Videos: Kalinga Nagar Attack
Village resisting Tata Steel attacked by police and goons.
Late evening a team of concerned citizens and a retired doctor managed to reach the devastated villages and provide primary first-aid.
Radical Notes
JournalArchive for March, 2010
The Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill 2010: Some Preliminary Observations
Sukla Sen
The draft Bill which had been approved by the Union Cabinet on November 20 2009 (1) was eventually listed for tabling in the Lok Sabha on March 15 2010 (2), the penultimate day of the first half of the Budget Session of the Parliament, after a lapse of almost 4 months.
In fact, the Bill was in the offing for quite some time by then, since the successful clinching of the Indo-US Nuclear Deal, on October 10 2008 (3).
The Deal has, it may be pertinent to recall, opened up for India the doors to the global nuclear market, thereby making the tag ‘Indo-US’ somewhat of a misnomer in so far as the tag conveys the impression of strict bilaterality (4). The market had remained out of bounds since the first (“peaceful”) nuclear explosion carried out by India way back on May 18 1974 with the plutonium obtained from the spent fuel rods of the nuclear reactor CIRUS supplied by Canada (5) to mentor India onto the path of developing capabilities to generate nuclear power (only) for “peaceful” purposes. The nuclear explosion, despite the disingenuous tag, “peaceful”, was looked upon by the rest of the world as a clear breach of faith, if not worse. The reactions were strong and almost instantaneous. India was, as a consequence, practically shooed out of the global nuclear market. With passage of time the barriers went further up and up. And, more so, after the second round of five blasts, on May 11 and 13 1998, declaring itself openly as a nuclear weapon power and attracting strong condemnations from the rest of the world (5a). Things became even tougher.
But if the US had earlier taken the lead to impose sanctions in response to Indian blasts, under George Bush, it took a unilateral initiative to radically reverse the situation in 2005. The contours of that move were duly captured in a joint statement issued on July 18 by George Bush and Manmohan Singh from Washington DC. After traversing a long and tortuous path marked by cajolements, mainly by India, and muscle flexing by the US, the international community was sort of coerced into accepting India back as a legitimate partner in (civilian) nuclear trade. The 45-member Nuclear Supplier Group (NSG) on September 6 2008 at the end of two rounds of stormy sessions granted a unique waiver to India, completely disregarding Pakistan’s shrill cry for a similar, and even-handed, treatment. The grand reward for the grossly aberrant India stood out in sharp contrast also with the harsh treatment being meted out to Iran, a signatory to the NPT, on the ground of its presumed intention to develop nuclear weapons under the guise of working towards nuclear power despite repeated denials and access granted to IAEA inspections of its facilities. (6)
This Bill is generally being looked upon as a continuum of that process, allegedly, in order to ensure a “level playing field” for the American enterprises – to let them have a significant share of the cake (7), the Indian nuclear market – a part payback for the American generosity bestowed upon India, for its very own reasons though. The move had, however, been first conceived by the then NDA government way back in 1999 (8).
When the US Secretary Of State, Hillary Clinton, visited India in July 2009 (9), there were talks of the Bill getting passed by the Indian Parliament. But nothing of that sort happened. Again in late November 2009, when Singh was to meet Obama in Washington DC (10), there was talk of getting the Bill enacted. Even then, it did not happen. The Union Cabinet had dutifully approved the Bill just on the eve of the visit though. With Manmohan Singh to visit the US to attend the Nuclear Security Summit, called by President Barack Obama, slated to be held on April 12-131 (11), the government was again trying to push it through. Never mind the considerable cooling off of Indo-US relations in the meanwhile as compared to the George Bush days (12).
It is of course quite another matter altogether that the Bill could not eventually be tabled on account of the shift in relationship of forces within the Parliament caused by the introduction, and its passage in the Upper House, of the much lauded and controversial Women’s reservation Bill (13). And now, given the realignment of forces, whatever be the intentions of the government, no easy or early passage is on the cards. But that does in no way mitigate the salience of the Bill and its serious implications. In any case, Barack Obama is scheduled to visit India later this year (14). So the pressure will persist.
Since the Bill was approved by the Union Cabinet on November 20 2009, at least three significant changes have been made. One, the name has been changed from ‘The Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill 2009′ to ‘The Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill 2010′ (15). Two, in clause 6.(2), the quantum of “liability of an operator for each nuclear incident” has been revised upwards from “rupees three hundred crores” to “rupees five hundred crores”. Three, a new “Chapter”, ‘Offences and Penalties’ with 4 clauses, has been added. Also, the Chapter IV, ‘Claims and Awards’, has been somewhat restructured and expanded.
The Bill, in the present form, is contained in 28 (26 + ii) pages. It has 7 Chapters constituted of 49 clauses and also ‘Statement of Objects and Reasons’ with ‘Notes on clauses’ following plus two memoranda.
The objective of the Bill as laid down in the extended subject line is:
To provide for civil liability for nuclear damage, appointment of claims Commissioner, establishment of Nuclear Damage Claims Commission and for matters connected therewith or incidental there of.
Para 7 of the ‘Statement of Objects and Reasons’ further lays down that the purpose of the Bill is:
to enact a legislation which provides for nuclear liability that might arise due to a nuclear incident and also the necessity of joining an appropriate international liability regime.
The “appropriate international liability regime” clearly refers to ‘Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage’ (CSC) – 1997 (16), which is purportedly based on the earlier Paris and Vienna Conventions. India is as yet signatory to none of these Conventions.(17) And the CSC is yet to come into force (18). And, that being the case, India has got to get a national law enacted so as to be able to declare that its national law complies with the provisions of the Annex to the subject Convention, before it is considered for membership of this Convention (i.e. CSC).
This Bill appears to be very much a move in that direction. It is, however, interesting to note while the CSC provides that “liability” of the “operator” is absolute, i.e. the operator is held “liable” irrespective of fault; the corresponding provision in the subject Bill, as contained in Clause 5 (Chapter II), is pretty much contrary to that. This Clause lists out the circumstances under which the “operator” will not be “liable” in case of an accident.
Regardless of justifiability or otherwise, the motivation for such a clear departure deserves to be properly explored.
The range of implications of joining this Convention, the main purpose of which appears to make Supplementary Compensation available jointly by the member countries in case of a (catastrophic) accident over and above the “liability” limit of the “operator” and the concerned state (19), also need be thoroughly examined.
The author of the Bill is Prithviraj Chavan (Minister of State for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences).
The Bill, in pursuance of the objective as spelt out above, in the Clause 9 (Chapter III) provides:
The Central Government shall, by notification, appoint one or more Claims Commissioners for such area, as may be specified in that notification, for the purpose of adjudicating upon claims for compensation in respect of nuclear damage.
The Chapter IV provides the details as regards ‘Claims and Awards’.
The heart of the Bill is however, arguably, constituted of clause 5, 6 and 7 (Chapter II). The clause 6 gives out the limits of “liabilities”, clause 7 spells out the “liability” of the Central Government and the clause 5 lists out the circumstances under which the “operator” shall not be “liable”.
The major problems are as under:
I. The Bill paves the path for private participation as “operator” of nuclear power plants in India.
One of the central elements of the Bill is to define the “liability”, arising out of any nuclear accident, of an individual “operator” – independent of (and unaffiliated with) the Government of India.
Till now all nuclear establishments/ventures, including power plants, without any exception, are run by the state through affiliated bodies – the Uranium Corporation of India Limited (UCIL) for uranium mines and the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) for the power plants.
Given that fact, this provision makes sense only in the context of an impending programme for participation of private players as “operators” of nuclear power plants.
In fact, the Clause 6. (2), inter alia, provides:
The liability of an operator for each nuclear incident shall be rupees five hundred crores.
And, the Clause 7(1), inter alia, provides:
The Central Government shall be liable for nuclear damage in respect of a nuclear incident.
(a) where liability exceeds the amount of liability of an operator specified under sub-section of section 6;
(b) occurring in a nuclear installation owned by it
Furthermore, the Clause 6(1) provides:
The maximum amount of liability in respect of each nuclear incident shall be the rupee equivalent of three hundred million Special Drawing Rights.
Therefore in case of the power plants operated by the NPCIL, as is the case with all the plants as of now, the quantum of “liability” is “three hundred million Special Drawing Rights” or equal to the “maximum” (i.e. total) “liability”.
The much lower quantum of “rupees five hundred crores” will apply only in case of nuclear power plants not owned/operated by the NPCIL. As of now, there is neither any such plant nor has any such plan been announced.
But these provisions taken together are a clear pointer to that direction.
The nuclear industry is unique in character in terms of safety hazards. And a nuclear power plant is potentially catastrophic, as so chillingly demonstrated by the Chernobyl disaster on April 26 1986 (20), in particular. Given the fact that profit maximisation drive is the very raison detre of any private enterprise giving rise to the intrinsic and inevitable tendency to cut corners in the field of “safety”, the envisaged ushering in of private players as “operators” of nuclear power plants is an open armed invitation to disaster.
A regulatory body overseeing safety measures can at best mitigate this trend, not eliminate it by any stretch. And given the tremendous clout of the private operators in this field given the scale of investments required, the efficacy of any regulatory body, in any case, would be highly suspect.
Hence, this move calls for all out resistance.
And, the CSC does in no way obligate its members to open up their wombs to private “operators”.
II. A. The Bill proposes to limit the total “liability” (of the (private) “operator” plus the “state”) regardless of the scale of the disaster.
This is just unacceptable.
II. B. On top of that, the total or “maximum” “liability” has been “capped” at “three hundred million Special Drawing Rights [SDR]“. This works out to just around Rs. 2,100 crore and 450 million US$.(21)
In case of Bhopal Gas Disaster, the Supreme Court had approved a deal between the contending parties providing compensation to the victims amounting to US$ 470 million (22). That was way back in 1989, more than two decades ago. Even at that time this was considered grossly inadequate.
So, while whatever cap on “liability” is unacceptable; this cap on total “liability” or the “maximum amount of liability”, as the draft Bill has put it, is woefully paltry. More so, given the fact that a catastrophic nuclear accident may very well dwarf the Bhopal Gas Disaster in terms of devastations.
In case of Chernobyl Disaster, while no precise estimate of total economic impact is available, as per one report, the total “spending [only] by [neighbouring] Belarus on Chernobyl between 1991 and 2003 was more than US $ 13 billion.(23)
That’s incomparably larger as compared to the “maximum liability” pegged in the Bill – 450 million US $!
However, once India joins the CSC, and it comes into force, the cap on total “liability” would undergo significant change as additional compensation over and above 300 million SDR would become available. In fact the CSC also permits the concerned states to provide for further (“third tier”) (24) compensation over and above the CSC limits. As long as the nuclear power plants in India obtain, joining the Convention may in fact turn out to be beneficial for the potential victims. But then the government must come clean on its plans, make specific commitment and explain the implications. The onus clearly lies with it.
III. The liability of an individual non-state (i.e. private) “operator” has been “capped” at a mere Rs. 500 crore. Less than one-fourth of the total or “maximum” liability.
And, the difference between the actual compensation to be paid and the “liability” of a private “operator” would be borne by the Indian government i.e. the Indian taxpayers/people.
So, while the very concept of cap is unacceptable and the total cap could very much turn out to be woefully inadequate; the cap on individual private “operator is abysmally low – less than one-fourth of the total cap.
It is evidently an attempt to brazenly favour a private “operator” at the cost of Indian masses.
The eminent jurist, and former Attorney General, Soli Sorabjee has argued in details (25)25:
Any legislation that attempts to dilute the Polluter Pays and Precautionary Principle and imposes a cap on liability is likely to be struck down as it would be in blatant defiance of the Supreme Court judgments. Moreover, it would be against the interests and the cherished fundamental right to life of the people of India whose protection should be the primary concern of any civilised democratic government.
Not only that, there is a further provision that this cap for an individual “operator” may be fixed lower or higher than the normative cap of Rs. 500 crore, but in no case lower than Rs. 100 crore. Quite significantly, while the cap of Rs. 300 crore, as had been understandably approved by the Union Cabinet, now stands revised upward to Rs. 500 crore; there is no corresponding revision of the floor level of Rs. 100 crore. So this “revision” in actual practice may turn out to be just a ploy, an act of deception.
It is not clear what stops the Indian government, or its designated agency, to peg such caps, while actually operating this provision “having regard to the extent of risk involved in a nuclear installation” – and no objective parameters whatever having been laid down, at the minimum of Rs. 100 crore, or thereabout?
In that case, the “cap” for the private “operator” becomes even less than one-twentieth of the total or “maximum” “cap. That’s just ridiculous.
It is also equally significant that while “the Central Government may, having regard to the extent of risk involved in a nuclear installation by notification, either increase or decrease the amount of liability of the operator”, there is no such corresponding provision for the “maximum [i.e. total] liability”. If the risk assessment of any particular “installation” makes it liable for adjusting the “liability” for the private “operator” it would be quite logical to adjust the “maximum [i.e. total] liability” for that “installation” in alignment with that. That nothing of that sort has been provided in the Bill clearly gives away the real intention behind. To lower down the “liability” of a private “operator” even much below the otherwise abysmally low amount of Rs. 500 crore – not even one-fourth of the “maximum liability”. That’s evidently just a stratagem to deceive.
Furthermore, with passage of time, the Indian Rupee is expected to depreciate against the SDR.
With the total or “maximum” cap having been defined in terms of SDR and the cap of individual private “operator” in terms of Indian Rupees, the proportion of the financial burden to be borne by a private “operator”, in case of a catastrophic accident, would further go down! Here again, there is no apparent reason, other than to favour the private “operator”, why in one case it is SDR and in the other case it is Indian Rupees.
Here it is pertinent to keep in mind that the CSC does not establish either a floor or a ceiling on the liability of the operator or require the concerned state to limit the liability of the “operator”. It in no way makes it incumbent upon any member country to either bring in private “operator” or limit/cap its “liability” at a level lower than the “total liability” (of minimum 300 million SDR).24
In case of the US, in the event of an accident, the first $375 million is paid by the insurer(s) of the plant. It is mandatory to insure the plant.
