Monday, October 8, 2012

ML Update 41 / 2012

ML Update

    A CPI(ML) Weekly News Magazine
    Vol.  15                          No. 41                                                                                                                                  2-8 OCT 2012

Nitish Kumar's Yatra

    Crackdown on Adhikar (Rights),
Display of Ahankar (Arrogance)
    Bihar CM Nitish Kumar's launched the 'Adhikar Yatra,' claiming to champion Bihar's right to special status. But throughout the route of his journey, Nitish's convoy was met with protesting people demanding their rights – and these protests have been met with arrogance, bullying, and outright repression. The 'Adhikar' Yatra has become an all-out crackdown on the rights of the people of Bihar, and a naked display of high-handedness and arrogance on part of the Chief Minister and JD(U) leaders.

The lowest point of this Yatra has undoubtedly been at Khagaria, where JD(U) leader Ranvir Yadav, husband of the local JD(U) MLA Poonam Yadav, fired from a police carbine in order to terrorise protesting villagers and  contractualised school teachers. At the Khagaria collector's office, a gathering of protestors led by the RJD had sought to meet the CM with a demand for the Khagaria district to be given 'special status' and assistance. Instead the police lathicharged the gathering, after which the infuriated gathering erupted in protest. Meanwhile, the contract teachers were on a peaceful dharna near the dais of the CM's public meeting. Women from mahadalit families who have been sentenced to death in the Amousi case were also gathered in protest, demanding freedom for Bodhan Sada and others. Ranvir Yadav set out for the collector's office from the public meeting dais with his henchmen. They first thrashed the contract teachers and other protestors near the dais, and when they met some protesting villagers en route, Ranvir Yadav picked up a carbine from the police, brandished it, and fired on the protestors. 

    What was worse was, that when the CM addressed the public meeting, he began by praising Poonam Yadav and Ranvir Yadav warmly for making it possible for him to reach the dais, and reprimanded the protestors! No case was filed against Ranvir Yadav in spite of the videotaped evidence of him brandishing a police carbine. Instead, cases were slapped wholesale on hundreds of protestors.
   
It should be remembered that Ranvir Yadav has served a jail term after being convicted in the 1985 Lakshmipur-Taufir Diara carnage in which nine people were killed. 
   
Even before Khagaria, the CM's convoy was met with protests by contact teachers (shiksha mitra) at every single place on its route. The appointment of contract teachers was a crucial factor in facilitating Nitish Kumar's victory in the last Assembly polls. But the contract teachers are a severely exploited lot – their salary is a pittance of Rs 6000, a fraction of that of the permanent teachers, for the same work. The immediate trigger for their protest is that they have not been paid even this meagre salary for months on end! These protesting teachers have faced repression at every juncture. At Darbhanga and Motihari, cases under the draconian 'Crime Control Act (CCA)' were slapped on them.  The CM had, in his public meetings, branded these teachers as 'instigated' by the opposition – and it seems that such pronouncements emboldened his camp followers and the police to outright assault on the protestors at Khagaria.  

After Khagaria, there have been wholesale preventive arrests preceding the arrival of the CM's convoy! At Araria, several CPI(ML) activists and teachers' leaders were among those arrested; but this could not prevent the people from expressing their protest, defying police repression. At Madhepura and Saharsa, the story was the same – preventive arrests of potential protestors, and police terror. The CM's 'public' meetings are now held in closed halls, where the public is screened carefully and only Nitish's supporters allowed entry!  

    It is ironic that when the CPI(ML) had first raised the just demand for Special Status for Bihar at the time of the state's bifurcation in 2000, holding a march to Parliament in Delhi before the NDA Government, Nitish Kumar, who was then a Central Minister in the same NDA Government, did nothing to support that demand!  
   
The Nitish Kumar Government showed its true colours already in its free hand to the Ranvir Sena which indulged in violence and intimidation after the killing of Brahmeshwar Singh. Now again, by praising and defending the criminal Ranvir Yadav and punishing the protestors, Nitish Kumar and his NDA Government have proved that they can never defend or champion the 'adhikar' of the people of Bihar. It is the protesting and struggling people of Bihar who alone can champion the struggle for their own rights, defying repression. And it is to give voice to the people's aspirations and struggles for social and political transformation that the CPI(ML) has called for the Parivartan Rally (Rally for Transformation) in Bihar on November 9, 2012.       

