Expose SFI-CPM's Lies! Stand by Lalgarh's Struggle against State Repression!

Masses make their own histories, not in the best of circumstances

of their own choice but in the circumstances given to them. -Marx
The old is dying and the new is struggling to be born;

in this interregnum there arises a great diversity of morbid symptoms. -Gramsci

.........

As more and more write-ups and commentaries on the people's uprising in Lalgarh is pouring in, it is important to respond to some of the salient points that keep coming up albeit couched in political sophistry. Whether it is from the sensation-crazed media or from Karats to Yechury, Biman Bose or Buddhadeb and their likes in the Liberation, or the SFI and AISA in this campus, all have striking similarities. The most striking aspect which also speaks volumes of their political bankruptcy is their latent and mortal fear to accept that people, the masses of the people, can also think. They do have a political will determined by their objective and subjective experiences of the harsh realities of eking out a livelihood in some of the most economically backward regions of the subcontinent. This is a deliberate vice of all ruling class ideologies and their practitioners to portray people as lifeless beings, empty receptacles who can only be 'gullible' and 'innocent'. So like the "white man's burden" it is for the righteous CPM, Liberation and their torchbearers in the campus -including some of the learned faculty- to show the people the 'true' path. But this path is of servility to the existing exploitative, blood-thirsty policies promoted by all the political parties that have put their money-bags in the parliament.

Why are these parties insisting that the people of Lalgarh are gullible, ignorant, innocent, illiterate…? It is only in that way they can justify their massive police-paramilitary build up in the region to 'liberate' the people from the clutches of the Maoists who have led them astray under the barrel of the gun. What CPM, Liberation, SFI and AISA is conveniently forgetting is that the same people of Lalgarh has long been fighting the harmads, the fascist goons of the CPM armed to the teeth with ammunition provided from the government ordinance factories. These storm-troopers were the forces through which the CPM used to maintain their control over the people, enforce elections, corner government money meant for the development of the adivasis, and maintain an informers' network which used to work in tandem with the police. So to say the Maoists have terrorised the people of Lalgarh into submission to indulge in their 'infantile disorder' is to refuse to admit the bold and daring initiative of the masses of Jangalkhand, their efforts to build a future free from all forms of exploitation and domination. The efforts to build health centres, roads linking up all the villages, small check dams and other water harvesting methods through which they have managed two crops a season are all definite indicators of the political will of the people, their vision of their future. Through these efforts where the people -adivasis and dalits were at the centre of development and not CPM and its village strongmen - the impoverished masses of Lalgarh has succeeded in freeing themselves from CPM's stranglehold in the last eight months of the movement against state repression, and to reverse their dependency on migratory labour outside the region. This people who have dared to manage their own future can rebel against any form of domination and exploitation, and as per SFI if the Maoists are doing that, then they too will be taught a lesson by the masses. The People's Committee have given an open call for everyone to visit these areas to have a first hand knowledge of what is becoming and what is passing away in the unfolding struggle of Lalgarh. Perhaps the SFI and AISA members should go to these areas and see the initiative of the masses for themselves, and discover the truth.

SFI was quoting Mao perhaps to teach the DSU a lesson or two on the need for politics to be in command of all the actions by the revolutionaries. But strangely one thing that is missing in all the SFI and AISA pamphlets was politics from the point of view of the oppressed, deprived, discriminated and exploited. While reading Mao, SFI might have also come across this great insight from that Marxist practitioner-to have faith in the masses and only the masses. All the parliamentary parties fear the masses. Whenever the masses rise in revolt they grab the constitution which normally and conveniently they forget. They turn upside down all dissidence of the people into a 'law and order' question. So when Yechury is busy asking Manmohan Singh to show his seriousness by deploying the forces with immediate effect in Lalgarh and adjoining areas, Prakash Karat makes a song and dance about the virtues of dealing with the Maoists politically and 'administratively'. To add to this, Brinda Karat has gone senile to the extent that she has harped on the imperialist backed (for CPM's alleged opposition to the Nuke Deal) efforts of the Congress-Trinamul-'Ultra Left' combine to dislodge a democratically elected government of West Bengal. In all this double-talk of the CPM leaders, their fascist face could not be hidden from the masses. Soon they set the gun on Chidambaram's shoulder to declare the CPI (Maoist) as a terrorist organisation. So much for their political and ideological dealing with the Maoists. They have even declined to differentiate between the Maoists and the members of the People's Committee leading the struggle, paving way for the persecution of one and all resisting state repression. When we look into the arms-haul made from the CPM office in Khejuri near Nandigram-which Mamata Banerjee had declared as 'liberated from the clutches of CPM'-nobody asked as to how a party could have police uniforms and ammunition from the ordinance factories in its office. Predictably, there was no police-paramilitary operation against Mamata's 'liberated' Khejuri. This also shows the class character of ruling class oppression of all forms of dissent -whether armed or unarmed- that are genuinely from the masses of the people. As long as it is turf war between CPM and Trinamul, Congress or BJP, it is not a law and order question.

SFI has blamed the Maoists for making people's struggles a 'law and order' question. Does that mean the people do not have any right to defend themselves against the flagrant violation of their right to livelihood, dignity, and security? There was also an indication that in Kandhamal it was due to the Maoist killing of the Hindu Fascist Lakshmanananda that the people of Kandhamal had to suffer the persecution of the RSS-Bajrang Dal goons. So does that mean by the same standards, the people of Lalgarh have to suffer in the hands of the security forces because the Maoists sided with the oppressed masses? The SFI should come clear. They would make even an RSS and ABVP proud with their findings, which lacks any class analysis and reads like the handout of the officialdom.

Today anyone who defiantly speak against the anti-people policies of the government and at the same time keep all ruling class parties away from their struggle are branded Maoists. And Chidambaram-Buddha combine have also called the Maoists as terrorists. The SFI taking cue from that has also started profiling the very ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. If they have differences with the ideology of the revolutionaries, they should state first their ideological-political differences. Who is the genuine representative of the revolutionary ideals of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao and all people's heroes will be determined by those who have dared to make their own histories not in circumstances of their own choice but in circumstances given to them. Lalgarh and its people have dared to do it. The progressive and democratic forces including the Maoists have said they are with them. It is only the CPM, SFI, Liberation and AISA by indulging in duplicity have turned against the fighting masses, or are parroting the oft-repeated sophistry that 'innocent' [read ignorant] people are caught between the state and the Maoists. They should know that the failure of the revisionist CPM in West Bengal or Kerala does not mean the defeat of communist ideology in the subcontinent. It only shows the failure of a party that turned against the cause of social change by caricaturing Marxism, by becoming a part of the Indian ruling class, and thereby the trusted agents of imperialism, feudalism and the big bourgeoisie. The complete failure of CPM in addressing the genuine demands of the adivasis and poor peasants even after their 30 years of virtual reign in West Bengal is a tell-tale sign of the party's deviation from the basics of Marxist politics. Their reactionary political ideology as is visible from the failure of land redistribution among the masses, and also from the invitation to the Tatas and Jindals for establishing the industries at the cost of poor peasants and adivasis. It is no different from Congress and BJP's pro-imperialist political line.

Branding anyone who is standing against state oppression as Maoists has become a license to torture and kill. And it is not a new tactic, it was employed when dalit Christians were burnt alive by the RSS goons in Orissa, in persecuting adivasis in the name of Salwa Judum, in the cold-blooded murder of adivasi youths on mere suspicion of being Maoist supporters in Chattisgarh, and in the present state repression in Lalgarh. The SFI is trying hard to justify the butchering of poor adivasis because they have started to resist the perpetuation of decades of organized and systemic violence on the most oppressed sections of the society. The SFI is ruing the punishment of Avijit Mahatos and Anuj Pandeys of the CPM, who has generated people's wrath because of their fascist stranglehold over the poor masses. SFI must understand that Marxist politics is not what is propagated by CPM, but what is manifested by the conviction of Lalgarh's adivasi masses to fight against the ruling class's dictatorship. No amount of 'course-correction' and 'introspection' can save CPM from its eminent doom, and no amount of repression can break the resolve of the heroic Lalgarh masses for their liberation.

Fight the Communal-Fascist ABVP and the Sangh Giroh!

(The following is the statement signed by more than fifty JNU students against ABVP's fascist call for state repression on DSU and its activists for upholding its political belief:)

We, the undersigned, strongly condemn ABVP and its demand for persecution of DSU and its activists. ABVP in their pamphlet of 23rd June has asked for imposition of draconian laws like UAPA on DSU and its activists. It said ‘We demand that DSU office bearers should be immediately arrested and booked under the provisions of UAPA . The administration should immediately stop the activities of DSU by seizing its literature, propaganda materials, its accounts and office’. This is nothing but an open call for fascist repression by the state and the administration on a section of the JNU’s students for their political belief and exercising their democratic right to organize themselves and to dissent.

It is no surprise that it comes from ABVP which is threatened by a progressive and democratic students’ movement on campus, as well as by militant people’s movements outside. The communal-fascist ABVP and its masters RSS-BJP-Bajrang Dal-VHP brigade is known for targeting and repressing minority communities, dalits, adivasis, women as well as others who dare to question and resist their Hindu-fundamentalist agenda. They are also known to use the state apparatus in furthering their politics of repression. By using the same weapon that the state uses to carry out its repression on people’s movements, by terming them as ‘terrorist’, ‘Maoist’ etc. the ABVP and its like now are trying to target student’s organizations and activists in JNU. We will collectively resist any such nefarious design by the ABVP, or its protectors, the administration and the state.

Rape as instrument of oppression: Down with the use of systematic sexual violence against Kashmiri women! Punish the guilty in the Shopian rape case!

North East, Kashmir, Gujarat, Orissa, Chengara, Nandigram, Lalgarh.…be it the Communal-Fascist BJP or Social-Fascist CPM, Sexual violence has been the weapon of choice in the state’s repressive arsenal, whatever may parliamentary party in power be. Women become the most vulnerable targets of violence during war, communal violence or military occupation. That is the reason why, even in movements of the landless peasants, Dalits and Tribals, women forms the most militant section of a struggling population. In Nandigram, Singur, Lalgarh or anywhere else where land was being grabbed or the state and ruling parties has unleashed its violence upon the people, women were seen taking the lead in the struggle against it. Sexual violence has become the best weapon for the state to crush this surging tide of rebellion. Rape is used as an instrument of subjugation. The names of Tapasi Mallick and Manorama Devi are still fresh in our memories. The rape of adivasi women in Bastar by the state forces or the notorious Salwa Judum that has unleashed a reign of terror through rape and other forms of sexual assault, demonstrates the particular vulnerability of women. Similarly the Sri Lankan armed forces have been accused for decades for systematic violence of Tamil women.

The case of the rape and murder of two women in Shopian in Kashmir on May 29 by the security forces has again exposed the real face of the Indian state. This is the same state that is now yelling for ‘law and order’ situation in Lalgarh, the place where the CPM goons/Harmads in nexus with police/CRPF has been sexually assaulting women and other since a long time. In this Shopian dual rape and murder case, the state government initially denied any incident of rape, but later medical reports established that women were gangraped by 15-18 men. That the Jammu and Kashmir state administration and police was involved in a cover-up and destruction of evidence in the Shopian cases has been proved even by the state-appointed judicial commission. The commission report describes in detail the involvement of all state officials right from the police officials to the medical officers in hushing-up the case and passing it off as accidental death by drowning. The government was forced to take some action following massive protests in Shopian and across the state. But the culprits have not yet been caught due to the destruction of substantial evidence by the police and district officials, and the guilty officials too have not been punished sufficiently. The people in Kashmir have yet again come out to protest in large numbers demanding punishment against the culprits, but more importantly demanding the repeal of AFSPA, and an end to the terror of security forces. It is only because of the mounting protests and public outrage that the state government woke up after its week-long silence and was forced to order an enquiry. It was the collective public anger that forced the police to register a case of murder and rape, which it had refused to do till now.

This particular incident of rape is one among the many that take place on regular basis in the Kashmir that has been militarized and occupied by Indian security forces. In both Kashmir and the Northeast, time and again cases of abuse by the troops have come to light, but the state has never punished them for their crimes. According to a 1994 UN report, there were 882 rape cases by the security forces in Kashmir between 1990-92. According to Indian National Human Rights Commission, there were 1,039 cases of human rights violations (which include, rapes, terrorizing, abduction & killing of innocent women, children and youngsters & communal violence) by the security forces from 1990-1999, an average of 109 per year. These are just the official figures. The real numbers must be even higher as most of the cases go unreported out of sheer fear. As we know there are all legal measures to shield these illegal actions done under the cover of the AFSPA in Kashmir and North-east, PSA (Kashmir), the Disturbed Areas Act (DAA) etc. Draconian laws like Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) grants enormous powers to the security forces, to search, arrest, detain or shoot-to-kill anyone on the basis of suspicion-of course all in the name of ‘maintaining public order’ in so called ‘disturbed areas’. The abuse of power by security forces has resulted in incidents of arbitrary detention, torture, rape, molestation, harrasement and killing. It also protects military personnel responsible for serious crimes from prosecution, creating a pervasive culture of impunity.

The people of Kashmir have long been subjected to terror, abuse and brutality of the Indian security forces. The armed occupation of the valley is the biggest method of the Indian state of controlling the popular aspirations of the people for self-determination. The people of the valley have consistently fought against state repression and occupation. The Shopian rape and murder case has pushed people to the brink of tolerance of state and army’s violence and has again made them come out on the streets in large numbers to demand justice and independence of Kashmir.

Stop para-military operation in Lalgarh! Stop atrocities on the protesting people in the name of ‘flushing out’ Maoists!

A war is being waged by the Indian state on the most marginalized people of Lalgarh and Jangal Mahal (the forested and tribal dominated areas of Medinipur, Bankura and adjoining districts) in West Bengal right now. 11 companies of Para military forces including 6 Companies of BSF, one company of CoBRA have been deployed. 11 more companies of CRPF (and if required the notorious Grey Hounds) are on their way. This huge number of army is being posted to “sanitize” the entire Lalgarh, Shalboni, Ramgarh and Goaltor Block, off a ‘handful of Maoists’! Thus ‘Operation Lalgarh’ has become the news of the day. Unfortunately even after the sixth day of operation this huge army with its full force has failed to ‘flush out the handful of Maoists’. Rather, what they have been doing in the name of ‘combating Maoists’ is to unleash utter state terror on the villagers. The same villagers who had ‘dared’ to boycott police for the last seven months as a retaliation to the extreme terror unleashed on them on last November, were beaten mercilessly by the police and para-military on their way to the ‘operation’. They have been dragged out of their houses, beaten up ruthlessly and forced to stay in ‘relief camps’. They have been used to detect land mines. Their drinking water has been polluted at a number of places by the para-military. Their houses have been ransacked. A number of cases of molestation of women have also been reported in the media. The women have been specially beaten around their private parts. The local schools have been turned into temporary ‘relief’ camps. It is exactly the Salwa Judum model that is being replicated in West Bengal. The colour of the flag notwithstanding, its once again clear that all parliamentary political parties will unleash the same kind of terror whenever people rise up to challenge their power, question their authority and demand for justice and rights. The state government is showing bonhomie with their ‘arch enemy’ Congress while planning the state terror. The ‘ideological differences’ always vanish when the ruling parties ally with each other against the people. Thus Buddhadeb has vested full faith in his political opponent Chidambaram and the Congress, a bigger expert in state terror, rather than listening to his own people, and now the state has forbidden any independent scrutiny of the paramilitary operations in fear of public outcry against it.

The CPM-led state government is carrying out a massacre in the name of its ‘operation’ against ‘Maoists’ in Lalgarh, and is forcing people to stay in relief camps. The bourgeois media is hiding the fact that the thousands of villagers are being forced to run away from their homes ever since the ‘operation’ began, out of fear of persecution and torture by the security forces. Despite severe repression, many thousands are still resisting the entry of armed security forces by blockading the roads and retaliating state violence by using their traditional weapons. The armed forces are moving forward only by tear-gassing, brutally lathi-charging and beating up the protesting masses. TV images clearly show the police and CRPF openly dragging people out of their houses, and thrashing them with rifle butts, and also vandalizing entire villages. Yet, the media is silent about the blatant police brutality on the villagers, betraying its true class character.

This area of Jangal Mahal has seen extreme backwardness, hunger deaths, malnutrition and lack of development. The government for the last sixty two years since the so-called independence, including the 30 years of the so–called left government has done virtually nothing for the people. There are no roads, no electricity, absolutely no health facility or any sources of livelihood inside the villages. More shockingly there has been no provision for irrigation and drinking water in these extremely dry regions. The people here were forced to live an inhuman life for years. As the discontent of the people developed into a resistance against the government since 1996, state repression intensified in these areas. The CRPF was first deployed way back in 2006. Since then the people of this region have faced extreme state terror. The police regularly arrested people in mere suspicion without producing any legal ground. There have been forcible ‘checks and raids’ in the houses at night by the police when they used to ransack houses, beat up people and molest women. The CPM played two roles in the areas. The leaders siphoned off the entire money allotted for developmental activities while the cadres worked as informers to the police about the various political affiliations of the people. As a result regularly before any elections many non-CPM activists of various organizations were picked up as ‘Maoists’. The anger of the people therefore is directed massively against the CPM cadres and leaders in these regions. The natural outburst of that was seen when a thousand people gathered to demolish the palatial house of CPM leaders.

This is not an armed clash between the state and the ‘Maoists’ as the corporate media would like us to believe. For the Indian state, anyone who challenges its authority and power, and fights for an end of the exploitative system, is termed a ‘Maoist’. In that case, the tens of thousands of people of lalgarh and jangal mahal area can be labeled as ‘Maoists’ because they are all fighting the state. This also nullifies the argument coming from some sections of the media, and even the intelligentsia, that the adivasis are stuck between the Maoists and the state. Those making this ridiculous claim fail to see that the people have organized and are fighting their own battle. In this struggle, the people of jangal mahal have not only shown a model of resistance but have also attempted to undertake basic developmental work on their own, which the Indian state and the CPM deprived them of. The state with its full force wants to repress this movement, so that it does not become a model for all the other oppressed and struggling people of the country. But the state cannot stop Lalgarh from becoming a glorious example of people’s struggle against exploitation, against state repression and for social justice, like it could not stop Nandigram or Naxalbari from becoming part of the legacy of militant people’s resistance.

LALGARH: The Bastion of People’s Resistance against State Repression

Continued state repression had been underway in Lalgarh and its adjacent areas from November 2008, after the landmine blast on the convoy of Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, while he was returning from the inauguration of the SEZ of Jindal Steels in Salboni, about 50 kilometres from Lalgarh. In the name of arresting ‘Maoists’, the police went on a rampage arbitrarily arresting villagers, most of them adivasis, and beating them up mercilessly, leaving three persons dead with many gravely injured. These well-planned brutalities have been targeted particularly against women and children. Following this the people had formed the Pulishi Santrash Birodhi Janasadharoner Committee (PSBJC) or the People’s Committee against Police Atrocities to resist the fascist onslaught of the CPI(M)-run state machinery. Lalgarh and other areas were made out-of-bounds for the security forces in order to prevent them from carrying out their atrocities. In this moment of sharply divided battle-line between the adivasi peasants and the State reminiscent of the great Naxalbari uprising, DSU felt the need to visit Lalgarh with the aim of extending solidarity to the ongoing people’s movement, and to bring out the ground reality that has been deliberately overlooked or maliciously obscured by the mainstream corporate media and pro-state forces. A nine-member DSU fact-finding team visited Lalgarh from 7th to 10th June 2009. The team visited over 25 villages in that region and interacted extensively with the people. From these interactions it had become clear that the incidents of police atrocities in November last year were not unique, but merely a continuation of such state and police terror that the people of the region have been subjected to since 2000. What is unique this time is the people’s resistance, which has taken an organized and sustained shape this time around.

The history of police atrocities: The people in all the villages we visited conclusively verified police torture. They described how the police used to enter their houses very late at night, and in the name of ‘raids’ and ‘checks’ vandalized their houses and mercilessly beat them up, how any movement of the villagers at night even to look for their cattle was enough to act as proof for them being ‘Maoists’. Almost every family had one or more members who had been booked for being a ‘Maoist’. We were told about the 90 year old Maiku Murmu of Teshabandh who was beaten to death by the police way back in 2006. Young school girls were regularly molested by the police in the pretext of ‘body checks’. Women were forced to show their genitals at night during ‘raids’ in the pretext of confirming their gender. Before every election 30-40 people from every village would be picked up as ‘Maoists’ in order to weaken the opposition to the ruling CPI(M). The incident of police brutality in Chhotopelia, where a number of women were ruthlessly beaten up and one of them Chhitamoni lost her eye, acted as the last straw. The arrest of three students on the baseless charge of ‘waging war against the state’ further enraged the people. Lalgarh have now risen up-in-arms against this long drawn atrocities and organised oppression of the CPI(M) and the entire exploitative system they represent.

CPI(M)’s white terror: For the villagers, police terror was coupled with the terror unleashed by the social-fascist CPI(M). In fact, the police and CPI(M) are not just in alliance with each other, they meant one and the same thing for the villagers. In Madhupur, the local panchayat office had been turned into a camp of the harmad vahini [armed CPI(M) goons]. They told us how the ‘motor cycle army’ of the harmads roamed around the villages, terrorizing people, tearing down their houses, firing in the air, and beating people up, exactly the same way they used to operate in Nandigram. The police not only stood as mute spectators whenever the harmads went on a rampage, it supported them in all possible ways. The harmads even used police jeeps to move around. To return these ‘favours’, the local CPI(M) cadres acted as informers for the police. We met one villager whose house was demolished by the harmad, during which he kept calling the police for help, but they never came. Similarly, they narrated the incident of Khash Jongol where the harmads open fired on a village meeting and killed three people, injuring three others. It was only after an armed resistance was put up by the villagers, that the harmads were forced to retreat to Memul and then to Shijua. It is the same CPI(M) which is today shamelessly describing the resistance in Lalgarh as ‘anarchy’, whereas all this while its own cadres were perpetuating a reign of terror on the people. Recently the local CPI(M) leaders with active help of the police floated the so called Maoist Resistance Force with 200 cadres to terrorize the masses and collect ‘taxes’ on the stretch of the highway they controlled. Abhijit Mahato, which SFI celebrates as a ‘student leader’, along with many others were its local ring leaders. This way, the state and CPI(M) wanted to replicate the notorious Salwa-Judum style operations against the militant adivasis of West Bengal. It is therefore no surprise that masses themselves have now decided to retaliate and punish such criminals.

Who is really anti-development? This entire region in Midnapore (as also the districts of Bankura and Purulia) is marked by extreme poverty and backwardness. Agriculture is dependent on rainfall, which is scanty. We saw the dysfunctional government canal, which is lying dry. Villagers showed us the pathetic condition of roads which become completely inaccessible during the monsoon. About the state of medical facilities, the less said the better, with not a single functioning health centre for miles. Villagers have extremely limited sources of livelihood, depending largely only on picking of saal leaves and cultivation of limited crops. Starvation-deaths in the neighbouring Amlasol shows the precarious the lives of the adivasis in this region are, while the CPI(M) members continue to amass huge wealth at their expense. This is the real face of the CPI(M)’s ‘pro-poor’ rule of 30 years. Today it is branding as ‘anti-development’ those forces which are challenging the oppressive state machinery. A living proof against this typical propaganda is the developmental work done by the Committee against Police Atrocities. The Committee was formed against police atrocities but has also been carrying out people-centred developmental work in Lalgarh region in the past seven months. On its own has made 20 km of roads with red stone chips (‘morrum’), with villagers volunteering their labour. They have repaired several tubewells, and have installed new ones at half the price than the panchayat. They have also started constructing a check dam in Bohardanga to fight the water crisis. Two major works undertaken by the committee is the process of land distribution and running a health center in Katapahari. The government was supposed to distribute wasteland among the landless, but never did so. Now the Committee is taking initiative in Banshberi and other villages to distribute the wasteland adjacent to the forests to the landless people. We witnessed the distribution of the patta in one village. The Committee has also turned a dysfunctional building in Katapahari into a health center, which attends to more than 150 patients every day. Organs of people’s political power are being developed by the villagers throughout the region, with village after village forming people’s committees to look after their own needs and taking decisions for their benefit in a collective manner. Today in more than 200 villages there exist such committees, which have become the real institutions of people’s democracy. This makes it clear who is in favour of development for the poorer and marginalized classes and communities, and who is against it. As the nodal organisation of the people, the PSBJC is fulfilling the tasks of people-centric development and redistribution of wealth that the ruling classes of the country could never achieve in the last 60 years of so-called independence.

We also observed that the CPI (Maoist) enjoys mass support of the people in this area. Its posters could be seen everywhere. We were informed by the villagers that Maoists have held meetings attended by thousands of people. The villagers seemed very clear about the need for an armed resistance in the face of regular joint attacks by the state and CPI(M), and in anticipation of a brutal all-round assault. The restriction imposed by the state on adivasis against carrying their traditional weapons is another sign that the state is threatened by the collective strength of the oppressed masses of Lalgarh.

The ‘anarchy’ of the state vs. the resistance of the people: Our team was witness to the genuine anger and suffering of the people of Lalgarh. Therefore, we strongly condemn the media branding of the resistance there as ‘anarchy’ and ‘lawlessness’. We also believe that the police, administration and CPI(M) are solely responsible for the current situation in Lalgarh. In the past few days, people have demolished houses of local CPI(M) leaders and some of their party offices in the area. The crowds were jubilant as they tore down the house of CPI(M) leader Anuj Pandey because, as we too witnessed, the common people now have nothing but utter hatred for CPI(M) mis-rule and terror. The sight of the lone palatial house of this CPI(M) leader in the sea of poverty of Lalgarh was a disgusting proof of what the CPI(M) actually stands for in this state. People are demolishing CPI(M)’s party offices with their traditional weapons with the same anger that they are demolishing police camps. Every rally or meeting held by the PSBJC in the area is attended by people in their thousands. Our team was witness to one such big rally on 7th June attended by about 12000 people from various villages across the district, as well as several other meetings across the area during our visit. Inspite of seeing this organized assertion by the adivasis for their dignity and freedom, the CPI(M) has the audacity to claim that the adivasis are being ‘used as human shields’ by the Maoists. They are claiming to have the overwhelming support of the adivasis as proved by their victory in the Jhargram seat in the recent Lok Sabha elections. The hollowness of this claim can be understood by the fact that just about 12 % votes was cast in the region with an overwhelming majority boycotting the polls, and this 12% represents the combined ‘strength’ of all the parliamentary parties in the region, including the CPI(M), Trinamool and Congress!

In the dictionary of the ruling class, ‘anarchy’ and ‘terror’ are words to describe the organized resistance of the masses who have been pushed to the brink. These words are not meant for the armed gangs and mercenary armies of the rulers who attack, kill or suppress people to maintain their iron-grip over state-power and people’s lives. CPI(M) is crying hoarse about their party being ‘attacked’ in Khejuri, but it maintains a silence about the seizure of the huge cache of arms from its members in Khejuri last week. It is an open secret that CPI(M) and Trinamool possess more arms and ammunition than any other political force in the region.

Things stand at a crucial stage in Lalgarh today. With the entry of the central and state armed forces, nothing short of a full-scale war and a large-scale massacre of the fighting people can be expected. Rather than starting discussions on the people’s charter of demands which enumerates the problems faced by people of Lalgarh, the state is resorting to brute force, which is the only answer that it knows to a legitimate struggle of the oppressed. During the first day’s face-off yesterday, more than 50 peaceful protestors have been arrested, and 65 were injured due to the unprovoked assault by the security forces. Following on the heels of the state forces, CPI(M)’s harmads too have entered Lalgarh today and demolished the People’s Health Centre at Chakadoba. SFI is now that a democratic country cannot tolerate anarchy and lawlessness. This democratic country that SFI believes in can most definitely tolerate years of poverty, backwardness, state repression and brutality. CPI(M) and its ivory-tower ‘intellectuals’ can condemn mass movements of the oppressed classes. But the masses of Lalgarh have resolved to continue their fight to the finish. They are finally beginning to taste a life free of state terror and are participating in their own development, which they are ready to protect at all costs. In the different villages we visited, many residents held one opinion in common, ‘we have got independence for the first time’. The fight eventually is for much more than freedom from terror alone. It is a fight to end exploitation of one human by another, and the people of Lalgarh are showing the way to us in that struggle. No amount of fascist state–terror and repression can crush the people’s aspiration for freedom and justice. Red salute to the heroic masses of Lalgarh!

'Stop Police-military action in Lalgarh! Resolve problems through discussions!'

Let us look at the context of the present situation in Lalgarh. Ever since the police committed atrocities in November last, people’s discontent took the form of a mass rebellion against state terror. The joint attacks by the police and the main ruling party were repulsed by the adivasi people of the area under the leadership of the People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities. Four members of the committee lost their lives as a result of such attacks.

Despite persistent demands for the punishment of those policemen who committed crimes, the state government has done absolutely nothing in this regard. On the contrary, in the post-election period, they had made the blueprint for police action and further complicated the situation by arresting some people on cooked-up charges. On 12 June at Dharampur, the hermads (goons) of the main ruling party launched attacks against the members of the People’s Committee. The consequent resistance against such attacks took the form of a mass revolt and the residence of a person identified as an oppressor and his party office was attacked.

We hold that the inefficiency of the State government as also the backing given to unholy forces by them have created such an explosive situation. The steps the state government has taken for its ‘solution’ will create a dangerous situation and lead to more bloodshed. The employment of the central para-military force and the butcher ‘cobra’ units effectively implies declaration of war against the people. Needless to say, it would close the door for the restoration of democratic atmosphere.

We believe that the Lalgarh struggle is rooted in centuries of deprivation, exploitation and humiliation. It is rooted in socio-economic exploitation. It can never be an ‘administrative’ or ‘law and order’ problem. The question is political, not military. We condemn in unequivocal terms this deployment of para-military forces by the state and central governments in Lalgarh. We maintain that the state should immediately come out of this path of bloody confrontation and sit down for talks with the representatives of the struggling people of Jangal Mahal and make a sincere attempt to arrive at a solution.

Kolkata, 18-6-09

Signatories:

Mahasweta Devi, Aparna Sen, Bibhas Chakrabarty, Sujato Bhadra, Amit Bhattacharyya, Joy Goswami, Subhendu Dasgupta, manas Joardar, Chaitali Datta, Tarun Naskar, Tarun Sanyal, Pallab Kirtaniya, Kalyan Roy, Bratya Basu, Shanta Dey, Bhaskar Gupta, Debabrata Panda, Jibankrishna Dey, Debaprasad Roychoudhuri, Sanchita Bhoumik, Kamala Adak, Gopa Mitra, Layla Khaled, Ratna Sengupta, Ranjan Chakraborty, Siddhartha Saha, Sukhendu Bhattacharya, Gopa Mukherjee, Debashis Goswami, Dipanan Roychoudhry and many others.

A Preliminary Report on the Lalgarh Movement by the DSU Fact-finding Team

A 9 member DSU fact-finding team comprising of students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and journalists recently visited Lalgarh, to probe into the reality of the ongoing movement of the people in the area. Here is a preliminary account of our observations. We would like to appeal to you to highlight on certain issues of the movement, which have so far been overlooked and neglected by the media.

We heard through various media and other sources that massive state repression had been underway in Lalgarh and other adjacent areas since November 2008, after the attempted mine blast on the convoy of Buddhadeb Bhattacharya. We had learnt of the incidents of rampant police atrocities after this land mine blast, especially on women and school children in the area. Following this the people there had formed the Pulishi Santrash Birodhi Janasadharoner Committee (PSBJC) or the People’s Committee against Police Atrocities (PCPA) and have blockaded Lalgarh and other adjoining areas from police and other administration. With these preliminary facts in hand, we visited Lalgarh from 7 to 10 June, 2009. The team visited the villages of Chhotapelia, Katapahari, Bohardanga, Sijua, Dain Tikri, Sindurpur, Madhupur, Babui Basha, Shaluka, Moltola Kadoshol, Basban, Papuria, Komladanga, pukhria, Korengapara, gopalnagar, Khash jongol, Shaalboni, Shaal danga, Andharmari, Darigera, Bhuladanga, Chitaram Dahi, Teshabandh, Bhuladanga and talked extensively to people. We attended a big meeting called by the People’s Committee in Lodhashuli on the 7th of June and witnessed other small meetings which were held inside the villages. A firing and frontal battle between the people on the one hand and the state and armed gangs of the CPM on the other, in Dharampura and Madhupur/Shijua had started during our stay in Lalgarh.

The visit to Lalgarh and interaction with the people broke many of the myths which we still held before going there. After listening to the chronological narrative of the history of police atrocities in the area, we realized that the November incidents were not unique. It was merely the continuation of extreme state terror and police atrocities that the people of the region have been subjected to since 2000. What is unique this time is the resistance, which has taken an organized and sustained shape this time around.

The people in all the villages we visited conclusively verified police torture. They described how the police entered houses very late at night, and in the name of ‘raids’ and ‘checks’ vandalized their houses and mercilessly beat them up, how any movement of the villagers at night even to look for their cattle was banned. Almost every family had one or more members who had been booked for being a ‘Maoist’. We were told about the 90 year old Maiku Murmu of Teshabandh who was beaten to death by the police way back in 2006. Young school girls were regularly molested by the police in the pretext of ‘body check’. Women were forced to show their genitals at night during ‘raids’ to confirm their gender. Before every election 30-40 people from every village were picked up as ‘Maoists’ in order to weaken the opposition to the ruling CPI (M). The incident of police brutality in Chhotopelia, where a number of women were ruthlessly beaten up and one of them Chhitamoni lost her eye, acted as the last straw. The arrest of three students on the baseless charge of ‘waging war against the state’ further enraged the people. Lalgarh have now risen up-in-arms against this long drawn atrocities and organised oppression of the CPI (M).