Beyond that, up to US$ 10 billion is paid out of a fund jointly contributed by the “operators” as mandated by the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act.
Beyond that, the Federal Government pays.(26)
The contrast is too stark.
The argument by some commentators that without this Bill being enacted, the American companies would be at a disadvantage appears to be somewhat confused and only partly true. The American vendors will conceivably be at no disadvantage as compared to their competitors as the vendors are routinely “indemnified for consequential damages”. Even otherwise, the Bill does not prohibit the “operator” from making the equipment vendor “liable” on account of an “accident”. That is between the “operator” and the “vendor”. But as far as the victim is concerned, the “operator” will be “liable” subject to the applicable cap. From the (potential) victim’s point of view, such single point responsibility should actually be welcome. That would conceivably cut down much of legal complications which may arise otherwise.
The US-based enterprises will, however, be at a distinct disadvantage as prospective “operators” in absence of a cap on their “liability”.
The mainstream, and also radical, critics, known to be otherwise knowledgeable, have rather pitiably missed the central point that the essential thrust of the Bill is to enact a law in compliance of the CSC and usher in private players as “operators” and peg their “liability” at ridiculously low levels, going well beyond the framework of the CSC.(27)
The other point that has been raised is that the Bill “lets nuclear equipment suppliers and designers off the hook”(28). This, however, appears to be fairly misconceived – at two distinct levels. One, the vendor, the designer or even the turn-key contractor is customarily indemnified (i.e. given immunity) from consequential damages (which include third party damages). That is the standard norm. Two, the Bill itself does not do anything to prohibit the plant owner/operator from incorporating suitable clause(s) in the contract with the vendor/designer/turn-key contractor to hold them liable for any damage caused to any third party arising out of their faults.
Much to the contrary, the Clause 17, inter alia, provides as under:
The operator of a nuclear installation shall have a right of resource where –
(a) such right is expressly provided for in a contract in writing;
(b) the nuclear incident has resulted from the wilful act or gross negligence on the part of the supplier of the material, equipment or services, or of his employee;
That evidently knocks the bottom out of the argument that the Bill “lets nuclear equipment suppliers and designers off the hook”.
It, however, holds the “operator” responsible vis-à-vis the victims of any accident. That is both logical as the accident would take place while the “operator” is “operating” the plant; and highly welcome from the potential victim’s point of view as this would eliminate likely complications in determining and pinpointing “responsibility” resulting in interminable delays in obtaining any succour.
The objections raised as regards the 10-year limit to “liability” (29), as provided in Clause 18 (Chapter IV), are quite valid. In case of exposure to low dose radiations, the injuries caused thereby – mostly in various forms of cancer, may take much longer time to manifest. But then it would be that much difficult to establish the causal link.
All in all, the Bill has got to be opposed on the following grounds:
I. The Bill paves the path for private participation as “operator” of nuclear power plants in India. That’s an open invitation to disaster.
II. A. The Bill proposes to limit the total “liability” (of the (private) “operator” plus the “state”) regardless of the scale of the disaster. That’s just unacceptable.
II. B. On top of that, the total or “maximum” “liability” has been “capped” at “three hundred million Special Drawing Rights [SDR]“. This is too paltry.
III. The liability of an individual non-state (i.e. private) “operator” has been “capped” at a mere Rs. 500 crore. Less than one-fourth of the total or “maximum” liability. And it has provisions to further lower this amount, and pretty steeply at that. This is a blatant negation of the Polluter Pays and Precautionary Principle clearly and assiduously laid down by the Indian Supreme Court.
The Bill, if not withdrawn outright, must be referred to the concerned Standing Committee after tabling in the Parliament and widespread, open and transparent public consultations must follow thereafter to consider all the pros and cons, including the implications of joining the CSC, before taking any further step forward.
Notes:
1. See: <Daily India> or <kseboa>, for example.
2. See: <Rediff> and <Business Standard>, for example. A significant point to note is that as late as on March 14, and 13, both these news items, from otherwise credible sources, are quoting the concerned Minister to the effect that the Bill would be tabled in the Rajya Sabha on March 15. While, in reality, it was to be tabled in the Lok Sabha. That shows the degree of non-transparency prevailing.
3. See the Editorial, and other articles under the section, Indo-US Nuclear Deal, in the Peace Now, March 2009 at <CNDP> for an account of how the deal crossed its last hurdles. The news item at <http://www.kseboa.org/news/us-pressure-civil-nuclear-liability-bill-likely-in-parliament-session.html> explicitly links the Bill with the Deal thus: “The passage of a civil nuclear liability Bill is one of key steps in implementation of the India-US civil nuclear agreement.” And, it is no unique. Here is another example: “The US has linked the completion of the Indo-US nuclear agreement to India’s capping of nuclear liability and that is why the hasty move to introduce this in parliament.” at <http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/civil-nuclear-liability-bill-prefering-interests-of-us-companies-over-indian-people/>. There is no specific provision in the Deal to this effect though. A rather well-informed article at <http://www.american.com/archive/2010/march/india-the-united-states-and-high-tech-trade> lists out 3 hurdles in full implementation of the “landmark U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Agreement—the crown jewel of the U.S.-India strategic partnership”.
4. See the Editorial in the Peace Now, February 2010 at <http://www.cndpindia.org/download.php?list.13>.
5. India’s first reactor, the 1 Megawatt (MWt) Aspara Research Reactor, was built with British assistance in 1955. The following year, India acquired a CIRUS 40 MWt heavy-water-moderated research reactor from Canada. The United States agreed to supply heavy water for the project. … India commissioned a reprocessing facility at Trombay, which was used to separate out the plutonium produced by the CIRUS research reactor. This plutonium was used in India’s first nuclear test on May 18, 1974, described by the Indian government as a “peaceful nuclear explosion.” Excerpted from India’s Nuclear Program by Volha Charnysh at <http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/issues/proliferation/india/charnysh_india_analysis.pdf>. Also see Nuclear Power in India: Failed Past, Dubious Future by M. V. Ramana at <www.npec-web.org/Essays/Ramana-NuclearPowerInIndia.pdf>. This talks of India being largely cut off from the international nuclear market as a consequence.
5A. For world reactions to May 98 blasts, see <http://www.fas.org/news/india/1998/05/wwwhma14.html>.
6. For a brief evaluation and the trajectory of the Deal (till early 2008), see <http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article10224>. For a timeline, see p 7/8, Peace Now, Feb, 2010 at <http://www.cndpindia.org/download.php?list.13>.
7. See <http://indiacurrentaffairs.org/civil-nuclear-liability-bill-prefering-interests-of-us-companies-over-indian-people/>, for example. The pleadings of Omer F Brown, a key spokesperson for the US nuclear industry, that India enacts a nuclear liability law, as referred to above, has further validated this position.
8. See: <http://www.business-standard.com/india/news//govt-open-to-raising-nuclear-liability-cap//388512/>, for a very concise history of the move towards enacting a nuclear liability cap bill, locating the first move way back in 1999, and an explication of the government’s point of view.
9. See <http://www.america.gov/st/texttrans-english/2009/July/20090720161943xjsnommis0.2136499.html>.
10. See: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8374050.stm>.
11. See: <http://www.deccanchronicle.com/national/pm-may-visit-us-april-n-summit-158>.
12. See the Abstract at <http://acdis.illinois.edu/newsarchive/newsitem-indiausrelationsfrombushtoobamanewchallenges.html>, for example. Also <http://pragmatic.nationalinterest.in/2010/03/24/understanding-indo-us-relationship/>.
13. See: <http://www.hindustantimes.com/india/Nuclear-liability-bill-not-to-be-tabled-in-Lok-Sabha-today/519134/H1-Article1-519210.aspx>, for example. The news item also reported that: “Government sources say that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is keen to get the bill passed in parliament ahead of his US visit in April.” Also see <http://www.dailyindia.com/show/363428.php>.
14. See; <http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/americas/Obama-to-visit-India-later-this-year/Article1-518487.aspx>.
15. See the revised Bill at
16. See: <http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Conventions/supcomp.htmll>.
17. See B B Singh, op cit.
18. See A flawed Bill by Praful Bidwai at <http://www.flonnet.com/stories/20100409270709500.htm>. It provides: since it was opened for signature in 1977[read 1997], the CSC has only been signed by 13 states and ratified by only four countries (Argentina, Morocco, Romania and the U.S.) – in place of the minimum of five countries needed for its entry-into-force.
The relevant provision, Article XX. 1, reads: This Convention shall come into force on the ninetieth day following the date on which at least 5 States with a minimum of 400,000 units of installed nuclear capacity have deposited an instrument referred to in Article XVIII.
19. See The Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage: Catalyst for a Global Nuclear Liability Regime by Ben McRae at <http://www.nea.fr/law/nlb/nlb-79/017-035%20-%20Article%20Ben%20McRae.pdf> for detailed explanations.
20. For a quite conservative, but exhaustive, estimates of the impacts of the disaster, see Chernobyl’s Legacy: Health, Environmental and Socio-economic Impacts and Recommendations to the Governments of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine by The Chernobyl Forum at <http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Booklets/Chernobyl/chernobyl.pdf>. For an alternative assessment by the Greenpeace, look up
<http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/nukes/chernob/read25.html>
21. The exchange rate on March 25 2010 stands at 0.6603090000 SDR per US$, at <http://www.imf.org/external/np/fin/data/rms_five.aspx>. And, SDR 0.0144709000 per Indian Rupee.
22. A news item at <http://beta.thehindu.com/news/national/article53103.ece> provides: According to an agreement on February 15, 1989 facilitated by the Supreme Court, the Union Carbide Corporation, U.S. provided a compensation of $ 470 million (Rs. 715 crore) …
23. See: <http://www.greenfacts.org/en/chernobyl/l-3/5-social-economic-impacts.htm#1p0>. The comparable estimate reported by the Greenpeace, at <http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/nukes/chernob/read25.html>, is:
The Belarus Government estimate the total economic damage caused between 1986-2015 would be (1992 June prices) $235 billion. In Ukraine, in 1995 the Ministry for Chernobyl needed 286.4 thousand billions of karbovanets ($2.3 billion), but received only one third of this. It is therefore possible to estimate that the total bill for those countries most effected will exceed $300 billion by 2015.
24. Ben McRae, op cit.
25. See: <http://beta.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article64688.ece?homepage=true>.
26. See: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act>.
27. India-US Nuclear Deal Redux: Another Showdown by Radha Surya at <http://www.zcommunications.org/india-us-nuclear-deal-redux-by-radha-surya>, which refers also to various other eminent critics including Brahma Chellaney, a known nuclear hawk, and Gopal Krishna, of the Toxics Watch Alliance (TWA), is an excellent illustrative case.
28. The bill lets nuclear equipment suppliers and designers off the hook. Excerpted from The great nuclear folly by Praful Bidwai at <http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=130882>. The oft repeated references made to the Bhopal Gas Disaster and the “liability” of the Union Carbide therein is plainly misleading. The Union Carbide was the owner/operator of the plant. Apparently, no one at any stage even as much talked of holding the (yet unheard of) vendors of equipment(s) or designer of the plant responsible or “liable”. Siddharth Varadarajan, even while noting the provisions of the Right to Recourse has rather curiously refused to acknowledge the implications in a forthright manner. Ref. <http://svaradarajan.blogspot.com/2010/03/nuclear-liability-law-has-sting-in-tail.html>.
29. Equally obnoxious is the 10-year limit to liability: many forms of radiation injury, including cancer and genetic damage, reveal themselves only 20 years after exposure. See Bidwai, ibid.
Join Demonstration (April 1 2010) against TATA sponsored Orissa Govt’s attack on Kalinganagar
CPI(ML) New Democracy
Delhi Committee
Friends,
Adding to its criminal assault on the tribals of Kalinganagar on January 2, 2006 and continuous encirclement of the area since then killing, maiming and framing the people in false cases, the Naveen Pattnaik’s armed police along with hired armed goons of TATA have launched a serious armed attack on the tribals of Kalinganagar from 30th morning. Since morning firing by the police has injured over a dozen, four of them seriously. This criminal armed assault has been launched to force the tribals to hand over their land to TATA.
The assault has been coming for days. 26 platoons of Orissa State Armed Police (OSAP) and 2 platoons of the special Operations Group (SOG) had been added to the already massive police deployment in the area. According to press reports, seven Magistrates and 35 Police inspectors had been deployed in the area. Obviously they did not come with any peaceful intent.
Since the past few months, under the general cover of Chidambaram’s ‘war’ against people’s movements, the Maven Patina Govt., under TATA’s tutelage, had again stepped up the attack on Kalinganagar. The affected villages have been effectively cordoned off for months, neither anganwadis, PDS shops nor dispensaries are functioning.
The assault on Kalinganagar tribals is to be viewed in the context of Naveen Pattnaik Govt. signing a large number of MOUs with foreign and Indian corporates for exploitation of mineral resources of Orissa. Police barracks are being constructed in Jagatsinghpur to be used against anti-POSCO protesters. Despite severe violations by Vedanta even admitted by Govt. panel, the Orissa Govt. is extending all help to them. Naveen Pattnaik Govt. is using the might of state to displace the tribals. The direction being taken by this Govt. for Orissa is disastrous for the people of Orissa and their long term interests.
The Kalinganagar tribals have been opposing this long drawn assault on their ancestral lands. To express solidarity with them, to condemn this brutal, heinous assault on them and to demand of Naveen Pattnaik Govt. that all forces be immediately withdrawn from Kalinganagar and the TATA Project be scrapped immediately, please assemble at Jantar Mantar on 1st April (Orissa Day) at 12 noon. We appeal to all revolutionary and democratic organizations and individuals to unitedly raise their voice against the trampling of democratic rights of tribal people. A memorandum signed by all who oppose this brutal attack and stand in solidarity with the fighting people of Kalinganagar will also be submitted to Orissa Govt.
