[Marxism] MLIN [March-April 2008] Gates Visit | Terrorism Witch-Hunts | Rape in Gujrat | SEZ | CPM Congress and More (text)

[CPI (ML) Intl Liaison Office]

ML International Newsletter
March-April 2008

***********************************************************************

An update on news and ideas from the revolutionary
left in India. 
Produced by: Communist Party of India
(Marxist-Leninist) Liberation international team 
***********************************************************************

Websites: mlint.wordpress.com and www.cpiml.org
Emails: cpiml_elo at yahoo.com and cpimllib at gmail.com

Table of Contents

1)	No to the Indo-US ‘Logistics Support Agreement’
2)	Aftab Ansari’s Story: Demanding Justice for Victims
of Witch-hunts
3)	Patan Reveals Pandora’s Box of Rape in Modi’s
Gujarat
4)	Saffron Experiment in Orissa Laboratory
5)	The Parliamentary Left of Sri Lanka and the
Nationalist Trap
6)	Ganga Expressway : ‘Corporate Hitay, Sarvajan
Dukhay’
7)	Protest Against Land Grab at Nalanda
8)	Draft Political Resolution for CPI(M)’s 19th
Congress
9)	‘People’s Assertion Rally’ in Siwan
10)	7-yr Jail Term for Bant Singh’s Attackers
11)	AICCTU Achieves Recognition as Central Trade Union
Organization
12)	Long Live Comrade Ramakant Dwivedi ‘Ramta’

Imperialism and South Asia

Go Back Gates ! No to the Indo-US ‘Logistics Support
Agreement’

- Kavita Krishnan, Liberation, March, 2008.

On February 25, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates is
due for a visit to India, to ink in a ‘Logistics
Support Agreement’ (LSA) between the two countries. It
is yet another indicator that far from being on hold,
the Indo-US ‘civilian’ Nuke Deal and all its attendant
military deals are all well on track.  

This LSA’s implications are more far-reaching and
comprehensive than the port call by the USS Nimitz or
the joint naval exercises. The US Ambassador has
described the LSA as “aimed at improving
interoperability between the militaries of the two
countries,” while the External Affairs Minister, in
Parliament, described it last year as “a facilitating
framework for mutual logistical support when deploying
defence resources in disaster relief operations or
joint exercises and without commitment for assistance
in situations of armed conflict.” In spite of these
bland assurances, it is clear that there is more than
meets the eye. The LSA is essentially a barter of
goods and services between the Armed Forces of both
countries, but it will effectively oblige the Indian
Armed Forces to provide a range of services to the US
Armed Forces. This will turn the Indian forces into
mercenaries of sorts, and is also a backdoor method of
enlisting India into a North Atlantic Treaty
Organisation (NATO)-type alliance. 

Interestingly, the LSA is actually nothing but a
version of the Acquisition and Cross Servicing
Agreement (ACSA) (under a US statute that was formerly
known as “NATO Mutual Support Act”). These ACSAs were
intended to simplify exchanges of logistic support,
supplies, and services between the United States and
other NATO forces, though the law was subsequently
amended to permit ACSAs with the governments of
non-NATO countries. In India’s case, the ACSA is
termed the ‘LSA’ on special request by the Indian
Government which is eager to mask its true purpose.
Under US law, such an Agreement is only possible with
a non-NATO country if it (1) has a defence alliance
with the United States; (2) permits the stationing of
members of the US Armed Forces or the home porting of
US naval vessels in such a country; (3) has agreed to
pre-position US material in such a country; (4) serves
as host country for US Armed Forces during exercises
or permits other US military operations in such a
country. Clearly the LSA, if signed, will imply that
India has agreed to the above criteria and is
therefore for all practical purposes tied to a
‘defence alliance’ with the USA. 

