indigenous or African heritage, even though they are the majority of Venezuela’s population.

The government has singled out RCTV’s role in helping organise the April 2002 US-backed military coup that overthrew the elected Chavez government, which was subsequently restored by a popular uprising of the poor, as the key factor behind the non-renewal. During their time in power, the coup leaders publicly thanked RCTV for its assistance.

These facts have become twisted beyond recognition in a campaign by the corporate media that is part of a drive to paint the Chavez government as moving towards a dictatorship, even though pro-Chavez forces have won 11 straight national elections and Chavez was re-elected in December with the largest number of votes in Venezuelan history.

The corporate media have ignored the fact that 79 out of 81 TV stations, 706 out of 708 radio stations and all newspapers in Venezuela are privately owned, and that the majority of the private media are virulently anti-Chavez. Since Chavez was elected in 1998, only two TV stations have been closed: the state-run Channel 8 during the coup by the coup leaders, and community TV station Catia TV in July 2002 by then-Caracas mayor and coup leader Alfredo Pena.

Freedom of speech has been extended under the Chavez government. Just after Chavez came to power, he passed a law that allowed the entire population the right to use the nation’s airwaves. This legalised a large number of previously illegal “pirate” radio stations, the type of stations that are still illegal in the US. The government has actively promoted community media, especially radio, which has blossomed in recent years. TVes aims to provide a space to the growing movement of independent media producers.

What none of the critics have been able to answer is: which other government in the world would renew the licence of a station that actively participated in a coup against the legitimate government? The tolerance of the Chavez government towards the private media involved in the coup is remarkable. The government has not attempted to shut down RCTV or jail its owners, or even cancel its licence, although it had a strong legal case to do so. Instead, it allowed the licence to run out its term, then chose to grant the concession to someone else.

The government says it is seeking to “democratise” the media, so that those who were previously excluded can have a voice. An article by George Ciccariello Maher posted on Venezuelanalysis.com on May 29 pointed out that 80% of all messages, information and media content produced in Venezuela are controlled by either Granier or billionaire Gustavo Cisneros, who owns Venevision. Both are married to granddaughters of William H. Phelps Jr. — the founder of 1BC corporation, which runs RCTV. Leading 1BC shareholders include direct descendants of Phelps. Cisneros is also one of the richest men in Latin America, owning a range of industries in Venezuela and across the region.

In light of these facts, the only possible justification for renewing RCTV’s concession is that Granier and his oligarchic mates who own 1BC have some sort of automatic right to use it forever, regardless of how they abuse the privilege. To renew the licence would have sent the message that the likes of Granier, by virtue of their extreme wealth, can break the law with impunity, work to overthrow elected governments and refuse to pay taxes, and they will be rewarded with a renewal of their concession. And by implication, that the majority of Venezuelans, whose access to media is being increased, do not have the same right.

At the heart of the campaign over the media in Venezuela is the Bolivarian revolution being led by the Chavez government, which is redistributing the nation’s wealth and breaking the economic and political power of the oligarchy. This revolutionary process is increasingly empowering the working people and the poor through participatory democracy. The democratisation of the media is a crucial part of this campaign. In keeping with its profoundly democratic nature, the revolution has sought to break the media monopoly — not by silencing the rich minority who exercise the monopoly, but by countering it with an explosion of new media run by the previously voiceless.

All attempts to stop this peaceful and democratic revolution have failed, and the opposition is growing desperate. Having failed to mobilise significant numbers, the opposition then resorted to violence, with some among the protesters on May 26 opening fire on police without provocation, injuring 11 officers. In the days following the May 27 deadline, students from the wealthy universities, which remain strongholds of the elite, took to the streets, burning tires and garbage in order to block traffic, while attacking police with rocks. Yet the corporate media ignored students from the Bolivarian University — created by the Chavez government to provide free education to the poor excluded from the old universities — who marched off campus on May 29 according to a Bolivarian News Agency report, in a show of support for the RCTV decision. On June 2, Aporrea.org reported that Avenida Bolivar in central Caracas was completely filled by a “red tide” of people from across the country who took part in a massive demonstration to reject opposition violence and support the govenrment’s stance.

The Venezuelan government believes that behind the RCTV campaign is a new plot to destablise the country in order to undermine the Chavez government, isolate it internationally, and lay the groundwork for its overthrow and for the reversal of the gains made by the revolution by whatever means possible.

The government is upset that a Spanish broadcast by CNN screened footage of a protest in Mexico while claiming it was a protest against the RCTV decision inside Venezuela, and that CNN recently showed an image of Chavez alongside an image of an assassinated al Qaeda leader. The government claims Globovision intended to potentially incite Chavez’s assassination when it followed an interview with Granier with the images of the failed assassination attempt of Pope John Paul II, while a song with the lyrics “Have faith, for it doesn’t end here” played over the top.

The much-vaunted “attack on freedom of expression” supposedly underway in Venezuela, in reality exists in the same places as Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction — inside the minds of the US State Department.

(From International News, Green Left Weekly issue #712 6 June 2007, slightly abridged.)

Right way ahead for France

noreply@blogger.com (दुःखदीन) — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 06:20:00 +0000

