Expose SFI-CPI(M)’s anti-Marxist and Chauvinist Position on Kashmir! Stand by the Kashmiri People’s Struggle for National Self-Determination, including Secession!

“A socialist of any of the oppressor nations who does not recognise and does not struggle for the right of the oppressed nations to self determination, i.e., secession, is in reality a chauvinist, not a socialist.”     - LENIN

 

In the pamphlet issued on the 10th of July, SFI has attacked DSU’s position on Kashmir as ‘opportunist’, ‘irresponsible’, ‘erroneous’, even ‘pro-militancy’ and ‘pro-secessionist’, without first clearly placing DSU’s understanding on the question, or even their own! Far from castigating DSU, what SFI has successfully achieved is to lay bare its own reactionary, anti Marxist-Leninist and national-chauvinist ideological bankruptcy on the highly important question of oppressed nationalities. DSU remains committed to the Leninist principle of standing by and strengthening the struggles of oppressed nationalities for national liberation, and their democratic right to choose their own collective destiny even if that choice is for national independence through secession. Every genuine Marxist organisation in history has firmly upheld this principle of people’s democracy, which far exceeds the bourgeois ‘liberals’, ‘social democrats’ and ‘Marxists’ who never gets tired of talking ‘democracy’ in every instance, but exposes their majoritarian nationalism and chauvinism of an oppressor in practice. If SFI cares to look back at history, they will find that it is this hypocrisy that the Bolsheviks fought against in European ‘socialists’ of the First International almost a hundred years back, and it was the constitution of the USSR which for the first time in history enshrined the right of the national minorities to self-determination, including the right to secede. All the ‘liberal and democratic’ constitutions, including that of India, appear in poor light when it comes to recognizing this truly democratic right.

The fact that SFI and CPI(M) still plies the old trade of the revisionists and reactionaries who have plagued the International Communist Movement, and which was repeatedly exposed and rejected by Marxist-Leninists, is no news to us. They have long abandoned Marxism and has transformed into social-fascists, trampling and crushing the struggles of the oppressed people wherever the CPI(M) is in power, be it the movements of the peasants and workers in Bengal and Kerala, the liberation movement of the Tripuris in the state of Tripura, or the separate statehood movement in Darjeeling. They have never shied away from unleashing state repression wherever their political power was challenged, be it the Naxalite movement in 1960s and ’70s, or the movements against land grab and state terror in Singur, Nandigram, Lalgarh, Chengara, using the combine force of army, paramilitary, police and harmads and by silencing political dissent by employing draconian laws like AFSPA and UAPA, etc. Where they are not in power, the CPI(M) has supported the repressive measures of their ruling class partners in crushing people’s movements from Kashmir to Tamil Eelam to Dandakaranya.

For CPI(M) and SFI, Kashmir is nothing but a ‘problem’! It does not matter to them that it is a problem only for the Indian ruling classes. They do not recognise that for Kashmiris it is a non-negotiable democratic aspiration, for which close to a hundred thousand people have laid down their lives at the hands of the Indian state’s fascist armed apparatus. They protest against “the continuing violence in the Kashmir Valley”, without identifying the reasons for this daily violence or its perpetrators. What they simply want is for ‘normalcy’ to return, the normalcy of continuous Indian occupation, of everyday repression of the Indian Army, the brutal silencing of the call for Azadi to eternity. This ‘normalcy’ is disturbed and becomes a problem when the people of Kashmir militantly resist this unrelenting occupation of their homeland, and the crimes committed by the Indians, whether be in the army, bureaucracy or judiciary with impunity. That is why they complain in their pamphlet that the state government “has proved itself quite incapable of dealing with the situation”. Probably they want the National Conference government to take a leaf out of CPI(M)’s book in ‘dealing’ with mass struggles! 