Naujawan Bharat Sabha (NBS)
Delhi Committee
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The Battlefield of Kalinga Nagar
Satyabrata
On the 28th of March, while the district magistrate of Jajpur was talking to the protestors of Kalinga Nagar who have been opposing the establishment of a plant by Tata Steel since 2006, the Superintendent of Police declared that “protestors will not be spared”! The Government of Orissa has continuously been attempting to protect its ‘clean image’ while at the same time taking ahead its brutal agenda of pandering to the capitalist interests. The day after the talks, i.e. on the 29th of March, 2010, the construction started and the day after, i.e., today on the 30th, twenty four platoons of police encircled the villages that were protesting and started firing rubber bullets. This was followed by the entry of the troops into the village and their evacuation. Houses in the villages were burnt and cattle and food destroyed. This was followed by firing of real bullets in which Member Kanuriya, a local inhabitant got injuries. About twenty people had fatal wounds. The alternative media that is present there is also being harassed so that news from the region doesn’t go out. And then there is the mainstream media, the State’s strongest Ideological ally that has shown in news channels that the police fired back because of the violence of the agitators present there. It is a completely planned out attack against the people of Kalinga Nagar with no hidden ambitions.
This is the moment of suppressing of the democratic part of the movement and the State is successful in brutally suppressing it. What fate democratic dissent has under the brutal rule of capital is evident from this moment of the movement. There is no other alternative for the movement to survive other than getting militarized which the State is forcing it to be. Then, of course, there is the Operation Green Hunt to deal with it after it has been militarized.
No matter what the State does, its brutalities shall ultimately dissolve into the idea of “development” that capital has constructed for itself as a notion to be imposed on the people and coerced into them via its Ideological Apparatuses. It is high time the people deconstruct this notion of development and question the nepotism of this “developmental” process. The ruling party of Orissa, the BJD, has as its sole weapon, this notion of “development” that it has been utilizing in continuing its rule with all its brutalities. The task here is to discern the notion and unmask the State exposing its true demonic face.
Tata sponsored ‘Green Hunt’ in Kalinga Nagar to destroy democratic tribal movement
Yesterday (25 March) the Collector of Jajpur district assured Dabar Kalundia, a tribal leader of Bisthapan Birodhi Jan Manch (BBJM) that he would come to Baligotha village on 28 March for a meeting with the dissenting villagers and find a solution to the prevailing conflict. But within a day the Collector has broken his word as today about 24 platoons of armed policemen have been deployed in Kalinga Nagar to suppress the democratic & non-violent movement of the BBJM. It is feared that there will be bloodshed at a larger scale than 2 Jan 06 when 14 tribal men, women & children were killed in a police shootout. The villagers fear the police will attack tomorrow morning.
For more than 3 months now the resistance villages of Kalinga Nagar have been besieged by police forces who have randomly arrested dozens of villagers who stepped out of their village. People have been framed under false charges. There has been repeated midnight attacks by policemen and Tata goons to annihilate key activists of the BBJM. Hired assassins have also tried to eliminate the tribal leaders of the movement and one such attempt caused the death of Amin Banara of Baligotha village. Recently large number of police forces had been deployed on the pretext of building a road through the villages. Every attempt of the police and administration to quell the dissent of the people has been countered in democratic and non-violent ways by the BBJM.
The BBJM has clarified several times that it is not a Maoist backed organisation and does not want violence. The BBJM has made it clear that it will not accept displacement and mindless industrialisation that is already causing massive pollution in the area leading to widespread disease, crop failure, air, water & sound pollution. The Collector also agreed to the meeting only after the BBJM wrote several letters to him demanding that their concerns be addressed first as the Collector had been announcing in some meetings in the area that the Common Corridor Road would be built at any cost.
Surprisingly the print and electronic media have so far ignored developments in Kalinganagar which itself is a threat to democracy. Mainstream political parties also have reached a consensus with the ruling party which creates concerns among all citizens who understand the implications of mobilization of armed police in kalinganagar villages resisting Tata induced displacement.
We demand that the Govt should stop acting like a hired mercenary of Tata Steel company and withdraw all police forces from the area immediately. If there is any bloodshed the sole responsibility will lie on the Govt. The Govt should also give up the Common Corridor Road project as it will be built on fertile farm land and the community land of the tribals. The Govt should respect the sacrifice of the 14 tribals killed by the police and scrap the Tata project immediately. There should be no further displacement & dispossession of tribal people from their land. The Govt should immediately start working towards restoring peace in the area by assuring the tribals that there will be no attacks on them by the police or Tata goons. A medical team should be sent to the villages immediately as people have not been able to visit doctors for days in fear of arrest.
We appeal to all concerned citizens, progressive groups & media persons to raise their voice against the Fascist tendencies of the Govt and express solidarity with the tribals of Kalinga Nagar.
Prafulla Samnatara, Lok Shakti Abhijan
Lingaraj, Samajbadi Jan Parishad
Radhakant Sethi, CPI-ML Liberation
Prashanta Paikrai, PPSS
Bhalachandra Sadangi, CPI-ML New Democracy
Lingaraj Azad, NSS
On the Kafila Debate on Arundhati Roy’s ‘Outlook’ Article on Maoists
Pothik Ghosh: There is no doubt the Indian Maoist movement – which has erupted in the sense of pure socio-occupational and physical geography in the agrarian-tribal location – has rendered the externalised imposition of a given Marxological/communistological historiography to define (in discourse) and articulate (in the materiality of lived practice) its struggle uniquely determinate to the specificity of its historico-geographic location redundant. But to assert that it has done so by claiming something that is purely autonomous tribal aspiration and struggle would be equally fallacious. For, tribal identities as they exist and pose themselves in and through struggles – both in areas of Maoist influence as also in sangh parivar-infested tribal areas of especially Orissa and Madhya Pradesh – are formed by being inscribed within the determinate, if not discursive, mode of capital. Those identities and their movements are thus either articulated by the specific configuration of dualised and hierarchised capitalist power, or are responses to the respective historico-geographic specifications of such a general configuration of power.
In such a situation, one must speak of rupture, not in terms of romantically reified forms, but in terms of what is yielded through the posing of a continuous critique. The empirically discernible form of the Indian Maoist movement in emergence is clearly a rupture with both the capitalist continuum of history (and thus its historiographic sense) and the established Marxological narrative (an analytic really) of the history of capitalism. But then the subsequent affirmative emphasis on this Indian Maoist form as form, both for its original physical geographic location and outside it, marks a return of the logic of duality via the return of the tendency of representation and the discursive structure of capitalism. This form, therefore, can continue to be the horizon of rupture, which it has been in its emergence, only when it posits its own negation as a form qua form for other specific temporal, spatial, spatio-temporal and socio-occupational moments.
The repeated failure of the Indian Maoist/Naxal movement to not only expand beyond the specific historico-geographic boundaries within which it has emerged, but, therefore, as a result face imminent defeat, if not cooption (the experience of the constituents of Communist Party of India (Maoist) in Jharkhand and Liberation in Bihar would be telling on that score), in its purported historico-geographic and socio-occupational bastions is, if one were to talk in terms of effects, precisely due to this problem of reifying one moment of the process, which is meant to unfold by constituting itself through critique of its reified/abstracted moments, and thus obstruct its critically constitutive unfolding.
The point is, the Indian Maoist movement can be defended or saved as the specific embodiment of the general revolutionary logic of event or rupture that it is, only if that logic unfolds through its critical re-enactment, or reconstitution if you will, for other historical locations through the emergence of forms idiomatically specific to the diverse historicalness of those locations. To that extent, socialism ceases to be a systemic horizon in a teleological sense and becomes a horizon of continuous motion that is not serial but dialectical having to be constantly constituted through critical opposition and rupture. It was not for nothing that Marx in his ‘The Class Struggles in France’ came up with the idea of “revolution in permanence”.
Thus, socialism, as a mobile and open ‘epistemological discourse’, can be aphoristically called a multiplicity of singularities. That is also the epistemological context of Benjamin’s ‘Theses on Philosophy of History’, and his injunction therein to “blast open the continuum of history” must be seen as a critical struggle against the distortionary conflation of labour’s life-world and its history with the textual abstraction of a centred historiography and/or analytic. It’s a struggle to reclaim life and its history from such abstraction and domination and in the same movement pose the idea of life-world in critical opposition to the discourse of textuality, even as we show that the life we live empirically, before its reclamation through critique, is an analytic abstraction or text. This idea of the life-world, which was formulated by Marx as a conceptualisation of the horizon of constantly self-constituting and thus dialectical motion, is something that is constitutively posed in our continuous Benjaminian struggle to disrupt the analytic continuum of history that constantly forms following every successful move to blast it open. The counter-discursive horizon that this continuous critical struggle to overcome the horizon of discursivness or reason in history, which is history as a continuum, poses is what Benjamin called montage and Trotsky narrative in the context of formulating a revolutionary discourse of history. It’s really a narrative (Trotsky) or montage (Benjamin) of singularities, where the constitutive narrative/montage link among them is the fact of them being singularities or events. It’s this horizon of revolutionary history, which is a horizon of constant ruptures, that Foucault posed as “genealogy” against the horizon of conservative and reactionary history, which is canonically called History and is a serial continuum. Foucault’s term for singularities and their repeated self-constituting evental emergence is respectively fragments and archaeology, something that was his active critical-political-methodological engagement, as opposed to a detached discursive-methodological engagement, with history both as it is lived and is formulated as discourse. The generalised horizon that is posited by him for his event-constituting archaeological manoeuvre is termed by him, in a quasi-structuralist kind of way, as the “history of problematics”. My subjective preference is, however, for the Benjamanian concept of gestus over Foucauldian fragment, which as a word still has the whiff of the old whole-fragment (universal-particular) dualised and discursive discourse.
However, to the extent that genealogy, montage or narrative are all discourses of history, they appear as a serialised continuum in much the same way as the analytic-centric form of conservative History. But we must remember that the former is a discourse of life-world, which makes it a discourse of counter-discourse, even as the latter is a discourse of lived life, which in not being critical and in being established, is really an abstraction and thus a textual discourse. Thus in the material operation of empirical living, the former posits continuous critical opposition and rupture with abstract schemas that seek to prevent life from constantly constituting itself critically and thus autonomously; even as the latter seeks to transform lived life into a non-critical piece of the abstract schema of history as it is given in the positive materiality of empirical human lives. Thus motion in the latter is really the continuance of the abstract schema through time. The former is a discourse, as you also seem to be pointing out, of living history while constituting it, while the latter is a discourse of living history as the a priori abstraction in which it is given.
To return, through this theoretical excursus, to the immediate question at hand, is to once again focus on the need to generalise the logic of event or rupture enacted by the Maoist movement and the failure on that count. It is in this context that Arundhati Roy’s Outlook article poses a problematic. The article is a problem, not per se, but in that it enacts a modality of radical politics at the urban location that obstructs the recognition of this need to constantly generalise the evental logic that has found its specific expression for the agrarian-tribal location in the form of the Maoist movement. It is, in fact, more of a problem because this modality of radical politics is fast becoming a dominant modality among urban radicals. The failure to recognise this need for generalisation of the logic encapsulated by the Maoist movement for all other locations beyond the agrarian-tribal geography conveniently enables urban radicals like us to displace the identity crisis and anxiety we experience as denizens of our specific urban ground on to some other ground – in this case the ground of insurgent tribals and peasants – and live our own class rage, without recognising it as such, cathartically and vicariously. That enables such urban radicals to exempt themselves from taking up the more difficult struggle of engaging with and critically opposing the configurations of capitalist class power – which in its myriad ideological forms of culture, economy, society is the real cause of anxiety and crisis that urban creatures face – on their own specific ground to overcome the crisis they experience as city inhabitants.
That, of course, is not the failure of Roy or the Maoists, much less their tribal-peasant base, alone. It’s the failure of all working-class forces, which includes me and my comrades as well, in all other locations. The point is to begin, as Zizek says citing Lenin, from the beginning by recognising this failure.
Pratyush Chandra: One point that interests me in Jairus Banaji’s post in Kafila and the subsequent debate on the post is his focus on labour as the centre of the movement. I think this focus is fundamental in order to ground various local/localised struggles in political economy (or rather in its critique) and to understand the underlying interconnections between them (whether the leadership of these struggles understand them in this manner is immaterial – did not Marx appreciate Paris Commune even when Blanquists were in hegemony?).
Marx’s conceptualisation of labour and of capital-labour relations is rich enough to provide tools for comprehending various struggles against capitalist accumulation (both primitive and normal). He understood subsumption of labour by capital as a process (not some particular fixed states), which starts from being formal to real – from a stage where labour is subsumed through non-capitalist “forms” of exploitation to the actual subsumption in “pure” wage-labour form. Between these two poles, subsumption can take a plethora of forms. Who knows better than Jairus that unwaged labour (reproductive or otherwise) is also part of the capitalist subsumption of labour.
So how do we understand tribals and “peasants” struggles against land and resource alienation within this framework? They are essentially fighting against capitalist efforts to alienate them from their resources, which create (or, better, reproduce) conditions for the subsumption of their labour by capital. Whether they will become wage labourers is not at all essential; if they are not employed, or even employable, they still remain labourers as part of the reserve army of proletarians or surplus population (stagnant, latent and floating) reproducing themselves on their small pieces of land, or by food gathering (in forests or trash cans). Their struggle, in a Marxist sense, can be understood as part of the anti-systemic working class struggle to control the conditions of production and, I stress, reproduction too.
Now coming to the forms of struggle (armed, unarmed, etc), I think we as Marxists (of all hues and colours) cannot act as idealists, by considering only those movements as working class movements or anti-capitalist movements, which are projected in our idioms, and are developing according to our framework of strategic-building. The working class can throw diverse forms of struggles according to its internal constituents or class composition. However, one must critique forms in order to show the limitations and problems of those forms, in order to avoid the problem of overgeneralisation of particular forms, and also in order to undertake the revolutionary task of generalisation seriously, which essentially means to see a revolutionary building up against capitalism within and through all forms of working-class struggles.