For the villagers, police terror was accompanied by the terror unleashed by CPI (M). In fact, the police and CPI (M) are not just in alliance with each other, they meant one and the same thing for the villagers. Our team was taken to Madhupur, where the local panchayat office had been turned into a camp of the harmad vahini (armed gangs of the CPM). They told us how the ‘motor cycle army’ of the harmads roamed around the villages, terrorizing people, breaking their houses brutally, firing in the air, and beating people up, exactly in the same way they did in Nandigram. The police not only stood as mute spectators whenever the harmads went on a rampage, it supported them in all possible ways. The harmads even used police jeeps to move around. To return these ‘favours’, the local CPI (M) cadres acted as informers for the police.

We met one villager whose house was demolished by the harmad, during which he kept calling the police for help, but they never came. Similarly, they narrated the incident of Khash Jongol where the harmads open fired on a village meeting and killed three people, injuring three others. It was only after an armed resistance was put up by the villagers, that the harmads were forced to retreat to Memul and then to Shijua.The Committee was formed against police atrocities but has also been carrying out alternative developmental work inside Lalgarh in the past seven months. These areas are marked by extreme poverty and backwardness. Agriculture is dependent on rainfall which is scanty. We saw the dysfunctional government canal, which is lying dry. They showed us the pathetic condition of roads which become completely inaccessible during the monsoons. The Committee on its own has made 20 km of roads with red stone chips (‘morrum’), with villagers volunteering their labour. They have repaired several tubewells, and have installed new ones at half the price than the panchayat. They have also started constructing a check dam in Bohardanga to fight the water crisis. Two major works undertaken by the committee is the process of land distribution and running a health center in Katapahari. The government was supposed to distribute wasteland among the landless, but never did so. Now the Committee is taking initiative in Banshberi and other villages to distribute the wasteland adjacent to the forests to the landless people. We witnessed the distribution of the patta in one village. The Committee has also turned a dysfunctional building in Katapahari into a health center, which attends to more than 150 patients every day. Doctors from Kolkata and other regions visit there thrice a week.

We had also attended a huge meeting called by the Committee in Lodhashuli against a sponge iron factory located in the region. We visited the factory site and saw the adverse effect of pollution on the trees, water bodies and land. The people informed that even the paddy grown in the region have turned black, so much so that even the panchayat has refused to accept the paddy. The meeting was attended by around 12000 people from many villages of the district, despite a bus strike called by CPM. It was a vibrant meeting, where the committee resolved among other things to boycott the factory and bring about its closure.

The presence of the Maoists within Lalgarh was one of the most contended issues during our visit. Our team observed the presence of Maoists and that they had mass support of the people in this area. Their posters could be seen everywhere. We were informed by the villagers that Maoists have held meetings attended by thousands of people. The people seemed pretty clear about the need for an armed resistance in the face of the regular joint attacks by the CPM and the state. The restriction on carrying traditional arms by them is a clear signal by the state to debilitate this movement.

This team was witness to the genuine anger and suffering of the people. Therefore, we do not agree with many sections sections of the media which brand the resistance there as ‘anarchy’. We also believe that the police, administration and CPM are solely responsible for the current situation in Lalgarh.

By the time we left Lalgarh, the struggle has intensified. By then, the people had been successful in making their immediate enemy CPM to escape along with the police. The enthusiasm we saw in the people was exuberant. For the first time they are being part of not some vote-minting political party but a committee which is their own organization. They are living a life free of state terror and building their own developmental projects. In different villages many residents held one opinion in common, ‘we have got independence for the first time’. Their fight is against age old exploitation, deprivation, torture and terror. In this way, it is a historic fight.

We urge the media to revisit Lalgarh. The movement has its roots in extremely impoverished socio economic conditions increased by the inaction of the state. The state is bound to strike back at this fight of the people. The CRPF and other central forces will soon come with the orders to open fire on the resilient masses. The state government is also shamelessly asking the notorious and infamous Grey hounds and Cobra to come and crush the people’s movement. That will be the most unfortunate and condemnable thing. The anger of the masses against massive state terror, underdevelopment and corruption is valid. And so is the fight against it. This team will publish a detailed report based on our visit about this movement in Lalgarh. We remember the progressive role played by some sections of the media especially the regional media in Bengal progressive role during the Nandigram movement and would appeal to you to also stand by the people of Lalgarh and their genuine fight before the state carries out yet another genocide.

Building a Revolutionary Alternative

to the Politics Of Opportunism and Compromise
A Report on the Successful completion of the III Unit Conference of DSU, JNU


DSU’s III Unit Conference was successfully concluded on 22nd March, 2009 which was organised in the Comrade Naveen Memorial Hall (Teflas TV Hall) with the participation of a large number of its members and sympathisers. Several rounds of debates and discussions in General Body Meetings took place in the run up to the unit conference, where the activities and interventions by DSU in the campus and outside were thoroughly reviewed. These discussions which encompassed ideological, political and organisational aspects were synthesized and several important resolutions were passed in the closed session of the conference. The conference started with the hoisting of the DSU flag and a minute’s silence in the memory of the martyrs of the revolutionary students’ movement, selection of the presidium, discussions on the DSU Constitution, organisational review, passing of resolutions and election of the Executive Committee. In the Open Session that followed, G N Saibaba, a former member of the Andhra Pradesh Radical Students’ Union and the Vice-Chairperson of the International League of People’s Struggles, delivered the Keynote Address where he talked about the history of revolutionary students’ movement in India and its role in the context of the present imperialist crisis. An overview of DSU’s functioning was presented, followed by solidarity messages by various organisations such as the Naga Students’ Union Delhi, Delhi Tamil Students’ Union, Revolutionary Cultural Front etc. as well as several sympathisers. Several important suggestions and criticisms were also put forward by sympathisers which the organisation resolves to incorporate in its coming days.

Some of the important resolutions passed in the Unit Conference are:

1. DSU will strive to integrate with the militant people’s resistance in various parts of the country against repressive state policies.
2. DSU reiterates its resolve to stand by workers and peasants revolutionary movements in the country and outside and to mobilize students and youth for uniting with their movements to stand against the rule of imperialist, feudal and comprador bureaucratic bourgeoisie to achieve a revolutionary social transformation.
3. The organization resolves to struggle against the casteist and brahmanical policies of the state including the forthcoming SC/ST Reservations Act in the faculty positions and for the full implementation of the provisions of reservation.
4. DSU resolves to stand by the ongoing movements for self-determination including secession, such as in Kashmir, Nagalim, Assam, Manipur, Sri Lanka, Palestine and other oppressed nationalities.
5. DSU resolves to support the democratic demands of people for separate statehood in Telangana, Gorkhaland, Bodoland and others.
6. Increasing attack on Muslims and Christians promoted by communal-fascist forces with the active support of the state in Gujarat, Orissa, Karnataka as well as in the whole of the county led by RSS-VHP-Bajrang Dal-BJP-ABVP and other outfits of the sangh giroh shows the growing stranglehold of the feudal-imperialist forces on the oppressed masses. Encounter killings and communal witch-hunting in the name of fighting Islamic Terrorism or conversion implemented by the Hindu Right has made life and livelihood of the minorities in the country vulnerable. DSU resolves to fight communal fascism in all its forms inside and outside the campus and also to strengthen all the people’s movements fighting against Hindu-communal-fascist terror.
7. Banning of various people’s organizations including revolutionary students’ unions, revolutionary mass organizations, revolutionary trade unions, women’s organizations, cultural organizations, SIMI etc. by the state is a direct attack on the democratic rights of the people to and curbing of the right to organize and express their opinion. DSU condemns such fascist designs of the ruling classes, and resolves to fight against these bans and demands that all such bans must immediately be revoked.
8. The regressive and reactionary role of the anti-people corporate media has come to light over and over again in instances of minority witch-hunt, reservation, anti-women, casteist and fundamentalist reporting as well as constructing opinions and profiles. DSU condemns the regressive and biased media and resolves to voice peoples’ concerns and issues and of the students in particular which does not find a place in the corporate media.
9. DSU will strive towards strengthening the ongoing revolutionary people’s movements worldwide and particularly in India and to integrate with the people’s movements in order to march towards attaining the goals of the New Democratic Revolution in South Asia.
10. DSU resolves to intensify the struggle against revisionist trends in the Indian communist movement and to continue to expose the social-fascist official left who has implemented imperialist policies in Bengal and Kerala. The glorious people’s resistance in Nandigarm, Singur, Chengra, Lalgarh etc are the outpouring of people’s anger against the social-fascist CPI(M). In the campus, DSU will intensify its ideological and political struggle against revisionism as it is manifested in the regressive politics of SFI and AISA.
11. The spectre of agrarian crisis that has gripped the length and breadth of the country is a grim reminder of the criminal neglect of various governments to the agrarian sector which still provides more than 70 percent of the jobs. More than 70 percent of the people in this country leave in worst conditions of penury and destitution in the rural areas. DSU strongly condemn the subservient nature of the Indian ruling classes towards imperialist loot and plunder and stresses the need to fight for a pro-people agrarian policy which can only ushered in by a pro-people government that will stand against the profit seeking imperialists and their local comprador agents tooth and nail. With the deepening grip of the policies of Liberalisation, Privatisation and Globalisation the Indian economy has been ever more strongly embedded in the imperialist web, especially with the US. The policies of LPG are nothing but the dictates of Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) pedalled by the IMF and World Bank that the Indian ruling classes have been implementing since 1991. This has resulted in the most brutalised existence for the various sections of the masses. With the vice like grip of recession fleecing the Indian economy, the situation of the masses has gone from bad to worse. Any political party whether it is the Congress, BJP, or the parliamentary Marxists like CPM, CPI or CPI(ML) Liberation or any of their kind have nothing concrete to offer to the people except a further dose of the same policies as is evident from the recent overtures of the Indian government in opening up the insurance structure to the imperialist capital and several such measures. More than 600 SEZs have been approved by the Indian government which is nothing but creating enclaves where the law of the land is not applicable. Along with this are the hundreds of MOUs signed by the Indian government and various state governments with imperialist and comprador monopoly capital for mining, construction of super highways, mega-dams, which is nothing but the unbridled loot and plunder of minerals and resources of the vast sections of the people. DSU will make all efforts to expose and to struggle against the farce of parliamentary ‘democracy’ and elections.
12. The ruling classes knowing fully well that the masses are not going to take it lying low have also enhanced the teeth of the government with more draconian laws like the ULPA and various other local variants of the same enacted by the respective state governments. This is despite the provisions of more draconian laws like the AFSPA in the North East and Kashmir, the PSA (Kashmir), the Disturbed Areas Act (DAA) and similar such instruments which has strengthened the fascist authoritarian hands of the state. Those who offer unflinching resistance to the anti-people policies of the state are met with such bloody vigilante campaigns like Salwa Judum in Chhattisgarh, the Harmad goons of the CPM in Nandigram, Singur, Salboni, Lalgarh, the mercenary forces of the state on the heroic masses of Kalinganagar, Kashipur, Jagatsingpur etc. DSU resolves to stand against the repressive policies of the state and to support the people’s movements fighting these policies.
13. In recent years we have experienced an upsurge of privatization drive in different aspects of education which has been consistent with the reports that Knowledge Commission, Birla-Ambani Report suggested. Major thrust in these reports has been de-politicization of student body – the recommendations of Lyngdoh Committee is an instrument of facilitating privatization by repressing students’ voice of dissent resistance and right to unionize. Privatization of education also largely ensures this process in JNU as well. We have experienced privatization of education through introduction of different market-oriented courses, privatizing basic amenities. DSU resolves to struggle against privatization of education and to fight to establish a democratic, scientific and people oriented education.

DSU recognised the need to intensify the students movement within JNU and outside to face the grave challenges posed by privatization of education, growing unemployment, curbing of democratic rights through draconian measures like Lyngdoh Committee Recommendations, scuttling of reservation, depoliticisation, right-wing attacks on minorities, oppressed castes and tribal communities, patriarchy and violence on women, state repression of the revolutionary movement, the present economic crisis of world imperialism and so on. In doing so, we must also expose and intensify the fight against revisionism and opportunism within the students’ movement on campus, in the process of building up a genuine alternative to the election-centric politics of AISA and SFI. The fascist attacks by ABVP goons in JNU has been going on unabated with the active shielding and support of not only the administration but also a section of the teachers. The inability and even unwillingness to confront the sanghi lumpens beyond empty-phrase mongering by both SFI and particularly by ‘radical’ AISA, has emboldened these fascists and the list of their violent acts are ever increasing. In this situation, DSU recognises its responsibility to mobilise the student community to confront the sangh-giroh in campus and bring them to justice.

Similarly, the very crucial ongoing fight against privatisation of campus cannot be clinched with either AISA or SFI in the lead, whose gross betrayal of the trust of the student community has been repeated so often that the students no longer expects them to ‘fight’ issues beyond tokenism. In times of real crisis their strategy has been to withdraw from the movement or to compromise with the administration and thereby backstab the aspirations of the student community. After rustication orders, AISA-led JNUSU has termed the stopping of the prospectus-sale as unfortunate, an action which was decided in the JNUSU Council with a common agreement between AISA and SFI and implemented by a handful of students. It matters little to them if this act undermined and disrespected the call for action mandated by the UGBM or that it does not address the crucial demand for the removal of electric meters from Koyena. AISA and SFI’s ‘commitment’ to fight the scuttling of reservations and of seat-cuts was already experienced by the campus last year.

DSU in the coming days will work towards mobilizing and consolidating the student community under the guiding principles of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism to collectively face the challenges ahead, and to integrate with the larger movement for a revolutionary social transformation. Taking forward the legacy of Naxalbari and inspiration from revolutionary martyrs like Bhagat Singh, Charu Mazumdar, Anuradha Gandhi, Saketh Rajan, Naveen Babu and thousands of others who laid down their lives for the liberation of the oppressed masses, DSU reaffirms its resolves to uncompromisingly carry forward the banner of revolutionary students’ movement.

We the students are the Union!

Let us build up a militant students’ movement
to challenge the authoritarian administration,
to isolate the compromising pseudo-left,
and to defeat the communal fascists!

Destruction, destitution, displacement and death today are called ‘Development’. It is a time when imperialism coupled with fascism is destroying lives, livelihood and dignity of millions of people, to safeguard the interests of a handful. It is a time when the dream of an exploitation-free and just society is called a utopia! Yet hundreds and thousands of the most oppressed of the society have been fighting for that. Because in that ’utopia’ alone lies the belief for life, the hope for the future. In the present social system, the odds are heavily against the oppressed sections that constitute a vast majority of the population. The need therefore is to demolish this system that benefits a few at the cost of the many, and to build a new society in its place through a radical social transformation. And this struggle must be fought from wherever we are located. In this context of constant attack from all the powers-that-be, let us look at our own campus!

JNU is not an island. The JNU administration represents the ruling class in the campus! We all know that this casteist-communal-patriarchal administration is up for selling JNU to the market forces. They have internalized the language and politics of World Bank, IMF etc. as well as the Tata-Birlas. According to them, JNU is being converted to a ‘world class university’. And naturally for ‘resource generation purposes’ they need to levy user charges for electricity, hike the price of prospectus, rent out PSR for commercial use! And with the ‘resources’ which is nothing but tax-payer’s money, we have the plasma TVs, the manicured flower pots, pointless signboards and hideous hoardings. ‘World Class’ therefore entails nothing but an external glitter, but with gradually privatized education and commercialized basic facilities, denial of minimum wages and basic legal rights to the mazdoors on campus. And the decisions for all these have been taken arbitrarily, bypassing all concerned bodies of students, teachers and karamcharis. Such anti-student policies, going by the World Bank model again, has to be necessarily implemented in such an undemocratic manner, more in consultation with the market than with the representatives of university community. After all, when the ruling classes ask the people whether they want to get displaced to make way for an SEZ or not!

The World Bank and its cronies have rightly identified students’ movement as the ‘biggest impediment to privatization of education’. And hence Lyngdoh came knocking! The Lyngdoh committee report is intrinsically linked to the larger designs of depoliticisation, facilitating a complete privatization of basic and higher education. It is designed to crush consciously articulated political dissent and opposition. The Committee states that students must be ‘integrationist’ and ‘nationalists’ at heart, and student politics should be aimed at inculcating values of social and economic ‘development’. But imposition of Lyngdoh Recommendations is a thinly veiled instrument for crushing the countrywide students’ movement that raises the genuine issues of the masses and also challenges the status quo. With clauses which will have far reaching consequences, it aims to ensure administration’s hold on the election process, confine student politics within the boundary of the institution, cutting it off from the larger political processes in the name of ‘unnecessary politicization of student bodies’. The Supreme Court Stay on the JNU election process, which is free of money and muscle power and known for its democratic credentials, prove beyond doubt that Lyngdoh is not meant to eliminate the drawbacks of student politics; rather it is here to facilitate state’s control and repression. In this, Lyngdoh is no different in nature from a vast range of draconian laws imposed by the state on the people from above, be it MISA, TADA, POTA, MCOCA, UAPA, AFSPA, NSA, etc to name a few. The only difference is that while these draconian laws target and suppress the struggling masses, Lyngdoh aims to clamp down on the students and the youth.

And when feudalism and the market ties a knot, social justice becomes a prime target. Measures like Lyngdoh are resorted to by the state to quell the simmering discontent among the large majority of students today, who is facing injustice, discrimination and exclusion at every step. Can we expect social justice from a state whose very fabric historically has been woven with brahminical ideology? The recent legislation of 27% OBC reservation was not a ‘gift’ from Manmohan and Co. It is an outcome if long battles that thousands of people for several decades have fought and even given their lives for. It was a movement that forced the state to recognize a right which the casteist society denied for centuries. However, just the passing of legislations don’t really mean their implementation. The casteist authorities always seek to take away with one hand what they were forced to grant with the other. JNU again provides a perfect example of this! Last year in April, JNU administration assured JNUSU that 27% reservations for OBC student would be implemented at one go. However it unilaterally decided later that OBC reservation will be implemented in a phased process. The excuse was infrastructural inadequacy. Making OBC reservation conditional on seat-increase signified reserving the seats for upper caste students. Even the stipulated 12% reserved seats for the first year of implementation was not fulfilled. While around 22% OBC students joined the campus without reservation, with implementation of reservation in phased manner, a meager 9.95% OBC students joined last year. Thus, the administration defeated the reservation policy even after it was made into a law. Same happened with PH reservations as well. Moreover, the administration took a unilateral decision of doing away with progressive ‘offer-system’ and initiated a ‘waiting-list’ system for admissions. It was clear that the waiting-list system is not a conducive system in a university like JNU where students apply from different parts of India. With a short notice in the waiting list, it is virtually impossible for non-Delhi students to come and take admission. And it makes it much more difficult for students coming from deprived socio-economic backgrounds take admissions, or worse, to wait till the next list comes. But it was a conscious policy of this casteist, communal administration to scuttle reservation, to make it an exclusive privilege of the metropolitan-‘meritorious’, upper caste students. After students’ agitation, the administration constituted yet another committee to look into the deficit in reserved seats and to review the wait-list system. It will be a time-bound committee, they promised! But as expected, we are yet to hear from that committee, while admissions for the coming session is just three months away! This year too, the administration has not yet come out with a clear roadmap as to how it will fulfill the mandated reservation quotas along with last year’s deficit! The administration with its actions has time and again made clear that it is against any step towards a just, democratic and inclusive education in JNU, and is an agent of all the regressive and anti-student forces.

The rising incidents of communal hooliganism are a product of this: Like imperialism is fuelling and feeding the fascist forces, JNU administration also shields and nurtures the communal lumpens. The sanghi perpetrators were left scot-free even after they vandalized and scuttled the presidential debate in 2007. The administration ignored the mass deposition of over thousand students, the video proofs that clearly identified the perpetrators and even the Shankar Basu Committee Report that categorically recommended strictest punishment for the sanghi goons. The same handful of sanghis had beaten up a student once more in Chandrbhaga hostel night in the following semester and the administration conveniently hushed it up. The goons, emboldened, dared to attack yet another minority student in Lohit hostel just few days back, spreading a sense of terror. These lumpens are pets of the administration, like they are for any ruling class. They help to keep students diverted from real issues like privatization of education, commercialization of basic facilities. Like their sanghi masters are doing outside, by diverting people from genuine issues!


The pseudo-left student organizations have failed to stop either the administration or the communal fascists. The parliamentary mother parties of SFI and AISA have failed to go beyond tokenism and phrase-mongering, to challenge imperialism or fascism in their immediate manifestations. Rather, they ally with these forces and compromise on the struggle at every step. Thus one can’t expect them to wage any genuine struggle against these forces, their rhetoric notwithstanding. Both these organisations have engaged in petty mudslinging and alleging each other for ‘failures’ while claiming ‘victories’ to themselves. They are the two sides of the same coin. They have sat on hunger strikes (in last year only there were four) whenever they wanted to score mileage over each other, while failing in all the major struggles. Non-implementation of reservation and seat-cut was one of the major struggles last year. The AISA-led JNUSU remained completely silent on the change to ‘wait-list’ system and continuously defended the administration’s position that there had been no seat-cut. SFI initially argued that there was seat-cut and even requisitioned a UGBM, but after their resolution was defeated made a complete u-turn. Both started an opportunist hunger strike after that, and withdrew after administration gifted them one more committee! They took out a victory march and forgot about the committee which despite being time bound, is yet to come out with concrete positions.

The betrayal of the fight against privatization by AISA-SFI is another glorious addition to their politics of opportunism! When the crucial fight against fee hike, electric meter and commercialization of campus spaces started, students responded in an unprecedented manner. There were more than thousand students who joined the long march called by JNUSU. When the administration refused to yield an inch on the major demands of removal of electric meters and reduction of prospectus price, the students debated in the UGBM and decided on a concrete course of action of blockading the ad-block after two days of strike. The students extensively boycotted classes for many days, participated in all the protest actions of JNUSU in large numbers. Yet the leadership betrayed the spirit of the movement as well as the UGBM mandate, by not going into the blockading. 722 students through an open letter asked the JNUSU leadership to respect the mandate, without any response. The AISA led JNUSU with their new allies SFI decided to stop the sell of prospectus in ad-block, a proposal that was defeated by the UGBM (AISA itself had debated and voted against it in the UGBM!). With barely forty students they went for this adventurist action, and the administration took disciplinary action against five of them (something they said will happen, only if we go for the blockading). They championed yet another defeated resolution of the UGBM to go for indefinite hunger strike (something SFI had debated and voted against in the UGBM!). One by one SFI and AISA withdrew from the hunger strike, as arbitrarily as they started it. The result is that the all the prospectus had been sold at the hiked price. The electric meters are still in place in Koyena! And to top it, now we have come to know, that the president had expressed his ‘remorse for the unfortunate protest’! This is the tradition of opportunist, bankrupt and anti-democratic politics of so-called ‘left’ AISA and SFI.

We the students are the union! All the struggles in JNU that have been won (in real terms) were because of collective, organized and principled students’ struggles despite the repeated compromises and betrayals by JNUSU leadership. The pseudo-left has compromised, failed and betrayed the movements to challenge the casteist-communal-patriarchal administration and its communal stooges. Let us radicalize the campus politics. And reclaim our historical legacy of militant students’ struggles! Fight to secure our future, with equality and social justice in education!

Strongest and Historical Ally of Imperialism is Fascism: We have to Defeat Both!

The recent crisis of imperialist economy is acute, but not new. It has several historical precedents. And history is witness to the simultaneous rise of fascism forces, whenever imperialism is either too strong or weak. Fascism and imperialism are historical allies. They feed into each other.

The practice of whipping up of communal sentiments to cover up the lack of development in every aspect of social lives had been an old and regular tactics of the ruling class. The right wing parties, be it the congress or BJP and their various allies have always used the communal card to misdirect the real grievances of the people regarding their deplorable material conditions. Just like the Nazis did with the Jews in Germany, Hindutva brigade picks up the Muslim and off late the Christian community, as the scape-goat for all the problems, real or imaginary. One Azamgrah becomes the roots of all problems in India. And then we have the masjid demolitions. The post-Ayodhya riots. The Gujarat genocide. The Batla house encounter. The Kandhmal killings. No, the Gujarat killings did not help the retrenched ‘hindu’ mill workers in Ahmedabad, the riots did not bring irrigation water to the destitute ‘hindu’ farmer in middle India, it did not create jobs for the millions of unemployed ‘hindu’ youths or liberate the ‘hindu’ women from the shackles of patriarchy. Rather it only reinforced the discriminations, not only against muslims, but against dalits and women, workers and peasants.

The Sangh-giroh does not represent people of any religion. They represent the landlords, the casteist semi-feudal authorities and the comprador big bourgeoisie, whose interest today are directly tied to American imperialism and global finance capital. Their love for George W. Bush, the poster boy of the regressive Christian rights and values is evident. But poor dalit-christians of Orissa had been at the receiving end of their brutal violence. What happened in Kandhamal is not an isolated event, although it is an outcome of a sustained effort of the Sangh Parivar to spread the poison of communal hatred in Orrisa. The violence in Orissa is not exclusively a religious violence. It must be seen as part of the evolving social economical and political conditions in the country in general and in Orissa particular. Orissa has a share of 6.6% of total value of the mineral resources but constitutes only 1.6% of the national industrial production. These huge mineral resources make Orissa a lucrative destination for the world’s biggest MNCs and private capital. The Orissa government has ruthlessly pursued land acquisition for mining companies and for exploitation of other natural resources through brute force in Kashipur, Kalinganagar, Jagatsinghpur and Hirakud to make way for foreign and indigenous capital at the cost of people and their livelihood. On the other hand there is the rising people’s resistance to these neo-liberal economic policies and economic plunder by imperialists too. The ruling classes, being aware of this reality, are finding ways to contain mass opposition. The sangh parivar is working precisely for the feudal and imperialist forces through its divisive politics of communal hatred and pitting the most marginalized groups against each other; in this case the adivasis against dalits, majority of whom happen to be Christians. When they want to safeguard the ‘Hindu order’ against other religions through their policies and values, they also have to perpetuate its own internal hierarchies of caste and gender. And here too application of brute forces becomes a systemic necessity. And thus the gruesome massacre of Khairlanji. Mass murders and rapes by the private armies of the feudal forces or the state like Ranvir Sena and Salwa Judum. The growing atrocities on dalits, adivasis and women are perpetrated by the feudal forces with the help of imperialism.

The targets of both fascism and imperialism include women too: In the current financial crisis, the women are worst hit. Lakhs are being thrown out of jobs and the horrors of unemployment are forcing women to prostitution and other demeaning jobs just in order to survive. Women employment is in sizable numbers in the financial sector, garments, handicrafts, service and entertainment sector, etc. Massive layoffs have already begun in the financial sector, about 5 lakhs are expected to loose their jobs in the textile sector, and handicrafts are in the doldrums due to the drop in exports. Besides, the acute agrarian crisis are affecting women the most as their drop in living standards has increased the household drudgery enormously. And when the ruling class unleashes the fascist forces to cover up the real problems of underdevelopment and exploitation, women become fresh targets. In all communal riots or state repression, rape and sexual assault are one of the main weapons of these patriarchal forces. We have seen it in Gujarat, in Kandhmal and in Nandigram too. And there are the moral policing on women like we have seen in Mangalore. From the reactionary right to the pseudo ‘left’, have reduced the condition of women to the most deplorable state through their policies and repression.

The whole point of communal fascism is to prevent the people from correctly identifying the forces that keep them in their deplorable condition. To project an illusory enemy in order to shield the real. To keep the people divided, and make the ruling classes and their parties more secure in their seats of power. Thus while the communal frenzy and riots can change governments, it never ever changes the anti-people economic policies of the Indian state. Be it NDA or UPA, Narendra Modi or Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, the IMF World Bank dictated new policies continue at both the center and state level. The major share of economy in this country is still in agriculture and the horrors of agrarian crisis are spiralling every year. No change in the governments in center and state levels could stop or control the crisis. Since 2000 agriculture in this country has been virtually stagnating. Farmers' indebtedness is rooted in such stagnation, increasing risk in production and marketing and lack of institutional support. And this has resulted into massive suicide by farmers. The number of suicide by farmers between 1997-2007 had been 182,936! And this also genocide, a cold blooded mass murder by the state and imperialist policies!

Therefore the fight against fascism has to be necessarily the fight against imperialism, and vice versa: The fight against the communal fascism therefore has to be a fight against the economic and social policies that dispossess people of their land and livelihood, subsidize the rich with the tax-payer’s money, which compels mass suicide of farmers, ruins small traders by redesigning the retail sector according to MNC diktats. It is underdevelopment and economic crisis that feeds the fire of communal fascism. The fight against communal fascism is not just ideological, but is a struggle against the whole social structure, on which the Indian state is based. And from Gowalkar to Gandhi the very fabric of Indian state is woven with brahminical ideology. And ALL the political parties, rhetorical difference notwithstanding, carry forward that legacy. This also matches with the undiluted support for all the governments to implement the policies of imperialism in their soil. And therefore, even the ‘left’ front government does not hesitate for a moment to give a communal colour to the anti-land grab movement in Nandigram by citing the presence of a large number of muslim peasants and few muslim organizations in the struggle! The parliamentary ‘left’ has chosen not to see the communal specter being materially rooted. This willful blindness is understandable because they uphold the same system that breeds the fascists! And therefore for all the parliamentary parties, muslims and other religious minorities have only two identities. They are either vote-bank or ‘terrorists’!

The hollowness of the opposition to the communal fascist by the parliamentary ‘left’ is also reflected in their electoral opportunism. All parties including the parliamentary ‘left’ frequently ally with former or future ally of BJP making a mockery of the ‘struggle against communalism’. In 1989, parliamentary ‘left’ supported the National Front government in which BJP was an important constituent! And now just take a look at the newly formed media hyped ‘third front’ led by CPI(M) . Jayalalitha’s AIADMK, a most reactionary party and former ally of NDA has taken too many communal steps in Tamil Nadu to expose its real color! Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP, another former ally of NDA has adapted most pro-imperialist and anti-people policies so far. But both these parties are star cast in the third front! Even more shockingly, the same ‘left’ front is also trying to woo the support of Navin Patnaik’s BJD! The same BJD whose active support as NDA ally to RSS and Praveen Togadia in igniting violent communal riots in Kandhmal and rest of Orissa just last year is fresh in public memory! Even the more radical-than-thou CPI(ML)-Liberation (the parent party of AISA) who has already courted alliance with CPI(M) in Bihar, has in the past tied knots with Nitish Kumar who went to join the BJP. Its ally in the last Bihar assembly election, Ram Vilas Paswan’s LJP is a former ally of BJP. Such is the magic of parliamentary politics! Such is the genuineness of their struggle against communalism!

But is it just a sordid tale of unilateral oppression by the imperialist, feudal and fascist forces? NO! It has never been so. And the hope for life, dignity and justice rests solely on the valiant anti-imperialist and anti-feudal struggles fought by the most oppressed masses. And when the state and the imperialist forces oppress with variant forms of violence, killing with bullets and hunger, one can not expect the resistance against it to be fought only through the ‘peaceful means’. The ongoing revolutionary armed people’s movement with the participation of dalits, adivasis, women, peasants and workers across the country is today the only fitting challenge to the imperialist forces. The naxalite movement, no wonder, in the eyes of the state is therefore the ‘biggest internal security threat’ or ‘the major law and order problem’. Because it is in this movement alone they see their downfall! And naturally in Bihar, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand the communal fascist forces are the direct adversaries of the people’s movement. It is the direct clash of the oppressor and the oppressed. It is the people’s movement which fought for land and dignity against the landed upper caste and their private armies in Bihar. It is the people’s movement which is waging a valiant war against the imperialist intruders and their army of Salwa Judum in Chhattisgarh. It is the people’s movement that is fighting to secure the natural and mineral resources in Orissa and Jharkhand. It is the same movement which is fighting against extreme caste oppression in Haryana and Maharashtra. It was the people and their heroic struggle which made the state roll back its proposed SEZ in Nandigram, made the Tatas leave Singur. It is the people who are fighting to safeguard their rights and dignity in entire western belt of West Bengal.

And our inspiration to fight comes from these unabated fighters and their uncompromising, courageous struggles against the morbid forces of imperialism, feudalism and the comprador bourgeoisie. Because we believe in life and people. And this fight must go on. As Marx says, ‘Let life be dead. But death must not be allowed to live’.

When imperialism strikes, strike back!

The entire capitalist/imperialist system is in the midst of a worst ever crisis since the times of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Never before, in these past 80 years has the crisis in the system been so deep and all encompassing. Already the US, European, Japan and Russian economies have gone into recession. Industries are now also being affected and even giants like the car monoliths General Motors, Ford, Chrysler (all of the US) are on the verge of bankruptcy. The ILO estimates that by end of 2009, 20 million people will be rendered jobless. Over 13 lakh people in the US have already lost their houses because they have not been able to pay back the mortgages. This crisis has hit the working people the worst, who had already been pushed to the brink due to the offensive of capital. In this age of so-called globalization, impoverishment, unemployment, wage cuts and contractualization of labour have been growing enormously, while a handful make fortunes on a gigantic scale. The market became the new god that determines everything. It was portrayed as 'the end of history', as though the 'golden' capitalist era’ is here for ever. Even ‘welfare’ was privatized with a massive mushrooming of NGOs funded by the imperialist agencies and the state. But the fantasy of the neo-liberal consumer ridden economy had banged down on the hard reality. It is exposing the hollow myths of ‘growth and development’ and is going to drag down millions of already exploited and deprived masses with it. The imperialist especially US economy is basically dependent on the speculation in share markets, real estate business, zooming service sector and on production and sale of war weapons. The financial explosion which was supposed to be a remedy for the declining productive sector, has now delivered deadly blows to the US economy. Further the financial collapse in the US greatly impacted the European financial system as well which had invested heavily in the US mortgage market. In a domino effect, first the housing bubble burst leading to the collapse of banks that invested in mortgages; then the collapse of financial institutions that heavily invested in the mortgage related financial instruments; then with the collapse of the credit market and liquidity and a resulting drop in people's purchasing power the beginning of the collapse of the 'real' (manufacturing) economy. The financial downturn became acute in September 2008 with the collapse of the largest investment banks and insurance companies of US -- Lehman Brothers, a pillar of the US Financial establishment; followed by the collapse of Bears Stains; Merrill Lynch; Morgan Stanley; Goldman Sachs; Washington Mutual, bankruptcy of biggest US insurance company American International Group. Till September 2008, 81 corporations in the US filed for bankruptcy!

