Krantikari Yuva Sangathan (KYS)
All India Revolutionary Youth Organization, Haryana State Committee.
ITI-Polytechnic Students’ Committee,
Munshi Premchand Library, Dharodi, Distt. Jind, Haryana.
Ph. :07206621090
Comrade Sonu Gurjar,
Red Salute,
We, the students of Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) and Polytechnic institutes of Haryana, heartily congratulate you for the struggle you have waged against the oppressive, unjust and adamant Maruti Management and extend revolutionary greetings to your struggle. We have been following the struggle you have waged through strike and other means for the legitimate demands for the last four months, are in constant touch with it and getting inspiration from it. We are well aware that we will be joining the factories in one or two years and we will be facing the same oppressive conditions that you are fighting against, whether it is a question of low wages, long working hours, unequal pay for the same work, or the question forming the union. Thus if your struggle attains victory, it will be a victory not only for you but it would a victory for the future of many of the students who are studying in ITI and Polytechnic. We are also aware that the Maruti Management is trying all legitimate-illegitimate means to weaken your struggle. They are enrolling new recruits to continue with the production on the one hand and weaken your struggle on the other.
We assure you that until the Maruti Management agrees to concede on your demands and our struggle is victorious, none of the student will apply for job in Maruti industry and will not allow Maruti Management to hold campus placements in ITI and Polytechnic institutes. If we go and work in Maruti now it will not only be your defeat but our own defeat and it will be a setback to our future.
We, the students of ITI-Polytechnic, once again extend our full support to your struggle and hope that the victory will be ours.
Inquilab Zindabad.
Bahadur,
For Krantikari Yuva Sangathan (KYS),
ITI-Polytechnic Students’ Committee.
We, the Maruti Suzuki Employees Union (MSEU), as representatives of the workers of Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, IMT Manesar, send this appeal to all concerned for financial help in the struggle fund, at a juncture when our struggle has entered a crucial phase. All workers in the industrial belt of Gurgaon-Manesar-Dharuhera-Bawal and from all across the country and beyond have expressed solidarity with us, and our fellow workers in Suzuki Powertrain India Ltd., Suzuki Castings and Suzuki Motorcycle have especially shown concrete solidarity. We have also received solidarity greetings from all sections of society concerned with the struggle of workers.
We reiterate our demands of the right to organise and unionise, to withdraw all charge-sheets against workers, and revoke the termination and suspension of workers since August 29th, and for the just demands of the contract workers. We condemn the adamant attitude of the Maruti Suzuki management who are using their money and muscle power, coercion and intimidation against workers.
As the struggle continues, we appeal to all to help us by contributing to the struggle fund. You can send your contributions directly to:
Account no. 002101566629
IFSC code: ICIC0000021
SHIV KUMAR
ICICI Bank,
Branch- Gurgaon, Sector-14, Haryana, India.
Please inform us by email at: mseu.manesar@gmail.com so that we could confirm that we received your contribution to the struggle fund.
NOTE: As the tripartite meeting is still going on between the MSEU, labour department and the Maruti management, the rally for today has been postponed. Further action shall be intimated as the situation develops.- Nayan
The struggle in Maruti Suzuki is at a crucial juncture, as around 4500-5000 workers in three of Suzuki’s plants continued their solidarity with the over 3000 workers of MSIL.
This is on the initiative of the plant-level young workers’ spontaneity and solidarity, whose independent but united might, is holding forth.
Yesterday 15th September, the corporate media, singing the company’s tune, splashed across newspapers that “violence erupted as workers attack supervisors.” It even figured out some arbitrary number, and quoted Maruti Suzuki management saying: “the striking workers have polluted the environment in Manesar. Such actions are damaging for the industrial climate in the Gurgaon-Manesar belt. They will destroy jobs and prosperity in the region.” Behind him, the company logo beams “Count on us”.
But yesterday’s confrontation happened while the company was trying to force three buses with some contract workers inside the plant, under police and management muscle protection. Workers sitting at the factoy gate asked the new contract workers to join in the agitation in solidarity and tried to stop the buses. This led to a confrontation when the management and police attacked workers, 4 of whom were injured, and arrested, one of whom had not been let off till late last night.
Meanwhile the workers in Suzuki Powertrain India Ltd. stopped the finished stock truck to get out of the factory.
There is a call for a rally today 16th September from Kamala Nehru Park in Gurgaon by all trade unions. We appeal to all to strengthen it by participating in it in large numbers.
The struggle of the workers of Maruti Suzuki India Ltd. (MSIL, Plot 1, Phase 3A), IMT Manesar united as MARUTI SUZUKI EMPLOYEES UNION (MSEU) is spreading like a prairie fire in the Gurgaon-Manesar-Dharuhera-Bawal industries belt, finding crucial support among the workers in the area.
In a significant development, today evening, 14th September, around 3-3.30 pm, when the shift-change happened, workers in three more factories of Suzuki in India, with production chain linkage with Maruti Suzuki, have gone on strike. These are workers in the nearby plants of SUZUKI POWERTRAIN INDIA LTD. and SUZUKI CASTINGS (Plot 1, Phase 3A), where the recently formed SUZUKI EMPLOYEES UNION operates, and workers in SUZUKI MOTORCYCLE INDIA PVT. LTD (Kherki Dhaula, Badshahpur, N.H. 8, Gurgaon-Manesar road).
The workers are on a sit-in strike inside these three factories, completely stopping production. Suzuki Powertrain India Ltd., which manufactures diesel engines and transmissions for supplies to MSIL and has an annual production capacity of 3 lakh units, has around 1250 trainee and permanent and over 600 contract workers; Suzuki Castings, a part of Powertrain, has around 375-400 trainee and permanent and over 500 contract workers, while Suzuki Motorcycle India Pvt. Ltd., has around 1200-1400 workers who relentlessly produce around 1,200 motorcycles and scooters a day. All of these around 4500 workers, have gone on strike in solidarity with the struggling workers of Maruti Suzuki in IMT Manesar, and have said that they are determined to continue till the demands of the workers of Maruti Suzuki, organised as MSEU are met.
The workers of Maruti Suzuki, IMT Manesar have been struggling against the conditions of unending days-and-nights of exploitation and repression in the factory, which resulted in the charge-sheet, termination and suspension of 57 workers since Aug 29th. The MSEU is demanding the withdrawal of the charge-sheet, termination and suspension of the 57 workers, their right to organise and unionise and the just demands of the contract workers.
Along with expressing support for the workers of Maruti Suzuki, the workers in the three factories are also vocal about the oppressive conditions in their own factories, and also demand regularisation of the contract workers in their respective factories. The issue of Unionisation and permanent status to contract workers is surfacing as the major issue in the region finding a resonance with the workers struggle in the rest of the country. The significant thing about this strike in the three factories is also the plant-level workers spontaneity and unity rather than the top-down approach of the big central trade unions, who are now slowly coming in support. Concrete support from independent, even factory-level trade unions in the area and beyond is thus a significant development.
