Immediately Withdraw the Death Sentence against Adivasi & Dalit Cultural Activists Jeeten Marandi, Anil Ram, Manoj Rajwar and Chhatrapati Mandal!

Yesterday the Giridih additional district sessions court judge Indradeo Mishra pronounced death sentence to four ‘Maoist’ convicts in regard to a case of killing 19 people in Chilkhari that took place in 2007. The convicts are Jeetan Marandi, Anil Ram, Manoj Rajwar and Chhatrapati Mandal. Six other accused were acquitted in lack of evidences. It is evident that the four people who were convicted had been falsely implicated and arrested by the Jharkhand police in 2007 and now they have been given the harshest punishment by the session court.

Among the convicts, Jeeten Marandi is a well-known cultural activist of Jahrkhand, who has consistently exposed and opposing the anti-people and repressive activities of the state through his organisations Jharkhand Aven and Krantikari Janvadi Morcha. Through his songs, plays and articles he consistently opposed displacement, corporate loot and state repression. The state had first put the charge of sedition on Jeeten Marandi where they alleged that he has given ‘inflammatory speeches’ in the rally that took place on the issue of release of political prisoners on 1st October 2007, in front of Raj Bhavan in Ranchi. After that a series of false cases were slapped on him. Along with the Chilkhari case, the state had put two cases from Thana gaon, one case from Pirtand police station and two cases from Teesri police station. It must be noted that when the cases of Pirtand and Teesri P.S. took place, Jeeten was in jail for different cases. This clearly reflects the real intention of the govt to implicate him in false cases to silence his voice.

Even in the Chilkhari case, the police denied the possibility of involvement of Jeeten Marandi. While reporting the incident of Chilkhari the Hindi daily Prabhat Khabar published Jeeten’s photo in the first page calling him the prime accused of the case. Later the editor of Prabhat Khabar acknowledged his mistake and publicly apologized to Jeeten. That time the police officers too confirmed that the prime accused of Chilkahri case was not cultural activist Jeeten Marandi, but a Maoist commander by the same name. But later the police changed its statement and said both cultural activist Jeeten Marandi and Maoist commander Jeeten Marandi are involved in the case! In order to implicate Jeeten Marandi, three new witnesses were incorporate in the case.

Capital punishment by the state in itself is a barbaric act, which has been ended in more than 130 countries already but not in the “world’s largest democracy’’. It is summarily used against people who challenge the policies of the state and fight for a better society. Jeeten Marandi and others case is a glaring proof of that. It also shows how despite glaring loopholes the court rabidly upholds the police version. We strongly condemn this farcical justice of the state, the withdrawal of the death sentence against four activists of Jharkhand and their immediate release. We demand that the thousands of political prisoners languishing in various Indian jails be released unconditionally.

Condemn the Police Firing and Brutal Murder of Three Protestors in Guwahati!Down with the Dictatorial and Anti-People Assam Government!

DSU strongly condemns the violence unleashed by Assam police and paramilitary personnel on a protest demonstration at the behest of the chief minister Tarun Gogoi and on 22 June 2011. This brutal crackdown by the central and state government’s armed forces on the peaceful protestors has left three persons dead, including Rubul Ali, a 9 years old child. Protestors converged in front the State Secretariat in Dispur, Guwahati demanding an immediate stop to the eviction drive undertaken by the government in the hills and forests surrounding the city, and asking the government to confer land rights to the inhabitants who have been living there for many years. The people who have been evicted or are facing the threat of imminent eviction in the near future by the Assam Police and the Forest Department are primarily the working people of the city, and lives a precarious existence due to the government’s denial of permanent land rights to them, since the government considers them to be ‘illegal encroachers’, and have repeatedly tried to evict them by using brute force. These marginalised sections of the society numbering many lakhs – who mostly earn their living by day labour, peddling rickshaw, selling vegetables, hawking, working as street vendors and as domestic help, etc., have been at the forefront in the struggle against the eviction drive by the government, militantly resisting the uniformed goons from the police and forest department.