The LSA was mooted first by the Vajpayee Government
and during Bush’s visit in March 2006, the Joint
Statement issued by Manmohan Singh and Bush indicated
that it was underway. Under the LSA, India will be
obligated to provide services such as refuelling and
port facilities to US warships, bombers, aircraft etc.
and even ‘billeting’ (accommodation to soldiers), food
etc. In countries like the Philippines where a similar
Agreement was signed in 2002, people have demanded
that their Congress conduct an enquiry into the
presence of US troops on Philippine soil, apprehending
that the Agreement was being used as an excuse to
allow the country to function as a US base in the
region. Why would India be any different? While Pranab
Mukherjee assured Parliament that the LSA contained no
‘commitment’ of assistance in ‘situations of armed
conflict’, the LSA does not rule out such assistance.
With such an Agreement in place India will certainly
provide refuelling and other services to US warships
and aircraft used to conduct war or maintain
occupation of countries like Iraq or Iran. Also recall
that recently, US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice
has affirmed that the Indo-US Nuke Deal would be
acceptable to the US only if it complied fully with
the Hyde Act – thus giving the lie to Manmohan Singh’s
assurances in Parliament that the Hyde Act is
extraneous to the Deal! Pranab’s assurances on the LSA
are surely as hollow and misleading as Manmohan’s on
the Hyde Act.       

The LSA actually fits into the US’ urgent needs for
alternate logistical back-up in Afghanistan and Iraq,
in the backdrop of the crisis in Pakistan and the
reluctance of USA’s European NATO partners for deeper
involvement in Afghanistan. Just a few months back,
the Pentagon expressed its need for ‘back-up plans’ as
the unrest in Pakistan begins to affect the flow of
supplies to American troops fighting in Afghanistan.
About 75 percent of the supplies to Afghanistan,
including 40 percent of vehicle fuel supplies, either
go through or over Pakistan; these supply lines are
threatened by the unrest in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
The US also fears that hostilities with Iran may
expose its supply lines to Iraq to the danger of
attacks by Shiite militias backed by Iran. On more
than one occasion in the recent past, the selfsame
Robert Gates has rebuked the European NATO allies for
not sharing enough of the burden in Afghanistan. A US
LSA with India must be seen in the light of these
urgent needs of the US military, and its strategic
plans for alternative logistic supply lines for
protecting oil supplies and pipelines and to counter
the growing maritime might of China.        

Along with the Knowledge Initiative in Agriculture and
the Indo-US Nuke Deal, the LSA is also a part of the
web of ‘strategic’ relations with the US being spun by
the Manmohan Government. It will irrevocably
compromise India’s sovereignty and bind India to the
humiliating and shameful status of an ally in the US’
many military aggressions and occupations. The US
Defence Secretary must be greeted with nation-wide
protest during his visit, and the UPA Government must
hear the resounding ‘No’ to the move to sign the LSA. 
  

Struggles in India

Aftab Ansari’s Story: Demanding Justice for Victims of
Witch-hunts

- Radhika Krishnan, Liberation, March, 2008.

After the serial bomb blasts in November in various
courts in Uttar Pradesh (UP), the Muslim community in
the state is constantly living under the shadow of
unfortunate stereotyping and witch-hunt. Aftab Alam
Ansari, a worker of the Calcutta Electricity Supply
Corporation (CESC), is one such young innocent who was
branded a dreaded terrorist and accused for collusion
in a blast case. He was arrested by the UP Special
Task Force (STF) and the Criminal Investigation
Department (CID), and overnight an innocent man’s
world turned into a nightmare of torture and
interrogation. 

For days, the police tortured Aftab and tried to force
a confession out of him that was
Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) area commander
Mukhtar alias Raju Bengali. 22 long days later, when
he determinedly refused to succumb to their torture,
Aftab was finally released and he was declared
innocent by the court. 
Recently, Aftab was in Delhi, joined by the Jawaharlal
Nehru University (JNU) Students’ Union and the Forum
for Democratic Initiatives (FDI), to highlight his
demand for compensation and justice. He recounted how
his petitions for compensation and for punishment of
the guilty police officials – both in the UP and West
Bengal police force – have been ignored. 

Aftab’s story is not unusual, it finds echoes not just
in UP and West Bengal, but all over the country. These
states, particularly UP, are merely the latest
“hotbeds” for suspected terrorists, the most recent in
a long list. For years thousands of innocent Muslims
have been similarly targeted in Kashmir, picked up
without even a formal charge by the Indian army
operating under the protective shield of the Armed
Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), after which they
simply add to the long and growing list of  the
“disappeared”.  Maharashtra too has a long track
record. After every blast, the Mumbai police routinely
descend on the entire Muslim community without any
defendable explanation. In Modi’s Gujarat, encounter
killings aka Sohrabuddin Sheikh have been frequently
observed; but also in Congress-ruled Maharashtra.  

