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AISA activists Comrades Neha (L) and Shreya (R) at Delhi Police HQ on October 13, protesting sexual assault by police against them. Both women were kicked in their private parts by policewomen at the AISA demonstration at the Home Minister Amit Shah’s

residence demanding removal of the Dy. HM accused of killing farmers.

editorial

New Series Vol. 27 No. 07NOVEMBER 2021

CONTENTSCOMMENTARYModi Regime Unable To Protect Civilians In Kashmir ....................... 4Hate & Vigilantism in Karnataka ..... 9Coal Crisis .................................. 10Air India Sell Out ......................... 12ARTICLEHundred Years of CPC Past 3 ....... 20FIELD REPORTDance of Hate At Darrang ............24Powrakarmika Jaatha ......................28SPECIAL REPORTHindu-Supremacists VsIndia’s Freedom Struggle ............32

Editor-in-chiefDipankar BhattacharyaEditorArindam SenEditorial BoardKavita KrishnanV. ShankarSanjay Sharma

Editors' e-mail: [email protected]

Art: V Arun Kumar

ManagerPrabhat KumarPhone: 7042877713Website: www.cpiml.netE-mail: [email protected] pages including covers

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Towards the First Anniversary of India’s Historic Farmers’ Movement

The historic farmers’ movement will complete one year on 26 November, 2021. In its nearly yearlong existence the movement has demonstrated the amazing potential of

people’s power in an extremely adverse situation. Hundreds of farmers’ organisations representing a wide social and ideological spectrum have stuck together with unprecedented unity, indomitable spirit and collective discipline in the face of continuing provocations, demonising propaganda and orchestrated violent attacks.

The all-India people’s conference held in the end of August in Delhi borders reflected not just the unity of the fighting farmers but also growing popular support for the farmers’ movement from different classes and sections of people. The 5 September Muzaffarnagar Mahapanchayat showcased the transformation of this epicentre of 2013 communal violence into a growing fortress of farmers’ resistance and communal harmony. The 27 September Bharat Bandh too demonstrated widespread countrywide support for the farmers and growing convergence of people’s anger against the Modi regime – price rise, unemployment and sale of assets being major concerns apart from the disastrous farm laws, labour codes and privatisation.

The Lakhimpur massacre happened precisely against this backdrop. The massacre seemed to be a brutal, cold-blooded execution of the threat already issued by Ajay Mishra, the notorious Lakhimpur history-sheeter turned Modi minister, to teach the farmers a lesson and make them flee Lakhimpur. The restrained yet prompt, courageous and determined protests up by the farmers in Lakhimpur and across the country in response forced the Yogi government onto the back foot. The government had to come to an understanding with the farmers before they bade farewell to their martyred comrades. FIRs had to be filed against Ajay Mishra, his son Ashish Mishra and a few others and after a few days Ashish Mishra had to be arrested.

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4 | NOVEMBER 2021 | LIBERATION - CENTRAL ORGAN OF CPI(ML)

In the face of such a brutal assault, the farmers’ movement held its ground, maintained its cool and forced the government to concede some of their basic immediate demands. The Sangh-BJP brigade of course still hopes to tire out and silence the farmers by unleashing more violence. Khattar has asked his party men to take up sticks and beat up the farmers in Haryana (the police already beat a farmer to death in Karnal), in Maharashtra masked criminals attacked veteran communist farmer leader Subhas Kakushte for speaking out against the Modi government, and in Delhi women activists of AISA were sexually assaulted by Amit Shah’s police when they assembled outside Shah’s residence to demand the resignation of Ajay Mishra. The farmers’ movement will have to summon all its strength to foil this design of crushing the movement by intimidation and violence.

There is also the constant attempt to discredit the movement,

divide the unity of the people and distract the people’s attention. The recent Singhu border atrocity where the limbs of a Dalit man Lakhbir Singh were chopped off by an outfit of Nihangs, professed militant defenders of the faith, came as a huge shock and gave the movement perhaps its biggest jolt since the Republic Day chaos. The government of Punjab has set up a Special Investigation Team and the farmers’ organisations are also probing the incident thoroughly. The details emerging are quite murky – Lakhbir’s family and villagers are puzzled how the man who had hardly ever stepped out of his village landed up at Singhu border and photographs showing Aman Singh, the chief of the sect which took responsibility for the murder, in close company of BJP leaders, including Union Agriculture Minister Narendra S ingh Tomar have gone viral on social media. The involvement of dismissed Punjab cop and murder convict Gurmeet

Singh ‘Pinki’ in the meeting between BJP leaders and Baba Aman Singh only adds to the murky nature of the entire episode.

The recent spate of targeted terrorist kill ings in Jammu and Kashmir and the incidents of communal violence against the minor i ty Hindu communi ty in Bangladesh during the recent Durga Puja festival also pose a challenge to the spirit of Hindu-Muslim-Sikh harmony fostered by the farmers’ movement. Ahead of the crucial elections in UP, Uttarakhand and Punjab early next year, the Sangh-BJP brigade is working overtime to intensify communal polarisation and distract attention from the agenda of survival and people’s welfare foregrounded by the farmers’ movement. As the farmers’ movement moves towards its first anniversary, let us defend and spread the gains of the movement to save India from corporate loot, communal violence and fascist aggression. pp

Why Is The Modi Regime Unable To Protect Civilians From Terrorists In Kashmir?

In October 2021 alone, eleven civilians (and counting) have been killed in the Kashmir

Valley. These include five migrant workers from Bihar and UP; one each from Kashmiri Pandit, Jammu Hindu and the local Sikh minority communities; and three Kashmiri Muslims.

A new terrorist outfit calling itself “Resistance Front” claimed responsibility for the killings. In 2021, 28 civilians have been killed by terrorists; of whom five belong to the Kashmiri Pandit or local

Sikh communit ies and 2 were Hindu migrant labourers from Bihar. This spurt of terrorist activity targeting civilians and minorities in the Valley is deeply disturbing. Why is the Modi Government that has controlled the Kashmir Valley since the abrogation of Article 370 in August 2019, unable to protect civilians and minorities from terrorists?

The Modi regime, rejecting all sane counsel, had insisted that the forcible abrogation of Article 370 would end terrorism in the

Valley – instead what we have is a fresh wave of terrorism targeting civilians. Now the Prime Minister cannot pass the buck – it is he and his administration alone that must answer for why Kashmir’s minorities and civilians are left exposed to terrorists.

Communal violence and terrorism targeting minorities is at its peak all over India. Hindu-supremacists are targeting Muslim vendors during the Navratri season; Muslim students were forcibly evicted from “garba” celebrations at their college in

COMMENTARY

Enhanced BSF Jurisdiction – Assault on Federalism and Rule of Law

D i p a n k a r B h a t t a c h a r y a

Even as the whole country demands the resignation of Ajay Mishra, the key

instigator and orchestrator of the Lakhimpur massacre of farmers

who has recently been inducted in the Modi cabinet as one of Amit Shah’s deputies, as a Minister of State for Home Affairs, the MHA has quietly issued another

draconian order. A notification issued by the MHA has increased the jur isdict ion of the Border Security Force in the eastern and western border states of Assam,


MP; Christians were beaten up by Hindu-supremacist outfits in MP; Yati Nasinhanand continues to harass Muslim children on video at his temple premises in Dasna, Ghaziabad; a Hindu supremacist mob attacked and sought to evict the lone Muslim family in Pewda village near Indore; a young Muslim man Arbaaz was beheaded by a terrorist group called Sri Rama Sena Hindustan; Muslims were attacked in riots in Kawardha, Chhattisgarh; a Muslim youth was lynched to death in Shamli in UP – every day there are new incidents to add to the list.

The massacre of farmers at Lakhimpur Kheri is also no less an act of terror, where a Home Min is te r ’ s son mowed down protesting farmers with his SUV. And women students protesting at the Home Minister’s residence to demand that the accused Minister be sacked, were subjected to sexual violence by Delhi Police personnel. Who but Home Minister Amit Shah and PM Modi are responsible for such atrocities?

Ironically, speaking at the 28th Foundation Day of the National Human Rights Commission, PM Modi chose to at tack human rights activists, accusing them of

“selective outrage.” The fact is that his Home Minister Amit Shah selectively excludes Muslims from the category of “human”, by calling them “termites”. And whether it is Kashmiri Pandit and Hindu/Sikh minorities in Kashmir or Muslim minorities all over India, the Modi regime and the BJP violates their rights. The police and armed forces of India have become a byword for custodial torture, custodial killings, and violations of human rights and civil liberties.

In what will be remembered as an obituary for the NHRC in India, the NHRC Chairperson Justice Arun Mishra used the occasion to praise PM Modi saying “It is because of you that a new era has now begun in J&K.” If the Chairperson of India’s human rights body is

issuing such statements over the political institution he is supposed to be monitoring, it only shows that the NHRC has been reduced to a puppet. International institutions like Amnesty International have been evicted from India by the Modi regime which has also imprisoned leading human rights defenders like Sudha Bharadwaj and Gautam Navkakha under the draconian UAPA law.

The need of the hour is for people to unite and rebuff the communal and divisive forces and hold the Modi regime accountable for terrorism and violation of rights. The BJP must not be allowed to use the killings in the Valley to spread hatred against Muslims or to seek approval for its suppression of rights in the Valley. pp

Protest across Bihar by CPIML Liberation, Bihar against the targeted killings of migrant labourers in Kashmir.

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West Bengal and Punjab from the existing limit of 15 km to 50 km. In the case of Gujarat, the jurisdiction has been brought down from 80 to 50 km. The notification authorises BSF to conduct search, arrest and seizure operations within this expanded jurisdiction without any permission of the state government or local administration.

The Border Securi ty Force was founded in the wake of the India-Pakistan war of 1965 as a dedicated force to protect India’s western and eastern international border. In the last five decades the force has grown massively with increasing deployment in maintenance of internal security and in what the state calls counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism campaigns. Like other paramilitary forces, the BSF too has often been accused of major human rights violations in the process. In recent years the role of the BSF has also been a matter of periodic dispute in India’s bilateral relations with Bangladesh. But what has been less documented and discussed is the harassment suffered by the people living in border areas.

People living in border areas are usually too vulnerable and afraid to lodge complaints and with the MHA’s backing the BSF in border areas enjoys near-total impunity, almost akin to the dreaded ‘special powers’ granted

to the Armed Forces under the notorious AFSPA. With the latest notification, the BSF jurisdiction wil l grow more than threefold i n Pun jab and West Benga l . Given the BJP’s virulent anti-immigrant propaganda and violent campaigns and communalisation of the issue of citizenship and visa with neighbouring countries, it is not difficult to understand that the enhanced jurisdiction and power of BSF will also be used to intensify this anti-immigrant campaign and create a permanently polarised environment in the border areas.

The new noti f icat ion about changes in the BSF jurisdiction is being sought to be justified in the name of operational efficiency and curbing of crimes. Incidentally Gujarat , the s ta te where the jurisdict ion has been reduced f rom 80 to 50 km, wi tnesses mega commercia l smuggl ing. As much as 3000 kg of heroin was seized from Adani’s Mundra por t in Gu ja ra t ’ s Ku tch on ly in September. The enhanced jurisdiction of the BSF only means enhanced central control and intrusion into the state turf of law and through the backdoor. Incidentally, during the UPA era Narendra Modi as Gujarat CM had vociferously opposed the idea of giving more powers to the BSF by calling it an attack on federa l ism. In Apr i l 2012 in a strongly worded letter to Manmohan S ingh , Narendra Modi had called it the creation

of a state within state, snatching of state’s powers by the Centre.

Today, the central agencies a re a l l be ing sys temat i ca l l y w e a p o n i s e d b y t h e M o d i government against opposition-ruled state governments to bypass and undermine the powers of the states. From the CBI and ED to now BSF, central agencies and central forces are constantly overriding the authority and administration of state governments to execute the political agenda of the Modi government. The over-centralising drive of the Modi government is a lso making a mockery of the const i tut ional ly st ipulated federal d iv is ion of legis lat ive powers and subjects between the union government and state governments – the farm laws being the most conspicuous example of the union government usurping the powers of the states. From new education policy and NEET to GST and farm laws, every major move of the Modi government has eroded the powers of the states. And then there has been the most shocking example of Jammu and Kashmir, where a state was overnight stripped of not just its constitutional identity and powers but also its very statehood t o b e r e d u c e d t o c e n t r a l l y administered Union Territories. Delhi and Lakshadweep have also been sub jected to such aggressive central invasion in recent past . The BSF should focus on patrolling and protecting the internat ional border. The enhanced jurisdiction and powers of the BSF will only weaken the proclaimed central responsibility of the BSF and weaken India’s already deteriorating human rights situation and federal framework. The weaponisation of BSF as a tool of the Modi government must stop. pp

Areas of Punjab and West Bengal falling under extended jurisdiction of BSF. (Source: Indian Express)


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Wrong On Human Rights

[1] https://www.newsclick.in/The-New-Service-Rules-Jammu-Kashmir-Open-Doors-Witch-Hunt[2] https://www.newsclick.in/killings-civilians-spectre-nineties-kashmir[3] https://sports.ndtv.com/world-cup-2019/pm-narendra-modi-sends-wishes-for-speedy-recovery-to-shikhar-dhawan-2056600[4] https://scroll.in/latest/923539/no-hindu-can-ever-be-a-terrorist-says-prime-minister-narendra-modi

K a v i t a K r i s h n a n

( A v e r s i o n o f t h i s p i e c e appeared in the Indian Express.)

An event mark ing the 28th Foundation Day of India’s National Human

R igh ts Commiss ion (NHRC) revealed much about the current state of human rights in India. By definition, defending human rights - rights that recognised to reside in every human being and are not conferred by the state – requires vigilant scrutiny over and curbs on the power exercised by the State. The NHRC is India’s statutory human rights body – intended to act as an independent watchdog to scrut in ise and monitor the actions of the Indian State and its agencies.

At th is event , though, the watchdog could easily be mistaken for a loyal lapdog of the very institutions it is in theory supposed to monitor.

The current chairperson of the NHRC is retired Supreme Court judge Arun Mishra, who as a sitting judge had hailed PM Modi as a “versatile genius” and an “internationally acclaimed visionary who can think globally and act locally.” Mishra chose the NHRC foundation day as an occasion to lavish Union Home Minister Amit Shah with praise, declaring: “It is due to you, Mr Shah, that a new era has now begun in Jammu and Kashmir.”