The protest demonstration called on 22 June jointly by Brihattar Guwahati Bhumi Pattan Dabi Samiti (Greater Guwahati Land Rights Demand Committee) and Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS) was attended by more than 6000 protestors facing eviction. They expected that the Memorandum containing their demands will be received by a minister or a high administrative official, and would also address their grievances by opening a dialogue. However, the government merely sent a magistrate to receive the memorandum, and asked the protestors to disperse. When the protestors declined to withdraw without talking to a higher government functionary, the police and the paramilitary was ordered to lathi-charge and tear-gas the protestors to forcibly remove them from the venue. A tussle ensued between the police and the protestors, when Debashish Bora, a sub-inspector of police shot dead in cold blood the 9 year old Rubul Ali and Diren Das without any provocation. More police firing on the agitated protestors followed, who were now shooting to kill, in which another protestor Shiva Sarma died. The police brutality continued for hours, in which hundreds of protestors were severely injured. The people militantly resisted the government forces armed with guns and pistols with their bare hands, stones and lathis, and forced their perpetrators to retreat. With no medical help coming from government hospitals, the people themselves rescued and hospitalised the injured.

Not stopping at cold bloodedly murdering and spilling the blood of protestors, the vengeful Assam government has now followed it up with a reign of repression campaign by lodging false cases on many activists of the land-rights movement and arresting them. While the perpetrators of the firing, be it the lawless political leadership of Congress in the Assam government who ordered the killings and assault, or the identified police officers who executed these orders are roaming scot free, the ‘rule of law’ is now invoked on the protestors. In a highly condemnable act, the Assam police have arrested Ahkil Gogoi, the leader of KMSS while he was in a press meet in the Guwahati Press Club. A witch-hunt is presently carried out to arrest other activists of the movement.

The motive behind this brutal repression is not difficult to understand, when we take into account the government’s eagerness to give away hilly and forested land in and around Guwahati to multinational and Indian comprador business houses. The government have been systematically transferring large plots of land belonging to tribal communities of the region to private companies for real estate development and for other commercial purposes. The resistance by the people affected by forcible land alienation and displacement has become the biggest impediment to the government-corporate nexus. As we have witnessed in the recent past, the central and state governments have been working as the mercenary goons of private companies by trying to forcibly take over land from peasants, adivasis and the working people. However, be it in Bhatta Parsaul of Uttar Pradesh, Forbesganj of Bihar, Sompeta of Andhra Pradesh, Kalinganagar and Jagatsinghpur (POSCO) etc. of Odisha, Jaitpur of Maharashtra, Singur and Nandigram of West Bengal, the government has been confronted by militant mass resistance of the people. In every place the government has used its coercive machinery against the people, going to the extent of perpetrating massacres. The killing of 6 protestors by the Bihar police in Forbesganj who were demanding the removal of a starch factory is one recent instance. DSU condemns the deadly assaults committed by the central and state governments on the people all across the country, and stands with the peoples’ movements fighting against the might of the state.



Fight the Authoritarian JNU Administration! Unite to Oppose Administration’s Circular Restricting Students’ Entry into JNUSU Office!

JNUSU office has been recently locked up by the administration barring entry of the students without formal permission. This unprecedented step taken by the administration is justified through yet another draconian circular. This time authoritarian administration’s logic is that in the absence of an elected JNUSU, prior permission to use the office must be taken by the students from the administration. The key to the office, which is now with the Dean of Students, will not be given to anybody without permission. Though utterly ridiculous even in appearance, it is another move by the administration to curb democratic space for vibrant political activities for which JNU is known for. Does JNUSU exist only when there is an elected Council? The answer is simply NO. According to the JNUSU Constitution, which in itself is the result of many decades of students’ movement in this campus, every student of this campus is a member of JNUSU irrespective of presence or absence of the JNUSU council. At the time of registration, every student makes contribution to the JNUSU fund as a member. Therefore JNUSU office, quite contrary to what JNU administration wants us to believe, belongs to all of us. It does not solely belong to JNUSU office bearers. Most importantly it never belonged or will ever belong to JNU administration. The Dean of Students or anyone in the administration need not permit us to enter a place which rightfully belongs to all of us. Moreover, JNUSU office is not a mere infrastructure within the jurisprudence of our VC and its administration. In the long tradition of JNU, it stands for students’ autonomy, democratic spirit and as a site for protest and dissent against the powers-that-be. This new circular is a direct attack on our political freedom, right to expression and assembly.