Mahir Ali

The French electorate this week forwent an opportunity to pick a woman as the head of the state for the first time, opting instead, by a small but decisive margin, for a sharp turn to the right. It’s a decision quite a few of those who voted for Nicolas Sarkozy on Sunday may come to regret before long.
For all his keenness to depict himself as an outsider, Sarkozy was very much a part of the establishment 18 months ago when economically depressed suburbs in cities across France exploded after two youths of Arab origin were electrocuted while being chased by the police. Two days earlier, Sarkozy, in his capacity as interior minister, had described petty offenders as “scum”; few months before that, he had vowed to clean out the Parisian suburb of La Corneuve with an industrial-strength power hose.
If soundbites of this variety, spiced up with a racist flavour, infuriated large numbers of people, they also served as a dog whistle that attracted the far right. The National Front’s Jean-Marie Le Pen received a smaller proportion of the vote in last month’s first round of the presidential election than he did five years ago because a section of his support base defected to Sarkozy, correctly viewing him as a more effective vehicle for the extremist agenda.
Not surprisingly, the next president’s perceptions of the present are coloured by his views of the past. Twelve years ago, Jacques Chirac admitted collective French responsibility for collaboration with the country’s Nazi occupiers. Sarkozy rejects all guilt on this account. Another favourite subject of his is the supposed falsification of history by those who find cause for shame in France’s colonial past. However, it isn’t very clear which colonial experience he fancies as a particular cause for pride: Algeria? Vietnam? Rwanda and Burundi?
He has been more ambiguous on the subject of the latter-day colonization of Iraq, describing the occupation of that country as a “historical mistake”, yet, during a visit to the US, chiding his own government for its “arrogance” on the matter, to the considerable annoyance of Chirac and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin. The latter, while serving as foreign minister, responded eloquently to the Bush administration’s belligerent rhetoric at the UN. France played a vital role in ensuring that the US and Britain embarked on their aggression without the world body’s imprimatur.
This was unquestionably the Chirac government’s finest hour on the international stage, and its policy enjoyed an approval rating of 90 per cent among the French public. This helps to explain Sarkozy’s reluctance to diverge too sharply from the near consensus. But had he been ensconced in the Elysee Palace in 2002-03, it is likely that he would have followed in the footsteps of Spain’s Jose Maria Aznar and Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi by massaging George W. Bush’s bloated ego with unstinting moral support and a limited military deployment.
Unlike some of its neighbours, postwar France has maintained a certain aloofness from the US. This tradition, established by the president-elect’s putative hero Charles de Gaulle, is likely to be discontinued by “Sarko the American”, which in turn could precipitate a diminution in Europe’s stature in world affairs - not least in the Middle East, where Sarkozy’s attitude towards Israel closely reflects that of the US.
It is on the domestic front, however, that Sarkozy’s progress will closely be analysed, and his campaign benefited from the fact that he brings to the project a clear vision, unpleasant as it may be.
In his victory speech, he vowed to “rehabilitate work, authority, morality, respect, merit”. Whether it was used deliberately or subconsciously, “rehabilitate” is an interesting choice of word, because it carries the implication of bringing back into vogue something that existed in the past. You will seldom find its proponents acknowledging that the neoliberal “reform” process falls squarely in that category, for it is based on the assumption that rapid “growth” and “wealth creation” are contingent on further empowering the owners and controllers of capital while wresting from workers many of the rights that were gained after long and arduous struggles.
This is, in other words, a regressive process, its primary aim being to take relations of production back to where they stood a hundred or so years ago. Small bribes often succeed in restricting resistance to the backsliding. Trade unions tend to sell out, or become so bloated and bureaucratized that they lose the respect and allegiance of their members. But those that continue to serve their historic purpose of agitating and bargaining for better conditions face the wrath of the entrepreneurial classes: they are dismissed as relics of the distant past and as hurdles to “progress”. From the capitalist point of view, the ideal solution to the nuisance posed by organized labour is legislation that strips it of its powers.
That, in part, is the sort of thing Sarkozy has in mind. His supporters hope, and his opponents fear, that his influence on the economic landscape of France will be as profound as the effect Margaret Thatcher produced in Britain. He has the unions in his sights, not least because they proved a year ago that they can still summon up the street power to resist retrograde proposals.
The bone of contention last spring was the de Villepin government’s contrat première embauche, which would have made it easier for employers to sack young workers. It was ostensibly intended to combat widespread youth unemployment, but millions of French workers and students didn’t see why job creation should entail job insecurity, and they poured into the streets in numbers not witnessed since May 1968, compelling Chirac to order a retreat.
Sarkozy has frequently underlined the need to “liquidate the legacy of May 1968”, offering the impression that the events of that tumultuous phase in French history were little more than a mass mobilization in defence of the right to strike. In fact, the radicals of ‘68 were determined to overturn the power structure, and very nearly succeeded in bringing down de Gaulle. They were let down, above all, by a Communist Party fearful of seriously challenging the status quo.
Among the more prominent leaders of the abortive revolution of ‘68 was Daniel Cohn-Bendit, who now represents Germany’s Greens in the European Parliament. He recently advised Sarkozy’s presidential rival Ségolène Royal, the Socialist Party candidate, to back away from left-wing policies. “If she tries to play it on the traditionally socialist card, she will lose,” he predicted, “because France has veered right.”
So much, then, for the legacy of May ‘68. It was, in fact, liquidated long ago. Sarkozy isn’t inheriting a socialist state any more than Royal would have sought to create one, had she won last Sunday’s election. France does, however, retain elements of the welfare state. As Tony Judt commented in The New York Times a couple of weeks ago: “The dysfunctional French social model, we are frequently assured, has failed. In that case there is much to be said for failure. French infants have a better chance of survival than American ones. The French live longer than Americans and they live healthier (at far lower cost). They are better educated and have first-rate public transportation. The gap between rich and poor is narrower than in the US or Britain, and there are fewer poor people.”
Much of this may no longer hold true once Sarkozy has had his way, but there can be little question that his campaign benefited enormously from the incoherence of the competing vision. Royal was unable to offer voters much more than a vague, unexciting continuity. It wasn’t entirely her fault: the fractious Socialist Party was never solidly behind her, and some socialist voters decided that a dose of Sarkozisme was likelier to reinvigorate the left than a bout of Royalisme. However, the risk is that five or 10 years of Sarkozy could drastically alter the shape of French politics, paving the way for a situation analogous to that of Britain, where the Thatcherite legacy found the ideal host in New Labour.
European social democracy has been in decline for decades: most of the parties associated with that label have convinced themselves that there is no alternative to neoliberal economics and, furthermore, that deviations from the capitalist path are indefensible on the electoral battlefield. No one exemplifies this trend better than Sarkozy’s friend and admirer Tony Blair. The centre has shifted, making it simpler for conservatism to slide towards extremist variants of the creed. Sarkozy, with his appeals to nationalist pride, is one of the consequences. If the drift continues, it is not inconceivable that the far right in Europe will before long acquire “respectability” of the sort it hasn’t enjoyed since the 1930s.
“I will be president of all the French people,” Sarkozy vowed in his victory speech. The diminutive, polarizing politician’s tall claim will severely be tested once he begins implementing his agenda after next month’s parliamentary elections. One of his first targets is likely to be the 35-hour working week. And a harsh crackdown on “delinquency” could reduce France’s unemployment problem the American way: by increasing the prison population, with disproportionate representation for non-whites.

There is a small possibility, of course, that the reality of power will moderate Sarkozy’s crypto-fascist tendencies. However, given that their new president appears to have little time for notions such as liberté, egalité and fraternité, it’s more likely that the plurality of French citizens will sooner or later find themselves rallying to defend not the legacy of 1968 but the spirit of 1789.

The mass movement in Pakistan - from nowhere to everywhere

noreply@blogger.com (दुःखदीन) — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 06:18:00 +0000

(Labour Party Pakistan (LPP) General Secretary Farooq Tariq, along with more than 1000 others was arrested on May 4, and released from detention on May 7. Below is an abridged account by Farooq Tariq of the developing movement against the dictatorship in Pakistan.)
On March 8, no-one in Pakistan would have thought a mass movement would erupt in the near future with the potential to overthrow the regime of General Pervez Musharraf. A day later, Musharraf suspended Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, with the illusion that nothing would happen and business would go on as usual.
Musharraf had done this in the past successfully, but it was different this time. Immediately after the suspension, the 80,000 strong advocates’ (lawyers’) community started agitating against the decision.
This peaked on May 14, when for the first time since Musharraf took power in October 1999, the whole of Pakistan shut down. It was the first political strike in seven years and the first political action during that time that was not initiated by the religious fundamentalist forces.
On that day, Pakistan was united against the military dictatorship and the gangsters of the MQM (the United National Movement, which shares power with Musharraf). From Karachi to Peshawar, all the shops were closed and there was little traffic on the streets. In Lahore, more than 15,000 people demonstrated.
Even traders associated with the military regime went on strike. Great anger was expressed against the killing of more than 40 political activists who had attended a reception for Chaudhry on May 12 in Karachi. More than 200 others were injured by the bullets of the MQM thugs.
This neo-fascist organisation, based on the Urdu-speaking immigrants of 1947, controls the local bodies and almost all the provincial and national seats in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city. Several busloads of LPP activists were snatched by MQM gangsters, who dragged them inside with guns to their heads. A private TV channel, Aaj, attempted to show the firing live, so the gangsters went and shot at the TV station’s building for over six hours.
Advocates’ movement
The advocates’ movement was started by the bar associations across Pakistan after March 9. Historically, the advocates have been at the forefront of every democratic struggle in Pakistan. They were the main force behind the movement against General Ayub Khan’s dictatorship in the 1960s; they were also responsible for keeping the movement alive during the General Zia dictatorship of the ’80s.
There have been numerous hunger strike camps, protest camps and both small and big demonstrations, mainly by the advocates during the first 60 days of the movement. The movement was built up slowly but steadily, convincing many ordinary Pakistanis to pay it attention.
The first phase of repression against the movement was in the week after March 9. Many advocates were beaten up by police and arrested. That did not work. Then the regime’s strategy was to exhaust the movement by opening up and allowing the demonstrations to take place freely. That brought more people into the movement, including the activists of political parties including the Muslim League (Nawaz), the Pakistan People’s Party, parties associated with Awami Jamhoori Tehreek (the People’s Democratic Movement — a left alliance including the LPP), the Awami National Party, the Baluchistan National Party and the MMA.
The second phase of repression began on May 4, mainly against political activists. I was detained by Lahore police from May 4-7.
The Chief justice
Chaudhry was no different to the other judges who have helped sustain the military regime. But in his two years of office, he supported ordinary Pakistanis who were subject to human rights violations, and particularly helped women victims of rape and conservative, reactionary customary practices. Chaudhry also stopped the privatisation of the Pakistan Steel Mills in Karachi. Yet he has also made decisions against trade union rights and has banned some strikes in the public sector.
While not a worthy hero of ordinary people, Chaudhry earned respect when he refused to resign and was called to the Army House by Musharraf, in the presence of five military generals who immediately removed him from the post and put him under house arrest. This spurred the anger among the advocates, who labelled it an attack on the judiciary.
People were fed up with the regime, but had no trust in the main political parties. The MMA religious fundamentalists, who had the street power, used this to gain more and more concessions from the regime, including power in the North West Frontier Province and sharing power in Baluchistan. But they had come out to save the regime whenever it was in trouble.
Now the religious fundamentalist are trailing behind the advocates’ movement, hoping to hijack it. They have lent their support to the advocates but cannot be trusted to consistently oppose the regime.
Benazir Bhutto admitted last month that the Pakistan People’s Party is in contact with the military regime and is ready to share power with Musharraf as president. This sparked great anger among the advocates, who are mainly led by supporters of the PPP, and Bhutto no longer makes such statements.

