College ON SALE in Tamil Nadu!Administration of American College, Madurai attempts to SELL OFF the college premises for 30 crores to private companies!

The American College in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, a 170 years old institution that is known for its socially inclusive education policies, has today become a battle ground. The students and the faculty of the college have been fighting a pitched battle for the last 3 months against the attempts by the college administration to sell off the college premises to some local business houses to be used for real estate and commercial purposes. The administration wants to shift the campus to the suburbs after making a huge profit from this land deal. Since several years now they have been drooling over the ‘real estate value’ of the campus that is centrally located in the city of Madurai. And it is only the remarkable vigilance, tenacity and strength of the student community that has resisted and defeated every such move till date. The students have objected to this nefarious plan because it will severely restrict the educational opportunities for the students from economically and socially marginalised students of the city who would not be able to attend classes by travelling everyday to a distant location. Moreover, it is a blatant case of handing over the property of a public-funded education for private profit. So, braving arrests and threats to life the students of American college have organised themselves under American College Students Forum (ACSF) have been putting up a strong resistance to defend their right to education.

Since April 2008, the Bishop (of CSI, Tamil Nadu) has been on the constant prowl to lay his hands upon the college administration. This is in spite of his role being strictly limited to religious matters according to the college constitution. He has made several surreptitious and manipulative moves for having a principal of his own choice at the head of the college affairs. All these moves were directed towards selling off the college premises. And when the students, conscious of his intentions, tried to stop him from entering the college in August 2008, he directed 50 policemen protecting him along with hired lumpens to attack the students with logs and blades.

Last December, the Bishop made another attempt to cleverly implement his long-pending plan of selling-off the campus in a multi-crore deal. When the vigilant students once again rose to the occasion and resisted this shrewd move by the Bishop, the puppet administration shamelessly threatened to fail the protesting students in their examinations. But they could not ultimately succeed in tampering with the mark-sheets of the students because of the support of faculty members who stood by them. The police arrested the teacher who, against enormous pressure from the administration, had refused any tampering with the marks of the students. The district administration and the state government have maintained a silence even after the students have approached them with memorandums demanding the state government to intervene till the legal case on legitimacy of the administrative council is settled. This once again lays bare the complicity of the state machinery and the police in this lucrative multi-crore property deal.

The students have been fighting a protracted and militant battle against the state-corporate-mafia nexus that is bent upon turning college property into a real estate venture. On 10th March 2011 the students went on a relay hunger strike in the campus. The administration constantly pressurised the students to withdraw their hunger strike. The Bishop and his men perceived the resistance of the students as a potent threat to their designs and thereby on 16th March they used hired goons to enter the campus and beat up the students who were on hunger strike. The students fought back this brutal repression by intensifying their struggle. The ACSF announced indefinite hunger strike on the 17th March 2011, which was again brutally attacked by the local goons under the supervision of the police. This time they went on a rampage in the campus, attacking the students, faculty and damaging the vehicles parked-all under the silent spectatorship of the police. The administration concocted the truth and told the media that it was a result of fight between two sections of students and called the police to ‘restore order’ in the campus. The police promptly arrested the struggling students, many of whom were remanded and are still in jail.

The anti-student attempts to sell-out the American College campus has to be seen in a larger context. With the liberalisation-privatisation-globalisation policies, commodification and commercialisation of education has been intensified, so much so that only those from privileged classes can afford it. In Tamil Nadu alone, there has been 111% increase in the number of ‘self-financed’ engineering colleges in last 6 years. Private engineering colleges have risen from 224 to 473 with only 6 government colleges and 16 under the Anna University. The state government has been keen in introducing ‘job oriented’ subjects in Arts and Science colleges. Most of these colleges are owned by education mafias with the sole purpose of minting money. In this context, the struggle of the students of Madurai is part of a much larger fight against the tightening grip of corporatization, dictates of the market and the commodification of institutions of higher education. They are fighting to defend the right to education of the most oppressed sections of the society.