Though SFI mutters vaguely about the “democratic rights”, “sentiments” and “aspirations” of the Kashmiris, they maintain a calculated silence on what exactly is this aspiration and sentiment. Are the Kashmiris merely fighting for a right to be free from state’s atrocities and AFSPA, or for their right to protest and expression? Only the hypocrites like SFI and CPI(M) can pretend to ignore that this right is nothing but the right to national self-determination, for Azadi. It is the hypocrisy, political bankruptcy and utter opportunism of SFI and CPI(M) which compels them to undermine this struggle by terming it as ‘terrorism’, ‘anti-national’ ‘insurgency’, thereby justifying the Indian occupation of Kashmir like any other ruling class parliamentary party, including BJP. In the same vain, in the national liberation struggle of the Iraqi, Afghan or Palestinian people resisting imperialism and occupation led by Al Qaida, Taliban or Hamas, they only see ‘Islamic fundamentalists’ and ‘jihadists’, much like their Sanghi ruling class counterparts. The difference between the social-fascists and the communal-fascists is afterall not as big as they want it to appear!

Resist the Pre-Planned Efforts of the JNU Administration to once again Sabotage 27% OBC Reservation! The Rejected Recommendations of the Casteist Mukherjee Committee Must Not be Reverted!

In a complete pre-planned sabotage of the implementation of 27% OBC reservation, the casteist JNU administration is once again out to scuttle social justice. In JNU in the last two years OBC reservations were grossly violated due to the elitist and casteist recommendations of Aditya Mukherjee Committee. First OBC reservation was made mandatory on 54% seat increase and ‘lack of adequate infrastructure’ remained the recurring (il)logic of the administration to delay full implementation of OBC reservation. Next, the casteist and opportunist misinterpretation of cut-off was brought. Over-ruling the MHRD guidelines and supreme Court verdict, the eligibility cut-off has been surreptitiously replaced by a ‘merit cut-off’, i.e. instead of deducting ten points from the eligibility marks, ten points are deducted from the marks scored by the last general candidate. This has stopped the admission of stipulated number of OBC candidates in various centers despite they being fully eligible for admission. The vacant OBC seats have been thereafter was allowed to lapse, and were conveniently converted to ‘general category’ (read upper caste) seats. In the last two years the intake of OBC students grossly suffered due to this casteist agenda of the JNU administration.

This year after extensive mobilization of students and support from the progressive section of the faculty, Aditya Mukherjee Recommendations were severely challenged in the Academic Council meeting and the AC finally rejected the recommendations. The matter was referred to the Dean’s Committee and after several deliberations the Committee studying models of other universities, on 17 June came up with a viable model for implementation of 27% OBC reservation. For the first time since OBC reservations were implemented in JNU, a cut-off was pre-fixed to 36, after deducting 10% marks from the eligibility cut-off, i.e. 40. Given hundreds of OBC students were illegitimately denied admission in the past two years, this cut-off was much more viable and socially just.

But the casteist JNU administration was in no way ready to accept an admission model which will ensure social justice and break the existing brahminical hegemony in knowledge production. Keeping up their feudal and shrewd means to scuttle social justice the JNU administration used the pretext of a ‘legal notice’ sent by none other than the casteist brigade of Y4E to revert the decisions taken in both AC and by the Dean’s Committee. The rejected casteist model based on Aditya Mukherjee Committee Recommendations is once again brought back by the administration. The JNU administration also shrewdly chose the time of this decision. Right in the eleventh hour before the final results of BA and MA courses are about to be announced the administration hastily took the volt-face. Ironically, some of the Deans who otherwise are self-proclaimed custodians of ‘progressive politics’ vociferously argued in favour of the casteist machinations of the administration! The administration has only received a rubbish legal notice which is in no way binding upon them and it is definitely not a stay order on admissions from the High Court. Yet it is evoking the bogey of ‘legal problems’ with the model which the Dean’s Committee had come up with.

It is however, the administration who has been upholding illegal means to sabotage reservation and social justice for the past two years. The Aditya Mukherjee Recommendations are in complete contravention with the Supreme Court Verdict and MHRD guideline. Although it was not challenged in the court, it was opposed tooth and nail by the student community and by the progressive section of the faculty in the last two years. The casteist administration should understand that any criterion that bars perfectly legible OBC students from taking admissions is flouting the Verdict on reservation and are thereby illegal. Such criteria can not be justified on any ground, be it the age-old Brahminical (il)logic of meritocracy, infrastructural lacuna or baseless ‘legal threats’ from the casteist brigades.