A report on “Global Systematic Crisis Alert” which toured the world in February 2006, says, “Our researchers insisted on that many times in the last two years: any comparison with the previous crises of our modern economy would be fallacious. It is neither a remake of the 1929 crisis, nor a repetition of the 1970s oil crises nor 1987 stock market crisis. It is truly a global systematic crisis, that is to say a crisis affecting the entire planet and questioning the very foundations of the international system upon which the world was organized in the last decades.”The imperialist governments world over have pumped in gigantic amounts of funds to prop up the crumbling financial system. This is nothing but the appropriation of tax-payer's money to rescue big business. It entails nothing but privatization of profits and nationalization of losses!

After the great depression of 1929, the US economy had gone for a militarization programme to overcome the crisis. Now also, sales of arms to many countries help the US economy simultaneously with maintaining the US hegemony and sustaining markets. In recent times the world has been witness to brutal aggression on two of the most long-enduring and valiant struggles for independence: that of the Palestinian and the Eelam Tamil people. The recent attacks in the name of war against terror and against the Palestinian peoples’ defensive war are all products of the same imperial war machine. It was the US which helped the formation of Israeli state for ensuring its own survival, and since then the Israel has been the bridgehead of the US imperialism in West Asia and a safe base for its reactionary maneuvers all across the world. Both the US as well as Israel has closely integrated war-economies, selling weapons and waging wars to sustain itself. While Gaza was being raged by the fascist Israel state in an attempt to sniff out the liberation movement of the Palestinian people the Sri Lankan state was no less ruthless in its genocidal war on the Tamils fighting for their free Eelam, which continues till date with the support of Indian state and US imperialism. The occupation of Killinochi and Mullaithivu regions brought the historic Tamil nation in Sri Lanka’s north-east under Sri Lankan military rule, reminding us that the Israeli assault on Gaza is not the only ‘final solution’ pursued by the imperialism and its regional allies across the world. The major suppliers of arms for Sri Lankan government are the US, Israel and India. Although this might sound like a brazen conspiracy theory but according to the LUGANO Report, a secret research document on ‘the future of the global economy and the free-market system’, commissioned by the major global power and written by an anonymous ‘working group’, the only way to save ‘Western Civilization’ from the upcoming crisis, is by a drastic reduction of the population – in other words, mass extermination and genocide! The desperate attempt of the US to infuriate the old enmity between India and Pakistan also fits into the designs of the desperate attempts of US to open up its war market to bail out the crisis. The recent arms deal to the tune of 2.1 billion signed by US with India has to been in this backdrop. It is therefore likely that deaths due to war, hunger disease, etc. will reach an unprecedented level.

Backward countries like India are the worst sufferers in the crisis: The bourgeois establishments could offer no solution to this ongoing crisis. But this is a global crisis which will not leave any part of the world unaffected. The countries linked to US economy, like India will be worse hit. Imperialists will seek to push the burden of the ravages of crisis on the backward countries. Backward countries like India have been dependent fully on foreign capital, for not only marketing but also production. Therefore the sudden withdrawal of foreign capital has not only affected stock exchange but also the credit availability. It is visible in the frequent crashes in stock exchange that is flashing on the TV screens; drop in foreign exchange reserves; weakening of the currency, drop in export orders and resulting unemployment. The financial minister has already declared a range of measures that increases enormously the concessions given to foreign capital. India has now seen a drastic devaluation of its currency, to the extent of about 25% between January 2008 and October 2008. On the other hand, as a consequence of selling the US dollar between March 2008 and the first week of October 2008, the foreign reserves have drastically come down in the first week of October. In Asia, 43% of GDP and vast sectors of economy are involved in outsourcing products, parts and services for the TNCs. The crisis has affected the backward countries in terms of capital, production and marketing for which these countries are heavily dependent on imperialist economy.

The economic crisis is taking a huge toll on jobs across India. There had been massive retrenchments lately, unavailability of fresh posts and reduction of existing salaries. ASSOCHAM a top association of the business houses has said in a report in October, 2008, that Indian companies will have to slash 25% of their work force to ‘sustain operation’. It further said that lay-offs will take place majorly in the seven key industrial segment – steel, cement, IT enabled services/BPOs, financial and brokerage services, construction, real estate and aviation. The fall out of the current economic crisis will throw as many a 10 lakh working people from jobs in India. Larger chunk of the people retrenched consists of women. According to a sample survey conduced by Labour Bureau covering eight sectors (mining, textile & textile garments, metals & metal products, automobile, gems & jewellery, construction, transport and the information technology/business process outsourcing industry) the total employment has declined from 16.2 million during September 2008 to 15.7 million during December 2008, implying a job loss of about half a million. The textile industry, one of the largest employers in the country is under great threat – recent example being the 128 years old textile industry of Tamilnadu where in the knitwear industries in Tirpur about 20,000 are to loose jobs due to sinking exports. Tata has recently shown the door to 700 casual laborers in Telco. Investment bank Goldman Sachs, American Express, Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse, drastically cut salary. Goldman Sachs has cut nearly 10% of its 2,300-strong work force in India that is in the bank’s BPO, KPO and investment banking business. The intense financial crisis has impacted the giant American Express so much that it has reduced its expenditure in India and retrenched 10% of its Indian staffs. This amounts to a huge number of 7,000 heads. Jet Airways and Kingfisher announced laying off altogether 1,900 employees in October 08 but withdrew the sack order under pressure but are paying the staffs less than half their earlier pay. Air India is reported to offer 15,000 non operational staff leave without pay for three to five years. Until January ‘08, job creation was running at about 2.3%, leaving 1-2 million unemployed every year. It is now only about 1.3%, a study says. Alarmingly, the export sector has job losses as high as 30 lakh, engineering 1 lakh, and IT companies like Satyam has trimmed 1,500, Wipro 1,000, TCS 500. Others like Patni Corp., Kingfisher, Virtusa and Quark are also retrenching steadily. This is the depressing scenario everywhere in the organized sector but the massive lay offs in the unorganized sector employing scores of millions cannot be estimated so early. India will face a worse fate with its declining growth rate and if it stands at 7% there will be as many as two million fewer jobs. Already there is a deceleration in employment growth to 1.925 per year from 1993-94 to 2006-07 from 2.61% between 1983-1993-94 due to a sharp drop in job-creation in agriculture.

Banking and industrial sector in India are also facing major impacts. Stocks in sectors like real estate, power, metal, banks, etc, had lost a whopping 70 to 90% from January to October’08. The progressive lack of demand as a fallout of recession has severely hit the automobile market in India with all the six giants like Maruti Suzuki, Honda Seil Cars India, Tata Motors, Hero Honda, TVS Motor, Bajaj Auto seeing tumbling sales of their products. The hardest is the IT sector for its exposure to foreign banking and financial services (40% of industry’s exports). The UPA government has now been in a trouble. It cannot check the inflow of FII and various financial instruments to keep the crashing speculative markets afloat but it is also forced to go for some regulations on the line of the US or European countries. But such a country like India with the stable dependency on FII, FDI, World Bank, MNCs will only sink further. The norganized sector being the worst hit, the downtrodden sections of Indian society, the dalits, women, adivasis, and religious minorities will suffer the most. Understandably the recent regeneration of the hindu fascist forces are also a systemic necessity of the policies of imperialism to sustain itself. Fascism after all has been the historic ally of imperialism.

The present crisis which is reminiscent of the Great depression is a systemic problem of the capitalist mode of production itself. The roots of the crisis lie in the imperialist system itself for which there is no solution within it. The solution is also not in Keynesianism, which the CPM brand intellectuals will like us to believe. They go on to the extend saying that ‘global Keynesianism’ would bring back the economy to the order. Keynesianism at best talks about the irrationality of capitalism. Let us remind them the endemic crisis arises not only from the irrationality but the class nature of it. And also the euphoria of ‘welfare state ’,’golden period of capitalism’ characterized by the Keynesian policies evaporated very long back. Thus no amount of patch work like Keynesianism can save the economy. The only real solution to revive the economy is through the very overthrow of the system and its replacement with the socialist alternative. It is only by challenging and fighting the imperialist forces tooth nail that we can end this supreme inequality, deprivation and exploitation and secure equality, dignity and justice.

The battle has been lost, but the fight must go on!

The month-long struggle against privatisation of the campus has finally ended in a sorry defeat, with the JNUSU withdrawing its hunger strike yesterday, despite an overwhelming and active participation of the student community in its initial days. But unlike many retreats and compromises of the JNUSU in the past, this defeat is going to be a historic one, with far-reaching consequences. It is an inexcusable surrender of the leadership to the forces which are trying to weaken the students’ movement for our rights and social justice, apart from clearing the way for privatisation of education and basic facilities in JNU. This struggle moved inevitably towards a fruitless culmination ever since the AISA-led JNUSU compromised on the major demands raised by the student community. Moreover, it demonstrated scant respect for democratic decisions of the students, the leadership trying their best to demobilise the student movement from the path of a militant confrontation with the administration. The JNUSU leadership finally decided to retreat from the site of struggle apparently respecting an appeal by JNUTA. But the real reason behind this surrender was the lack of support from the mass of students, and the predictable treachery of their ‘most reliable’ comrades the SFI. They withdrew from this highly unpopular hunger strike as soon as it was ensured that the rustication orders on the JNUSU leadership will be revoked through JNUTA’s intervention. But it meant that none of the core demands of the struggle is going to be clinched, and we may soon hear about formation of committees to ‘look into’ the demands. Thus, all that this month-long movement has achieved is to stop the commercialisation of PSR, a demand conceded by the administration on 3rd Feb itself. There has been a calculated silence from both AISA and SFI on the demand of removing electric meters, which means that the JNUSU leadership has bought the administration’s lie that the meters will remain merely for some ‘scientific survey’. The demand to roll-back the hiked prospectus price has been thoroughly compromised, and the administration did not budge an inch from its stance except coming up with the dangerous ‘charitable exemption’ for BPL students. This move can very well be the prelude to a differential fee structure in the coming days. We only hope that the JNUSU leadership will at least refrain from claiming this as an ‘achievement’ of the ongoing struggle!

It is by now clear to all that the AISA-led JNUSU was interested in resisting the privatisation moves of the administration only in rhetoric and not in practice. This is similar to the anti-imperialist cries of the parliamentary left who are enthusiastically implementing the same imperialist policies wherever they are in power. By compromising and surrendering on every count, the present JNUSU leadership has conceded not only this movement but also the movements in the coming days which will be fought, if at all, against this very administration! The credibility of the JNUSU is at a historic low, and the responsibility squarely lies on the JNUSU leadership who has repeatedly betrayed the trust and responsibility placed on them by the students of the campus. What was common between the administration and the present JNUSU leadership in the course of the struggle however was the bypassing of democratic bodies and ignoring the aspirations of the student community. The administration had taken the decisions on meter, fee-hike, PSR, ‘beautification’ etc. unilaterally bypassing all the concerned bodies like CDC or IHA and without involving representatives form students and teachers. Similarly, the JNUSU decided on the course of struggle unilaterally, by undermining the UGBM mandate, implementing courses of action which were defeated by the UGBM, bypassing the debates generated in the All-Organisation meetings and undercutting the larger students’ aspiration to confront this authoritarian administration with more assertive forms of protest.

JNUSU leadership and its alliance of opportunism: the AISA-led JNUSU vested its complete faith in their new-found ally SFI, and vehemently attacked voices of dissent and criticism, conveniently forgetting SFI’s commendable history of ‘disassociation’, betrayal and opportunism. It is the same SFI which started with the demand of paralyzing the ad-block in the initial period of the movement, and then took a sly u-turn on the eve of the UGBM. They mouthed the demand of blockade after the UGBM passed it, again to slip away on the eve of the blockade. The AISA-led JNUSU chose to forget all this in the hope that by sticking together they will be able to revoke the rustications. But by running away from the struggle, the SFI has once again assured us that it is an honest and true opportunist, even though it meant leaving AISA high and dry. The other ‘natural ally’ of the JNUSU in the course of this struggle was JNUTA, to the extent that its mere appeals had more weight and importance for the JNUSU leadership than the commands of the students passed through UGBMS. Members of JNUTA came uninvited at midnight and addressed the rally on the eve of the blockade, dissuading the students from going for this confrontation. This was readily agreed to by the JNUSU leadership. Again the JNUTA ‘appealed’ to the JNUSU to withdraw the indefinite hunger strike even before the negotiations began on any of our demands. Such a unilateral withdrawal at the behest of JNUTA has been unprecedented in a JNUSU-led struggle. JNUTA from the beginning has made no commitment in supporting our demands other than expressing its mild protest against rustications. It is not hidden from anyone that the teaching community, with a few honourable exceptions, is whole-heartedly backing the administration’s present privatisation drive. The deplorable role played by the JNUTA a few years back during the struggle to hike MCM amount is still fresh in our memory, when it insisted that the struggle be called-off with a compromise. The struggle rejected such offer and went ahead without the support of the JNUTA, finally winning it with the sole strength of the students. Knowing full well this history, how can JNUSU allow the JNUTA to dictate terms of the students’ movement and be influenced by it, when the TA’s role can at best be advisory? JNUTA is not a neutral body. It has remained closer to the administration than the students. JNUSU leadership’s capitulation to the pressure-tactics of JNUTA and the administration has converted a possible victory to a near-certain defeat, for which it is answerable to the students.

The JNUSU leadership vested their trust on everybody except the students. So pathetic and bankrupt has been AISA-led JNUSU’s politics that it forgot the political nature of the struggle, and tried to evoke a non-existent ‘humanism’ and ‘sympathy’ of the administration through a indefinite hunger strike! The students who came for the long march, boycotted classes for a long time, participated in all other protest actions called by JNUSU, has been left betrayed and angered. But the responsibility of this historic defeat of the ongoing movement will have to be borne by the opportunistic JNUSU leadership, and not by the student community. As Brecht has put it, The defeats and victories of the fellows at the top are not always the defeats and victories of the fellows at the bottom. This is a defeat of the leadership, and its high time that the students of the campus prepare for a fresh round of collective struggle against privatisation

The authoritarian administration must be confronted!

The ongoing struggle against the recent wave of privatization in the campus which began with a spirited mass demonstration at the ad-block on 3rd Feb. has entered its second month today. Whereas this struggle had been unparalleled in terms of unprecedented student participation, it has also experienced vacillation and opportunism of the JNUSU leadership in taking the struggle forward for a decisive victory as mandated by the students through the UGBM. It is therefore not surprising that the administration has so far conceded nothing to our demands except scrapping the plan to commercialise PSR. The aggressive and hostile stance of the anti-student and authoritarian administration again came to light yesterday when it came up with yet another circular to justify its moves of privatization as well as its disciplinary action on the protesting students! It vilified the ongoing movement against privatization by claiming that it is based on mere rumors! As if the electricity meters, the hiked fees, the commercialized PSR, the mushrooming constructions and installations are all figments of imagination! As if thousands of protesting students are engaged in a bitter struggle with the administration for ‘baseless issues’!

On the demand of removing electric meters from Koyena Hostel, the administration reiterated its ‘decision’ of not levying ‘user charges’. But they have also mentioned that electricity consumption is rising and they need to carry out ‘scientific survey’ to measure that! The questions remain, what is the point of installing meters in individual rooms to know the amount of net electricity consumption? The Presidents of two other hostels were also told about the installations of meters in their hostels. What is the extent of their ‘scientific survey’? And what if after doing a round of survey, the administration scientifically decides to levy user charges from the students? Moreover, the administration initially planned to charge students for consumption of electricity beyond a certain level, but this plan was quickly shelved as a result of the mass discontent and anger the meters have generated among the students. The protest against installation of electricity meters was strongly registered right from the start, because the students vest NO trust on this administration which is giving the argument that ‘JNU students are prosperous’ in every possible public forum, thereby exposing their real intention behind installing meters in hostels. And why does the administration want to do a survey of the cost of electricity consumed by the students, whereas their enormous unaccounted extravagant expenditure remains unmonitored? This is nothing but the first step towards charging students for electricity in the coming days.

For fee hike of prospectus even the administration admits that the issue remains unaddressed. It claimed that the fee hike was recommended by a committee ‘duly constituted comprising some members of the Standing Committee on admissions’! This particular committee that the administration is referring to was however formed unilaterally by the administration; its formation was not discussed in any democratic platforms. More dangerously, the minutes of its meetings revealed that they had recommended the increase of the amount of entrance examination fees along with increasing the fee of the prospectus! The administration for this year chose to stick to only one of the several reactionary and anti-student recommendations it had made! That the administration, as an extension of the anti-people and autocratic state apparatus, is going on implementing pro-market policies in the campus one after another, is no surprise. This administration headed by the VC is an assembly of crooks that profess neo-liberal economic policies, and for whom the students of JNU, its past and the present hardly matter. Their agenda is to shape the future of JNU and its students in a particular mould. Unless they are kicked out of their positions of power, the misdeeds of the thieves in the Pink Palace will lead JNU to a socially alienated, privatized and corporate-friendly enclave, where only the privileged will have a right to entry! The students know the gravity of this challenge to defend the present and future of JNU; its time that the JNUSU leadership lives up to the occasion.

A few old questions and fresh reminders to the JNUSU leadership: When the desperation and high-handedness of the administration is becoming more and more evident posing ever new threats, is this struggle led towards the right direction? The struggle started with unprecedented students’ participation and very pointed demands against privatization. Despite the massive students’ support and UGBM mandate the leadership refrained from going into more assertive forms of struggle like paralyzing the ad-block by blockading its entrances. It chose not to go into any concrete protest actions when students were with them, even after the negotiations failed! Rather they championed a course of action which was defeated in the UGBM and with a handful 30-40 students tried to stop the sell of prospectus at a late stage of the struggle. Right after which, they championed another defeated resolution by going for indefinite hunger strike, which still continues.

Was the JNUSU leadership trying to avoid ‘coercive tactics’ and ‘disciplinary action’ from the administration by not going for a blockade? Administration however did take action even when they were merely trying to stop the sell of prospectus, proving that the administration has outsmarted JNUSU leadership in strategy. And now in yesterday’s circular the administration is calling even the hunger strike a ‘coercive tactic’! The point is, the administration will deem any course of action which genuinely challenges privatization as ‘coercive’ and will repress! De-escalation of the spirit and participation of students by JNUSU leadership apprehending reactions from the administration has diluted this crucial fight, not only in the mass participation but also in its aims and objectives, resulting in frustration and desperation among the common students, a reflection of which was witnessed today when a student threatened to jump from the 8th floor of library if our demands were not met. The JNUSU leadership has already retreated from demanding removal of electric meters, and now with more prospectuses getting sold each day and its closing date coming nearer, any possibility of JNUSU forcing the administration to roll-back fee-hike seems grim! The only issue to the current phase of the ongoing struggle emerges to be the revocation of rustications. Fighting the disciplinary action undoubtedly is extremely crucial, but if the entire struggle gets reduced to it, giving up on all other crucial demands, it will open up floodgates for privatization in the future, and will irreparably damage the credibility of JNUSU and the progressive student movement of JNU! The administration is determined to sell-off JNU. Only a principled, militant and collective struggle of the students can stop it!

Remembering Com. Naveen Babu...

“Silence!
Here sleeps my brother.
Don’t stand by him
with a pale face and a sad heart.
For, he is laughter!
Don’t cover his body with flowers,
what is the use of adding flowers to a flower?

If you can,bury him in your heart.
You will find
at the twitterings of the bird of the heart,
your sleeping soul has woken up.
If you can,
shed some tears.
and -
all the blood of your body…”
-from an anonymous poem written on the walls of Presidency Jail, Calcutta, during the Naxalbari uprising.

It was a revolutionary transformation of an ordinary student, from an A.P. village, who came to the capital city with high ambitions, into a guerrilla fighter of the revolutionary people’s war. That was the transformation of Naveen into Balakrishna. Starting his journey on the revolutionary path from JNU in late 1980s, Naveen embraced Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and within a decade reached the peaks of the Eastern Ghats at Darakonda, to lay down his life during an exchange of fire with the fascist Andhra Pradesh police on February 18, 2000.

Com. Naveen was in a village in Krishna district of Andhra in a middle peasant family. He completed his graduation in Hyderabad and joined M.A. Sociology in Meerut University in 1984. In 1986 he joined M.Phil course in Sociology in JNU, and after completing his dissertation in 1988 he joined Ph.D. Naveen formed the Student’s Forum, which stood for the exposure of the SFI’s politics of compromise in JNU. In 1986, the Delhi Radical Students Organisation (DRSO) was formed. In 1988 he joined the DRSO, and made it a force to reckon with in the campus. Com. Naveen was a revolutionary students’ leader who aspired to rejuvenate radical ideology in the university. He put in untiring efforts to build an all India revolutionary student movement and made himself and his room the centre for the revolutionary student movement in Delhi. He not only took part in every student movement at the JNU, the Delhi University and other colleges but also participated in programmes and activities organised outside the campus. Naveen not only countered the neo-colonial theories of the earlier leaders and thereby defend the political line of the DRSO, he also actively supported the right of self-determination of the nationality struggles, bringing DRSO close to the students of Kashmir and the North-East.

In 1989, when Delhi became the centre for the upper caste anti-Mandal mania, the DRSO swam against the tide, supporting reservations for the OBCs. When there were vacillations even amongst the revolutionary ranks, Naveen stood like a rock, patiently explaining the necessity for DRSO to support reservations, thereby drawing it closer to the oppressed sections. Since 1990, Naveen became a professional revolutionary. He left JNU in 1992 discontinuing his Ph.D to join a law course at the Delhi University (DU) in 1993. In 1990 itself, he represented DRSO in the all-India student body, AIRSF, taking responsibility for editing the student magazine KALAM. Naveen played an outstanding role at the International seminar on nationality struggles which was held in February ’96. The seminar, held under the auspices of the AIPRF played a key role in linking the class struggle with the nationality struggles, giving birth to the CCNDM - Coordination Committee of Struggles of Nationalities and Democratic Movements. This effort of Com. Naveen remains as a strong bridge between the revolutionary and nationality movements. As a part of this effort he clearly explained the process of emergence of class and revolutionary struggles in India to the representatives who came from different countries of the world. Particularly he accompanied the world famous intellectual, William Hinton, when he travelled to many places in India and hel ped him understand the movements going on in those places. In 1994-95, for the first time Naveen visited Balaghat district in order to understand the Adivasi movement in DK and the growth of Guerilla Zones.

With a pleasing personality, an affectionate behaviour, a microscopic analytical methodology, a role model living style, and with a continuous study of world literature for establishing socialism of which he dreamt, Com. Naveen never got tired of sharing his knowledge with friends and tirelessly sought to win over intellectuals to the side of revolution. With all these qualities he emerged as a role model for students and youth. Com. Naveen was known for his simple living habits and forth rightness. He was always ready to make honest self-criticism, showing an eagerness and sincerity to rectify mistakes. He always stood for taking up things critically, not blindly. He stood for fighting against wrong ideas, come what may. He was for principled fight, without any liberalism. Com. Naveen stood for the unity of words and deeds, theory and practice. He was an intellectual, in the tradition of martyrs Christopher Caudwell, David Guest, who laid down their lives in the Spanish Civil War, or Chaganti Bhaskar Rao martyred in the forests of Srikakulam. Com. Naveen blended his pen with the gun and laid down his life fighting the brutal Indian state for a new society free of exploitation and oppression.

RED SALUTE TO COM. NAVEEN!

Fight for revocation of the rustication and out-of-bound orders! Intensify the struggle against electric meters, fee hike, for social justice!

Yesterday the administration came down heavily with iron fist on five protesting students who were handpicked and summarily rusticated. No time to show-cause, no enquiry seemed necessary, because they were part of a JNUSU-led struggle against privatisation of this campus. It lays bare the real face of this autocratic administration and its design to privatise the campus by using all possible means at their disposal! Administration’s desperate act to strangulate this movement is similar to the way any organ of the ruling class clamps down to suppress people’s resistance. It is happening everywhere; let us be in no illusion that JNU administration is an exception. The administration wants to pursue the JNU of their dreams, where prosperous students buy their education and basic facilities and where they do not protest. They are clearly setting a standard for us to which we have to comply! And comply silently without any resistance. This is their definition of a ‘disciplined student’. It doesn’t matter to the administration the legacy the students of JNU uphold, the history of resistance we cherish and the collective spirit that students have shown in the face of privatisation moves by the administration! The history of the students’ movement of the campus is not a concern for the force which wants to determine our future in its own terms, on its own image! This is how the administration is strengthening the forces against the campus from outside: be it privatisation or Lyngdoh.

But should we go down without a fight? Clearly we have no other option but to uncompromisingly fight this battle tooth and nail. JNU students have repeatedly fought past moves of privatisation and commercialization, along with the repressions that followed as a result. Students of this university have fought to keep the fee structure low, resisted self-financed courses, resisted the hiked fee of prospectus and drafts, stopped the introduction of communal courses like yogic-science and astrology, stopped corporate funding in some schools, forced the removal of the monopoly outlet of Nestle, ensured minimum wages of workers on this campus. This time too, we have to fight to win, because what is at stake is our right to democratic education, right to dissent, right to subsidized basic facilities and social justice.

This authoritarian administration cannot be fought by undermining the students and their mandate. When the campus and its students’ movement is facing unprecedented onslaught from outside, we must be steadfast in our vigilance and critique against any subversion or compromise from within. This movement started with very concrete demands, and its course of action was set by the UGBM after much debate. It is a cause of grave concern that the JNUSU leadership is repeatedly disrespecting both the basic demands and the UGBM mandate, thereby helping the administration’s in its draconian moves. They have given up on the very crucial demand of removal of electric meters from Koyena hostel, citing dubious ‘advancements’ where there clearly aren’t any! Removal of the meters, not the mere suspension of ‘user charges’, is the overwhelming demand of the student community even now. In addition, JNUSU leadership (with extraordinary understanding and coordination between AISA and SFI) is repeatedly deciding on courses of action which were rejected by the UGBM, such as ‘stopping of the sale of prospectus forms’, ‘indefinite hunger strike’, etc. They have so far bypassed the resolution of blockading the ad-block, which was passed in the UGBM. In the days after this historic UGBM, AISA-led JNUSU managed to de-escalate and demobilize the movement so much, that the unprecedented and massive participation of thousands of students were reduced to 30-40 students on the day the selling of prospectus was stopped yesterday. Thus, this fight to defend the democratic ethos of the campus is ironically being fought by undermining the UGBM and its mandate, the highest and most democratic body of students. It shows the lack of integrity and commitment of the leadership to democratic values, and their lack of resolve to take this movement to a more assertive and logical stage.

Two days back, 722 students signed an open letter to the president of JNUSU with an appeal to respect the UGBM mandate, recognise the demand of removal of electric meters, and intensify the ongoing struggle by going for a blockade of the ad block. However, the decision of stopping of prospectus-sale yesterday and the hunger strike today reflects unilateralism and undemocratic functioning on the part of JNUSU Council. It has overturned the UGBM mandate and continues to impose a course of action on students which has already been rejected. DSU recognizes the need to collectively face the present onslaught on JNUSU and stand by it, but do not agree with the indefinite hunger strike as a mode of protest at this stage as it goes against the course of action decided in the last UGBM. In the last All Organization meeting, DSU and other organisations except AISA and SFI rejected the hunger strike, and since there was no consensus it was left to the JNUSU Council to decide, which predictably decided on an indefinite hunger strike. However, we are left with no other option but to stand by a JNUSU leadership that has compromised and betrayed decisions and aspirations of the students repeatedly during this movement at this crucial juncture in order to collectively fight the high-handed administration.

It is not that all students who came down to the street in such huge numbers a week back, came to the UGBM, boycotted classes for many days and participated in all the course of actions in large numbers to resist the drives of privatisation, have now lost interest! It is a matter that concerns each and every student of this university, for now and in the days to come. The issue of installation of electric meters or fee hike and rustication of protesting students are not in isolation, but are just the initial manifestation of larger assaults of privatisation and throttling of voices of dissent against it. Let us continue our fight to reclaim our university and our democratic culture!

DSU initiated a signature campaign in which 722 students signed an Open Letter to the JNUSU President demanding that the JNUSU uphold the mandate passed by the UGBM, respect the course of action decided therein, and therefore give a call for blockading the ad-block till all the demands are fulfilled, including the (1) Removal of electric meters from Koyena Hostel, (2) Complete roll-back of the hiked prospectus fee. The JNUSU must not betray the aspirations of the entire student community and must not retreat from this crucial struggle against privatization.

The text of the Open Letter is as follows:

"The ongoing struggle against privatization and for social justice led by JNUSU has failed to achieve two of its major demands:

1. Removal of electric meters from Koyena hostel. The installation of the electric meters is a systematic way to ensure the privatization of basic facilities. The mere assurances from the administration not to take user charges (which was their position even before the movement started) is just an eye wash to deter this movement and the JNUSU unfortunately is trying to sell the same logic. By keeping the electric meters the administration is keeping full scope for levying user charges in the future at their discretion, and no ‘written agreement’ with the JNUSU can stop them.
2. Complete roll-back of the hiked prospectus fee. The matter of the hiked price of the prospectus has not been addressed by the administration at all. Instead by talking about fee waiver for BPL students they have given clear indications to bring differential fee structure in JNU in the future.

We the undersigned students believe that no significant outcome has resulted from the many rounds of negotiations so far with the administration, unlike what the JNUSU is claiming currently. We apprehend that the leadership is heading towards a compromise with this corrupt, authoritarian administration, rather than confronting it. Therefore we demand to the JNUSU leadership:

1. To uphold the resolution passed in the UGBM and go for the blockading of the ad-block.
2. To take the ongoing struggle to its logical conclusion – of fulfilling all the demands which have not been achieved."

Let us not surrender before the fight is over! Resist any attempt to reduce this Crucial Struggle into mere Tokenism!!

Some organisations are spreading rumours about ‘achievements’ of the movement. But if we go by the reporting by the JNUSU leadership in All-Organisation meetings and their pamphlets, the electric meters will NOT be removed from the hostels. The administration has merely agreed not to take ‘user charges’ for the time-being, a declaration made three weeks back. People who believe that the administration is indeed investing so much money to do ‘survey of consumption’ are either fooling themselves or fooling others. And the JNUSU has simply given up on this extremely crucial demand of removing the meters, and is thereby facilitating the installation of meters in all the hostels in the coming days. With such an opportunistic approach, this fight against systematic privatisation of basic facilities in JNU is bound to get compromised right at the beginning! If the meters are installed, JNU is going to be the FIRST public university in this country where students will be charged for electricity separately. So much for our much-proclaimed historic legacy of fighting liberalization and privatisation! The sell of prospectus with a hiked price has also been going on for almost a month across the country and through postage. The proposal by AISA-SFI led JNUSU Council to stop the prospectus counter at such a late stage is a mere tokenism, which is too little too late in the name of fighting fee hike. In this stage maximum pressure should have been put on the administration to make them yield to our very pointed demands. Instead only the continuing JNU students and other students from the vicinity will be harassed by not letting them buy the forms. In our opinion this course of action shows a completely misplaced priority at this crucial stage of struggle. Instead of making the administration yield to all the demands, such tokenism is just a face saving device for the JNUSU leadership.

How democratic ethos got compromised in this struggle by the undemocratic JNUSU leadership. After the Long March of 10 Feb, when no consensus was reached for the future course of action, the students went for a UGBM, which is the highest decision making body of the students and whose mandate is binding on the JNUSU. The UGBM gave a concrete roadmap of struggle to blockade the ad-block and put maximum pressure on the obstinate administration. The JNUSU leadership however permanently withheld the decision to blockade the ad-block, and have now come up with a very different course of action. In the following AO meeting, after being pressurized by the rest of the organizations the decision to put blockade in abeyance was made a time-bound one, till the negotiations fail. The negotiations failed after four days. Yet the leadership took it to their discretion to say that since ‘the material conditions have changed the UGBM mandate stands null and void’! In the All Organisation meeting too, it is only AISA who advocated against the UGBM mandate; SFI maintained a convenient and well calculated silence while all the rest of the organisations pressurized the JNUSU to uphold the mandate. Since no consensus was emerging due to the AISA-SFI’s alliance to subvert the movement, they took it to the Council where SFI-AISA can work on their own, maintaining their newfound harmony! In a most opportunist way, they chose to implement a course of action that has been defeated by the UGBM, to only stop the sale of prospectus. Is this not a complete undermining of the democratic practices which the students’ movement in this campus has always upheld?

The university and student movement is going through a very critical phase. The stay order on students’ union election and the drive to privatize are not unconnected from each other. The need to gradually privatize universities, to turn education into a commodity which can be bought by the few who can afford it are all in the recommendations of the Birla-Ambani Report on higher education, a number of reports on education in India by the World Bank, the report of the Knowledge Commission etc. Students’ movement, as argued and identified by these forces, is the prime impediment on the way of privatisation. This argument has its merits. In JNU itself earlier drives of privatisation were resisted only by vigilant and assertive struggles by students. The forces which are hell bent on withdrawing the subsidy from education and basic facilities of students are the same ones which are trying to scuttle students’ movements and elections. They are the same agents of neo-liberal economic policies which are grabbing lands from peasants to make capital-intensive industries, selling the natural resources to imperialist forces, trying to turn the country into a Special Exploitation Zone.

And JNU is no island! The repeated statement by the VC that JNU students are ‘prosperous’ is a dangerous prelude to his further designs. His show of ‘charity’ by exempting the BPL students from paying for the prospectus adds to that. It is the clear signal to bring differential fee structure and to charge the basic facilities. The money of poor tax payers of this country can be invested in his ‘beautification’ drives, while ‘prosperous JNU students’ should manage their own education and well being! In the face of these multi-pronged attacks, what the JNUSU leadership chose to do is to completely concede before even trying to lead the fight! They tried to diffuse the unprecedented students’ unity and participation in this movement and undermined the mandate by the UGBM!