While the actual terrorists rarely get punished, most
of these “suspected terrorists” either disappear from
the face of the earth, or languish in jails waiting
indefinitely for a “free” and “fair” trail. In some
rare cases, they are declared innocent after a
harrowing period of interrogation and torture. For the
Aftabs in India, there are many stumbling blocks in
the fight for compensation. From a legal point of
view, Section 197 of the Indian Criminal Procedure
Code (Cr.P.C.) provides the state with a comfortable
loophole to protect state machinery from punitive
action. According to provisions of Section 197,
prosecution of State and Central government officials
requires permission from the same State or Central
government! 

Obviously, the first step towards justice is that this
Section ought to be scrapped. Such provisions cannot
exist in a democratic society; if everyone is equal in
the eyes of the law, then there can be no immunity
from prosecution and the police must be liable to
legal action as any ordinary citizen. 

Another problem is an ambiguous definition of what
exactly constitutes torture. India is a signatory to
the United Nations Convention Against Torture (CAT).
It has however not yet ratified the CAT, and the
existing provisions in the Indian law have not been
amended to incorporate the mandate of the CAT. The
Convention specifically prohibits the use of torture.
There is however no definition under the Indian law of
what exactly constitutes “torture”.

In this project of minority witch-hunting, what is
particularly disturbing is the role of the media and
the judiciary. Both often cooperate enthusiastically
with the police in framing innocents. Recently, 5
youth from Azamgarh and Mau in UP were picked up and
paraded before the media as the “terrorists”
responsible for the Sankatmochan bomb blasts. What
followed was a public trial where the media blissfully
portrayed them as terrorists rather than as the
accused. And the judiciary wasn’t far behind. An
institution like the UP bar council refused on
“ethical” grounds to fight cases in defence of these
suspected terrorists. All of them were later released
for lack of conclusive evidence. But the denial of
their right to legal representation, and their
demonisation by the media, went unremarked.  

Another striking aspect is the contrast with the state
machinery’s response to genocide or hate campaigns
launched by public figures holding responsible
positions. The Maharashtra Government, for instance,
is only too willing to pick up any young Muslim on
scant or non-existent evidence as a suspected
terrorist; but the same Government declares that there
isn’t ‘enough evidence’ to prosecute Bal Thackeray
despite the Srikrishna Commission’s findings of his
role in the 1992-93 Mumbai riots – this, despite the
pages of Shiv Sena mouthpiece Saamna full of
exhortations to violence. 

When Mohd. Haneef was illegally detained by the
Australian government, many Australian citizens (both
expatriate Indians and Australians), as well as the
Indian government (though after some delay and under
considerable public pressure!) came out in his
support. The Chief Minister of Karnataka gave Haneef a
hero’s welcome, and offered to ensure him a job in
India, in an attempt to compensate for the injustice
Haneef had faced.  When will the Indian State accept
that there are hundreds of Haneefs in India, thanks to
its attitudes and actions? When will it ensure
compensation and justice? 

Women’s Struggles

Patan Reveals Pandora’s Box of Rape in Modi’s Gujarat

- Dwarika Nath Rath, Liberation, March, 2008.

The gang rape of Bilkis Bano and so many others in
Gujarat 2002 was part of a cold-blooded campaign of
genocide, justified as a ‘reaction’ to Godhra. One
wonders how Modi would explain the systematic and, it
would seem, habitual rape of poor dalit women students
in his glorious, ‘growing’ Gujarat.      

At Patan PTC College, a dalit young women from a poor
family was a victim of gang rape by six male teachers
of the college. Using the threat of internal marking,
they took the advantage of her poverty, and raped her
14 times in four and half months inside the college
and in the village. It came to be known that this
woman was not the only victim; rather the sexual
exploitation was rampant for a decade, and was
patronised by local Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP)
leaders. 