It is time we strengthen and broad base this struggle for reservation in higher education and social justice at large. This recent and most brazen instance of the entrenched casteism in the administration once again proves the reactionary character of the implementing authorities in this country when it comes to the issue of social justice. We must not remain in any illusion about the fact that this is a lengthy and pitched battle, and that our movement for reservation must go on despite any such reverses that come in the way. The students and teachers of DU are also fighting a prolonged legal battle against the casteist and corrupt administration of their university against the same illegal ‘merit cut-off’ criterion. The DU administrations have also made vitriolic casteist statements to the press completely defying the Supreme Court verdict. The Delhi High Court is sitting on their case for long delaying social justice. The UPA government has also made it clear that it will make attempts to delay the deadline for the implementation of OBC reservation. Inside the campus too, the battle for reservation against this feudal administration must continue unabated. It is time that all the different battles for social justice come together to fight a more enhanced struggle against the entrenched brahminical forces which will try all their means to scuttle 27% OBC reservation in higher education.

This challenge once again has come in a time when there is no functional JNUSU. That is why the pro-reservation forces must come together in solid unity to once again fight this feudal and brahminical administration. The JNU administration is not only casteist but is also flouting all democratic decision making processes through which the University has always functioned. We appeal to all progressive and democratic forces in the campus to come together at this hour of crisis to prevent one more denial of social justice by the entrenched casteist forces.

Demand a Stop to the Fascist Repression by the Indian State on the People of Kashmir! Lets Stand with the People of Kashmir in their Struggle for Azadi!

Ay zalimon, ay jabiron...Kashmir hamara chhor do! (Oh oppressors, oh wicked ones...leave our Kashmir!) 

- A slogan raised on the streets of Kashmir

 

The people of Kashmir have risen once again against state repression and for their right to national self determination. Despite all the brutalities and the heavy deployment of the army and the paramilitary forces, the Indian state has been unable to prevent thousands of Kashmiris from pouring out in the streets.  In the last few weeks, 16 youth including a woman, have lost their lives while protesting at the hands of firing by the police and CRPF in Anantnag, Sopore and Srinagar. In the most recent spate of killings, a 17 year old youth was abducted by the police and tortured to death on 6th July. When in protest people from Gungbung, Tengpora and Batamaloo joined his family for a peaceful sit in at the Srinagar-Baramulla highway demanding the whereabouts of the boy, CRPF fired tear gas shells to disperse the protesters. Later the body of the boy was found lying in a nearby stream. The protests subsequently intensified across the valley and three more unarmed civilians were gunned down taking the total tally of number of people killed to 16 including a nine year old boy, the number of injured have crossed hundred. In the past few days, the freedom of press has also been severely constrained and reporters and journalists have also been repeatedly beaten up. An indefinite curfew has now been imposed in the valley. The army has also been now been deployed to restore ‘normalcy’! The government has also clamped down on mobile services in the valley while severe restrictions have also been put on the movement of the people in the valley with the army calling all the shots. Pro-freedom leaders including Syed Ali Shah Geelani have been arrested and charged under Public Safety Act.

When the movement for Azadi erupted in the late 1980’s in the form of armed struggle after decades of peaceful struggle were ignored, the Indian state resorted to fascist means to crush the uprising. In the subsequent two decades, more than 70,000 have been killed, many women raped, and thousands have simply ‘disappeared’. Draconian laws like the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) have provided complete impunity to these killers. A recent fact finding report revealed the existence of more than 27,000 unmarked graves that had around 30,000 unidentified dead bodies. The Indian state initially portrayed the freedom fighters in Kashmir as ‘Pakistani terrorists’ to manufacture consent for the brutal suppression. They kept insisting that they are ready for a peaceful solution through dialogue on all issues only if they left the path of armed struggle. The Indian state faced in the past few years with the massive mobilization of people in non-violent struggles has now been caught on the wrong foot. It has become a huge cause of concern for the Indian ruling class who can no more justify their repression on grounds of fighting ‘terrorists’. Therefore, Lt. Col. Jaiswal, an army colonel, recently in the most absurd and heinous manner, commented that ‘agitational terrorism’ is the cause of most concern in the valley. The CRPF therefore is opening fire on these fighting yet unarmed masses, on the meaningless pretext of ‘provocation and self-defense’. During the massive movement in 2008 against the Amarnath Land Transfer, the Indian state shot down more than 60 people including a senior Hurriyat leader. These protesters are once again been portrayed by the state and its media agents as a handful hired agents working at the behest of forces across the border. Nothing can be a more brazen and shameful depiction of genuine mass anger and protests by people who have been repressed in the most brutal ways since the past few decades by the Indian state. The question of stone throwing is being blown out of proportions with the establishment and media portraying it as if the CRPF is firing in ‘self defence’. What is happening is exactly the opposite. When the CRPF is firing on peaceful sit-ins and protests, what else do they expect? As one protester put it recently “I would love to join peaceful protests. But they don’t let us gather together, not even for shouting slogans and expressing anger.”

