Violence and non-violence?

Can there be any perfectly non-violent agitation when the state apparatus is becoming more and more violent and suppress every people’s movement brutally? When the police and para-military forces used hundreds of rounds of lathi charges beating the protesters like street dogs, when hundreds of tear gas shells were fired directly against them and when lakhs of litres of water was targeted against them from water-cannons to throw out the tens of thousands of students, youth and women for two days, will not they react if they are living beings? When many gets killed in trampedes during Kumbha Mela and other religious congregations, do the police book them as murders and charge sheet the worshipers for them?

What the government and its criminalised police force is doing in Delhi now is nothing different from what the military and police are doing in J&K and Northeast and later against the Naxalite movement in 1970s and now in the adivasi areas in the name of suppressing the Maoists. It is pure and simple state terror to suppress genuine demands of the people. Was it not justified on the part of students , youth and women to protest against the ghastly gang rape of a girl in Delhi streets? Though it happened on 16^th evening, did the government come forward with any concrete proposals to prevent recurrence of this 1001th attack on women during this year in Delhi alone? The protests had started from 17^th, but the government did not respond. It was then it took massive forms on 22^nd and 23^rd. Still the government did not address the protesters. Instead the union home ministry ordered removal of the protesters by any means. The people were attacked in the most foul ways. It was when the protesters were provoked in most heinous ways including the police men dealing brutally with the girls there were some retaliation. Who was violent? The protesters, or the police who indulged in all vile acts to throw them out from the ‘sacred preserves’ of the ruling elite?

Without bothering to go in to these, the NGOs, a section of the petti-bourgeois intellectuals, a section of media etc have started echoing what the criminalized state machinery is repeating; they say violence should not be there! Was not the attack on the girl on 16^th violence? Are not all these attacks on children, girls and women violence? Was not the order of home ministry to throw out the protesters and the wanton way the police accomplished it violence of the worst sort? After all these violence, do these goodies want that the students, youth and others protesting there to act like inert things? Like the anti-people, anti-national government and its brute machinery, these goodies are also serving their masters, directly or indirectly: the upsurge of the students, youth and their supporters on 22^nd and 23^rd in Delhi streets was great; let us salute them and denounce the brutal state which tried to drown it with lathis, water cannons and tear gas, and now trying to vilify it and to suppress its participants.

New Year, New Challenges!

The year that passes in to history-2012- was a provoking, challenging one. Internationally it witnessed the deepening of the crisis faced by the global finance system. In spite of the efforts by the governments of the imperialist countries to transfer its burden to the toiling masses of their own countries and to the people of the countries under neo-colonial plunder, they could not overcome it or minimize its impact. On the contrary, it is showing signs of further intensification. There are possibilities of more bitter struggles than the Occupy Wall Street which pitted the 99% against the 1% or the street fights in Greece breaking out more militantly. Egypt is still in turmoil as people at large are learning about what is the role of religions today. The street fights in Syria are continuing unabated. The miners in South Africa are continuing the struggle. There is not a single country in the world including China, where the GDP growth level is claimed to be still in two digits, which is free from growing people’s revolts, as price rise, under employment, poverty of the masses, gender- caste- race inequalities and corruption are sky-rocketing. Everywhere people are angry and the New Year is going to witness more bitter revolts and increasing calls for social change.

Within the country the UPA government has launched more neo-liberal onslaughts through further dilution of the public distribution system through so-called cash payments of the subsidies, manipulation of a parliamentary majority to impose 51% FDI in retail and other vital sectors. Its policies are giving rise to more scams and it is protecting the scamsters, devastating the life of the masses further. In spite of the dog-fights in the parliament, in implementing these anti-people policies the different political parties leading the central and state governments are competing with each other.

During this year the bankruptcy of the bourgeois parliamentary system existing in the country was further exposed. While the government and opposition got engaged in shouting duels, the attacks on the people went on intensifying unabated. The masses were devastated further while the elite class became richer. Prices of all essential commodities and charges of essential services soared high. Corruption became more rampant. As more people are forced to migrate to the urban areas due to impoverization of rural life and displacement for neo-liberal projects, the administration intensified attacks on the slums to uproot them, without providing any alternative housing. The communal and caste forces increased their divisive and reactionary work in the service of the ruling system. The women, dalits, adivasis, minorities and other oppressed sections came under increasing onslaughts. As a result,  all the socio-economic, political contradictions have further sharpened. People are coming out on the streets increasingly, challenging the ruling system. Delhi witnessed the storming of the elite ruling class centers by the students, youth and women. In Ahmedabad people rallied with red flags challenging the communal fascists and calling for a people’s alternative. All these expressions of people’s anger and calls for revolutionary changes are bound to intensify  in the New Year.

So it is going to be New Year which poses New Challenges. A powerful countrywide people’s alternative capable of mobilizing the angry masses and people’s movements and to lead them towards a radical social change is the need of the hour. Building such a people’s alternative against all imperialist onslaughts and against the ruling system is the urgent task before the revolutionary and democratic forces. The tamashas in the parliament and in state assemblies expose how anti-people, anti-national and utterly opportunist are the ruling class, regional, communal, cast based and pseudo left parties whether in power or in opposition. The task before the revolutionary left is to expose all these opportunist forces, to mobilize the masses based on anti-imperialist revolutionary ideological, political line, to strengthen the people’s alternative capable of overthrowing the ruling system through mighty people’s uprising, and to advance towards people’s democracy and socialism.

The experience at international and national level shows that, after the severe setbacks suffered by the international communist movement and the fall of the socialist models projected in Soviet Union, China and in other former socialist countries, such an alternative cannot inspire the left masses if it focuses only on quantitative aspects, only on the number of people getting mobilized. Such an alternative, while trying to bring together all genuine left and democratic forces, should focus on a qualitative leap to transcend past mistakes and limitations and to reach new theoretical clarity. It should develop the Marxist-Leninist understanding according to the present conditions and become capable of re-instilling confidence among the working class and oppressed masses regarding the possibility of capture of political power and achieving socialist transformation with an advanced perspective. Let us pledge to take up this challenge, and advance along this path in the New Year. Let us make it a year of mightier and more advanced revolutionary offensives.