It is not mere coincidence that the JNUSU office was locked up on 10 June, precisely the day when JNU Forum against War on People was organising its public meeting in the office. The meeting was organized to protest against the administration’s restrain order on Forum’s activities including public meetings in the hostel messes and the ongoing enquiry against it using the bogey of ‘legal violations’. Teachers from JNU and DU addressed and stood in solidarity with the Forum, opposing JNU administration’s crackdown in no uncertain terms. They also condemned administration’s efforts to please the high and mighty of the state by witch-hunting, harassing common students in the name of Proctorial enquiry. A large participation of the students in this struggle also ensured that the administration’s efforts to curb the freedom of the students fail miserably once again. This is what the administration is most scared of. This is what even Indian state is apprehensive of. The collective struggle of the students with active participation of the teachers’ community has thoroughly isolated this administration. Standing naked in their complicity with the state, JNU administration has reacted in a typical manner in which ruling classes of this country have always done. JNU administration is up in arms to ensure that there is little space in this campus to build up a broad collective opinion against Operation Green Hunt in any of its avatar, inside and outside the campus. Therefore they did not even hesitate to lock up of JNUSU office indefinitely. Thereby the administration is trying to scuttle not only the JNU Forum, but the very space for students’ political mobilisation. The administration and the Indian state think that they have been able to weaken the students’ movement of JNU by putting a stop to the JNUSU elections since 2008. The locking-up of the JNUSU office, which has always been - in spirit and in reality – at the centre of debate, discussions and dissent, is another challenge thrown at us by this neo-liberal administration! 

Behind the smokescreen of the recent circular locking up the JNUSU office lies the state’s single point agenda to privatize higher education. Time and again, Knowledge Commission Report, Birla-Ambani Report identified that the biggest obstacle to privatization of higher education in consonance to LPG paradigm is students’ politics. To depoliticize campuses across the states and discourage students from participating in debates pertaining to state policies affecting the everyday life of the people, Lyngdoh Committee recommendation was introduced. But JNU’s students’ movement has stood firm even in the face of such unprecedented assault, and are fighting Lyngdoh in and outside the campus politically and legally. Through our sustained political campaign we have exposed the real intention of the state and Lyngdoh Committee, putting a very question mark on its constitutional validity. We have collectively fought the privatization of this campus. We have upheld the democratic, inclusive spirit of this campus by our ongoing collective struggle for full implementation of 27% OBC reservation. Time and again, JNU has become the very site where opinions have been built up against feudal-comprador ruling classes of this country and against their anti-people policies. Repeatedly JNU students have stood firmly with the people, for social justice and against all forms of exploitation and oppression. JNU has refused to stack up theses and dissertations being cut off from the society and the people, or their struggles. JNU and its students with their progressive culture continues to pose a threat to status-quo which wants to sell off campuses, and country’s resources to imperialist-comprador capital. Despite putting a stay on JNUSU elections, the state and administration has failed to do what the market and corporate interests demanded in their reports. Therefore it is no surprise that the JNU administration, acting as the stooge of the state, has now stepped in directly. It is now in search of slightest of pretexts to clamp down on students. It is perennially looking for excuses to control and restrain political activities in any form on this campus in every manner possible. The circulars against JNU Forum are the mere beginning. Students of the forum are not targeted because they have flouted some legal provisions. They are being victimised precisely because they dare to brave the state-power to stand in solidarity with oppressed masses of this country. Locking up the JNUSU office with this new circular must be understood in this context. The authoritarian administration as an agent of the state is trying to do what the state through Lyngdoh has failed to do.

JNU students must carry forward the legacy of progressive students’ movement. We must stand up to this administration and its fascist diktat in the name of circulars. We must expose all the ploys of the state, JNU administration and its lackeys to destroy what we have achieved in several historical junctures over last forty years. This is another decisive moment in the progressive politics of JNU students’ movement. We must declare to this administration and the state loud and clear that the JNUSU Constitution or JNUSU office belong to us and we will never tolerate any intervention on the part of the authorities. DSU calls upon student community to stand united and fight this administration till all its authoritarian measures are withdrawn. As in the past, we must once again defeat this administration in its devious ploy to take away our rights.