Kashmir has always been portrayed in mainstream media as a problem of ‘law and order’. The entrenched Indian media has always chosen to parrot the Goebblesian lies of the state. On the issue of Kashmir particularly it has remained brazenly pro-state and has never cared to probe into the aspirations of the Kashmiri people. Kashmir has been reported as the ground zero of the ‘Pakistan backed Islamist terrorist organizations’ who are ‘anti Indian’ and ‘pro-Pakistan’. In this story weaved by ‘liberal’, so called ‘secular’ media what has largely gone missing, with very few exceptions, is the relentless struggle of the Kashmiri people for right to self-determination, their angry protest against the fascist state brutalities, discrimination as a citizen in the name of governance and so on. In line with its imperialist masters, the Indian state has resorted to the Israel-US styled killing of the innocent people and branding them as ‘terrorists’ or firing on peaceful protests. This as the ‘war on terror’ have been reported by the mainstream media unquestionably in order to garner popular support for the state which is denying Kashmiri people their democratic right to self-determination for decades.

On the other hand, the portrayal of the question of Kashmir by the Indian civil society and some of our ‘progressive’ comrades as merely one of human rights violations is an opportunist betrayal of the struggle that the Kashmiri people have waged in the face of most brutal from of repression and state terror. To raise mere demands like ‘withdraw the army’ or ‘revoke AFSPA’ is an illusory statement unless one addresses the root cause of the Kashmir question. And that is the historically denied right to national self determination of the Kashmiri people, it is a question of Azadi. That is why there is such a massive presence of the occupying Indian army and impunity provided to it through laws like AFSPA. Even as the Indian state and its apologists continue to laud itself as being the ‘world’s largest democracy’, the presence of 8 lakh army personnel in the valley, making it the world’s most militarized zone totally betrays such claims. A country that continues to administer the world’s largest military occupation can not continue to call itself a democracy. The progressive and democratic forces in India must therefore oppose this forceful occupation of the Kashmir valley by the Indian state and stand in full solidarity with the people of Kashmir in their fight for nationhood and freedom.

Condemn the cold blooded murder of Azad & a freelance journalist in fake encounter! Expose the farcical commitment of the Indian state to ‘dialogue’!

The spokesperson of CPI(Maoist) Cherukuri Rajkumar alias Azad and a freelance journalist Hem Chandra Pandey, both unarmed, were brutally murdered at Adilabad district in Andhra Pradesh on the 1st of July 2010.  While reporting this incident, the Andhra Police however claimed that Azad and one Sahadeva were killed in a ‘four hour long encounter’ involving ‘fierce gun battle’ near Sarkepalli village in Jogapur forests in Wankhidi mandal, Adilabad, while others of the armed troop of Maoists managed to escape in this lengthy exchange of fire. The corporate media of course blindly parroted these lies and never cared to pay heed to the section of the civil society and activists who were challenging the state’s version and were most vociferously exposing another blatant incident of fake-encounter. According to media reports and activists, Azad, who was appointed to head the peace-talks with the Home Ministry, was on his way to meet his comrades to decide on the cease-fire process. Both Azad and Hem Chandra Pandey were picked up by the Andhra Pradesh police from Nagpur at 11 am on the 1st of July 2010 and brought to Adilabad and were shot dead in cold blood while both were unarmed. But the naked-fact of a fake-encounter killing was and is still being brushed aside by the corporate media and the state by remaining simply silent about the facts that have come into the fore.