How and when Musharraf will step down, who will take over, if there will be general elections or a transitional government of some alliances, are some of the questions being discussed in the movement. One thing is certain — that Musharraf is weaker to an extent never seen before. He cannot last long. Many have started counting the days. He is a general on his last leg.

Exposing the Saffron Scheme: A Popular outline-V

noreply@blogger.com (दुःखदीन) — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 18:06:00 +0000

In lieu of conclusion

Comrade Vinod Mishra

In the month of March, a comrade handed me a questionnaire issued by the ABVP during the Benares Hindu University Students’ Union elections, with the request to write a ‘befitting’ reply. The questions were a mere rehash of oft-repeated allegations against communists, their foreign roots, their role in the Quit India movement, during partition and even during Emergency and so on and so forth. ABVP wondered what relevance Marxism had in India after the Soviet collapse. Wonder of wonders! ABVP was soon to get a befitting reply in Benares Hindu University itself!

The battle in BHU campus had clearly assumed ideological proportions and ABVP had to suffer a stunning defeat at the hands of AISA. The victory was an exclusive AISA victory as the student wings of CPI and CPI(M), Janata Dal, Mulayam, and even ex-Naxalites, were all working to ensure AISA’s defeat. The BHU victory came in succession to AISA victories in Nainital and Allahabad and attracted a lot of media attention.

Ideologues of the Sangh Parivar, who till the other day relished the ‘death’ of Marxism and boasted their expanding influence in West Bengal and Kerala as the corroboration of this fact were hard put to explain the resurgence of Marxism in the intellectual centres of Uttar Pradesh. Time was ripe for going over to a counter-offensive and thus the idea of this popular series was born.

Unfortunately, most of the writings against the Sangh Parivar’s communal philosophy were enmeshed in a liberal Hindu framework: extolling the virtues of Ram, invoking the themes of Hindu tolerance and Sarva Dharma Sambhav, and correspondingly, the liberal Hindu image of Gandhi and Vivekanand; and appealing to the conscience of communalists formed the mainstream of secular defence. Left leaders too joined in under the pretext of a new-found realisation of the role of religion. Even Nehru — so dear to CPI and CPI(M)-wallahs — became taboo and was silently replaced by Gandhi in secular left literature. Pseudo-secularism indeed!

True, the fascist connotation of Hindu Rashtra was as correctly identified as the need to build a broader unity of secular forces. But in the absence of a renewed thrust on the consolidation of a left core, this opened the floodgates of ideological and political opportunism as well. It goes without saying, that bereft of the cutting edge a counter-offensive, the whole secular propaganda may fall flat in face of a heightened communal onslaught. Who will then take up this challenge? The responsibility invariably falls on the Marxist-Leninists.

In course of our popular propaganda against communalism we questioned:

(A) The Gandhian methodology of invoking Hindu symbols, particularly Ram Rajya in the freedom struggle and held that it was the prime cause for Muslim alienation.

(B) Radhakrishnan’s definition of secularism as sarva dharma sambhava — which also became the official credo — and held that a modem state’s policy towards religion can only be sarva dharma varjite.

(C) The rationality of projecting Ram, a religious figure, as a national hero, and held that this status can only be attributed to the people’s hero Bhagat Singh.

(D) The validity of Hindu Rashtra as the unifying force for the country, and held that, if history is any guide, a Hindu Rashtra will surely disintegrate into multitudes of kingdoms. Symptoms of Maratha Rashtra of Shiv Sena developing side by side is an indicator of this.

(E) The role of the RSS in the entire course of the freedom struggle, including in 1942, in precipitating and supporting partition with the demand that entire Muslim population should be deported to Pakistan, in hobnobbing with Indira Congress during the days of Emergency, and held that RSS openly derived inspiration from Nazism, a foreign ideology.

(F) The RSS style of diffusing the target against the colonial masters during the freedom struggle by raising the Muslim bogey, and held that history was being repeated once again exactly when India was facing the serious threat of neo-colonisation.

(G) The anti-Pakistan axis of Indian foreign policy and held that a friendly approach towards Pakistan and a positive resolution of the bilateral dispute of Jammu and Kashmir are crucial to the improvement of the communal situation in India. We even proposed a commonwealth of independent states of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

In our build up of a counter-offensive we had pointed out that the most conservative bourgeois and landlord class and upper caste social composition of BJP, the increasing intervention of sadhus and mahants in civic and political life, the militant organisation of dregs of society in the garb of kar sevaks and hordes of upstart intellectuals bent upon falsifying history, organising hate mail and forcibly shutting down all dissident voices in academic circles combine to form a perfect mix for fascism.

Afterthought

The Babri Masjid has been demolished. Democrats of all hues have rightly demanded that for the sake of historic justice the Babri Masjid should be rebuilt there itself. The doubt, however, lingers on whether this will be possible or practical at this stage.

A makeshift Ram temple is already there and the way the Rao government is proceeding – in the typical Congress style of ‘delinking religion from politics’— and acting from behind only through Chandraswami and Shankaracharyas, the case of a Ram temple is getting strengthened. Who will take the credit — Congress or BJP — remains the only issue to be settled.

Ideologues of the Sangh Parivar had been repeatedly saying that Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi dispute is not merely a religious one. As Babri Masjid, according to them, was the symbol of national humiliation, of Muslim invasion and rule over Hindu India, it is instead a question of national dignity.

Come on, for the sake of nationalism and patriotism why not build a national monument at the site? Neither the Babri Masjid, nor a Ram Mandir, a national monument in memory of the heroes of the first war of independence of 1857. After all, Awadh was the epicentre of this rebellion and building a national monument at Ayodhya can be a befitting honour to that history.