Remembering Prof. R. S. Rao

Prof. R. S. Rao, the renowned Marxist economist breathed his last at 1.40pm on 17 June 2011 in Ganga Ram Hospital, New Delhi. He was 74 years of age. The life and works of Prof. Rao, who taught for many decades at Sambalpur University in Odhisa, was inspired by Communism, which found its concrete expression in India’s context through Naxalbari. His thought and works were focused on the investigation of the class structure of the Indian society and emphasized the need for a revolutionary social transformation. His book Towards Understanding Semi Feudal Semi Colonial Society: Studies in Political Economy, or his other works help us in correctly analysing the present oppressive society its exploitative production relations. He is remembered for explaining complex problems of economics in very simple words which could be understood not only by the experts and academics but by people in general.

Recently, Prof. Rao played a crucial role as one of the three mediators between the Maoists and the Odisha government after the abduction of Malkangiri Deputy Collector R Vineel Krishna and Junior Engineer Pabitra Majhi. After their release, Prof Rao said, “There is a challenge ahead, as the government has to honour the commitment it made during the five-day negotiations. Tribal people have been neglected over the years. They don’t have land and do not enjoy rights on forest land. These things should be rectified. The negotiation table has given the opportunity to highlight all the issues” (The Telegraph, 26 February 2011). In spite of his ill health, Prof. Rao readily accepted the call to mediate on behalf of the Maoists, and to leave for Bhubanewar as he believed that the problems of adivasis had to be highlighted. All his life, he raised the issue of the adivasis displaced by the Hirakud, Upper Indravati, Balimela and such projects, which is a testimony to the political commitment towards the most oppressed sections of the society and their struggles. This commitment led him to challenge the anti-people and imperialist model of ‘development’ pursued by the ruling classes of India, and to talk of an alternative model of development with the most oppressed of the people at its centre. While speaking in a DSU public meeting in JNU a few years back, he argued for such a path of alternative development, which he said could be achieved only through a communist movement.

Highly respected as a peoples’ intellectual who personified the principle of “Red and Expert’, the demise of Prof. R. S. Rao is a big loss to the revolutionary movement in India and the struggling masses of the country. DSU pays its homage to Prof. R. S. Rao.

Oppose the POSCO Project in Odisha! Stand in Solidarity with the Anti-POSCO Movement Fighting against Displacement, Destruction and Death!

While the corporate media of the country is busy celebrating the farcical ‘movements’ of Hazare-Ramdev and company against corruption, the adivasis in Gadakujang, Nuagaon and Dhinkia gram panchayats in Jagatsinghpur, Odisha are gearing up for pitched battle against the police, the mercenary forces of the mining giant POSCO. 2000 women and hundreds of children were making a human barricade braving the scorching heat for the last few days, to ward off the 700 strong armed police forces and the state sponsored vigilante gangs who had gathered there to forcefully facilitate the land grab. Repeated threats from the authorities of brutal carnage could not deter the determined masses. This is the biggest FDI project in India which is going to displace and dispossess thousands of adivasis, dalits and OBCs from their land, betel vines, fish ponds, forests and mountains. As the ongoing struggle indicates, the resilient masses will not let that happen.

The movement against POSCO started in 2005, right after the project and the consequent land grab was declared. The POSCO project is to set up a steel mill worth $ 12 billion which will need 4004 acres of land. The project has promised the creation of 7,000 jobs after destroying the lives and livelihood of more than 20,000 people. The project also blatantly flouts many constitutional and legal provisions such as the Coastal Zone Notification Act which require the consent of the people before encroaching into forest areas. The project would divert 1,253.255 ha of forest land and will require felling of about 2.8. lakh trees only for the integrated steel plan and captive minor port at Jatadhari Mouth. The anti-POSCO movement led by POSCO Pratirodh Sangarm Samiti (PPSS) had faced state repression severely. All its leaders have arrest warrants issued against them, while more than 800 activists have been arrested. The government has refused to hold meetings with the activists on the pretext that they have been charged with non-bailable offences. But when some of the people switched sides and formed a ‘pro-POSCO organisation’ they were accepted as ‘people’s representatives’ in government meetings even with the charges pending on them! The government has successfully broken a section of the masses by paying huge bribes to form a ‘pro-POSCO United Action Committee’. Some of them have been converted to form vigilante gangs who are regularly used against the resilient people fighting POSCO. But nothing could deter the people till date. They are still fighting tooth and nail and are currently braving to face the ‘final’ onslaught by a desperate Naveen Patnaik government.