The Gurgaon-Manesar-Dharuhera-Bawal is afire with workers struggle as in the wake of the MSEU’s spirited fight. In the nearby auto-parts manufacturing plant of MUNJAL SHOWA, IMT Manesar (Plot No. 26 E & F Sector 3) on 12 September, all of its 1200 contract ‘trainee’ young workers went on strike against its horrible working conditions and arbitrary hire-and-fire policy, where workers were paid a meagre around Rs.4000-4800, even lower than the Haryana minimum wage rate. In the settlement inked last night 13th September, at 12 pm, the management was forced to make 125 workers permanent, and to promise that after completion of 3 years of training, all workers will be made permanent. This is a historic victory of workers in the area who struggle against internal segmentation of labour, and prepare to wage a determined and united struggle against capital.
However, MARUTI SUZUKI is continuing with its adamant stance and spreading misinformation that the production has resumed (while it is not so as the MSEU’s release makes it clear) and that it can go on with recruiting new workers and ‘robots’ if the workers do not sign the ‘good conduct bond’. The biggest automobile manufacturer in India, with a passenger car market of 45%, whose spending on ‘employee cost’ has decreased to a mere 1.9% of its total spending in 2010-11 is increasing contractualisation, even as it builds an empires on the exploited and alienated labour of the workers. It is responding by using ‘bouncers’, state police and administration and corporate media on its payroll, and attacking workers with misinformation, legal (with a willing State in tow) and illegal threats and coercion.
The struggle in the Maruti Suzuki plant in IMT Manesar has found strong support from the strike action in the three factories of Suzuki India today. It is a difficult road ahead still for the workers who are facing the might of the company and state. We as part of the larger solidarity effort and forum in coordination with the Maruti Suzuki Employees Union’s effort, appeal to all concerned to stand in solidarity with the workers’ struggle.
Dear Brother Shiv Kumar,
General Secretary of Maruti Suzuki Employees’ Union (MSEU)
We of National Railway Motive Power Union of Chiba (Doro-Chiba), Japanese locomotive drivers’ union, send herewith heartfelt greetings of solidarity to you, and express our fierce anger against outrageous attack of Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) on MSEU. And above anything else, we could not suppress a hot surge of anger against Suzuki Motor Corp. (SMC) and its Chairman SUZUKI Osamu who stands behind MSI and commands all ongoing oppressions against MSEU.
Doro-Chiba has been in a long struggle against privatization, casualization and outsourcing, and continue to fight against neo-liberal policies in a state of near collapse. And the March 11th East Japan Huge Earthquake and the subsequent nuclear plant accident have triggered a drastic explosion of the fundamental contradictions of capitalism in the midst of aggravating global economic crisis.
If you’d be interested in our action in Japan against SMC’s Tokyo Office or Shizuoka Headquarters pushing this unforgivable union busting, please let me know an appropriate timing of the action.
End the lockout, and drop the inhuman “good conduct bond”!
Reinstate all the dismissed and suspended workers!
Recognize the right of organization immediately!
THE workers, both permanent and contract, of Maruti Suzuki Industries Ltd. in IMT Manesar, Haryana are struggling against the company’s exploitative and repressive ways of functioning and the willing state government, administration and police. They demand the recognition of their Union, oppose the termination and suspension of workers from August 29th for their just demands, and the company’s baseless charges on workers who raised their voices and false propaganda that production has resumed even as it is practically at a halt. They stand united as Maruti Suzuki Employees Union (MSEU) which is rallying the workers of the company, as workers and Unions in the Gurgaon-Manesar-Dharuhera-Bawal industrial belt and all over India stand in support.
Today, 11th September, the MSEU after its joint meeting with representatives from around thirty Unions, reiterated its demand of the right to organise and unionise, to withdraw the charge-sheet, termination and suspension of 57 workers, and to stand with the just demands of the contract workers for their wage-hike and withdrawal of suspensions and against the company’s easy hire-and-fire policy and that till these are met, they will not enter the factory.
The MSEU has given a call for a rally and blockade of Gurgaon tomorrow morning 12th September at 10am. All Unions and workers in the area will join with the struggling Union’s effort.
WE, all student and youth organisations and concerned individuals, condemn the exploitative ways of Maruti Suzuki and stand in solidarity with the legitimate demands of the workers for the right to unionise, the unconditional withdrawal of charge-sheet, termination and suspension of 57 workers, the withdrawal of the good-conduct bond, and the just demands of the contract workers.
WE call upon all students and youth to join the rally of the workers of Maruti Suzuki tomorrow 12th September in Gurgaon in solidarity with its struggle. It will start at 10 am from Kamala Nehru Park in Gurgaon.
signed jointly by:
Krantikari Naujawan Sabha (KNS)
Democratic Students Union (DSU)
All India Students Assiociation (AISA)
All India Students Federation (AISF)
Students For Resistance (SFR)
Vidyarthi Yuvajan Sabha (VYS)
The story of those who make all stories possible is a simple one of every moment’s struggle. The around 3000 workers in Maruti Suzuki in Manesar, Haryana, more than half of whom are hired on contract, are extremely angry, and this collective anger is one of the most lethal arms that they possess. It arises from discontent of the unending days and nights of alienated labour, reduced to being mere parts of the machine, torn from his fellow workers by the attack on the right to organise. The worker lives and bleeds to death, faces insults and feels fatigue, thirsts for water and suppresses his urine, all this, only so that the assembly line goes on. In this nerve centre of the automobile industry, the Plot no.1, Phase 3A of the Industrial Model Town Manesar, a Swift and an SX4 model car is assembled in 38 seconds. 1250 squeezed out per day. Super-profits of the bosses. Efficiency. Development. Growth. Consumer satisfaction. A ‘happy’ middle class family.
Maruti Suzuki Industries Ltd., the biggest automobile company in India with a passenger car market share of over 45%, promises a “way of life”. For this, it spent a reported Rs. 2000 crores on advertisement alone in a year (so the bent-back welcome to its lies from Wall Street Journal to all the so-called objective corporate media in India). As its profits soar in geometric progression, its financial statement says it spent a mere 1.9% as total employee cost in the year 2010-11, down from 3.5% in 2001 and 2.3% in 2008. When in June this year, the young workers all in their 20s, demanded their right to organise, and filed for Union registration on 3rd June, the company sent its ‘bouncers’ to literally arm-twist the workers into signing a blank sheet of paper to give up their demand for this minimum of respect. The workers struck work on June 4th and continued a sit-in inside the factory for 13 days till June 16th. The suspension of 11 workers was revoked.