Mishra is re fer r ing to the abrogation of Article 370 of India’s Const i tu t ion in August 2019

that stripped J&K of statehood. Since then, the Modi regime has controlled the territory of Jammu and Kashmir without even the nominal rituals of democratically elected state-level representation, let alone the r ight to express any form of democratic protest. The pet i t ion cha l leng ing the constitutionality of that move has gathered dust in India’s Supreme Court for the past two years. In this “new era”, this Brave New World, Kashmir i Musl im government employees are being summarily dismissed from their jobs without any public enquiry, on the grounds of mere “association with” any person who sympathises with self-determination for Kashmiri people.1 Further, the “new era” has brought back an old spectre: that of civilians being killed by terrorist outfits. In 2021, 28 civilians have been killed by terrorists, 23 of whom were Kashmiri Muslim, five were Kashmiri Pandit or Sikh, and two were Hindu migrant workers.2

From the dais of this human rights platform, PM Modi took aim at India’s human rights defenders: a beleaguered and extremely vulnerable species. He accused them of seeing “human rights violations in certain incidents but not in other similar incidents” and declared that such a “selective” human r ights lens “ tarn ishes the nat ion’s image.” The fact i s tha t Ind ia ’s human r igh ts defenders have held every shade of government responsible and accountable to human rights and

civil liberties. Sudha Bharadwaj, a leading human rights defender who is in prison for the past three years thanks to flimsy charges under a draconian law, exposed rights violations in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar when India’s Home Ministry, then under the control of Modi’s rival the Congress, had unleashed “Operat ion Green Hunt ” that resulted in the rape, massacre and displacement of adivasi civilians in the name of combating Maoist insurgents. Human rights bodies like the PUCL and PUDR held the Congress regime accountable for the massacre of Sikhs in Delhi in 1984 just as they held the BJP and Modi accountable for the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002.

In fact, it is Mr Modi who is guilty of the “selective” gaze of which he accuses his critics. He tweets his concern for a cricketer’s thumb injury3 but is silent when the son of his deputy Home Minister mows down protesting farmers with his SUV; or a Muslim man is riddled with bullets by police in BJP-ruled Assam outside his home who then proceed to desecrate his body with a thrashing, and allow an embedded photographer to practice long jumps onto the man’s abdomen.

M r M o d i h a s r e p e a t e d l y declared4 that “No Hindu can ever be a terrorist, and if he is a terrorist, he can never be a Hindu.” He said this in an election speech, accusing the Congress regime of having insulted Hindus by charging the Hindu ‘sadhvi’

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Pragya Thakur with a bomb blast at Malegaon – a woman he chose to field as a member of parliament from his party. He thus recognises terrorism not by the nature of an act but select ively, by the identity of the perpetrator. He Amit Shah has likewise explained how the select ive tool of the

Citizenship Amendment Act will recognise undocumented Hindus, Sikhs, and other non-Muslims as “refugees” while helping to weed out undocumented Muslims a s “ t e r m i t e s ” . T o p r o t e c t a whole category of persons from ever being accused of terror charges based on their faith as

Mr Modi does; or to declare a whole category of persons as less than human based on their faith as Mr Shah does – these are the very essence of fascism which selectively str ips entire communities of their rights as human beings, i.e their human rights. pp

Undertrials and Human Rights Violations R a t i E R

The current Chief Justice of India (CJI), N.V. Ramana, spoke in August this year

about the state of human rights in the country and the role that the Supreme Court should play to defend justice. In his speech delivered at the Vigyan Bhawan in Delhi on 8 August, he said that police stations “pose significant threats to human rights and bodily integrity”. Interrogation involving torture and horrific inflection of mental and physical pain, while illegal, is rampant. He also spoke of how the system, in its current state, does not defend rights of undertrials. He pointed that to the great detriment of undertrials, the detained and the arrested are often denied legal representation. The CJI’s statements tell us that the widespread nature of rights abuse in Indian prisons has made it impossible for the forces-that-be to deny its existence.

As human rights defenders, there is a need today to fight for the rights of undertrials. Today, under the present dispensation, the ‘ judicial ’ process i tsel f is the punishment. We are seeing multiple instances of laughable and r id iculous charges being foisted on vocal opponents of the

ruling regime. These charges are followed by prolonged incarceration of the accused, based on fake or no evidence. In most cases, the accused is finally declared not guilty, after a long stint in jail. This final acquittal, however, can hardly be termed justice. If the Supreme Court is serious about justice, the CJI and their team must ensure the following: 1. Arbitrary and unnecessary

arrests must stop. Magistrates must not authorize detention casually and mechanically. Pre-trial incarceration cannot be the rule.

2. A timeline for trials must be fixed and capped for say 3-6 months, or a maximum of one year.

3. All undertrials languishing in jai ls must be released immediately on bail.

4. Cases, which are pending at evidence stage for a long time on account of failure to produce wi tnesses or evidence, must be closed within a time frame.

5. A programme of action must be in place to combat the digital divide.

6. The police system acts in a proactive manner when

i t comes to ar res ts and detentions. However, the poor, the marginalised and the potically vulnerable in particular have poor access to the justice system. A free and easily available legal aid system should proactively reach out to the poorest of poor, dalits, adivasis and the vulnerable living outside the system of justice.

7. A recent Supreme Court order has directed installation of CCTV cameras in all police stations and offices of central investigation agencies. This has to be done immediately to prevent violence on those arrested.

In addition to these procedural reforms, it is important to mention here that the existence of draconian legislations is a major obstacle in the direction of ensuring human rights. It is a blatant violation of justice today that human rights defenders are being detained under UAPA and similar draconian laws. These should be deemed illegal, as they curtail the rights as enshrined under the constitution. Along with the above mentioned reforms in judicial and police procedure, such legislations should go. pp

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Increasing State-sponsored Hate and Vigilantism in Karnataka

R a t i E R

There has recently been a spate of vigilante actions and moral pol icing in

Karnataka. According to a report in The Print, there have been 11 such cases in the past month in Karnataka, where inter-faith friendships and relationships have been targeted. Couples and even friends and colleagues belonging to d i f ferent fa i ths have been threatened and harassed by right-wing vigilante groups for just going home together from work, visiting a restaurant and spending time together. A Muslim man in Belagavi was beheaded by members of a Hindu-supremacist outfit Sri Ram Sene (Hindustan).

Instead of condemning these episodes, Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, in a press meet in Mangalore in Dakshina Kannada, justified increasing moral policing and criminalisation of inter-faith relationships by right wing activists. He said that "actions and reactions” of vigilantes were not just inevitable but necessary in order to check “immorality” and those “hurting sentiments in society".

Not just the Chief Minister but various other ministers in the Karnataka government have abdicated their const i tut ional responsibilities and taken upon themselves the job to teach 'moral values" to cit izens. These so-called ‘moral’ values are essentially blatant justifications and displays of Islamophobia and misogyny. Home Minister Araga Jnanendra, reacting to the Mysore gang rape case, indulged in a shameful exercise of victim blaming. According to him, the victim and her partner should

not have visited 'dangerous' places in Mysore. The Health Minister K. Sudhakar, at a World Mental Health day event at NIMHANS in Bangalore, spoke of the “healing powers” of the traditional family system in India. For Sudhakar, the shifts in traditional family norms are responsible for several social and mental problems we are seeing today. At the function in NIMHANS, he spoke against choices exercised by women to not marry, to not have children or to have children through surrogacy. For the BJP and the RSS, independent choices made by women are most often anathema, especially when these choices challenge patriarchal norms and misogyny. Jnanendra and Sudhakar, as well as Chief Minister Bommai, are the latest in a long line of RSS-inspired leaders who seek to push back against independent women who do not subscribe to their notion of Hindutva.

Karnataka has been seeing i n c r e a s i n g a n t i - w o m a n a n d anti-Muslim vigilante actions by groups such as the Hindu Jagran Manch, the Bajrang Dal and the Sri Ram Sene. These groups are emboldened by statements issued by ministers and BJP leaders justifying their actions. In 2002, the then chief minister Narendra Modi used the ‘Action-reaction' logic to justify massacre of hundreds of Muslims. And now, in Karnataka, BJP leaders are following suit and using the same language to spread hate in the state. When the chief minister of a state openly indulges in communal hate mongering and defence of patriarchal norms, it showcases a constitutional crisis. These 'Ministers', who have taken oath on the Constitution of India are misleading citizens by their support to saffron vigilantes. The real victim is the Indian Constitution, for constitutional morality is lost. pp

Protest in #Bengaluruon October 21 against rising communal violences on the minority communities in Karnataka.

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Modi’s Coal Policy is Solely Responsible for Coal Crisis

R a j i v D i m r i

The present coal crisis, which has pushed the thermal power plants to

the verge of closure in many states, is another addition to the list of devastating outcomes of the Modi government’s policies over the last more than seven years. Mid-night demonetisation, GST, sudden and unplanned cruel lockdown, handling of Covid-19, NMP and continuous, daily shocks of hikes in fuel prices, to name a few in the series of Modi’s policy decisions which have plunged the nation and its common people in a crisis and devastated people’s lives and livelihoods for the profits of his crony friends.

In the first week of October, a number of states, including national capital Delhi, started raising concerns about potential blackouts as a result of low coal inventory at thermal power plants with an average of four days’ worth of coal stock left against a recommended level of 15-30 days. Rather, the crisis had started 2-3 months back due to coal shortage in the face of the rising demand for power in the post-Covid period, with central government doing nothing to address this evolving crisis. Even after several states raising the concern, the central govt. continued to deny any coal crisis. The central government’s attitude of deliberate ignorance towards coal-power crisis rightly became comparable to its criminally apathetic attitude towards Oxygen crisis killing thousands of people during 2nd wave of Covid-19 pandemic. Modi government has also been charged by commentators with Policy paralysis and catering to the interests of private coal mining companies. However, after a lot

of hue and cry the govt. started holding top level ministerial meetings involving the PM himself but just to offer reasons behind coal shortage like heavy rains, spurt in economic activities in the post-Covid period, sharp increase in prices of imported coal, etc., which were all evident from the beginning and should have been addressed in a timely manner. Meanwhile, Coal India Limited (CIL) augmented coal production, and coal supplies were increased to thermal plants bringing some relief for the time being. In this instance, we should note that coal and lignite fired thermal power plants account for about 54 per cent of India’s installed power generation capacity but currently account for about 70

per cent of power generated in the country.

‘Modi-made’ crisis This is the first-ever major coal

crisis witnessed by the country since the nationalization of this sector in 1973. This crisis is not a surprise. If we look deeper into this crisis we find that it is a ‘Modi-made’ crisis occurring mainly due to reversal of the policy of nationalisation to give entry to private players, particularly his crony friends (essentially a pack led by Adani), dominating the mining and power sectors in order to mint money from these vast natural resources belonging to the country.

It starts with the policy of the Modi government, what he calls ‘freeing

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the coal sector from decades of lockdown’ and thereby opening the coal sector for commercial mining (mining by the private sector without any end-use restrictions) including 100 per cent FDI, dismantling CIL and finally doing away with the nationalised character of the coal sector. During the tenure of the governments before Modi’s, the mines were opened up to the private sector mainly for their captive use, but the commercial sale of coal thus mined was not allowed. Therefore, such mines still do not contribute substantially to coal production. The opening of the coal sector for commercial mining — which was immediately resisted by workers in the coal sector through a three day strike in first week of July — essentially started through auctions on 18 June 2020. This was the period of Covid, resultant lockdown/restrictions and virtually paralysed economic activities which helped private players to acquire coal mines at very low bids. So, in an easy ride to power on the waves of anti-Coalgate protests and the anti-corruption movement during the Manmohan Singh Regime, it is ironic that the Modi government has now virtually handed over the coal sector to his cronies and friends for a pittance.

T o p r e p a r e t h e g r o u n d s for opening the coal sector for commercial mining, the CIL, which is the central government institution for coal production contributing 80 per cent to total coal production in the country, was weakened in a systematic manner. During 2014-16 (the initial years of Modi rule), CIL showed record production of coal so that not a single power plant in the country was short of coal. CIL had accumulated reserves and a surplus of around Rs 35,000 crore in 2015. This should have naturally been used for expansion plans. On

the contrary, the Modi-1 government sucked out (as it did in the case of many other Central Public Sector Undertakings as well) most of these funds through forced dividends and buybacks to balance its ‘own budget’ and serve his crony friends, leaving CIL with only around Rs 8,000 crore as reserves in 2019. The CIL was obviously strapped for funds for its expansion plans. CIL was weakened by various measures, apart from stopping its expansion, including non-appointment of a regular CMD for more than a year since 2017, compelling CIL to invest in three fertilizer plants and ironically diverting its operations to setting up toilets under Modi’s pet project of Swachh Bharat Mission. This caused a stagnation of CIL’s coal production levels, which was 606 MT in 2018-2019, 602 MT in 2019-2020 and 596 MT in 2020-2021, that is, a decline of 10 MT. The production this year has further come down and in the present crisis, the production of CIL was 249 MT in the April–September quarter. While CIL was being weakened, the Modi government started auctioning off commercial mining in 2020; the two phases till August 2021 have offered around 100 coal blocks for commercial mining. While the production of coal by CIL is dwindling, there is no coal production worth mentioning by private owned mines as most of them are non-operational. Adding to this, the coal that was imported in the first three months of the crisis has also come down to due to soaring prices affecting the imported coal based power plants which are in private hands. This is what has given rise to the coal crisis, threatening a power shut down, directly emanating from the coal policy by the Modi government of freeing the coal sector from ‘decades of lockdown’ disguised as ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ (Self-reliant India).

'Coal for the Rich'Leading the pack of bidders,

Adani has bagged some of the biggest and r ichest mines by making the most of very low bidding during the lockdown period. As India’s largest coal mine developer, Adani has coal mines spread across Chhatt isgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, and Maharashtra, apart from those in countries like Australia and Indonesia. At the same time, Adani’s coal company (Carmichael Coal) in Australia has also announced its readiness to export first coal from its Australian mining project this year. Just when prices of imported coal were soaring and India was entering into coal crisis, David Boshoff, CEO of Adani group’s Australian business arm (Bravus Mining & Resources India) announced in the month of June 2021 that India will be a ‘foundation customer’ for Carmichael coal and Bravus has already secured the market for 10 million tonnes per annum production. So at a time when the global prices of imported coal are too high and Adani is all set to import coal to India from its coal mines in Australia, the Modi government seems to leave no stone unturned to promote his business.

Meanwhile, the Modi government has started utilising this crisis as an opportunity to further push the interests of private players and foreign companies in coal mining and the power sector, as it did during Corona and lockdown to pass several anti-worker, anti-farmer and pro-corporate laws. The narrative that is being developed is that due to several legal and administrative hurdles in acquiring mines and making them operational, and above all, in the face of growing resistance by the people directly affected by mining, it is costlier and more difficult to produce coal

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in India for private mines than to import it. So the need is to remove these hurdles and further ease the path of doing business. The government is therefore moving ahead to take care of this need in the form of some immediate steps and assurances. Despite a record rise in international coal prices, the government is advocating that power generators using local coal should use up to a 10 per cent blend of imported coal for power generation. At the same time, ways and means are being explored as indicated by Power Minister RK Singh’s statement ‘that the government is looking at the law to see how imported coal based plants can be made operational.’