Towards Unity and Resurgence of

Left-Democratic Forces Through People's Resistance  

ALL INDIA LEFT COORDINATION (AILC) CONVENTION ON

NATIONAL CRISIS AND LEFT-DEMOCRATIC AGENDA

The All India Left Coordination held a day-long Convention on the National Crisis and Left and Democratic Agenda on 30th September at Mavalankar Hall in the national capital. The Convention was addressed by leaders of a range of Left parties and democratic movements, as well concerned citizens.

The Convention called for a united struggle of Left and democratic forces for the ouster of the UPA Government, holding it responsible for a series of mega scams involving top Ministers and even the PM, for facilitating corporate plunder, and for unleashing an offensive on the survival and livelihood of common people.

A 7-member presidium comprising Comrades Swapan Mukherjee, Harkanwal Singh, Vijay Kulkarni, Gobind Chhetri, Smitha, Rajaram, and Kavita Krishnan conducted the Convention.  

The Convention began by adopting a resolution of condolence for RMP leader Comrade TP Chandrasekharan, who was Secretary of the Left Coordination Committee (LCC), Kerala, which is one of the founding constituents of the AILC. Comrade Chandrasekharan was brutally hacked to death on 4 May. The resolution demanded a CBI enquiry to identify the killers and political conspirators behind Comrade TPC's heinous murder. The resolution also expressed condolences for the two fisher-people martyred in the agitation against the Koodankulam nuclear plant: Antony Samy and Sahayam Francis.

Comrade Swapan Mukherjee welcomed the participants and guests at the Convention. Kavita Krishnan placed the 12-point Resolution before the house. Bhimrao Bansod, Secretary, LNP(L), Maharashtra, spoke in support of the resolutions, elaborating on them.    

The AILC had invited leaders of all the Left Front parties to address the Convention. Addressing the Convention, D Raja on behalf of the CPI welcomed the AILC's initiative and expressed his party's commitment to Left unity. He said that the Left parties in a parliamentary democracy needed to give thought to building a political alternative to the Congress-BJP polarity. People of India, he said, had time and again rebuffed the attempts to keep India's politics within bipolar confines. The Left's role, he said, should be to generate confidence in the regional forces to stand by a non-Congress, non-BJP platform. He said that to build unity, the Left should put aside points of difference and work together on issues on which there was agreement. 

Dipankar Bhattacharya, General Secretary of the CPI(ML) greeted the gathering on behalf of the AILC. He said that not even the ruling class is able to deny the economic crisis any more. The ruling class, however, seeks to use the crisis as an opportunity: imposing the burden of the crisis on the common people and intensifying the neoliberal offensive in the name of 'resolving' the crisis. However, for the struggling Left and democratic forces too, the crisis should be taken as a revolutionary opportunity.

He recalled that in 1992 November, immediately after the neoliberal offensive was first unleashed, the working class organizations with red flags aloft, had held a massive rally in the national capital. But the Left could not give a consistent political shape to that working class resistance. Soon after, the BJP demolished the Babri Masjid and plunged the country in communal carnage.

This time around, when people's struggles against the neoliberal offensive are again on the rise, the Left must be alert against the communal agenda. The Left must rebuff and resist all versions of BJP-NDA rule, be it the Gujarat model based on naked communal genocide, or the Bihar model based on hollow claims of 'governance' beneath which communal and feudal forces are being emboldened.  

In West Bengal and Kerala, he said, the Left Front governments put themselves in crisis and weakened the Left because they implemented neoliberal policies instead of resisting these policies. Today Mamata Banerjee is trying to occupy the space that the CPIM-led Government abandoned. Some people are saying she has 'hijacked' the agenda of the Left. The agenda of the Left is consistent resistance – and Mamata's posturing will be exposed soon. But the Left ought to introspect on their conduct towards their own issues and their own mass base. Left unity, he said, can come about only by addressing rather than evading these questions about the conduct of the Left. Hailing the anti-nuke struggles in India, he said, "The names of places like Chernobyl and Fukushima became well-known after terrible nuclear disasters occurred there. But Koodankulam and Jaitapur have become known the world over, for their brave agitation to prevent a disaster. The Left should stand firmly by these people's struggles."    