Petition: Stop Encounter Killings in the name of countering Maoism!
To: Home Minister of India
We strongly condemn the recent killings of senior CPI (Maoist) leaders Sakhamuri Appa Rao and S. Kondal Reddy in ‘encounters’ by the Andhra Pradesh police.
While the AP police have claimed that they were killed in gun battles in two different incidents in Prakasam and Warangal districts, there are strong grounds to believe that the two Maoist leaders were first arrested in Maharashtra, taken back to AP and then shot in cold blood.
The use of assassination, kidnapping and torture by the forces of the Indian State to contain the Maoist insurgency is not new or surprising but it remains even now, as before, an illegal, immoral and reprehensible strategy.
Firstly, the use of such methods by the Indian police, paramilitary forces or army – under whatever pretext- go against basic provisions of the Indian Constitution and puts them on par with ordinary criminals or even terrorists. The fact that the Maoists do not believe in the Indian Constitution does not mean the Indian government should also abandon its commitment to the only consensus document that gives it its own legitimacy. The Indian State has a duty to uphold the Constitution, irrespective of the opponents it faces, and failure to do so robs it of its entire claim to represent ‘Indian law’.
Secondly, there is enough evidence to show that the use of such dirty methods, once justified by the political masters, unfortunately becomes a bad habit making the Indian security forces a threat to the lives of millions of ordinary Indian citizens. The fact that India has one of the world’s highest numbers of custodial deaths and ranks extremely high in the list of countries using torture is testimony to this dubious phenomenon. The people at the receiving end of such violations of law by the Indian State on a day-to-day basis are the Dalit, Adivasi, Muslim, poor communities as also the people of Kashmir and the North-East and this is completely unacceptable.
We demand that the Indian government put an immediate end to the use of abduction, torture and fake encounter killings to tackle the Maoist and other armed insurgencies. Lawless governance and impunity for wrongdoers in uniform leads to loss of faith in democracy. The institutional failures that give rise to insurgencies also need to be understood and tackled in a political manner for any lasting solutions.
Sincerely,
State Repression in Orissa: A No-Escape Situation?
Satyabrata
This is the most repressive period in the history of Orissa.
Troops have been deployed in Koraput regions for the enforcement of Operation Greenhunt. The State Government of Orissa has asked for more troops to the Central Government so that it can deal wit the “left-extremists”. Already, in the preparatory phase of this repressive period, the State Government has been arresting leaders of several movements calling them ‘Maoists’. The intentions of the State Government can be seen clearly if one engages critically with what it has been doing of late. Abhay Sahoo and Biswajit Ray of POSCO movement were arrested with false cases in their names. There has been no militant incident in the POSCO movement in spite of the torturous attitude of the Police and pro-POSCO goons in the region. The CM has declared, with no respect for democratic voices, that the “POSCO-problem” will be solved by April 10, situations will be POSCO-favouring. One can judge what effect this statement shall have on the people that have been resisting the POSCO project. If they resist it with arms, there is the always available “Maoist” tag, if they don’t, things are easy – in the former case there is Operation Greenhunt to deal with the movement and in the later case, the police and the local goons shall suffice.
Recently in Narayanpatna of Koraput, a completely democratic mass movement was crushed with murders and arrests in the name of dealing with Maoists. K. Singana and Andrew Nachika of Chasi Mulia Adivasi Sangh were murdered, Gananath Patra was arrested as a threat to national security and Tapan Mishra was arrested being branded as a Maoist. The same movement still continues in other regions of Koraput like Bandhugaon, etc and Chasi Mulia Adivasi Sangh leads them too. Now troops are being deployed in the regions to deal with Maoists. In Narayanpatna one incident of ousting landlords and liquor traders started the whole series of repressive steps that the State took resulting in the brutal crushing of the movement. The State’s killing machine only needs alibi to kill without which its normal repression is sufficient to crush any movement. The movements of this region have no way out. If they don’t take to arms, landlords and local militia shall crush them; if they do, Operation Greenhunt shall gun them down. The movements shall conclude in the State’s desired form of conclusion with the restoration of the status quo.
Bhubaneshwar, the State’s capital, lacks the basic organization of intellectuals and activists who can raise voices on behalf of the oppressed in the villages and the media is drunk with hegemonic liquor and stands with complete indifference and apathy to the movements.
The movements against Vedanta, the Niyamgiri movement – all are skeptical of what fate they are destined to face under the present circumstances. Troops upon troops are being employed in the regions of movements to “deal” with them. The basic problem from the perspective of the movements is that they have not been able to go beyond territorial limitations and have not generalized their movements to create an inter-movemental political space that could challenge the State at the same time taking the movements ahead.
Posco Protest on April 1, 2010
On the first of 1st of April, at 11a.m., POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti, is organizing a protest mobilization at Balitiuth near Badabanda Station, Jagatsinghpur. All sympathisers of the POSCO movement are requested to be present. The POSCO Pritirodh Sangram Samiti is looking forward to solidarity from other movements, intellectuals and activists.
Contact Prashant Paikarai, Ph: +91 9437571547
Hari Sharma (1934-2010)
Chin Banerjee, Harinder Mahil, Raj Chouhan, Daya Varma, Vinod Mubayi, Charan Gill
It is with deepest sorrow that we announce the death of our friend and comrade, Hari Prakash Sharma, on March 16 following a prolonged battle with cancer. Hari took his last breath in his home of 42 years at Burnaby (a suburb of Vancouver), British Columbia, surrounded by his comrades Harinder Mahil, Raj Chouhan, and Chin Banerjee. All of them had come together in 1976 to form the Vancouver Chapter of the Indian People’s Association in North America (IPANA), which had been founded by Hari and many others at a meeting in Montreal in 1975.
Hari was born on November 9, 1934 at Dadri in Uttar Pradesh though his family came from Haryana. His father was a railway employee, so he moved from one place to another wherever his father was posted. Hari received his BA from Agra University and his Master’s in Social Work from Delhi University. The insight into the social life of India Hari got from his travels by train enabled by his father’s employment in the railways and his extensive travels by foot through the villages of India stimulated Hari to start writing short stories in Hindi. Hari is regarded as one of the finest writers of short stories in Hindi and many people had urged him to resume his writing in Hindi. One of his stories was adapted as a play and staged in New Delhi.
Hari moved to the US in 1963 for further education and did his Master in Social Work from the Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, in 1964 and Ph.D. in sociology from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY in 1968. He taught briefly at UCLA before accepting a position at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia in 1968, where he stayed till his retirement in 1999. He was honored by the University as Professor Emeritus.
Hari, like many enlightened academics of the 1960’s plunged in the anti-Vietnam war movement in the US and Canada. This is also the period when he espoused Marxism, which ideology he held dearly and steadfastly until his death.
As a member of the Faculty of Simon Fraser University he became a champion of the academic rights of colleagues who were faced with the threat of dismissal for their support of the student-led movement for democratizing the university. He became an associate and friend of another Marxist Kathleen Gough, who was suspended for her political activities. Kathleen Gough and Hari P. Sharma co-edited the 469-page book, Imperialism and Revolution in South Asia, which was published in 1973 by the Monthly Review Press, New York. The book was sought by political activists of that time and many people know of Hari as an eminent leftist scholar because of that book.
The 1960’s were a period of international revolutionary upheaval. The Naxalbari peasant uprising happened in the spring of 1967. Hari was greatly inspired by it. He went to India and visited Naxalbari area. It is then he got committed to the path opened by Naxalbari and retained his faith in its ultimate success until his last days, while many of his comrades had simply written off Naxalbari as a thing of the past. Hari developed contact with peasant revolutionaries and maintained a living contact till his last days.
While associating with the Naxalbari movement in India, Hari carried on anti-imperialist work in Vancouver through the weekly paper, Georgia Straight, published by the Georgia Straight Collective, of which he was a founding member. In 1973 Hari went to the Amnesty International in London and the Commission of Jurists in Geneva and sent a written representation to the UN Human Rights Commission to publicize the condition of more than thirty-thousand political prisoners in Indian jails.
In 1974 he and his comrade Gautam Appa of the London School of Economics organized a petition of international scholars to protest the treatment of political prisoners in India, which he handed to the Indian Consulate in Vancouver, BC on August 15 of the same year.
In 1975 Hari enthusiastically accepted an invitation from his friends in Montreal. He along with many others founded the Indian People’s Association in North America (IPANA) on June 25, 1975, exactly on the same day on which Indira Gandhi declared the State of Emergency in India. Hari’s tireless work against dictatorship in India and in defense of political prisoners and oppressed peoples, and his energetic organization of progressive people across North America in the struggle against Imperialism and for social justice, led to the revocation of his passport by the Indira Gandhi government in 1976.
Having engaged in various anti-racist struggles in the 1970s, IPANA in Vancouver, under Hari’s leadership became a primary force in the formation of the British Columbia Organization to Fight Racism (BCOFR: 1980), which proved to be an extremely effective instrument against the tide of racism in the province at the time. Hari and IPANA also played a leading role in the formation of the Canadian Farmworkers’ Union (CFU: 1980), which for the first time took up the cause of farm workers who had been historically excluded from protection under the labour laws and any protective regulation.
From the 1980s Hari’s work also began to focus on the condition of minorities in India, which came to a crisis with the attack on the Golden Temple and the massacre of Sikhs in Delhi in 1984 following the assassination of Indira Gandhi. Hari stood firm in his defense of the human rights of Sikhs and, increasingly of Muslims who became the primary targets of the rising Hindutva forces gathered under the banner of the Bhartiya Janata Party. He organized a parallel conference on the centralization of state power and the threat to minorities in India to coincide with the Commonwealth Conference in Vancouver in 1987.
In 1989 Hari brought large sections of the South Asian community together to form the Komagata Maru Historical Society to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Komagata Maru incident, in which Indian immigrants traveling to Canada on a chartered ship were turned away from the shores of Vancouver by the racist policies of the Canadian Government. As a result of the society’s work a commemorative plaque was installed in Vancouver. In 2004, during a screening of the documentary film on this incident by Ali Kazimi, Continuous Journey, the Mayor of Vancouver presented a scroll to Hari dedicating the week to the memory of Komagata Maru.
Following the attack on Babri Masjid in December 1992 Hari became the prime mover in the formation of a North American organization dedicated to the defense of minority rights in India called, Non-resident Indians for Secularism and Democracy (NRISAD). This organization brought together Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, and Christians of origin in South Asia through educational and cultural activities. It had its most significant moment in Vancouver in 1997, when it celebrated the 50th anniversary of the independence of India from colonial rule by bringing together people from the entire spectrum of the South Asian community to focus on how much remained to be done on the subcontinent and the urgent need for peace between Pakistan and India.
Recognizing the need to build a North American front against the growing menace of Hindutva fascism in India, Hari travelled to Montreal in September 1999 to join the founding of International South Asia Forum (INSAF). He became is first President and organized the Second Conference in Vancouver from Augst10-12, 2001.
Hari’s leadership again led to the development of NRISAD into South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy (SANSAD) in Vancouver to embrace the necessity of going beyond a focus on India to the entire South Asian region in the quest of peace and democracy based on secularism, human rights and social justice. SANSAD has pursued these goals vigorously, condemning the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 (for which he was denied a visa to go to India), championing the human rights of Kashmiris, promoting peace between Pakistan and India, supporting the rights of women in Pakistan, condemning violence against journalists and academics in Bangladesh, supporting the movement for democracy and social justice in Nepal, and defending the human rights of Tamils under the attack of the Sri Lankan state.
Besides being an able political organizer and a gifted writer of short stories, Hari was also a talented photographer. He photographed the common people of India, their lives and struggles. His photographs hang in many homes and have been displayed in many exhibitions. He proved himself to be an excellent director of political drama.
Political ideals remain steadfast. However, there has, naturally been, divergence of opinion on the strategy and tactics of achieving these ideals. During the course of long political activity of more than 50 years, Hari made many friends and comrades. It is natural that among these comrades there also arose disagreements on many issues. Nevertheless, Hari remained a comrade or a friend of all of them and they all are deeply saddened by his passing away.
Hari leaves behind him a legacy of activism in the service of the oppressed. He is an inspiration to engagement in the struggle for a better world, to a never-flagging effort to create a world without exploitation, without imperialist domination, without religious, caste, ethnic or gender oppression, a world that Marx envisioned as human destiny.
A Memorial Service for Hari will be held at Riverside Funeral Home and Crematorium, 7410- Hopcott Road, Delta, B.C. (Ph. 604-940-1313) , at 3:00 pm on Sunday, March 21, 2010.
Sri Lanka: Parliamentary General Election 2010
Election Manifesto of the New-Democratic Party
Introduction
The entire people of Sri Lanka are facing acute crises and problems at two levels. One concerns the failure to resolve the national question caused by chauvinistic capitalist oppression. The other concerns the economic crises and problems that developed as a result of class oppression. Besides these, people have to struggle against a variety of problems faced by them in their daily lives. In all of these problems, the ruling classes comprising the government and the opposition factions are on one side and the overwhelming majority comprising the working people are on the other. Another fact that needs to be noted is that the imperialist forces of global hegemony and forces of regional hegemony have continued to meddle and tamper with the national question which is the main contradiction, and in the economic issues arising from the class contradiction, which is the fundamental contradiction. The effects and consequences of the above factors are been experienced as sorrow and suffering by the people at all levels of the political, economic, social and cultural aspects of society. Hence we briefly place before the public in the Election Manifesto of the New Democratic Party the basic political stand and the demands put forward by the Party.