Ms. Anandiben Patel, the present Revenue Minister in
the cabinet hails from this constituency, and had been
the Education Minister of Gujarat for the same past
decade when the sexual exploitation took place. The
Patan PTC College is situated in the outskirt of the
city with 8 feet high boundary walls and controlled by
District Institute of Educational Technology (DIET).

The victim comes from a very poor background from
Jetalvasana village of Visnagar Taluka of Mehsana
district. She scored 89% in 10th class and 70% in 12th
class. Her father, a daily labourer encouraged her to
study. She wanted to be a doctor, but lack of funds
made her opt for the PTC teachers’ training course.
She was admitted to Patan PTC College July 07.

In less than two months after her admission, on
11-9-2007, she was summoned by a teacher to a
classroom and subjected to gang rape. She was
intimidated into silence by the teachers with threats
of releasing pornographic photos of hers. This
continued on several occasions; and the rapists
included Prof. Atul Patel, an influential man known to
be close to Anandiben Patel. He headed the election
campaign of Anandi Ben Patel in 2002, and is said to
be the kingpin in this sex racket. The teachers spread
the word that she was possessed by an evil spirit in
order to explain her fainting fits and disturbed state
of mind. The sole woman teacher, Prof. Bhartiben
Patel, was appointed in 1997 but was transferred to
Palanpur in 2001, because she complained about the
sexual harassment of the students. 

When the victim told her story on 30 January, and
medical examination confirmed rape, 97 other women
students filed a complaint in a signed memorandum to
the Principal on 31 January. They were joined by
parents in their protest, and on 4 February, the PTC
students assaulted the accused lecturers with sticks,
bricks, and damaged their bikes. 25,000 people of
Patan joined in a protest rally. Patan town remained
closed for two days. The protesting students and
parents have demanded a probe into the role of
Education Minister Ramanlal Vora; dismissal of all
accused and scrapping of the internal examination
system.

The students along with the parents went to
Gandhinagar on 7 February but were not allowed to meet
either the Chief Minister or the Education Minister.
The personal assistant to Education Minister
trivialised the incidents, saying “such things go on”.
Anandiben Patel claimed that as Education Minister,
“no complaint sexual harassment had ever reached her.”
But the fact is that in 2004, one Draksha Parmar filed
a complaint against teacher Manish Parmar. The case
was sealed by the then Principal J.N. Chaudhary and
hushed up. 
The BJP is conspicuously silent on this matter. The
Sangh Parivar and its outfits are absent from the
scene. The Chief Minister has avoided visiting Patan,
merely ordering a magisterial enquiry which is widely
perceived as a cover up job. 

The National Commission of Women team which visited
Patan suspects more women were raped. There had been
recommendations to scrap the internal marks in PTC
College after a case of molestation of a girl student
in Rajkot private PTC College in 2005 when Ms.
Anandiben Patel was the Education minister. It was
recommended to reduce the internal marks from 40% to
15% to 10%, but this decision was not taken. It is
believed that the sexual harassment has become
commonplace in PTC Colleges. In Meghraj Taluka, a
Patan-type incident took place 22 years back where 15
women were victims. 

There are 65000 PTC teachers unemployed in the state
and this year more than 30000 will join their ranks.
There are 16000 women studying in 134 women’s PTC
colleges in Gujarat. In most of these colleges, there
are no lady lecturers or even women wardens; though it
is compulsory to stay in the hostel. 

To run a PTC College is becoming a big business.
National Council of Teachers’ Education [NCTE]
introduced the policy of Self Finance in PTC. There
are 431 PTC colleges, most of them self financed. The
appointments are made on political grounds. There was
not a single female teacher in 13 members’ staff for
the past six years in Patan. There are 16 DIET
colleges for men and six for women. 

The Patan incident is just a tip of an iceberg. If
such rampant sexual exploitation can happen in the
DIET colleges then one can imagine what may be
happening in the self financed colleges run by
influential people in power. It is necessary to have a
thorough investigation of all these self finance
colleges, and to ensure implementation of the SC
Visaka Judgement guidelines to stop sexual harassment
in the workplace.