Made to cower down momentarily in face of the workers’ fight, the company, with blood on its hands from crushing the workers movement in early 2000 in its Gurgaon plant, plotted revenge and Shinzo Nakanashi, the MD threatened that workers must be “educated”. Cockroaches and dead flies begun to be found in the food in the hurried lunch-break of 30 minutes that workers earn in the canteen ½ km from the working station. The tea was without tea leaves or sugar in the 7 minute break, as workers would go to the bathroom running with a snack in the mouth, tea cup in one hand, unzipping with the other hand, before the bell rings and the assembly line resumes. The company doctor would give heavy doses of ‘instant’ medicines even on any minor complaint by a worker, only so that disruption of work could be prevented. The disease then returns in greater degree and one day’s wage cut of Rs.1500, two days Rs.2200, three days cut of Rs.7-8000 is implemented, so that almost the total month’s wage is cut. One second late into punching-card entry is a day’s wage cut, but he cannot then go out of the factory but has to give his full production for that day too.
Meanwhile, with ‘development’, ‘growth’, ‘consumer satisfaction’ involved, the willing State too lends its full support (rejecting the minimum demand for registration of the workers’ Maruti Suzuki Employees Union (MSEU) as a pre-independence day gift on 14th August; police force of 500 send to occupy the factory to ‘prevent violent activities’ as a pre-emptive measure on August 28th night). The company then terminated 11 workers and suspended 38 on August 29th and 30th on false charges demanding a ‘good-conduct bond’ (read: humiliation by law), with the state police and administration, the media (which is singing the management’s tune that production has resumed), and ‘bouncers’ on its payroll as its willing pawns.
Inside the factory, with cameras even in the bathrooms, the company’s evidence-less charges of ‘indiscipline’ and ‘sabotage’ or go-slow in production are baseless. Is it remembering the death penalty for ‘industrial sabotage’ implemented in an emerging industrial England with the 1812 ‘frame breaking act’, that corporations clamour for more ‘solid’ laws? The language now is ‘flexible’ labour laws for a more insecure and ‘mobile’ labour force. In fact, contractualisation of labour is fast becoming the definitive burning issue before the working class. The workers, both permanent and contract, in Maruti Suzuki however stand united in this struggle.
In such a situation, the current demand of the recognition of a Union that the workers feel represents their interests becomes the first step towards demanding the end of such despicable working conditions and back breaking extraction of labour which make profit and strength of the company possible in the first place. The Maruti Suzuki Employees Union (MSEU) is demanding as an immediate measure, the withdrawal of the charge-sheet, termination, suspension of the 49 workers. The workers are sitting day-and-night at the factory gate, peeling off the layers of Maruti Suzuki’s “way of life”.
The significance of the current struggle in Maruti Suzuki’s assembly plant where workers anger and corporate-state power battle, can only be fully comprehended in view of its impact in the vast network of arteries of the industry in the area and beyond of which Maruti sits at the centre, exhausting a low paid, ‘mobile’ workforce with the normalcy of exploitation. On 1st Sept, on the call of the MSEU, in solidarity with all the workers of MSIL, Manesar, over 5000 workers assembled at the factory gate no.1 for a dynamic gate meeting and juloos that followed in the IMT Manesar area. On the 5th September again, around 4000 workers rallied till the highway to block it. The Gurgaon-Manesar-Dharuhera-Bawal industrial belt in Haryana is stirring up in solidarity and protest by workers and Unions in the area. The social power of these young workers is tangible with the thunderous camaraderie that erupts when workers and others join in solidarity.
This struggle erupts as a continuation of rising tide of workers` struggles in Gurgaon-Manesar with the most prominent being the police attack on a demonstration of Honda (HMSI) workers in July 2005. In May 2006, immediately after a five day occupation at Hero Honda by 3,000 contract workers, tools were laid down in the supplying plant of Shivam Autotech. Similar situations at HMSI and Delphi have also arisen after that. The Rico Auto 43-day strike happened in September 2009 with one lakh workers in the area going on a one-day general strike which shook not only the entire area but stopped production lines in General Motors in the US. This present struggle thus, more than itself, is important in the possibilities it shows ahead for working class struggle and the struggle of the masses in crisis.
We know and realise even better with the ongoing struggle in Maruti that profit depends on one most significant variable- exploitation of working people. This is true from POSCO Orissa to Maruti Manesar, where the potentiality of the masses is violently disrupted on one hand by displacement and uprootedness, and then boxed up in daily routines, shift rhythms and distorted social relations. We realise that exploitation is not an event or a spectacle but married to how ‘normalcy’ is produced. As young women and men faced with the crisis of the system as it stands, we realise that this and other such struggles of the workers and masses expose the skeletons on which the grand houses of riches are built. As a youth organisation, Krantikari Naujawan Sabha, seeks to expose the limitations of the present system from a left revolutionary perspective, seeking a living political process. Rather than ending up ‘interpreting’ Marx’s 11th thesis “Philosophers have only interpreted the world so far. The point however is to change it”, a direction is sought towards really changing the world.
With the struggle in Maruti Suzuki, we stand as part of the larger solidarity effort and forum which is in coordination with the Union’s effort. We call upon all to join us in the solidarity meeting with the struggling workers in Kaveri mess, JNU, tonight 9th September at 9.30pm.
As you know, from 29th August when Maruti Suzuki Industries Limited, MSIL, Manesar (Plot 1, Phase 3A) terminated 11 and suspended 38 workers, the production is effectively at a halt in the plant. The company has been splashing rumours across the media that production has resumed through some ITI-trained contract workers and has been quoting figures of 125-150 etc. of the number of cars produced in the plant.
We, Maruti Suzuki Employees Union (MSEU), send this communiqué on the situation since August 29th to lay out the real picture. The company has gone on a recruitment drive through contractors in the area, after dismissing its own workers, and has hired some contract workers in a desperate bid to start production. However, these workers do not have the knowledge, honed through years of skilled work, required to run the production. Of these new contract workers, many who have come out of the plant in solidarity with the workers outside, having stayed inside for past four days, tell us that they tried to operationalise the production line, being forced by the management for 1-2 days. But being unsuccessful, they had to push some cars down from the line, instead of the models going through the entire process, including proper inspection.
When earlier all over 3000 workers, permanent and contract, worked stretched to their full capacity, the company somehow used to produce 1000-1200 cars every day. And now, can the 120-odd untrained workers and its handful of engineers and supervisors produce anything? The production was at a total halt in the beginning of last week, and in the last 2-3 days, a meagre 8-10 cars were produced in the plant, which are all faulty models somehow clubbed together, as the company fakes its figures and tries to instil consumer confidence. The Swift model which is produced in this plant has at present 80000 bookings. In this situation the company is unable to run any proper production of cars, and is resorting to churn out faulty models. The company may send these faulty models to the market, so it could also be blamed on us later as it has done till now. At the same time, some few management and staff are also conniving with other companies so that they could dig in their own profits from this, again conveniently blaming the workers.
We want to tell everyone that unlike what the company and the media are painting us as- undisciplined and adamant saboteurs- we have a commitment for our work and value what we produce with our sweat and blood. It is we workers who produce, and not the impersonal company and its robots.