The National Question and the Tamils
The New Democratic Party has consistently emphasised that the national question is the principal contradiction in Sri Lanka. The end of the war has not brought the national question to its end. Since chauvinism is even more closely bonded to the state machinery, national oppression against the Tamil, Muslim and Hill Country Tamil nationalities has intensified further. The three nationalities are affected in different ways according to their specific conditions of existence.
Generally, all three minority nationalities are subject to discriminatory treatment. Their right to education in their mother tongue and the right to conduct their affairs in their language are unlawfully denied to them. Besides, allocation of places in higher education, vocational training and the professions are unfavourable to them. In addition, owing to chauvinistic oppression against the Tamil nationality being implemented as a chauvinist war of national oppression in their traditional homelands, Tamils have suffered loss of life, disablement, and loss of property on an unprecedented, massive scale. Several hundred thousands have been forced to be displaced within the country and abroad. Amid this, in addition to land already appropriated from Tamils for establishing “High Security Zones”, planned colonisation of Sinhalese is being intensified with the aim of reducing them to a minority in their own territories.
Besides those in the open prisons called “Refugee Camps”, thousands are languishing in prisons and detention caps, as terror suspects, without trial or inquiry. Not merely Tamils and Hill Country Tamils but also Muslims and Sinhalese are put through such suffering for political reasons. The main cause for this situation is planned chauvinistic oppression by the state. Yet, attempts to resolve the national question, firstly as parliamentary deals, secondly as peaceful campaigns and thirdly as armed struggle, based on the claim that the Tamils could by themselves resolve the Tamil national question, failed. There were two fundamental reasons for the failure. Firstly, at no stage was the liberation struggle of the Tamil nationality carried forward as a mass struggle. That was the reason why weapons gained prominence while democratic practices were rejected. Secondly, the struggle with a narrow nationalist outlook was isolated from the struggles of other oppressed people. As a result, the struggle of the Tamils tended to rely on and side with Western powers and to deny support and even be hostile to struggles against imperialism and hegemony. As a result, the liberation struggle of the Tamils became isolated within Sri Lanka as well as internationally. It was because the three stages of struggle were guided by the same incorrect, upper class, elitist thinking that they pushed the Tamil people into a great tragedy. Thus there is a need to be freed from these errors, unite the Tamil people on a working class basis, create militant solidarity between them and other oppressed people and carry forward the fourth stage of the struggle. The New Democratic Party made clear its observations on the matter even before the struggle of the LTTE faced downfall.
Muslims
Since the Muslims are spread throughout the country, they face different kinds of oppression according to the environments in which they live. Also, their livelihood and small trade have been subject to attack by fanatically chauvinistic gangs, Muslims in different parts of the country have from time to time faced fierce chauvinist attacks. Tamil narrow nationalism has, in addition, targeted Muslims and carried out massacres. The expulsion of Muslims from the North in 1990 was a major act of cruelty against them. The government, while on the one hand engaging in activities that divide the Tamils and Muslims, has been colluding with chauvinistic gangs in seizing land and property from Muslims, and denying the Muslims their rights.
Hill Country Tamils
The Hill Country Tamils have, since deprivation of their right to citizenship in 1948, have struggled for their existence. The Sirima-Shastri Accord of 1963 was a great injustice perpetrated against them. Cruel exploitation of their labour and their expulsion of many from the plantations following the nationalisation of the plantations facilitated the implementation of that accord. Efforts have intensified to suppress the political voice that they may have through the right to vote that they won as a result of a prolonged struggle. Planned Sinhala colonisation and schemes like the Upper Kotmale Scheme designed to destroy plantations on the one hand and chauvinist attacks against them on the other persist. The so-called leaders of the Hill Country Tamils are accomplices of the chauvinists in activities designed to prevent the identification of the Hill Country Tamils as a distinct nationality. The people need to recognise the true nature of such leaders.
The Way to a Solution
In the current situation where the national question is being exacerbated and the minority nationalities are severely oppressed, the New-Democratic Party emphasises that, without resolving the national question, it is not possible resolve other problems faced by the country. From that position, the New-Democratic Party has consistently put forward the following idea as the basis for a long-term solution for the national question.
A just and lasting solution to the national question is possible only through rebuilding the country as a multi-ethnic, multi-nationality entity with autonomous regions for the nationalities and autonomous structures to preserve the unique identity of communities without a contiguous territory, based on the principle of the right to self determination within the framework of a united Sri Lanka which treats all nationalities and national minorities as equals.
Immediate Steps
At the same time, taking into account the consequences of the war and the direct impact of chauvinistic attacks, the New-Democratic Party urges the following immediate steps.
• All the people been displaced as a result of the war should be immediately resettled in their own homes.
• Normal life should be restored for people affected by war, through reconstruction and rehabilitation.
• All losses due to war should be compensated and opportunity provided for communities to rebuild their lives based on self-reliance.
• Military camps should be removed from areas in which civilians live in large numbers.
• All those under detention without trial or inquiry should be released forthwith and due compensation paid for the injustice done to them.
• Planned colonisation should be stopped forthwith, High Security Zones done away with, and the right of communities to their traditional territory respected.
• Acts of communal hatred affecting the life and livelihood of Tamil, Muslim and Hill Country Tamil people should be ended immediately, and firm action taken against those who provoke communal hatred.
• The legal right of all speakers of Tamil to education in their mother tongue and to carry out all affairs including matters relating to the state in Tamil in any part of the country should be safeguarded.
• Provocation of hatred towards the Muslims and acts of violence directed against Muslim communities should be prevented.
• Moves to appropriate land belonging to the Muslims in their traditional areas should be prevented.
• Hill Country Tamils should be recognised as a nationality and their right to existence in regions in which they have lived for several generations should be affirmed.
• The Hill Country Tamils, especially the plantation workers, should be given an adequate wage increase, and be granted the legal right, opportunity and means to possess their own homes and land in order to maintain an independent economic existence by developing cultivation and animal husbandry.
• Educational and employment opportunities should be enhanced for the Hill Country Tamil community, which is still backward in education and employment.
Social Oppression
The well being of any nationality of Sri Lanka cannot be isolated from that of other nationalities. Hence, it is not possible to isolate the liberation of the Tamil, Muslim and Hill Country Tamil people cannot be viewed in isolation from the interests of the country as a whole. Likewise, we cannot ignore oppression based on class, caste and gender, nationally and within each community. It should again be reminded here as a lesson of historical experience that the tendency to be blind to social oppression, on the pretext of the liberation struggle of the Tamil people and unity of the nationality, has in no way helped the liberation of the Tamil people.
Many trade union rights and other legal rights won by the workers through struggle have been lost under the liberalised private sector economy, which is part of capitalist globalisation.
Several obstacles exist in society that prevent the victories scored in the struggle against casteism under the leadership of our Marxist Leninist party from leading to a total elimination of caste domination. Tamil narrow nationalism has been an accomplice to those evil forces.
While education and employment opportunities for women have increased, their work load too has increased. Besides that, there is also an increase in sexual harassment in their places of work. Thus, besides oppression based on caste, nationality and class, working women suffer gender-based oppression within the family and outside. Neither armed struggle nor urban employment has helped working class women to win liberation. The concerns of feminist campaigners remain confined to the boundaries of the well to do middle class.
We never accepted the argument that the unity of the nationality or of the community will be wrecked by raising issues of social oppression. The New Democratic Party has not exempted any social injustice. It has struggled against all forms of social oppression including chauvinistic oppression. Thus the following demands are included in the Election Manifesto of the Party.
• All trade union rights denied to the working class following the Open Economic Policy should be restored. All employment sectors should without exception be given the right to organise as a trade union.
• The rise in prices should be arrested, the cost of living controlled, and wage increases should be granted.
• The rights of working people including workers, peasants and fisher folk should be assured.
• Untouchability, caste-based discrimination, disregard and oppression that are still practiced as a result of residual caste ideology should be fully eliminated.
• In addition to strong legal action against all social violence against women, the idea of gender equality should be emphasised in all social institutions including schools.
• Sections of the people who remain backward on the basis of class, gender, caste and region should be granted special concessions in education, higher education and employment.
Alternative Political Path
To win the above demands, it is important to build a new front of mass struggle that brings together all nationalities and national minorities along an alternative political path based on broad unity of the people. It is only through the total rejection of the narrow Tamil nationalist outlook which portrayed the Sinhalese people as enemies and acting on the basis that the broad masses of Sinhala working people are an ally that it will be possible to defeat the chauvinism afflicting the Sinhalese people and enable them to accept the rights of other nationalities. Through that, it will also be possible to salvage the struggle of the Tamil people against national oppression from the tendency to isolate the Tamil people from other nationalities of Sri Lanka, and thereby carry forward the struggle.
Global domination by the US and the regional hegemonic ambitions of India, besides contributing to the transformation of the national conflict into war, have been obstacles to finding a just solution to the national question. The imperialist grip on Sri Lanka has tightened during the past three decades. Sri Lanka is now a major debtor nation. Sri Lanka, without a national economy, depends on earnings from the sale of its labour power in the international market, directly or indirectly through means such as the garment industry. Hence, it is important to rescue the sovereignty and the economy of the country from US-led Western imperialism and from Indian hegemony. All foreign involvements that seek to use the national question for purposes of intervention, and domination trade, political and military affairs should be opposed.
The New Democratic Party has never believed that useful political change can be brought about through the parliamentary system. It has never propagated such faith among the people. The importance of this election to the Party is the opportunity that it provides to take correct ideas among the people and thereby mobilise the people along an alternative political path.
The people by studying, understanding and supporting the stand of the Party will be strengthening the struggle for their rights. We pledge that, with the strength of that support, the New Democratic Party will work resolutely with the people within and outside parliament to mobilise the people and advance along the path of struggle.
If the people will grant us parliamentary representation at this election, we pledge that we will continue to be an honest political force which is true to the people and act to build a new political culture and advance our political cause.
Orissa : Throttling of Freedom of Thought and Expression
We express our concern on the police raid of the house of Sri Dandapani Mohapatra, a writer and journalist. On 11th March 2010, while Sri Mohapatra was away in some meeting, violating all procedures, the police raided his house for nearly six hours ransacking all his belongings and not even allowing his ailing wife and children to take their food. The police had not given a copy of any search warrant to his family members, nor stated any reason for the raid. As per Sri Mohapatra the police took away a number of old journals such as Ghadaghadi, Inquilab and Marga O Chinta – none of which is proscribed by the government – without giving a seizure list, which is mandatory. In a democratic set up of government to possess such materials is within the purview of freedom of thought and expression. Strangely, the police have taken the signatures of Sri Mohaptra’s son and that of the local Sarpanch on a number of plain sheets of paper. We learnt from Sri Mohapatra that after raiding the house, the SDPO Chhatrapur had threatened him on the same day in the evening asking him to come to the Police station by 15th of March or face the dire consequences. It is ascertained from Sri Mohaptra that no criminal case is pending against him under any allegation. This is outright police highhandedness and gross misuse of power.
After talking to Sri Mohapatra and on perusal of some of his writings we have reasons to believe that the only intention of the police in raiding the house of Sri Mohapatra could be to suppress his dissent opinion – which he has been expressing through his writings continuously for the last many years – simply by terrorizing. It needs to be noted that Sri Dandapani Mohapatra is the General Secretary of Dakhshina Odisha Sahitya Sammelani, a literary organization of south Orissa, and has been associated with writing and publishing for a long time. He was publishing a satirical magazine called Ghadaghadi between 1984 to 1990. He has published a few books of his poems. Currently, he has been writing for a weekly tabloid called ‘Sahanamela’.
It is a matter of concern that the police, without following the due process of law, have disclosed to a section of media that the raid was undertaken due to suspected Maoist links.
We condemn the police action as it violates the fundamental rights of personal liberty as well as freedom of speech and expression. The police highhandedness is not only directed against the expression of dissent of Sri Mahapatra, it also gives a red signal to all such persons who express their dissent fearlessly. We urge upon the government to stop this undemocratic practice in general and to conduct a high level inquiry into the incident. We also appeal to all the freedom loving people to condemn such undemocratic activities.
Pramodini Pradhan, Convenor, PUCL –Bhubaneswar
Biswapriya Kanungo, Advocate and Human Rights Activist
Petition: Assault on Democracy
To: The President of India
The President of India,
Rashtrapati Bhavan,
New Delhi – 110 004.
Dear Madam Visitor,
Subject: Assault on Democracy
On 18 February 2010, the Delhi Police presented a charge-sheet against Mr. Kobad Ghandy. This document also alleges criminal activities, and support for criminal activities, against several individuals and organisations that have been active in safeguarding and promoting civil and democratic rights, for several decades now. These organisations and individuals have been actively protesting the violation of civil and democratic rights of large numbers of people in the context of ‘Operation Green Hunt’ – the government’s military offensive against ‘Maoists’. Several of those affected by the allegations in the charge-sheet are members of the academic community of Universities in Delhi, who also happen to share in the work and activities of the organisations identified in it.
The allegations against these individuals and organisations are utterly baseless and unsubstantiated; they consequently appear to be motivated solely by the government’s intention to silence all such protests, and to criminalise all such legitimate and democratic activities. This is in continuation with intensifying attempts by the state to curtail spaces for democratic dissent and protest, within and outside the university, and indeed, to erode the very principles of democracy.
Worldwide, universities have traditionally been a crucial space for freedom of expression, the exploration of ideas and critical debate. They have always been, and should always be, sites where even the strongest critique of the state can be – in fact, must and should be – made possible. This is an essential character, not just of the university as an institution, but of the democratic principles of the society it exists in. The attempt to silence these individuals and organisations, therefore constitutes an assault on this very fundamental essence of the university, as well as on the character of democratic society.
We would like to unequivocally affirm that, for the university to remain a space in which democratic principles and practices are sacrosanct and inviolable, the voices that emerge from it must be allowed to do so freely. We consequently also strongly condemn attempts like the baseless allegations in the charge-sheet, to violate precisely this quality of the university and its community.