CPI (ML) Investigation Report

Saffron Experiment in Orissa Laboratory

- D. P. Bakshi, Liberation, February, 2008.

Kalinganagar in January 2006 and now Kandhamal in
December 2007 – in both episodes we can see the twin
faces of Navin Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal (BJD) -
Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) Government in Orissa, in
which the most vulnerable sections of the state’s
people – adivasis and dalit minorities – are subjected
to corporate land grab and police brutality on the one
hand and communal pogroms on the other. Heady with
Narendra Modi’s victory, the Sangh Parivar seems all
set to make Orissa the next saffron laboratory.       
 

Kandhamal is one of the most backward districts of
Southern Orissa. This is also culmination of the
violence which has been simmering in Orissa since a
coalition government led by the BJP came to power in
1998. 1999 saw the gruesome murder by Bajrang Dal
activists of the Australian missionary Graham Staines
and his two young sons. This was followed by other
sporadic attacks and murders. An investigation into
religious communalism in Orissa by the Indian People’s
Tribunal, led by Justice K.K. Usha in 2006 noted the
“spread of communal organizations in Orissa, which has
been accompanied by a series of small and large events
and some riots
such violations are utilized to
generate the threat and reality of greater violence,
and build the infrastructure of fear and
intimidation.”

Bloody Christmas at Kandhamal 
On 23 December 2007, Sangh outfits marched through
Barakhama village, Kandhamal, “Stop Christianity, Kill
Christians”; on 24 December despite police promises to
control the situation, Sangh Parivar organisations
shut down shops and, at night, cut power and telephone
lines and felled trees to build road blocks; on 25
December, Christmas Day, a mob of 400 people armed
with trishuls, swords, rods, and some guns – rampaged
through the area, breaking down the doors of churches,
attacking people at prayer, burning down a total of
seven churches, looting and torching Christian houses,
hospitals, convents, hostels, and other institutions,
and injuring hundreds and killing at least eleven
people. 

Colonial and Feudal Legacy of Tensions in Kandhamal 
Kandhamal (formerly Phulbani) is an area with a
colonial and feudal legacy of social tensions.
Historian Biswamoy Pati notes that in the 19th
century, colonial officials and feudal landed classes
recruited tribals of Kandhamal as forced labour, and
took up a drive of converting a section of them to
Hinduism. The Sangh Parivar’s claim that they seek to
‘reconvert’ the Christian tribals ‘back’ to Hinduism
are therefore false; the Hindus in this region too
were converts from tribal animism to Hinduism. With
time the Hinduised Kandhas began to assert their
majoritarian identity, and by the 1950s, tribal
Kandhas began converting to Christianity in good
numbers to defy Hindu domination. Sections of the
dalit Panas too converted to Christianity in the 1950s
as a “survival strategy”. Panas were not only
discriminated in the feudal caste hierarchy; they were
also stigmatized by the colonial regime as a ‘criminal
caste’. Writes Pati, “Unlike the sections of the
affluent Kandhas and other tribal groups who could get
integrated into the caste formation, the poorer
sections were “integrated” through terror as
outcastes.” In the 1990s, the Hindu converts among
Kandhas also began intimidating the dalit Panas to
prevent their entry into temples, and clashes ensued.
Converted tribals and Panas both are known at the
receiving end of the terror campaigns by the Sangh
Parivar in the name of ‘reconversion’ or ‘protests
against forced conversion’.     

While the Christian population from both dalit and
adivasi backgrounds (only 2.3% in Orissa today) is
declining, it is the Sangh Parivar who are involved in
aggressive proselytization - converting Adivasis to
Hinduism. All along the tribal belt, from Dangs in
Gujarat in the West to Orissa in the East, Hindu
Samgams, or congregations, are being held, and
thousands of Adivasis threatened and intimidated into
attending. 

The attack on Christians at Kandhamal was orchestrated
by Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) leader Swami
Lakhanananda Saraswati, one of main organizer of
Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Orissa (wanted by police
in a case related to communal violence in Rourkela)
and founder of a big Ashram in Kandhamal as a joint
venture of VHP and Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad. Just one
year back a big conference of VHP was organised in
this Ashram participated by 50,000 from different
parts of our country and overseas Indians from
different foreign countries. Dara Singh concentrated
his operations in the North-Western part of Orissa
(Keonjhar-Mayurbhanj district), while Saraswati
selected Kandhamala for his hate campaign. 