Defence of democracy against the kind of witch-hunt being seen in the name of countering Maoism or terrorism, and opposing draconian laws, he said, must be central to the core agenda of Left politics.

He said that various regional ruling class parties had proved their opportunistic willingness to go with Congress, BJP and on occasion with any 'Third' alternative. These parties did not seem to suffer any confidence deficit. Rather, it is the Left that must find confidence to assert itself independently without compromising on its core agenda. If a resurgence of the Left is being seen worldwide after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it is certain that the Left in India can revive itself irrespective of the electoral defeats in West Bengal or Kerala or anywhere else.

Consistent and uncompromising people's resistance, he said, against every ruling class offensive on people's land, livelihood, democratic rights, was the key to forging Left unity and ensuring a resurgence of the Left in cooperation with every other fighting democratic trend. He also appealed to the Maoists to come out of their exclusive emphasis on military action and move on to mass resistance and political assertion. Debabrata Biswas of Forward Bloc and Abani Roy of Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) also spoke, supporting the AILC initiative towards united Left struggles. Speaking on the occasion, Debabrata Biswas reflected on the role of the Left in Parliament, calling for introspection about their failure to put up a fight against the SEZ Act inside Parliament.

K S Hariharan, Secretary, LCC Kerala, said that Comrade TP Chandrasekharan's martyrdom imposes a historic responsibility to build a consistent, democratic, revolutionary Left platform. The Left should unite for this cause, for which Comrade TPC laid down his life.

Gobind Chhetri of CPRM, Darjeeling, described his party's resolve to struggle for Gorkhaland while upholding the red flag and Marxist principles. He described the GTA agreement as a fraud on the Gorkha people and called for the Left to consistently support democratic struggles for separate statehood. He called for the Left to uphold the legacy of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru, and struggle for revolutionary transformation.

Leader of the Koodankulam agitation, SP Udayakumar, sent a video message expressing solidarity with the Convention. He questioned the rationale of some Left parties in opposing nuclear plants being set up after the 123 Agreement, but supporting the Koodankulam plant on the grounds that it predated the Nuke Deal. He thanked the AILC for its support and solidarity, and said that the people's movements hoped that a fighting Left, that would defend people's rights and our natural resources and environment, would gain strength.   

Prasenjit Bose, former leader of SFI and CPI(M), exposed the lies peddled by the Manmohan Singh Government to defend price rise and FDI in retail. He said that the Left could not revive and reassert itself by supporting Pranab Mukherjee or standing alongside Mulayam Singh and Nitin Gadkari – it must assert itself in united, independent struggles on a Left agenda.  

Shamsher Singh Bisht, President of Uttarakhand Lok Vahini, said that the plunder of our land, natural resources and environment by greedy corporations and MNCs, must be resisted by uniting the many forces of people's struggle.  

Prof. Nawal Kishore Choudhury, Patna University, said that all the arms of the State, as well as the media and now even Universities, are being hijacked by corporates. He called for united struggles of the Left and other democratic forces to resist corporate control.

Prof. Manjit Singh, Punjab University, Chandigarh, noted that the world over, even in the US and Europe, there was an upswing in people's struggles against pro-corporate policies. But these policies which failed in the countries of their origin are being imposed on India by our own ruling class!     

Dr. Sunilam spoke of peasants' struggles in Multai (MP), where more than a 100 cases have been slapped on him. He spoke about the onslaught of such draconian repression on all democratic protest. He said that while many powerful political parties who claimed the socialist legacy of Dr Ram Manohar Lohia had in fact betrayed it, there were still many struggling streams of socialist forces in the country. He called for Left and socialist streams to join hands in struggle, and hailed the initiative of the AILC in this direction.

Sumit Chakravarty, editor, Mainstream, said that the vacuum of Left movement has given space to communal fascists. He called for recognition of the grievous wrongs of the Left Front in Kerala and Bengal, and for the Left as a whole to learn from this experience. He felt that the AILC could show the way and be a pivot for revolutionary communists.