We request you, in your capacity as Visitor of Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University, to intervene and protect the universities and their communities from such assaults. We also request you to ensure that the individuals and organisations targeted in the charge-sheet are not victimised by the baselessly punitive and retributive actions of the state, and that their civil and democratic rights are upheld.
Sincerely,
Video: Is Marx Back? An Interview with Leo Panitch
In this interview Leo Panitch deals with the problems of working class politics and organisation – of trade unions, parties, bureaucratisation and social democracy. There is a very interesting discussion of the Soviet experience and on the international left’s attitude towards various transformatory praxes and experiments throughout the world, including the Latin American.
Courtesy: Socialist Project
Petition: Withdraw Sedition Charges against Dr. Rati Rao
Shri B S Yeddyurappa,
Chief Minister,
Karnataka
Sir,
We the undersigned are writing to you in the backdrop of the fact that Dr E Rati Rao, a senior scientist, long-standing activist of the women’s rights movement, Vice-President of PUCL-Karnataka and Vice President of the All India Progressive Women’s Association (AIPWA) has recently been charged with sedition by the police of the state that you govern – Karnataka.
Dr. Rati Rao was Editor of an in-house PUCL-Karnataka Kannada language bulletin (called PUCL Varthapatra) for private circulation among PUCL members – and it is this bulletin (last published in 2007) that is the supposed basis for the charges of ‘sedition’.
The FIR against Dr. Rati Rao accuses her of publishing the PUCL bulletin that is “favoring naxals and Muslims and is propagating that the police are killing innocent people in the name of encounter”; that “calls upon dalits, women, minorities, farmers and adivasis to build organizations in order to fight for their rights”; that “accuses the Sangh Parivar in Karavali (coastal Karnataka) of indulging in false propaganda and fueling communal disharmony” and “calls upon the secular forces to raise their voice against such spread of communal hate”; and “by raising such issues incite and spread intolerance, disbelief, discontent amongst the public”; that “in the name of doing good to the dalits, women, minorities, & adivasis the said bulletin is spreading false information against the casteist & communal Government…It is propagating intolerance, disbelief, and discontent amongst the Government officials.”
The sections under which Dr. Rati Rao has been booked are Section 124 A (Sedition), Section 505 (False statement, rumour, etc., circulated with intent to cause mutiny or cause communal discord) and sections of the Press Act that relate to knowingly spreading false information. The PUCL Bulletin in question had discussed the attacks on the Christian community in Karnataka and had indicted the Government for failing to do enough to protect the minority community from attack.
Going by the FIR against Dr. Rati Rao, are we, the citizens of India, to believe that in the eyes of the BJP-ruled Karnataka today, it is ‘sedition’ to avail the basic democratic right (and duty) of resisting communal hate campaigns and extra-judicial killings by the police; of asserting secularism; of encouraging dalits, women, minorities, farmers and adivasis to organize for their rights; and of asking why the Government is failing to prevent attacks on minorities and dalits?! Is it because the Karnataka Government itself is colluding in the attacks on women, dalits, minorities and human rights that it feels so threatened by democratic activists who take up such issues? Is the Government of Karnataka out to muzzle every voice of democracy and dissent?
We find it ironic that while the Karnataka police does not book the Sangh outfits for spreading rumours galore of ‘love jehad’ and ‘forced conversion’ etc to target Muslims and Christians, nor for violating the Constitution by indulging in communal violence – people like Dr. Rati Rao who have devoted their lives to defending constitutional liberties are accused of sedition and activists seeking to bring facts to light are booked for ‘spreading rumour’!
Dr Rati Rao is a scientist and researcher specializing in food microbiology, and retired as the Deputy Director of the CFTRI (Central Food Technological Research Institute). She has a history of several decades of democratic activism – first in the student movement, then in the women’s movement with the Samata Progressive Women’s Forum, Mysore since 1978 and as a prominent figure in the autonomous women’s movement right since the 1980s; and long associated with the Left and progressive movement and the human rights movement, especially the PUCL.
Why was a bulletin last published in 2007 dug out now, three years later, for punitive action by the Karnataka Government? We believe it is merely a pretext to intimidate Dr. Rati Rao, who has in recent times, as National Vice President of the All India Progressive Women’s Association (AIPWA) been visiting Karnataka villages to organize rural poor women to fight for their rights, who was recently part of a fact-finding to expose the atrocities against Dalits in Chitradurga district of Karnataka, and who recently participated in a National Convention against Sexual violence and State Repression in Raipur, Chhattisgarh.
To us it is clear that the charge against Dr. Rati Rao is part of a calculated campaign of harassment of civil liberties and democratic activists and crackdown on dissent that has marked the BJP regime in Karnataka and the ‘Operation Greenhunt’ of the central government.
We the undersigned condemn the trumped up charges against a respected member of the democratic rights and women’s movement and demand your immediate intervention to ensure that the charges be immediately withdrawn.
Operation Green Hunt: its stated and unstated targets
Kumar Sanjay Singh
Every conscious citizen is aware that the proposed operation Green Hunt, ostensibly to deal with the Maoist armed struggle, is an event with ominous portents. It can be argued that the events that are unfolding have consequences that go much beyond the attempted military solution to problems that are essentially political and economic in nature.
That the intended target of the government is much larger than the stated target is becoming obvious in the statements and actions of the state. Witness how in the aftermath of the Silda action the Home Minister Mr. P C Chidambaram tried to steam roll all the critiques of the government into Maoist sympathisers, completely ignoring the fact that criticising the human rights violation of the government is not tantamount to a support of the Maoists. More recently, the charge sheet on Mr. Kobad Ghandy, filed by the Delhi Police, mentioned some prominent democratic and civil liberties organisations and activists as fronts of the Communist Party of India (Maoist). Obviously, the intended targets of the state are not simply the Maoist party but all such organisations and individual that have been critical of the state’s developmental policy and track record on human rights. A fact testified by the assault of rights activists and Gandhian organisations in Chhattisgarh.
The manner in which the central government wants to deploy paramilitary forces in the so-called sensitive states betrays the state’s unstated agenda in three respects. First, the attempt to cajole and pressurise the reluctant chief ministers of Bihar and Jharkhand through media propaganda and other kinds of pressure and persuasion is a testimony of the attempt to redefine centre-state relationship in the favour of the centre; even on the issue of law and order which is a state subject.
Second, deployment of armed paramilitary forces through a central fiat amounts to imposition of armed paramilitary forces over civilian administration. This is permissible only under emergency. Yet the government is not declaring emergency since such a declaration obliges the government for a mandatory review of the declaration every six months. The government has therefore imposed a de facto emergency without actually declaring it. Thus it has claimed unfettered power without any legal or time bound restraint, in other words it has claimed impunity in the area of operation Green Hunt. Experience of use of armed and paramilitary forces provided with impunity, for instance in the north eastern states and J& K has been that the number of civilian casualty and the erosion of human rights is unacceptably high. In other words the casualty, repression and oppression of the civilian population living in the areas of operation green hunt will be dramatically higher than the stated targets of operation green hunt. In fact, the plight of the civilian population is further compounded since they have been also targeted in some instance by the guerrilla forces.
Third, the initiation of the inter-state counter naxal operation is actually a part of the oft stated plan of the centre to restructure and centralise internal security apparatus. Thus, this is a decisive shift of law and order and policing from the state subject. Over the period of last more than two decades several issues of state subject have been taken over by the centre, for instance forest, roads, port management and now policing. These are portents of a shift towards a more unitary form of governments. Could this also be seen as imposition of a Presidential form of government by stealth? It ought to be pointed out here that this idea had been mooted by Indira Gandhi and Atal Bihari Vajpayee during their respective tenures as Prime Minister.
To cut a long story short the current operation while stated to be against the Communist Party of India (Maoist) has a much larger unstated target. It threatens to trespass the safety and security of the indigenous and tribal people in the operation area, it seeks to trespass on the fundamental rights of the citizens of the country and finally, it seeks to redefine the structure of governance of the country. It is evident, therefore, the current offensive is quite comprehensive and seeks to impact upon a cross section of political process and the life and rights of common citizens. It stands to reason that such a challenge requires a resistance that is imaginative and flexible enough to include the opinions of all the stake holders that are to be impacted.
A preparatory meeting in Delhi against State violence and repression (March 12 2010)
The Delhi University Campaign Against War on People invites concerned organizations and individuals for a preparatory meeting to address issues of state violence and repression and the erosion of democratic spaces, currently epitomised by ‘Operation Green Hunt’. The objective of this preparatory meeting is to jointly organize a future course of action.
Venue: Room no. 207, Indian Social Institute, Lodhi Road, New Delhi.
Correspondence Pamphlet No 4: The Student as a Worker
This pamphlet was read and distributed in the Seminar, “Dismantling Democracy in the University”, organised in the University of Delhi on March 4 2010.
Is the semester system good or bad? If we say it is bad then why do we say so? I would say, and many might concur that privatization of the educational sector is also bad. Why do we say that? In the final session, we will discuss ‘politics in the university;’ why do we need a politics at all here? To begin to answer any such questions a more fundamental question needs to be addressed. What is the university and what do we do here?
The university is a workplace, where students, teachers and the karmcharis work. What is work about? It is about production – human beings are creative, and we create in our workplace. As creative beings we find fulfilment in what we create; what we create is an extension of ourselves, through which we reach out to others who are also part of society. In the university knowledge is produced; we study, teach, research and discuss. As creative beings involved in the production/creation of knowledge it is through the knowledge we produce that we put forth ourselves, our identities to the world. To truly find fulfilment, to be happy in other words, we would like to determine what we create, how we create and with what we create; this holds equally for teaching, learning, researching and by extension discussing. Although some could argue that the work place, in this case the university is not that important a site in our lives, home is more important. But honestly, we spend so much of our time and energy here, that it would be foolish to argue that it has no bearing on our happiness; some amount of thinking should make this seem self-evident. So then assuming that for happiness it is necessary for this space in its capacity as a workplace be fulfilling, we can contend that: it is important for us to have a say in the decisions that determine its running. So if new changes are being imposed into its structure, we as the people who work here, and to whom by extension this place belongs, have the right to not accept these changes, and even to remodel older structures. What determines our likes and dislikes is the ability or inability of these structures to gives us space for the fulfilment of our creativity.
In this framework of ‘those who work’ in the university, students are an uncomfortable fit. When the teachers view them, or the administration, the students are either consumers or products. They are paying for a commodity, education, which they should get – so if teachers go on strike, they break the producer-consumer pact. Or it is the task of the teachers to prepare students for the market, so if they go on strike, they are hindering production. When individuals situated in the university, as subjects, look at the university, they see that while for those who “work” here it is the permanent site of labour, for the majority of the students, it fails to have any connotations of finality. Studenthood is a temporary state, a purgatorial interlude that precedes entry into the heaven of work and salaries. When one tries to “politicize” this space, one of the main problems one faces is that students do not feel that they have much to gain by its improvement – “I’m here only for one more year.”
A substantial number of professors have been cribbing about the semester system, but there is not much they can do. They are afraid to go on strike, because they themselves feel that by hindering production and by breaking the consumer pact they will be ‘harming careers’ and might bring the wrath of the ministry on them. On there own, they cannot stop these developments. They need to communicate with the students, establish a bond altogether different from the pedagogic one that exists right now. They need to be able to think about students differently, students as part of the same continuum as they, working in the university, desiring fulfilment, affected by what affects the teachers. In a system where value is eternally deferred, the formal manifestation being exchange value, even when they start getting salaries they don’t get fulfilment. What is common to the time when they will get salaries and now, is that in both realms they labour, work, make use of their creativity, and in circumstances that they do not determine.
If I were to translate ‘creativity’ in the register that agitational politics usually makes use of: it is nothing but our capacity and need to labour. Understanding creativity like this would allow us to elaborate upon the nature of the said continuum. When Marx says ‘working class,’ does he mean only the ‘male, white, industrial proletariat?’ Maybe. But what was the logic behind designating somebody a worker? The working class is that section of the people on which work is imposed; the people who are alienated from their creativity, who are forced to create in circumstances that they do not want to create in, and who as a result will have to fight to be able to determine these circumstances. There was another concept, that Marx often made use of: the collective worker. The collective worker is this continuum, a continuum beyond localized time or space, of the working class subjectivity. The collective worker is a universal, common to all those on whom work is imposed. Work is imposed on the collective worker: the collective worker is made of various people on whom work is imposed in various ways; in a different way in the factory, in a different way in agriculture, in a different way in the university, in a different way in the household. So work is imposed on the professor in one way. We propose that work is imposed on the student in another. Studenthood is a phase in the life of this ‘collective worker.’ It doesn’t matter if some students come from rich households, if some will go on to become factory owners, or vice chancellors, at the moment of studenthood they are part of the collective worker. Professors and students are part of the same continuum. They together occupy the university, and in fighting for self-determination they are essentially on the same side. So in opposition to the student as a consumer, and the student as a product, is the student as worker. That the student does not create ‘value’ does not matter, because capitalism decides what is valuable and what is not: but this does not change the fact that work is imposed upon the student.
Anyhow, we need self-determination for happiness, and for self-determination we have to fight. The tribal in Chhattisgarh might need to fight the police, multinationals, and the armed forces for self-determination, the factory worker will need to fight the factory owner, we have to fight the administration, the vice chancellor for instance. If students, teachers and Karamcharis work in the university, what right has any random person to determine what will happen here? The Vice Chancellor and his pals are not elected representatives; they come in through mechanisms in which we have no say. Today we might be fighting the semester system, or the service regulations, or against the attendance rule, fee-hike or for timely payment of karamchari salaries, but we also need to fight the arbitrariness with which these problems impose themselves upon us. It is not enough to say that the vice-chancellor should not bring in the semester system, we have to ask why the vice-chancellor should do anything at all? If there has to be an administrative body, then we should elect it, and have the power of immediate recall, if what we don’t want to happen happens. Of course all this is a long way off, but are we even ready to think our problems through? If we don’t push further than questioning a move here or a move there, we should know that till there is an administration, such things will happen.