We will yet again reinstate our demands to the JNUSU leadership not to abandon or compromise in this extremely crucial fight against privatisation but to intensify the struggle to nip the designs of the administration right in its bud. Otherwise they will be equally responsible in ‘the attack on the soul of JNU'!

There can be No Retreat, No Compromise! We must Win this Battle!!

Tonight we enter into a more intensified stage of the ongoing battle! A battle with the corrupt, insensitive and authoritarian administration which is hell bent on privatising the university. This battle has to be clinched by us, before the administration wins it and succeeds in realizing their dream of turning this university into a corporate enclave.

The lies and insensitivity of the administration simply knows no bounds. In today’s newspapers the VC has given statements that JNU students are provided with ‘unlimited water and electricity’, that the number ‘of cars and bikes in front of hostels’ are a real proof that students are not from marginalized sections and that ‘90% of JNU students receive fellowships’! The VC, no wonder, sees what he wants to see. So the unlimited water that is sprinkled on his rose gardens in the summer when all the hostels remain dry is the only thing he can see. The students who own bikes and cars are the only students he’ll recognize and will try to justify his drives to privatisation at their cost! It is this same administration which had denied the full implementation of 27% OBC reservation. It required a forceful students’ struggle to force this same administration to hike the meagre amount of MCM. And the students who receive any kind of scholarship or fellowship (whose number is far less than 90%) knows how much harassment they have to face in the finance office every time. We remind Mr. VC and his coterie that the subsidized facilities that students have been receiving in this university since its inception is not a gift or show of charity from the administration but is a basic right of every student in this institution. Subsidy in education is being withdrawn in other universities as a ploy of the imperialist forces to privatise education and reduce it into a marketable commodity. Such designs have failed in the past in JNU because there has always been a thriving and vigilant students’ movement. The standard of its socially inclusive character and equitable education has to be defended and expanded rather than destroyed, as is being done by the present administration!

And all that ‘glitters’ is not JNU: it is not the pointless plasma TV, the ugly hoardings, the corporate parties in PSR, the flower pots, the electric meters, the costlier prospectus, mindless deforestation and construction which constitutes of JNU. Neither should it be the insensitivity of the administration, their shameless audacity to deny reservation over and over again, their rampant corruption, their boundless authoritarianism that should determine the nature and future of JNU. This university belongs to us. The socially sensitive, socially inclusive and democratic character that we have built over years has to be reclaimed from the handful of corporate-friendly dictators. This is a historic juncture for JNU, and everything that JNU has stood for is at stake today. The success or failure of the ongoing movement will determine how the future JNU will be. And the strength of the movement is us, the students of the campus. So join the protest march in large numbers that will culminate into a mass sit-in. With this peaceful form of protest, and by our collective strength of numbers and unity, we will defeat any attempts to repress or sabotage it

The Administration is Crumbling, Let’s Fight for the Final Victory!

The unprecedented mass upsurge of the students of JNU against privatisation and for social justice poured out to the streets to express the collective anger against the anti-student and undemocratic decisions of the administration. Today’s demonstration once again showed that the student community of JNU is not ready to accept these autocratic pro-corporate policies lying down. The administration made all arrangements to keep the thousands of protesting students out of ad-block: mobilizing large numbers of Group 4 guards, police, barricades. The ad-block was turned into a war-zone by the administration, but the students made sure that the administration faced a crushing defeat in the first round of this battle. Now comes the crucial moment of winning the war tomorrow. The only excuse that the administration has given today while talking to JNUSU is that of vice-chancellor’s absence from the city. It therefore becomes crucial for another mass student gathering at Ad block tomorrow morning and to make successful the second day of total strike to clinch our demands.

The strength and victory of our movement is in large number of students’ participation with a relentless and uncompromising struggle. Tomorrow’s total university strike and mass gathering is much more than an extension of today’s agitation, it is the moment to reclaim JNU. It is not a matter of a single day, it is tomorrow that will decide the future of JNU, whether this university will be for the students, for a socially-responsible and democratic education, or will remain in the hands of a few ‘dalals’ of neo-liberalism who will continue to sell the campus and its resources to corporates. We must unite and strengthen JNUSU at this crucial juncture. It is a historic moment for students’ movement in JNU. We are very near to a victorious culmination of the ongoing struggle, and we must once again show this authoritarian administration that JNU is not their fiefdom, JNU hamara hai!

“The defeats and victories of the fellows at the top aren't always defeats and victories for the fellows at the bottom.” -Brecht

The present struggle against privatisation is heading for yet another shameful compromise. This struggle started with unprecedented enthusiasm and participation of the students. But there is a general feeling that this struggle too is now heading towards a compromised end of which we have lots of precedence in the recent past. It is a sheer failure of the AISA-SFI led JNUSU to respect the students’ participation and concede to the corrupt and authoritarian administration, rather than taking the struggle to its logical conclusion through a more assertive form of struggle as mandated by the last UGBM.

What is being compromised by JNUSU leadership, and how? After more than ten days of spirited struggle the JNUSU has yesterday come up with a list of ‘achievements’! JNUSU is now claiming that all issues other than the fee hike of prospectus has been ‘clinched’. Much of its claims however are misplaced and misrepresented. The fact that the circular to rent out PSR will be rolled back was ensured by the administration after the 10 Feb Long March itself. Therefore it can not be flaunted as a ‘victory’ now to call off the current phase of the movement. Similarly, on the day of the Long March itself the Rector 2 agreed to give in writing that the administration will not take ‘user charges’, but maintained that they will not remove the meters. The fact that the movement went into a UGBM to decide future course of action was because the students did not accept these ‘solutions’ from the administration. The student community unambiguously demanded the meters to be removed from Koyena, and was resilient to the installation of the same in any other hostels. All know that the installation of meters is a systematic way to ensure privatization of basic facilities. And the administration in all possible public forums had justified the imposition of user charges giving the rubbish logic of ‘prosperous JNU’! Thus their mere assurances not to take user charges now are just an eye-wash to deter this movement, and the JNUSU unfortunately is now trying to sell the same logic of the administration to the students. The matter of fee hike has not been addressed by the administration at all. Rather they put forward this extremely dangerous argument of offering ‘fee waiver for BPL students’, thereby implying that all other students can afford the hiked prices of the prospectus. Isn’t this a prior indication to bring differential fee structure in JNU? And by keeping the electric meters the administration is keeping full scope for levying user charges in near future whenever they feel like it, and no ‘written agreement’ with JNUSU can stop them. The JNUSU leadership is either fooling themselves in vesting faith on them. Or more dangerously, they are acting as a stooge of the administration in materializing their designs of privatization.

They are arguing to stop the sell of the forms now, which is just a face saving device for both AISA and SFI. The argument given by AISA and SFI in yesterday’s all-organization meeting to stop selling of forms from the JNU counter now as the only course of action is a mere eyewash and a face saving device to pretend ‘radicalism’ after they have conceded the entire movement. As many people have argued in the past too, it is too late to be an effective action, when forms are being sold every day all over the country since past one moth. The possibility of the symbolic message that would have gone had this counter been stopped earlier is also gone since considerable time has been lost. Who buys forms from the JNU counter are mostly the continuing JNU students and few others from Delhi. They will be the only target of the struggle now, as in our assessment this will effectively put no pressure on this insensitive administration. In the proposal of blockading the ad-clock also the form counter would have been stopped but along with that the entire ad-block would have been paralysed too. The effect of such a pressure would have been much more on all the negotiations. The JNUSU leadership did not even try to confront the administration despite so much of students’ support before surrendering to them completely. This movement was unprecedented on the count of the students’ participation and a concrete roadmap mandated by the students in the UGBM. The leadership however is now conveniently trying to champion a defeated resolution of the UGBM where just the stopping of prospectus sale was proposed by SFI, rather than the one that was passed, thereby undermining the aspirations and the participation of the students. They therefore contributed rather than countering the undermining of the democratic space within this university. They scuttled the voice of the common students as much as the administration did!

A dress rehearsal for the upcoming elections in Bihar! The current bonhomie between the AISA and SFI leadership to sideline the common students who had consistently been in this movement comes as no surprise! It is a clear alliance of opportunism and compromise. SFI historically has never taken a strong stand against privatization inside and outside the campus, be it on the issue of removing the monopoly outlet of Nestle or in justifying corporate land grab in the name of SEZ! AISA also currently is in no position to take a strong stand, since their masters CPI(ML) Liberation are joining hands with the social fascist CPI(M) in Bihar in the upcoming parliament elections, the same CPI(M) who perpetrated the Nandigram massacre, the rape and murder of Tapasi Malik, the murder of Rizwanur, and in whose name AISA garnered votes in the last JNUSU elections. This is the magic of the farce called parliamentary democracy in India, and what we see in JNU is a mere fractional reflection of the same.

DSU appeals to the student community to force the JNUSU to abandon the path of compromised tokenism in the name of fighting privatization. We cannot allow the JNUSU leadership to betray the aspirations of the students and their mandate in the UGBM in this crucial juncture. JNUSU must uncompromisingly fight the corrupt and authoritarian administration and their designs to privatize the university, rather than claiming false victories.

“When the masses are not with you and you act, it is adventurism. When the masses are with you and you do not act it is real opportunism.” -Mao

The ongoing struggle against the drives to gradual privatisation of the university has reached a critical stage now. The demands of this movement had been so straight forward that either they can be clinched, or the movement fails. There is no scope for middle grounds this time. No space for maneuvering or committees. And this fight is an extremely important fight as it is not just about electric meters in one hostel, hiked price of prospectus, commercialization of PSR or OBC and PH reservation only. This is a fight to retain and reclaim JNU. A fight to uncompromisingly stall the efforts of privatisation before it engulfs the entire campus. A fight to ensure that JNU remains a socially inclusive, democratic institution which can organically accommodate students coming from even the most backward regions or social strata. And the direct adversary in this fight is the mindless, authoritarian administration whose only motive is to destroy the current socially inclusive character of JNU and reduce it to a corporate enclave, where education along with all the basic facilities are turned into commodities.

And the role of the JNUSU leadership so far in this struggle has been disappointing the AISA led JNUSU right form the start was determined to deescalate the spirit of the unprecedented students’ participation in this movement by proposing an indefinite hunger strike as the future course of action. They claimed that any other more assertive forms of protest will give ‘moral and political legitimacy’ to the JNU administration and negotiations will be difficult after that! As if this authoritarian and completely sold out administration cares for any legitimacy! Will the administration that threatened, misbehaved and did not even bother to recognize JNUSU’s legitimacy, will come down to a negotiating table unless it is sufficiently pressurized? The UGBM gave a complete rebuff to JNUSU and AISA’s proposal to go for hunger strike and other milder non-confrontational forms of struggle and gave a clear mandate to blockade the ad-block if negotiations fail beyond a certain time. SFI which started off with a call to ‘paralyse the ad-block’ and requisitioned for the UGBM on the same demand, conveniently made a compete u-turn on the day of the UGBM. It again returned to its earlier ‘radical’ pretension once the students mandated and upheld the demand for the more assertive form of protest of blockading the ad-block! And it shifted its position once again when the negotiations have virtually failed and according to the UGBM mandate its binding on the JNUSU to take the movement in this higher form. No surprises there! Their pretentious ‘war cries’ not withstanding, who will believe in their so-called fight against privatisation, when they have blatantly justified Nestle in JNU or corporate land grab and all other moves of liberalisation and privatisation elsewhere? The logic given by AISA and SFI for not going into this more assertive form of protest is that students are not yet ready!

What more can a common student possibly do? What made this particular movement stand out from all other movements in the past is by the sheer magnitude of students’ participation. Although the VC out of his utter desperation called the students ‘outsiders’ it was the JNU students who pro-actively and enthusiastically took part in large number in the protest demonstration of 3rd February, held parallel hostel GBMs and passed unanimous resolutions against the drives of privatisation, took part in the most vibrant and largest march of JNU’s recent history, came back in large numbers for a protest demonstration the next day, spontaneously took part in the mess campaign after the negotiations failed, participated and debated the matter in the UGBM which continued till seven in the morning, gave a mandate for the future course of action, observed two days of university strike with unprecedented spontaneity, boycotted classes for continuous three days often braving the threats form the teachers, took part in another march in large numbers, came to the ad-block early morning again in large numbers… What else can they possibly do to register their support for this movement?
The mode of protest that was upheld in the UGBM was NOT any coercive move. It was simply human blockading of the entry points of the ad-block to stop any body from entering, till the administration yields to our demands. This is to put maximum possible pressure on this absolutely arrogant and dictatorial administration which is otherwise not ready to budge even an inch from its position of privatizing the university.

What we stand to lose is more than this fight alone. The JNUSU leadership in its current status is on the verge of disrespecting the spirit of this movement. The large participation of students in every form of struggle in this movement had reflected the faith that the students had vested on JNUSU. And by compromising yet again with the administration, by not taking the struggle to a logical conclusion they are only betraying that faith and strengthening the designs of the administration. The JNUSU will also irrecoverably lose the trust of the student community. The VC has said in too many forums that the only impediment in realizing his dream of turning JNU into a ‘world class university’ is students’ politics. He obviously speaks the typical language of the World Bank. And we know too well by now the real character of the JNU of his ‘dreams’! The role of the JNUSU leadership far from countering boldly such designs is rather strengthening it. Their reluctance to implement the mandate of the UGBM equally sabotages the hard earned democratic ethos and practices of JNU. Along with this particular struggle, which in itself is extremely important, what we shall lose is the legitimacy of JNUSU in all the struggles in the coming days. Similarly the high handedness of the administration will also win along with its drives of privatisation, if we lose this battle!

Now that the negotiations have failed in yielding any positive outcome, we insist that the JNUSU leadership give a call of a blockade of as mandated by the UGBM to meet our demands of removing the electric meters from Koyena hostel, complete roll back of the hiked prospectus fee, scrapping the plan of PSR commercialization, full implementation of OBC and PH reservation. A retreat from any of these demands will be termed as a compromise and betrayal of the ongoing movement against privatisation. Let us also remind the JNUSU leadership that the victory of the leaders is always the victory of the masses. But the defeat of the leadership is not always the defeat of the masses!

Let us Barricade the Ad-Block!

The UGBM tonight is not only to decide the future course of the ongoing movement against privatization, but to decide the future character of JNU itself. We must not shy away from taking the authoritarian administration head-on by taking the movement forward and to a higher form.
The VC said all those who walked in the long march were hired form outside! He also said the JNUSU is distributing free food to allure people to protests! Surely the language of market is the only thing the VC and his stooges understand! That’s why he can’t understand why the students in this campus fought against Nestle and for the minimum wages of the workers, why can’t students appreciate his mindless ‘beautification’ and considers it to be shameful wastage of public money, why students protest against the rise of the price of prospectus, why they demand the implementation of reservation, why they want Alimiyat Fazilat certificates to be recognized, why they refuse to pay separate electricity bills, why they object when PSR is being commercialized!

Because in his vision of the ‘World Class University’ these are no issues! In the University of his dreams students do not protest at all. They just remain as isolated atomized individuals who quietly study the courses he offers. In his university students will have to buy their education and basic facilities as well! And that is why the VC and his stooges do not belong to this university!

The university community of JNU understands the language of people and struggle. We would like to remind the VC and his coterie, that it is this university and JNUSU which remained functional even when the entire nation came at a stand still in the wake of the emergency, or stopped the then Prime Minister from entering the campus. It is this university which gave safe shelter to hundreds of Sikhs during the 1984 riots. The students of this university, have stood by people’s movements time and again in various places. They have also taken part in people’s movements themselves and have even got martyred.

Within the university also students have fought against privatization, the introduction of self-financed courses, the introduction of communalized and reactionary courses like astrology and yogic science, fought for the construction of new hostels, struggled to enhance MCM, threw out the monopoly outlet of Nestle, fought to ensure minimum wages of the workers, fought to implement reservation and so on. And apart from these well known struggles there are also many initiatives every day by unknown students in various levels to make this university a better, a more democratic and humane space to live. Such silent struggles, unregistered initiatives make this university a better home for thousands of students, teachers, karamcharis and workers every day.

And that is precisely what the VC and his stooges seek to destroy. Because what drives them is the neo-liberal economic policies. Which apart from destroying also dehumanizes! Which along with oppressing also ensures repression of any voice for democracy or voices of protests that demand for basic facilities of students, equality in education or social justice!

And thus we are in a historic juncture. The administration has refused to budge an inch even after thousands of students marched on the streets protesting against the installation of electric meters, the commercialization of PSR or the hiked prices of the prospectus. They can not possibly move from their position as they are tied down to immense corruption themselves. And should we succumb to the situation even after thousands of us have come down to the streets together. This struggle has already moved to a peak of students’ mobilization and participation. The next step can only be to move ahead in the same spirit and barricade the ad bloc. As the next step of this movement, let us resolve not to allow anybody to enter the ad bloc and function till they withdraw these moves to privatise the university. This university is ours, and let us decide to take the movement to a higher form.

Any retreat from this point of the struggle will be pushing the ball to the administration’s court again. Any reduction from this participatory stage of the struggles by reducing it to a few people sitting on indefinite hunger strike will be detrimental to the unprecedented spirit of this mass movement and will be a compromise with its militant essence. We have a historic necessity to barricade the administration which is systematically trying to sell and destroy the university, our university. Let us try and strike at them to clinch not only the ongoing struggles but also all the fights in the days to come. If we compromise or retreat this time, we stand to lose not only our present struggle but our past legacy and the future too

Intensify the ongoing struggle against privatization! Make the administration dysfunctional until our demands are met!

After yesterday’s JNUSU council meeting and today’s all-organization meeting, it has been decided to observe a two-day total university strike on Monday and Tuesday, giving ample time to the administration for negotiations, failing which, the students would have no other option but to undertake a mass sit-in to make the Administrative block dysfunctional. The administration is bent on destroying the very foundations of the university, and force its policies of privatization of campus spaces. The administration has so far turned a deaf ear to the protest by thousands of students, forcing us to go into a more decisive agitation. At this historic juncture, it is our collective responsibility to take the movement to a higher form and participate with all our strengths in the course of action decided in the UGBM. The struggle is not just about a Rs.80 increase in the prospectus fee, electric meters in hostels, or commercialization of the PSR. It is part of the larger fight against the neo-liberal agenda of privatization of our education and commercialization of campus, against making our education available only to a few sections of the rich, who can afford to buy education in the market.

The UGBM on 12th February to decide the course of action in the ongoing agitation against privatization of campus resolved to undertake a stronger, militant and more concrete action in order to channelize the unprecedented spirit of the students against privatization. The resolution that was passed in the UGBM made it clear that students were against reducing the momentum that had been built during the demonstrations at ad block on 3rd or the long march on the10th of February and the subsequent protests. Instead, the students, realizing the immediacy of the issues and the administration’s arrogant, deceitful, non-responsive reaction to this mass mobilization, gave their mandate to making the administration dysfunctional until all our demands were met.

This campus has consistently fought against previous attempts by the administration to privatize campus spaces and commodify education through fee hikes, corporate funding of courses, contractualization of services in the university etc. The students have resisted attempts to undermine the hard-fought socially-inclusive character of JNU that has come in the form of scuttling of reservation policy, reversal of deprivation points system as well as the upcoming challenge of anti-reservation bills being passed by the parliament. The students of JNU have stood up against the reactionary state during Emergency, the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom and the black-flagging of the PM during his visit to JNU. in 1995, the administration was forced to revert its policy of fee hike and also reinstate the deprivation points under a militant agitation led by JNUSU. In 2005, students successfully threw out Nestle from campus. But the students are aware that the fight against privatization is far from over. The neo-liberal assault of the state on education and social justice continues in several forms inside and outside the campus. This is an unprecedented attack by administration on us in its drive to make JNU a ‘world class university’, and it calls for an unprecedented response from the campus community in the form of a mass participation in decisive actions, as was reflected in the Long March.

DSU appeals to all the students of JNU to participate in large numbers in the ongoing agitation under the leadership of JNUSU until all our demands are met. Let us observe a 48-hour total university strike starting on Monday, and join the march and mass sit-in as mandated by the UGBM. Let us all give the administration a strong signal that we will struggle unitedly against their attempts to sell out our education and the university in the market

Intensify the Ongoing Struggle! Defeat the Administration's Corporate Agenda!

After yesterday’s march where thousands of students had registered their protest against fee hike and privatization of JNU campus, the Rector assured the student community that the administration would discuss these issues when the VC would return to campus.

Today when the JNUSU went to make the students demands to the administration, the Vice Chancellor arrogantly denied all of them. Instead, he threatened the JNUSU and the protesting students that they would face dire consequences if the struggle continues. The VC claimed that thousands of students who marched yesterday were ‘outsiders’ and students of Jamia Milia and Delhi University who were hired by the JNUSU to do so. The administration, which is too scared to face the students and discuss the issues with them, instead shamefully chose to videotape the protest demonstration at ad block today.

The agitation against privatization has entered a crucial phase. For two weeks the protests under JNUSU’s leadership have continued and yet the administration has refused to discuss the issues with the students. After two days of strike by the JNUSU, instead of accepting to the demands like removal of electric meters from Koyna hostel, the VC declared that the administration plans to introduce electric meters in ALL hostels of JNU—above a nominal usage, students would be charged for electricity consumption.

Seeing the absolutely dictatorial attitude of the administration, the agitation needs to be intensified. The VC has rubbished not just the demands but the spirit of the JNUSU itself. The Vice-Chancellor’s words today only exposed his true face as the stooge of the state which kills peasants, adivasis, minorities in the name of neo liberal policies and SEZ. In all movements when the state intensifies its terror, the people intensify their movements and struggles through the necessary means to fulfill their just demands. At this moment we cannot take a step back but must further mobilize ourselves in a militant struggle that forces the Administration to fulfill our genuine demands. If not, we would be losing the entire battle. This struggle is not just about electricity meters, signboards, prospectus or the corruption in the administration, but rather about what JNU has been and what it should be.

The JNUSU has received a requisition signed by more than 1100 students for a UGBM to decide the future course of action. We appeal to all the students to attend the UGBM in large numbers to democratically deliberate and decide on the course of the struggle and to protect the ethos of the JNU campus.

Intensify the Fight against Privatisation of Campus!

"All issues are students’ issues, and no issue is students’ issue alone."

The massive protest demonstration on February 3^rd at the ad-block called by JNUSU has sent a clear message to the authoritarian JNU administration that anti-student policies, including the ongoing privatization drive in the campus in the name of ‘resource-generation’, must immediately stop. While installing of electric meters in the rooms of Koena hostel, a sharp increase in the price of the JNU prospectus, renting of the PSR, making of OBC reservation conditional to ‘availability of infrastructure’, curtailment in dhaba timings were some of the immediate demands, the students also collectively expressed their anger against bypassing of the student community in decision-making, and imposition of policies that go against the grain of JNU as a socially-sensitive and responsible institution. Taking full advantage of the supreme court stay on JNUSU elections, the administration has intensified its efforts to make JNU a corporate-friendly university, in the unfounded expectation that there will be no resistance from the students. The administration is introducing anti-student polices one after another in quick succession, and has once again challenged the student community to take up the responsibility of defending what JNU stands for: a democratic, inclusive and socially responsible education that upholds the spirit of criticality and non-conformism in thought.

The intensification of the privatisation drive in the campus: The students’ movement of JNU has fought attempts at privatisation and corporatisation of campus spaces in the past, the successful struggle against Nestle in 2004-05 and Tata funding in the School of Arts and Aesthetics in 2007 being recent examples. Past attempts at fee hike was also fought and won. However, this does not mean that the campus have remained immune to the larger policies of Liberalisation, Privatisation and imperialist Globalisation. Crores of rupees are being invested by corporate houses in the science centres of JNU to facilitate market-oriented research. Highly expensive courses such as the Global Studies Programme in CSSS have been introduced which are sponsored by multinationals like BMW and Mackenzie. Ford Foundation has provided funds for setting up and running the Centre for Law and Governance. Corporates like Mahindra and others have come to JNU for recruitment, and curriculums of many centres have been changed to cater to the needs of the market.

These are only a few examples from our campus how privatisation and corporatisation is being implemented in higher education. Today higher education remains accessible to only a few who can afford to pay hefty fees for technical courses in IITs, IIMs, engineering, medical and media institutes and so on, be it public or private. ‘Merit’ is not a criterion of admission for those who can pay large capitation fees and buys degrees in the market. Even in neighbouring DU colleges, the yearly fees have become highly prohibitive for a majority of the students from weak economic and social backgrounds. The fact that fees in JNU have remained low and thus affordable in some ways to the deprived classes, is because of the progressive students’ movement which have struggled against the logic of the market to uphold a democratic and inclusive education. With the onslaught of neo-liberal policies of the state, this too has come under attack. The days are not far when the administration will introduce a steep increase in the tuition fees and hostel rents etc. with the argument that the university needs to generate its own resources. The administration has tried to justify the electric meters in Koena hostel by arguing that most of the students get scholarships, and hence should bear a portion of the cost of education and facilities they receive.

Privatisation in the campus is taking place at many levels. Not only is the PSR being rented out or auditoriums made open for commercial use, even the essential services in the campus are also being made contractual where private companies such as Group 4 is in charge of campus security, Chase is providing library workers and lab assistants, Vayudoot is employing workers for gardening, garbage collection and electrical works, Garima is running messes in Chandrabhaga, Lohit and Mahi-Mandvi hostels, and so on. Much like the students who come from economically and socially weaker sections of the society are being denied the right to higher education, the workers are also denied their basic work-related rights under the privatized regime.

Attempts to scuttle 27% OBC Reservation: The rights and opportunities of the marginalised sections to education in campuses like JNU are being further jeopardized by the scuttling of OBC reservations even after it becoming the law of the land. Last year when after a protracted battle –both inside and outside the court– 27% OBC reservation got a go ahead, the JNU administration subverted it by a drastic reduction of seat cuts, and ensuring that a mere 9% students could take admission under the provisions of the act. Even though the administration assured that this year the full quota of 27% would be fulfilled, it has been again made conditional to ‘infrastructure’. Making the provision of 54% seat increase conditional on OBC reservation itself was a ploy to prolong and scuttle the implementation of reservation, and this year too the same logic of inability to increase seats have been used by administration. Whereas funds are in no short supply to be lavishly spent on needless extravagance in the name of ‘campus beautification’ and putting up of expensive gadgets and furniture all around, lack of funds is the excuse for not providing the necessary infrastructure to accommodate new students. This design to put hurdles on OBC reservation, along with that of PH category reservation has to be defeated, and we must ensure that the full quota of OBC and PH category reservation is fulfilled this year, without any reduction in the overall seats offered. The present agitation under the leadership of JNUSU must be intensified in order to force the administration for the full implementation of reservation policy in letter and spirit.

Authoritarian JNU administration: Even after the massive demonstration of the students, the administration in its discussions with the JNUSU has not shown any sign of genuinely addressing the demands. Disregarding the collective opinion of the student community the administration refused to remove the electric meters in Koena hostel, and in fact is contemplating its installment in other hostels as well. The decision to rent PSR has only been temporarily set aside, and it has declined to reduce the price of the prospectus. Despite repeated demands, the administration has not committed to implement 27% OBC reservation by this year. In all, the administration has yielded very little to the demands of the student community, and has only come up with vague and temporary assurances. This leaves the students with no other option than to further intensify the ongoing agitation by forging a unity of struggle and uncompromisingly fight for our legitimate rights.

The administration feels emboldened by the stay on the JNUSU elections and making this an excuse has been acting in an authoritarian manner. The JNUSU and the student community have been kept out of decision-making, thus trampling on the democratic rights which have been achieved through years of struggle. Meetings of Academic Council and various committees such as the Campus Development Committee are being held without any student representation, which has allowed the administration to impose its decisions on us. Previously unheard-of committees have suddenly sprung up, which are taking unilateral decisions pertaining to campus life. The administration must be confronted and their undemocratic decisions have to be rejected at every step, and be made accountable for its misdeeds as well as anti-student policies. This struggle is at the same time a part of the struggle to defend our democratic rights, the JNUSU and its constitution.

University for whom? It is not a coincidence that the supreme court stay and the phase of intensified privatisation has come at the same time. The administration feels that the student movement has been weakened by the onslaught of Lyngdoh. As the Birla-Ambani Report recognised students’ unions as the main hurdle to privatisation of education, the present VC too thinks that student politics, which has been the hallmark of JNU, is an impediment to the making of a ‘world-class’ university. In their scheme of a world-class university, the students will not have the right to raise demands and will have to bow to the decisions from above unquestioningly. No critique and resistance to the policies of the state will be tolerated, and no social concern or peoples’ issues will be addressed. In a world-class university, everything including education will be sold at the market price, ‘professionals’ will be produced for the industry. There will be no place for dissent, no place for opposition and alternatives. This is the essence of the world-class university which administration wants JNU to be, the same essence of the market and of imperialism.

JNU is not an island: Much like the oppressed classes of the country finds themselves at the receiving end of Indian state’s neo-liberal policies, and repressed through the use of violent force if they chose to resist them, the students too are faced with an onslaught on their basic rights, including the right to education. And at a time when an overwhelming majority of the peoples are facing an all out imperialist onslaught, how can a campus like JNU remain immune to this process? The same undemocratic and anti-people policies that are imposed elsewhere in the name of development are also being implemented in our campus with the same authoritarian manner. A Nestle outlet, electric meters, hike in the prospectus price, renting of campus spaces and facilities, Global Studies Programme, Posco scholarships or Ford sponsorship etc., all are manifestations of the same process. When we, as students, collectively stand against these policies in our campus, we also therefore strengthen the people’s resistance against the ongoing assault of privatization and imperialist plunder.

Intensify the ongoing struggle against privatisation in the campus! Guard against sectarianism! It is only an uncompromising and collective struggle that can resist and finally defeat the JNU administration’s anti-student and pro-corporate policies. The demonstration of 3 Feb is a reflection of this spirit. In the recent past, however, we have been witness to the betrayal of the students’ movement by JNUSU leadership, be it from SFI who sided with the administration in the struggle against Nestle and the in workers’ issue, or from AISA in the fight for OBC reservation which defended seat cuts last year. SFI is continuing with its tradition of sectarian one-upmanship by indulging in parallel agitations such as ‘paralyzing the administration’ without taking JNUSU or the larger student community into confidence, and thereby undermining the present struggle. The same SFI which was crying hoarse in the last UGBM of undemocratic JNUSU functioning did not wait to build a consensus in the JNUSU council meeting and went ahead with its own programme. Such acts of sectarianism will weaken the ongoing struggle for social justice and against privatisation, and will embolden the administration at a time when the JNU student movement is faced with grave challenges from inside and outside the campus. Let us intensify this struggle without falling prey to sectarian politics.

Palestine and Tamil Eelam: Liberation Movements under Imperialist Aggression

Countries want independence, nations want liberation, and people want revolution! –Mao

In recent times the world has been witness to brutal aggression on two of the most long-enduring and valiant struggles for independence: that of the Palestinian and the Eelam Tamil people. Through the 22 day-long assault on Gaza, called Operation Cast Lead which ended ten days ago, the Israel state tried in vain to teach the people of Gaza a lesson: Submit or Die. But the heroic Palestinians have refused to submit. The result is a death toll of more than 1375 and more than 5450 wounded, with above 65 percent civilian casualties, including 412 children. 115 are still missing. 4100 homes were destroyed. Most of them were dismembered and burned by missile fire and chemical weapons. Scores of children and women have been slaughtered as well as defenseless civilians and officials, in utter disregard for the rules of war or international law and public opinion. The one-sidedness of the attack can be measured by the 13 Israeli casualties in the same period. And all this went on for three full weeks while the ‘international community’ watched in silence and the people of the Arab world came out on the streets in militant protests condemning Israel and the US.

More than 70% of the people of Gaza today are refugees in their own land. In Gaza city alone, more than 22,000 families are receiving food aid. White phosphorus was used in crowded civilian areas, including refugee camps. White phosphorus once touches the skin, can burn through the flesh to the bone. Israel is not a party to a convention regulating its use. UN schools and main aid headquarters where tons of food was stocked were bombed. UN employees including drivers were killed. Amid growing demand for trial for war crimes in the International Criminal Court, Israel has banned the publication of the unit commanders who led the attacks against Palestine fearing they will be charged and tried for their crimes. Even Israeli human rights groups have demanded investigation to the incidents where unarmed women and children were killed. Israel faces prosecution for committing war crimes, more of which are coming to light after the invasion has been stalled. There are however reports of Israeli fresh air-strikes, indicating the fragile and temporary nature of the assault.

Gaza, a tiny geographical space stretched across 45 kilometers in length and 10 in breadth has 1.5 million people, the world's highest density of population. It suffered terrible civilian casualties during indiscriminate Israeli aerial bombardment of the region even during ‘stage one’ of the assault. As Israeli ground troops moved in for "stage two", the number of dead and injured grew enormously, as did the proportion of civilian casualties among the overall dead and wounded. Israeli troops surrounded Zeitun, near Gaza city and prevented rescue teams to offer help to the victims for four days. When paramedics eventually entered on 7th January, in one destroyed home they found four half-dead children clinging to the corpses of their mothers in the rubble. Israeli mortars purposefully attacked and killed more than 40 people outside one school in the Jabalya refugee camp. As a result, children under sixteen-years and women accounted for nearly 40% of the casualties.

Besides, the inhuman condition of Gaza as a result of the continued artillery and aerial shelling became amply clear when one considers the fact that Israel only admitted 40-50 truckloads of food and supplies a day, less than ten percent of what people need in Gaza during a full-scale war and after 18-months blockade perpetrated by Israel. This condition is further aggravated by scarcity of fuel, clean water and electricity. In the first few days of the land invasion, Gaza hospitals had inadequate supply of drugs, equipment, blood or electricity, with all the beds occupied long ago and even the corridors filled with the wounded. Israel did not allow more than a handful of the injured to be evacuated to hospitals elsewhere. It deliberately targeted ambulances and medical teams with the excuse that they could be carrying rockets. Along with the extermination of Palestinians, the Israeli authorities made phone calls and dropped leaflets warning Gaza residents to evacuate or face death. Israel’s foreign minister’s kept claiming that there was no humanitarian crisis in Gaza, while its armed forces went on battering residential areas, schools, hospitals, water-supply and electricity infrastructure, and even the UN headquarters in Gaza in the name of targeting the resistance fighters of Hamas. It seems that Israel has accomplished what its Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai’s warned in February 2008: that Gaza was facing a "shoah", the Hebrew word for Holocaust. This criminal misadventure of Israel however has only exposed its fascist designs, and further consolidated the movement for Palestinian national liberation.