Electricity Amendment Act BillAt the same time, the voices

of advocates of privatisation have become louder in favour of increasing electricity tariffs and clearing the Electricity Amendment Act Bill (EAA) in the coming session of Parliament, the indication of which again has been given by Power Minister.

Passing of this EAA Bill will totally throw open the power sector to private players.

In the wake of this crisis, purchase bids have already far outstripped supply leading to the average market clearing price of Rs 15.85 per unit up from Rs 2.35 per unit a month ago on the India Energy Exchange (IEX). It has been advised that generators could seek to increase the price they charge to discoms under Power Purchase Agreements with power distribution companies as these companies are currently meeting shortfalls in power supply by purchasing power at significantly higher rates on power exchanges. Imported coal-based generators, mainly owned by corporates (like Tata and Adani), which were closed for some time have already geared up to the situation and are making agreements with states at increased prices.

Although not much has been said and done by the government so far, in the near future there will be some major announcements and measures from Modi government

seemingly to remove so called hurdles and push the interests of private players, particularly the Adanis, in the coal mining and power sector. The Coal policy along with EAA is not only directed towards wholesale privatization, but it will further increase the burden of electricity tariffs on various sections of common people and lead to ruin of employment and livelihood and increase job-insecurity.

The ongoing resistance against acquiring these mines will have to be further strengthened and working people and democratic forces will have to be battle-ready to resist and reverse these policies of the devastation of lives and livelihood and of putting India on sale.

Meanwh i l e , aga in i n t he background of the coal crisis, it is being said that there is a need to explore the field of renewable energy, and, you guessed it! — Once again, it is Modi’s crony and friend Mukesh Ambani who is being designated the leader in this sector, having recently acquired the biggest solar panel company of Europe! pp

Air India Sell Out: A Deal for Which Taxpayers Have to Pay the Bill

S a n j a y S h a r m a

Have we ever heard of a deal where the seller has to shell out a large

sum in exchange for handing over a huge legacy enterprise worth Rs. 52000 crores of assets and solid infrastructure? This is exactly what is happening in Modi’s much-touted ‘New India’; the government is selling the iconic Air India to the Tata Group on terms which will result in losses for the public exchequer. But the moot question

is: Why would the Tata Group buy a perennially loss making company, when it already has two companies in the aviation sector (Vistara and AirAsia India)? Why would inherit a company which registers losses year after year?

Let us look at the details of the Air India sales deal between the government of India and the Tata Group. The government will pay nearly seventy per cent of Air India’s debt, which is Rs. 46,262

crores, as part of this deal, while the Tata Group will actually spend only Rs. 2,700 crores in cash and one fourth of the remaining debt accounting for Rs. 15,300 will be taken care of by them. Technically speaking, government has to spend many times more than the buyer!

This sell-out will have a huge human cost too. In the very first month, Air India’s new owners have ordered its many employees to vacate the residential premises

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allotted to them and made their intention clear in matters of how Tatas are going to deal with Air India workmen in future. According to the deal, the Tata Group has an obligation to retain the employees for one year. After one year, they can offer a voluntary retirement scheme, which in practical terms happens to be a forced retirement plan in the neoliberal setup. At present, AI has 12,085 employees of which 4,001 are on contract. Out of 8,084 permanent employees nearly 5,000 are due to retire in next five years. The AI subsidiary Air India Express has 1,434 employees. After one year, Tatas will be able to retrench employees on the basis of performance or disciplinary actions, besides having an option to offer a VRS plan or wage cuts. Air India may not have been an ideal establishment in terms of protecting trade union rights, fair wages and employees’ legal rights, but it was faring much better than private airlines. Air India unions are demanding scrapping of this deal and the future of thousands of employees is now at stake. On the other hand, the Prime Minister Modi

has termed this sale a step that will give new energy to the aviation sector of India.

With this acquisition, the Tata group has secured a near monopoly over half of India’s aviation sector by adding around 144 in-operation aircrafts to its combined fleet of three air carriers. In addition, Air India will add to Tatas prowess an immense infrastructure spread globally, a very high prestige and brand value, and highly skilled and professional workforce, along with 4,400 domestic and 1,800 international landing and parking slots in Indian airports as well as 900 slots overseas in the airports in other countries across 42 destinations including more congested airports like Heathrow, New York, Singapore, Dubai and Hong Kong. The Air India Express has additional 651 slots. Air India holds licenses to operate on a large number of long and mid-distance international routes. These have opened a plethora of opportunities before the Tatas that can turn it into a bigger monopoly in Indian aviation. The Tatas now have a chance to overcome the recurring losses in Vistara and AirAsia on the back of

expanded infrastructure, without having to spend an extra penny. Moreover, Tatas now have control over very large real estate assets owned by the Air India.

A i r Ind ia has never been a loss making venture i f one takes into account the deliberate m i s m a n a g e m e n t a n d w a s t e of resources led by the political establishment since 1990s. This was aimed at getting rid of the public sector to pave the way for the private sector. Air India was made to bleed out its revenues in various ways. Even then, this company is making operating profits, which was Rs. 1,787 crore in year 2019-20. Its earnings before interest and taxes (EBITDA) stood in positive for the past many years.

The confusion being spread by the right-wing WhatsApp propaganda is that Air India pays its employees higher wages in comparison to the private companies and hence it accrued its losses. This propaganda is not founded on facts. The Air India’s salary bill accounts for nearly 12 per cent of its revenues, which is almost at par with the salary bills of many private aviation companies.

With the entry of private companies in India's aviation sector in 1990s, the basic economic model of the national carrier was kept unchanged thus making it uncompetitive in the face of new private airlines. Why the Air India establishment did not see any need to restructure the company’s fare structure vis-a-vis new private players is quite incomprehensible even to a layman. But a bigger jolt came during the UPA-1 government, when the Civil Aviation Ministry under Praful Patel decided to purchase 111 aircrafts, 68 for Air India and 43 for Indian Airlines, thus creating a debt which was to be repaid through revenue earned. This was done in a very unprofessional and non-transparent manner. It is since then

A protest against the privatisation of Air India in 2018

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Reality Check On Modi’s Vaccine Boast

PM Narendra Modi, in a speech and an op-ed piece, claimed that India

in his leadership had achieved an impressive and “historic” vaccine victory, having administered 100 crore doses of the Covid-19 vaccine on October 21, 2021.

With this vaccine boast, the Modi regime is trying to build up his image as a “vaccine man”, to get rid of his image in India and abroad as the man responsible for criminal failure on the Covid-19 front, costing millions of Indian lives during the first wave lockdown and the second wave Covid-19 crisis. Modi knows that the terrible images – of bodies floating down the Ganga and people gasping for breath and dying for lack of oxygen – still haunt public memory. The Allahabad High Court, on 5 May 2021, had issued this damning indictment of the BJP government at UP and the Centre, stating that the “death of Covid patients just for non-supplying of oxygen to the hospitals is a criminal act and not less than a genocide.”

With an election in Uttar Pradesh coming up soon, the Modi regime seeks to replace the traumatic memories of its crimes with hype of a supposedly historic success on the vaccine front.

But the hype does not stand up to scrutiny. The Modi government had promised to achieve the target of 100 crore doses in three months – instead it has taken nine months to do so. It had promised that all adults would be vaccinated by the end of 2021 – India is still very far from achieving that target.

Consider the following facts: • In India, only persons 18 and

above are eligible for Covid-19 vaccinat ion, whereas most other countries are vaccinating persons 12 and above. So, the percentage of the population eligible for vaccination in India is already less than that of other countries.

• Of the already limited eligible population, India has been able to fully vaccinate just 31%, while just 75% have gone at least one dose.

• India offers the excuse of greater population size for its poor performance in comparison with other countries. But this excuse does not pass muster. China, with far greater population size than India, has fully vaccinated 71% of its population.

• India waited till January to place orders for its vaccines, just five days before beginning its vaccination drive – instead of pre-ordering enough doses much earlier as other countries did. And it procured only enough vaccines to offer a single dose to 20% of the population. This delay in procuring vaccines and resulting acute vaccine shortage left Indians exposed to the deadly second wave of Covid-19.

• Modi is lying when he says that Indians got free vaccination; in fact while Covid-19 vaccines have been free in most countries, India is one of the few countries where people have had to pay for vaccines. Modi left states


that Air India is continuously bleeding out its revenues to pay interests even as the debt burden continues to rise till date.

Later the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) called this purchase “a recipe for disaster”, which wasted money and became the basic reason for the national carrier to become financially crippled. In that year, Air India suddenly became indebted by Rs. 38,500 crores, and since then was made to pay interests at high rates from whatever revenue it had generated each year. Interestingly, Air India had asked for the purchase of 28

planes during 1990s. It took 8 years before the final approval was given in 2004. In the same year Praful Patel’s ministry went into a hurried acquisition mode by increasing the number of aircrafts to be purchased to 68. No convincing explanation was given for this misstep which CAG criticised as a purchase done when there was no demand for more planes.

The CAG had pointed out that no cost benchmarks were set up by the ministry before buying aircrafts and assumption of increase in revenues of the Airlines was based on unrealistic and faulty premises.

The same report had also questioned the merger of Air India and Indian Airlines calling it ill-timed and done without factoring in integrated operations. The Air India losses escalated nearly ten-fold within few years of this merger.

The trajectory of Air India is not different from other PSUs. This is the time for everyone to join hands to build a stronger resistance against the sell-out of economic sovereignty and freedom. This is crucial at the present juncture when attempts are on to give away more public sector undertakings in the Oil and Insurance sectors to Modi’s cronies. pp

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on their own to broker their own deals with vaccine dealers, and as a result, there was absolutely anarchy in vaccine pricing until the Supreme Court intervened and forced the Government to cap vaccine prices somewhat.

• ‘No VIP treatment culture in vaccination’, claims PM Modi. But his government allowed private hospitals to procure 25 per cent of the monthly vaccines produced, and the more privileged were able to buy themselves jabs at private centres while the poor had to stand in lines at government centres. By delaying vaccine procurement,

leading to an acute shortage; encouraging massive gatherings like the Kumbh Mela in April 2021; sending out misleading messages suggesting that Hindu devotees would not get Covid-19; fabricating testing data at the Kumbh to create a false sense of safety; and failing to ensure sufficient oxygen in hospitals, PM Modi and other leaders from his

party BJP, are personally responsible for boosting the size, scale, and deadliness of the second wave. PM Modi has since then deliberately suppressed data on Covid-19 second wave deaths, admitting to just 4 lakh deaths when the actual number is closer to 40 lakh deaths. Even today, Covid-19 orphans and bereaved spouses struggle to survive, receiving no acknowledgement let alone support from the government. In the first wave, PM Modi’s cruel and unplanned lockdown cost lives of countless migrant workers and plunged India even further into joblessness. Now, PM Modi wants to use his pet media houses to transform the true story of his criminal Covid-19 failure into a fictional story of vaccine success!

A panel of global scholars prepared a “rogues gallery” of world leaders whose bungling of Covid-19 pol icy needlessly caused avoidable deaths on a massive scale. Narendra Modi tops that list, which includes Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Alexander

Lukashenko of Belarus, Donald Trump of the United States, and Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico. Such leaders need to be held accountable for the criminal loss of lives.

It is worth remembering that in Brazil, a congressional panel has submitted a 1200-page report recommending that President Jair Bolsonaro be charged with “crimes against humanity” for his bungling of Covid-19 policy that has caused the deaths of 6 lakh Brazilians. This report also indicts two top execut ives of Bharat Biotech’s former business partner in Brazil, Precisa Medicamentos, for “running an organised crime”, besides fraud and forgery. In India, too, we need to expose and reject Modi’s attempts to self-certify his own performance, call out his lies, and hold his Central Government as well as concerned state governments accountable for the Covid-19 and lockdown catastrophes which are indeed “crimes against humanity.” pp


India Hungrier Under ModiN i r b h a y

If you're not living under a rock, you must have heard of India’s dismal performance on the

Global Hunger Index. Before talking about India's rank, it is an absolute must to understand what the Global Hunger Index (henceforth GHI) entails and what it does not.

What Is The GHIThe GHI combines four indicators:

1. Proportion of undernourished a s a p e r c e n t a g e o f t h e population: please note here that undernourishment is a measure of the proportion of the population

with inadequate access to calories and is based on data which directly relates to food supply of the country. It is not a measure of weight and height.

2. Wasting: percentage of children under 5 who have low weight for height

3. Stunting: percentage of children under 5 who have low height for age

4. Under 5 mortality rate Let us also note that the GHI is

peer-reviewed by external experts and that the methodology has long been established and tested. The

international community- including India - has agreed upon the SDGs (sustainable development goals) and the GHI uses indicators that are part of the indicators which measure progress towards the SDGs.

India’s GHI PerformanceIndia ranked in the worst 16

countries this year – 101 out of 116 countries. Last year, the picture was the same – we ranked 94 out of 107 countries - behind Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh. Our GHI score has gone up very slightly since last year, from 27.2 to 27.5.

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India’s Own DataB e f o r e w e j u m p t o t h e

government’s response to the GHI data, let us look at other relevant data from our own country. • The latest National Family Health

Survey (NFHS-5) shows that 4 key metrics for the nutritional status of children declined in 2019-20 compared to 2015-16 in many of the 22 surveyed states. The National Statistical Office

(NSO) data from 2017-18 which suggested tha t consumpt ion expenditure had fallen for the first time in 4 decades from Rs 1,501 per month in 2011-12 to Rs 1,446 per month in 2017-18.

Is The GHI “Unscientific” or Based On An “Opinion Poll”?

Indians by now are no longer surprised when the Modi government shamelessly (whether through fake images on social media, fabricated data, or misleading arguments) lies to defend the indefensible. Yet somehow the government surprises us by making each lie worse than the previous one. The government claims that the GHI methodology is “unscientific:” and that the data is based on a “4 question poll..” It would be best to leave it to Miriam Wiemers, Advisor to the Global Hunger Index to tackle this baseless and absurd claim:

“The (UN Food and Agriculture Organization) FAO’s telephone-based opinion indicator — the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) —— is not used in the GHI. The GHI uses the prevalence of undernourishment indicator, which is assessed by FAO using Food Balance Sheet data from each country.”

Does The GHI Fail To Measure Height And Weight?