So we appeal to consumers to stop buying Maruti Suzuki cars till we workers sit at the factory gate, as it will entail in your loss, given the manner in which they are being produced. WE also appeal to all concerned to stand in solidarity with our struggle to end termination, suspension and charge-sheet, and to establish our right to unionise.
“Words are never “only words”; they matter because they define the contours of what we can do.” – Slavoj Zizek
In the discussions that have taken place on the Tamil national question in Sri Lanka, the concerned subjects have been referred to, even by well meaning comrades, as ‘Sri Lankan Tamils’. Whereas the subjects, if one should go by the term used by various Tamil activists, intellectuals and just common people who stand for the struggle for a Tamil homeland, refer to themselves as ‘Eelam Tamils’. What is in a name, as the bard asked ages ago? While the word ‘Eelam’ has been part of Tamil vocabulary for ages to denote the geographical entity which is called Sri Lanka today, the latter name became popular only a few decades back. All the same, today’s ‘Eelam’ has a completely different meaning and connotation from the ‘Eelam’ of the ancient period. Followers of national liberation movements across the world be it Palestine, Kurdistan or Chechnya, would know that the terms used to describe the people and the geographies they contest were not the same in the past as they are now. Of more value than the etymology of self-defining terms of oppressed nationalities is the deployment of such terms in their present resistance and thus, the contemporary usage of such terms is more political than anything else. Keeping this argument in mind, the article seeks to explain the politics of the term ‘Eelam Tamil’ and what it means to the Tamil resistance and its participants.
The sociologist Manuel Castells defines idenity as a people’s sense of meaning and experience. He argues that though identities may originate from dominant institutions, “they become identities only when and if social actors internalize them, and construct their meaning around this internalization.” From the day Sri Lanka achieved its independence, the recognized powers defining Tamil identity were primarily Colombo-centred Tamil elites, who were mostly bureaucrats in service of the Sri Lankan state. The institution they served and the Sinhala elites whom it primarily benefited championed a Sri Lankan nationalism that was essentially based on suspicion and/or hatred of the Tamil people. At its racist worst, Sri Lankan nationalism aimed at annihilation of the Tamil identity. At its liberal best, it aimed at assimilation. The post-independence Tamil elites found it easier to negotiate with the latter aspect, and like all elites disconnected from masses, had only their sectarian economic interests in mind. Despite the rather obvious structural racism that was being installed against the Tamil people, the Colombo Tamil believed that a liberal balancing act between two loyalties was possible. Accordingly, they sold out on popular classes. The best example of such betrayal was their unquestioning support to the Sirimavo-Sastri past of 1964 – the first major act of ethnic cleansing – by which over half a million upcountry Tamils, almost entirely belonging to the labouring classes, were stripped off their citizenship rights and shipped to India. Likewise, the process of colonization of Tamil territories and the phenomena of Sinhalization, where certain Tamil sections either owing to apprehension or seeking benefits ‘converted’ as Sinhalese, were also not challenged by these gentlemen.
For the Tamil popular classes the contradiction inherent in this identity project was becoming apparent even in the 50’s. Almost as if giving voice to this, V. Navaratnam, a theorist of Tamil nationalism and a doyen of the Federal party, wrote in 1957 in a short tract called ‘Ceylon in Crisis’ of the irreconcilable antagonism between the Tamil people and the unitary state. He was also highly contemptuous of the ‘Colombo Tamil intelligentsia’, a constant throughout his life – he would brand them as traitors later. While the Tamil people were unable to relate to the identity project of the pro-state Tamil elites, being unable to internalize it or relate it to their experiences, facing discrimination and violence at a day to day level from the very state they were called to be loyal to, they were still unable to come to terms with the terms of the radical nationalists. To use Sartrean terminology, the critical transition from seriality to a group-in-fusion was still incomplete. But not for long.
The Black activist Stokely Carmichael said that “We have to fight for the right to invent the terms which will allow us to define ourselves and to define our relations to society, and we have to fight that these terms will be accepted.” The 60’s and 70’s in Sri Lanka, periods that witnessed anti-Tamil violence, repressive laws, an escalation of colonization and institutional discrimination, were also periods where the Tamil political actors contesting the powers-that-be were fervently searching for the terms with which they would address themselves vis-à-vis the oppressor. Even as in 1972 Sri Lankan nationalists got a shot in their arm with the ethnocratic ‘republican’ constitution that effectively made Tamils third grade citizens, the political vocabulary of the Tamils was rife with an old word that got a new lease of life and meaning – Eelam. In 1973, S.J.V. Chelvanayagam, hailed later on as the father of the Eelam Tamil polity, pleaded for the recognition of a Eelam Tamil nationality as a distinct political entity with its right to self-determination. Three years later, the historical Vaddukkodai resolution that declared the necessity of the struggle for a “Free, Sovereign, Secular, Socialist State of Tamil Eelam” was passed under his aegis. After decades of attempted negotiations, reconciliations and compromises with the oppressors, the oppressed now had a paradigm, a terminology of self-definition of their identity. The Eelam Tamil discourse was set – and after 1976, one either recognized it or opposed it. It was then no coincidence that the birth of the most resolute defenders of the Eelam Tamil struggle, the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam), happened in the same year.
Identity formation was one thing – to wage an uncompromising political struggle to secure rights by/for the people who assert that identity is another. The assertion and struggle are interlinked and inseparable. Of the various organizations that emerged in the late 70’s, it was only the Tamil Tigers who were able to keep track of both. Rapidly winning support among the Tamil masses, they promoted an Eelam Tamil politico-cultural identity that was modern, secular while at the same time politically ‘intolerant’. An example of this ‘intolerance’ is a statement of theirs from the early 90’s that defines a traitor as “whoever accepts or supports the Sri Lanka unitary constitution, the Sinhala national anthem, the Sinhala national flag.” (The French Resistance was no less ‘intolerant’ of the Vichy regime collaborators who served Nazi Germany, sang the Deutschlandlied, saluted the Swastika.) Zizek argues that it is not enough that one finds new terms with which to define oneself outside of the oppressor’s tradition, one should go a step further and deprive the oppressor of the monopoly of defining tradition the way he wants it. The Tigers’ much criticized ‘intolerance’ towards renegades was then but a progressive negation of the discourses framed by the oppressors – not only was the Tamil subject required to denounce the oppressor’s polity, he was also required to denounce the oppressor’s political language and political symbols. In short, assimilation was to be made impossible.
Taking on from Chelvanayagam, V. Prabhakaran, the leader of the LTTE, argued for the rights of the Eelam Tamil nation to self determination by virtue of their possessing “a distinct language, culture and history with a clearly defined homeland and a consciousness of their ethnic identity.” Amilcar Cabral argues in ‘The Role of Culture in the Struggle for Independence’ that this type of a resistance against a militarily superior power is possible only because “the popular masses, who have preserved their culture and identity, maintain their sense of individual and collective dignity despite the torments, humiliations and depredations they must often suffer.” Such struggle, he says, “the organized political expression of culture”, is necessarily a test of identity and dignity. The struggle is not just aided by the progressive aspects of the culture of the subject people, it also injects newer progressive elements into cultural life, preventing asphyxiation at a time of crisis.