Israel-US Imperial Nexus: The recent attacks in the name of war against terror and against the Palestinian peoples’ defensive war are all products of the same imperial war-machine. It was the US which helped the formation of Israeli state for ensuring its own survival, and since then the Israel has been the bridgehead of the US imperialism in West Asia and a safe base for its reactionary maneuvers all across the world. Both the US as well as Israel has closely integrated war-economies, selling weapons and waging wars to sustain itself. The imperialist administration cannot develop or reform its finance without launching wars at its initiative. Many wars and battles are and will be fought under the guidance and support of US imperialism. The US-Israel nexus has to be seen in this context. The US supply of up-to-date 1000 pound ‘bunker buster’ bombs and high-tech missiles to incinerate large numbers of human beings within their deadly radius, its role in overseeing the genocidal war amply makes clear from the statement of the Chairman of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee Howard Berman that “Israel has a right, indeed a duty, to defend itself in response to the hundreds of rockets and mortars fired from Gaza… The loss of innocent life is a terribly tragedy and the blame for that tragedy lies with Hamas.” To the Bermans of the world, only the lives of Israelis matter, not the growing thousands of murdered, dismembered and mutilated Palestinians of Gaza – they do not count as people!

The mass military extermination campaign was a follow up of its non-stop total economic embargo and unremitting selective assassination campaign of the previous two years. Both were designed to purge Palestine of its Arab population, first via mass hunger, disease, humiliation and violent intimidation and the proxy power-grab through the Palestinian Authority under a puppet Mahmoud Abbas, the president. Saudi Arabia, Egypt did not protest the Israel attack. Even the PA controlled by Fatah was not critical. PA is persecuting anyone in the West Bank expressing solidarity with the resistance in Gaza, imprisoning students and professors, journalists and workers, etc.


The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank has been working as the perfect agents of Israel and the US, evident from the comment made by a PA official in Ramallah that Israel made a big mistake in ending the attack on Gaza without overthrowing Hamas from the Gaza strip. He said that "the Hamas is still in power is bad for all", meaning bad for the PA as well as Israel-US. The PA is resorting to draconian measures in the West Bank to thwart the spread of sympathy and support for Hamas and the people of Gaza. Hamas, the peoples' representative organization of Gaza, leads a deocratically elected government after defeating Fatah, has won this round of the war. The Hamas may have probably been weakened militarily, but has emerged politically stronger. Israel thinks that "disproportionate" use of force against its adversaries, as it did with Egypt, Jordan, Syria and most recently, Lebanon in 2006, will crush down resistance. The US and Israel has been trying to dislodge Hamas with the help of its agent PA and Mahmoud Abbas, which failed, leading to a direct assault. In the words of the Israel leader: “…because everything is connected to everything…” it is necessary to destroy each and every facet of life, removing all conditions for Palestinians to exist with dignity and freedom. Israel attempted to eliminate the leadership of the Hamas, killing the Gaza commander Major General Tawfik Jabar on the first day of the attack itself. The Interior Minister, Said Siam was also killed, in a targeted attempt to finish off the resistance movement.

The struggle for Tamil Eelam and its fascist repression by the Sri Lankan state: While Gaza was being raged by the fascist Israel state in an attempt to sniff out the liberation movement of the Palestinian people, the Sri Lankan state was no less ruthless in its genocidal war on the Tamils fighting for their free Eelam, which continues till date with the support of Indian state and US imperialism. The occupation of Killinochi and Mullaithivu regions brought the historic Tamil nation in Sri Lanka’s north-east under Sri Lankan military rule, reminding us that the Israeli assault on Gaza is not the only “final solution” pursued by the imperialism and its regional allies across the world. The major suppliers of arms for Sri Lankan government are the US, Israel and India. Israel provides Kfir jets and illegal cluster munitions and also technical trainings for Sri Lankan Special Forces and paramilitary death-squads. As with Hezbollah and Hamas, the LTTE has also been banned as a ‘terrorist’ organisation in several countries in order to curb the scope of peoples’ resistance against imperialist aggression. This fits well to suit Sri Lanka’s strategic significance and also the military, political and theocratic elite that rule the country, maintaining a Western domination of a semi-colonial export-oriented economy.

The Sri Lankan state uses a mythical past drawn from religious texts to claim the whole territory for the Sinhalese, reminding us of Israeli’s claim on Palestinian land on the basis of concocted historical past. But truth is that the Tamil presence in the island dates from antiquity. The assertion of the rights of the Tamils as an oppressed nationality and the struggle for free Eelam has led to the Sri Lanka’s prolonged war against the Tamils involving some of the world’s worst war crimes. As has been the case throughout the conflict, Tamil civilians are facing the brunt of the Sri Lankan force’s brutal and indiscriminate assault. Civilians have been targeted, orphanages and hospitals have been regularly bombed. Torture, rape and random killings have been perpetrated by the state’s military and paramilitary forces. This brutal and inhuman nature of the Sinhala State is in full display in the recent assault launched to wipe off LTTE. Vanni, where the war is now being fought, artillery attacks and aerial bombing have already killed hundreds of civilians, including children. Hospitals, ambulances are being attacked. International organizations are not being allowed to enter those regions. As a result of indiscriminate aerial, naval and ground attacks more than 3000 have been killed and many thousands were injured within past few weeks and displacing over 400,000 who are living in subhuman conditions with no access to food, medicines and drinking water. The so-called international community, the UN, etc. by remaining silent and assenting to Sri Lankan government’s ploy to cut the Eelam area off from any outside contact have proven their true nature as an ally of imperialist forces. As a resident of Vanni noted, "The message the Sri Lankan forces were passing to the civilians of Vanni, by repeated and unprovoked attacks, is that they should subjugate themselves by walking into the territories in the hands of the Sri Lanka Army (SLA)." This was a trap the fighting Tamil people have not fallen into. The Sri Lankan Army intruding deep into the Tamil territory did not find a single person, the whole population moving northwards to avoid its wrath, and possibly to fight back at an opportune time. With the full knowledge that the whole Tamil civilian population is now confined in a region less than 300 kilometers, Sri Lanka continues to pound it with bombardments, the declaration of ‘safe-zones’ notwithstanding.

Indian State’s support to the Imperialist Genocides: The struggles of the Palestinians and Tamils to end occupation are important components of the worldwide anti-imperialist struggle. After the Cold War, the Indian ruling classes have been working as willing agents of US imperialism in South Asia, and with the support of the US trying to implement its expansionist designs in the region. It explains the calculated silence maintained by the Indian state when thousands of civilians were slaughtered in Palestine and Sri Lanka, failing to even condemn the killing of thousands of unarmed civilians. While India continues to maintain strong diplomatic and military ties with Israel in this period, Indian intelligence and security forces were involved in aiding the Sri Lankan forces in its genocide of Tamils in the name of ‘War against Terror.’ The various political parties, media and the so-called civil society and the intellectuals have maintained a criminal silence and failed to take a stand in favour of the oppressed Eelam Tamils. It was however easy to condemn and protest against Israel as it is comfortably distant from the Indian shores.

But even the use of mass-murders, bombs and rapes, blockades and displacements, and disproportionate use of fascist violence amid the US imperialism’s change-of-mask from Bush to Obama, has hardly been able to crush the aspirations of the oppressed people for freedom and dignity. Both in Gaza and Vanni, with little outside support the Palestinians and Tamils are resisting the repeated wars of aggression which has demanded huge sacrifice from the freedom-aspiring people. Surrounded and slaughtered though they are, these attacks have strengthened rather than weakened the liberation movements, steeling the resolve to fight on till the final goal is achieved. As Abu Leila of Hamas told the media from an undisclosed location in Gaza, “The Israelis destroyed a lot of empty buildings but they completely failed to break our organization.” In the same spirit a journalist from Tamil Eelam noted that though the Sri Lankan military is testing the breaking point of the Tamil people, they "are not prepared to surrender themselves.” As history has proven over and over again, the spirit of freedom and justice among the oppressed cannot be crushed by the use of force, and it is only a matter of time when the resistance, whether for a free Palestine or a free Tamil Eelam, succeeds in throwing out the oppressors and achieving liberation

Carry Forward the Workers’ Movement on Campus!

Since November 2006, workers on JNU campus have been demanding and fighting for their basic rights and minimum wages. An issue which initially emerged when 15 construction workers at the School of Physical Sciences construction site demanded their full wages, has over the last two years come to involve all sections of contract workers on the campus. Maalis, safai karamcharis, mess workers, workers in the library, along with the JNUSU and students, have all raised their voice in a persistent struggle for certain basic demands, which are still being denied to them by the administration-contractor nexus. They continued in the face of violence by the administration in the form of retrenchment from work, breaking of their jhuggis, threat and intimidation, and other assaults.

Over the course of the struggle the workers realized the importance of and need for collective action and struggle in an organized manner. The demand for an independent Workers’ Union emerged in October 2007 in some sections of the contract workers. This demand quickly spread through all the sections and the process of unionization began when the workers initiated a monthly meeting for all the contract workers on the campus, where common students and the JNUSU would also be present. In the course of this and subsequent meetings, many more demands and grievances came to be articulated. Over the subsequent months, this came to take a more formal structure with representatives from all worksites and contracts, and formulated a charter of demands.

The contract workers formed their union, the JNU Sangharshil Mazdoor Union (JNUSMU) in September 2008 and demonstrated in front of the ad block for the fulfillment of their charter of demands. These include full payment of the minimum wage, payment on time, provision of ESI/PF facilities and proper account number and cards to every worker, provision of ID cards, basic worksite facilities and first-aid and so on. Hundreds of workers, students and some members of the faculty protested and demanded these rights under the banner of JNUSMU and JNUSU. However, the administration refused to recognize the JNUSMU and negotiate with the workers’ representatives, declaring that it was ready to discuss the issues with JNUSU and any individual worker who might have some grievances but not with the JNUSMU. Not surprisingly, the workers who are vocal and active in this process are being targeted or threatened, and some even removed from work, by the corrupt and feudal contractors with the full support of the administration. The administration also signed an order to cut a day’s pay for many workers for the day of the demonstration.

We know that the administration’s recognition of the united contract workers on the campus can only come through a consistent and strong struggle of the JNUSMU. The JNUSMU has come to the phase of formulating a Constitution to give due direction to the Workers Union and formulating a formal structure, which we think is a necessary step towards a democratic unionization of workers. There is currently an initiative of workers and students which would culminate in the drafting and adopting of the JNUSMU Constitution.

In this context, we call upon the JNUSU to strengthen the solidarity between the students and workers, and to support and assist the JNUSMU in any way necessary in the writing of a formal constitution. In recent times we have seen signs of apathy and disinterest on the part of JNUSU leadership to engage in the ongoing workers’ struggle on the campus, whereas there is a need for the JNUSU to take proactive role in supporting the workers’ movement. The workers and students look forward to the JNUSU to once again take up the issue of the construction workers in the process of drafting the Constitution, who are as yet being denied their full wages by the administration and contractors, in the massive work taken up for the 'beautification' of this 'world class' university. The struggle for implementation of rights and dignity of all contract workers on campus is an ever-continuing one, and needs an active and persistent support and solidarity from all other sections of the campus. We appeal to the JNUSU and the campus community to come out in full force, to assist and support the JNUSMU in this crucial stage of clinching a progressive, democratic Constitution for the united contract workers of the campus.

Public Meeting: Sri Lanka's Genocidal War on Eelam Tamils and the Question of Nation's Self-Determination

Self-determination of nations in the Marxist programme cannot, from a historico-economic point of view, have any other meaning than political self-determination, state independence, and the formation of a national state. - Lenin

Genocidal war on Eelam Tamils by the fascist Sri Lankan state: For the last two weeks, the Sri Lankan armed forces have been engaged in an aggressive war with the people of Tamil Eelam, aimed not only at the combatants but the entire civilian population. As a result, Thousands of Tamils have been killed, wounded and have been forcefully displaced. It is not a war between the Sri Lankan army and the LTTE as the mainstream media tries to portray, but is an attempt by the Sri Lankan state to wipe out the entire Tamil population from the island, in the cover of eliminating the LTTE. Schools, orphanages, hospitals had been made targets of indiscriminate aerial bombings by the Sri Lankan Air Force. For example, 61 children from “Sencholai” (Red Garden), a home for children who lost their parents in war, recently died in one such attack. Sri Lanka Army’s Deep Penetration Unit fired upon a civilian bus travelling from Madhu to Paalampiddi in January 2008 killing 20, of whom 11 were school children, and injured 14 out of whom eight were children. No civilian area has been spared by the air force, which are attacked on an everyday basis. Bunkers have become an inevitable infrastructure in all schools. It is as if the Sri Lankan government wants to create a graveyard in the whole of Tamil populated areas in the Eelam. Such an approach is consistent with the Sri Lankan President’s comment that this is the final assault to finish off the ‘terrorist’ LTTE, only after which it will think of any ‘talks’ with the Tamils! We have heard many times about the ‘final solution’ to the Tamil national question by Sri Lankan presidents through the use of brute force, but the Tamils fighting for their separate country has defeated the wars of aggression every time in the past. This time too, even with thousands of casualties, the Tamil people are bravely resisting the might of the Sri Lankan state, and this time too, its misadventure is bound to culminate in failure. The struggle of the Eelam Tamils for an independent country has emerged out of a historic experience of oppression and subjugation in the hands of the Singhalese nation. This reflects the political aspirations of the Tamil people to be free of Singhalese national oppression, and it can only have a political solution, and not a purely military one. It is therefore necessary for all the democratic voices to recognise and stand by the inalienable right of the Eelam Tamils to self-determination through secession from Sri Lanka, and to oppose the ongoing genocidal war of aggression by the Sri Lankan state on the freedom-aspiring Tamils in the northern and eastern parts of the island country.

The approach of the Sri Lankan state: Irrespective of the parties in power in Colombo, the response of the Singahlese ruling classes in Sri Lanka towards the democratic aspirations of the Tamils have primarily been through the use of brute force. In 1983 itself, the then President Jayawardene declared that “I am not worried about the opinion of the Tamil people …now we cannot think of them. not their life or their opinion …the more you put pressure in north, the happier the Sinhala people will be here… really if I starve the Tamils out, the Sinhala people will be happy”. From the time direct British colonial rule ended in 1948, the successive Singhalese governments have followed a consistent policy of national oppression and discrimination towards the Tamil minorities, denying their basic rights and opportunities for socio-economic development. Land settlement policies implemented from 1950s onwards displaced millions of Tamils in the northern and eastern districts such as Mannur and Mulai Thivu in a planned manner, which were then redistributed among Singhalese peasants and landless labourers. The Sri Lankan parliament declared Buddhism as the state religion, and pursued a policy of discrimination against other religious minorities. The ‘Sinhala-Buddhist Only Act’ formulated in 1956 declared Sinhala as the only official language, which was against the policy so far followed of recognizing both Sinhala and Tamil as state language. Further, in 1970, discrimination against Tamil youths pursuing higher studies in the name of standardization led to a drastic decline in their entry to government jobs. In 1979 the Sri Lankan state enacted the notorious Prevention of Terrorism Act to cope with the growing militancy among the Tamils. This Act and the subsequent crackdown by the army of Tamil youths confirmed the fears of the Tamils that the Sinhalese government was hell bent to exterminate them.

These are only a few examples from the history of a long-running process of calculated oppression and discrimination by the Sri Lankan state towards the Tamil minorities. The Tamils in Sri Lanka initially voiced their opposition peacefully to these oppressive and undemocratic policies, such as the mass resignation of Tamil MPs in 1956 and 1958, a series of demonstrations and strikes in Colombo, etc. The response of the Sri Lankan state then, as now, has been to unleash a reign of terror and brute force through the army on the agitating Tamil population, leading to the first major wave of Tamil refugees to the northern and eastern parts of the island in 1958. The state-sponsored massacre of hundreds of Tamils in 1983 made the question of self-determination through peaceful means decisively redundant, and pushed the Tamils in Sri Lanka to the path of armed struggle for national liberation of Eelam, a path made crimson by the blood of thousands of martyrs. This war has also helped the Sinhalese ruling classes in diverting the attention from the basic issues of livelihood and economic development of the people of the country in general, with a large part of the GDP spent in financing the exorbitant defense budget.

The Tamil national movement for an independent Eelam: With the democratic aspirations and demands of the national minority in Sri Lanka crushed ruthlessly, the Tamil parliamentary parties passed the historic Vettukottai Resolution in 1977 where demand for a separate Tamil Eelam was raised for the first time under the banner of Tamil United Liberation Front. From that time onwards, for more than 30 years the struggle for a separate Eelam is being waged by the Tamils, withstanding untold repression of the Sri Lankan armed forces which is aided directly or indirectly by Indian state and its imperial master, the U.S. The war imposed on the freedom-aspiring Tamils took genocidal proportions in 1995 and 2000, in 2002 when the ceasefire agreement was broken, and again now in 2008. The Sri Lankan state has violated agreements signed with the Tamil representatives over and over again, and now it is imposing the precondition of laying down arms, in one word surrender, before any negotiation. The Tamils have been facing the choice between fighting for freedom at the risk of death or living as slaves throughout the period of this decades-long war. The Tamils have been offered and they have rejected a negotiated settlement through international mediation many times in the past, which could have led to peace, but a peace without justice. An uncompromising struggle for national self-determination, the fight for a free Eelam has emerged as one of the foremost nationality movements in the world, which have been demonized and isolated by the present imperialist world order led by U.S. imperialism. Rather than recognizing and upholding the just demand of the Tamil national minority, the rulers of India represented by Congress, BJP or even the so-called communists CPI(M) has acted as the faithful South Asian agents of U.S. interests in repressing the Tamil Eelam movement.

Indian state, the faithful agent of U.S. imperialism in South Asia: India has been following an expansionist policy towards its neighbouring countries in South Asia, and has even militarily intervened more than once in their internal affairs. In Sri Lanka too, under this policy of furthering its own geo-political interests (which is tied to the interests of U.S. imperialism) Indian state initially supported the armed struggle of the Eelam Tamils. But soon the Indian state joined hands with the Sri Lankan government to suppress the movement, and sent the Indian Peace Keeping Force in 1986 which created mayhem in the Tamil populated areas in Sri Lanka, killing, raping and maiming thousands. After a complete military defeat of the Indian mercenary army it was forced to retreat, but Indian ruling classes, irrespective of the party in power, has till date continued full diplomatic and military support to the fascist Sri Lankan state. Pranab Mukherjee, the defence minister has this week stated that India will not stop military aid to Sri Lanka, and expressed its willingness to help the Rajapakshe government in carrying out the present genocide of Tamils. A Sri Lankan army official has recently revealed that Sri Lankan military officers are being trained in Dehradun and Gurgaon military camps by the Indian army. But this is not all. According to some media reports, hundreds of Indian military personnel are directly involved in the present war, serving in Sri Lankan armed forces in advanced battle fronts. Such overt and covert support is not surprising, given the Indian state’s anti-democratic and pro-imperialist character, which itself has been crushing the genuine demands of various nationalities, such as Kashmiris, Nagas, Manipuris and Assamese and others within its territorial boundaries through the use of superior military might. It is not possible for Sri Lanka to continue its war against the Tamil national minorities without the approval of the Indian state, and Rajapakshe’s constant visits to New Delhi of late makes it clear that Indian government is actively supporting the present war. And being the foremost custodian of U.S. interests in South Asia, it is not difficult to conclude that India is given a go-ahead in this by Washington itself.

The so-called Marxist parties such as CPI, CPI(M) or CPI ML (Liberation) too has abandoned the Leninist principle of supporting the democratic demand of national self-determination, including secession, and have failed to force the Indian state from following a policy of non-intervention in Sri Lanka. They are equally responsible for castigating the movement for Tamil Eelam as ‘terrorism’, thereby helping in its brutal repression. Major regional parties in Tamil Nadu, whether DMK or AIDMK which never fails to celebrate Tamil nationalism to garner votes, have utterly failed to take any decisive action to prevent the ongoing massacre and displacement of thousands of Tamils in Eelam. Close to than 60,000 people have died and nearly 3 lakh have been displaced so far during this war, most of whom are Tamils. The media also has played its devious role in hiding the true situation of Eelam Tamils, which is uncritically presenting the biased versions spoon-fed by the Sri Lankan government, or completely blacking out this calculated extermination of an entire population in the name of ‘war against terror’. The Indian media, such as the casteist and Brahmanical Hindu group run by N. Ram, too is guilty of justifying this brutal repression, rather than building a public opinion against this unceasing cold-blooded massacre of hundreds of civilians on an everyday basis.

The need of the Hour: The Sri Lankan government, in its attempt to silently carry out this latest military misadventure to sniff out the Tamil resistance, has expelled all humanitarian agencies including the Red Cross as well as the international media from the war front. Of late the Sri Lankan forces have also stopped providing data about casualties in the ongoing war. Such criminal attempts of systematically silencing democratic and genuine rights of the people by use of force will inevitably fail. We must demand an immediate and unconditional declaration of cease-fire from the Sri Lankan government and a stop to the genocide in Tamil Eelam. At the same time, following the principles of Marxism-Leninism, which stands unequivocally in favour of the right to self-determination of the oppressed nationalities, we must raise our voice in support of the demand of Eelam Tamils for independence. It is high-time that the Sri Lankan and Indian ruling classes as well as their master U.S. realize that only a free and independent Tamil Eelam can ensure permanent resolution to the nationality question in Sri Lanka, and only a unity based on justice and equality of the two nations can usher in peace in the island. Moreover, only an integration of the revolutionary class struggle with the national liberation struggles can effectively fight feudalism and imperialism, two primary enemies of the people in the Third World countries.

Condemn the attack on Prof. S A R Geelani by ABVP lumpens in Delhi University! Punish the ABVP lumpens!

The communal fascist lumpens of the ABVP and RSS unmasked their fascist face yet again in DU. On the 6th of November, a seminar on ‘Communalism, Fascism and Democracy: Rhetoric and Reality’ was organised by a group of DU students. SAR Geelani, lecturer of Zakir Hussein College and DU was chairing the seminar. As soon as Prof. Geelani entered, some ABVP lumpens entered the hall. One of them went up to the dais and spat on Geelani’s face. The rest led by Nupur Sharma, the DUSU president, went on a rampage across the room, breaking the mikes, furniture and glass panes of doors and windows. The police being a silent onlooker, finally the students pushed these goons out of the room. The doors were closed from inside and the seminar went on successfully. The lumpens however kept breaking the remaining windows from outside and hurled abuses against Geelani in particular and the Muslim community in general.

What happened in DU did not come as a shock or a surprise. It was indeed the continuation of what happened in DU history department last semester when these same goons vandalized it and assaulted its HoD Prof. Jafri, because they did not agree with a portion of the history syllabus. It is the same communal and fascist ideology that propelled their friends in JNU to go on rampage in the presidential debate last year because they did not agree with a statement made by a speaker. And all this makes their fascist ideology too clear for everyone to see. You can not say things which I don’t agree to! You can not practice a religion which I don’t belong to! If you demand anything which I don’t like, you are a terrorist! It is the same politics of silencing people of different faith, ideology or culture which we have seen in so many instances of communal pogroms.

However the politics of the sangh parivar is NOT one of communalism alone. It is equally casteist and patriarchal. The same fascist ideology that led into the mass killing of Muslims with the help of the state in Gujarat was operating behind the mass murder of dalits in Jehanabad or Laxmanpur-Bathe. It was the same people who mass-raped in Jhabua, who try to force women to become sati even today. They are the same lot who in the name of salwa judum are trying to force the tribals out of the forests in Bastar to capture the land for the MNCs. The practice of whipping up of communal sentiments to cover up the lack of real development in every aspect of social lives of this country had been an old and regular tactic for the Indian ruling classes. The right wing parties, be it the Congress or the BJP and their various allies have always used the communal card to misdirect the real grievances of the people reeling under deplorable conditions. Just like the Nazis did with the Jews in Germany, the Hindutva brigade picks out the Muslim community as the scapegoat for all the problems, real or imaginary. And then we have the Mosque demolitions; the post-Ayodhya riots; Gujarat genocide; the mysterious bomb blasts and the fake encounters… The list seems never-ending.

They have full backing of the administration and the state. Be it JNU or even DU these lumpens are not large in number. But they are emboldened because of the institutionalized protection they are ensured of. In JNU after a prolonged enquiry and despite a positive report by the Shankar Basu Committee, all the identified goons of the ABVP who had done the rampage in presidential debate were let off. The Chandrabhaga hostel incident has been hushed up completely by the administration. In DU too no action has been taken against the goons who vandalized History department. And the larger scenario of state sponsored communal-fascism is too evident by now. The Gujarat genocide was made possible by the active involvement of the state machinery. The salwa judum has been created and armed by the state to forcefully evict the tribals. The Malegaon and Nanded blasts have not called for any action against the accused.

Playing the game of ‘democracy’: 60 years since the so-called independence and the role reversals of NDA and UPA for the last ten years only exposes the communal colour of the parliamentary parties. Be it the right or the “left”-wing, the Muslims Christians other religious minorities in this ‘democracy’ are vested with only two identities. They are either vote-bank or terrorist to all the parties that are in or are craving for power. The parliamentary ‘Left’ has equally failed to see the communal specter being rooted into the material conditions of the society. This willful blindness is understandable, because they too are intrinsically a part of the same system that breeds the fascists. Naturally, their opposition to the hindu right is restricted to supporting the Congress in place of BJP! The same congress, whose neo-liberal policies create the ground for communal-fascism. Buddhadev Bhatatcharya is following the same policy in his state in a bid to woo investors. And in the process when it comes to repression, they quickly adopt the same politics of communal-fascism. The peasants of Nandigram who were fighting for their land were termed both ‘Maoist’ and ‘Islamic fundamentalist’ by the CPM government. Kerala government too recently has arrested two people who had Geelani’s photo on their computer, as potential terrorists!

Then there are the parliamentary exigencies. The so-called ‘left’ parties (actually, all parties) frequently ally with former or future partners of BJP, making a mockery of the struggle against communalism. Even the more-radical-than-thou CPIML-Liberation (the parent party of AISA) who have been courting the CPI & CPM for national level alliances, ended up allying with Nitish Kumar’s Samata party, who went on to join the NDA and now rules Bihar. Liberation’s ally in the last Bihar assembly elections, Ram Vilas Paswan’s LJP is a former ally of BJP. Such is the magic of India’s parliamentary politics!

There is only force that the Sanghi lumpens are scared of. It is the collective strength of the people. Unless we protest, we assert, force them to retreat, they will keep assaulting the democratic spaces and try to throttle all the voices that seek to challenge them. The attack on SAR Geelani was not just an attack on an individual. It is a concerted attack on our right to expression and dissent, on rights of people to challenge the state-driven policies. We have to decide which side we are on!

Condemn the attack on Prof. S A R Geelani by the ABVP!

Demand punishment of the ABVP goons!

Resist the communal-fascist politics of the sangh-giroh!

Fight against the Indian state’s witch-hunt of Muslims in the name of fighting ‘Islamic terrorism’!

Stand in solidarity with the people of Orissa, Karnataka, Gujarat

and other places fighting against communal-fascist RSS-VHP-BJP!

Join

PROTEST

MARCH

9.30pm 10 Nov . 2008 (Tonight)

From Ganga Dhaba, JNU

Condemn the assault and vandalism of the fascist ABVP-RSS in Delhi Univesity!

Today on 6^th of November students and teachers of Delhi University organised a public meeting on Communalism, Fascism and Democracy: Rhetoric and Reality at Arts Faculty. Ajit Sahi, Tehelka reporter, Rajesh Ramchandran, Mail Today reporter, Nishat Quaisar of Jamia Milia Islamia were among the speakers. As the Chair of the meeting, when SAR Geelani (lecturer at Zakir Husain College, University of Delhi), came inside the room and took his seat, one of the ABVP lumpens sitting in the front row came forward and spat on his face twice. It was a planned attempt to disrupt and vandalise the public meeting – ABVP goons were sitting inside the room and they rose to hurl abuses at the participants and physically attack them. DUSU President Nupur Sharma (of ABVP) was leading the fascist mob. The ABVP lumpens entered the room and declared that SAR Geelani could not speak!

The ABVP goons attacked the women students and participants, broke the microphone and hurled chairs. They also manhandled media persons who were covering the meeting. Sahi and Ramchandran, who were speakers at the meeting, were threatened by the communal-fascist goons. At this point, the Pro-Vice Chancellor and the Proctor called one of the organisers and told him that the meeting could not go on because it was creating a 'law and order' problem! It was the courage and resistance of the audience who insisted on continuing the meeting that even after such intimidation, threats and open display of vandalism that the meeting could be continued. The ABVP goons were pushed out of the room by the audience and the meeting continued. The lumpens however continued to throw stones at the room, broke window panes, tried to break the doors and hurled abuses on the speakers and the organizers in the presence and support of a large contingent of Delhi Police. SAR Geelani in particular was targeted. All their attempts at scuttling the meeting however ended in failure and Geelani delivered his speech to an applauding audience, much like in JNU where the ABVP lumpens had to flee due to the collective resistance of the university community. It is to be noted that last year too, the faculty members and students of the Delhi University History Department were targeted by the same goons who are yet to be punished.

The communal-fascist politics of the sangh-giroh in Gujarat, Orissa, Karnataka, Jammu and other parts of the country was in display today in Delhi University. The state and its security forces have been shielding and helping in their crimes against religious minorities in particular and against the democratic rights of the people in general. This politics has to be fought back at all levels, much like the students and teachers of DU did today. We call upon the JNU students to join a protest march on 7 Nov at Delhi University at 11:00 am, starting from Vivekananda statue, Arts Faculty, DU organized by the Delhi University Community against the fascist politics of the sangh-parivar with the support of Delhi Police, and to demand that:

1. The DU administration lodge a FIR against the ABVP culprits, especially persons like Nupur Sharma, Vikas Dahiya, Desh Ratan, Sonu Singh, Ashutosh and others.

2. A time-bound enquiry into today’s act of vandalism and assault and action against the guilty.

3. To ensure that such acts of assault and disruption are not repeated in future

A University that does not allow dissent becomes a prison!

The recent stay on JNUSU elections for violation of the Lyngdoh recommendations is yet another instance of direct state intervention to curb democratic movements, of students this time, to crush the voices of dissent. This is yet another attempt of the state to depoliticize students’ politics and to curtail our rights question and protest.

Is Lyngdoh really aiming at curbing money and muscle power as many would like us to believe? Well, the Amicus Curie in Supreme Court who is entitled to oversee the violations of Lyngdoh Committee recommendations has not sent a single letter to the universities that have not started election process following the recommendations of the report or to the universities like DU which have openly and blatantly flouted the recommendations by using as much money and muscle power as it used to do. But it did stay the JNUSU elections because the real aim of Lyngdoh is to curb politicization of the students and create students’ unions which are bureaucratized, depoliticized and works as a puppet of university authorities. Where students’ politics is cocooned within a limited frame and not allowed to debate, discuss and vote on issues of social and political importance.

All laws come with a ‘progressive face’. No laws formulated and implemented by the state openly claims to repress. The POTA, TADA, MCOCA etc where brought forward to ensure ‘national integrity’. The AFSPA was brought with the pretext of ‘national security’, the SEZ act came in with the aim of ‘development’. But these laws are actually aimed to repress, to deny the democratic rights to the people, to throttle the voices of dissent, and to liquidate people’s movements against the powers that be. The Lyngdoh committee recommendations with all its so-called progressive aims are ultimately aimed at curbing the democratic movements of the students and to silence the voices of critique and dissent that emerges through these movements.

Is it a matter that concerns the ‘political lot’ of JNU only? The stay on JNUSU election is not just an order against the election process. It is a direct assault on the students’ movement and politics. And politics in this campus is far wide spread than just elections. Some people say Lyngdoh has praised the JNU model. But that model is not only about the technicalities that ensure a money-muscle free peaceful election. It is an evolved model of political consciousness, of the culture of debate, the courage to question and critique anything, the right to protest and to fight for rights and justice, to fight against oppression and injustice. And not surprisingly these are the things that Mr.Lyngdoh’s recommendations ultimately aim to curb. JNU student movement has fought against the way JNU is being subtly corporatised, against the monopoly of nestle outlet, when workers’ rights are openly being violated, when reservation is craftily denied, when communal lumpens are shielded by the administration. Any issues pertaining to students’ welfare, be it the fight against privatization of the university, fight against fee-hike, fight to build new hostels, to hike the MCM amount, to recognize Alimiyat –Fazilat certificates, or the fight to ensure and regularize scholarships etc. have all been clinched with collective struggles of students and under the banner of JNUSU. And all these struggles were political fights against a casteist, communal and patriarchal administration which is hell-bent on corporatising and eventually privatizing the university in due course as per the Birla-Ambani Report. Lyngdoh and his reactionary recommendations are only here to facilitate that. The rich political debates on campus where students not only build their opinions but also vote on the larger questions of imperialist aggression, on state repression, the neo-economic policies, the nuke deal, SEZs, land grab and the fight against it, the movements on nationality question etc. are also contradictory to the ‘integrationist’ and ‘nationalist’ politics that Mr. Lyngdoh recommends.