Next, let us rebut another claim that the government makes. T h e g o v e r n m e n t c o n f u s e s

undernourishment wi th under nu t r i t i on . Undernour i shment ( inadequate ca lor ies) i s the only indicator where India has performed worse than last year. Undernourishment prevalence rose from 14% to 15.3% between 2017-2019 and 2018-2020. Therefore it is not a surprise that the government singled out this indicator. Ministry of women and child development foolishly said that instead of relying on a poll, the Index should have used measurement of weight and height to calculate the ‘undernourishment’ indicator. This argument could not have been more naive. The GHI already uses height and weight for 2 of its indicators – stunting and wasting. The government seems to be confused between under nutrition and undernourishment. 3 indicators used in the GHI – stunting, wasting and under 5 mortality rate- measure under nutrition (which the government says should be measured). The 4th indicator which measures under nourishment has to do with calories and food supply. Therefore, the government is saying the GHI should measure something it’s already measuring.

Outdated Data Funnily enough the government

accepts the GHI finding that India has been improving on the under 5 mortality rate indicator. So the Modi Government is will ing to believe the “unscientific” GHI when the index reports an improvement in performance! The government also points out that in the GHI, India’s performance on stunting and wasting has not worsened. Here, the Government “forgot” to mention that for “stunting and wasting”, the GHI has used the same data that it used last time - data from NFHS 4, so naturally there is no change in performance. In fact, the NFHS-5 found that stunting among children below five did not improve at all but wasting worsened in most of the surveyed states and Union Territories since NFHS-4.

Steep Fall in Budget For Child Nutrition Under Modi

● Economist and activist Jean Dreze points out that Budget allocation for the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme is 40% lower in real terms to what it was several years ago. In real terms, the central allocation for ICDS is also lower today than it was six years ago.

● In 2020 Dreze had pointed out that the central budget for mid-day meals (Rs. 11,000 crore) is lower than what it was in 2014-15 (Rs. 13,000 crore).

● Poshan Abhiyaan, the NDA government’s flagship programme for child nutrition which it constantly keeps boasting about, has a minuscule budget of Rs. 3,700 crore.

● Compared to Rs. 30,000 crore allocated to the Ministry of Women and Child Development in 2020-2021, this financial year, the allocation is down by almost 20% i.e., around Rs. 24,000 crore. This came at a time when even the government itself admitted that India’s routine health services were disrupted (read NHM-HMIS which tracks the utilisation of health services from over 200,000 health facilities).

● To put things into perspective, each year the government gives a tax cut (to mostly large corporates) of about 5 times the amount that it spends on nutrition and women and child development.

The government (which is a maestro at using red herrings and denials every time it is questioned) claims to be “shocked” at the “unscientific methodology” of the GHI. What it should really be shocked at is the continued and worsening extent of hunger and deprivation in our country under Modi, who claims he is the first PM in 70 years to address India’s chronic problems and bring “good times” to Indians. pp

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How Not To Fight Fascism Reflections On Kanhaiya’s Arguments For Joining The Congress

K a v i t a K r i s h n a n

On September 28, Bhagat Singh’s birth anniversary,

Kanhaiya Kumar announced his decision to leave the CPI and join the Congress party. He joined Congress along with Congress-backed Gujarat MLA and Left-leaning Ambedkarite leader of the Dalit movement Jignesh Mevani.

Kanhaiya acknowledged he was “born in the CPI”, but that he felt the need to leave it and join the Congress since the Congress is the only party that can “lead in the ideological war to save the idea of India.”He said that today’s India needs Bhagat Singh’s courage, Mahatma Gandhi’s unity, and BR Ambedkar’s quest for equality, and implied that it was in the Congress that these three essential elements could unite and find a home.

We wish Kanhaiya and Jignesh nothing but success in the political careers of their choice. But the political arguments about fighting fascism offered by Kanhaiya beg several questions and call for closer scrutiny.

Cannot Reinvent HistoryFirst: Bhagat Singh, Gandhi,

and Ambedkar were all, indeed, freedom fighters. But there was never a time in history when they were all at home together in the Congress party. Rather, Bhagat Singh is Bhagat Singh and Ambedkar, Ambedkar, because they chose to embrace revolutionary paths and goals (the cause of socialist revolution

in the case of the former and that of Dalit liberation and the annihilation of caste for the latter) beyond the confines of the Congress. In the last phase of his life Gandhi too had distanced himself from the Congress as a political party, choosing to spend his days on riot-torn streets, or striving to ensure peace and justice for Muslim minorities in India. When he was assassinated for this social and moral cause by Hindu-supremacist forces who today rule India, it was not as a political leader of the Congress party. It is simply not possible to reinvent history today and artificially describe the Congress party today as the home for those three figures. One can only seek to do so by reducing them to one superficial dimension each, emptied of the specific ideas and contradictions that are their true gift to us.

The more important and urgent question, however, is this: which forces in India are currently “fighting the ideological war” against the fascists? Can that ideological war be fought better from a Congress platform rather than a Left one?

Can You Fight Fascism Without Challenging Hindu-Supremacist Ideas?

The main feature of fascism, that distinguishes itself from other authoritarian or anti-people forms of politics and state, is majoritarian tyranny and violence against minority communities as well as ideological adversaries,

organised and orchestrated by the State in close collusion with a whole range of non-state forces. In India, fascism is Hindu-supremacist ideology and politics, which systematically employs the mainstream media as well as social media and grassroots organisational networks to spread its ideology. This ideology that comprises Islamophobia and the Manuvadi social hierarchies of caste and gender packaged as “social harmony”, and that brands all intellectual, ideological, and political challenges to religious, caste, and gender hierarchies as traitorous attempts to break up the “harmonious Hindu nation.”

The fight against fascism requires us above all to boldly and with all our might resist this fascist ideological and physical offensive against oppressed identities and revolutionary ideologies. It requires us to stand in bold defence of those being victimised as “anti-national” or even as “infiltrators”, rejecting and challenging the claim of Hindu-supremacist ideology to represent “Indian nationalism.”

It also requires us to reach out to help organise those sections of people affected by the policy offensive (in economy, education, health, and so on) unleashed by the fascists in service of their crony corporate funders. We must take up this challenge, even and especially when those who bear the brunt of this offensive are still in the fascists’ thrall. As the poorest Indians (who lost

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loved ones to Covid-19, lost livelihoods, lost hard-won labour laws; and are now losing the last bastion of survival – agriculture) recognise that they too are victimised by fascist policies, we need to stand by their struggles.

But no anti-fascist movement worth its name can shy away from the responsibility of confronting the hateful Hindu-supremacist or Manuvadi-patriarchal ideologies that have made deep roots within these very poor and exploited classes. As long as the workers and farmers, Dalit and adivasi and desperately poor communities, devastated as they are by the Modi regime’s policies, feel at best indifference and at worst, satisfaction in the humiliation and subjugation of Muslim minorities, or hate the idea of love between a daughter from one of their homes and a Muslim man, even their strongest movements against the current regime will fail to rise to the level of a successful anti-fascist resistance.

Is Strategic Silence on Injustice An Electoral Compulsion?

It is on this question that I think Kanhaiya’s own ideological understanding diverged with Left politics long before his formal break with it, and came much closer to that of the Congress and many other centrist political formations and their ideologies. The latter have as a rule given the persecution of minorities and of activists defending those minorities a wide berth. They argue that if they speak up against such persecution, Hindu voters will be alienated from them. Better to appeal to Hindu voters on the “safe” issues – of economic hardship, corruption,

[1] https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/bihar-assembly-election-congress-rjd-tie-up-with-cpi-ml-attempt-to-revive-naxals-yogi-adityanath-2313676

farmers’ rights, and so on, they say. Dalit or adivasi issues could figure here since these too are considered “safe”, as could issues of “women’s safety” – i.e rape; but issues of inter-faith or inter-caste marriage fall firmly in the politically unsafe and unpopular category. In September-October 2020, on the eve of the Bihar Assembly elections, Kanhaiya also argued much on the same lines.

In an interview with the Indian Express1 exactly a year ago (22 October 2020), Kanhaiya argued that the Opposition should set its own agenda - farm laws, labour laws, Ambani-Adani’s wealth in contrast with people’s unemployment and poverty, India’s worsening position in the hunger index and so on. He described the communal agenda set by the BJP (mandir-masjid, Hindu-Muslim) as purely intended to divert from the above-mentioned issues of substance. The interviewer - seasoned journalist Manoj CG – pushed him to elaborate, asking, “So the Opposition should avoid reacting to divisive issues?” Kanhaiya replied, “If there is a Hindu-Muslim (issue), as a political party you have to give a response. Give a response but consistently raise issues of farmers, unemployment, security of women, atrocities.”

The problem with this position, in my opinion, is that hateful agendas are not merely diversionary for the RSS and BJP. These agendas serve a dual function for India’s fascists. They push popular common sense towards the would-be “Hindu-supremacist Nation”, making Hindu-supremacist politics

appear more and more “normal”. At the same time, these agendas serve as tools to mobilise large sections of the people to identify with a sense of Hindu victimhood and Hindu supremacy, rather than as oppressed Dalits or adivasis or women; or exploited workers or farmers; or unemployed and homeless poor. This is not mere “diversion” – it is pretty central to fascist politics, and there simply is no way to sidestep it. And for anti-fascists, these are not “Hindu-Muslim” divisive issues; they are issues of justice. The fascist propagandists brand all issues of justice as “Hindu-Muslim issues”, as Hinduphobia and Muslim appeasement – how can anti-fascists accept this characterisation?

The world’s best known anti-fascist poet was the Marxist Bertolt Brecht, who well knew that as long as exploited workers and peasants felt no solidarity for oppressed Jews, defeating the fascists was impossible. He wrote: “The compassion of the oppressed for the oppressed is indispensable. It is the world’s one hope.” His poem, ‘Song of the SA Man’ is aimed directly at workers who fall for fascist propaganda and as members of the rank and file of the fascist brigades, kill Jews. One such worker sings, “They told me which enemy to shoot at/So I took their gun and aimed/And, when I had shot, saw my brother/Was the enemy they had named…./ So now my brother is dying/ By my own hand he fell/Yet I know that if he’s defeated/ I shall be lost as well.”

Kanhaiya, gifted with the power of simple, persuasive, and eloquent speech, could play

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an invaluable role in persuading the Indian people to recognise issues of justice and human rights violations as urgent, just as issues of bread and butter are. Instead, he seems to have decided that one must just issue a “response” – a press release – on “divisive” and “controversial” issues like the witch-hunt of Muslim minorities, and go back to stressing the bread and butter issues and the ‘safer’ issues of social justice. He articulated his stand in theory in October 2020 – but he had already done so in practice the previous month. On 16 September 2020, Kanhaiya had agreed to speak at a press conference we organised in the immediate wake of Umar Khalid’s arrest. But he failed to attend. Instead, later that day, he issued a response in the shape of a long-winded post covering the range of bread and butter issues on which the Modi Government had failed; and then used the ploy of fabricated cases, arrests, jail etc to divert from its failures. Buried in the six-para long litany of these failures was a curated list of some political prisoners, including Umar. At the time, Kanhaiya’s critics and his friends alike explained his avoidance of the issue, as a compulsion of electoral politics: specifically, the Bihar Assembly elections.2

Asked about his absence from the PC, Kanhaiya retorted, “Why am I being personally held accountable for not attending a press conference? Are such questions asked of members of other Opposition parties?” He had a point. If he, Kanhaiya, was silent on his student politics

[2] https://theprint.in/opinion/pov/umar-khalid-who-kanhaiya-kumar-strange-silence-over-his-arrest/506605/ [3] https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/bihar-assembly-election-congress-rjd-tie-up-with-cpi-ml-attempt-to-revive-naxals-yogi-adityanath-2313676[4] https://www.cpiml.net/liberation/2020/12/sikta-victory-and-the-equal-citizenship-movement-at-west-champaran [5] https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/some-lessons-from-bihar/cid/1799924

comrade Umar Khalid’s arrest, other Opposition leaders too were likewise silent. Congress has been silent on the unjust arrest and incarceration of its councillor Ishrat Jahan, as RJD has been silent on the arrest of its student leader Meeran Haider, in the same fabricated case in which Umar has been framed.

Anti-Fascist Coalition Needs A Bold Left

I would argue, however, that defensively ignoring issues of justice is a recipe for defeat not success for anti-fascists, even when it comes to real politics, electoral politics. If one has already conceded that one lacks the vocabulary and skill to persuade Hindus among one’s own (potential) voters to recognise and oppose injustice against Muslims, then surely one has conceded defeat to the fascists even before the elections have begun?

In the Bihar elections, the CPIML’s excellent performance drew a lot of attention. A key factor in that victory was the fact that the CPIML had been equally consistent in its sustained response to issues of the migrants crisis and hunger during lockdown; of unemployment and vacant government posts; of the rights of every section of workers and peasants in the state; of social justice and defence of reservations – and equally, on every issue of justice ranging from CAA-NPR-NRC; communal lynchings, arrests, and abrogation of Article 370. These issues – and the names of Umar, Sharjeel, Ishrat, Gulfisha, Safoora, Natasha, Devangana, Sudha

Bharadwaj and others - figured in every CPIML election meeting. Predictably, BJP leaders like Yogi Adityanath attacked the CPIML by linking it to “Naxals, Shaheen Bagh, JNU’s Tukde Tukde Gang, Kashmir” and so on in every rally.3 Yet, the CPIML did well, and even outperformed its more defensive Opposition allies (the Congress performed especially poorly). Being bold rather than furtive about taking up issues of political injustice4 not only helped rather than hindered CPIML candidates – it gave the entire Opposition alliance campaign the energy and credibility it needed.5

It is apparent to all that the most effective and challenging Opposition to the BJP regime is found on the streets in the powerful and spirited ongoing movements – and of all the political trends, it is the Left that is most essential to, and most at home in those street struggles. The enemy recognises the Left’s credibility as a threat – which is why it tries (in vain) to tarnish this credibility: by branding every voice of ideological opposition as “urban naxals”. None of this propaganda has managed to oust the red flag from taking its place among the green, blue, yellow, white, and rainbow flags in the diverse people’s movements. No effective anti-fascist political and electoral coalition can be imagined without an energetic and bold Left as its beating heart and its ideological spine. pp

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Hundred Years of CPC: Great Legacy, Grave Concerns

[1] Mao’s definition of this oft-misunderstood term was, “learning Marxism through criticism and self-criticism”. Even after the completion of that particular campaign, he wrote in this note, it would still be necessary periodically to organise similar ones for “full airing of views and the introduction of reforms”.

A r i n d a m S e n

[Our plan was to conclude the article in this number, but we have had to split the last instalment into two parts in order that we can cover some important political developments. -- Ed.]

Having briefly narrated the series of economic reforms since late 1970s in Part II, it

is time to zero in on the latest -- and yet to be fully unfolded -- round of reforms. But any scientific inquiry requires a conceptual/theoretical framework in which one must analyse the relevant facts to arrive at the essential truth. For us, that framework can only be based on Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. Let us then start with a very relevant quotation from Mao.