Another factor was the Kui Samaj, an organisation of
Kui-speaking Kandha Adivasis who for over a decade
have been opposing the Pana Dalit Christians’s demand
for Scheduled Tribe status. Since 2002 “Kuis” have
achieved Scheduled Tribe (ST) status; but the
contention is over whether “Kuis” should be
interpreted as Kui speakers and thus include Panas or
not. Though the Kui Samaj does not directly associate
itself with the Sangh outfits, its Kandha members have
often been mobilised by the RSS and its affiliates,
and its leader Lambodar Kanhar is another of the key
organizers of the December violence.  

The Build-Up 
Reports suggest that 25-30 busloads of people were
brought from Kandhamal to Bhubaneswar on 21 December
2007 to attend a Yagya programme. Under the cover of
the Yagya all the Presidents of RSS from caste
panchayats of Kandhamal district had a secret meeting
from 11 AM to 6 PM at an unknown place on 22 December.
On 23 December the Yagya was over and all of them went
back to their respective places.

Even before that, on 9 December, Swami Lakhanananda
came to Bamunigan and had a secret meeting with
Bighneswara Banika Sangh affiliated with RSS and VHP.
Since then, the situation in Bamunigan was tense, with
threats mounting against Christmas celebrations. 

Meanwhile the Kui Samaj had given a call for a bandh
on December 25 and 26 against the granting of ST
certificates to Panas. Apprehensive of this bandh
coinciding with Christmas, the Christian Jan Kalyan
Samaj of Kandhamal met the Collector and
Superintendent of Police (SP) on 23 December with a
written statement against the bandh, demanding that
arrangements be made to guarantee the security of
Christians celebrating Christmas. The SP visited
Bamunigan, but did not care to deploy any force there.

On 23 December itself Ambedkar Banika Sangh of
Bamunigan together with 6 Sarpanches of the area also
appraised the situation and sent a fax message to the
SP, and met him at Bamunigan. They also went to the
police station to discuss the tense situation and
reported that the Swami planned to perform a Yagya in
front of the Church.


On 24 December early morning 6 Sarpanches together
along with village heads went to the police station
and requested to allow the market to be opened; the
RSS and Bajrang Dal opposed this. The ASI came to the
market and told the people to open the market. Still
Sangh activists forced the traditional weekly market
(Haat) to close and attacked the market goers, and
also destroyed Christmas pandals on the road. Two
Christians (Sillu & Avinash) were shot and injured.

At 2 pm rumours were spread about an ‘attack’ on the
Swami, and he got himself admitted to a local
hospital. Some TV channels also promoted this report
with an inflammatory ‘interview’ with the Swami,
though they failed to show any footage of the
‘injuries’ sustained by the Swami. 

At about 7:30 pm a 400-strong Sangh mob, raising
slogans of “Jai Sri Ram” and armed with guns, swords
and other lethal weapons opened the gate of Balligude
Church and abused the Christian youths who were busy
decorating for Christmas. They came running, shouting
“kill the Christians and destroy the Church.” The
youths together with priests, nuns, and hostel
residents ran to the jungle to save their lives. The
mob then collected furniture, worship materials and
all other belonging of the hostel and set them on
fire.

This was followed by a chain of violent attacks on
churches, convents, Christian hostels and Christian
people for two days. There was at least one
retaliatory action in which Christians attacked a
Hindu hamlet. 
Initially the police stayed silent spectators and
later clamped curfew. The Navin Government made some
ridiculous attempts to spread the fantastic theory
that it was “Maoists” who were responsible for the
attack. 
For the first time since 1947, some 3,000 Christian
men, women and children are forced to live in two
refuge camps. And even now older people and some
women, unable to flee, remain in the villages living
in sheer terror. 

The similarities with Gujarat are many: the rumour of
an ‘action’ (the ‘attack’ on the Swami) to justify a
‘reaction; the mobilisation of adivasis on a communal
plank; systematic setting of minority establishments
on fire; and forcing minorities to flee the villages
and live in refugee camps, for instance.    