Prof. Chaman Lal of JNU, who has researched and written widely on Bhagat Singh's legacy, communicated the encouraging news that Shadman Chowk in Lahore, Pakistan, (the site of the erstwhile Lahore jail where Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru were hanged) has finally been renamed Bhagat Singh Chowk in keeping with the long-standing efforts of Left forces in Pakistan.

Concluding the Convention, Mangat Ram Pasla, Secretary, CPM Punjab, said that it was a shame that India had a PM who shamelessly hailed colonial rule, served imperialist forces, and betrayed the Indian people. He said that the AILC had been an effort in the direction of uniting struggling forces of the Left. He said that in the past two years, the AILC had made modest but significant progress. He said that the Left should not compromise on its core principles. While there were serious differences and debates with CPI(M), he said, the AILC is committed to the broadest possible struggling unity with all Left forces, including the CPI(M). He said struggling people everywhere looked with great hope towards the Left to unite on a fighting agenda and provide a consistent political alternative: and the struggling Left must live up to this challenge.      

At the Convention, the AILC adopted a 12-point resolution calling for a struggle for the ouster of the UPA Government, reversal of pro-imperialist, pro-corporate policies, resistance to communal forces, against state repression and draconian laws, and against violence on women and dalits.

The following plan of struggle actions, proposed by the AILC, was adopted by the house at the Convention:

1.        AILC Solidarity Fortnight with struggle against Koodankulam Nuclear Plant, beginning with visit of Comrade Dipankar Bhattacharya, CPI(ML) General Secretary, to Koodankulam on 1 October 2012

2.        Countrywide campaign and mobilisation against FDI in retail, corporate exemption, price rise, cuts in subsidies, and demanding that UPA Government quit power

3.        Punjab Bandh on 5 October (in support of the call by 17 organisations of Punjab)

4.        Parivartan Rally (Rally for Change) in Patna, Bihar, on 9 November

5.        Call to turn 2-day Strike called by Central Trade Unions on February 20-21, 2013, into a countrywide mass political strike

Following the 9 November Bihar Rally, the AILC will hold a meeting at Patna, after which it will declare its next course of action.

Among those who attended the Convention were Prof. Amit Bhaduri, Madhu Bhaduri, Dr. CD Sharma of Gohana, Haryana, and journalists Jawed Naqvi, Anand Pradhan, and Rajesh Joshi. A colourful photo exhibition displayed outside the Mavalankar Hall greeted visitors with images of AILC's journey from 2010 to 2012, spanning AILC's founding convention, its March to Parliament in 2011, various agitational initiatives, and a photographic tribute to Comrade TP Chandrasekharan.        

CPI(ML) General Secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya Detained while Entering Koodankulam

    CPI(ML) General Secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya along with other CPI(ML) leaders was arrested on October 1 at Radhapuram, a few kilometers away from Idinthakarai, the site of the protest against the Koodankulam Nuclear Plant. CPI(ML) Politburo member S Kumaraswamy and Tamil Nadu State Secretary Balasundaram and other CPI(ML) leaders of Tamil Nadu were also arrested along with him.
    At Tirunelveli town the same morning, 100 local CPI(ML) activists were detained by police and prevented from proceeding to Idinthakarai, and 70 activists were detained at Kanyakumari. Comrade Dipankar Bhattacharya and his team had proceeded directly to Indinthakarai from Tuticorin airport, but were stopped by a huge posse of police, at a short distance from Idinthakarai.
    A Convention organised by the All India Left Coordination (AILC) at Mavalankar Hall, New Delhi on 30th September had given a call for a fortnight-long Solidarity Campaign in support of the anti-nuke agitation at Koodankulam, from October 1-15. The CPI(ML) General Secretary's visit to Koodankulam on October 1 was to kick off the solidarity fortnight. A videotaped message of Koodankulam struggle leader SP Udayakumar was also screened at the AILC Convention.
    Demonstrations were also held all over Tamilnadu against repression on fighting people in Koodankulam. A poster campaign was held immediately in Chennai condemning the arrest of comrades. The CPI(ML) GS and other CPI(ML) leaders were released in the evening.
    AICCTU Public Meeting in Coimbatore
   During the course of their long drawn struggle Pricol workers organized a public meeting on October 2 in Coimbatore to thank the people and workers of Coimbatore who stood by them during their trying times and supporting them continuously. Com. Dipankar Bhattacharya, GS, CPIML, who spoke in the 1000-strong meeting recalled the first All India Strike in which workers of the country first warned against the onset of neo-liberal policies and called upon the workers and people of the country to give a blow to the UPA II government which has ruined the lives of people of the country, by making the February Two-days All India Strike a great success. Com.S.Kumarasami, PBM and National President, said that the fighting working class would never bow to suppressive pressures from any quarters and would always rise to the occasion, and said that workers of Tamilnadu will give a fitting reply to the Jayalalitha government by bringing the State to a standstill on February 20-21. Com.Balasundaram, State Secretary, CPIML, congratulated the workers for their relentless struggle. Pricol workers handed over Rs.100,000 to Com. Dipankar and Rs.50,000 to Com N.K.Natarajan, State President towards 9th Congress of the Party. Com. A.S. Kumar, State Dy. GS, AICCTU, Com. Balasubramaniam, Dist.Secretary, CPIML, Coimbatore, Comrades Janakiraman, JayaprakashNarayanan, Coimbatore dist committee members, Comrades Saminathan and Viji, Pricol workers' union office bearers spoke in the meeting and Com. N. Krishnamurthy, State Secretary, AICCTU convened the meeting.