The story of ‘fierce gun battle’ has already come under serious suspicion by the facts being reported even by some of the mainstream media, that villagers of adjoining areas denied having heard of any such  exchange of gun-fire between 10pm and 2am, let alone a four hour long gun battle. Moreover, it is also difficult to believe that not a single policeman was injured in the supposed ‘four hour long fierce encounter’ with 25 heavily armed Maoists.  Further, the fascist nature of Indian armed force and the state and their mastery over transforming a fake encounter into a ‘bloody battle’ got thoroughly exposed when it was identified that the person who was killed along with Azad was Hem Chandra Pandey a freelance journalist based in Delhi.  He wrote for various Hindi dailies and worked for in the in-house magazine, Chetna in the communication department of DARCL Logistics Ltd for a monthly pay of Rs.15,865. His wife in a press conference informed the media that he had gone to Nagpur to do a story and was supposed to come back on the 2nd of July. This proves beyond doubt that Azad was indeed picked up from Nagpur even before he met his comrades and then he was killed in cold blood; and the journalist Hem was killed on the other hand just to suppress this truth and justify their fictitious version of a ‘heroic police raid’. Journalists in more than 6 districts of Andhra Pradesh and Hyderabad have strongly protested the killing of Hem and it is only under immense pressure and fear of being exposed, that the AP Police in a vault-face had to identify him as a ‘scribe’ the very next day. The targeting of journalists by the state in various struggle areas, killing them, intimidating them, or booking them under fake charges in a desperate bid to stop them from reporting the other side of the story is a fascist assault on the fundamental ethos of the very profession of journalism. In recently concluded genocide in Tamil Elam, the bloody war waged by the fascist Sri Lankan state, against the Tamil population, also adopted the same tactics of silencing the media by deliberate targeting of journalists.

Azad was someone who was heading the on-going peace talk between the Home Minsitry and the Maoists via Swami Agnivesh. There were several letters that had been exchanged between Chidambaram and Azad discussing the modalities and time period for the possible ceasefire. At this juncture, the deliberate elimination of the person who was leading the peace process on behalf of the Maoists exposes the farcical nature of the commitment to ‘peace’ that Chidambaram keeps boasting about. And the Home Ministry is therefore singularly responsible for derailing the so-called peace-process that it proposed to initiate. Evidences in this case most comprehensively indicate towards another incident of fake encounter just like the thousands of other such staged encounters going on over the years all over the country in the various liberation struggles and people’s movements in Kashmir, North-East, West Bengal, Chattisgarh and so on. And like in every such occasion before, this time around as well the armed forces will be shielded in spite of overwhelming evidences to ‘safeguard their morale’.
 

This fascist strategy makes complete mockery of the NHRC appointed Ranganath Mishra Committee’s directive (1996) that all cases of encounters are ‘cognizable offence’ until the police version is verified by an independent investigating agency and hence the police personnel must be booked under the charge of homicide in these sorts of killing. The historic Andhra High Court ruling on encounter killings clearly said that ‘the state is responsible to register an FIR against the encounter killing and the plea of self defense be proven before the court of law by the involved security personnel’. But the saga of such fake encounters continues unabated against all such legalities, norms and provisions of the UN, other international conventions and statutes of civil liberty. The adoption of this ‘US-Israel counter insurgency strategy’ of targeting and extra-judicial elimination of the leadership of a people’s movement brazenly exposes the fascist nature of the Indian state that flouts and undermines the very law of the land and the constitution that it claims to uphold. The ‘Mossad-trained’ covert operations of the security forces and the brutal killings of the leaders of people’s movements in fake encounters like that of Lalmohan Tudu, Sudhakar Reddy, Appa Rao, Kondal Reddy and others all point towards the same direction.


Immediately constitute independent enquiry into the killing of Azad & the freelance journalist Hem Pandey!
Home Ministry must clarify its position on the peace process it claims to initiate!