All left, democratic forces in Orissa raised strong
voices of protest against this heinous attack of
saffron forces on religious minorities and against the
tacit collusion of the BJD-BJP Government with the
Sangh Parivar. CPI (ML) organised a powerful protest
march on 28 December at Bhubaneshwar and Rayagada. The
State Government and administration did not allow any
visit by opposition political parties, in the name of
‘preventing’ any new tension or provocation. 

In London, the South Asia Solidarity Group, which has
vigilantly campaigned against the covert foreign
funding of Sangh outfits in India, issued a strong
statement of protest. Holding that the Judicial Review
Commission set up by the Navin Government to
investigate the violence did not inspire any
confidence of justice, SASG demanded that the Centre
set up a CBI enquiry; sufficient relief to the
refugees in camps and safe and speedy return and
rehabilitation; and also that the Centre institute an
independent inquiry into the Sangh Parivar’s
“infrastructure of fear, intimidation and violence in
Orissa”. SASG also demanded that the British
Government “investigate the international arms of the
Sangh Parivar organisations in Britain who support and
fund the criminal activities of Hindutva groups in
India”. 

Events of the last decade reveal that Orissa may be
the third major experimental ground after Gujarat and
Jharkhand, where the Sangh Parivar strives to develop
a strong base among tribal people. As the BJD-BJP
Government seeks to grab land from adivasis and the
poor to hand over to corporates, and also looks the
other way as the Sangh increases its influence, the we
face the urgent challenge of building up a powerful
people’s resistance, both against the policies of
liberalisation and loot as well as against the
communal hate campaign.

Politics in South Asia

The Parliamentary Left of Sri Lanka and the
Nationalist Trap

- S. Sivasegaram. 

The Sri Lankan left has several features that
distinguish it from the left in India. The first
Marxist party, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP),
formed much later than that in India in 1935, was
Trotskyite dominated. The Communist Party of Ceylon
(CP) was formed following the expulsion of
‘Stalinists’ in 1940. Hostility to Stalin also meant
that the LSSP would not support the war against
fascism when the Soviet Union was dragged into World
War II. Also, the CP was less under the influence of
the Communist Party of Great Britain than was its
Indian counterpart, a factor that is said to have
helped in the struggle against revisionism in Sri
Lanka in the early 1960s. The CP, although weaker than
the LSSP in electoral politics, had a strong working
class base and more influence than the LSSP among the
Tamil and Muslim left intellectuals and oppressed
masses.

The LSSP and the CP were a world apart from their
social democratic predecessor, the Ceylon Labour Party
with roots in the fledgling trade union movement and
an anti-communist agenda that deteriorated into
chauvinist politics aimed at workers of Indian origin
by 1930. The LSSP had a split in 1945, and a merger
and a split in 1950 so that there were two Trotskyite
parties until 1956. The weaker, VLSSP (revolutionary
LSSP), went into an alliance called Mahajana Eksath
Peramuna (MEP or People’s United Front) with the
Sinhala chauvinist Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) in
1956. The alliance fell apart in 1958, but the VLSSP
inherited the name MEP as well as its Sinhala
chauvinism. 

The opportunism of the VLSSP may seem the first
betrayal of the minority nationalities by the left,
but its roots lie in the remarkable performance of the
left in the elections to the first parliament in1947.
The hopes that the LSSP leaders nurtured about being
elected to power faded since the elections of 1952,
partly because the Citizenship Act of 1948
disenfranchised the Hill Country Tamils, constituting
around a tenth of the population. Although the left as
a whole opposed the Act, the left leadership, the LSSP
in particular, since then, began to neglect political
work among the Hill Country Tamils, constituting a
backward but the most numerous section of the working
class. The political weakness of the LSSP leadership
has been traced to the propertied class origin of the
bulk of its leadership, and it took less than two
decades for the LSSP to switch from ultra-left
Trotskyism to parliamentary social democracy. 