The way ahead: The stay on JNUSU elections has to be vacated in the court through a legal battle. But so far no stay order on any students’ union has been won in the court only. The legal battle will have to go parallel with a strong political battle exposing the real intentions of the state intervention in students’ politics. It is NOT money-muscle power and criminalization of students politics that they seek to attack. It is the politicization of students’ politics, our right to protest and dissent that they seek to assault. And JNU is not the first university that is standing against the reactionary recommendations of Lyngdoh. The SU elections of Allahabad University have been stayed on the pretext of ‘preparing formalities conducive for Lyngdoh recommendations’ for the last two years. The students of Kanpur and Lucknow University have been brutally lathi-charged by the police while they were protesting against the implementation of the same. It is by rejecting the Lyngdoh recommendations everywhere in toto and fighting against the all forms of state’s repression that we can democratize students’ politics and our present society.

DSU's Resolution Rejecting Lyngdoh Committee Recommendations in JNU gets passed in the UGBM Unanimously!

The students of JNU have unanimously passed with overwhelming enthusiasm and show of unity the DSU resolution placed in the UGBM that concluded in the wee hours of 26th October, after a night-long debate. The text of the resolution is:

'The JNUSU Constitution expresses the democratic ethos and norms of the JNU students evolved over 37 years of collective struggle. The Supreme Court’s stay on the JNUSU Elelctions and the attempt to impose Lyngdoh Committee recommendations in JNU is against the letter and spirit of the JNUSU Constitution. This UGBM therefore resolves to reject the implementation of Lyngdoh Committee recommendations in JNU in any form.'

The struggle must now be intensified to defeat Lyngdoh committee recommendations not only in JNU but everywhere, in its totality. We must unitedly fight to finally scrap Lyngdoh, which is against the very spirit of students' movements, its autonomy and voices of dissent.

Reject Lyngdoh in toto! Defend our JNUSU and its Constitution! Resist the attack on our democratic tradition!

The JNU students’ movement is today facing a grave threat in the form of Lyngdoh Committee Recommendations. The Supreme Court stay on the JNUSU Elections is a direct attack on our democratic rights, our democratic space on the campus. Lyngdoh, if imposed, will completely crush and suppress our institutions like JNUSU and its Constitution, which has been at the forefront in the JNU student’s struggle against administration’s anti-student policies, as well as that of the Indian state. JNUSU represents our collective voice of resistance and is the most formidable platform of struggle, and we must defend its weakening or dismantling through the reactionary Lyngdoh. We need to be aware that in this planned attempt to curb our democratic institutions, the Youth for Equality (YFE) has over and over again betrayed the current collective struggle of students in upholding the JNU constitution and the democratic traditions against the stay and the Lyngdoh Committee recommendations. They presented their own lawyer on the day of yesterday’s hearing on the case in Supreme Court who supported full implementation of Lyngdoh. In subsequent all organization meetings they had taken inconsistent and dubious stands on the issue and have lied and contradicted their position. They have publicly called the previous two JNUSUs ‘illegal’ and have slandered against an ex-Chief Election Committee member. So lets isolate YFE in our struggle against Lyngdoh and in defense of the JNUSU.

But the struggle against Lyngdoh cannot be confined only to JNU. In the garb of controlling criminalization of student politics, the Lyngdoh recommendations strengthen the hands of the University administrations. In universities like JNU have a history of progressive struggles, and that has been possible precisely because the students’ movement have successfully prevented the administration from interfering in students’ affairs, and whenever such attempts were made, the students fought back. Now JNU’s student movement must spearhead the countrywide struggle against the imposition of Lyngdoh, and any compromise or confusion in this matter will pave way for the destruction of our hard-earned democratic space.

In this historic juncture, DSU appeals to the student community of JNU to speak out against Lyngdoh Committee recommendations and the Supreme Court stay of the JNUSU Elections on its basis. Come out and pass a mandate in the UGBM tonight in total rejection of Lyngdoh Committee recommendations. Only through this we will be able to defend our JNUSU and the JNUSU Constitution.

Unite for an uncompromising fight against the reactionary Lyngdoh Committee Recommendations! Join tomorrow's UGBM in large numbers!

The Supreme Court served a notice to the JNUSU and JNU administration stating that the JNUSU elections are in violation of the recommendations of the Lyngdoh Committee. Today was a hearing of the case. The JNUSU EC and representatives of all organizations had come together to respond to the situation and legal counsel was engaged to argue on behalf of the JNUSU and the student community. This assault on JNU’s tradition of independent elections is a cleverly timed one: in the absence of a elected JNUSU to lead a struggle.

Today’s verdict confirms our position expressed in our pamphlet yesterday that not informing the students about the imminent threat of Lyngdoh and not mobilizing them actively against it immediately is not a correct approach to fight this onslaught on the hard earned democratic space of JNU. In the coming days, an uncompromising struggle can be the only answer to the attack on JNU’s democratic tradition and institution.

The Blatant HYPOCRISY and BETRAYAL of Y4E: Till last night the Youth for quality (Y4E) was standing in consensus with the rest of the organizations rejecting Lyngdoh Committee recommendations in all organization meetings. Today in the morning however Justice Lahoti appeared in Supreme Court and said he was representing Y4E, and that his clients are in favour of Lyngdoh Recommendations in JNU! This immediately weakened the case of JNUSU and the Judge got a clear pretext to impose the stay order. This complete betrayal of the movement is shameful and condemnable, but is expected from the Y4E who had always been doing sectarian, unprincipled and discriminatory politics. Being pushed to wall in the AO meeting they admitted that YFE supports Lyngdoh Committee recommendations in JNU. Organizations like this must be isolated and we strongly feel that no movement against Lyngdoh can be fought in the same platform with YFE which is inviting Lyngdoh to JNU. Therefore, although DSU has been and will be a part of all the struggles that are going to be launched in the coming days in JNU against Lyngdoh and although we agree to the broad spirit of the joint statement issued by other organizations WE REFUSED TO BE A SIGNATORY TO THAT SINCE Y4E HAS ALSO SIGNED IT. The struggle against Lyngdoh is going to be the prime and most crucial challenge in the days to come and we insist that only a principled and uncompromising struggle rejecting Lyngdoh in toto in JNU and elsewhere can safeguard students’ movement across the country.

The context of the Lyngdoh Committee is one of the state’s withdrawal from education. The World Bank and its cronies are aggressively pushing for privatization of education. The Birla-Ambani report on Higher Education clearly identifies student politics as the chief impediment to privatization. A politicized student body is a stumbling block for neo-liberal designs; Lyngdoh is designed to depoliticize students and crush consciously articulated political dissent and opposition. Lyngdoh claims to be a champion of democratic space for students, directed only against money and muscle power. But the stated aim of the Lyngdoh recommendations is actually to do away with or at least limit the politicization of student bodies and the intervention of political parties in student elections. JNU has a history of struggles against fee-hikes and the privatization of education led by a politicized students union. Had it not been for the presence of a political JNUSU with clear ideological affiliations with left movements, this university would have been privatized a decade ago and many of us would not have been able to afford an education in JNU.

The use of money and muscle continues in numerous places despite Lyngdoh; because powerful ruling class student organizations can easily buy and beat their way around Lyngdoh and indeed any other law. It is the dissenting student voices that face a crackdown. In JNU if elections are free and fair, it is not because of some code of conduct but because the student body rejects lurid shows of wealth and power. The only answer to the criminalization of student politics is a pervasive politicization of student politics and NOT the regulation of student politics by the state. We must fight the imposition of the Lyngdoh recommendations in JNU and in every other campus.

We appeal to the students of JNU to come out in large numbers in tomorrow’s UGBM and participate in all the struggles in the coming days against the onslaught of Lyngdoh. We the students must give an unified mandate to decisively defeat the onslaught of Lyngdoh. This is a decisive moment in the history JNU’s student movement, and the students are called to play their historic role in defense of our democratic space, our JNUSU and its unique Constitution.

Reject Lyngdoh! Oppose the Stay on JNUSU Elections!

JNUSU EC has resigned. The old JNUSU Council takes over the charge of the Union! The UGBM scheduled on 25 October (sat.) will be conducted by the JNUSU and Chaired by the JNUSU President.

In an all organization meeting convened at 8pm today evening on 25th October 2008, the JNUSU all the Election Committee members have submitted their resignation citing their inability to continue with this year’s JNUSU election process in the wake of the Supreme Court’s stay order today. The JNUSU Council now takes over the charge as per the JNU Constitution after the EC has resigned. It is for the UGBM to decide till how long this JNUSU will continue in office, apart from deliberating and deciding on the further course of action. In this hour of grave danger and crisis to our much cherished democratic tradition and institution, we repose our faith in JNUSU to spearhead the struggle against the imposition of Lyngdoh and in defense of our democratic space. We at the same time believe that a Struggle Committee be formed with representatives from all organizations to work in co-ordination with the JNUSU leadership in mobilizing the campus community for this struggle. It is only the path of an uncompromising and principled struggle challenging the Lyngdoh Committee Recommendations as well as the Supreme Court stay order both inside and outside the court that we will collectively be able to overcome this crisis.

In a time of this unprecedented attack on the JNUSU and its Constitution in the wake of the stay order of the Supreme Court, we demand that the JNUSU:
Immediately Convene a Emergency JNUSU Council meeting!
Establish a Struggle Committee comprising of representatives of all organizations to lead the struggle against Lyngdoh and to uphold the JNUSU Constitution!

When Lyngdoh Comes Knocking…

The Supreme Court has served a notice stating that the JNUSU elections for the last three years including the present one has been violating the recommendations of the Lyngdoh Committee. The Election Committee has received this notice on the 21st of October. An All Organization meeting was called on the same day. This latest assault on JNU’s democratic institution is a very cleverly timed one: there is no elected Students Union at the moment and there was little preparedness to counter Lyngdoh. An effective struggle against Lyngdoh will be constrained by the lack of an elected JNUSU. Tomorrow (24th October) is the first hearing. Legal counsel has been engaged by a committee formed in the first AO meeting (consisting of the CEC, ex-CEC and one representative from every organization). This battle is a legal battle, but it is at the same time a political battle. It is only our political mobilisation that can influence the legal proceedings in favour of the present JNU election procedure.

However, there is no plan for a political mobilization of the students against Lyngdoh or the Supreme Court notice at this crucial juncture, and this is a cause of concern. Various organizations, including the pseudo-left SFI and ‘radical’ AISA has maintained a calculated silence on this issue. They have argued that the student community should not be informed for this would create a “panic situation”, let alone mobilizing the campus community to defend our democratic space. Both AISA and SFI believe that by remaining silent on the issue and not confronting the reality will save us from this onslaught. By doing so, they are not only fooling themselves, but also abdicating their responsibility to lead the students against the very real danger of an interim stay to the present election process. We believe that this IS a dire situation! The case will be handled by a bench notorious for giving some of the most reactionary judgments in recent memory. It is a distinct possibility that the JNUSU elections might be either stayed, or conducted according to the Lyngdoh recommendations. Earlier, the scuttling of OBC reservations, the scrapping of the offer system by the administration, and also the coming of a Nestle outlet to campus was possible because the student community was kept in the dark by the JNUSU leadership of that time. The same applies to this attempt by the state to crush the student movement in JNU. The life-blood of the JNUSU, the JNU students’ movement has always been the students. Political organizations sitting in closed door meetings have decided to withhold information from the larger student community, but this approach of surrender and compromise cannot effectively combat the threat of Lyngdoh.

The Lyngdoh Committee recommendations are highly regressive and against democratic functioning of students’ unions, because it justifies and allows for administrative control of students' elections. The fixing of eligibility criteria will result in a pro-administration and depoliticized union, for a functional union can never follow such parameters set by the university administration. The administration will have the power to cancel an elected candidate if he/she is found to have academic arrears or insufficient attendance. Students with disciplinary action against them cannot contest. Students who stand up to the establishment regularly have disciplinary action and false cases against them. Academic performance of students will also be a factor in their candidature being accepted. These and numerous other provisions constitute a frontal attack on the politicization and autonomy of student politics.

The context of the Lyngdoh Committee: The World Bank and its cronies are aggressively pushing for privatization of education. The Birla-Ambani Report on Higher Education clearly identifies student politics as the primary impediment to privatization of education. A politicized and militant student body is a stumbling block for neo-liberal policies; Lyngdoh is designed to depoliticize students and crush consciously articulated political dissent and opposition.

Lyngdoh claims to be a champion of democratic space for students, directed only against money and muscle power. It is deeply disturbing that this claim has been accepted so uncritically by “progressive” “left” organizations. A stated aim of the Lyngdoh recommendations is to do away with or at least limit the ‘unnecessary’ politicization of student bodies. JNU has a history of struggles against fee-hikes and privatization, struggles led by a politicized students union. Had it not been for the presence of a political JNUSU with clear ideological affiliations with left movements, this university would have been privatized a decade ago and many of us would not have been able to afford an education in JNU.

The claim of combating money and muscle power is a smoke screen. It is a pretext for the state to control dissent among students. It is the student wings of ruling class parliamentary parties that use money and muscle: the NSUI, ABVP, SFI (where their parent party is in power) and so on. Student politics is also a reflection of the larger politics. Administrations have nearly unlimited punitive power even without Lyngdoh; the fact is that these punitive powers are not used against ruling class elements, but students and organizations that stand against the establishment. The JNU administration chose not to punish those found guilty of the presidential debate violence, while students protesting for workers rights were served suspension notices the day after they confronted the Registrar. So if the JNU administration or any administration is given more powers, who will they be used against??

The use of money and muscle continues in numerous places despite Lyngdoh; because powerful ruling class student organizations can easily buy and beat their way around Lyngdoh and indeed any other law. It is the dissenting student voices that face a crackdown. In JNU if elections are free and fair, it is not because of some code of conduct but because the student body rejects lurid shows of wealth and power. The only answer to the criminalization of student politics is a further politicization of student politics and NOT the regulation of student politics by the state or the admibistration. We must collectively fight the imposition of the Lyngdoh recommendations, not just in JNU but in every other campus.

Defeat the Communal Fascists! Reject the Politics of Opportunism and Compromise of AISA & SFI!

The attempt to scuttle UGBMs and other democratic forums of the student community has been set in place by both AISA and SFI and this year the school GB Meetings were no different.

In SSS and SAA the convenors from SFI left the campus without informing the student community beforehand. Running away from the forums to hold them accountable has now become a tradition for SFI—in 2004 the JNUSU VP from their organization had left the campus in a similar fashion. At least that time SFI had accepted their mistake whereas this year they did not even care to clarify or apologise for such irresponsible behaviour. The school GB is both for the school to hold the elected Councillors accountable for the last year’s action (or inaction as the case may be) as well as for the students of the school to deliberate and voice the larger issues of concern. Earlier school GBs and UGBMs used to be held each semester. Now they are held only once a year. Therefore the annual school GBM becomes all the more important and SFI’s undemocratic and irresponsible politics has cost SAA the chance to have such a debate this year. In SIS the students have not seen the Councillor from SFI and one Councillor from AISA in almost any program this year. Most undemocratically the SIS Councillor and one councilor in SLL&CS from SFI did not even bother to attend the GBM.

In other schools where the debate did happen such as SSS, AISA-led JNUSU attempted as far as possible to scuttle all democratic norms. Most undemocratically common students get much less time to speak than the school councilors and JNUSU office-bearers. However, this was taken to the limit in the SSS GBM where the JNUSU president who was chairing the meeting in the absence of the convener granted himself unlimited time to speak and spoke for 33 minutes when common students were given just 4 minutes each! The logic given was that the president was responding to the questions posed to the JNUSU. However these questions had been directed to the JNUSU as a whole not just the JNUSU President and they are together given ample time to answer them. At the UGBM the students have already witnessed the extreme arrogance and indiscriminate flaunting of the ‘discretion’ of the president starting from not reading out and even tearing up resolutions at his will to putting JNUSU’s own resolutions to vote without clarifying what they meant. The SSS GBM saw an extension of the arrogance and undemocratic functioning of the JNUSU office bearers. After the GBMs are over the students community is not even informed of the names of the new EC members.

The school GBMs are increasingly being turned into just another forum to gauge the electoral support for both AISA and SFI. The practice of actively keeping students away from the debate and asking them to come only at the time of voting is deeply problematic and condemnable. In SIS, for instance, a miniscule number of students actually came for the debate but at the time of voting this number was around 150. 150 however is a very small proportion of the total school population. This clearly indicates the extreme de-politcization and undermining of democratic platforms. In SSS and SLL&CS as usual the practice of herding students in during the vote continued. Many people could not enter SLL&CS including some known AISA activists who then tried to force their way inside resulting into an unwarranted tussle among students of mainly AISA and SFI. What followed was a shameless show of desperate fighting among the activists of these two organisations in which some women activists were also heckled.

What is even more shameful is the way in which new students are pressurized to vote. New students rooming with old students as TR until they get hostel is an old practice and part of the JNU tradition. But forcing freshers to translate the ‘favour’ into organizational allegiance by voting for the respective organizations of their seniors is highly feudal practice. New students stay in other’s rooms because the administration has failed to provide them with hostels so far, particularly this year the hostel crisis is acute. But that does not give any organization the right to curb the independent political development of the new students and enforce their own organizational allegiance on them.

In SSS, SLL&CS and SIS reports presented by AISA and that of SFI in SSS were defeated by the students. Their defeat reflects the failure to convince students on their own agenda despite their desperate attempts to rally voters at the end. SFI’s politics of opportunism and betrayal of the student community is well known. However AISA, which came with a full mandate, has failed on all the issues facing the campus whether it be reservation or dealing with ABVP lumpenism. AISA’s claims that they have “forced” the administration to “name” the culprits in the Presidential Debate case is as dubious as their position on the reservation and new admission policy issue. They have given full-fledged support to the administration’s line and hence allowed the scuttling of reservation as well as seat cuts in all the schools. Through their reluctance to take up the issue of ABVP lumpenism they have allowed ABVP to go scot-free in various cases of caste and communal violence.

AISA has in the past year demonstrated tremendous ability to follow in traditions set by SFI! The scuttling of the UGBM is only one instance. When AISA talks of the ‘unholy nexus’ between SFI, DSU, NSUI, ABVP against a ‘progressive left secular’ AISA they just resonate the same flawed logic SFI used to give till a year back when they held the office. The fact is all the organisations oppose or support the Convener’s report on their own grounds and to invent or imagine ‘alliance’ and conspiracy in that is a shameless way to justify their defeats.

The progressive demands of the student community such as full implementation of the reservation policy cannot be met by such opportunism of the pseudo-left AISA and SFI. Neither can the rising communal politics of the right-wing be defeated through the politics of compromise. Politics which seeks to de-link the struggles outside the campus, such as in Chengara, Nandigram, Kashmir, Orissa and other parts of the country and struggles of other oppressed sections in the campus, for instance of contract workers, from the student movement, can never sustain a strong militant struggle of the students. It is time to build a real, radical alternative against the communal fascists as well as the pseudo-left.

DSU Press Statement for JNUSU Elections 2008

Another Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union (JNUSU) election is around the corner. This election is happening at a time when the people of this country are the target of all round aggression of the State—in the form of anti-people economic policies, the mayhem in the market and the Hindu communal fascist onslaught on the people, especially the minorities with the active connivance of the state.

The richest of the regions of the country—Jharkhand, Orissa, Chhattisgarh—in terms of mineral, water and forest wealth, are inhabited by the poorest of people. Ever since the transfer of power in 1947, these people have been robbed several times of their rights and livelihoods. Yet again, the tribals in Chhattisgarh have become target of the worst attack of the state in the form of Salwa Judum where thousands of them have got displaced from their lands.

The worst anti-people policies, euphemistically called the ‘third generation reforms’, have become a bane for the peasantry, the toiling masses and the most deprived and oppressed sections of this country. More than a lakh and a half peasants have committed suicide. Even today despite all fan fare of the government to stem this, more and more news of the suicide death of farmers are coming from Andhra Pradesh, Vidharbha, Punjab etc. Hundreds of MOUs have been signed by the various state and central governments with the Multi National Corporations and the local compradors which is nothing but an open call to loot and plunder the valuable resources and livelihoods of the people to satiate the needs of the imperialist market.

Scared of the unprecedented defiance of lakhs and lakhs of the people of Kashmir who have thronged the streets of the Valley demanding Azaadi, the only way the so-called largest democracy in the world could respond was through brute military force. The politics of bomb blasts have become a good excuse for the communal, fascist state to make the Muslim community easy fodder for the so-called war against terror. The recent fake encounters in Jamia Nagar only exposes this communal fascist chararcetr of the indian state too clearly.

Any protests or dissent has been met with the worst kinds of draconian laws such as the ULPA, AFSPA, DAA, PSA, MCOCA, POCA etc. The bursting of the bubble of IT, ITES and tourism with the hurricane effect of the sub prime crisis, the so-called ‘high profile’ jobs of the new economy also have taken a tumble. Retrenchment is the order of the day. It is at this juncture that the present JNUSU elections are taking place.

Student politics cannot afford to remain confined within the four walls of the campus. Education, especially higher education should objectively reflect on the unfolding social realities so as to help build a society that is free from all forms of exploitation, oppression and mistreatment. DSU being committed to the politics of building a new world—free of urban-rural divide, free from all forms of national and social oppressions, of the domination of small business by big monopoly capital, free of the divide between mental and manual labour—where the interests of the oppressed, exploited and discriminated hold paramount place once again stresses the need to link the struggle of the student community for a scientific and democratic education with the everyday larger struggles of the toiling masses for fundamental revolutionary social transformation.

Campus issues: This was the first year that OBC reservation was to be implemented in JNU, as in all other campuses. Instead of the implementing 27% reservation in one go, as promised to the students by the administration, only 12 % resertvation with 18% seat increase was offered this year. But through various technical hurdles the administration ensured that not even 10% of the seat reserved for OBCs were actually fulfilled. This has been a huge step back for JNU for till last year, through the system of deprivation points, each new batch for the past few years had 20-24% OBC students. DSU has consistenly argued for the need of a vigilant student community and a millitant student union, to ensure the implementation of reservation. Once the reservation bill has been passed, the struggle for its implementation poses a long and difficult chanllenge. Unfortunately, this year in JNU the students union was not upto the challenge; at many points of time over the past semester they have compromised with the administration. They have misinformed the student community, wilfully withheld information from the students and worst of all, they have failed to live upto their radically pro-reservation claims.

This year, according to figures released by the administration itself, even the quotas for SC/ST and physically challenged (PH) students have also not been fulfilled. In fact the administration attempted to do away with PH category quota altogether and it is only due to the vigilance of the PH students themselves that 1.1% PH students finally entered the campus. It has also come to light that violation of varying magnitude in the fulfillment of SC/ST quotas have persisted over the the last many years. DSU believes that the fight to implement reservation is a difficult one and requires an uncompromising leadership. A leadership that understands reservation as a way to aggressively democratise higher education, not a leadership that bows to the law of the land no matter whether it is pro-people or not.

Last year, around this very time the JNU presidential debate was disrupted by a group of ABVP hooligans under the leadership of an RSS pracharak. These goons indulged in physical violence where some students were badly hurt, but worst of all their actions constituted a frontal attack on the, still independent political traditions of JNU. Nearly a year later, the Sankar Basu committee constituted to look into the matter brought out its report in which it unequivocally stated that the people named in the report were guilty and deserved exemplary punishment. In keeping with its hallowed tradition of sheilding lumpens, caste abusers and sexual offenders, the administration has let them off with a tame warning. The erstwhile JNUSU, on this count too, completely failed to put up a fight to ensure punishment for these lumpens.

JNU last year saw an extensive and militant struggle of workers and students on the issue of minimum wage for workers. It was a fight for the violation of workers’ rights as well as against a fight against contractor-administration nexus which is neck dip in corruption. The fight for workers’ right is continuing under the leadership of the newly formed JNU Sangharshil Mazdoor Union which the administration has refused to recognize. Many crucial demands including ensuring minimum wages in some sectors, esi/pf for all workers, medical facility are being raised by the JNUSMU for which the JNUSU must fight alongside the workers.

The gradual yet consistent efforts to corporatise education is becoming quite distinct in JNU every year. The subsidy that pours into JNU is spent in the so-called ‘beautification’ of campus while the students are faced with many pressing issues related to hostels, accommodation, infrastructure in the centers, library, health center etc. The irregularities in the financial assistance for the students remains a persistent problem and to cover it up the administration is pushing for corporate funding in many courses. We must also remain vigilant against the efforts to corporatise education and reduce it to a marketable product, available only to a handful.

The people across the country are leading revolutionary movements against the imperialist, communal and casteist ruling class of india and the world. Drawing inspiration from these movements going on in Chhattisgarh, Bastar, Orissa, Jharkhand, Nandigram ,Chengara as well as in Kashmir and the North East. We draw inspirations from these movements and are fighting to build a radical alternative in the campus.

DSU Panel:
Banojyotsna (for president)
Amrita, Kalaiyarasan, Priya Dharshini, Uma (for SSS Councilors)

Democratise the Campus! Reclaim the Union!

JNUSU is a platform of struggle to fight for the rights of the students in particular and the campus community in general. However, the Union has of late been reduced to being a silent onlooker or a defender of the administration as we have seen in recent times. No doubt, the prime enemy of the JNU students is the JNU administration, which is implementing anti-student, anti-worker policies in campus, and actively trying to curb any space for meaningful students’ politics.

The decidedly casteist character of the JNU administration shone bright this time as it actively worked against the full implementation of OBC reservation. In April this year, the students were promised 27% OBC reservation in one go. However, in May the administration overturned the agreement with the JNUSU and implemented only 12% OBC reservation. The deprivation points for OBC students (which ensured the admission of at least 20-24% OBC students till last year) was stopped even though reservation was only partially implemented. Moreover, a wait-list system was introduced instead of the offer system of admissions, due to which the number of students enrolled has come down in many Centers, and there has been an overall set-cut. The cut-off for OBC students was fixed as a merit cut off (relaxing 10 points form the marks scored by the last General candidate) rather than making it an eligibility cut-off (relaxing 10 points from the eligibility marks which is 40). In many centers there were no OBC students at all, despite reservation. This year, the violation of the SC/ST and PH quotas was also plaint to see. All these constitute a conscious attempt by the administration to turn JNU into an elite, upper caste/urban dominated university in the name of making it world class.

The perpetrators of violence in last year’s presidential debate have been let off without any action, whereas two years back students agitating for workers rights were served suspension notices just the day after the students confronted the Registrar. The Shankar Basu Committee constituted under student’s pressure to look into the presidential debate violence, found the accused ABVP lumpens guilty and recommended exemplary punishment for them. The administration however completely rejected the report and no punishment was given. Similarly, no action was taken against the perpetrators of the Chandrabhaga Hostel night violence. A handful of Sanghi lumpens is greatly emboldened by the administration’s covert and overt patronage. When seen in the context of the nationwide rise of Hindu fascism, these developments are particularly disturbing. On campus, the situation is made more acute by the absence of a militant student resistance to the communal administration as well as communal tendencies in the student community itself.

The administration tried to scuttle two DSU public meetings this year. One was a meeting where SAR Geelani was invited to speak on the condition of political prisoners, and the other where Ajit Sahi and SQR Illyas was invited to speak on the politics of bomb blast, state-terror and subsequent minority witch-hunting. The administration’s logic was that these are ‘sensitive issues’ and might invite violence! These were both meetings where attempts were made to expose the communal and authoritarian character of the Indian state and polity; meetings where inconvenient questions to the establishment were to be raised. That the administration tried to scuttle these meetings on some flimsy pretext, lays bare the authoritarian and communal character of the administration as well. Show-cause notices have been served by the right-wing senior warden of Periyar to the resident who booked the mess for the public meeting, and he has been threatened with ‘strict disciplinary action’. Despite such calculated attempts by the administration to stifle our right to expression and democratic space, large numbers of students attended both meetings and rich discussion took place in defiance of the administrations threats.

The Equal Opportunity Office, the only mechanism for dealing specifically with complaints of caste discrimination, has remained a toothless body. The recommendations of the Equal Opportunity Office are just ignored the administration and no serious punishment has been given till date to those found guilty. Last year, a student beaten up and abused on caste lines by the ABVP lumpens was actually denied admission to JNU, as were the perpetrators of violence of that incident. The student had to move to court to secure justice. Recently, in Periyar hostel, an ABVP lumpen had abused a dalit student for putting up a poster of Dr. Ambedkar, and the warden openly supported the perpetrator and threatened the victim with the connivance of administration.

The fact that JNU is relatively safe for women, is not a gift form administration but a result of students’ strugles (particularly of women students). The GSCASH is also a hard earned achievement of the students’ movement. The administration has repeatedly attacked GSCASH in direct and indirect ways to undermine it, the Ashok Mathur Committee being the most blatant instance. GSCSAH is denied sufficient funds and other technical assistance and every effort is being made to reduce it to a non-functional body. Moreover, GSCASH is not a punitive body and can only recommend punishment. It is in administration’s discretion whether to act on GSCASH recommendations, and is in fact free to ignore them completely.

There are other formidable challenges ahead of the students’ movement in JNU. A steady process of corporatisation of the campus has been taking place over the past few years, particularly in the context of the neo-liberal onslaught. The exorbitantly expensive and famously useless benches, LCD screens, classroom renovations clearly indicate an emphasis on decorative infrastructure as opposed to necessary infrastructure like hostels, books and so on. Introduction of privately funded Centres (for example, Centre for Law and Governance) courses (such as the Global Studies Programme in CSSS), and scholarships (Tata, POSCO, etc) has effectively changed the syllabi, course content as well as the orientation of research, making students more accountable to the market than the society. The university is thereby slowly steering towards privatization.

A more immediate threat to the democratic institutions of the students such as the JNUSU has come in the form of a Supreme Court Notice to JNU received yesterday which has accused that the Lyngdoh Committee recommendations has not been followed in JNUSU elections. DSU has taken a very unambiguous position against the recommendations ever since it came up for debate. The implementation of Lyngdoh recommendations in JNU will destroy the independent nature of the student elections, and will make it subject to administrative interventions. The need of the hour is to fight against the imposition of Lyngdoh in JNU both inside and outside the courts in defense of our democratic space. We need to build up a militant students’ movement and an uncompromising JNUSU to face the daunting challenges of our times.

Of Cannibal Corporates and State Terror: Singur and Beyond

The ouster of the Tata small-car factory from Bengal and their entry to Gujarat has caused a lot of heart-break among the followers of the official left. The ‘left’ intellectuals, the ‘left’ media or the social fascist CPI(M) politicians are all shedding tears at this great ‘loss’ to Bengal and the great ‘gain’ to Gujarat. However, a closer look at the ‘cost and benefit’ of this project clearly exposes the myth of such corporate-driven industrialization and their claims of ‘employment generation’. It also shows how such industrialization presupposes brutal coercion, violence and dispossession of the land and livelihood of thousands of people. This lays bare the false claims of the likes of CPI(M) that India has entered the phase of capitalism, and that the Tatas, Birlas and Ambanis represent India’s ‘national’ capitalist class.

Tata small-car project and the lies of the CPI(M) government: The CPI(M)-led Bengal government had flatly denied from the very beginning that it had forcibly acquired land from the peasants by means of coercion. People have given their ‘consent’, they claimed. Later the CPM was forced to accept in the court that it had no consent for atleast 411.11 acres of the land out of the 997.11 lands acquired. The process of forcible land acquisition and fencing off of the acquired land by the police was marked by the brutal lathi charge on the people of Singur that included old men, women and children, the implementation of section 144 in Singur for a long time, the death of Rajkumar Bhul and the rape and murder of Taposhi Malik. It also dispossessd 12000 families from their livelihood and displaced twelve families of Dobnadi village, from their homes as well. The agreement between the Tatas and the Government of West Bengal was also conveniently kept out of public knowledge with the argument that it was a trade secret! But it is not a liaison between two private corporate parties to be a ‘secret’. Surely, the CPI(M) had things to hide. The agreement actually promised huge subsidy to Tata group of industries, whose overseas acquisitions amount roughly to $14,062 (Rs 56,248 crores)! The subsidy obviously is paid out of the money of the impoverished taxpayers of the country.

The (hidden) costs of the project: Being forced by the Supreme Court, the Government of West Bengal had to make parts of the agreement public. It revealed that the Tata Motors Limited (TML) had been given around Rs. 3000 crore of government subsidy. According to the terms of this agreement, if one calculates in terms of net present value(NPV) ,the subsidy that TML gets for the land in Singur is anywhere between Rs.100 to Rs.150 crores; the subsidy due to the rental payment structure is Rs.78 crores; the implicit subsidy due to the tax holiday and the soft loan would be about Rs.1835 crores; the real estate “gift”, also known in WBIDC terminology as “infrastructural assistance”, is worth Rs.160 crores; and the subsidized electricity will cost another Rs.706 crores. So the giant Corporate Tata was gifted generously Rs.2928 crores of public money by a government that still prefers to call itself ‘communist’! And all this ‘subsidy’ or ‘assistance’ is for a factory that would produce cars for the use of the social fascist party to drive ahead with its of neo-liberal agenda of industrialization.

The ‘benefits’ of the project The CPI(M) claimed that Tata project was important on two crucial counts. It would ‘generate employment’ and it would create an investment climate for further industrialization. Both these claims however are extremely dubious. The employment claims of the project ranges from a high of 12000 (only 2000 in the plant and 10000 in the ancillary plants) to a low of 750! It was apparent that there was no certainty of large scale employment generation. Moreover, 62% of the projected employment in the automotive sector is going to be skilled labour, 28% is going to be management jobs, leaving only 10% jobs for unskilled labour. So, most of the people in Singur who have lost land, if at all they were absorbed in the plant would have been absorbed only as unskilled labourers. The people of Sanand in Gujarat will also face a similar fate where the plant is coming up now. The second prospect is also bleak if one looks at the nature and growth of Tata plants in Jamshedpur of Jharkhand. The Tatas, far from stimulating industrial growth has merely established enclave economies, as any other multinational company which loots and plunders the mineral resources for super-profits. Further, every time a capital intensive project like that of the Tatas is established, the state is expected to subsidise out of the money of the people of the country.