If Hinduism is just not a religion but a culture embracing all those who live in India, if Hinduism is equivalent to Indianness and if the Babri Masjid was demolished because it was a symbol of national humiliation, the Sangh Parivar should have no objection to raising a monument of national honour. Let the super nationalists and super patriots of Sangh Parivar accept this proposal and see how Muslims — the ‘anti-nationals’ — react to it. Messers Malkani and Govindacharya, are you listening to me?

Well, whether they listen or not, it is high time the secular and patriotic forces mooted this proposal, so as to prevent the building of a Ram Mandir there. A Ram Mandir will be a perpetual source of humiliation and alienation to Indian Muslims, and in this sense, a symbol of national disintegration. A national monument seems to be the only principled and practical demand at this stage and the nation must act, if necessary over the heads of all hues of die-hards, to avert a national catastrophe.

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Exposing the Saffron Scheme: A Popular outline-lV

noreply@blogger.com (दुःखदीन) — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 18:03:00 +0000

The myth of ‘secular’ Hinduism

Comrade Vinod Mishra

Another oft-repeated argument of the Sangh Parivar is that India is secular because Hindus constitute the overwhelming majority of the Indian population. Incidentally, this idea of equating the supposedly inherent tolerance of Hinduism with secularism also informs the official ‘secular’ opinion in India and hence the Hindu ethos is constantly invoked in all preachings of secularism in India.

Now, the present rise of Hindutva is marked by an alarming escalation of religious fanaticism in the Hindu masses, the growing clout of sadhus and mahants in the nation’s political life, a dangerous consolidation of all the dregs and scum of society in outfits like Bajrang Dal and Shiv Sena, a heightened spate of anti-Muslim pogroms, the open exhibition of communal bias by various wings of the state and increasing intolerance of every kind of dissenting idea in the academic world. This convincingly shows that a pure Hindu state can only mean the negation of democracy and secularism.

Secondly, several developed countries, where Christianity and Buddhism are dominant religions, are far more secular than India. Christianity in particular was quite an orthodox and intolerant religion — if one remembers the Inquisition — and in many European countries the church was a very powerful institution. In course of time, however, various trends emerged within Christianity and successful bourgeois revolutions led to the separation of the church from the state. In fact, the very concept of secularism, based on separation of religion and the state, arose from the successful bourgeois revolutions of the West.

Proponents of the supposedly inherent secular character of Hinduism, however, contrast it only with the supposedly inherent intolerance of Islam. This perception of Islam is shared by a vast majority of Hindu masses and therefore it is necessary to delve deep into the evolution of Islam.

In the sixth century, various tribes inhabiting Arabia were engaged in internecine clashes. The decline of the caravan trade and the consequent need for land was the major factor behind this. Islam as the movement for unification among warring tribes arose out of this socio-economic condition. Muhammad’s preaching advocating the merger of tribal cults and submission to the single supreme god — Allah — began in this historical situation. Chiefs of his own Koerish tribe as well as the merchant nobility were initially hostile to his ideas and he had to flee Mecca. People in the agricultural oasis of Medina, who were in conflict with the Mecca aristocracy provided a strong support base to Muhammad and with their help he eventually seized Mecca. With the emergence of Mecca as an important religious and national centre the Koerish nobility too not only accepted Islam, but even became its leaders.

Engels wrote that Islam was a religion intended, on the one hand, for city-dwellers engaged in commerce and craft and, on the other hand, for nomadic Bedouins.

Islam which had emerged as a national religion for Arabs soon turned into a world religion. By eighth and ninth century, Islam became the exclusive religion in the vast territory from Spain to Central Asia stretching to the borders of India. In the latter centuries, it spread on a larger scale to Northern India. Still later, it expanded to Indonesia, Caucasia and among certain peoples in the Balkan states.

Conquests recorded as holy wars for faith (Jihad) and arising out of the Arab need to unify and seize new lands did play a major role in the spread of Islam. But if people in many states like Byzantine and Sissamid empires did not offer any resistance, the reason being the terrible oppression suffered by them at the hands of local feudal lords. In the countries conquered by the Arabs, the obligations of the peasant populations — particularly those adopting Islam — was lessened considerably. In India the spread of Islam was facilitated by inhuman Brahminical caste oppression. The spread of Islam also has much to do with its simplicity, which made it attractive for the peasant masses in the patriarchal feudal states of the East.

Subsequently, the Muslim theologians and secular scholars have reinterpreted the commandments of Jihad. There have been attempts to reinterpret Hinduism as the religion with a holy book and Ram and Krishna as prophets of their times. Readers may recall in this context a recent debate in Muslim theological circles in Bihar where a certain Muslim scholar gave a call to withdraw the label of Kafirs on Hindus.

Islam has codified civil and criminal laws based on religious laws known as Shariat. Patriarchal tribal attitudes did influence the family ethics in Islam where women are subordinate to men. This is perhaps common to all religions. However, in the concrete social conditions prevailing in Arabia then, the Koran by condemning the cruel conduct of a husband towards his wife — and by specifying the woman’s property rights — the right to dowry and inheritance — did elevate the status of women somewhat.

Though Islam united people on a large scale under the banner of religion, the national and class contradictions went on intensifying in Muslim countries. This was reflected through the emergence of various trends and sects in Islam.

One of the earliest and largest among such trends has been Shiaism. It began as an internal struggle among the Arabs, as a struggle for power between Muhammad’s successors, but soon it developed into an expression of discontent of the Persians against their Arab conquerors. Shiaism till date remains the state religion of Iran. Most of the Muslims of the world, however, follow Sunnism. In the eighth and ninth centuries, Mutzilites — a sect among Sunnis — tried to interpret the Muslim doctrine in a rational spirit, maintaining that the Koran was a book written by the people and not created by god, and that man has free will. As against schools of thought based on literal interpretation of religions dogmas, certain schools of thought arose within Islam, which allowed for a more liberal interpretation of the doctrine and enjoyed support in more developed regions of the Muslim world.

Sufism grew within Shiaism but was also adopted among Sunnis. Adherents of Sufism did not pay much attention to superficial rituals and sought a mystical union with the divine. In the strict sense, they deviated from the Koran in their pantheistc perception of god. Initially they were persecuted by orthodox Muslims but later on a compromise was brought about.

In keeping with the era of democratic revolutions and anti-imperialist movements, radical changes occurred in Muslim traditions during the 19th and 20th centuries. In a number of Muslim countries the sphere of influence of the Shariat has been limited, legal norms have been secularised and the state separated from the hold of the Muslim clergy. In Turkey, in 1920s, democratic revolution occurred under the leadership of Kemal Pasha and after the establishment of republic radical reforms were introduced.

India provides a classical case of Islam’s coexistence with Hinduism, a religion with idol worship and many gods, for centuries. At the level of religious beliefs, there could hardly be any meeting point between the two, but at the grassroots, people from both religions share a common life, common aspirations, and many common beliefs. As the country was divided on Hindu-Muslim lines, obviously Muslims who remained in India would have a sympathetic attitudes towards Pakistan quite similar to the attitude of a Pakistani or Bangladeshi Hindu towards India. However, after Partition, the politics of Indian Muslims has generally veered around the Congress. To preserve its vote bank, the Congress went into political and social deals with Muslim fundamentalist forces often to offset the concessions it made to Hindu fundamentalism. This game had its obvious limits, and recent events have caused disillusionment of the Muslim community in relation to the Congress. Parties like Janata Dal have now jumped in to cash in on the Congress’ predicament, aligning, however, with the same fundamentalist forces.