DSU demands that that the proposed sell-off of the campus be stopped immediately. We along with ACSF, also demand the dismissal of the present principal who was responsible for the murderous attacks on the students and the teachers, along with the punishment of the goons, the police officers and the Bishop responsible for this attack. We also support the democratic demand of the students for 50% representation of teachers and students in the administrative council of the college. All the false cases on the students and teachers involved in the movement must be withdrawn and all the students arrested for fighting for their democratic right must be released immediately. Let us strengthen this collective struggle by standing in solidarity with the fighting students of the American College.

Imperialists, Hands off Libya! Resist Imperialist War on Libya in the Name of ‘Humanitarian Intervention’! Stand in Solidarity with the People of Libya in their Struggle against Imperialism!

Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Libya: Under the garb of the United Nations Security Council Resolution No.1973 approved on 17 March, the United States and other major imperialist powers have invaded Libya. While France, Britain and US has been the loudest advocates of this war, the other two veto-wielding powers Russia and China also meekly allowed the resolution to be passed with their abstention, keeping their own ‘national interests’ in mind. This imperialist war too takes up the old pretence of this being a ‘humanitarian’ mission to protect ‘civilian lives’ and to restore ‘democracy’. The resolution imposed a so-called No-Fly Zone (the first stage of imperialist invasion), and authorized the use of military force including “all necessary measures … to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack.” These “areas” include Benghazi, the city with a population of one million which has been the stronghold of the anti-Gaddafi forces fighting the Libyan government till last month. It hardly mattered that this was in violation of the very UN Charter that guarantees the sovereignty of independent states against external intervention.

After months of planning, surveying and arming dissident groups within Libya, the US, British and French warmongers started air-strikes on 19 March. They have threatened more intensified attacks in the coming days, including the use of ground troops. Not only the Libyan military infrastructure and communication is being targeted, but there have been reports of willful bombing of hospitals and residential areas to terrorise the people and force the Libyan government to surrender. Already, there are reportedly more than 100 civilian casualties in six days of intense bombing all over the country. The military command has now been handed over to the NATO, which is trying all means to enlist the participation of Arab countries into the invading forces, so as to give it the much needed legitimacy. It was exactly eight years back on 19 March 2003 that Iraq was invaded by the US with lies of Weapons of Mass Destruction, which finally led to the deposition of its legitimate government and the death of more than five million Iraqi people. This was after the US war-machine engulfed Afghanistan in 2001, ostensibly to dethrone Taliban and to set up a ‘viable democratic state’! No matter whatever pretext is trumped up, and whatever the western imperialist media conjures up, it is clear to the people of world that the Libyan war is aimed at toppling Muammar Gaddafi’s government and set up a puppet government in its place, so that US imperialism and its allies can take control of its rich oil resources and crucial geostrategic location.

Sham of ‘Democracy’ and Geo-Politics of Big Oil: These plans for war are not motivated by any intentions to protect the Libyan people or further the cause of so-called democracy, as the imperialists are proclaiming. This invasion by the Iraq-style “coalition of the willing” led by US in the oil-rich Libya is only driven by profit motives and geopolitical imperatives in the context of the worldwide crisis of the imperialist economy. Their initial aim was to instigate and exploit the civil war in Libya to impose a titular regime which will remain completely loyal to these powers and to the major Western oil conglomerates. When these attempts failed, direct imperialist intervention became necessary. The US-backed war also aims to suppress any genuine peoples’ upsurge and to ensure that any government that may replace Gaddafi serves not the interests of the Libyan people, but rather the demands of Washington and Big Oil. The NATO has legitimized this intervention by citing that they have ‘regional support’. This support comes from none other than the Arab League which consists of dictators, royalists and emirates who have always served the interests of the imperialists and have often violently repressed popular upsurges in their own countries. The autocrats of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have also indicated that they will send military forces to attack Libya. So far, the two Arab countries who have registered their support in the UN and are ready to join the US-NATO assault are Qatar and UAE, both ruled by monarchs and are currently aiding Saudi Arab’s violent intervention in Bahrain to repress the mass upsurge of people against its ruling monarchy.