Mao’s idea of Uninterrupted Revolution

In a short note with the above tittle (italicised here) Mao Zedong wrote in January 1958:

“Our revolutions have occurred one after another”, citing the post-1949 anti-feudal land reform, the movement for agricultural co-operation that followed, and finally, the socialist transformation of private industry, commerce and handicrafts. This “socialist revolution in the ownership of the means of production” Mao continued, “was basically completed in 1956. It was followed by a socialist revolution on the political and ideological fronts last year” (the reference is to a “rectification campaign1 at the grass-roots level”). As soon as the

campaign is over, Mao added, the party must start “a technological revolution”. Because, “China’s economy is backward and i ts material base weak. As a result, we are still not in a position to take the initiative and feel mentally constrained, and in this respect we are not yet liberated. We need to exert ourselves.” (emphasis added)

And why continue to “exert ourselves” after decades of back-break ing to i l , hardsh ips and sacrifices? Was it not time to take some rest and then resume the fight? Mao thought otherwise:

“In revolution as in war, we must set new tasks immediately after each victory. This keeps both the cadres and the masses full of revolutionary zeal …with new tasks pressing, everyone’s attention is set on how to complete them. Our aim in proposing a technological revolution is to get everyone to study science and technology.”

Mao conc luded th i s no te for inner- party circulation with the motto that was always -- in war and peace, revolution and reconstruction -- uppermost in his mind, ‘put politics in command’:

“Politics is apt to be neglected with a shift to the technological side, so we must stress integrating technology with politics.”

Thus in the Chinese context, Mao saw the major reforms following the new democratic revolution as nothing short of revolutions in specific domains -- such as land relations; agricultural cooperation;

industry commerce and handicrafts; ideology and poli t ics; science and technology; and so on -- as necessary components of what is called socialist revolution. In other words, socialist revolution is not an event but a very long-drawn process (“uninterrupted”, or in the words of the young Marx, “revolution in permanence”) oriented towards establishment of communism in China and the whole world. Without this basic orientation, this steadfast resolve, the reforms cease to be revolutionary.

Secondly, Mao was acutely aware that building a solid material base (“the serious task of economic construction”, which he highlighted --- in 1949 itself -- as the central task , o f wh ich techno log ica l innovation and progress were obviously a vital component) and a dynamic ideological-political-cultural superstructure were equally critical and complementary to each other. Simultaneous perusal of the twin tasks was what he called “continuing the socialist revolution under the dictatorship of proletariat” and this was a signal contribution of his to the Marxist-Leninist theory of revolution.

Another point, not captured in this particular quotation but highlighted very prominently in Mao’s post-1949 speeches and articles, available particularly in Volume 5 of his Selected Works, deserves our special attention here. For Mao, an integral, inalienable component -- the very foundation

Part

III

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-- of proletarian dictatorship (over counterrevolutionary forces) was unbridled democracy (“free airing of views”, right to dissent, “criticism and self-criticism” and so on) of the people. Sans this dialectic, proletarian dictatorship tends to turn into bourgeois dictatorship, he believed.

Taking these theses as our point of departure, let us investigate the more important reforms and other measures introduced in China in recent years.

Growth with Rising Inequality I t is universally recognised

that the reform-induced rapid economic growth and substantial poverty reduction2 in China have been achieved at the cost of a whole range of collateral damages, the most conspicuous being the rampant increase in income and wealth inequality. Already the 19th Party Congress (2017) observed that development in China was “unbalanced and inadequate ” (emphasis added) and stood in very sharp contradiction with the “peoples’ ever-growing need for

[2] For the period 1978–2005, Chinese GDP per capita increased from 2.7% to 15.7% of U.S. GDP per capita, and from 53.7% to 188.5% of Indian GDP per capita. Per capita incomes grew at 6.6% a year. Average wages rose sixfold between 1978 and 2005, while absolute poverty declined from 41% of the population to 5% from 1978 to 2001.

[3] An indicator of inequality -- the higher the index, the greater the inequality.

a better life”. According to data from Credit Suisse, the country’s Gini-coefficient3 widened to 70.4 in 2020 from 59.9 in 2000, making China one of the world’s most unequal major economies. As in other capitalist economies including India, during the public health crisis the share of personal wealth for China’s billionaires has doubled from 7% in 2019 to 15% of GDP in 2021.

Then there are problems like severe environmental degradation and risky levels of debt stock (close to 300 per cent of GDP) which means, in plain English, much of the growth has been debt-dependent and prone to violent financial and economic shocks.

To try and tackle this tricky situation, the Party/Government adopted a series of measures even in the face of difficulties posed by intense trade wars with the US and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Jack Ma Shocker and ‘Crackdowns’ that Followed

A poli t ical storm started in October last year with a speech by Jack Ma, the co-founder of

Alibaba Group Holdings, in which he attacked the country’s financial regulators as having a “pawnshop men ta l i t y . ” The gove rnmen t immediately summoned Ma to Beijing. The nearly $40 bill ion ini t ial publ ic offering (IPO) of Alibaba’s fintech arm, Ant Group -- owner of the country’s largest digital payments platform Alipay -- planned for Hong Kong and Shanghai a few days later, was summarily cancelled. The Party Politburo made its position clear: it was determined to “block the disorderly spread of capital”.

Later on, Alibaba was also hit with a record fine of $ 2.8 billion for failing to seek approval for its stock acquisitions of other companies in 2014-18. While the amount of fine was not too much for Alibaba, retroactive application of new anti-competitive rules announced in November 2020 signaled a stern warning to Ma and others of his ilk: do obey the rules in future. Most of the domestic and foreign media sensationalised all this as retaliation for Ma’s arrogant comments. But those in the know pointed out that far from being a knee-jerk reaction against one individual, it was part of a comprehensive plan -- laws, regulations, SOPs -- that was in preparation for months if not years, and was put up in public domain soon after the shocker.

Alibaba was not alone. Tencent Holdings -- one of the 10 biggest companies in the world -- was made to pay a fine of 500,000 yuan ($77,323) in connect ion with its acquisition of a leading Chinese music streaming company, which enabled Tencent to capture more than 80% of the domestic mus i c s t r eam ing ma rke t . I t

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was also asked to give up its exclusive music streaming rights. Tencent’s WeChat (a text and voice messaging app similar to WhatsApp but incomparably more versatile in applications4) also temporarily suspended registration of new users, reportedly to beef up its information security system as asked by the regulators. Didi Chuxing (better known as Didi Global) -- the Uber of China -- was raided less than a week after its listing in New York Stock Exchange, as part of a data security and privacy investigation. The maximum fine for violation of China’s anti-monopoly law was imposed on it and the app was removed from app stores. Act ion was taken against many others like Baidu, a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and art i f ic ial intelligence (AI), headquartered in Beijing.

However, that the anti-monopoly drive is more in the nature of a belated corrective than a real crackdown is recognised by both sides. The People’s Daily sought to reassure the private sector that support for it “had not changed”; that recent regulatory actions were meant to “rectify market order”, promote fair competition, protect consumer rights and “perfect the socialist market economy system”. And the tycoons in their turn digested everything -- the fines, the declines in their share prices, and most important, the long term curbs on the freedoms they were accustomed to enjoy so long -- in complete silence. More, they pledged tens of billions of dollars for job creation and social welfare initiatives in response to Xi Jinping’s ‘Common Prosperity” call.

[4] For example, WeChat Pay handles nearly 40% of the country’s mobile payments. This leaves small and midsize app developers in China unable to promote their services independently; Tencent has turned these apps into mini-programs, of which there are millions. Tencent has also expanded its business scope by acquiring app developers or buying stakes in them.

Disciplining Financial Markets and Allied Sectors

Banning all cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, major crackdown on tax evasion (recently a top celebrity was caught evading taxes and publicly shamed), discouraging and covert ly penal is ing ( i .e . , without publicly stating the real cause of the penalty imposed) overseas IPOs, the persistent tightening in the housing market in an at tempt to avoid a US-style housing bubble; -- these are some of the steps recently taken to cleanse the money markets. With the government stepping up scrutiny of forex dealers -- officials of China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) have now embedded themselves on currency trading floors -- banks and traders in the Hong Kong and Shanghai stock exchanges are feeling the heat. In fact several Chinese banks have withdrawn individual forex trading products, partially closing another avenue for speculation. All these comprise attempts to curb the unbridled expansion of unproductive and speculative investment and the associated financial risks that pose grave threats to the economy as a whole.

I n add i t i on t o r es t r i c t i ve m e a s u r e s , t h e r e a r e s o m e expansive ones too. For example, the government is now diverting more financial support to backward regions. To cater to innovation-oriented SMEs and “smaller public limited companies”, a new stock exchange has been founded in Beijing. It is also expected to lure domestic companies into listing at home instead of overseas and thus reduce reliance on foreign investment.

The regu la to ry measures imposed on big capital were long overdue and generally speaking, they are welcome. Per se, however, they have nothing socialistic about them. There are similar instances galore in capitalist countries -- such as the crackdown on the excesses of robber-baron capitalism in the US in the late 19th century, which led to path-breaking anti-monopoly laws that restored normal (though not ‘perfect ’) competi t ion and cleared the ground for speedier development of capitalism. More recent ly , we have seen ant i -trust moves like the one against Microsoft in 1998. And today capitalist states across the world are taking stringent steps against Tech giants like Amazon, Goggle, Facebook and Apple. However, it is reassuring that the CPC is careful not to allow the rise of a politically powerful “oligarch” class, as happened in Russia in the 1990s. The Jack Ma episode in particular demonstrates that unlike in India and many other developing countries, in China the state is not exactly dictated by well-connected wealthiest capitalists. The former retains the political command to decide when to promote them, even by allowing them to flout regulations with impunity, and when -- with changes in situations and priorities -- to pull the strings.

A New Catchphrase T h e s h i b b o l e t h “ c o m m o n

prosperity” -- euphemistically also called “Getting Rich Together” -- is now appearing everywhere and in everybody’s mouth. But as a concept, it has its historical roots.

Few people remember that when in the 1980s Deng Xiaoping said “let some people and some

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regions get rich first”, he also stated why: “We permit some people and some regions to become prosperous first, for the purpose of achieving common prosperity faster.”5 And now, following last year’s off icial declaration that with the eradication of extreme poverty, China had become a “moderately prosperous society”, in February this year the President set “common prosperity” as the next target in China’s development. It is an “essential requirement of social ism”, he said, adding that the government needs to “encourage high-income people and enterpr ises to g ive back to society more,” and “create opportunities for more people to become rich.”

As we have noted above, billionaires in China responded to this call in ample measure, ostensibly for keeping the ruling party in humour and avoiding sanct ions. Jack Ma, who had sort of quarantined himself in the aftermath of the totally unexpected thrashing he received, made his first public appearance to say that it was entrepreneurs’ responsibility to “work hard for rural revitalization and common prosperity.”

The professed aim of ‘Common P r o s p e r i t y ’ i s t o “ r e g u l a t e excessively high incomes” in order to ensure “common prosperity for all”. As the General Secretary put it in a long speech to party members: “Real izing common prosperity is more than an economic

[5] In an interview with America’s CBS news correspondent Mike Wallace on 2 September, 1986, Deng Xiaoping was asked to comment on a rather surprising statement: “To get rich is glorious.” Deng responded: “There can be no communism with pauperism, or socialism with pauperism. So to get rich is no sin. However, what we mean by getting rich is different from what you mean. Wealth in a socialist society belongs to the people. To get rich in a socialist society means prosperity for the entire people. The principles of socialism are: first, development of production and second, common prosperity. We permit some people and some regions to become prosperous first, for the purpose of achieving common prosperity faster.”

[6] As we pointed out in part II, the present leadership is batting for an economy with “domestic or internal circulation as the main body and the domestic and international dual circulations mutually promoting each other.” In the face of hostile trade wars launched against China by the US and its allies, this appears to be an attempt to reduce dependence on exports as a major growth engine and significantly promote the domestic market. And for that, as we often say in our country, substantially raising the purchasing power of the entire working people is the sine qua non. And that really is the basic motive behind the watchword ‘common prosperity’.

goal. It is a major political issue that bears on our Party’s governance foundation. We cannot allow the gap between the rich and the poor to continue growing—for the poor to keep getting poorer while the rich continue growing richer. We cannot permit the wealth gap to become an unbridgeable gulf. Of course, common prosperity should be realized in a gradual way that gives full consideration to what is necessary and what is possible and adheres to the laws governing social and economic development. … We must be proactive about narrowing the gaps between regions, between urban and rural areas, and between rich and poor people.”

Under this policy orientation, the government is now diverting more financial support to poorer regions and taking steps to control property prices. Annual residential rent increases has been capped at five per cent. The Supreme Court also has chipped in, declaring the 9-9-6 work-schedule (9 am to 9 pm, 6 days a week) common at many private-sector companies (especially for gig workers) to be illegal.

In addition, the President has chosen eastern Zhejiang province, where he once served as the Governor and Party Secretary during 2002-2007, as a “common prosperity” pilot zone. This province happens to be the location of the headquarters of several prominent internet corporations – Alibaba among them.

The Latest Economic Reforms: Major Takeaways

In sum, the new set of reforms are multi-dimensional, varied are the objective factors and motives behind them, and assessments also vary widely. What is clear is that the government is now focussed on strengthening control over domestic as well as foreign private companies while boosting the role of state-owned firms; encouraging crucial frontline technologies like semiconductor chips and electric vehicle batteries while discouraging speculative and corrupt practices; promoting the domestic market and the SMEs sector while breaking through trade barriers imposed by the US and its allies. This strategy may be seen as a stricter form of state capitalism, featuring a substantially enhanced role of state enterprises, government control and planning after a long period of relative economic liberalism with the goal of creating a far more self-sufficient economy6 that delivers high quality (more equitable, more balanced, more environment-friendly, more effectively planned and controlled by the state rather than blind market forces) -- if slower -- growth.

Bu t beyond the rea lm o f economic policy in the narrow sense, there are other important developments and political issues that we need to look at if we are to understand China today. This we propose to do in the next and concluding part. pp

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Dance of Hate At Darrang

A CPIML Liberation team visited the site of the infamous evictions and

killings at Dhalpur , Darrang district, Assam. The team compr ised Politburo member Kavita Krishnan, CPIML MLA from Bihar Comrade Rambali Singh Yadav, Central Committee member and Karnataka secretary Clifton D’Rozario, Central Committee member and Assam State Committed member Balindra Saikia. They were accompanied by Bihar youth activist Ravi Ranjan, AIKS leader Jayanta Gogoi, Jipal Krishok Sromik Sangha leader Pranab Doley, Sangrami Krishok Sromik Sangha leaders Dinesh Das and Jehirul Islam.