Looking back at the history of the Tatas: The history of the Tatas is full of labour law violations and of making windfall profits through unrestrained exploitation of common natural resources. This they did under the patronage of British imperialism during colonial period and of the Indian State after 1947. Under the garb of a liberal, ‘national’ and philanthropic company, it has been working as an undisputed leader in crushing trade union struggles and killing union leaders. For instance, in 1989, Tata crushed workers movement for wage hike in Telco’s plant in Pune by bribing union leaders and attacking those who refused to comply with it. Similarly, when about 3000 workers went on an indefinite hunger strike, Tata cracked down on the movement with help of the state government. Abdul Bari and V.G. Gopal- two senior union leaders – were gunned down while they were setting off for negotiations with the management. The massacre in Kalinga nagar in 2006 when the tribal resisted the illegal construction of a compound wall by Tata Steel on lands historically occupied by them is only one recent instance of the collusion between big capital and the Indian state. And the Tata’s big talk about ‘nation building’ and ‘industrialization’ got exposed once more when they blatantly supported Union Carbide Chairman Warren Anderson for his role in causing the Bhopal gas disaster.
Moreover, the Tatas have a glorious past of converting the so called Indian democracy in to a corporatocracy, at times even turning it in to a militocracy when people resist its killer projects. And so much is their love for Indian ‘democracy’ that since 1904, Jamshedpur (also called Tatanagar) has a corporate-owned municipality, consisting of members handpicked by the Tatas. Perhaps this is what they planned for Singur, but the heroic anti-displacement struggle of the peasants ultimately emerged victorious, with the Tatas being forced to evacuate.

Tata, Harrison Malayalam, Ambani, Birla are all the same, and so are Modi-Buddha or Manmohan: These ‘Indian’ companies are no different or better than the ‘foreign’ when it comes to looting and exploiting resources and labour, and the struggle against both these corporates is connected to the peoples’ anti-imperialist struggle. The Tata turned to Modi from Buddhadeb the moment it felt that the situations in Bengal has not yet become ‘conducive’ for it to yield super-profits. This is a clear indication that all the parliamentary parties and the big corporates are hand-in-gloves in exploiting the people to the fullest, and with the most ‘nationalist’ and ‘patriotic’ mask. Political parties when not in power often indulge in shadow-boxing with these corporates, the way Mamata Banerjee of Trinamool did in Singur. But with the first opportunity they are ready to compromise, and start to ‘please and plead’ the same corporates. With such opportunism which characterizes all the parliamentary parties including the so-called left, it does not surprise us that the CPI(M) which laid the carpets red with the blood of Singur for the Tatas in Bengal are at the same time opposing a similar project by the same corporate house in Kalinganagar. So be it the Tata in Singur or Kalinganagar, the Ambanis in Maharashtra, the Harrison Malayalam in Chengara and other big corporates in various parts of the country, the pattern and the process of ‘industrialization’ they follow are the same. It necessarily entails the dispossession of millions of people of their land and livelihoods to generate miniscule employment for some urban educated people and can only be effected through the use of extreme forms of coercion and brutal state terror. Nowhere is the consent of the actual owners of the land taken into consideration. What is promised in return of the land is the farce of ‘cash compensation’ that fails to match the actual loss to the displaced families. And all the ruling parties of various hues are competing with each other to invite more of such exploitative big capitalist projects in the form of SEZs, big dams, infrastructural projects and so on. The question is not about coaxing enough ‘compensation’ from the Tatas as AISA / CPIML (Liberation) will like us to believe. The point is to say NO to all forms of displacement, and intensify the movements rejecting the likes of Tatas, Harrison Malayalam and all other representative of the comprador bureaucratic bourgeoisie.

dsuA step back for the Tatas is a step ahead for the people’s movement against it: The Tata destroying the multi-crop high yielding land of Singur and leaving the state without completing the project is no surprise. Expecting that they would compensate for all the destructions is nothing but the inflated dream of NGOs and a complete misinterpretation of the real character of Tata and all other such big corporates. It also shows that for the Tatas, the Bengal government was not fascist enough which could not suppress the peoples’ resistance successfully enough, so that it is now going to the land of Modi. The answer to the extreme violence inflicted by corporate industrialization lies not in forcing them to compensate. The real way out of the tightening clutches of these corporates has been shown by the fighting people of Nandigram, Chengara, PosCo, Kalinganagar, Bastar, and now Singur. in Nandigram people did not allow the state machinery which was acting simply as the emissary of the Salem group (trying to materialize the project at any cost, by killing, raping, looting people) to enter till the point the project was withdrawn. In Chengara, dalits and adivasis have forced into a land illegally occupied by Harrisson Malayalam to claim it for themselves. In Bastar too, adivasis have resisted the entry of any big corporate trying to loot their land, forests and mineral resources. In Koel Karo in Jharkhand the people have physically stopped the proposed construction of a big dam aiming to generate electricity for the adjoining MNCs at the cost of displacing thousands. In Singur too, the people have finally ensured that Tata moves out. These movements are deemed anti-development and illegal by the state machinery and are being brutally suppressed. Yet they are most legitimate resistance in the eyes of the people who are fighting for their land and livelihood against the corporates, which in reality are the encroachers and looters. The Tatas stepping out of Bengal is therefore no great ‘loss’ for anybody except the CPI(M) and its lackeys, but a huge step forward for the peoples’ movements against state-sponsored corporate land-grab everywhere in the country. It is only by completely rejecting and standing outrightly against these cannibal-corporates that one can fight the neo-liberal agenda and strengthen the fight against imperialism

Defeat the Communal Fascists in the Campus! Reject the Politics of Opportunism and Compromise by AISA & SFI!

The attempt to scuttle UGBMs and other democratic forums of the student community has been set in place by both AISA and SFI and this year the school GB Meetings were no different.

In SSS and SAA the convenors from SFI left the campus without informing the student community beforehand. Running away from the forums to hold them accountable has now become a tradition for SFI—in 2004 the JNUSU VP from their organization had left the campus in a similar fashion. At least that time SFI had accepted their mistake whereas this year they did not even care to clarify or apologise for such irresponsible behaviour. The school GB is both for the school to hold the elected Councillors accountable for the last year’s action (or inaction as the case may be) as well as for the students of the school to deliberate and voice the larger issues of concern. Earlier school GBs and UGBMs used to be held each semester. Now they are held only once a year. Therefore the annual school GBM becomes all the more important and SFI’s undemocratic and irresponsible politics has cost SAA the chance to have such a debate this year. In SIS the students have not seen the Councillor from SFI and one Councillor from AISA in almost any program this year. Most undemocratically the SIS Councillor and one councilor in SLL&CS from SFI did not even bother to attend the GBM.

In other schools where the debate did happen such as SSS, AISA-led JNUSU attempted as far as possible to scuttle all democratic norms. Most undemocratically common students get much less time to speak than the school councilors and JNUSU office-bearers. However, this was taken to the limit in the SSS GBM where the JNUSU president who was chairing the meeting in the absence of the convener granted himself unlimited time to speak and spoke for 33 minutes when common students were given just 4 minutes each! The logic given was that the president was responding to the questions posed to the JNUSU. However these questions had been directed to the JNUSU as a whole not just the JNUSU President and they are together given ample time to answer them. At the UGBM the students have already witnessed the extreme arrogance and indiscriminate flaunting of the ‘discretion’ of the president starting from not reading out and even tearing up resolutions at his will to putting JNUSU’s own resolutions to vote without clarifying what they meant. The SSS GBM saw an extension of the arrogance and undemocratic functioning of the JNUSU office bearers. After the GBMs are over the students community is not even informed of the names of the new EC members.

The school GBMs are increasingly being turned into just another forum to gauge the electoral support for both AISA and SFI. The practice of actively keeping students away from the debate and asking them to come only at the time of voting is deeply problematic and condemnable. In SIS, for instance, a miniscule number of students actually came for the debate but at the time of voting this number was around 150. 150 however is a very small proportion of the total school population. This clearly indicates the extreme de-politcization and undermining of democratic platforms. In SSS and SLL&CS as usual the practice of herding students in during the vote continued. Many people could not enter SLL&CS including some known AISA activists who then tried to force their way inside resulting into an unwarranted tussle among students of mainly AISA and SFI. What followed was a shameless show of desperate fighting among the activists of these two organisations in which some women activists were also heckled.

What is even more shameful is the way in which new students are pressurized to vote. New students rooming with old students as TR until they get hostel is an old practice and part of the JNU tradition. But forcing freshers to translate the ‘favour’ into organizational allegiance by voting for the respective organizations of their seniors is highly feudal practice. New students stay in other’s rooms because the administration has failed to provide them with hostels so far, particularly this year the hostel crisis is acute. But that does not give any organization the right to curb the independent political development of the new students and enforce their own organizational allegiance on them.

In SSS, SLL&CS and SIS reports presented by AISA and that of SFI in SSS were defeated by the students. Their defeat reflects the failure to convince students on their own agenda despite their desperate attempts to rally voters at the end. SFI’s politics of opportunism and betrayal of the student community is well known. However AISA, which came with a full mandate, has failed on all the issues facing the campus whether it be reservation or dealing with ABVP lumpenism. AISA’s claims that they have “forced” the administration to “name” the culprits in the Presidential Debate case is as dubious as their position on the reservation and new admission policy issue. They have given full-fledged support to the administration’s line and hence allowed the scuttling of reservation as well as seat cuts in all the schools. Through their reluctance to take up the issue of ABVP lumpenism they have allowed ABVP to go scot-free in various cases of caste and communal violence.

AISA has in the past year demonstrated tremendous ability to follow in traditions set by SFI! The scuttling of the UGBM is only one instance. When AISA talks of the ‘unholy nexus’ between SFI, DSU, NSUI, ABVP against a ‘progressive left secular’ AISA they just resonate the same flawed logic SFI used to give till a year back when they held the office. The fact is all the organisations oppose or support the Convener’s report on their own grounds and to invent or imagine ‘alliance’ and conspiracy in that is a shameless way to justify their defeats.

The progressive demands of the student community such as full implementation of the reservation policy cannot be met by such opportunism of the pseudo-left AISA and SFI. Neither can the rising communal politics of the right-wing be defeated through the politics of compromise. Politics which seeks to de-link the struggles outside the campus, such as in Chengara, Nandigram, Kashmir, Orissa and other parts of the country and struggles of other oppressed sections in the campus, for instance of contract workers, from the student movement, can never sustain a strong militant struggle of the students. It is time to build a real, radical alternative against the communal fascists as well as the pseudo-left.

The Politics of Bomb Blasts, State Terror and the Witch-hunt of Minorities

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act": George Orwell

The serial blasts that shook Delhi on the 13th of September which killed around 40 people gave yet another opportunity to the state to target and witch-hunt Muslims, while the sangh brigade went on spreading their communal-fascist politics of hate and violence. The mainstream media which had earlier showed its true colours during the reservation debate by carrying on a virulent casteist campaign, has once again demonstrated its loyalty to the state by parroting the police version of the incidents and contributing in the state endorsed profiling of all Muslims as potential ‘terrorists’. The media’s follow up to the blasts and the ‘encounter’ on the 19th of September, leaving two young Muslims and one police personnel dead, have conveniently remained silent on the possibilities of this incident being orchestrated by the state and the communal-fascists. The design is to increase the communal polarity and pave way for the unleashing a fresh wave of persecuting the minorities. In the long run the state also wants to bring back draconian laws like POTA which will give the state unrestrained powers to clamp down indiscriminately any voice of resistance against state policies from the people.

Who are behind the recent bomb blasts?
Significantly, in Kanpur this August, two Bajrang Dal activists Bhupendar Singh and Rajeev Mishra was killed while the bomb they were making accidentally exploded. The Kanpur SP admitted to the press that the material used (Amonium Nitrate) in making these bombs were the same as the bombs that were used in Delhi. The police have deliberately overlooked this aspect and never pursued the links except interrogating a couple of VHP activists. In the interrogations Awadh Behari (the provincial general secretary of VHP) and Vishwas Kulkerni, an IIT professor and the Vibhag Sanchalak of RSS have been named as being involved in the whole incident. The police however did not pursue these links and investigate their involvement in the subsequent blasts or any other unlawful activities.

The witch-hunt of minorities:
The state has left the RSS, Bajrang Dal and VHP scot free but came down on the Muslims without any mercy. The Jamia Nagar fake encounter of 19th September is only one among a series of pre-planned and cold-blooded murders by the state. The police cordoned off the area around Batla House, kept the media out of the main scene of action and killed two residents. One of the deceased Atif Amin, a young student from Jamia Milia Islamia is said to be the ‘mastermind’ of both Ahmedabad and Delhi blasts. As was shown in Mail Today, in between the two blasts, Atif had submitted the details of his identity proof to the police for residence verification. Will such a ‘dangerous terrorist’ who was obviously on the prime look out by the police and other agencies do such an act? Another ‘dangerous associate to the terrorists’, Saquib Nisar was arrested with the charges of assisting the ‘terrorists’ in multiple ways in Ahmedabad and Delhi. Saquib was however arrested only after he dared to talk openly in the media defending Atif, denouncing any possibilities that he could be associated with any kind of ‘terrorism’. Saquib, by the way, was in Delhi when the Ahmedabad blasts took place and was taking his MBA exams during the Delhi blasts.

The witch hunt of Muslims that followed the Delhi blasts is however far widespread than just these two incidents. The entire area of Jamia Nagar, Zakir Nagar and Batla House etc. which are mainly occupied by students of Jamia Milia Islamia and young professionals who stay as paying-guests or as tenants are currently under attack by the police in the name of investigation and interrogation. Students are being picked up indiscriminately every day and are subject to torture and harassment. The atmosphere in these areas is one of complete terror unleashed by the state. A feeling of ‘who is next’ plagues the minds of the people.

Islamophobia and the ‘War against Terror’:
The ‘terrorist outfit’ that is claimed to be behind these recent blasts is the Indian Mujahideen, which the state tells us is a break away faction or in some other versions the more radical section of the outlawed Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). SIMI was banned by the NDA government in 2001 for two years and the ban was reinstated without a day’s break in 2003. Midway to the ban the NDA government lost the elections. The UPA government after coming to power banned SIMI for the third and the fourth time in 2006 and 2008 again without a day’s break. The reasons showed for the ban were identical in both the regimes and they were extremely flimsy, baseless and without ANY concrete evidence. There were blanket charges that SIMI was in ‘close touch’ with militant outfits and supported ‘extremism/militancy in Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir and elsewhere’. That they were in touch with Al Qaeda and the Palestinian Hamas were working to establish international Islamic order, they published objectionable and provocative literature that they sought to disrupt the peace and communal harmony of India. The state claimed to have seized ‘anti-national’ campaign material and propaganda documents in the form of literature, video and audio cassettes. In no occasion however the state could provide a single evidence of all these charges in any public forum. They kept making these vague, unsubstantiated and generic allegations against SIMI. Also in much similarity to the tactics adapted by the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels the government also took to repeating mere allegations so often that the media portrayed them as ‘truth’ without bothering for evidences and proves. In March 2001, SIMI had called public protests across India against the burning of Quran in Delhi. This was cited as an unlawful act to justify the ban! Ridiculously, the police across India have repeatedly told the courts that the use of internet by SIMI activists proves their anti-national and unlawful goals. The Maharashtra police said that the accused wanted the state to secede from India!!

During the course of these bans hundreds of criminal cases were slammed on the alleged SIMI activists across the country. Only a few were lucky to get a bail whereas most spent a year or two in jail. Some served the sentence for a much longer period. Most of the charges slammed on these people were heinous and baseless. Be it SIMI’s ex-president Shahid Badr Falahi or the Rajasthan state secretary Dr Mohammad Hasan, all had been booked over and over again on flimsy and unsubstantiated grounds to be acquitted by the court every time due to lack of evidences. However that does not minimize the harassment and torture they had faced in the course of these events or the subsequent social stigma they have suffered. These are just a few cases which have been brought into light by investigative journalists like Ajit Sahi who travelled across 11 states to look into the trial of hundreds of alleged ‘SIMI’ activists.

The list of persecuted Muslims is seemingly endless. Maulana Abdul Haleem, a cleric in Ahmedabad had been picked up after the Ahmedabad blasts with far fetched claims that he is a ‘terrorist’ without any concrete evidences. His attempts to rehabilitate some children, orphaned during the 2002 Gujarat riots to an UP orphanage had been deemed by the state as a conspiracy to send potential terrorists to UP for training in seditious activities. Maulana Naseeruddin of Hyderabad has been framed and put behind bars for his crime of ‘leading anti-Bush protests’ in the city! Such instances are abound all over the country.

JNU too is not free from Islamophobia!
Even in JNU some Muslim students have been interrogated by the police after the recent blasts. One student have been ‘interrogated’ in his hostel just because his name happens to resemble one of the ‘terror suspects’ widely circulated by the paranoid media! We know that for quite some time Kashmiri students of JNU have been targeted by the police and kept under surveillance. A Kashmiri student was very recently picked up and taken to the Vasant Vihar police station, where he was illegally detained for hours and questioned. Many students have complained that their phones are being tapped and that sleuths from the Intelligence Branch constantly follow and harass them. This is an issue which demands serious attention of the campus community, because the state is trying through these means to terrorise and silence an entire section of the students just because of their religion and identity. We must collectively resist this continued harassment and persecution of students. In this, the JNUSU must take a firm stand and raise this issue in all its seriousness.

The systematic and well thought out witch-hunting of Muslims is not just the domain of the sangh giroh. Even though it is the most fascist manifestation of anti-semitic persecution in India, the ruling class in totality is Hindu fundamentalist in nature. Empty slogans of ‘secularism’ or ‘communal peace and harmony’ is not going to counter this state-sponsored onslaught on the minorities. There is no doubt that we must demand the punishment of the perpetrators of the recent attacks on minorities. At the same time, we must also intensify the ongoing anti-feudal and anti-imperialist struggle for a decisive victory over the fascist and communal Indian state backed by its imperial masters.

SSS Rejects the Opportunism and Inaction of both AISA and SFI!

The SSS GBM this Friday convincingly defeated the two reports tabled by JNUSU Councillors representing AISA and SFI. It was clear rejection of the politics of opportunism and inaction in the last one year.

The mandate in last year’s JNUSU elections was to fight for OBC reservation, against the CPI(M)’s land grab in Nandigram, against the communal forces in campus and to take forward the struggle for workers’ rights. AISA for the first time won in all the four posts of JNUSU office bearers promising to fight for all these issues. However, a whole year’s experience have made it clear to the student community that they have repeatedly compromised in all of the above important issues, and failed to force the casteist-communal administration in taking concrete steps. The defeat of the two reports presented by AISA in SIS and SSS GBMs is a rejection of its politics of opportunism, compromise and betrayal.

This politics of AISA however is nothing new. Its parent party, the CPI ML (Liberation) abandoned the path of Naxalbari politics in 1980s itself by taking part in parliamentary politics. From that time onwards, this Party’s history is a history of degeneration and compromise. In this downward spiral of revisionism, they have aligned with the Samata Party of Nitish Kumar in 1995, which is now an ally of the same communal-fascist BJP which Liberation claims to build a broad alliance with CPI and Lok Janshakti Party. Liberation is now desperately trying to get into an alliance with CPI(M) in Bihar. But for the opportunist AISA it is all right to seek votes in the name of Nandigram and Singur in JNU.

Due to the betrayal of the Naxalbari movement and the aspirations of the people, in the last twenty years the toiling masses of Bihar have abandoned Liberation and are today standing with the ongoing revolutionary struggle. Liberation’s politics has been confined to manage a few seats in the assembly elections in Bihar by building unprincipled alliances. In the rest of the country, their politics has got reduced to managing NGOs or overseeing state-run and World Bank funded projects like NREGA. Many top-rank Liberation leaders are today running hundreds of NGOs funded by imperialist organisations like IMF and World Bank. At the same time, they do not lose one opportunity to malign the revolutionary movement in India, which has emerged as a real challenge to the ruling classes as well as to the revisionist politics of the likes of Liberation.

While Liberation represents pseudo-communists out of power, the ruling CPI(M) represents social-fascist politics in the mask of communism. SFI in JNU has proven many times in the past that they inherit the same brand of politics that CPI(M) practices in Bengal and Kerala, in Nandigram and Chengara. Being democratic and responsible is not in its politics, which is well understood by the student community. The students of SSS have punished SFI for a year of inaction and sectarianism, amply proven by the running away of the School’s convener without any intimation. CPI(M) and SFI’s real class character remains for all to see, when one hand they make big talk of fighting imperialism, at the same time killing and displacing peasants in Nadigram, Singur, Chengara in order to defend the interests of imperialist corporations. These self-proclaimed custodians of secularism portray the Muslims as terrorists/fundamentalists in Bengal and justify AFSPA in the name of fighting ‘terrorism’ in Tripura. Budhhadev’s love for Tata is no less than Manmohan’s love for Bush. In our campus too, SFI has worked as an agent of the administration. It has kept true to its history of betraying the progressive students’ movement of JNU, the agitations on Nestle, workers’ issue, reservation being only a few examples.

The rejection of AISA and SFI’s politics in SSS also brings the necessity of building a radical alternative, which will take the JNU students’ movement beyond the present hypocrisy and bankruptcy displayed by these two organisations. It is only the uncompromising revolutionary class-politics within and outside the campus that can resist the grave challenges posed by imperialist forces and its local allies, the casteist-communal Indian state.

The Delhi 'Encounter': A Preliminary Statement of the Fact-Finding Team

27 September 2008

A team of teachers, students, civil rights activists and intellectuals visited the site of the alleged encounter of the police with the 'terrorists' as claimed by them, on the 24th September 2008. Three DSU student activists from JNU were part of the team. The following is a synopsis of the preliminary findings of the team.

Of fear, terror and suspicion:
The team started its investigation at 11.30 AM on 24 Septemeber in Jamianagar area under Jamia Nagar police station. Even five days after the encounter the tension was palpable in Jamia Nagar & the adjacent areas. People were seemingly scared to talk to the fact-finding team. The stress & tension, generated after the encounter, was evident. People were nervous and requesting us NOT to mention their names under any circumstances. In the University premises the team had to face hostile queries whether we were from the media. The hostile media trial of the entire Muslim community that accompanied the bomb blasts was visible right from the premises of the university to the area of the encounter where the team visited. We felt, this is largely because of the witch hunt that ensued after the 'encounter' story of the police of two students at House No. L-18, Batla House, Jamia Nagar and the scores of arrests of Muslim youth from the vicinity. In fact, the arrests had already started right after the day of the blasts on the 14th.

In such a scenario, to instil confidence in the people was an uphill task, as they were at the receiving end of the state terror out to brand anyone daring to speak in favour of the deceased in the 'encounter' as 'accomplices' and 'masterminds' of the successive blasts in India. The police action followed by the media trial only parroting the 'official version' had created an atmosphere of fear and suspicion among the people. Whosoever the team had talked had the stamp of fear on their face.

The team had to keep in mind the feeling of incarceration and isolation not to say the terror of an authoritarian and prejudiced state that was writ large on the locality. There is definitely the palpable fear of the people of anyone and everyone picked up and framed by the police, who have a story for every occasion.

Police Siege and the wages of state terror:
To start with, the Gali where the House No. L-18 is located has been barricaded with a huge posse of police laying siege to it and the surrounding buildings. No one is allowed to enter the House No. L-18. The constables of Delhi police told us, albeit politely, that they need to ask for permission from higher authority to let us go close to the building. We are allowed after about 15 minutes. However, we were not allowed to enter the building, L-18. Rather, a man who is a resident of the house was asked to come out and give his version. As we spoke to that man a contingent of police officers, constables, plain clothes officers from special branch were surrounding us. We got this man's 'version' in the middle of all these. We also came to know, the key of the house (L-18) is with the police and they had to go undergo thorough checking whenever they ventured out or returned. Even the people staying in the nearby buildings also had to go through the police scanner. It was as if they were under house arrest. The children in the household were facing trauma-induced depression and had to resort to medical care. We also came to know, the kids missed their all important examination because of questioning by police on 19th September. They get scared of any kind of sound or noise thinking that it was a gunshot. The fear of anyone becoming the target of a vicious police action had taken over the psyche of these young minds. We also came to know two more families residing in L 18 have left the place after the encounter.

On further investigation we came to know that one family which has one woman pregnant left the house, because that woman was getting stressed under the circumstances.

The heavy presence of the police, in uniform and plainclothes, has only aggravated the situation. When we asked police personnel present in and around the area as to why the police is still laying siege to the premises the authority did not have any satisfactory answer.

It is also important to mention here, through out the process, we were followed by special branch officers. Infact, a journalist, who was not the member of the fact-finding team and a member of the team, was routinely questioned about the details of the other team members. Anyone, even from mainstream media visiting the area more than once, is called up by special branch.

The flat where the so-called 'encounter' has taken place in still sealed. The alleged seizure of weapons, laptop, etc., from the flat was done without any proper witness to the whole exercise. None of the members of the flat, not to say, of the locality was witness to the high profile 'seizure', which the police celebrated in the media. The conduct of the police was and is still shrouded in secrecy and arbitrariness that have only invited further wrath of the people. This in no way will instil confidence among the people. On the contrary, it has added further misery to their lives.

"It is a Fake encounter", say the people:
We could not find a single person in the entire locality who could agree with the story of the 'encounter' of the police. There is a complete unanimity in the opinion of the people about the one-sided nature of the firing and the time for which it continued. Further, there are some witnesses, (who would not want their name to be mentioned) who vouched that these youth who had fallen to the bullets of the police were just ordinary youngsters who had taken their career and their studies seriously. These witnesses have said that initially there were gunshots for 15 minutes. Then it stopped for a while. Then after a while the police went on firing intermittently for quite sometime positioned on the terrace and the Gali to show that it was a real encounter. In between, the police went on shouting loudly to create a feeling of real exchange of fire and project a real encounter. Later, the police declared that the encounter was successful. After the firing, the police had destroyed the flowerpots of the L-18 flat and the adjacent flats and used the pieces of the broken pots to break the windowpanes of L-18 to make it look like a REAL encounter.

No one told us about an exchange of fire. It was 'only one kind of sound', they all emphasized.

After visiting the rear and the sides of the L-18 flat, no one could have bought the story of someone escaping as there was only a single entrance, which the police had already been covering. It was impossible for anyone to jump from the fourth floor flat, as it would have resulted in near death or fatal injury. It demolishes the theory of police that two of the 'dreaded terrorists' have run away. More importantly, one of this 'terrorists', Zeeshan, surrendered to Headlines Today Channel, within hours of 'jumping and running away' from a fourth floor flat. Why will he do that - the locals ask.

There are also witnesses to three men dragged down from the fourth floor to the ground floor. None of the body of the deceased was shown to anyone. All the bodies were covered by clothes and were kept in a vehicle which was taken inside the porch of the flat.

The people of the locality are asking unanimously: Where have all the bullets gone?

Why Police is NOT allowing media to go inside L 18 and shoot and talk to people even almost after a week? Do they have anything to hide? Normally it is done within a few hours!

Why the police did not try to arrest these 'masterminds' alive? This is randomly done in India & rest of the world. In that case it could have helped the administration more. Isnt it?

Clear evidence of point-blank shots on the head of Sajid:
The photographs after autopsy of Sajid (17 year old) show clear marks of 7-8 gunshots on his head from above. These shots, which are at point blank, cannot happen in the case of an encounter. Because in case of an encounter, where the shots are fired from a distance, the wounds would open up.

Police Version of fake Tenant verification disproved

Prominent citizens of the locality have already questioned the story of the police of fake tenant verification. They have said that none of the details provided including the driving license, address, rent agreement paper were forged. The claim of the office stamp of the authority as fake was also disproved by the citizens in a press meet as they showed their own copies of tenant verification which was carrying the same official stamp. The Locals also feel, even if the forgery has been done by the owner and the caretaker of the house - NO INFORMATION GIVEN ABOUT ATIF IS FALSE. Factually, as we came to know from local people, not a single information given - whether it is about his last residence, parentage, driving license or permanent address - proved to be wrong

Mystery shrouding the death of Inspector MC Sharma:
No one is ready to believe that Inspector Mr. M C Sharma was killed in an exchange of fire.
There are several witnesses having seen him taken away by two men in plainclothes to a Santro car stationed near the Khalliullah Masjid with bleeding wounds of bullet shots on his shoulder.

It is intriguing to note as to why such an officer of importance for the Special Cell of the Delhi Police went for an operation without any protection and why he was walked all the way to the car. Moreover, the Hospital, Holy Family, which treated Mr Sharma has been told by police not to talk to press or civil society - that what we found out.

The people of the locality are asking: Why would the most dynamic of Special Cell Officers, Mr M C Sharma, would go to an operation - where he may nab the masterminds of deadly blasts - without wearing Bullet Proof Jacket?

Moreover, the police team also made sure that the 'terrorists' are hiding in that flat by sending an officer in the guise of mobile salesman, prior to sending the rest of the squad. So after confirming the whereabouts of the 'masterminds' how could a senior officer go without any protection?

Simmering tension:
Any discerning eye can make out the simmering tension pervading the entire area of Jamia Nagar and its vicinity. Everyday is passing by with a new arrest and yet another story from the side of the police. The role of the media, except a few reports in certain dailies, has more or less demonized the Muslims. More and more Muslim youths are being picked up. Even those who have gone and surrendered before the police or media have been framed under several charges. In these circumstances the people are one in saying that they are being pushed to a situation where they have total distrust of what is becoming in the name of 'war against terror'.

Fact-finding team Demands:
1. Immediately withdraw the police siege of Jamia Nagar in general and the Gali where house No. L-18 is situated.
2. Stop harassing Muslim youth under the garb of 'combating terror'.
3. Initiate a high-level judicial enquiry of the entire episode.
4. Make public the autopsy report of the two youth in the 'encounter'.
5. Make public the autopsy report of Inspector MC Sharma. There should also be a judicial enquiry into the circumstances leading to his death.
6. Press & civil society should be allowed to talk to doctors/authorities of the Holy Family Hospital
7. The State has to provide for the medical counselling of the residents of Jamia Nagar, who have been affected by this encounter
8. Police should stop releasing selective photos from CCTV cameras to Press to build opinions against Muslims.

The team comprised of Prof. Siddique Hassan, Deputy Amir Jamat-e-Islami Hind, SAR Geelani, Reader, Zakir Hussain College, Delhi University, Dr. Waqar Anwar, Jamat-e-Islami Hind, Dr. SQR Ilyas, Editor, Afkar-e-Milli, Suvojit Bagchi, Journalist, Anil Chamaria, Journalist, Dr. Karen Gabriel, Reader, St. Stephens, DU, Rona Wilson, Secretary (Public Relations), Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners (CRPP), Mahtab Alam, Association for Protection of Civil Rights (APCR), Banojyotsna Lahiri (JNU), Vanessa Chisti (JNU) and Sumati Panikkar (Independent Researcher)

Chengara Exposes the Pseudo-Communists Once More! The Myth and Reality of Land Struggle in Kerala

The question of land and caste has once again come to the centre of debate with the Chengara land struggle in Kerala. So much so that the Finance Minister of Kerala is on record branding anyone and everyone who talk about land and land reforms as Naxalites! There is also the commonsensical reaction that there is hardly any land for distribution in a densely populated state like Kerala. In this context when the issue is deliberately being side-stepped by SFI and its parliamentary master CPI(M) with Goebblesian conspiracy theories and sensational rhetoric taking precedence, it is important to historically look into the age old problem of land and the centrality of land as a means to political power in such semi-feudal, semi-colonial countries like India and in Kerala in particular.

Contextualising land reforms in India: Even after the transfer of power in 1947 (which the ruling classes have tried to sell as ‘independence’) till today, India has primarily remain an agrarian country with the vast majority of masses dependent on agriculture. The comprador ruling classes of India and the imperialist forces led by the U.S.A. were deeply alarmed by the severe agrarian crisis that faced India since 1947. Imperialism and its subservient Indian ruling class which has grown sadder and wiser after their defeat in China in 1949 was wary of shimmering peasant discontent across India. It was to contain this widespread discontent, which in the age of Third World Revolutions threatened to sweep away the powers of the landlord-big bourgeoisie led Indian state that the idea of ‘land reforms’ was floated. It was not initiated to address the basic problems plaguing Indian society. The problem of landlessness was not solved by the agrarian legislations: there was no fundamental change in the ownership of land in rural India. Feudalism was not to be liquidated, but to curb its grosser manifestations and introduce capital penetration in agriculture to some extent, so as to give an impetus to a section of landlords and rich peasants to increase agricultural production. The land reforms were intended to serve another purpose, no less important: this was to sow illusions among the peasantry, make “sentimental gains”, as Nehru said, and draw the bulk of the peasantry away from revolutionary struggles. In this task, the ruling classes found a willing ally in the Communist Party of India the leadership of which was steeped in opportunism from the very beginning. It is within this sub-continental context that one needs to locate Kerala, and thereby look at the ongoing Chengara Land Struggle, no matter how much the CPI(M) or SFI wishes to fool us by lies and misinformation.

The farce of land reforms in Kerala: In Kerala the high tide of anti-caste movements had capitulated to the emerging big bourgeoisie and to the post-47 idea of building a new Kerala which was primarily an appendage of the imperialist economy. It is at the same time that the ruling classes felt the immediate need to accommodate a section of the upper strata of the emerging anti-caste movements as the new economic agents of post-47 Kerala. And it was specifically for this purpose of accommodation of the capitulating new economic agents that made the land reforms a necessity. It is thus important for us to note that there was no radical-ness in the conception of the idea of land reforms. In fact it was first discussed by the Congress government in 1951 and was later merely implemented with an unchanged agenda by the Left with a radical façade. The land reforms were instrumental in promoting a particular form of agricultural economy- the cash crop based economy- binding it more closely to the international imperialist market nexus. It is quite interesting to note that the ruling classes in Kerala in Post-47 Kerala—be it the Congress or the erstwhile CPI—had the same development programme for the state, that propelled by a cash crop economy. And today the Congress and the CPI (M) have a similar development programme for the ailing Kerala economy— where IT, ITES and Tourism emerges as the prime movers of growth! This unanimity and convergence of the developmental path for Kerala economy jointly charted out by CPI(M) and Congress shows that both are equally subservient to the interests of the imperialist market.