What about political students’ organizations: essentially left organizations. How do they see the university and the students? They too seem to not think of the university as a valid site for struggle. For them it seems, the struggle is always somewhere else: in the forest, or in the factory or in slums? Of course it is there. It needs to be fought there. But it is also here. And it needs to be fought here as well. The university is not a place where activists are to be made to go and fight elsewhere. Unless we bring the struggle home, fight the particular forms of power that we face, transformation can never happen. I don’t intend to be vituperative; these are not charges. It is just an appeal to rethink the aims of struggle in the university.
Someone could ask, ‘what if we do get this right to determine what happens here? What if we are allowed to elect our own administration? Does this mean our problems are over?’ No, of course not. If we struggle merely for power to regulate, it won’t take us anywhere. Once we gain it, instead of the current administration some of us will be mediating between the market and the university. The outside, which will continue to be a problem, arbitrary, based on the idea of profit, not human happiness, will still determine us. Self-determination will not be complete in this localized fashion. Our demand for self-determination at a local level can only be tactical, not the final end. People everywhere face the problem that we face here, in different forms, in different degrees; but essentially the same. True self-determination, true democracy can only come when the structure that centres this dynamic is destroyed. People struggling in their respective circumstances, for self-determination, will finally need to come together to push the struggle to its culmination. But this is a somewhat larger matter. We start with what we face, with the local structure through which power tries to determine our lives. In the process we will of course, as Laclau would say, solve a number of small problems, make our lives in the university a little better, bring a greater degree of democracy here, but we must keep in mind that these small things are not the end, because the end is that which seems impossible right now; this impossible can be made possible, through an act which will retroactively make its own impossibility the condition of its possibility, shifting the horizon of possibility altogether.
‘May You Live in Interesting Times’: The Maoists and Us
On 20th February, the Hindustan Times, reporting on the chargesheet produced by the Delhi Police against Kobad Ghandy, stated that Ghandy was alleged to have been in direct contact with GN Sai Baba, a professor in Delhi University, and who is alleged to be in control of the CPI (Maoist)’s tactical counter offensive against Operation Greenhunt. Reporting on the same chargesheet, on the same date, the Times of India reported the investigators’ claim that civil rights groups like the PUDR and PUCL were actively helping the Maoists to spread their base; while Mail Today stated that there was an active Maoist operation amongst Delhi University students, specifically identifying the Democratic Students Union (DSU). Elaborating on this same chargesheet report the next day, the HT adds that a prominent research scholar and a human rights activist have been specifically identified by Ghandy as Maoist leaders in the capital, although they are not named by the newspaper. Interestingly, each of these details appears only in the particular newspaper mentioned, and not in any of the other papers: like the blind men and the elephant, it is as if each has ‘found’ something unique in the chargesheet, that characterises the contents of that document – but unlike the blind men in the story, who after all are each seeking to describe the same beast but end up describing only the part that they sense, these newspapers presumably all have access to the same ‘beast’ in its entirety (i.e., the chargesheet), but have chosen to report only on specific – but different – aspects of the extensive Maoist network that it alleges exists in Delhi. What, we may ask, is going on?
Very simply, if each newspaper reports on any one branch of this alleged Maoist network, each will have apparently reported something unique; further, each newspaper’s readership will have been made aware of one crucial way in which the Maoist ‘menace’ is apparently already in their neighbourhood, and spreading like a virus. But the total effect of all the reports is the imaging of a hydra, a Ravana, a many-headed monster conceived in the savage and distant tribal terrains of Jharkhand, Chhatisgarh and Orissa, and that is now slouching towards the safe cosmopolitan world of the NCR to be born. What is most disturbing in this picture – which would be fantastically ridiculous if it were not so dangerous – is that the heads of this monster that have been identified in the newspapers are intellectuals, civil rights bodies and university student organisations: the classic sites of dissent in any free society. In other words, Operation Green Hunt (or OGH) is no longer just ‘out there’, but is now itself slouching around in the NCR: dissent towards OGH is gradually itself being targeted under OGH.
Troublingly, sections of the press appear to be participating – wittingly or unwittingly – in this urbanisation of OGH. The fact is that if each of these papers had presented all that the others had also reported, the larger picture would have been self-evident, the elephant would have stood revealed as the state preparing to trample on intellectual dissent. One does not need to be particularly gifted visually or intellectually to see the connection between intellectuals, university students and civil rights activists. Every modern state has sought to control these sections of its society – and usually the press too – precisely because they have always been sources of political discomfort. When the press decides to go along with the state, or confines itself to being the voice of the state, it must ring a bell for us – in this case a very loud alarm bell, that tolls the names of Joseph Goebbels, over and over again. The question before us is, did the newspapers noted above choose to remain blind men? Or were their reporters deliberately fed partial information by the police, to ensure that the fear of the Maoist virus spreading would be treated as a ‘real’ threat, and not be perceived for what it patently is: a strategy for clamping down on any questioning of the government’s armed offensive against large populations of its own citizenry, in the name of cleansing the Maoist ‘infection’? Even if it was the latter, it was and is incumbent on any press worth its name – as another important site of dissent in any free society – to have sought out the information in its entirety, before rushing to press. Otherwise, in true Goebbelsian fashion, it will simply be blindly repeating the lies, over and over again, till the lies become the truth.
That this did not happen, for whatever reason, is closely related to another issue, which is the absence in the mainstream press and media in general, of any real understanding of or interest in the anxieties and apprehensions that OGH has given rise to, and of the consequent concern over it. This anxiety and concern has been emanating from several very diverse quarters, and essentially pertains to whether it is appropriate for the state to take arms against its own citizenry. Very few of these voices may be considered even remotely sympathetic to the Maoist cause; several of them have explicitly, repeatedly and sometimes even vehemently spoken against it. Irrespective of their take on Maoism, however, these voices have focused on the fact that OGH is an operation that is unconstitutional, violative of fundamental human rights and pretty evidently underway in order to further the interests of big corporate investments in the ‘infested’ areas. They have repeatedly sought to point out that the perceived ‘infestation’ actually constitutes the local tribal populations living there. If large sections of the tribal populations in these areas – threatened with displacement, destitution and/or violent death at the hands of big-money private armies and/or the state’s own military and paramilitary apparatus – should choose to resist this apparently inexorable process of internal colonisation, sometimes violently, then should we in Delhi be surprised? Delhi’s denizens are now world-famous for resorting to fists, lathis and the odd baseball bat on what might be considered the slightest provocation: it might be a neighbour parking his car in my space, or another’s washing hanging over my balcony – our sense of our space as sacred is powerful. Then, when the tribal – for whom it is not parking space but her very livelihood, history and future that are being stolen with her land – decides to protest, should we not be stirred by sympathy? If we are not, we need to wonder why we are not. And at least part of the reason for that is because we have been buying into the Goebbelsian lies of the state: that these tribal movements are all controlled and managed by Naxals/Maoists; or that the tribals are actually being coerced by Maoists; or that there are no tribals, only Maoists. That these are people fighting for rights sanctioned to them under the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution, is a fact that gets drowned in all the noise.
The Indian state – which is thus explicitly enjoined by the Constitution (among other documents) to protect the social and economical interests of tribals in these scheduled areas – is financially and politically too deeply invested in the project of clearing these areas and making them accessible to corporate exploitation, to acknowledge this. It would lose legitimacy and become a global scandal. Or it would simply reveal what most states under this stage of capitalism are doing. Hence the extended exercise of labelling all tribals protesting its actions ‘Maoist’; all intellectual and civil rights attempts to dissuade it, ‘Maoist sympathisers’; and all dissent in general is increasingly being viewed as ‘terrorist’. This, as will be easily recognised, has long been the hallmark of McCarthyism. And as with that form of political repression, no doubt a chain of arrests will be initiated based on ostensible ‘confessions’, beginning with Kobad Ghandy’s, and spreading out in a network that will be produced as Maoist, with no way of knowing if it actually is.
It is particularly instructive that Joseph McCarthy’s strategy of labelling all dissent ‘communist’ arose at a time when the capitalist economy of the United States was, post-Depression, impatiently seeking to lose the shackles of Franklin Roosevelt’s socially oriented New Deal policies. Thus, any policy that carried even a whiff of being social-welfarist was immediately branded communist and dumped, and its proponents attacked socially, politically and legally.
The parallels are clear with our own context: we live, as the old Chinese curse goes, in interesting times – when our own capitalism is kicking with impatience at obstacles to (irony of ironies!) ‘economic reforms’; when its increasing population of dollar billionaires are panting to go forth and multiply their billions by raping the hinterlands of the country; when the state is itself eager to role back measures like the PDS and to massively fudge figures on poverty, even as prices of especially essential commodities continue to escalate and farmers continue to commit suicide; when ‘Islamic terror’ – that bogeyman that allowed the BJP to simultaneously terrorise the Muslim community as well as steamroll its own version of economic reforms through – has given way to the ‘red terror’ of ‘Maoism’ (after all, the Congress can’t be seen as anti-Islamic), but to the exact same end. While there may appear to be a kind of poetic irony in our own Chinese curse seeming to be Maoism, the not so poetic fact is that it is not the spectre of Maoism that haunts the land today but the multiple spectres of unbridled corporate capitalism, state collusion with and participation in this capitalist expansionism, the consequent and unprecedented assault on the lives and livelihoods of millions of tribals in the ‘infected’ areas. And the ideological cover for all this in our own brand of McCarthyism: OGH or ‘anti-Maoism’ (which is less of a mouthful than Chidambaramism, although that would probably be a more accurate term). (We shall for now not even touch upon the absurdity, in an ostensible democracy, of banning an ideology, as has happened with Maoism; who or what, we might well ask, even if we do not subscribe to this ideology, is being sought to be protected by this ban?) The Indian state is, it seems, learning well from Joseph Goebbels and Joseph McCarthy; perhaps it will very soon look to Joseph Stalin’s Great Purge too. And it seems, the first to be purged from the metropolises will be the nuisances identified above: inconvenient intellectuals, university students and civil rights activists who will all be identified as ‘Maoists’ (never mind that they may actually be socialists, Gandhians, environmentalists or other such ‘beasts’) and removed from ‘shining India’. And once the intellectuals and activists and students are disposed of, Mr. P (Joseph?) Chidambaram will no doubt find an able ally in Mr. Kapil Sibal, to ensure that they do not surface again – for the latter as we know, is already working hard to dismantle the higher education system and sack it off to private and foreign institutional interests – but that is another tale. Suffice it for now to reiterate that, thanks to Mr. Chidambaram and his ilk, we do indeed live in interesting times, and all the interest is accumulating in the pockets of our dollar billionaires.
P K Vijayan is Asst. Prof., Dept. of English, Hindu College, Delhi University
Courtesy: Tehelka
Alexandra Kollontai on “International Women’s Day”
Mezhdunarodnyi den’ rabotnitz, Moscow 1920 — Women’s Day or Working Women’s Day is a day of international solidarity, and a day for reviewing the strength and organisation of proletarian women.
But this is not a special day for women alone. The 8th of March is a historic and memorable day for the workers and peasants, for all the Russian workers and for the workers of the whole world. In 1917, on this day, the great February revolution broke out.[2] It was the working women of Petersburg who began this revolution; it was they who first decided to raise the banner of opposition to the tsar and his associates. And so, working women’s day is a double celebration for us.
But if this is a general holiday for all the proletariat, why do we call it “Women’s Day”? Why then do we hold special celebrations and meetings aimed above all at the women workers and the peasant women? Doesn’t this jeopardise the unity and solidarity of the working class? To answer these questions, we have to look back and see how Women’s Day came about and for what purpose it was organised.
How and why was Women’s Day organised?
Not very long ago, in fact about ten years ago, the question of women’s equality, and the question of whether women could take part in government alongside men was being hotly debated. The working class in all capitalist countries struggled for the rights of working women: the bourgeoisie did not want to accept these rights. It was not in the interest of the bourgeoisie to strengthen the vote of the working class in parliament; and in every country they hindered the passing of laws that gave the right to working women.
Socialists in North America insisted upon their demands for the vote with particular persistence. On the 28th of February, 1909, the women socialists of the USA organised huge demonstrations and meetings all over the country demanding political rights for working women. This was the first “Woman’s Day”. The initiative on organising a woman’s day thus belongs to the working women of America.
In 1910, at the Second International Conference of Working Women, Clara Zetkin [3] brought forward the question of organising an International Working Women’s Day. The conference decided that every year, in every country, they should celebrate on the same day a “Women’s Day” under the slogan “The vote for women will unite our strength in the struggle for socialism”.
During these years, the question of making parliament more democratic, i.e., of widening the franchise and extending the vote to women, was a vital issue. Even before the first world war, the workers had the right to vote in all bourgeois countries except Russia. [4] Only women, along with the insane, remained without these rights. Yet, at the same time, the harsh reality of capitalism demanded the participation of women in the country’s economy. Every year there was an increase in the number of women who had to work in the factories and workshops, or as servants and charwomen. Women worked alongside men and the wealth of the country was created by their hands. But women remained without the vote.
But in the last years before the war the rise in prices forced even the most peaceful housewife to take an interest in questions of politics and to protest loudly against the bourgeoisie’s economy of plunder. “Housewives uprisings” became increasingly frequent, flaring up at different times in Austria, England, France and Germany.
The working women understood that it wasn’t enough to break up the stalls at the market or threaten the odd merchant: they understood that such action doesn’t bring down the cost of living. You have to change the politics of the government. And to achieve this, the working class has to see that the franchise is widened.
It was decided to have a Woman’s Day in every country as a form of struggle in getting working women to vote. This day was to be a day of international solidarity in the fight for common objectives and a day for reviewing the organised strength of working women under the banner of socialism.
The first International Women’s Day
The decision taken at the Second International Congress of Socialist Women was not left on paper. It was decided to hold the first International Women’s Day on the 19th of March, 1911.