A brief report of the visit to Darrang is below. In the next issue of Liberation, we will carry a report of the team’s visit to other flood-affected communities in Assam that are facing eviction, as well as a close reading of the Assam Land Policy and associated documents. Ed/-

The Killing Of Maynal Haque ● We met the family members of Maynal Haque, the man who was shot dead by Assam Police. We met his small daughter and son. The daughter was sobbing inconsolably, and had not had anything to eat or drink since the incident. The family and community are traumatised, especially children. The entire family is living under a makeshift piece of tin.

● We saw two homes near Maynal Haque’s own, which had not only been demolished but burnt down.

● Maynal was defending his home from arson and firing by the police & the “photographer” associated with the DM’s office. There are reports that he picked up a fallen beam to chase away a policeman

and the photographer after one of them hit a 14-year-old What can possibly justify 17 Assam police personnel opening fire on a lone man armed with nothing but a stick? This is not crowd control, it is not an “encounter”, it is murder.

Illegal Evictions ● Eviction Notices have been served to some through WhatsApp call the previous night, some got notices after eviction, and some have not yet received notices at all.

● What was the tearing hurry to evict by force, without even serving notices properly?

● We saw mosques destroyed, homes set on fire. What law allows police to commit arson and hate crimes?

Not “Encroachers” But Erosion Affected Farmers

The evicted households have settlement papers dating back to 7 February 1979, showing that they have been paying occupancy charges. The government has set up

Anganawadi Kendras and schools etc. When the river floods their land they are displaced onto government land. How can such households be termed “encroachments”?

Land Policy Is Unjust, Benefits Corporates Not “Indigenous” People

The 2019 Land Pol icy and Brahma Committee report talk o f e v i c t i n g n o n - i n d i g e n o u s “encroachers” from government land which will be distributed to “indigenous”. The definition of “indigenous” is not provided in the policy - why are family of Bengali-descent Muslims considered non-indigenous when they have lived on the land for 4 or 5 decades? When in fact it is their children who attend the Assamese-medium Government schools while the more privileged sections of Assam try to send children to English-medium private schools?

Moreover erosion af fected persons in La ika -Dodhya in Tinsukia (from the Mising tribal community) who f i t the BJP’s

CPIML team in Darrang, Assam

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definition of “indigenous” are yet to get the government land they are demanding.

The f ine pr int of the Land Policy makes it clear that even the “indigenous” Assamese are not going to receive any land. The whole thing is a ploy to grab land to hand over to corporates as is already happening near the airport, at Mikir Bamuni etc.

“Bangladeshi” and “Pakistani”

Al l f lood eros ion-a f fec ted communities in Assam (our team visited affected such communities a t La ika-Dodh iya v i l lages in Tinsukia as well as Balijan, Borbil and Halodhibari villages near the Kaziranga sanctuary) are termed “encroachers on Government land” and face forced eviction by the state. But the BJP seeks to divide the victims by adding an additional layer of stigma and hate to affected

Muslim communities, terming them “Bangladeshi” – i.e “encroachers” in India as a country.

T h e A s s a m G o v e r n m e n t has even been meeting some representatives of Muslims who are not of Bengali descent, to tell them that they are “indigenous (khilonjiya)” and therefore that the BJP is not opposed to Indian Assamese Muslims, only to those branded as “Bangladeshi ” ! A boatman who took us across the r iver to Darrang had the perfect comment on this tactic. A supposedly “indigenous” Muslim h imsel f , he remarked wi th a wry gr in, “This Government ’s niyom (policy) is that it brands them (Bengali-descent Muslims) Bangladeshi, while it brands us khilonjiya Muslims, “Pakistani”! He accurately recognised that the BJP’s policy is “hate all Muslims” – it is nothing to do with defending Assam’s so-called “indigenous” people.

Our Demands: ● The CM who is responsible for the communal eviction policy and whose brother is the SP Darrang who conducted the murderous attack must resign.

● Directions of the Supreme Court in its order dated 23.09.2014 in People’s Union for Civil Liberties vs. Union of India [(2014) 10 SCC 635] (on police encounter killings) must be strictly complied with. There should be registration

of FIR in regard to kill ing of Mohinul Haque and Sheikh Farid. An independent investigation into this must be conducted by the CID or police team of another police station under the supervision of a senior officer. The police officer(s) concerned must surrender their weapons for forensic and ballistic analysis, including any other material as required for investigation.

● The SP Darrang and pol ice personnel involved in f i r ing and arson must be sacked, arrested and charged under all appropriate criminal sections including murder, arson and attempt to murder.

● No more ev ic t ions o f poor under any pretext. Instead evict the super-rich who have built resorts in forest core zones, tea companies who have occupied 6354 acres of land to illegally set up tea gardens, encroachments by industries in tribal belts, and the BJP office built on Govt land in in Guwahati.

● Stop the communal propaganda c la im ing tha t t emp les a re being encroached by “il legal immigrants”. In fact at Darrang the temple has been kept safe in an area where almost 99% families are Muslim. The Hindu caretaker of the temple Parvati Das has also been evicted under the Land policy. If the Govt speaks of preserving sacred sites (“satras”) - why is the land grab near the airport destroying the “koita siddhi satra” near it?

● Local communities are providing relief to the displaced persons but the Government must take respons ib i l i t y and p rov ide relief including medical camps, drinking water, food, shelter, and hygiene.

● All evicted persons at Darrang must be restored to their lands and their homes must be rebuilt. pp

A destroyed mosque in Darrang

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Born Here, Grew up Here, Where Can We go Now?

K u m a r P a r v e z

I t was about nine in the morning and the sun was already blazing. In the scorching heat, under the

open skies, an infant child lay exposed to the sun. Men, women and children were wandering here and there, trying to find a sliver of shade. On 5 October 2021 the administration had ruthlessly bulldozed the huts in Patna's Malahi Pakdi inhabited mainly by rag- pickers and their famil ies. All the huts were razed to the ground; and not content with that, all goods and possessions were set afire and destroyed. The crime of these families, settled here for about 25 years, is only that they were opposing their eviction from that place and asking for their huts to be settled elsewhere prior to eviction. It should be noted that the place where these poor people had their huts is the location planned for the construction of a big station under the Metro project in capital Patna.

"Babu, they have not only razed our huts, they have also smashed our vessels and other belongings. At 9 am on 5 October orders came from the administration to vacate all the huts. We were in the process of vacating when hundreds of assorted policemen came and started beating up people. They hurled foul abuses at us and dragged us by the hair, beating us all the time. They hit Rajesh Thakur on the forehead with such force that he died that night itself. All of us are in a very bad state".

The above was narrated to us by Anita Devi as she showed us blue-black bruises from the police beating on her arms, face and other parts of her body. She added that her son Rohith was brutally beaten with an electric wire. When he went to the nearby hospital for treatment the police followed him there and continued beating him inside

the hospital. While the beatings were going on, vessels and goods were also being smashed and broken; cooked food on the stove platforms was being flung out, and other goods were being looted. Anita Devi said, "I used to work washing vessels etc. and earn Rs 2200 per month. All that is gone now. There is no food in the house. We are dependent on the children now; if they bring some pickings from here and there we manage to eat something. When we don't have the means even for food, how can we think of medical treatment? Night and day we are haunted by the fear that the police will come and drive us out from here".

Karmani Devi, cooking r ice on a brick stove, said, "We were born here, we grew up here, we were marr ied here only, we gave birth to our own children here...but today everything is in smithereens, where shall we go?" Manju Devi said, "I am borrowing vessels abd cooking food for the chi ldren. They smashed and broke everything I had, not even a teaspoon is left. We had a kabadi (rag pickings) shop; they burnt that also". All the families told similar tales of woe. Their first and foremost need is for food and vessels.

On 5 October all limits of brutality were crossed under the leadership of ASP Sandeep Singh. Human r ights were thrown to the winds. The brutal police action has caused terror in the hearts of people. They are stunned and terror-stricken after the death of 40 year old Rajesh Thakur. Bearing the brunt of pain, grief and financial straits, these families see a ray of hope in the leaders who are leading the struggle.

CPIML and other Left parties had organized a 2 day dharna at Malahi Pakdi Chowk on 5 and 6 August on the issue

of alternative housing arrangements before this eviction. This dharna was led by leader of CPIML legislative party Mahboob Alam, convener of the Urban Poor Front Ashok Kumar and CPIML leader Ranvijay Kumar. That dharna was ended after an assurance from the administration that alternative housing would be arranged before the eviction. A list of families to be evicted was started, and a l ist of about 250 families was made but meanwhile on 5 October this brutal incident was perpetrated.

After the death of Rajesh Thakur during treatment for injuries caused by the police brutality, thousands of angry urban poor blocked the road at Malahi Pakdi Chowk on 6 October. Holding the ant i -poor pol ic ies of the Ni t ish-BJP government responsible for this incident, they protested at the Chowk with Rajesh Thakur's body, demanding Rs 10 lakhs compensa t ion and a government job for Rajesh Thakur's family, a murder case against the guilty police officials, end to evictions without prior alternative housing arrangements, and implementation of the agreement reached earlier for resettlement of the poor on the land north of the Patliputra sports complex as chosen by the Patna DM. The protest was led by the Urban Poor F ron t , CPIML and o the r Le f t leaders including Ashok Kumar, Umesh Sharma, Puneet Pathak and others.

As soon as news of the urban poor jhuggi dwellers' struggle reached them, MLA and leader of CPIML legislative party Mahboob Alam and AICCTU State Secretary Ranvijay Kumar reached the spot and sat on dharna with the above demands . The a r r i va l o f Mahboob Alam further energized the protesters and talks were held with SDO Patna and police officials and an agreement

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was reached for Rs 4 lakhs (from the administration) and Rs 1 lakh (from the labour department) as compensation, immediate compensation of Rs 20000, Rs 3000 cash under Kabir Antyeshti Yojana and a job for Rajesh's kin in the Municipal Corporation, after which the victim Rajesh Thakur's body was sent for post mortem.

Earlier, Left parties formed a 'Malahi Pakdi Jhuggi Jhopdi Basao Sangharsh Samiti' to intensify the struggles on the above issues. It was decided to irganize a condolence meeting on 10 October for Rajesh Thakur who lost his life fighting for the rights of the poor. Further, a delegation wi l l soon meet the Bihar Minister for Urban Development and the Patna City Commissioner. The joint Left meeting was presided over by CPIML

leader Ashok Kumar and attended by leaders inc lud ing Devra tna Prasad (CPI), Manoj Chandravanshi (CPIM) and Ranvijay Kumar (CPIML).

Metro Exploits Workers12 youths from jhuggis and jhopdis

(huts) have got work in the construction of the station for the Patna Metro at the above site in Malahi Pakdi. Worker Ramkishun Paswan says that they are made to do sanitation, cleaning and other jobs, but get only Rs 260 as wages. He says they are constrained to accept th is as the Metro people say, if you want to work, accept this, otherwise leave.

Ramkishun showed us a photo on his mobile. The ohoto was of a Notice Board saying that wages have been

fixed for unskilled, semi-skilled, skilled and extremely skilled workers. Nagarjun Construction Company is the employer and the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation is the chief employer.The daily wages fixed are as follows:Unskilled workers: Rs 534Semi-skilled workers: Rs 603Skilled workers: Rs 767Extremely skilled workers: Rs 777

However , these 12 workers are gett ing only Rs 260 per day. These workers demanded a minimum wage of Rs 400. They also went on strike 3 or 4 times but the Metro administration is refusing to implement its own rules. The unemployment crisis is so dire that people are helpless and forced to bear this exploitation. pp

Citizens’ Team Visits Belagavi(A brief report by a Karnataka

citizens’ team comprising AIPF, AILAJ and AISA members in the matter of the beheading of a Muslim man for his relationship with a Hindu woman.)

I n light of the grave reports of the brutal beheading and murder of a 25-year-old Muslim man Arbaz

Mul la in Belagavi on 28 September 2021 because he was in love with a Hindu woman, a team of seven people from Bengaluru and Davangere visited Belagavi on Thursday, 07 October, to express sol idari ty with the family of the deceased and to conduct a fact f ind ing in to the inc ident . The team consisted of Akash Bhattacharya (All India People’s Forum), Avani Chokshi (All India Lawyers’ Association for Justice), Nizamuddin (Fratern i ty Movement) , Shaik Zakeer Hussain (journalist, The Cognate), Siddharth Joshi (independent researcher), Syed Junaid (activist, All India Students Association), and Tanveer Ahmed (Movement for Justice).

The team was struck by the fact that the police had made no arrests despite a clear role of the Hindu-supremacist vigilante group Sri Ram Sene (Hindustan) in the murder till 07 October. Only on 08 October 2021 were 10 persons arrested in connection with the killing.

When asked abou t t he murde r and desec ra t i on o f t he body , t he Superintendent of Pol ice refused to part with any information till completion of invest iga t ion . Even when asked about compliance with Supreme Court directions to create a 24-hour helpline to assist inter-caste and inter-religious couples, he again stated that he would respond to the same only after completion of investigation. The District Collector denied any knowledge of the incident. In the eight days that had passed since the murder the fami ly had received l i t t le solidarity from local polit icians, journalists and citizens including those not belonging to Hindu-supremacist parties and groups. The silence and i nac t ion on the par t o f the po l i ce ,

administration and politicians is what contributes to the impunity of groups such as Sri Ram Sene. A few days prior to the murder, Pundalik Maharaj, a member of the Sene, had openly threatened the victim’s mother with acid attack and had warned that he could murder her son, asserting that there were already 40 police cases against him and that he had nothing to fear. It is only after he carried out his threat that Maharaj was arrested by the jurisdictional police.

Talking to the fami ly, especial ly the victim’s cousin, aunt, and mother (Na jeema Sha ikh) , the team got a sense that the family had anticipated t rouble once the a l leged inter- fa i th love affair between Mr. Mulla and his neighbour became visible and known in Khanapur. Yet there was little social and community support that they could ca l l upon. So they had cons idered agreeing to a “settlement” proposed by Pundalik Maharaj and Prashant Birje of the Sri Ram Sene (H) with the hope that the situation would not escalate.

FIELD REPORTS


This underlines the helplessness of the local Muslims and Christians who have been repeatedly targeted with threats, occasional attacks, and boycotts by the Sri Ram Sene over the last decade. This incident comes in the wake of unchecked clout of Hindu-supremacist organizations including the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the region.

The citizens’ team appealed to all

citizens of Karnataka to extend solidarity to Mr. Mulla’s family and fr iends, to demand a speedy and fair investigation and trial in the case to ensure justice, and to make proactive efforts to build bridges between communities and rebuild communal harmony in the state as well as the country. The team demanded that action be taken by the Government to ensure such communal incidents are prevented. The team further demanded:

1. Government should take steps to ensure communal harmony including comprehensive compliance of the Supreme Cour t j udgment i n the Shakthi Vahini v Union of India case.