The integration of the Kerala economy with the imperialist world market has ensured that none of the regressive social structures and production relations holding back the Kerala economy is weakened. Rather all these structures have been reproduced and reinforced in ever new forms. For example, the state-sponsored cash crop economy has only ensured further alienation of the small and poor peasantry from their land, with land getting further concentrated among the economically and politically powerful classes and castes (which often mean the same). The crux of the land reforms that were initiated by the Kerala government in 1957 and implemented from 1 January 1970, was the fixing of ceilings on the amount of land that a family could possess. It promised that surplus land would be taken over by the government and redistributed among the landless. However, the land-ceiling legislations made liberal concessins to the large landowners, religious institutions, plantations and so on, leaving such loopholes that allowed owners of large landed properties to retain their possessions. Once the plantation sector got exempted, all that was left for redistribution were some paddy land towards the Western Kerala, some land in the midland areas, and some fallow fields that belonged to the Nilambur royal house. These ‘famous’ land reforms that we’ve all heard of is actually a law that gave on paper full ownership rights to tenant cultivators. A look at the Chengara Struggle gives us a clear picture of who the prime victims of such an arrangement were, and serves as an eye opener in more ways than one.

90% of the landless people agitating for land rights in Chengara are dalits and adivasis, also joined by the Muslims. But this is not a scenario unique to Chengara. In whole of post ‘land-reforms’ Kerala, the dalits, dalit Christians and Muslims comprise the vast majority of those dispossessed from land or excluded from the purview of land reforms. 85% of the dalits in Kerala are landless, and it’s obvious that any movement for land rights would constitute the dalits as its major participants. It is not enough to term this struggle as merely a struggle for land by the landless. The truth is that it is these historically oppressed sections of the people who have been deliberately kept out of Kerala’s land reforms that are raising their voice today for land. The dalits and adivasis who could never become even tenants within Kerala’s traditional caste-based economy, could not expect to receive any benefit from such laws.
In 1968 the Kerala government had estimated that some 8,75,000 acres of surplus land would be available for redistribution. However, till date, the government has been able to acquire only 1,24,000 acres. The rest of more than 7 lakh acres have all been usurped through underhand practices such as creation of Trusts. Trusts were exempted from ceilings under the land reforms legislation, and overnight hundreds of Trusts were formed in Kerala. Through creating trusts and registering deeds in false names and such myriad other ways, all this land was usurped by landlords, dominant castes and corporates close to the ruling class CPI(M) and Congress. Even out of this 1,24,000 acres acquired, only a meager 96,000 acres was actually redistributed! This is the real state of land redistribution in Kerala. The dalits, adivasis and the coastal people, who could not be tenants within Kerala’s traditional caste system, did not gain anything; not even a cent of land.

Deceiving the landless, the legal way: The Hutment Dweller’s Act was placed specifically by the CPI(M)-led govt. to deal with those sections of the population who remained dispossessed, and hence a potent radical force to challenge the rulers of Kerala. According to this Act, 10 cents of housing plots in panchayat areas, 5 cents in municipal areas, and 3 in corporation areas could be claimed by a landless family. But since lakhs of landless people were still kept outside the purview this law, they are yet to receive even this meager land. And thus out of the 25 lakh families who are claimed to have benefited from land reform, 5 lakh in fact came under the Hutment Dweller’s Act. But that has not stopped the CPI(M) to include them among the beneficiaries of their so-called land-reforms. Significantly, out of this 5 lakh, 4 lakh 25 thousand were dalits and adivasis.

And this is just one of the CPI(M)’s frauds in the name of land reforms. Another populist scheme called the One Lakh Housing Scheme was introduced in 1972. It meant one lakh houses. A wall in the middle. A house on each side. Two houses in one building. Five cents of land per house. The government pledged to build one lakh houses with this calculation. Naturally, the SFI or CPI(M) have claimed that this was a progressive scheme to provide housing for all homeless people in Kerala. Actually, this was a scheme to accommodate the militant landless class which had been excluded by the land reforms. But there were still a huge number of dalits and adivasis who were excluded from the One Lakh Housing Scheme. So, the CPI(M) came up with another scheme of social engineering for them: establishing hundreds of Harijan colonies in Kerala. Thanks to these policies and the benevolence of the Official Left, lakhs of landless today live in some 16,000-20,000 official or unofficial ghettoised ‘harijan’ colonies! Besides, tens of thousands more live in huts beside roads, canals, and other unoccupied marginal land – visible to anyone traveling in Kerala. The same government that talks about legal niceties when it comes to the struggling dalits in Chengara, also issues a special govt. order defying a high court order of eviction in Kozhikode when they think that their vote bank is under threat. The question here is not of legality, but of sheer opportunism and anti-working class politics of the social-fascist CPI(M) which is today the custodian of feudal-imperial interests.

In 2001, when the adivasis led a 48 days agitation, they were denied land. Six years later, when the landless – Dalits, Dalit Christians, Muslims, and others– have come together to struggle for land in Chengara, the same CPI(M) said that they are land owners! This well-calculated opportunism by CPI(M) is not difficult to understand. In effect their government says that there are no landless people in Kerala. That is, it does not accept that those of live in Harijan colonies, One-Lakh Houses, by the roadside, and so on are landless. This is the true ‘achievement’ of the so called land reforms in Kerala. To make matters worse, the CPI(M)-led Kerala govt. has recently placed a bill with the objective of doing away with land ceiling altogether. Another draft legislation prepared by the ruling Party, yet to be presented before the Assembly but modeled on the World Bank-IMF dictated New Agricultural Policy, aims at promoting contract farming and reintroducing the leasing of agricultural land. This proposal to remove land ceiling from the land reform legislations is tantamount to facilitate the unhindered landlordism of corporates. Likewise, contract farming will bring back tenancy, and more importantly, `reverse tenancy', in which big farmers lease land from small and marginal farmers. It will help big companies, driven only by short-term profit motives, to introduce corporate farming in a big way. The small farmers will either become laborers in their own land or will be alienated from agriculture itself.

The landless dalits and adivasis have become the focal point of a struggle like Chengara. By ignoring them, and conveniently picking out the adivasis, the CPI(M)-led Kerala government is shrewdly trying to diffuse the agitation building up at Chengara. Moreover, CPI(M) is trying to propagate the lie that the struggling people in Chengara are ‘landowners’ themselves! Such vicious slandering is being consciously employed to undercut this genuine struggle. Shameless fabrications and imaginative lies by the CPI(M) of this kind are abound, which can even make Hitler’s propaganda mastermind Goebbles turn in his grave! The CPI(M) State Secretary Pinarayi Vijayan, for example alleged that "There were authentic reports on the role of U.S. espionage agencies also playing a role at Chengara and the agitation was an attempt to grab land… The backing given to the Chengara agitation was part of a U.S game plan to defame Left governments in India"! He also added that the U.S. is trying to avenge the strong opposition registered by the Left parties against the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal. Not surprisingly, even the Kerala Chief Minister has lent his support to such bizarre claims.

The ruling CPI(M) has unleashed its affiliated trade unions against the struggling people of Chengara, a similar pattern which was also followed in Nandigram when it used the notorious Harmad mercenaries against the fighting peasants. Like in Nandigram, threats, assault, rape and blockade is continuously used against dalits and adivasis to suppress the Chengara land struggle. These goons of CPI(M) has now given an ultimatum to them to vacate the site of struggle -Harisson Malayalam plantation- within ten days, after which force will be used to evict the protesting people. The need of the hour is that we stand in solidarity with the Chengara struggle –a struggle for land, dignity and justice, and defeat the social-fascist CPI(M) once again. The CPI(M) and its stooges in the campus, who still thinks that people’s struggles can be suppressed by unleashing fascist terror-tactics should remember Nandigram. For history does not forgive those who forgets their history

CPI(M) Continues its Social-Fascist Agenda: Brutalities on Landless Dalits and Tribals in Chengara

Around this very time last year, the CPM attempted to sell Nandigram to the Salim Group. The sale of land was stalled by a surging people’s resistance. In the aftermath of many Nandigram, many people tried to explain it as one mistake, as an aberration. Some of these people including some professors in JNU guaranteed that nothing like that would happen again. “Buddha babu has apologized!” they told us. They along with numerous other intellectuals and media professionals were doing what they are paid to do; apologise for genocide and defend ruling class interests with elaborate and mystifying theoretical constructions. Many other people, well meaning people, forgave the CPM tentatively, believing that nothing of the Nandigram sort would happen again. And then the news from Kerala came; the CPM is attempting to break a legitimate struggle for land. The specificities are different from those in Bengal, but the politics is the same. Anyone willing to see the truth that stares all of us in the face will raelise: CPM stands by the interests of big capital and will do whatever it takes to defend them. The ‘people’, particularly those who are peasants or landless, will be decimated if they struggle to get what is rightfully theirs.

Land Reforms? The much trumpeted ‘Land Reform’ of the so-called Left Governments of both West Bengal and Kerala are nothing but sham. Done under the directives of Lazinsky, an US agent, they were simply ploys to diffuse the mounting movements of peasants to grab land. The land reform in Kerala too did not end landlordism or transfer power to agricultural labourers, poor peasants or the landless. Even E.M.S. Namboodiripad famously remarked that the old janmi system was replaced by "landlordism of another type". The land reform legislation in Kerala exempts certain kinds of plantations (which will inevitably be huge estates) from the ceiling limit. It had nothing to offer to the most deprived sections of its society, viz. the dalits and tribals who are denied any rights to land. They were either left put of the purview all together or given tiny amounts of land. There are reports of families having to bury deceased relatives inside their own homes, and these people are entered in records as landed! In recent times, there has been talk of removing the ceiling limits altogether. It is significant to note that in 1972 the CPM government allotted 1,43,000 acres of land to the Tatas. In comparison, the total land distributed to thousands of families as per land reforms was only between 3 and 4 lakh acres. This despite the fact that as per official figures in 1966, around 10 lakh acres of land was available for distribution.

The Struggle: The Chengara land struggle started the on 4th of August 2007. Frustrated by the state’s refusal to give land to the landless, 85% of whom are Dalits and tribals. Between 20,000 to 30,000 people have flocked to the Chengara is from all over Kerala. They have ‘squatted’ on land in the Chengara estate. The land was leased to the "Harrison Malayalam Plantation" by the government of Kerala. This land lease expired in 1996, and ever since then the company has not paid any taxes or rent to anyone. Leaders of the SJVSV (Sadhu Jana Vimochana Samyuktha Vedi, The organization leading this struggle), say that while the land deal itself was illegal. Also, while the company was given 1048 hectares on lease, it has illegally occupied excess land to the tune of 6000 hectares. The government has to this day not measured this land, for the encroachment has happened with government complicity.

Since August 3, 2008 a road block in place, which is effectively translating into a complete economic blockade. This blockade supposedly to defend the interests of plantation employees, is led by a united front of trade unions called the Trade Unions Action Council (TUAC). This front includes AITUC (CPI), CITU(CPM), INTUC(Congress) and even the Bhartiya Masdoor Sangh, the RSS affiliated trade union! Economic Blockade has been a tactic of the colonial state against tribal movements under the British Raj. It is a move to crush movements before a direct use force; starve people to near-death before you actually kill them. So much for our ‘independence’!! The protestors have been denied access to food, medicine and other necessities. There have outbreaks of malaria, pneumonia and diarrhea. A 180 protestors have been arrested for ‘theft’.

The TUAC claim that hundreds of workers have been thrown out of work, where as there are only 80 workers! Acting as muscle power for the state-corporate nexus (somewhat akin to the harmad vahini in Bengal), the Trade Union Action Council is planning a march on September 3, if these landless people are not evicted by then. They claim that the plantation employees must get back to work. Apart from the fact that they have no rights to the land, there is also the fact that the rubber trees are too old to be tapped. The state-company nexus obviously wants the land for purposes other than rubber cultivation.

Rape as state repression: Gujarat, Nandigram, Orissa, Bihar, Chengara…be it the Fascist BJP or Social Fascist CPM, sexual violence has the weapon of choice in the state’s repressive arsenal. In movements for land and livelihood, it is always the most dispossessed who struggle the hardest. The burden of any exploitation falls more on the women of any community, and so among even with the landless peasants, Dalits and Tribals, women forms the most militant section of a struggling population. In Nandigram, Singur or anywhere else where land was being grabbed, women were seen taking the lead. Sexual violence has become the best weapon for the state to crush this surging tide of rebellion. In Chengara, apart from the daily molestation faced by women leaving the estate to fetch supplies, in recent days four women have been raped.

What is legal and what is not? The protestors are called ‘illegal encroachers’ by the CPM government, just like the people of Nandigram were ‘illegally’ protecting their land from corporates. That the company is illegally occupying thousands of hectares of land has never been called encroachment by the CPM government. The company has sub-let and even sold land in its hold. It is only when the landless people, rise up to demand what is rightfully theirs that questions of legality come up.

Let us not see Chengara in isolation: It is a part of the broader movement across the country where the wretched of the earth have shunned silence and are rising up to fight. Chengara movement has been complete unarmed one so far. However, if the blockade and the repression continues, even they might be forced to take up arms as they really have nothing more to lose! The movement needs to be wary of NGO infiltrationwho may try to fish in troubled waters, and gear up for a long, bitter and uncompromising fight with the state led by the pro-capital and anti-people official ‘left’ in Kerala.

Richard Boucher Went Back!

Under the banner of the JNUSU, students in large numbers gathered in front of the SLS building in protest against the visit of Richard Boucher, the Deputy Secretary of the South and Central Asian wing of the U.S. State Department, a representative of US imperialism. After Indira Gandhi, Praveen Togadia, L.K. Advani, Manmohan Singh, the Israeli Ambassador to India, the protest against Boucher’s visit is another instance of JNU students choosing to stand by not Imperialism, but the peoples’ struggles against it. News of the protest reached Boucher and he cancelled his visit. This is a victory for the students. It is at the same time a revealing comment on the US administration, where ever they sense any criticality, they just stay away. Imperial domination is established, after all, not by critical dialogue but by bombs.

Some students might object to the protest on the grounds that the protesting students have violated Boucher’s right to freedom of speech. First of all, Boucher and other figureheads of imperialism have no lack of platforms to speak from: nearly every medium blares out the message of imperialism tirelessly. Be it the media, most of the academic work that is done in JNU and elsewhere, indeed our own so-called leaders speak the language of imperialism. It is the other set of voices that is never heard, the voices crying out against the decimation of their lives, livelihood and culture; through Special Economic Zones, development terrorism, Patents act and other killer policies peddled by imperialism. The US government has sponsored military coups in dozens of countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America. The human costs of imperialism are horrifying, and most of the blame lies squarely on Boucher and the regime he represents. The protest today was against an individual, but not just that. More significantly it was a protest against the imperial interests he represents. We have to ensure through consistent struggle that the fight against imperialism doesn’t end with protests against its figureheads.

Imperialism is not possible without local collaborators; we are surrounded by a web of compradors and collaborators that facilitate and implement imperial designs. Exposing this network and smashing it is the first step towards an anti-imperialist understanding. The rotten-to-the-core Congress party is the most obvious culprit with its list of crimes including the passing of the SEZ Act, the Patent Act and more recently the opening up of the retail sector to FDI and the Nuclear Deal. The Hindu fascist sanghi brigade, in keeping with its history of collaborating with colonial rule outdid the Congress in meeting imperial expectations. There are also other forces like the CPM aspiring to the comprador status of these mighty parties; be it their support for the SEZ act or the Nuke deal or the forcible occupation of agricultural land in Nandigram, Singur and now Chengara in Kerala. With the complicity of this coterie of dalals, nearly entire states (Jharkhand, Chattisgarh…) have been sold to multi-nationals. Millions of poor people have been sacrificed at the altar of ‘national interest’, which coincides suspiciously with imperial interests.

dsuWith such a long list of enemies, an anti-imperialist struggle may seem impossible. While it is a daunting task, we may take heart from the vibrant and growing resistance of the working people of this country, and all over the Third World. Millions and millions of peasants and workers, tribals and Dalits have stood up and in one voice rejected the neo-liberal developmental model. The explicitly anti-imperialist resistance in Nandigram succeeded, despite unimaginable state repression. The farmers refused to give up their land and the government was forced to take back the proposed chemical hub. Support for armed resistance against imperial takeovers in Chattisgarh, Jharkhand is surging like never before. The struggling people of Kashmir and the North Eastern region of India, in demanding the right to self determination, attack the very heart of imperialism. This is a part of the anti-imperialist struggle waged world-over by the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and others. For those who say that there There Is No Alternative (TINA), its time for you to hear! The toiling masses are forging an alternative in the heat of battle. Yes, imperialism is on a high, but not for long

The Horrors of Indian Occupation of Kashmir

“We are 82 per cent and our money is spent on sending you sh**it eating guys!... Get it right, you cut b****, you will be decimated gradually for this heinous act against majority Hindus that provide you with food! What is your contribution otherwise, you vermin?"

(Sic)- Hate mail posted online following protests in Kashmir against the land transfer.

Kashmiri journalists writing about the Amarnath land transfer have received much hate mail for the past two months, of which the above quote is an example. The hate mail has been telling them, among the usual volley of abuse, that they have no right to live in India. If the people writing these mails knew the first thing about Kashmir, they would know that these journalists and their people would be only too happy to not live in India! That is precisely what the Kashmiri people have been struggling for, for decades now: the right to self-determination, the right to have a separate nation. This also precisely why the Indian state has spared no efforts or expense in an attempt to crush them.

The controversy surrounding the land transfer has become yet another occasion for the Indian state to unleash terror on the Kashmiri nation. Atrocities committed by the Indian state machinery are commonplace in Kashmir. Over the last two months, many have been killed and injured. Official estimates (faithfully carried by the bourgeois media in India) of people killed over the past two months hover around 10-15 and supposedly about a 100 have been injured. The Kashmiri press and reports from people involved in the Kashmir movement place the death toll at a minimum of 50, with 30 people killed on the day of the March to Muzaffarabad itself. The number injured is at least 500. The Indian press has blacked out the reports that the Indian Army has been firing, lathi-charging and even tear gassing inside hospitals that house the wounded protestors. The media has also avoided reporting the daily harassment faced by ordinary Kashmiri people during the curfews: physical assaults, molestation, random house searches and arrests.

Thanks to Black laws such as the Disturbed Areas Act and the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, the Indian Army has unlimited powers inside Kashmir without any fear of legal consequence. The firing and cold blooded murder of 30 people by the army on the day of the Muzaffarabad March is not punishable under law, for the army was only trying to maintain law and order! The army cannot be taken to task for the fact that they attacked hospitals housing the wounded (many of whom were half dead anyway), firing, lathi-charging and tear gassing the wards; they were only fighting ‘terrorism’. The army will not be asked to answer for any of the brutalities over the last two months (or the decades before that); the army was only defending the interests of a nation that is supposedly ours. Where already in the valley there is 1 Indian soldier for every 7 Kashmiris, troop deployment has increased with even more expected on the days to come. On the question of land itself, the Indian army has forcibly occupied 87,000 kanals of agricultural and residential land, pushing people out of their homes and off their fields. None of this is spectacular. For the ordinary Kashmiri, it’s all in a day’s struggle. For the Indian State, it’s all in a day’s terror.

The immediate point of contention is the transfer of land to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board. Surrounded by distorted information, we are perhaps unable to see what is really the issue. The need of the hour is to examine the facts of the matter.

The land in question is about 800 kanals of land in Kashmir. This land was transferred by Mehbooba Mufti’s government to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB). This was opposed by the people of Kashmir for two reasons primarily. The SASB is made up of non-state subjects, meaning that the people on the board are not subjects of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Under article 370, designed to provide some minimum autonomy to the region, non-state subjects cannot own immovable property in the state. This transfer was seen by Kashmiris as, and indeed it is, an attack on the autonomy of the region; one more step towards compromising what little autonomy article 370 guaranteed. Also, a part of the land is forest land and the transfer is in violation of the 5th Schedule which prohibits the transfer of forest land to private individuals or the use of forest land for any commercial purpose. The rest of the land is owned by villagers or is community land. In the sub-continent, there is no such thing as fallow land; all land provides livelihood whether as agricultural land or grazing land for pastoral communities such as the Gujjars and Bakarwals. Local villagers, claiming ownership of at least 200 kanals of the disputed land are contemplating filing a PIL demanding that their land be restored to them.

Following widespread protests in Kashmir, there was talk of the order being cancelled. At this point, the RSS came into action, cobbled together a wide coalition under the name Shri Amarnath Yatra Sangharsh Samiti (SAYSS). The RSS has successfully cashed in on the commonsensical anti-Kashmir sentiment in Jammu. It is widely believed in Jammu that Kashmir has ‘developed’ at the cost of Jammu. The fact is that in every sense of the word Kashmir is as underdeveloped as Jammu if not worse; unemployment is rife, education, healthcare and other civic amenities are as degenerated as in Jammu. Ironically, of all the money that the SAYSS imagines is pumped into Kashmir about 60% is spent on the Army, bureauracy and other state machinery to maintain ‘law and order’. This is a cruel joke indeed! The Kashmiri people are resented for supposedly spending the very money that is used to kill, maim and brutalise them.

During this “mass movement” as the SAYSS claims it to be, many atrocities have been committed in Jammu aiming to cripple the economy of the Kashmir valley. The economic blockade of the Kashmir valley led to severe shortages of essential commodities and fruits growers alone reported a loss of 60 crore rupees by the end of July. The huts of poor Muslims (mostly Gujjars,who are the poorest and most exploited section in all of Jammu and Kashmir) were burnt down like in Jordian, Akhnoor, Poonch, Rajouri and Samba areas of Jammu. A mob of Samiti activists carrying spears and trishuls forced 250 gujjar families out of their homes in Akhnoor and Bisnah alone. Women were molested, houses burned down as the police watched silently. The situation in these areas is described by local progressive activists as ‘dangon ka mahol’. Scores of people, mostly Gujjars, Kashmiri drivers, and turban-less Sikhs mistaken for Muslims have been brutally assaulted, and some were even lynched (the similarity to the post-9/11 racist backlash in America is striking…).

The biased reporting in the media in Jammu and the rest of India has only complimented this reactionary violence, as also the state violence inside the valley. The unrest in Jammu is being portrayed as the ‘natural’, ‘spontaneous’ regional/communal response to the uprising in Kashmir against the land transfer. The role of the organized Hindu fundamentalists is being downplayed. What is shown to the world is a Menacing Muslim Kashmir vs. a Downtrodden Hindu Jammu. While the presence of a communal element cannot be denied, it must be remembered that this is primarily and most significantly a question of regional autonomy and that the communal element has been grafted onto it by a shrewd intervention of the fascist Hindu right.

‘Menacing Muslim Kashmir’? There are certain very simple but significant facts that we are never told our rulers and their lackeys in the media, for there is always the danger that we might put two and two together and ask some tough questions. We are told that the movement in Kashmir is a bunch of die-hard Islamists. We are never told that there are about 50,000 Sikhs and over 10,000 Pandits living in Kashmir, all state subjects. Or, that there are about 300,000 non-local skilled and unskilled Hindu laborers in the valley. And over 10,000 Hindu students are enrolled in colleges in Kashmir. Is it not significant to note that while Jammu and other parts of India have been gripped by communal frenzy, not a single incident of communal discord was reported from inside the Kashmir valley, supposedly the hotbed of crazed Islamic fundamentalists? Can we overlook the fact that more than five lakh pilgrims visited Amarnath shrine this season with the assistance of local Kashmiris, a record number so far?

In what is supposedly and predominantly a “Muslim Kashmir”, the Kashmiri Pandit Sangharsh Samiti (an organsiation of Kashmiri Pandits residing in Kashmir still), has articulated its opposition to the transfer of land to non-state subjects, condemned the economic blockade and also pledged support to the call of ‘Muzaffarabad chalo’. Mr. Tikoo, chief of the KPSS has also issued statements condemning the communal agenda of the RSS and other communal bodies such as Panun Kashmir (an organization of Kashmiri pundits with close links to the RSS brigade). Several Sikh bodies have also opposed the transfer on grounds that it violates article 370. Kashmiri Sikhs took out a procession in Srinagar in support of the demand for an independent Kashmir and also supporting the Muzaffarabad March. Representatives of both communities have come out in support of the Hurriyat’s demand that the Muzaffarabad trade route be opened up.

A problem with countering right wing propaganda is that one is forced, again and again to reiterate the obvious in the face of white lies. The agitation in Kashmir is against the illegal and unjust land transfer, against the terrorism of the Indian state. It is not against the Amarnath yatra, or the Hindus in Jammu or Kashmir or anywhere else. In the midst of RSS claims that Hindus, their pilgrimages and religious sentiments are under attack, the yatra this year (as every year before this!) has concluded peacefully. The number of pilgrims, higher than ever before, was 5 ½ lakhs. The cave that is the site of pilgrimage was first discovered by a Muslim shepherd and for over a century the pilgrimage was overseen and facilitated by the family of the shepherd. All the workers at the site are Muslim. They have not withdrawn their services or caused any trouble. The SASB was constituted a mere 8 years ago. Prior to that, Kashmiri Muslims have been custodians of the shrine and the yatra for 150 years, that is long before the Advanis and Raj Nath Singhs of this world were even born. The pilgrims themselves have reported no instance of harassment by the local Muslims. In fact, while the lawyers in Jammu were busy spreading hate, the Bar Association of Kashmir collected funds and started a community kitchen for the yatris. Nothing has happened to warrant the paranoia that the Sangh Parivar's has generated. But to say that is really begging the question, for Right wing paranoia, especially of the Hindu fascist kind, is always unwarranted. It is not difficult to understand, therefore, when after brutally suppressed and killed through the use of superior force of the Indian State, the common Kashmiris feel that they are forced to live in an alien country, their own country being subjugated by an occupation force. The call for Azad Kashmir therefore is again resonating throughout the valley, and anyone who stands up for the rights of the oppressed, must also stand up for and support the inalienable right of the Kashmiris for self-determination, for a separate and independent country. The Amarnath shrine controversy has once again demonstrated the aspiration of the Kashmiris to be free from national oppression, and for azadi.

Democracy at Whose Discretion?

It seems that AISA has thoroughly internalized the language of the anti-reservationist administration, which has been very much on display during and after the UGBM. One of the resolutions placed by SSS AISA councilors was that “This UGBM holds that there should be a united struggle under JNUSU’s leadership to ensure the fulfillment of OBC/SC/ST/PH reservation subject to the availability of eligible candidates so that the anomalies in the present admission process can be remedied”. It was only after a strong point of order was raised from the floor that they were forced to remove the ‘eligibility’ clause. But from what understanding and position this clause comes from? Isn’t it speaking the same language as the meritocratic administration and Y4E? Whom are they trying to appease?

Objections were also raised from the floor when the SSS councillors from AISA had put the resolution “The house holds that for fulfilling the increased intake in the wake of OBC reservations, a properly defined one shot offer method should be worked out for JNU admissions in the forthcoming year, keeping in view the due share of different categories in the admission list.” Firstly the Councillors were asked whether the JNUSU holds offer system as a better system to which the SSS Councillor replied that “We think it is a better system.” When the students pointed out that this is a complete contradiction of the position held by JNUSU so far that offer system is arbitrary and not legally tenable, the SSS Councillors added the line “This house holds that reservation and seat increase would be calculated on the basis of intake.”

Until the UGBM the JNUSU held that the offer system is arbitrary and legally untenable. Why did they wait only until this point of placing resolutions to reveal their position that offer is a better system? JNUSU claims that in the Academic Council meeting in May they had argued for the offer system which got defeated. However from then until now this is the first time they have argued in favour of the offer system. Even then, this resolution does not unconditionally support offer but a “properly defined one shot offer system” which they themselves have not properly defined in the UGBM or after it. We demand that the JNUSU stop deceiving the student community and clarify this method of admission. By placing this resolution they also fooled their own cadre and students who stood in favour of intake.

An All Organization (AO) Meeting Now, But What For? For the past two weeks, we have repeatedly demanded all organization meetings, GBMs, etc from the JNUSU to debate the issues at hand. They consistently denied this—the JNUSU Joint Secretary stated after the Standing Committee meeting that “we will call it when we think it is required.” Finally they were forced to call a UGBM which they conducted in a highly undemocratic manner. Today post the UGBM they gave a call for an AO meeting to decide on the future course of action. However, the future course of action had already been decided unilaterally by the JNUSU through a call for mass hunger strike at Ad Block even before the AO was held. Clearly the democratic functioning of the JNUSU works quite well according to their discretionary powers!

SFI’s Sorry Tale of Opportunism: The sudden change of position and complete silence on the issue of seat cut right after the UGBM should not surprise us. SFI placed its demands on the issue of reservations, seat cut and to restore offer system cunningly in a single resolution and managed to get them defeated at one go. Subsequently they have very conveniently relinquished their “radical” pretension and moved back to toeing the line of the administration. They should now clarify whether they still maintain the position of seat cut or not.

‘SFI-Led DSU’? The most striking aspect of the post-UGBM AISA poster was its resemblance with the language with which SFI had spoken all these while. When we opposed AISA’s resolution they propagated we are in alliance with SFI. Isn’t this the blame SFI always puts on AISA when they vote against school Convenor’s reports along with ABVP? AISA’s sudden invention of such alliance only reflects their own political bankruptcy.

AISA and SFI: TWO Faces of the Same Coin

The tradition of subverting and manipulating the JNUSU and UGBMs to serve partisan interests has been well-established by SFI. It is now being ably carried forward by AISA. The UGBM is the most democratic forum of the students where students have a right to speak and be heard by other students. It is the highest decision making body, where the student community collectively sets an agenda and certain demands to be taken forward in struggle, irrespective of ‘leader’s’ wishes or interests to the contrary.

SFI’s undemocratic functioning, and working as the lackeys of administration while in JNUSU leadership, is well known. In March 2007, the SFI-led JNUSU leadership infamously scuttled one UGBM, and then ran away from the second when its own resolutions got rejected by the student community. At that time AISA claimed to be at the forefront against such anti-democratic and anti-student functioning of SFI-led JNUSU. However, AISA-led JNUSU and particularly the President have proved themselves to be proud inheritors of this legacy of SFI. The ‘radical’, ‘democratic’ posturing of the JNUSU leadership and AISA was thoroughly exposed before the student community at the last UGBM.

THE CHOICE OF Time AND SPACE FOR UGBM: The AISA-led JNUSU's undemocratic approach towards the UGBM was very clear from even before it began. To start with, the JNUSU leadership questioned the need for an UGBM. The poster announcing the UGBM was inexplicably small and invisible, displaying the lack of seriousness. Moreover, ad-block was chosen as a venue to ensure that majority of the students would not come and participate in the debate throughout the night. The similarity of AISA with SFI in attempting to limit student participation in the UGBMs is striking. For example, SFI called the UGBM last year in front of JNUSU Office! Now when AISA claims that 800 students participated in the UGBM, its lies are for all to see; the number of students voting in favour, against, and abstained totals not even 600 and we all know how students are herded in the last minute during the voting! JNUSU should admit that it was the most poorly attended UGBM in the recent past.

AUTHORITARIANISM ON DISPLAY: In principle, certain technicalities such as deciding on how many calls to give to each speaker, how much time each speaker can take etc. are at the president's discretion. In yesterday's UGBM, however, the JNUSU president openly MISUSED his "discretion" at several points to serve partisan interests, in not allowing students to put forward many resolutions and in forcing a vote on resolutions which were placed by his own organization and to which the students sought clarifications that were never given. He started flaunting his highly biased ‘discretionary’ power by allowing his own organization AISA to distribute pamphlets (containing new sets of false and confusing data) in the venue of the UGBM, completely flouting the conventions of UGBM and JNUSU.

TWO IMPORTANT RESOLUTIONS FORWARDED BY DSU WAS NOT EVEN PLACED BEFORE THE HOUSE:
The first of these resolutions was on the crucial issue of retaining the deprivation points for the OBC students till the 27% reservation quota is fulfilled, and the second on restoring the ‘offer’ system next year to ensure that there is no reduction of seats. The JNUSU president did not even read the two resolutions, first claiming to have "lost" them, and then when he was given the second time, he claimed "ye padhne ke layak nahin hai” (“Its not worthy to be read”), and that they were similar to resolutions which had been placed earlier. It was a lie, as these resolutions differed fundamentally from the earlier resolution placed by AISA activists. To what extent does the President's discretion go? Does he or she have the right to dismiss resolutions on some spurious grounds? He went so far as to tearing a resolution when he was forced to read it in front of the house. This is an unprecedented misuse of power. Clearly the JNUSU president and his cronies did not want the students to take position on these issues. Discretion, we might remind the JNUSU office bearers, leads to authoritarianism if it does not respect the minimum essence of democratic practices.

The hypocrisy of JNUSU-AISA reached its heights when its activists placed a resolution claiming that from the next year an offer list in one shot should be introduced. Being questioned, the proposer of the resolution who is a SSS Councillor, even admitted that the offer system was a better one. This contradicted all their campaigns in favour of the intake system so far. When students asked for clarification to such hypocrisy, they were first left clueless and then hastily changed the resolution which contradicts itself by conveniently embracing both offer and intake! Who are AISA and JNUSU leadership trying to fool? The president then forced a vote on the resolution even when a section of the students were confused and were asking for further clarifications. The office bearers went ahead to say that “vote against the resolution if you are confused”! Does this not defeat the basic norms of UGBM? They finally arbitrarily called the UGBM to an end while many resolutions and issues were still pending.

AISA has proven itself to be no better than SFI in violating democratic norms and procedures. The Union President went so far as to comment that "democracy me yahi hota hai, majority ka decision hota hai." What an interesting usage by a "radical left" activist and President, of a standard right-wing dictum usually sprouted by the RSS-BJP-VHP majoritarian brigade! Time will prove that like SFI, AISA-led JNUSU too will ultimately have to pay the price for its high-handed, anti-reservation, pro-administration, and anti-student positions. No amount of propaganda against DSU will stop us from exposing AISA over and over again in front of the student community.