For the LTTE, this was imperative. For the first time in the modern history of the Eelam Tamils, there was organization with a leadership that emerged almost entirely from the popular classes with an exceptionally high percentage of women at decision making levels – in 2002, 5 out of the 12 member central committee were women (If one subscribes to Marx’s belief that the progressiveness of a movement can be gauged by the position that it gives women, then this fact alone should vindicate the Tigers). The philistinism of the comprador Tamil elites of Colombo, long considered the face of Tamil culture, would have to be challenged and so would decadent cultural relics among the natives. The very historical fact of the massive support among popular classes, peasantry, women and backward sections for the Tigers, and owing to their cadre base and leadership being derived from such sections, they had to look at Eelam Tamil identity and culture not just as agents of political change, but also to radically remould them to fit a project of a progressive Eelam Tamil nationalism. It was pointless to talk Tamil culture or identity in abstract – it had to be rooted in the concrete, in the socio-political context that the Eelam Tamils found themselves in. Thus, Capt. Vanathi, a LTTE leader and poet martyred in 1991, did not find the subject of her poetry in a hoary Tamil antiquity – she found her revolutionary Tamil woman in the battlefield confronting the enemy, a political agent heralding a new culture and identity.
Another phenomena, probably the core aspect of the Tigers’ Eelam Tamil project was the ‘Cult of the Hero’, a close equivalent of Robespierre’s ‘Cult of the Supreme Being’. But while the latter demanded a faith in a common secular god and the immortality of the human soul, the former required a faith in the martyrdom of fallen comrades and the immortality of the meaning of their sacrifices. The result was the creation of a secular festival – ‘Heroes Day’, held every year on the 27th of November, the day the first LTTE cadre fell in battle. Under the Tigers, the occasion drew more crowds than any religious festival of the Eelam Tamils – it still does among the diaspora – and the event not just fostered a sense of solidarity but also provided the Eelam Tamils a shared memory of opposition to persecution. Besides, the festival produced a horizondalizing effect on what was once a vertical society. The Tamils paid common homage to martyrs of different castes, subcastes, religions alike and their graves were rallying points of the Eelam Tamil culture that the Tigers hoped to create, transcending sectarian affiliations. The grave of the martyr was also symbolic of an uncompromising rejection of assimilation by the oppressor’s tradition. Thus, the annihilation strategy of the Sri Lankan state that found its highest expression in the Vanni massacre of May 2009 was accompanied by a systematic destruction of the martyrs’ graves. The message Sri Lanka wanted to give to the Eelam Tamils was this. Resistance to assimilation would meet this fate alone.
Despite the different ways that supporters looked at the project of the Eelam Tamil identity and its protagonists, there was an agreement on certain fundamental points – recognition of Eelam Tamils as a unique national formation with inalienable rights to exercise their political and economic sovereignty, which includes their rights to oppose colonization of their lands and the concomitant mutilation of their cultural consciousness by means of assimilation. With the military crushing of the LTTE, the Sri Lankan state proclaimed the end of Eelam Tamil identity as such. Let alone recognition of nationality, Mahinda Rajapaksa declared that there are no minorities in the island and that all are Sri Lankans. This, of course, implies that the Eelam Tamil is beyond the frameworks of his definition. In this, he is complemented by both Sinhala and Tamil liberal intelligentsia.
While a Tamil using the word ‘us’ to refer to the Tamils as a community perturbs the liberal Sinhala, he nevertheless tolerates it. One can be anything as long as one is Sri Lankan. The Sri Lankan liberal views the Tamil as a minority whose rights must be protected, under his patronage of course. ‘They may be Tamils, but they are Sri Lankan citizens’, he argues while protesting against the abuses of the state. The elite liberal intellectuals of Colombo recognize a plethora of rights for the Tamils – citizen rights, human rights, women rights, children rights. All rights except that one right that the Eelam Tamil people fought for – right of a nation to self-determination.
It was pointed out before how the Colombo based Tamil elites pursued an identity project that was antithetical to the interests of the popular classes of Tamil Eelam. After the tragedy of Vanni, the farce of such intelligentsia became all too apparent. Take for instance, the Colombo based Centre for Policy Alternatives, an institute extensively funded by foreign capital, a hub of Tamil intellectuals following the collaborator Neelan Tiruchelvam’s line, opposes human rights violations while at the same time justifying the war on the LTTE. According to them, the Eelam Tamils deserve human rights accorded to a minority. The national question is blasphemy to them. Their demands for “non-violent conflict resolution and democratic governance” are nothing but cover language for their attempts to defend the economic interests of those privileged sections who defend the ‘Sri Lankan Tamil’ identity against the interests of the Eelam Tamil masses who would be stripped of their powers to resist assimilation at politico-ideological levels and are also left helpless to defend their national economy pillaged by colonization. The struggle of the Sri Lankan liberals, Sinhala or Tamil, is then at odds with the struggle of the Eelam Tamil people. Their struggle is for good governance. Our struggle is for self governance. This is the crux of Eelam Tamil identity politics – not a defence of abstract cultural rights or human rights, but a concrete assertion of political sovereignty.
But the limits of Sri Lankan liberal tolerance is tested when a Tamil questions the foundations of Sri Lankan nationalism, challenges the political economy of Sinhala colonization and refuses assimilation, that is, when a Tamil subscribes to Tamil Eelam – at this point, the lines are blurred between the Tamil liberal Saravanamuttu, Sinhala liberal Sanjana Hattatuwa and the racist Gothabaya whom they claim to oppose. All three are united in denouncing and denying the status and rights of the Eelam Tamils. No wonder that liberal and racist alike find the Tamil diaspora that adamantly refuses to be defined by them an eyesore (the ideological offensive that is being waged on diaspora requires a separate analysis in its own right). After all, only an Eelam Tamil nationalism has the power to negate the reactionary negation of Sinhala colonization, thereby ending privileges of local compradors as well. It would be naïve to expect the ruling class or their liberal apologists to recognize the same. The liberal Sinhala is only the human mask of a monstrous Sri Lankan nationalism and the Sri Lankan Tamil liberal is its make-up paint. The need to recognize and expose this is imperative for those who stand by the Tamils’ rights as a nationality and it is also imperative to deny the terms and definitions of those with the Sri Lankan establishment. For starters, the Eelam Tamils should be referred to as such, and not as ‘Sri Lankan Tamil.’ The political differences between the two terms are too much for them to mean one and the same.
To sum up, the Zizekian matrix of the Event can be used to explain the state of the Eelam Tamil politics while also drawing equations for the future.