2. The Belgaum administrat ion must ensure the safety of Mr. Mulla’s family.

3. The government must acknowledge t h a t Be l agav i i s a c ommuna l l y sensi t ive area and take requis i te steps to prevent such incidents in the future. pp

Sanitation Workers' Campaign In Bangalore Streets

M a i t r e y i K

T he BBMP Pow r a k a rm i k a Sangha has started a Jaatha across the city of Bengaluru

from 9th October, 2021 to highl ight the vulnerable conditions under which powrakarmikas are forced to work and demand for dignified working conditions.

The Jaatha was inaugurated by Com Ravanamma, a senior leader of the Union, who retired as a powrakarmika last year and who has been at the forefront for the rights of powrakarmikas from the beginning.

Powrakramikas (Safai Karmacharis) despite being frontline workers at the forefront of the war against COVID-19 are forced to work under extremely vulnerable working conditions. Instead of taking steps to ensuresafe working conditions, the Prime Minster took to theatrics during COVID-19 and asked people to bang thalis and light candles for the frontline workers. Pots were banged but powrakarmikas continues to work under vulnerable conditions.

T h e J a a t h a c o n s i s t i n g o f powrakarmika leaders f rom across the ci ty, is going around the city of Bengaluru highlighting this failure of the

Government. It demands for dignified and safe working conditions and that all powrakarmikas be made permanent and wages of a minimum of Rs. 35,000/-. The work performed by powrakarmikas is caste ordained, being done by primarily Dalit women, who are subject to caste atroci t ies and sexual v io lence. The Jaatha demands an immediate end to such caste based atrocities and sexual violence of all forms. The Jaatha also demands that the Municipal Corporation ensure the provision of housing to all of them and education to all their children, in order to ensure that they are not forced to enter this caste-ordained work.

The Jaatha starts at 4 am moving with the powrakarmikas to the muster where the i r a t tendance is taken at 6 am. Workers are not provided any form of transportation and are forced to either walk the distance or come through autos in large numbers, an unsafe mode of transport. Meetings are held at 6 am, 10.30 am and 2 pm when workers congregate for attendance. In between the Jaatha moves through the streets and markets. Several people came forward expressing their solidarity

to the demands of the powrakarmikas and said that they would stand with the workers who ensured the health. In the evening the Jaatha congregates at the homes of powrakarmikas. The BBMP Powrakarmika Sangha has bought a film dedicated to those workers who lost their lives to COVID-19, on the condition of powrakarmikas during the COVID-19 lockdown. Director Raju who works as a powrakarmika and directs short films has made a fi lm on the Inauguration ceremony and the Jaatha, which. Both these films are screened at the homes of the powrakarmikas, which is followed by a discussion.

The vulnerable working conditions of powrakarmikas are a clear example of the way in which the caste system, patriarchy and the neo-liberal agenda of the State has condemned a historically oppressed community into a caste-ordained profession and pushed an entire community of people into a cycle of poverty. The Jaatha is putting forth a clear message against such structures of violence and demanding for what is rightfully due to the powrakarmikas. pp

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Sardar UdhamD r i p t a S a r a n g i

In Shoojit Sircar’s 2021 biopic Sardar Udham (2h 44min), Udham (p layed by V icky

Kaushal) is asked by his British comrade Eileen the reason why he is only fighting for the freedom of the people in his own land but not the freedom for everyone. Udham replies that only after being free from the English rule he can claim himself to be equal to Eileen, who can demand everyone’s freedom, but Udham has to demand it first for his own people.

In the school textbooks, Udham Singh is reduced to a couple of sentences for his contribution to India’s freedom struggle. We are told he was a member of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association and the Ghadar Party, and that he was the assassin of Michael O'Dwyer who was the infamous Lieutenant Governor of Punjab during the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre. He was hanged by the British for that act – and since has been one of the martyrs of the freedom struggle.

Biopics on freedom fighters of India’s Independence Movement have always tended to depict the protagonists as superhuman, self-righteous, masculine heroes. Drenched in jingoistic patriotism, these movies erase the actual heroes of the freedom struggle – the people and their tireless struggle for their dignity, be it their dignity in freedom from colonial rule, or in the dignity of their labour. Most of the Freedom Struggle movies we see, have imagined India as Mother, where the duty of her sons is to break her chains and save her from the tyranny of the “foreign” English.

Sardar Udham breaks this trend. This film does not need to imagine the country as a symbolic entity pictured as Mother. The country is real here with its people and their exploited labour – labour which creates wealth in India which is drained away illegally by the parasitic British empire.

Udham Singh of this film, therefore comes across as an undaunted young man whose act of killing the ruthless O’Dwyer at a meeting at Caxton Hall is neither revenge, nor a hot-headed action to liberate the country. Rather, it is a symbolic act of protest - which rekindles the fires that killed thousands on 13th April, 1919 at Jallianwala Bagh. It reinvigorates the memory of the massacre, and it has the power to affect the actions of revolutionaries in the soil of the country.

Udham is also depicted as a torn man in his late youth. As a witness of Jallianwala Bagh, as a former comrade of martyr Bhagat Singh - he carries a heavy heart laden by the memories of the killings of his people and his comrades. Yet his eyes still dream of revolution as his zeal crosses the boundaries of country, continent or race in finding allies to lit up the flames of protest in his county.

What is more interesting about the movie and Udham’s character, is that Udham is not shown to be a patriotic Indian alone but a revolutionary inspired by communist ideology. This film unapologetically shows the communist ideological sides of HSRA, the ideals and the thinking of the Party. While in custody, while being viciously tortured and interrogated - Udham goes by the name of Ram Mohammad Singh Azad. The first three of of these names reflect the three most prominent religious identities (Hindu, Muslim, Sikh) of the South Asian subcontinent, which are repeatedly pitted against each other by colonial and communal politicians. Those three names unite in one single name – finally brought together by ‘Azad’ – which means ‘Free’ and is also the name by which his HSRA comrade Chandrashekhar has been known.

Today, that name resonates strangely with the Indian viewer. We are watching this film in an India ruled by Hindu supremacists, and everyday

we hear reports of incidents in which Muslim minorities are subjugated, humil iated, abused, and ki l led. Likewise in neighbouring Pakistan and Bangladesh (and Myanmar and Sri Lanka too), minorities continue to face humiliation and death. Seven and half decades after “azaadi” (freedom), we are far from achieving the India or South Asia for which “Ram Mohammad Singh Azad” sacrificed his life. Instead it seems we are now going in the opposite direction. But the name is also a powerful reminder – that we today must struggle to live up to Udham Singh and his comrades.

What haunts the film is the story (told in a non linear way) of Udham’s memory and lived experience of the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre. The excruciating details of Amritsar 1919, the slaughter, the agony, the tedious Sisyphyan rescue operations carried out by the volunteers despite the night curfew, the sedated steady operations of the frontline medical professionals - encompass only the last 45 minutes of the movie, as Udham recalls in vivid, graphic details the events from that day and night to the British detective who dealt with his case.

Those memories of Jallianwala Bagh brought to life in the film forces us to confront the fact that Jallianwala Bagh is not really a thing of the past. It is a lived reality, in India today where rulers continue to use colonial-era laws to gag and imprison those who walk in Udham Singh’s or Bhagat Singh’s or even Ambedkar’s or Gandhi’ footsteps; where struggling workers or farmers or adivasis are cold-bloodedly massacred by police forces or henchmen of the ruling party.

The ideas of revolution cannot be buried - while being taken away from the court after being sentenced to death - Udham‘s slogan “Inquilab Zindabad” resonates long after the film is over. It is both a promise and a challenge. pp

review


No Land’s People - The Untold Story of Assam’s NRC Crisis

A i s h i k S a h a

The political terrain in Assam and the conditions that led to the drafting of the

National Register of Citizens (NRC) have often been euphemistically referred to as ‘complex’, a term that barely captures the anxiety, fear, and sheer inhumanity that has been a part of the exercise. This text attempts to peer into both the ‘political’ background for the demand of the NRC and its implementation in its current form, and the ‘personal’ aspects of the lives of those whom it impacted directly.

The author Abhishek Saha tells us how the NRC process affected him personally, as his grandmother was left out of the citizenship list despite her name being in the NRC conducted in 1951. The question of who really gets to be Axomiya and who gets branded an outsider is determined in a near arbitrary manner with historically transcribed cut-off dates.

While the book deals with a number of issues including the history of the NRC, the procedural defects of the exercise, and the politics behind it, what hits home the hardest are the heart wrenching stories of those who have had to go into detention camps or had to lose everything in order to make a case for themselves at the Kafkaesque Foreigners Tribunal. The NRC exercise shifted the burden of proving citizenship onto people who often did not possess the resources to fight for their cases in courtrooms. Many asked the simple question “why do we have to prove that we are citizens of a land in which we were born?”

Documents that sufficed for the rigorous background check to join the Indian Army are apparently insufficient to prove citizenship as the case of Mohammed Sanaullah demonstrated. The problem with the exercise has been the fact that it is rooted in the cartographic anxieties of the post-colonial state. Land over which people had freely moved about for millenia, was suddenly subject to boundary checks and documentation. The commonly used term ‘infiltrators’, which supposes a planned military exercise, betrays this framing (though it was not well hidden to begin with). People fleeing v io lence or economic hardship can hardly be considered to be ‘infiltrators’, but they are branded so all the same. Children born to parents who may have been immigrants, have also supposedly participated in the military exercise since their birth!

The author points out that the NRC exercise had received at least some degree of acceptance for a myriad variety of reasons. Many had hoped that such an exercise would finally lift the tag of being ‘infiltrators’ from themselves and allow them to get on with their lives. Others had believed that it would be a panacea to all of Assam’s problems including corruption and unemployment. The NRC exercise had clearly left even those who had wanted the process to be conducted deeply unsatisfied. Those who had championed the process felt that the figure of 19 lakh undocumented immigrants (the number of persons left out of the Assam NRC for want of documents) is ‘too low’. They insist

that the ‘infiltrators’ had managed to somehow prove that they were genuine citizens. Those who had hoped that the process would finally put an end to the unfounded allegations of being ‘ infi l trators’ now discovered that the poison of communalism had been introduced into an already toxic discourse. The BJP, unable to digest the very simple logic that most of the immigrants are ‘Hindu’, started to campaign for the Citizenship Amendment Bill to incorporate them, but found obstinate opposition within the state.

S a h a d o c u m e n t s t h e v e r y arbitrary nature of the way the NRC was conducted. Inclusion of one’s name in the 1951 NRC or subsequent electoral rolls was no guarantee of being accepted as a ‘genuine’ citizen. People whose parents were accepted as Indian citizens have themselves been left out. Any bureaucratic error could be used as an excuse to be branded a foreigner. Even the IT giant Wipro was embroiled in the process of integrating the legacy data to the system.

Achil le Mbembe in his essay On the Postcolony used the term ‘necropolitics’ to signify the power of the state to dictate how sections of people must live and how they must die. Stating that “under the conditions of necropower, the lines between resistance and suicide, sacrifice and redemption, martyrdom and freedom are blurred”, Mbembe argues that the state orders the death of its citizens through a variety of ‘methods’. The BJP seemingly finds a playbook here, hoping to kill Indians by any means necessary. pp

INTERNATIONAL


Facebook: Making Profit With Hate Speech A i s h i k S a h a

Facebook is once again at the center of controversy, this time due to accusations by a

whistleblower of prioritizing profit over monitoring hate-groups and hate-speech. The lack of transparency over content moderation has often been flagged as one of the key issues with the social media giant that also owns Instagram and WhatsApp. The Intercept published a 100 page list of ‘Dangerous Individuals and Organizations’, which Facebook circulates among its employees for moderation of contents on its sites .

Allegations of ineffective moderation of hate-speech on Facebook owned platforms have often been countered by the company’s claim that it judiciously monitors all hate-speech on the platform and pledges to do more in order to curtail violent rhetoric. The documents reveal a key pattern to Facebook’s moderation practices. Firstly, the vast majority of the listed individuals and organisations are from the Middle East and North Africa region, especially with Arabic names, reflecting an embedded alignment with US foreign policy objectives rather than concerns of its users, with the language of the document clearly reflecting a post-9/11 cultural bias. Secondly, a conspicuous absence of the large number White Supremacist, anti-immigrant, and neo-Nazi organisations that have been responsible for the numerical majority of terrorist attacks in Europe and North America.

The revelations come in the footsteps of the allegations made by Frances Haugen, a former Facebook data scientist and whistleblower, in her complaint to the SEC. The complaints include the company misleading investors and users regarding its safety practices, disproportionate focus on the US with 87% of moderation resources despite accounting for less than 10% of active users, and the lack of flagging of hate-speech with 3-5%

of hate-speech being cracked down upon. An internal report by Facebook titled ‘Adversarial Harmful Networks – India Case Study’ demonstrates clearly the extent of hate-content and fear mongering on the platform against Muslims. Another sampling survey in West Bengal demonstrated the extent of fake news being shared on the platform, with the company’s limited access to Bengali and Hindi language moderation resources. The complaint also cites a third document titled ‘Lotus Mahal’ that shows how it was aware of the functioning of the BJP-IT cell flooding the platform with duplicate and fake accounts in order to boost its user engagement.

While Facebook categorises India as a ‘Tier One’ country reflecting a high risk of societal violence, its actions to prevent its own platform from being used for said violence have been limited. The

company has chosen a deliberate strategy of turning a blind eye to hate-speech by the Sangh linked organizations like Bajrang Dal, precisely due to fear than any crackdown could bring physical retribution against its India-based employees . It was also revealed last year that Ankhi Das, who was formerly the top public-policy executive in India, had opposed any application of hate-speech rules to Hindu nationalist politicians and groups.

Engels had used the term ‘social murder’ in The Condition of the Working Class in England to demonstrate how the members of the working class was being systematically being pushed to their deaths for capitalist enterprise to be profitable. In the modern age of ‘Digital Capitalism’ literal murder of working class and minorities are being encouraged for social media companies to be and remain profitable.pp

SPECIAL FEATURE


India At 75 Hindu-Supremacists Vs India’s

Freedom Struggle: A Brief History ( T o d a y , H i n d u - s u p r e m a c i s t

fasc is ts are in power in Ind ia, and are busy try ing to wri te themselves i n to the h is tory o f Ind ia ’s f reedom movement; while distorting the role of the movement’s actual key actors. In this feature we examine the trajectory of the two foremost Hindu-supremacist organisations, the Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, from their birth until India’s freedom and soon after.