The BJP’s advocacy of a Hindu state and its religious fanaticism is only, albeit negatively, strengthening fundamentalist forces among Muslims. Opposing bigamy or polygamy as part of progressive social reforms is one thing, but linking it with the growth of Muslim population is highly absurd. Having more children is an attribute of the feudal society and has nothing to do with religion. Polygamy is practised by a miniscule section of Muslims in India, and moreover, a little common sense can explain that given the ratio of male and female population, neither can this be the general phenomenon in a society, nor can it in any way account for population growth. The BJP’s concern for a uniform civil code and the rights of Muslim women is a big fraud and is only part of an overall attack on Muslim identity. Its jumping into the fray in the Shah Bano case only led to an orthodox Muslim backlash and caused a setback to a progressive social reform which otherwise had good support among Muslims too.

By advocating second-grade citizenship for Muslims in Hindu India, the BJP is only strengthening pro-Pakistan feelings among Muslims. Similarly, the demand for merging the Muslim identity with the Hindu ‘cultural’ identity is a direct negation of a composite Indian identity, notwithstanding the BJP’s trickery of equating Hindu identity with Indian identity. The Sangh Parivar’s ideological offensive shall only perpetuate and strengthen the myth of Pakistan among Indian Muslims.

Pakistan and the Pakistani myth among Indian Muslims was created because of the pronounced Hindu bias of India’s freedom struggle. And it continues to exist and draw fresh sustenance from the Sangh Parivar’s Hindutva hysteria. True to their treacherous role in freedom struggle, they are repeating the same for the sake of splitting and weakening the Indian people’s resistance to the neo-colonial danger. The Sangh Parivar is once again at His Master’s Service, exactly when it is needed most.

However, the BJP is not going to have the last word on the future of Indian Muslims. New generations of Muslim youth no longer have any deep emotional attachment with Pakistan and are eager to carve out their space in India as Indian Muslims. They are quite receptive to the ideas of a secular state and recent events have brought them closer to the Left. Progressive and democratic intelligentsia among Muslims are raising their voice for democratic reforms within the Muslim society, stressing modern education and, particularly, elevation of the status of women. All secular forces must strengthen this developing current among Indian Muslims, which will lead to their becoming equal partners in deciding the destiny of India. Only a genuinely secular Indian state will destroy the very rationale of Pakistan, and if Pakistan still exists, be sure that the Indian Muslim youth will celebrate India’s victory over Pakistan in a cricket match with the same fervour as his Hindu brother.

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Exposing the Saffron Scheme: A Popular outline-lll

noreply@blogger.com (दुःखदीन) — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 17:52:00 +0000

The myth of Hindu pride

Comrade Vinod Mishra

One of the popular slogans of the Sangh Parivar is Garv se kaho hum Hindu hain (Proudly say we are Hindus), exhorting Hindus to proudly proclaim their Hindu identity. According to the Sangh ideologues, the loss of Hindu pride was mainly responsible for the Hindus’ meek submission to successive foreign invaders. Therefore in order to retrieve Hindu pride it is all the more necessary to demolish the monuments of Hindu humiliation. The Hindu crusade, at the fag end of the 20th century, has thus begun with the demolition of the Babri Masjid and obviously the list runs longer to include masjids at Kashi and Mathura to the Jama Masjid and even the Taj Mahal.

Let us recount the history of evolution of Hinduism to unearth the essence of this so-called Hindu pride. Ironically, the first known invaders of India were none other than the Aryans themselves, who came from the Iranian highlands around the middle of the second millennium B.C. To buttress its claim of Hindu India, the Sangh Parivar is engaged in a grand design of falsifying history and disproving all known historical tendencies in dishing out new theories of Aryans being the original inhabitants of this country. This is utterly false. The original inhabitants of India were people of the Mohenjodaro and Harappan civilisation in the Indus valley — a civilisation higher than that of the Aryans. India’s pre-Aryan population was most probably Dravidian. The Aryan tribes were semi-nomadic pastoral tribes with a developed patriarchal clan system and military democracy. In other words, they were at a transitional stage from a pre-class to class society. From the Indus basin and Northwest, they gradually spread out to the Gangetic basin and Northeast. This advance, however, involved innumerable battles with the local population. This whole transitional phase is reflected in the Rig Veda and other Vedas.

The religion of the Aryans at this stage is termed as Vedic religion. In the early stages, Devas and Asuras were both Vedic gods, albeit belonging to two hostile camps. Later on, Asuras became evil spirits, the opposite of what happened to other Iranians. The local hostile tribes of Dravidians were personified as Rakshasas.

Vedic Aryans practised polytheism where gods representing forces of nature, particularly Indra, occupied the central position. There were no temples, no professional priesthood, and no concept of retribution after death. The idea of the soul’s separation from the body too had not developed by then. A varna system had come into being reflecting the emerging pattern of social division of labour. In short, Vedic religion was reflective of the transitional stage of Aryan society and it was more concerned with life on earth than after-life.

As Aryan tribes evolved into settled agricultural communities, a number of despotic, early slave-owning kingdoms emerged in the beginning of the first millennium B.C. At this stage, Vedic religion gave way to what is known as Brahmanism.

The Varna structure acquired a social rigidity and there emerged a separate social group of Brahmans — specialists in the Vedas — with a good deal of authority. The laws of Manu, in 5th century B.C., gave divine sanction to the varna and caste system and the Brahman caste was virtually deified. Vedic gods were relegated to secondary positions and new deities came to the forefront, Brahma being the foremost among them. As the local population gradually merged with the Aryan conquerors, their deities too entered the Brahmanic pantheon. With the development of a rigid caste system, gods too became caste gods. With the arrival of Upanishads, the idea of immigration of soul became dominant and the idea of karma became the theoretical foundation of reincarnation.

The Brahmanical period is also described as the Upanishadic period where six classical schools of thought developed. Vedanta, advocating the merger of Atma with Bramha, a profoundly mystical philosophy, was the mainstay of Brahmans. The kshatriyas, who had been competing with the Brahmans, sided with Sankhya, a philosophy closer to materialism.

Beyond the sphere of classical philosophy, there emerged materialistic philosophies of Charvaka and Lokayata which rejected even the existence of god. They were reflective of the common people’s rejection of Brahmanic domination.

Brahmanism was collapsing under its own weight and the broad masses of people in the form of unconscious protest against oppressive caste system started rallying behind the rival religious trends of Buddhism and to an extent Jainism by 6th and 5th century B.C.

Both these trends rejected the caste system as well as the organised priesthood. Buddhism, in the main, replaced Brahmanism and between 3rd century B.C. and 1st and 2nd century A.D. it even became the state religion under Maurya and Kushan dynasties. With its complex rituals, alienated from the masses, the Brahminic aristocracy was no match for the Buddhists’ populism.

In the course of its struggle with Buddhism, Brahmanism drastically reshaped itself under the leadership of Adi Shankaracharya. Thus began the phase of what is known as Hinduism. The Buddhists were the first to introduce the concept of temples. To overwhelm the masses, grand Hindu temples were built with huge idols of gods. Pilgrimage sites were introduced, and to ensure mass mobilisation, public ceremonies and religious processions were initiated. To bring gods closer to the masses, there came into being the concept of Avatars. Mythical heroes like Ram and Krishna were elevated to the status of avatars of god and thus were treated as saviours. Buddha too was incorporated as one of Vishnu’s avatars. Strange enough, while Buddhism spread far and wide and became a world religion, in the country of its origin it was virtually wiped out.

Hinduism essentially came to mean the preservation of the old caste system supplemented by new methods of influencing and controlling the masses. With the growth of social stratification, caste, ethnic and racial diversification and complexities of class relations, Hindus went on splintering into various sects, marked by unending mutual schisms.