(1) Fidelity – Vaddukkodai resolution of 1976, LTTE & secular-modernist Eelam Tamil nationalism
(2) Reactive re-integration – politics of ‘Sri Lankan Tamil’ identity, minority rights
(3) Outright denial of eventual status – Sri Lankan liberalism, assimilation
(4) Catastrophic total counter-attack – Sri Lankan fascism, annihilation Vanni style
(5) Total enforcing of the Event leading to an ‘obscure disaster’ – emergence of a Hamas-styled Tamil nationalism
(6) Renewal of secular-modernist Eelam Tamil nationalism
(2) (3) and (4) all contributed at different levels to weakening of (1). (2) and (3) also require a weakening of (4) as it weakens the moral legitimacy of their advocacy of ‘co-existence’, especially in the wake of various gross abuses coming to light in the international arena. All the same, (2) and (3) will not hesitate to rally behind (4) in case of an emergence of (5) or (6). In case (6) does not emerge, considering the continuing betrayal of the interests of the Tamil popular classes by protagonists of (2), the probability of (5) cannot be ruled out – as an example, we have seen the Hamas fill the vacuum in Palestine in the face of a weakening of a progressive movement and sell out by elites. In the long run, (5) may deliver freedom, but its ability to be egalitarian is a question. Hence our case for progressives to lend their support to (6) and for the subscribers of (6) to pick-up the thread of the uncompromising emancipatory political tradition of (1) and take it forward.
So, the question “What is in a name?” is not appropriate with regards to the Eelam Tamils. After all, a people do not wage a struggle for decades and sacrifice over 200000 lives for a rose to be named differently. Considering the Eelam Tamils’ political struggle now, the more apt Shakespearean question to be posed is “To be or not to be”!
The management of Maruti Suzuki Industries Limited, Manesar plant (Plot 1, Phase 3A) has terminated 11 and suspended 38 workers on 29th and 30th August 2011, on completely fabricated charges of go-slow in production and that workers have been ‘undisciplined’. It is doing this as a continuation of harassing workers for our struggle for the right of Union formation and other legitimate rights from June 4th to 16th. It is using brute police force to intimidate us, and is also continuing to pay and use bouncers and lumpen force to continuously threaten us. The management is also spreading a rumour that the production has resumed yesterday 31 August through a handful of contract workers, some supervisors, engineers and robots. This disinformation campaign has also been splashed across the media.
We on behalf of Maruti Suzuki Employees Union (MSEU) want to reiterate that production is at a complete halt, and not even a single car has been produced since 29th August 2011. All workers of the company, both permanent and contract, stand in solidarity and continue to wage struggle for our rights and against the management’s adamant attitude.
Today evening, 1st September, on the call of the MSEU, in solidarity with all the workers of MSIL, Manesar, over 5000 workers assembled at the factory gate no.1 for a dynamic gate meeting and juloos that followed in the IMT Manesar area. This includes workers from many factories in the Gurgaon-Manesar-Dharuhera-Bawal industrial belt in Haryana, including workers from Maruti Suzuki Gurgaon plant, Suzuki Powertrain Manesar, HMSI, Hero Honda, FCC Rico, Rico Auto Dharuhera, Rico Auto Manesar, Omax, Lumex, Sona Steering and many others. Workers and representatives of various Unions from the factory-based independent Trade Unions to central trade unions AITUC, HMS, CITU, INTUC, NTUI, AICCTU have solidly expressed solidarity with us. People from surrounding villages, as well as students, youth from universities and colleges in Haryana and Delhi and many intellectuals also participated in the meeting in solidarity with the workers.
We demand, as immediate steps, that the company revokes the termination of 11 workers and suspension of 38 workers. We also demand that it withdraw its charge-sheet imposed on the workers from June till now.
We appeal to all to stand in solidarity with our struggle in the coming days.
After having terminated 11 workers and suspended 10 on 29th August, 28 more workers have been suspended on 30th August by an adamant management/owners of Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, IMT Manesar (Plot 1, Phase 3A) leading to a total of 49 workers being shown the door on fabricated charges of go-slow action in production and supposed ‘indiscipline’ by workers. Gun-totting police force of around 500, along with bouncers on the payroll of the company still occupy the factory. A lumpen force flush with the company’s money threaten workers on dharna outside and harass us even in the areas of residence nearby. We are forced to acknowledge that this is the real face of the company’s slogan “way of life”.
After the 13-day strike in June (4th-16th) this year and the interim agreement between the company and workers on 16th June, the management has been relentlessly harassing the workers who have dared to raise their voices. That the demand for Union formation and workers’ rights forged through an unprecedented unity among the around 1000 permanent and over 2000 contract workers inside the factory have only increased, is not acceptable to the company which has its hands full of blood having crushed the workers’ movement in the Gurgaon plant in the late 1990s-early 2000s. That all workers in this industrial belt, and almost all Unions, independent and affiliated, have and are continuing to express solidarity with the workers of Maruti is a threat to the bosses and the rulers.
As the struggle continues, We from Maruti Suzuki Employees Union (MSEU), appeal to all to lend support and solidarity to the workers of Maruti Suzuki in the coming days. The workers and Unions in the industrial belt of Gurgaon-Manesar-Dharuhera-Bawal in Haryana stand in solidarity with us and many from across the country have also expressed solidarity.
We have called for a Juloos-rally from the factory gate no.2 in Manesar, Haryana at 4 pm tomorrow 1st of September 2011, and appeal to all to join us. Representatives of all the Unions in solidarity will address the gathering after the rally.
This morning, 29th August, Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, IMT Manesar (Plot 1, Phase 3A) terminated 11 workers and suspended 10 more, on flimsy and distorted (read: vengeful and punitive) grounds of ‘indiscipline’ and a supposed go-slow action in production by workers. The company has also imposed a ‘good conduct bond’ (read: humiliation ‘by law’), only after signing which, workers can enter the factory premises. Meanwhile around 500 policemen of Haryana and riot-police have occupied the factory since yesterday evening, with the excuse of ‘preventing violent actions’. This preemptive action totally exposes, again, whose police the state forces are. Accompanying and reinforcing the police, are ‘bouncers’ on the company’s employ, and some 8-10 tough-men who have been bought over by the company from the surrounding village being used to threaten the workers. Apart from the 21 permanent workers, terminated and suspended, everyday around 2-5 casual and contract workers have been terminated since the agreement on the 16th of June.
The production is at a halt, as workers have refused to bow down to the company’s dictates, and are standing united in struggle. Other workers in the industrial area are also expressing solidarity with the workers. Many Unions, independent and affiliated, have also come in support, and stand against the company’s draconian actions.
All the 11 terminated workers had been earlier reinstated after a prolonged battle with the company which included a 13-day strike (June 4th-16th) by all workers and unprecedented solidarity among workers and other Unions in the industrial area of Gurgaon-Manesar in Haryana. This strike action was in the context of the demand of the workers to form their own Union, the Maruti Suzuki Employees Union (MSEU), and against exploitative working conditions and other legitimate workers’ rights. After this defeat of the company, many business honchos had pointed out that this reinstatement sets a bad example to the industry as other workers’ would start demanding their rights too.