The UPA government and its environment minster Jairam Ramesh has displayed utter duplicity over the POSCO project. On 26th January this year, Manmohan Singh and Naveen Patnaik together had assured the POSCO management that they will expedite the process of land acquisition. The government brazenly ignored the recommendations of Meena Gupta and N.C Saxena committee, both of which had recommended the revocation of the project to avoid the impending onslaught on people and environment if the project takes place. Environmental minister Jairam Ramesh gave POSCO its much awaited environmental clearance earlier this year. Between 2002 and 2010, the State government of Odhisa cleared 184 industrial projects involving a total investment of Rs.8 lakh crore. They include 50 plants for the production of 83 million tonnes of steel at an investment of Rs.2,50,000 crore, 30 thermal power plants for a targeted production of 37,000 MW of power, four port projects, several alumina refineries and a number of cement plants. The government has identified 14 sites to develop ports along the 480-km coastline. All these industrial projects require more than 50,000 acres of land. Besides, thousands of acres are to be alienated for the extraction of iron ore, coal, bauxite and other minerals to meet the raw material needs of the projects. The 30 thermal power plants alone would generate 90 million tonnes of fly ash a year, and there is little land available to dump this waste. And all these devastating project be it POSCO or Vedanta are 100% export oriented projects of foreign MNCs. They simply expose how the Indian state is prostrating before foreign capital and imperialist market while destructing the lives, livelihoods, land, forest, water, mountains of the country and its people. This enormous loot of resource and the massive land grab is the real face of India’s ‘double digit growth rate’.

Many parliamentary and ruling class parties are currently camping with the people fighting against POSCO, with their rhetoric of ‘protest’. From Congress which is the primarily instrumental behind the project to the pseudo-Left parties such as CPI(M) who have history of unleashing brutal repression on people to grab lands when they were in power are all waging their ‘support’. Similarly many foreign funded NGOs are also flaunting their support for this massive movement. But historically these parties and organisations have always played the role of betrayers and agents of the ruling classes who only try to deviate and debilitate genuine people’s movements. But the strength of the POSCO movement lies in its people. The uncompromising masses who have clearly vouched to take the movement on a militant level if the state repression further intensifies. They are ready to fight and die to safeguard their land, vines, forests, water and mountains.

The POSCO project and the movement against it on one hand exposes once again the comprador nature of the Indian ruling classes, while on the other hand vindicates the strength of militant mass movements. The strength of the peoples’ movement is the reason why the government has now been forced to halt the ongoing land acquisition operations for five days, ostensibly for a local religious festival! It is laughable that a government which does not even care for the lives and livelihoods of the people will stop its repressive acts out of respect for peoples’ traditional customs. But this is going to be a temporary halt only, before the government comes up with more devious plans to evict the peoples. Therefore, when the probability of a major state onslaught is imminent, the progressive and democratic sections of the country must stand in unconditional solidarity with the people of Jagatsingpur, who are facing the police guns with supreme courage and determination. DSU extends its solidarity with the fighting masses of Jagatsinghpur, and calls upon the JNU community to support this peoples’ struggle.

Condemn Police Brutality on Protesting People in Bihar! Resist Bihar Government’s Policy of Displacement and Destitution in the name of ‘Development’!

The bullets fired by Bihar Police found a six month old child as their target. One pregnant woman was shot six times and killed. People were subjected to unrestrained police brutality, leaving at least six dead and many more grievously injured. All this happened as police open fired on agitating villagers in Forbesgang in Araria district, Bihar on 3 June 2011. Most of the dead and injured are poor peasants and workers belonging to the Muslim community. Moreover, as if this act of state repression was not enough, the police have lodged an FIR against 3,000 villagers of the region on the fabricated charge of murder and loot.