This date was not chosen at random. Our German comrades picked the day because of its historic importance for the German proletariat. On the 19th of March in the year of 1848 revolution, the Prussian king recognised for the first time the strength of the armed people and gave way before the threat of a proletarian uprising. Among the many promises he made, which he later failed to keep, was the introduction of votes for women.
After January 11, efforts were made in Germany and Austria to prepare for Women’s Day. They made known the plans for a demonstration both by word of mouth and in the press. During the week before Women’s Day two journals appeared: The Vote for Women in Germany and Women’s Day in Austria. The various articles devoted to Women’s Day – “Women and Parliament”, “The Working Women and Municipal Affairs”, “What Has the Housewife got to do with Politics?”, etc. – analysed thoroughly the question of the equality of women in the government and in society. All the articles emphasised the same point: that it was absolutely necessary to make parliament more democratic by extending the franchise to women.
The first International Women’s Day took place in 1911. Its success exceeded all expectations. Germany and Austria on Working Women’s Day was one seething, trembling sea of women. Meetings were organised 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.
In 1913 International Women’s Day was transferred to the 8th of March. This day has remained the working women’s day of militancy.
Is Women’s Day necessary?
Women’s Day in [North] America and Europe had amazing results. It’s true that not a single bourgeois parliament thought of making concessions to the workers or of responding to the women’s demands. For at that time, the bourgeoisie was not threatened by a socialist revolution.
But Women’s Day did achieve something. It turned out above all to be an excellent method of agitation among the less political of our proletarian sisters. They could not help but turn their attention to the meetings, demonstrations, posters, pamphlets and newspapers that were devoted to Women’s Day. Even the politically backward working woman thought to herself: “This is our day, the festival for working women”, and she hurried to the meetings and demonstrations. After each Working Women’s Day, more women joined the socialist parties and the trade unions grew. Organisations improved and political consciousness developed.
Women’s Day served yet another function; it strengthened the international solidarity of the workers. The parties in different countries usually exchange speakers for this occasion: German comrades go to England, English comrades go to Holland, etc. The international cohesion of the working class has become strong and firm and this means that the fighting strength of the proletariat as a whole has grown.
These are the results of working women’s day of militancy. The day of working women’s militancy helps increase the consciousness and organisation of proletarian women. And this means that its contribution is essential to the success of those fighting for a better future for the working class.
Working Women’s Day in Russia
The Russian working woman first took part in “Working Women’s Day” in 1913. This was a time of reaction when tsarism held the workers and peasants in its vice-like a grip. There could be no thought of celebrating “Working Women’s Day” by open demonstrations. But the organised working women were able to mark their international day. Both the legal newspapers of the working class – the Bolshevik Pravda and the Menshevik Looch – carried articles about the International Women’s Day: [5] they carried special articles, portraits of some of those taking part in the working women’s movement and greetings from comrades such as August Bebel and Clara Zetkin.[6]
In those bleak years meetings were forbidden. But in Petrograd, at the Kalashaikovsky Exchange, those women workers who belonged to the [Bolshevik] Party organised a public forum on “The Woman Question”. Entrance was five kopecks. This was an illegal meeting but the hall was absolutely packed. Members of the party spoke. But this animated “closed” meeting had hardly finished when the police, alarmed at such proceedings, intervened and arrested many of the speakers.
It was of great significance for the workers of the world that the women of Russia, who lived under tsarist repression, should join in and somehow manage to acknowledge with actions International Women’s Day. This was a welcome sign that Russia was waking up and the tsarist prisons and gallows were powerless to kill the workers’ spirit of struggle and protest.
In 1914, Working Women’s Day in Russia was better organised. Both the workers’ newspapers concerned themselves with the celebration. Our comrades put a lot of effort into the preparation of Working Women’s Day. Because of police intervention, they didn’t manage to organise a demonstration. Those involved in the planning found themselves in the tsarist prisons, and many were later sent to the cold north. For the slogan “for the working women’s vote” had naturally become in Russia an open call for the overthrow of tsarist autocracy.
Working Women’s Day during the imperialist war
The first world war broke out. The working class in every country was covered with the blood of war. [7] In 1915 and 1916 Working Women’s Day abroad was a feeble affair – left-wing socialist women who shared the views of the Russian Bolshevik Party tried to turn March 8th into a demonstration of working women against the war. But those socialist party traitors in Germany and other countries would not allow the socialist women to organise gatherings; and the socialist women were refused passports to go to neutral countries where the working women wanted to hold international meetings and show that in spite of the desire of the bourgeoisie, the spirit of international solidarity lived on.
In 1915, it was only in Norway that they managed to organise an international demonstration on Women’s Day; representatives from Russia and neutral countries attended. There could be no thought of organising a Women’s Day in Russia, for here the power of tsarism and the military machine was unbridled.
Then came the great, great year of 1917. Hunger, cold and trials of war broke the patience of the women workers and the peasant women of Russia. In 1917, on the 8th of March (23rd of February), on Working Women’s Day, they came out boldly in the streets of Petrograd. The women – some were workers, some were wives of soldiers – demanded “Bread for our children” and “The return of our husbands from the trenches”. At this decisive time the protests of the working women posed such a threat that even the tsarist security forces did not dare take the usual measures against the rebels but looked on in confusion at the stormy sea of the people’s anger.
The 1917 Working Women’s Day has become memorable in history. On this day the Russian women raised the torch of proletarian revolution and set the world on fire. The February Revolution marks its beginning from this day.
Our call to battle
“Working Women’s Day” was first organised ten years ago in the campaign for the political equality of women and the struggle for socialism. This aim has been achieved by the working-class women in Russia. In the soviet republic the working women and peasants don’t need to fight for the franchise and for civil rights. They have already won these rights. The Russian workers and the peasant women are equal citizens – in their hands is a powerful weapon to make the struggle for a better life easier – the right to vote, to take part in the soviets and in all collective organisations. [8]
But rights alone are not enough. We have to learn to make use of them. The right to vote is a weapon which we have to learn to master for our own benefit, and for the good of the workers’ republic. In the two years of soviet power, life itself has not been absolutely changed. We are only in the process of struggling for communism and we are surrounded by the world we have inherited from the dark and repressive past. The shackles of the family, of housework, of prostitution still weigh heavily on the working woman. Working women and peasant women can only rid themselves of this situation and achieve equality in life itself, and not just in law, if they put all their energies into making Russia a truly communist society.
And to quicken this coming, we have first to put right Russia’s shattered economy. We must consider the solving of our two most immediate tasks – the creation of a well organised and politically conscious labour force and the re-establishment of transport. If our army of labour works well we shall soon have steam engines once more; the railways will begin to function. This means that the working men and women will get the bread and firewood they desperately need.
Getting transport back to normal will speed up the victory of communism. And with the victory of communism will come the complete and fundamental equality of women. This is why the message of “Working Women’s Day” must this year be: “Working women, peasant women, mothers, wives and sisters, all efforts to helping the workers and comrades in overcoming the chaos of the railways and re-establishing transport. Everyone in the struggle for bread and firewood and raw materials.”
Last year the slogan of the Working Women’s Day was: “All to the victory of the Red Front”. [9] Now we call on working women to rally their strength on a new bloodless front – the labour front! The Red Army defeated the external enemy because it was organised, disciplined and ready for self sacrifice. With organisation, hard work, self-discipline and self-sacrifice, the workers’ republic will overcome the internal foe – the dislocation (of) transport and the economy, hunger, cold and disease. “Everyone to the victory on the bloodless labour front! Everyone to this victory!”
The new tasks of Working Women’s Day
The October Revolution gave women equality with men as far as civil rights are concerned. The women of the Russian proletariat, who were not so long ago the most unfortunate and oppressed, are now in the Soviet Republic able to show with pride to comrades in other countries the path to political equality through the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and soviet power.
The situation is very different in the capitalist countries where women are still overworked and underprivileged. In these countries the voice of the working woman is weak and lifeless. It is true that in various countries – in Norway, Australia, Finland and in some of the states of North America – women had won civil rights even before the war. [10]
In Germany, after the kaiser had been thrown out and a bourgeois republic established, headed by the “compromisers”, [11] thirty-six women entered parliament – but not a single communist!
In 1919, in England, a woman was for the first time elected a member of parliament. But who was she? A “lady”. That means a landowner, an aristocrat. [12]
In France, too, the question has been coming up lately of extending the franchise to women.
But what use are these rights to working women in the framework of bourgeois parliaments? While the power is in the hands of the capitalists and property owners, no political rights will save the working woman from the traditional position of slavery in the home and society. The French bourgeoisie are ready to throw another sop to the working class, in the face of growing Bolshevik ideas amongst the proletariat: they are prepared to give women the vote.[13]
Mr Bourgeois sir – it is too late!
After the experience of the Russian October Revolution, it is clear to every working woman in France, in England and in other countries that only the dictatorship of the working class, only the power of the soviets can guarantee complete and absolute equality, the ultimate victory of communism will tear down the century-old chains of repression and lack of rights. If the task of “International Working Women’s Day” was earlier in the face of the supremacy of the bourgeois parliaments to fight for the right of women to vote, the working class now has a new task: to organise working women around the fighting slogans of the Third International. Instead of taking part in the working of the bourgeois parliament, listen to the call from Russia – “Working women of all countries! Organise a united proletarian front in the struggle against those who are plundering the world! Down with the parliamentarism of the bourgeoisie! We welcome soviet power! Away with inequalities suffer by the working men and women! We will fight with the workers for the triumph of world communism!”
This call was first heard amidst the trials of a new order, in the battles of civil war it will be heard by and it will strike a chord in the hearts of working women of other countries. The working woman will listen and believe this call to be right. Until recently they thought that if they managed to send a few representatives to parliament their lives would be easier and the oppression of capitalism more bearable. Now they know otherwise.
Only the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of soviet power will save them from the world of suffering, humiliations and inequality that makes the life of the working woman in the capitalist countries so hard. The “Working Woman’s Day” turns from a day of struggle for the franchise into an international day of struggle for the full and absolute liberation of women, which means a struggle for the victory of the soviets and for communism!
DOWN WITH THE WORLD OF PROPERTY AND THE POWER OF CAPITAL!
AWAY WITH INEQUALITY, LACK OF RIGHTS AND THE OPPRESSION OF WOMEN – THE LEGACY OF THE BOURGEOIS WORLD!
FORWARD TO THE INTERNATIONAL UNITY OF WORKING WOMEN AND MALE WORKERS IN THE STRUGGLE FOR THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT – THE PROLETARIAT OF BOTH SEXES!
Notes
2. Tsarist Russia still used the old “Julian” calendar of the Middle Ages, which was 13 days behind the “Gregorian” calendar used in most of the rest of the world. Thus March 8 was “February 23″ in the old calendar. This is why the revolution of March 1917 is called “the February Revolution” and that of November 1917 “the October Revolution.”
3. Clara Zetkin was a leader of the German socialist movement and the main leader of the international working women’s movement. Kollontai was a delegate to the international conference representing the St. Petersburg textile workers.
4. This is not accurate. The vast majority of unskilled workers in England, France and Germany could not vote. A smaller percentage of working-class men in the United States could not vote – in particular immigrant men. In the south of the US black men were often prevented from voting. The middle class suffrage movements in all the European countries did not fight to give votes to either working-class women or men.
5. At its 1903 Congress, the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party divided into two wings, the Bolsheviks (which means “majority” in Russian) and the Mensheviks (which means “minority”). In the period between 1903 and 1912 (when the division became permanent) the two wings worked together, unified for a while, split again. Many socialists, including entire local organisations, worked with both wings or tried to stay neutral in the disputes. Kollontai, an active socialist and fighter for women’s rights since 1899, was at first independent of the factions, then became a Menshevik for several years. She joined the Bolsheviks in 1915 and became the only woman member of their central committee. She also served as commissar of welfare of the Soviet Republic and head of the women’s section of the Bolshevik Party.
6. August Bebel (1840-1913) was a leader of the German Social-Democratic Party. He was a well-known supporter of the women’s movement and author of a classic book on Marxism and women Die Frauenfrage, translated into English as Woman Under Socialism, which has been translated into many languages.
7. When war broke out in 1914, there was a massive split in the international socialist movement. The majority of the social democrats in Germany, Austria, France and England supported the war. Other socialists, such Kollontai, Lenin, the Bolshevik Party and Leon Trotsky in Russia, Clara Zetkin and Rosa Luxemburg in Germany, and Eugene Debs in the United States, to name some of the leaders, denounced the pro-war socialists for being traitors to the working class and to the fight for a workers’ revolution.
8. The word “soviet” means “council”. Soviets, or workers’ councils, are democratic bodies in which delegates are elected in factory and neighbourhood meetings and are controlled by their sister and brother workers. The representatives of the soviets must report back to their constituency and are subject to immediate recall.
9. After the working-class seizure of power in October/November 1917, the Russian workers’ state was faced with two major problems. One was an invasion, including the United States; the second was resistance by the pro-monarchist and pro-capitalist elements in Russia. Primarily under the direction of Leon Trotsky, the soviets created a workers’ and peasants’ army, the Red Army, which defeated the forces of counterrevolution.
10. Women had won the right to vote in several of the states of the United States prior to World War I. A federal amendment guaranteeing all women over 21 the right to vote was passed on August 26, 1920. It was not until the 1960s that the last legal barriers to working-class people voting in the United States were abolished.
11. The “compromisers” Kollontai is referring to are the Social Democratic Party leaders who formed a new capitalist government in Germany after the fall of the kaiser in 1918. They actively supported counterrevolution after coming to office.
12. While the aristocratic Lady Astor was indeed the first woman to serve in the British parliament, the first woman elected to parliament was the Irish revolutionary Constance Markievicz. Together with other members of the Sinn Fein party, she refused to take her seat in the imperial parliament.
13. French women did not finally get the vote until after World War II.