The Haryana government, hand-in-glove with the powerful company’s “way of life”, rejected the demand of the workers Union on August 14th as a pre-independence day gift to workers, saying that the management-run Union, the MUKU is already in place (even though all the workers have resigned from it, saying it represents the company and not workers). After it becoming clear that the state is ready to do everything to help the company, said Shinzo Nakanishi, MD, MSIL, in a threatening tone, “change will come about gradually through education.” The company has been preparing for an attack since the agreement after the strike, and has mobilised the government, the labour department, the judiciary, the police, bouncers, corporate media, apart from its in-factory harassment techniques, to weed out ‘troublemakers’(read: workers who stand up for their rights).
We appeal to all to lend support and solidarity to the workers of Maruti Suzuki, who have a difficult struggle ahead and are determined to take it forward united.
Some have already started pondering whether Anna Hazare himself or an agitation on his lines could be used to highlight the issue of establishing a Common School System or for some other welfare measures that concern the downtrodden. My conviction that it is impossible emanates primarily from the analysis of the so-called amorphous ‘civil society’ which is essentially liberal bourgeois in character. What would one expect from a ‘movement’ (??) which relies heavily on the corporate sector – from a doctor who would love to deprive millions of Indians of primary healthcare and promote privatization of health facilities to collecting enormous amount from them as donations?
Why don’t we sit down and address a basic question about such trans-political antics which bring together the right wing fundamentalism, social democratic traditions, and progressives who would like to call themselves ‘left’ of a different type (who would jump at any gathering that gives them space and where the congregation is of a sufficiently large number) under one banner? What are those interests which are common to everyone – the corporates, ‘poor’ as well as the so-called ‘middle class’? Are we talking about bringing together the exploiters and the exploited (“the rich and the poor”, as Anna calls them) under the rubric of what they call ‘nation’ cemented through the slogans of ‘Bharat Maata ki Jai’, ‘Jai Hind’ and other symbolisms of a farcical nationhood represented by people holding Anna Hazare’s army days’ pictures? Is it not another social corporatist ideology that defines every right wing mobilisation throughout the globe? Is this a moment or an issue which would transcend all forms of polarisation in Indian society?
At a time when the nation has been reeling under inflation, poverty of people is depriving them of their basic necessities, a movement emerges which allows a much wanted deviation from the issues which could have taken the form of a class war, only if the Left had also realized it. Unfortunately we live in a political climate where particular forms of ‘Left’ politics are also fighting a battle for survival – which they believe could be won only by catering to the frustrations of the petty bourgeoisie assembled at the behest of a man who tries to become another ‘Gandhi’.
The rule of capital gets a breather in the form of this movement, as every systemic problem has been pinned down to a single cause, corruption, which of course needs only policing and, why not, also self-policing. Everybody wants a strong independent body above political ‘manipulations’ – so let it be, what’s the problem? The corporate world is all happy – it is already tired of buying and dealing with so many layers of politicians and bureaucrats – it wants a strong and resolute administration, which is not influenced by political flux and uncertainty.
Recognising that all indicators of economic and social life point towards an objective crisis of the system (which survives only by creating breathing spaces – through identitarian politics as well as momentary antics like this), one will have to go beyond the issues of how democratic is this ‘movement’ or how corrupt the corporate sector itself has been or how sectarian (on religious grounds as well as politically) this endeavor is or how well funded has been this movement (through money collected from Ford Foundation, UNDP… as well as through public fund collection). The question is – now that the Parliament has endorsed the will of Anna Hazare as the will of the people and therefore as the will of the Parliament, will it alleviate the poverty, and all other forms of oppression from society? Pointing to corruption as the most vicious form of oppression and playing down the more fundamental forms of exploitation unleashed by capitalism has been the hallmark of such a movement, which would never bring into focus the class question. It appears that everything will be alright if such a bill is passed, as if the system would not devise its own means of circumventing these acts.
Laws are not products constituted outside the system. Some of them may provide respite to people (without endangering the rule of capital) but they are never meant to subvert the system. Hence, if one has to recognize the utility of laws such as RTI or anti-corruption, it has to be done keeping in mind their role as instruments that keep dissent within the functional limits of capitalism. They are not meant to serve as instruments that would jeopardise the system. Those who portray this moment and act of a few disgruntled ex-bureaucrats and ‘civil society’ activists as revolutionary are misleading masses into a trap that would consolidate the rule of capital. The discontent that is there, evident in mobilizations, needs an articulation which tells people that laws only provide you a brief, temporal respite within the system (which would invent its own ways and means to accumulate, if not through ‘illegal’ cuts then through fully endorsed ‘incentives’). It may, at a certain plane, bring about contradictions within the system but it would never establish the truth that such pathologies are inherent part of the system.
Coming back to the point raised in the beginning, those who feel that Anna Hazare would take up the questions of education and health are grossly mistaken because the ‘Team’ with him – the drivers and strategists – would never be interested in demolishing capitalism and build a system where there is no place for commodification of education and health facilities. Even if individuals therein (including Anna) might want to raise these issues, this unity of “the rich and the poor” that we see on the issue of corruption cannot be envisaged on the issues that harm the mainstream interests of private capital. In fact, many in the corruption movement would rather argue that the state withdrawal from these sectors and segmentation of these facilities at least ensure that everybody gets something (‘something’ being amorphous like the ‘civil society’). On these issues, Anna’s fast will go Irom Sharmila’s way – no media attention and no parliament debate.
The Anna Hazare situation invites two common reactions: many dismiss it as a middle class driven “urban picnic”; and others, notably the mainstream media, describe it as just short of a revolutionary movement to establish “people’s power.” The same divide exists among progressives and those concerned with social change. Strategies differ on the basis of where one stands on this divide.The problem, however, is that neither of these reactions fully reflects the reality of what is happening.
We note that our position below is focused on what can be done in this situation, and is not meant to excuse or defend the government. We condemn the brutal, corrupt and anti-democratic actions of the UPA; we also, it must be noted, condemn the actions of the BJP and its State governments in trying to portray themselves as crusaders against corruption. The dangerous Lokpal Bill that has been presented must be withdrawn, and, as said below, a process initiated for effective institutions of people’s control that can be used to defeat corruption. We issue this statement precisely to caution against erroneous tactics that are strengthening the very state that we must fight against.
The Opportunity
It is true that the protests so far have been dominated by middle classes, and that they have been exaggerated by the media. But this does not mean that this process becomes meaningless. Precisely because there is no strong organised movement among the working class at the national level, no alternative media, and no consciously projected alternative to the existing system, a hyped up middle class movement can easily grow into something much larger. We can already see that happening, as protests are spreading and diversifying in terms of their mass base. People’s anger at this system and at the corrupt nature of the Indian state is hardly a middle class phenomenon alone.
For that reason, we cannot and should not dismiss this situation. The more people are willing to see this system for what it is, and to express their anger and disgust with it, the more there is an opportunity to expose it and fight for something new. A crisis is an opportunity for those who are fighting for change.