Parody of ‘Humanitarian Intervention’ in Propping up Imperialist Stooges: The sham of ‘humanitarian intervention’ is being trumpeted faithfully in the corporate media. Right after the civil war in Libya started, major sections of the media have been portraying it in a way that suits the imperialist interests. On 22 February, BBC showed the footage of crowds in Benghazi pulling down the green flag of the Libyan republic and replacing it with the flag of the overthrown monarch King Idris – who had been a puppet of US and British imperialism. Similarly, it has carefully blacked out the Libyan people’s voices against this military aggression, or their defiant and patriotic resistance to defend their country. Right now the media is once again justifying the war on Libyan people by dubbing it as the ‘war against Gaddafi’. This media will never focus on the real imperialist intention which is to tighten its grip over Libya as a semi-colony, ruled by the United States and its fellow predators from Western Europe, who will seize control of the oil reserves and transform the country’s territory into a strategic base of operations against all the mass upsurges which is now sweeping West Asia and North Africa. Washington, which pretends to be outraged over the killing of Libyan civilians and bent on ‘saving lives’ even at the cost of more lives, is itself responsible for the slaughter of hundreds of thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan. On the very eve of the UN vote, the US war machine has carried out the cold-blooded murder of around 40 civilians (media count) in a drone attack in western Pakistan. The same powers stood by the Tunisian and Egyptian dictators, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak when they massacred demonstrators seeking jobs, democratic rights and an end to the plundering of their country and their resources by the corrupt ruling elite. They offered political, diplomatic and in some cases direct security assistance in an effort to prop up these stooge regimes. Crimes have been committed with impunity by US allies in Oman and Bahrain and by the US client regime in Iraq without even any public condemnation by Washington, let alone the organization of an international war campaign.

The US-European posture of humanitarian outrage has no credibility: Until a few weeks ago, these powers were openly paying court to Gaddafi to obtain lucrative contracts for the exploitation of the oil and gas resources of Libya. It also continues to back the regimes in Bahrain and Yemen as they scythe down protesters demanding democratic rights. The US and its cronies are silent on the atrocities meted out to the people of Kuwait or Saudi Arabia or Bahrain who are also fighting to overthrow their dictatorial rulers. This is simply because the ruling regimes in these countries are declared puppets of US. As for Egypt and Tunisia, the imperialists are pulling every string they can to get the masses off the streets. There was no talk of US intervention to ‘help’ the Palestinian people of Gaza when thousands died from being blockaded, bombed and invaded by Israel two years back. To the contrary, the U.S. intervened to prevent condemnation of the Zionist settler state of Israel. These same forces were criminally silent and thereby complicit on the use of chemical weapons on the people of Tamil Eelam by the fascist Rajapakshe government of Sri Lanka. Since 1945, the US has toppled or subverted more than 50 governments through coups, intrigue or direct war. It used mass murderers like Suharto, Mobutu and Pinochet to dominate by proxy. In the Arab world, every dictatorship and monarchy has been sustained by the US.

Desert Storm in the Arab World shows the Faultlines of a Worldwide Economic Tyranny: The mass upsurge sweeping the Arab world is not merely against their dictatorial governments but is against the worldwide economic tyranny designed by US Treasury and imposed by US Agency for International Development, IMF, WTO and World Bank, which have ensured that even relatively rich countries like Egypt are pauperised, with half the population earning less than $2 a day. From Tunisia in January 2011 the desert storm of people’s upsurge had set across the entire Arab world. From Tahrir Square in Egypt to Algeria, Bahrain, Sudan, etc. massive protests shook the comprador, autocratic regimes most of which are mere stooges of US imperialism. Although the corporate and imperialist media are forced to talk about these massive protests and their attempts to overhaul the ruling classes in Tunisia and Egypt, the anti-imperialist and anti-neoliberal aspect of these protests are being carefully made inconspicuous and the uprisings are only attributed to the misrule and rampant corruption of the head of states. These protests with their anti-imperialist character and overwhelming participation of women demolished all the vulgar stereotypes of the Muslim world trumpeted by the propaganda machinery of the so-called ‘war against terror’. These mass upsurges in the Arab world have shaken imperialism in and out. They are shaken by the spread of the protests and at the same time are clueless about the road ahead in the region. The war on Libyan people once again reflects the desperation of the imperialism as they have run out of all other solutions.

DSU condemns the ongoing imperialist war on the people of Libya by France, Britain, Italy, etc led by the US. We hail the people’s upsurges in the Arab world and expresses its full solidarity with the struggling people fighting tooth and nail the mighty forces of imperialism and the feudal/monarchic ruling classes who have lived the time and space that post-World War II inter-imperialist arrangements have provided them. We must resist this imperialist war in solidarity with the Libyan people. It is the people of Libya and the Arab world who must have the right to shape their future.