While futile attempts for sarva panth sambhav — later translated as sarva dharma sambhav and proclaimed as the basis of Indian secularism — were made by some, in later periods there emerged religious reform movements, first under the impact of Islam, and then Christianity. Kabir, Nanak, Chaitanya and a host of other reformers — making up what is known as the Bhakti Andolan in the Middle Ages — attacked the caste system and the complicated rituals of Hinduism. Kabir stands out as the most outstanding among all these reformers, who, on behalf of the common masses launched scathing attacks against the superstition and hypocrisy of the Brahmans.

In the British period, Raja Rammohan Roy, Dayanand Saraswati and Vivekanand were the major advocates of reform. They all championed the pantheistic philosophy of the Vedanta school and tried to get rid of the rigid caste system. However, each one of these trends ended up only adding another sect to Hinduism and nothing more. Hinduism, with its rigid caste system, supposedly with divine sanction, closed its doors forever and remained essentially a national religion. Buddhism, Christianity and then Islam grew into world religions. Vishwa Hindu Parishad therefore is a misnomer, a pretence, to project Hinduism as a world religion.

More than upholding a false Hindu pride, all progressive reform movements in Hinduism have tried to give Hinduism a liberal, modern outlook with particular emphasis on doing away with the rigidity of its caste structure. Hindu orthodoxy has all along resisted it more or less successfully on the strength of traditions and traditional institutions. Now for the first time, there has emerged a counter-movement under the auspices of the Sangh Parivar, which aims at annulling whatever effect the reforms have had. Those who are expecting a social reform in Hinduism out of the current upsurge of Hindutva are living in a fool’s paradise. This movement has so far offered us only wilful distortion of history, consolidation of the social and political clout of the sadhus and mahants, renewed aggressiveness of upper caste Hindus and of course a lumpen army of Bajrang Dal and Shiv Sainiks. This is what is being hailed by the ideologues of the Sangh Parivar as the upsurge of Hindutva, the rise of a Kshatriya cult in Hinduism on the lines of Khalsa, and, of course, as the assertion of Hindu pride.

Religion, as has been rightly said, is the expression of man’s powerlessness vis-a-vis his environment. Religious fantasies do provide illusions of breaking through the limits imposed by the environment and people, therefore, have always flocked to religion, particularly in times of distress. But illusions are only illusions, they can never replace reality. Invoking the Hindu pride and the super-human role of a monkey god, it is possible to demolish a dilapidated structure, kill and maim thousands of unarmed innocent people but not to resist the invasion of neo-colonial powers which is going on unabated, ironically with the complicity of the forces of Hindu pride.

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Exposing the Saffron Scheme: A Popular outline-ll

noreply@blogger.com (दुःखदीन) — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 17:50:00 +0000

BJP’s gameplan behind turning Ram, the mythical hero, into a national hero

Comrade Vinod Mishra

The popular epics, Valmiki’s Ramayana and Tulsidas’ Ram Charit Manas symbolise the victory of good over evil in a typical fashion, elevating Ram, the popular mythical figure, to the rank of an incarnation of God. Thus Ram belongs to the spiritual and religious domain for Hindu masses. Integrity of his character, Maryada Purushottam, and the standards of his rule, the Ram Rajya, are often invoked in popular parlance to emphasize moral virtues and social justice. None has ever thought of turning Ram into a national hero till the advent of modern Hinduism.

Savarkar, the founding father of the ideology of Hindutva, in his desperate search for a symbol of Hindu India, wrote, "Some of us worship Ram as an incarnation, some admire him as a hero and a warrior, all love him as the most illustrious representative monarch of our race." Since then, advocates of Hindutva have been harping on the theme of this ‘most illustrious representative monarch of our race’. Vijaya Dashami was chosen as the day for launching of RSS in 1927. The saffron flag, supposed to be the flag of Ram, was chosen as the flag of RSS.

Finally, Babri Masjid, supposedly built after demolishing a Ram temple, provided the Sangh Parivar with the perfect mix where Ram was pitted against Babar. The transformation of Ram from a cultural, religious-mythical figure to a national hero with arrows targeted against Muslim ‘invaders’ was thus complete.

If, Ravana of Ram Katha imprisoned Sita, the Ravanas of Sangh Parivar have imprisoned Ram himself for their political manipulation. Ram has to be freed from their clutches to restore him to the spiritual-religious domain of his worshippers.

The RSS repeatedly exhorts Muslims to look upon Ram as their hero and assures them that all problems would then be over. But this demand is not only highly arrogant and ridiculous in that it asks Muslims to renounce their faith and revert to idol worship — because in no other way can Muslims look upon Ram as their hero — it is also a retrogressive demand, particularly when several Hindu trends have advanced towards monotheism, looking at God in abstraction.

While, in contrast to other mythical figures, the epic of a dispossessed Ram sharing his life with otherwise inferior castes and defeating Ravana, the Brahmin king, with their help evokes a popular identification with him among the common masses, his appeal is still not uniform even among Hindus of different sects and regions. Some segments of Hindus, particularly from among dalits, are even critical of some of his actions which they feel smack of an upper caste syndrome.

Hindus and Muslims quite rightly look upon the heroes of first independence war in 1857 as well as the martyrs of anti-British struggles as their national heroes. The demand should be made upon the Sangh Parivar to exhibit the same spirit because despite Golwalkar Indian nationalism had its origins only in anti-British struggles.

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Exposing the Saffron Scheme: A Popular outline

noreply@blogger.com (दुःखदीन) — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 17:48:00 +0000

Sangh Parivar - Traitors to the cause of freedom

Comrade Vinod Mishra

The role of the Communist Party in 1942 is a much maligned one and a few years back Mr.Arun Shourie searched through the archives to expose the socalled treachery of the CPI in that period, albeit with a few insertions of his own here and there. Admittedly, the Communist Party did make a tactical blunder in that period and almost all the communist formations of India accept that. Except this brief episode, communists remained an important segment of the freedom movement. Militant fighters for the cause of freedom were either inspired by the successful October Revolution in Soviet Union and the communist ideology or by leaders like Bhagat Singh and they graduated to communism in large numbers.

Savarkar, the first proponent of modern Hindutva, did play a heroic role in the early days of anti-British struggle. But since mid-20s, after becoming the leader of Hindu Mahasabha, he followed a clear line of compromise with the British, so much so that during the 1942 movement he asked the Mahasabha members in local bodies, legislatures and services to "stick to their posts and continue to perform their regular duties". The virulent anti-Muslim propaganda and the call to "Hinduize politics and militarize Hinduism" resorted to by Savarkar and his Mahasabha effectively meant full wartime collaboration with the British. (V.D. Savarkar, Historic Statements, 1957) Hedgewar, the founder of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, worked within the Congress fold but his espousal of Hindutva only led to his and his organisation’s growing drift from the mainstream freedom movement.

The non-cooperation movement of the early 1920s — which represented the highest point of anti-British unity in the entire history of freedom movement and which was betrayed by Gandhi and the Congress leadership, who called it off in l922 — only drew a derogatory remark from Hedgewar: "As a result of the non-cooperation movement of Mahatma Gandhi, the enthusiasm (for nationalism) in the country was cooling down and the evils in social life which that movement generated menacingly raised their head…The Yavan snakes reared on the milk of non-cooperation were provoking riots in the nation with their poisonous hissing". (Bhishikar, 1979, p.7)

In 1927, when the freedom movement showed fresh signs of revival and a powerful agitation developed against the arrival of the Simon Commission, the RSS kept itself strictly aloof and was rather busy organising its first training camp in Nagpur. September 1927 witnessed a communal riot in Nagpur and RSS was found deeply involved in the same.