Therefore we cannot agree with those who look at these protests and hunger strikes and see in them a “blackmailing” of Parliament. Parliamentary democracy in this country has never been more than a very limited space. Even this space has been rendered meaningless in recent decades, by precisely the forces who today are shouting about its virtues.
For instance, the SEZ Act was passed after barely a day’s debate in Parliament. Economic reforms were introduced through stealth, FDI in retail is on the verge of being approved, and the UID project is going ahead – all without a whisper of Parliamentary approval. It is correct to be cynical of neoliberal pro-corporate leaders when they suddenly discover that Parliament is a sacrosanct institution. When people feel that the system is rotten to the core, we should not attempt to dilute that reality by saying that Parliament will deal with the problem.
The danger is not to Parliament; it lies elsewhere.
The Danger
The fact that people are angry is an opportunity. But it is also a risk, because that anger can be channeled in ways that actually strengthen the existing power structure. In this case, consider:
• The message being conveyed about these protests – the tactics of the leadership notwithstanding – is that of support to Anna Hazare and his “Team Anna.” Beyond the concept of “transparency”, the public campaign does not engage at all with the idea of a democratic organisation of the people (as opposed to one “supported” by the people). As such, this raises the question of whether those participating are being asked to fight to build people’s power, or whether they are fighting to increase the power of the “good leader.”
• The demand of the campaign too is not about, even in a minimal sense, democratising the Indian state or society. The Jan Lokpal being sought may address some types of corruption, or it may not do so; but it is not intended to give people any greater control over the state. It is projected as effective not because it will be democratic, but because it will be powerful, because it will stand “above” democracy and politics itself. Just as Anna is a good person who deserves support, so the Jan Lokpal will consist of good people who deserve power, and who will use it to “cleanse” the state.
• Most of those joining these protests are doing so on the basis of media coverage. In practically all areas (with one or two exceptions) the mobilisation lacks any core organisation. At most there are ad hoc groups of urban elites; but in large measure, the place of the organisation has been filled by the mainstream media itself. All the ideas sought to be communicated are therefore seen through the lenses that the media applies to them. As a result, even where elements in the leadership try to talk of popular struggle and democratic principles, they are overridden by an overwhelming focus on attacking the current power holders and replacing them with an even more powerful, more “clean” institution.
The net result of all this is that “corruption” becomes defined very narrowly, as the taking of benefit in violation of the law. The ultimate message of this movement is: trust the rules, trust the state, trust the Lokpal; what matters is finding the right leaders and having faith in them. This is the message that is sent by the mobilising instrument, the media, regardless of what the leaders may actually say.
This is not only not a democratic message, it is an anti-democratic one. At this moment, in India, it is also dangerous. Brutality, injustice and oppression in this country is not a result of violation of the law alone. Indeed, much of it happens because of the law in the first place. We have a state machinery which has brazenly shown itself to be the servant of predatory private capital. This is the biggest reason for the current boom in corruption: the enormous money generated through superprofits that is then used to purchase the state and generate more superprofits. Sometimes this is exposed as violating some law and gets called a “scam”; but at other times, as in most economic reforms, it simply changes the law. The SEZ Act is again a good example. It triggered a wave of land grabbing across the country, which was only slowed by the global economic crisis; but there was nothing “corrupt” in the Lokpal sense about most SEZ-relatedactions. Our people are being crushed by a cycle of intensifying capitalist exploitation and repression. Can this be stopped by good leaders with the right powers?
Many would answer “Obviously not; a Jan Lokpal cannot address everything.” This may be true, but that is not the message actually being sent out. Rather the message is that Lokpal-style solutions and Anna Hazare-style “good leaders” are the answers to people’s anger at injustice. When the leadership, Ramdev-style, starts adding on a laundry list of additional issues to its demands – as land acquisition has recently been added – it reinforces this dangerous message. Thus this movement not only does not weaken the state; implicitly, through the message it sends, it builds people’s support for making the state and its leadership more powerful. This of course the reason that it attracts support from everyone from Jindal Aluminium to the RSS.
What Can Be Done
The mere fact that people are protesting against the government does not mean that they are fighting the state. The Indian state certainly has little to fear – as a state – from a mobilisation whose prime message is that change happens through good leaders. The current power holders are resisting the threat to their position, but the system itself is not under threat. Indeed, the danger is not to the state or its institutions, but to efforts at deeper social change in this society.
The dilemma of the current situation cannot be answered by simply joining wholeheartedly, or by withdrawing in silence.
Some have declared support for the current movement, while seeking to push it to take up other issues. The sympathies of some in the leadership for left and progressive positions is often cited. But the main engines of these protests – the media and urban elite circles – are actively opposed to any such positions. One has simply to imagine what will happen if this mobilisation does begin to turn towards a more radical stance: the media will instantly change its position from “Anna is India” to “Anna is a power crazed megalomaniac”, confusion, slanders and disinformation will start, and the movement will collapse. Given this reality, simply joining at this stage will be counterproductive. People will no longer be able to distinguish between forces who fight for social transformation and those who are upholding the current system; and when the latter fail, they will take down the former with them.
But to remain silent is to be irrelevant at an important time. It is also important not to fall into the trap of those who, in their criticism of the anti-democratic tendencies of this movement, start defending the existing state. In our view parliamentary supremacy is not and cannot be the slogan of those who seek social change.
What is required therefore is an approach built on two realities. The first is that the current explosion of scams is a direct result of neoliberal policies that have converted the state into the arm of a particularly predatory, criminal form of big capital. Today the real face of the state is more apparent then ever before, and corruption is one glaring sign of it. Therefore, to try to fight corruption without fighting for true people’s power over the economy and society is impossible. Therefore, our demands must focus on building such people’s power over the institutions of the state.
The second reality is that the current atmosphere of anger and suspicion of the state offers a chance to raise precisely these issues and to make the link between corruption and the system under which we live. The more political forces, mass organisations and people’s struggles do this, while keeping their identity separate from ‘India Against Corruption’, the more it will be possible to use this opportunity to build and expand radical struggles. If people can see the system is rotten, that can be developed that into an awareness that this rottenness goes far deeper than mere corruption and dishonest leaders. That is the challenge of this moment.
Abhay Shukla, Pune
Arvind Ghosh, Nagpur
Asit Das, POSCO Pratirodh Solidarity, Delhi
Bijay-bhai, Adivasi Mukti Sanghatan
Biju Mathew, Mining Zone People’s Solidarity Group
C.R. Bijoy, Coimbatore
Kiran Shaheen, Journalist
Pothik Ghosh, Radical Notes
Pratyush Chandra, Radical Notes
Ravi Kumar, Dept of Sociology, South Asian University
Shankar Gopalakrishnan, Campaign for Survival and Dignity
Shiraz Bulsara, Kasthakari Sanghatna
(all signatures are in individual capacity; additional signatures welcome)