The Pun j ab H i ndu Mahasabha was formed in 1909, and the Hindu Mahasabha was formed in 1915. The RSS was formed in 1925. What did these respective formations and their leaders do, when India fought for freedom; when freedom fighters spent long years in prison and sacrificed their lives?

The leaders of the HM and RSS stated their aims quite clearly. So we will rely on their own writings, as well as the assessments of these outf i ts by other part icipants in the freedom struggle. - ed/-)

Did Hindu Mahasabha and RSS Ever Support The Fight Against The British Raj?

Leaders of the RSS and Hindu Mahasabha repeatedly displayed their contempt for the anti-British freedom movement.

Golwalkar Condemning The Freedom Struggle As “Disastrous”

“Anti-Britishism was equated with patriotism and nationalism. This reactionary view has had disastrous effects upon the entire course of the freedom movement, its leaders and the common people”.

- M. S. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts,1996, p. 138

“There are bad results of struggle. The boys became militant after the 1920-21 movement…After 1942, people often started thinking that there was no need to think of the law…”

- Golwalkar on the impact of the Non Co-operation

Movement of 1920-21 and Quit India Movement of 1942,

Shri Guruji Samagra Darshan, (S.G.S.D.), Vol. IV, p.41

“In 1942 also there was a strong sentiment in the hearts of many. At that time too the routine work of Sangh continued. Sangh decided not to do anything directly.”

- Golwalkar on the Quit India Movement of 1942, S.G.S.D.,Vol. IV, p.40

Shyama Prasad Mookerjee Helped The British Crush Quit India Movement

Mookerjee refused to resign from the Ministry in Bengal during the Quit India Movement. Not only that, as a Minister in the Bengal Government in 1942, he actively offered help and advice to the British administrators to crush the Quit India Movement. In 1942, he wrote:

“The question is how to combat this movement in Bengal? The administration of the province should be carried out in such a manner that in spite of the best efforts ... this movement will fail to take root in the province.”

“As regards India’s attitude towards England, the struggle between them, if any, should not take place at this juncture. ...Anybody who plans to stir up mass feelings resulting in internal disturbances or

insecurity, must be resisted by any Government...” (Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, Leaves from a Diary, OUP, 1993, pp 175-190)

Golwalkar Felt Martyrs Were “Failures” Whose Sacrifice Did Not Serve “Complete National Interest

Golwalkar asked us to question “whether complete national interest is accomplished by that (martyrdom)?” (Bunch of Thoughts, p. 61-62)

He wrote about martyrs of the freedom struggle: “there is no doubt that such man who embrace martyrdom are great heroes ...All the same, such persons are not held up as ideals in our society. We have not looked upon their martyrdom as the highest point of greatness to which men should aspire. For, after all, they failed in achieving their ideal, and failure implies some fatal flaw in them…” (Bunch of Thoughts, p. 283.)

What About Savarkar? Did He Write Mercy Petitions?

VD resisted the British long before he joined the Hindu Mahasabha and before was imprisoned. Soon after his re-arrest and trial, when he was taken to the Andamans in 1911, he began pledging loyalty to the British and begging for release in a series of “mercy petitions”. He has the shameful record of writing no less than seven mercy petitions promising to serve the British loyally in exchange for his release.

In a letter dated November 24, 1913, he repeated this petition pleading for release, promising to mend his ways, and become “the staunchest advocate … of loyalty to the Government … where else can

SPECIAL FEATURE


the prodigal son return but to the parental doors of the Government?”

To obtain his release in Jan 1924, Savarkar accepted without any compunction the conditions set out in his release order “that he will not engage publicly or privately in any manner of political activities without the consent of Government.”

But Rajnath Singh Says Gandhi Advised Savarkar To Seek Mercy?

In a recent speech, Rajnath Singh said that Savarkar wrote his mercy petitions only because Gandhi advised him to do so. Is this true?

The facts are as follows: Savarkar submitted seven mercy

petitions, the first one in 1911. At the time Gandhi was in South Africa. Gandhi returned to India only in 1915. So he had no contact with Savarkar when the latter wrote his mercy petitions.

In 1920, Gandhiji responded to Savarkar’s younger brother Narayan Rao who had asked for his advice. Gandhiji wrote a letter saying, “It is difficult to advise you. I suggest, however, framing a brief petition setting forth facts of the case, bringing out in clear relief that the fact that the offence committed by your brother was purely political.” So Gandhiji advised Savarkar to accept his offence but point out that its motive was political rather than criminal. He did not advise Savarkar to beg for mercy!

Historian Rajmohan Gandhi, who is also Gandhiji’s grandson, says, “Rajnath Singh is asking us to believe that a letter that Gandhi writes in January 1920 to a request from the Savarkar brothers should be interpreted as advice given by Gandhi nine years earlier that Savarkar should send a mercy petition. The suggestion is absurd beyond description. It is laughable.”

Gandhiji did write in Young India

in May 1920 seeking the release of the Savarkar brothers as well as the Ali brothers – Maulana Shaukat Ali and Maulana Mohammed Ali. But he is not “begging for mercy” for them – he is demanding the release of all political prisoners including those with whose ideas and methods he disagreed.

Maybe Savarkar Just Asked For Mercy Tactically? Did He Not Fight The British After He Was Free?

Here, let us consider what opinion two freedom fighters - Gandhiji and Subhash Bose – had about Savarkar and the Hindu Mahasabha.

In his May 1920 Young India piece, Gandhiji made it clear that while he felt the Savarkar brothers’ imprisonment was unjust, they were not freedom fighters. He wrote, “The Savarkar brothers state unequivocally that they do not desire independence from the British connection. On the contrary, they feel that India’s destiny can be best worked out in association with the British.”

Subhash Bose met Savarkar in June 1940. His wrote about the meeting: “Mr Savarkar seemed to be oblivious of the international situation and was only thinking how Hindus could ...secure military training by entering Britain’s army in India.” He also found that neither Jinnah and Savarkar was interested in the freedom struggle, writing “nothing could be expected either from either the Muslim League or the Hindu Mahasabha.” (Netaji Collected Works, Vol 2, The Indian Struggle)

Syama Prasad Mookerjee, writing in his diary, noted that Subhash Bose told him that if the Hindu Mahasabha tried to build itself as a political body in Bengal, “He [Bose] would see to it, by force if need be, that it was broken before it was really born.” (Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, Leaves from a Diary, OUP, 1993)

But Vikram Sampath Claims That Bose Praised Savarkar?

Journalist Ayush Tiwari tried to verify a quote attributed by Savarkar’s latest biographer Vikram Sampath to Subhash Bose, containing fulsome praise for Savarkar. He traced the quote to Dhananjay Keer’s biography of Savarkar – but Keer provides no source for his quote. As Tiwari adds, “In fact, there is no primary source than can be attributed to this quote.” So Sampath uses an unsourced quote from Keer’s hagiographic account without making any attempt to verify it! As we saw above, Netaji’s own writings carry a very negative assessment of Savarkar and of the Hindu Mahasabha.

Tiwari adds that “It has been a quite old trend to credit Netaji’s struggle to Savarkar. In fact the trend was started by Savarkar himself as he wrote in his ‘Tajasvi Tare’ book, published after independence.”

Did Rajaji Author The 1926 Biography of Savarkar, As Sampath Claims?

Journalist Ashutosh Bharadwaj did a fact check on a sensational quote attributed by Sampath to C Rajagopalachari (Rajaji), claiming to have “penned” Savarkar ’s 1926 “biography” which had been published under the pseudonym “Chitragupta.”

But this quote was nowhere to be found in Rajaji’s collected works. Bharadwaj finds that Sampath’s “source” for this quote is Hindu Mahabhasha Parva, a book by Savarka r ’ s b ro the r Babarao Savarkar. There is no primary source for that quote either.

Note that the 1986 reprint of the 1926 biography, published by Veer Savarkar Prakashan, has a preface that clearly states, “Chitragupta is none other than Veer Savarkar.”

SPECIAL FEATURE


Why These Attempts To Claim Gandhi or Bose or Rajaji Endorsed Savarkar?

Vikram Sampath and Rajnath Singh now seek to somehow manufacture credibility for Savarkar, tainted by his multiple mercy petitions and his communal, pro-British politics. So they claim Gandhi advised him to beg for mercy; that Bose praised him and Rajaji wrote his biography. But the quotes or sentiments attributed to these leaders seem to be fake news produced by Savarkar himself or his brother!

What Did Savarkar Do After Being Freed From Andaman Jail?

From the time he was freed from prison to the end of his life, it is clear that Savarkar kept the promises he made to the British in his mercy petitions. He never participated in the freedom struggle in any capacity. He wrote his hateful Hindu-supremacist manifesto Hindutva in 1923, and spent his life working solely for Hindu-supremacist politics.

As Bose noted, Savarkar was not interested in supporting the Quit India movement or building any armed resistance to the British. He was obsessed only with how Hindus could get into the British Army and get training that would help in fighting Muslims!

And can we forget that Savarkar was the mastermind behind the assassination of Gandhi?

But Savarkar Was Never Punished For Gandhi’s Assassination?

While Nathuram Godse was hanged for killing Gandhiji and his brother was jailed for his part in the conspiracy, the mastermind Savarkar escaped punishment, even though a Hindu Mahasabha member Badge turned informer and testified that Apte and Godse met Savarkar, came away with

weapons, and that Savarkar blessed the duo telling them “Yashasvi houn ya” (May you be successful and return). Badge added that Apte told him that Savarkar was sure that “Gandhi’s 100 years are up” and so the assassination attempt would be successful. But in the absence of independent corroboration, Savarkar got the benefit of doubt and escaped punishment.

However, Home Minister Sardar Patel was sure of Savarkar’s guilt. In a letter to PM Nehru, dated 27 February 1948, Patel wrote, “It was a fanatical wing of the Hindu Mahasabha directly under Savarkar that [hatched] the conspiracy and saw it through.”

After Savarkar’s death, the Justice Kapur Commission enquiry found additional proof corroborating Badge’s account and confirming that Savarkar was the kingpin of the assassination conspiracy. In its 1969 report the Kapur Commission concluded that “people who were subsequent ly involved in the murder of Mahatma Gandhi were all congregating sometime or the other at Savarkar Sadan and sometimes had long interviews with Savarkar….All these facts taken together were destructive of any theory other than the conspiracy to murder by Savarkar and his group.”

Patel Held The RSS To Be A Danger to India

In a letter to Hindu Mahasabha leader Syama Prasad Mookerjee on July 18, 1948, Patel wrote:

“There is no doubt in my mind that the extreme section of the Hindu Mahasabha was involved in the conspiracy [to kill Gandhi]. The activities of the RSS constituted a clear threat to the existence of Government and the State. Our reports show that those activities, despite the ban, have not died down. Indeed, as time has marched on, the RSS circles are becoming more

defiant and are indulging in their subversive activities in an increasing measure.”

In a letter to Golwalkar in September 1948, Patel reiterated the reason for his decision to ban the RSS:

“All their speeches were fill of communal poison. ...As a final result of the poison, the country had to suffer the sacrifice of the invaluable life of Gandhiji. Even an iota of the sympathy of the Government, or of the people, no more remained for the RSS. ...Opposition turned more severe, when the RSS men expressed joy and distributed sweets after Gandhiji’s death.”

ConclusionThe RSS and BJP venerate

Savarkar while their top leaders maintain “physical distance” from Godse. However that distance is narrowing, as the BJP gets more and more brazen and confident. Modi’s decision to field Pragya Thakur as an MP from Bhopal, declaring that “No Hindu can ever be a terrorist” is a case in point. Pragya Thakur was part of the terrorist plots by the Abhinav Bharat (run by Savarkar’s descendants). She openly and repeatedly declares that Godse – the terrorist who assassinated Gandhiji - was a patriot! And while Savarkar may have claimed that he did not bless Godse’s assassination attempt, today the Hindu Mahasabha declares its intention to build Godse temples! It is clear enough, though, that the RSS and Hindu Mahasabha collaborated with the British and had nothing to do with the Indian freedom struggle. Instead they were involved in communal and terrorist conspiracies – the worst being the assassination of Gandhiji. And today, the same forces collaborate with imperialism and are involved in communal violence and conspiracies to assassinate people like Dabholkar, Pansare, Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh. pp

Labour Unrest Brewing in the United StatesA i s h i k S a h a

Beyond the everyday headlines, the United States seems to be heading towards a new wave of labour militancy. Almost

every major industry in the US seems to have been hit by the recent mobilization of workers, who are no longer willing to work for poverty wages. While the labour shortage triggered by the restrictions due to COVID-19 is seen as the immediate cause, the roots of the problem lie deep within the economy itself.

Workers rights have been under attack in the US since the Reagan Era politics of tax cuts and ‘small government’, as social security, unemployment benefits, and unionisation rights were attacked by both the Republican and Democratic party led administrations over the past four decades. The result? Wages have stagnated while the cost of living in the US has skyrocketed resulting in massive indebtedness for the average American. 77% of US households have had some kind of debt with a total $1.57 trillion owed in student loans and $10.44 trillion owed in mortgage payment. This meant that workers had to work whatever low wage job they could find in order to just be able to keep their heads above water.

The pandemic pushed the crisis into an overdrive as workers were forced to risk their lives, work longer hours, and put up with appalling conditions. The pause on repayment on student loans and the halt on rental evictions under such conditions have allowed workers for the first time to be able to reorganise themselves to fight for better conditions. Workers are simply refusing to do poorly remunerated work and this has in turn triggered a shortage of labour.

Companies like John Deere, which manufactures agricultural machinery, have refused to share their profits with the workers, while their CEO has received a pay hike of 160%. This has resulted in 10,000 workers resorting to a strike for better pay for themselves as future workers. 1,400 workers at Kellogg’s cereal plants across the country, 1,100 coal miners at Warrior Met in Alabama, and 420 United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) members at Heaven Hill Distillery in Kentucky have all resorted to strikes that are ongoing. The strikes

of 30,000 Kaiser Permanente workers & 60,000 International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees has generated waves in the US labour militancy.

The Department of Labour has estimated that 4.3 million employees, i.e. 2.9% of the country’s workforce, have quit their jobs in the month of August alone! This has had certain employers bemoaning that “no one wants to work any more” despite the fact that they themselves have refused to offer better pay and work conditions.

Certain Republican party representatives have started advocating an end to the pause on debt repayment and rental evictions hoping that a return of the misery faced by workers would force them to return to work. We have often been told numerous times that the capitalist labour market works by simple rules of demand and supply, and workers must reskill themselves if they want higher pay, but now when demand for labour outstrips supply, employers are demanding an artificial inflation on supply to keep labour costs low! It does appear that capitalists cannot follow their own rules for once. pp

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R.N.I. No. 55777/93P. R. No. DL(E)—11/5156/2021-23

Posting at New Delhi G.P.O.

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