In the Civil Disobedience Movement of 1930, in the background of Congress adopting Purna Swaraj as the national goal in the Lahore Congress, once again the RSS was nowhere to be found. Hedgewar asked RSS shakhas to celebrate independence day -- 26 January 1930 as decided by the Congress -- through worship of the bhagwa jhanda (saffron flag). But in sharp contrast to the pattern prevailing generally all over the country, lathi-wielding RSS cadres were nowhere engaged in confrontation with the colonial police while observing the day.

Golwalkar took over as Sarsanghchalak after Hedgewar in 1940 and further perfected the anti-Muslim, pro-British thrust of Hinduism. Says Golwalkar, "The theories of territorial nationalism and of common danger, which formed the basis for our concept of nation, had deprived us of the positive and inspiring content of our real Hindu nationhood and made many of the freedom movements virtually anti-British movements. Being anti-British was equated with patriotism and nationalism. This reactionary view has had disastrous effects upon the entire course of the independence struggle, its leaders and the common people". (Golwalkar, 1966, pp. 142-43)

This, perhaps, is the most revealing exposition of the RSS’ definition of patriotism and nationalism. Strange as it may appear, this ideologue of Hinduism decries anti-British nationalism right amidst the rising tide of freedom movement to overthrow the colonial yoke. All the ‘nationalist, patriotic’ outcries and fervor of RSS were essentially directed against past memories of Muslim domination. For it, history had ceased to exist after Shivaji’s forays against the last great Moghul emperor, Aurangzeb. The British interlude only helped demolish the last remnants of Mughal rule and hence was an ally. Shivaji’s battle was to be continued till it culminated in Hindu Rashtra. The RSS emerged from Maharashtra with unmistakable Maratha overtones and it willingly played into the hands of British colonialists who always tried to sabotage the freedom movement by encouraging the Hindu-Muslim divide.

No wonder then that the RSS was nowhere to be found in the Civil Disobedience Movement of 1940-41, the Quit India Movement of 1942, the Azad Hind Fauz, the 1945-46 upsurges centering around the INA trials and the Bombay naval mutiny.

Today, the same history continues in changed circumstances. Once again when the country is facing a serious threat of neo-colonialism from the same old imperialist powers, the Sangh Parivar is ready at the masters’ service. Their nationalism and patriotism has nothing to do with opposing American supremacy and the IMF-WB’s and MNCs’ domination over India. All their fervour is directed against the symbols of Muslim rule which have receded well past into history. This not only serves to sabotage India’s struggle for a second freedom from economic subjugation and chronic threats to political independence as well as from the authoritarian establishment for a people’s democratic society, but also serves their imperialist masters, with their newly perceived Islamic threat after the collapse of the communist challenge.

Philosophy of Hindu Rashtra is borrowed from Nazism

RSS-BJP propagandists day in and day out accuse communists of borrowing a foreign ideology from a German named Marx while they themselves claim to be purely indigenous. However, it was none but a German (albeit of Austrian origin) again who deeply influenced Golwalkar in fashioning his ideology and organisation. The name of this German is Adolf Hitler.

Writes Golwalkar in his We or Our Nationhood Defined: "German national pride has now become the topic of the day. To keep up the purity of the nation and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the semitic races -- the Jews. National pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by."

Translation of this Nazism in India means that non-Hindu people must renounce every bit of their identity -- be it language, culture, religion…everything. In case they refuse to do so, Golwalkar may still allow them to stay in the country subject to the condition that they "wholly subordinate to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment, not even citizen’s rights".

The whole RSS philosophy of Hindu Rashtra, therefore, is nothing but a borrowed version of the German Nazi state.

continue.......

Conscience and Cross-Voting in the Presidential Polls

noreply@blogger.com (दुःखदीन) — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 17:45:00 +0000

Much as anticipated, the UPA nominee Pratibha Patil has made it to Raisina Hill. She polled nearly twice the number of votes as her NDA rival Bhairon Singh Shekhawat. In addition to the votes of the UPA constituents and the Left, the support of Mayawati also proved decisive.

The race was not closely fought and the winner was a foregone conclusion; yet this Presidential election, seen as a forerunner of the next Parliamentary polls in 2009, generated the heat and dust of a high-pitched political contest. For now, the Presidential poll outcome has served to highlight the disarray in the NDA and the isolation of the BJP. Having dishonestly projected Shekhawat (a life-long BJP and RSS leader) as an “independent” candidate, the BJP has found that it is in fact their own MLAs – in Gujarat , MP, Chhattisgarh who have proved to be “independent” of their party!

The ironies of “conscience” in our parliamentary and public life also played out dramatically in this election. The CPI (M) vouched for the secular conscience of the Congress nominee. The BJP leadership appealed to voters to heed the “voice of their conscience” to vote across party lines. And wonder of wonders, it was the communal conscience of that Shiv Sena, the closest ideological ally of the BJP in the NDA, which was moved to support the secular candidate selected from among various Congress possibles by the CPI-CPI(M)! Some BJP legislators in Madhya Pradesh apparently chose to display their particular brand of conscience and defiance by writing ‘ Om ' and ‘Jai Shri Ram' across the ballots to invalidate them.

Reacting to the UNPA's announcement of a decision to abstain, the BJP attempted to get the EC to exercise its authority. While the Election Commission recognized the democratic right to abstain, it declared that parties were not allowed to issue whips on such how their members to vote. According to the EC, in Presidential elections or elections to the Rajya Sabha, legislators get a certain licence: voting behaviour that in the House would be castigated and penalised as “floor-crossing” and horse-trading would now become a lofty exercise of conscience. Parties that issued a whip to abstain would risk inviting penalties for attempting “undue influence” on the election process. Former Chief Election Commissioner GVG Krishna Murthy put the same point across more baldly. He proclaimed that it was a “duty” to vote and for a party to call upon its members to abstain amounted to a “threat”. In other words, to invoke inner-party democracy and discipline is to go against the “duty” so dear to the ruling class: the duty of bending democracy to fit the two-party paradigm. Smaller players must either join the two teams or quit the game.

Before long we are going to have another UPA-Left consensus candidate for the Vice President's office, symbolising the growing political convergence between the two tiers of the ruling dispensation (the UPA and its supporters ‘from without'). A woman in the Rashtrapati Bhavan and a backward Muslim in the Vice President's chair will now be projected and celebrated as empowerment of the weaker and marginalized sections of society. The people of India , however, know better. Lived experience of the past 60 years have convinced them that such superficial symbols are poor substitutes for the real struggle for empowerment.

Corporate media outraged: Venezuela expands free speech

noreply@blogger.com (दुःखदीन) — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 04:24:00 +0000

Stuart Munckton

(From International News, Green Left Weekly issue #712 6 June 2007, slightly abridged.)

No More Street Food in Delhi!

noreply@blogger.com (दुःखदीन) — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 03:54:00 +0000

Lalit Batra

Most cities and towns in the so called Global South are marked today by an overwhelming presence of the informal economy. Hawkers and street vendors are one of the most visible segments of the informal sector. When Keith Harth, an economic anthropologist, on a mission to study urban labour markets in Africa, coined the term ‘informal economy’ he was, to a large extent, referring to scores of hawkers and street vendors selling a bewildering array of goods on the streets in cities and towns of Africa. Till 1960s the dominant discourse viewed the presence of the informal sector of the economy, including hawkers and vendors, as a temporary phenomenon, a by-product of the transition from the ‘traditional’ to the ‘modern’ economy. It was assumed that as the process of modern capitalist development advances this sector would cease to exist soon enough with the extension of the legal, regulatory and administrative frameworks of the State to all aspects of economic activity.