RYA Commemorates Bhagat Singh's Birth Anniversary

    The Delhi-NCR unit of RYA held a walk from the Shaheed Park (site of formation of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association, HSRA) to India Gate on September 28, to mark the birth anniversary of Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh. Scores of youth participated in the walk, displaying colourful placards and raising slogans.  
    At India Gate, a public meeting was held, which was addressed by Delhi-NCR unit RYA convenor Aslam Khan, JNUSU Joint Secretary Piyush, other youth activists and CPI(ML) leaders Girija Pathak and Kavita Krishnan. A team of RYA activists sang revolutionary songs on the occasion. 

AIPWA Protest in Uttarakhand

    On 27 September, AIPWA activists gheraoed the Kotwali police station in Lalkuan, Nainital, to protest against the police's failure to arrest those accused of the rape and murder of an 8-year-old girl on 10 July. 
    Scores of women clashed with the police at the gate of the police station, and eventually sat in a protest dharna there. The protesting women resolved that they would conduct a widespread signature campaign to demand a CBI enquiry into the case since the police was so obviously biased. They also decided to gherao the local representative of the Uttarakhand Government, Harish Chand Durgapal, to demand that his Government press for a CBI enquiry into the heinous rape and murder.
    The protest meeting was addressed by a large number of AIPWA activists and leaders including AIPWA National Council member Malti Haldar and AIPWA leader Vimla Rauthan.  

AIPWA Condemns Sexist Remark by Union Minister

    (AIPWA Statement issued on October 2, 2012) 

Union Minister for Coal Sriprakash Jaiswal who is a Congress MP from Kanpur made a brazenly sexist remark a poetry gathering at a women's college in Kanpur.

    Reacting to news of a cricketing victory, he said, "A new victory is like a new marriage. As time passes the victory will become stale. As time passes the wife becomes stale, she no longer provides the same pleasure."
    This remark is shamefully sexist. Jaiswal's subsequent 'apology' is in fact no apology at all. He has in fact tried to justify his offensive remark by saying it was 'light-hearted satire and humour that is normal in a kavi sammelan ([poetry gathering),' while saying he is sorry 'if he has hurt sentiments of women.' The very fact that Sriprakash Jaiswal thinks it is 'humourous' to refer to wives as though they were commodities to provide pleasure, and which, like commodities, become 'old' and replaceable, is what is absolutely offensive. It is offensive not to 'sentiments of women', but to democratic principles of gender equality.       
    AIPWA demands that the UPA Government immediately strip Jaiswal of his post as Minister. After such a shocking, public insult to the principle of women's equality and dignity, Jaiswal cannot be allowed to remain a public figure representing the Government.

AISA Wins VP in Allahabad University

    AISA candidates fared quite well in Allahabad University Students Union elections. AISA leader Ramayan Ram polled 1244 votes for President and  Shalu Yadav won Vice President post. She polled 2596 votes which was highest among all candidates contesting for all the four posts. The elections were held after a gap of seven years.

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