Women hold up half the sky! Uphold the Revolutionary legacy of March, 8: International Women’s day!

Patriarchy over history has retained older forms of oppression and invented newer faces to subjugate women. Its oppression is centuries old and pre-dates civilization. Equally old is the struggle of women against varied forms of patriarchy. The organized struggle of women however is just hundred years old, and today we celebrate the completion of its centenary. International woman’s day is an occasion to remember all the fights and battles women have waged and are waging every day against the forces of patriarchy, that operates through imperialism, feudalism, capitalism, consumerism, caste, communal fascism, market, relationships, discrimination, state repression and so on…

According to an account of the first celebration of International Women’s Day: The first International Women's Day took place in 1911. Its success succeeded all expectation. Germany and Austria on Working Women's Day was one seething, trembling sea of women. Meetings were organized everywhere – in the small towns and even in the villages halls were packed so full that they had to ask male workers to give up their places for the women.
This was certainly the first show of militancy by the working woman. Men stayed at home with their children for a change, and their wives, the captive housewives, went to meetings. During the largest street demonstrations, in which 30,000 were taking part, the police decided to remove the demonstrators' banners: the women workers made a stand. In the scuffle that followed, bloodshed was averted only with the help of the socialist deputies in Parliament. From what started as collective assertion of economic demands of higher wages and better working conditions by organised working-class women in the factories of US in the nineteenth century, armed with Marxism, the international women’s movement in the twentieth century broke the barriers of economism and reformism to fight political battles for a revolutionary transformation of society, in which lies the liberation of women and all other oppressed sections of the society.

March 8th is significant for starting the organized struggle of women worldwide. But then all issues are women’s issue and no issue is a woman’s issue alone. Because whenever a woman is killed, raped, harassed, beaten up, tortured, discriminated against, paraded in the name of beauty, is killed in the womb or right after birth, is asked to pay for her marriage, her body is sold and consumed, her dignity is crushed, her mobility is controlled, her thinking is manipulated, her consciousness is restrained, her choice is denied, her morality is questioned, her privacy is invaded, her rights are flouted- it doesn’t merely remain a ‘woman’s issue’. It becomes question of denial of justice, equality, and liberty of the entire humanity.

Patriarchy also does not operate in isolation. It works and reveals itself through various forms of oppression. It creates the question of ‘morality’, ‘honour’, ‘religiosity’, ‘duty’ through caste and religion; it puts up the façades of ‘empowerment’ and ‘freedom’ by commodifying the woman’s body through the imperialist consumerist market, it tries to ‘control’ rebellions by using weapons of state repression where women are made specific targets; it can also come in the form of ‘intimate relationships’ only to curtail the mobility and clamp down on the independent thinking and fight for her rights. In every form it subjugates the woman, undermines her personality, curb her independence to ultimately clamp her down to push her further away from her liberation.

And thus the fight for women’s liberation also can not be an isolated struggle but has to be connected with all other fights against all forms of injustices. The fight against patriarchy is also there fore a fight against imperialism, feudalism, capitalism, communal fascism, caste oppression or state repression. Today organising and politicising the most oppressed classes of women, be it adivasi or dalit women, the revolutionary women’s movement in India is not only fighting against direct onslaught by the forces of the Indian state, but is also confronting the age-old forms of feudal and patriarchal oppression within the present anti-women male dominated society. To build and expand an uncompromising movement among the women who have been systemically deprived of even the minimum democratic rights and dignity. Women have fought valiant struggles in Tebhaga, Telanagana, Naxalbari uprisings. Women are in the forefront of struggles for liberty, equality, justice, dignity, rights, livelihood and national freedom in the struggles storming across the entire Arab world, in Kashmir, in North East, In Lalgarh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Maharshtra as well as in the streets in other cities, in the fields, in the forests and countryside.

March 8 is the therefore day to remember these brave struggles of these women who have fought throughout history to ensure the revolutionary transformation of the present oppressive social order to bring a world of equality and justice not only for women but for all oppressed people.