However various studies subsequently conducted in many parts of the world proved beyond doubt that far from shrinking, the informal sector was in fact expanding. In almost all of Asia, Africa and Latin America, the majority of the workforce was found to be working in the informal or unorganised sector. Recent studies suggest that subsequent to the ascendance of neo-liberal economic policies in most parts of the world, its speed of expansion has increased substantially. In fact even in advanced industrialised countries of the West informalisation of the economy and the workforce is rising significantly.

Today about 93 per cent of India’s work force is in the unorganised sector, which accounts for 63 per cent of the country’s GDP. There is a dearth of reliable data on the prevalence of the informal sector in urban areas. There are studies which put these numbers at 65 percent in small towns to 46 percent in million plus cities. In any case, one can safely assume that over half the workforce in urban areas is earning its livelihood in informal sector. A large number of those within the urban informal sector- 15 percent according to one estimate- are street vendors.

Delhi has a workforce of roughly 40 lakhs, only about 22 per cent of which are employed in the organised sector. There is a paucity of official data on the number of hawkers and vendors operating in the city but reliable estimates put the figure between 3 to 4 lakhs making it one of the most important informal sector activities in Delhi. The problems faced by street vendors in the city are now too well known to need any elaboration. Studies conducted by several organisations recount the familiar tale of barely enough earnings to be able to survive, harassment and plundering by the police, municipal authorities and local musclemen, criminalisation by law, non recognition in official city plans, apathy or hostility of the middle and upper classes and so on.

Unlike many other major cities the Master Plans of Delhi have repeatedly made provisions for accommodating and regularising hawkers and vendors but there has been little effort on the part of authorities to effectively implement these provisions. Thus till date less than 20,000 tehbazari licenses have been issued by municipal authorities rendering the existence and livelihoods of over 90 per cent street vendors illegal and making them easy preys to all kinds of harassment and exploitation. A study conducted by Manushi, an NGO, in 2001 puts the payments made by hawkers and street vendors in Delhi by way of bribes and extortion to police, municipal officials and local musclemen at Rs. 600 crores annually!

In this context the recent Supreme Court order banning cooked street food in the capital is like punishing the victim instead of the perpetrator. The order put a seal of approval on the scheme proposed by the MCD and the NDMC to ban cooked street food in order to regulate hawking and vending in Delhi with a view to beautify the city for the Commonwealth Games 2010. Citing reasons of health and hygiene, the court ordered that, except tea and coffee sellers, all other hawkers selling cooked food on streets will have to go. The court also rejected the petition filed by hawkers’ associations and NGOs like NASVI, SEWA and Manushi for conducting a comprehensive survey to ascertain the number of hawkers in the city and identify suitable hawking sites.

At a time when the economy has stopped creating jobs despite all the hullabaloo about 8 percent growth rate, the court order is bound to add a few lakh more to the list of the unemployed. Not only that it will kill the 500 year old great culinary tradition of street food of Dilli beside making the city further unsafe. Significantly, the order comes at a time when the government is considering allowing 100 percent FDI in retail. Sealing of commercial units, removal of hawkers... has the highest court of land put its weight firmly behind the Reliances, Walmarts and McDonalds of the world?

Red Salute to Comrade Jita Kaur

noreply@blogger.com (दुःखदीन) — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 03:48:00 +0000

Comrade Jita Kaur came into the ML movement through her active participation in the student’s movement in Gorakhpur. She became an activist of the PSO, Gorakhpur at a time when the entire state of Uttar Pradesh was seething with student’s protests against academic anarchy and hold of anti-socials and criminals enjoying political patronage of bourgeois political parties, in the campuses. In her early days Jita was an idealist who had seen through the sham of religious ideas and it was for the greater cause of revolution that she decided to devote herself completely. Jita’s joining a revolutionary left organization had its impact on her personal life, her father Sardar Rattan Singh being a Congress leader as well as well known religious leader in Gorakhpur. As a woman, Jita continued to fight her battle in the conservative background of her home and the feudal-patriarchal milieu in this backward district of Purvanchal. After she finished her post-graduation, Jita began to take keen interest in the women’s movement, and formed the Jagrit Mahila Parishad in the District. She was an ardent activist who began to combine the aspirations of young middle class women with those of the most downtrodden sections of society. In the process she also became associated with the Indian People’s Front in Uttar Pradesh. As a leader of the UP IPF, Jita got involved in the struggle of people being displaced from Ramgarh Tal area in Gorakhpur. The Ramgarh Tal Pariyojana was posing a grave threat to the livelihood of the local inhabitants and to ward off their fear and insecurity, Jita left her home and began to live with the affected people. In the process she began to build a new mass-base for the I P F. Jita not only became popular as a mass leader fondly called ‘didi’, she became immensely loved by the women. She had played a major role in involving several intellectuals and women of the town in support of the people of the Tal. She also contested Assembly elections in Gorakhpur on IPF banner.

Comrade Jita gradually began to organize women activists in the state and in the process also met and involved Ajanta Lohit in IPF work. She later became a state committee member of the CPI (ML). When the founding conference of AIPWA was being held in Delhi, Jita came to Delhi to assist in the preparation work. Later she became associated with AIPWA work in Delhi and also became state committee member of the Party in the State of Delhi. In Delhi Jita organized Party work in East Delhi and North-West Delhi. When the need arose she left for Punjab and began to work in Mansa. She was a state committee member of the Party there and was also entrusted with the task of organising AIPWA. She helped streamlining the State Party Office in Mansa and played an important role along with the comrades in Punjab in organising the Party. She encouraged young activists and women to work as whole-timers in the Party. She contested Parliamentary elections in Ludhiana in 1998. She was the National Secretary of the AIPWA and in this capacity she visited Uttarakhand, Punjab, MP and Bihar for AIPWA programmes. She was also very active in the joint women’s movement and became popular with women’s activists from other streams. She was an active participant in the joint women’s conferences held in Patna and Calicut.

When she was in Delhi, the Central Office of AIPWA was entirely managed by her in the most creative, living and economic way. Many women comrades who stayed here still miss the cosy ‘room of one’s own’ where women’s issues, politics, personal problems of women were discussed and resolved. Battered women, women marrying against their parents’ wish, or going for inter-religious marriages, girls thrown out of home or those fighting against patriarchal attitude of in-laws or husbands came for help and AIPWA office was a place that provided strength and succour.

It was after the Burdhawan conference that she fell sick and was diagnosed having gall bladder cancer in November 2006. She was undergoing treatment in AIIMS. After 2 cycles of Chemotherapy and Radiotherapy, she had become very weak. Doctors opined that the tumour could not be removed by operation since it had spread to the liver and was resistant to the therapy. She was also put on Alternative treatments—Tibetan and Sino-Vedic. Jita was alternately staying in Comrade Srikant’s house and in the Party Office. On 14 June she was taken to Jalandhar by her elder sister and brothers for a few days, but she passed away there on 23 June morning. Her body was brought to Mansa on the same day where a large number of Party leaders, members, supporters and representatives of various fraternal organisations came to bid her farewell.

Comrade Jita dedicated her entire life, and everything she possessed, for the cause of the people and the Party. She was a very hard-working and energetic woman activist and all those who knew her will remember for her warm, loving and caring personality, for her political uprightness and honesty as well as for her relentless struggle in the face of odds.
Red Salute to Comrade Jita Kaur!