While there is no doubt about the opportunism of the
left parties, the charge that the left betrayed the
Tamils on the language issue is not quite correct,
since the LSSP and the CP voted against the Sinhala
Only Act in 1956. The shift in language policy towards
one of protection of Tamil language rights within the
framework of the Sinhala Only Act occurred well after
the Federal Party, the main Tamil nationalist party
then, expressed willingness in 1957 to find a solution
within the framework of the Sinhala Only Act. 

The real betrayal was the class betrayal in 1963, when
the LSSP, CP and MEP formed the United Left Front
(ULF) and planned a powerful trade union campaign
based on twenty-one demands, which put fear into the
national bourgeois SLFP government of the day. The
LSSP leadership was tempted in 1964 by a cabinet post
for its leader; and the ULF fell apart as did the
trade union campaign. The LSSP split later in the
year, but the rebels who formed the LSSP(R) were
politically weak. The CP also split in 1964, based on
the international debate on the road to socialism, and
the Marxist Leninist faction that rejected the
parliamentary path was politically strong and had with
it the bulk of the party’s trade union membership.
Although subsequently weakened by a combination of
factors including the rise of nationalist politics,
Marxist Leninists remain a significant political force
among the Tamils and the Hill Country Tamils.

The degeneration of the LSSP and CP was inevitable
since their opportunistic alliance with the SLFP,
which eroded their vote bank and their trade union
base. Squabbles with the SLFP led to parting company
in 1975-76 and contesting the elections as a left
alliance in 1977. The result was a humiliating defeat
for the SLFP and the decimation of the parliamentary
left, which crawled back to the SLFP nest in the late
1980s to ensure its parliamentary presence. The Nava
Sama Samaja Party (NSSP) – its subsequent factions
included – split from the LSSP only after the
electoral disaster of 1977. 

The case of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP,
meaning People’s Liberation Front), mistakenly or
mischievously dubbed Marxist, is different. Despite
the origins of several founder-leaders in the two
factions of the CP, it rejected the working class as a
revolutionary force. Its chauvinism was so blatant
that it labelled the Hill Country Tamils an extension
of Indian expansionism. It attracted a sizeable
section of left-inclined youth whom it misled into the
misadventure of April 1971. It was revived as a
political force in 1978 with help from the
pro-imperialist United National Party (UNP)
government, which wielded unprecedented power from1977
until its defeat in 1994, and the blessings of a
Trotskyite Fourth International. With the planned
aggravation of the national question by the UNP
government, the JVP became increasingly chauvinistic.
It rejected the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord of 1987 to stage
an uprising because the Accord offered some autonomy
to the Tamils, and murdered left and centre-left
leaders who supported the Accord for its positive
features in addressing the national question. Marxist
Leninists, it may be noted, criticised the Accord for
its inadequacies and its accommodation of Indian
hegemonic interests, issues that the JVP was not in
the least concerned with.

The decimation of all but one member of the JVP
Politburo by state terror in 1989 meant that the JVP
had to wait until the defeat of the UNP in 1994 for
its second resurrection. The JVP grew at the expense
of the old left in the South which was by then a spent
force, but slowly. However, the combination of a
chauvinistic agenda and an opportunistic coalition
with the People’s Alliance led by the SLFP in 2004
helped it to secure 34 (or 15%) of the 225
parliamentary seats, despite a less than 7% share of
the vote nationally when it contested independently.
The emergence of the right-wing Sinhala chauvinist
Jathika Hela Urumaya as a political force with 9 seats
has made the JVP even more chauvinistic and
obstructive in its approach to the national question.

In fairness to the CP and the LSSP, they cannot be
said to uphold a chauvinistic ideology. But they have
consistently failed to protest in the slightest
against the chauvinistic agenda of the SLFP, their
major political partner, or against the pursuit of war
by the present government in which they are partners.

The lesson for the left movement as a whole is that
opportunism of any kind only morally weakens a left
party and inevitably leads to its degeneration into a
centre-left reformist party that would participate,
passively or even actively, in acts of national
oppression and compromise with imperialism. Even
worse, it could be compelled to do the dirty work for
a repressive state in the name of combating
‘terrorism’ and separatism.

Struggles in India

Ganga Expressway : ‘Corporate Hitay, Sarvajan Dukhay’

- Sunil Yadav, Liberation, March, 2008.