For some time villagers in this area have been protesting against the construction of a starch factory. Reportedly the construction wall of this factory was blocking the important road to Forbesgang town causing innumerable trouble for the villagers in terms of commuting and other everyday activities. It was cutting off villagers’ shortest route to the only hospital in town. Two repeated round table talks took place between the company management and the villagers, in which the management promised to construct a parallel road to the existing one. But the company soon turned back on their promise and approached the local authorities. The administration came to quick rescue of the company and deployed heavily armed police battalions guarding the premises. Left with no choice, people of the area on the day of police firing directly confronted the company, and destroyed the compound wall blocking their road. The police opened fire on the unarmed villagers, not to disperse them but with the intent to kill. The administration subsequently repeated the well-rehearsed version of ‘frenzied mob violence’ etc. The video tapes now released and independent media reports however expose rather a vindictive police force mercilessly beating even injured persons to death. Nobody has much doubt that who were in frenzy only but Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and his mercenary gang of police. The CM has ordered a farcical judicial probe into the matter after almost ten days have passed after this brutal incident.

Bihar carnage proves once again that Indian state is subservient only to the interests of comprador capital and the feudal forces. One of the managing directors of the proposed starch factory is son of Ashok Agarwal, BJP’s Legislative Council Member from Katihar. The project was duly sanctioned by Bihar State Industrial Development Corporation, including the permission for encroachment of the road for public use. Like numerable examples, this incident also clearly brought into light the involvement of the politician-corporate nexus in perpetrating the worst forms of feudal oppression in rural areas. In these regions, the ruling political elite of the parliamentary parties have been identical with the feudal lords. They use the state machinery in the most repressive manner possible to extract resources of these areas in the name of development. This so-called Development increasingly becomes the persuasion of all anti-people policies in the interest of comprador bourgeois class of this country, as is evident in Araria massacre. Or the tie up of feudal-comprador ruling classes serves directly to imperialist forces like in Junglemahal, Posco, Narayanpatna etc. Notorious  private militia sponsored by the powerful propertied classes like Shanti Bahini, Hermad, Salwa Judum in addition to police and paramilitary forces sustain the worst form of structural violence in a manner akin to colonial era.

Nitish Kumar is yet another make-belief symbol of ‘empowerment’ and ‘progress’ created by the corporate media. Nitish Kumar’s electoral victory was lauded by many as the assertion of the oppressed masses belonging to the marginalized castes. However, vast sections of the oppressed masses of Bihar constituted by the dalits, adivasis, women and minorities continue to exist in utter poverty, deprivation and exploitative social relations. While New Delhi is ablaze with the Anna Hazares and Baba Ramdevs opposing ‘corruption’ in government, systemic exploitation deepens everyday through looting of their resources by comprador and imperialist capital, dispossessing and impoverishing millions. All parliamentary parties – including the so-called Left – are complicit in actively aiding each other in this exploitation. Political bankruptcy has reached such a low that the same CPI(M) which actively facilitated ravaging of villages in Singur, Nandigram or in Lalgarh for TATAs,  or Jindals is now shedding crocodile tears for people in Bihar. Indian ‘democracy’ breeds on this systemic exploitation and repression of the vast masses of working people, and Nitish Kumar is just another actor on the stage tied by the same strings.

The solution to this continued oppression lies only with the peoples’ collective strength and their uncompromising struggles. The Indian state has sent the message loud and clear that anybody who opposes the state in their ‘holy’ mission of the ‘development’ and ‘democracy’ is against them. Any resistance, in any form therefore is to be labeled as ‘security threat’ or ‘anti-development’ and suppressed most brutally. Against this, people too have stood firm and resolute. They are up in arms to challenge or overthrow this corrupt, oppressive system with its roots. Such militant peoples’ movements are coming up spontaneously all over the country. The revolutionary movement too is ever expanding, as Operation Green Hunt is becoming more and more repressive. Araira is yet another chapter in the brutal history of ‘world’s biggest democracy’ scuttling the aspirations of the people through brutal force. But it is also another glorious tale of people’s collective spirit, which we salute to at this grave hour. We condemn in the strongest words the Indian state’s fascist repression of the people and extend our full solidarity with people’s resistance in Forbesganj for their life, livelihood and justice.