India vs. RSS

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E-book published in July 2018 Published in April 2018 by LeftWord Books 2254/2A Shadi Khampur New Ranjit Nagar New Delhi 110008 INDIA LeftWord Books is the publishing division of Naya Rasta Publishers Pvt. Ltd. leftword.com © 2018, Pinarayi Vijayan

Contents Note from the Editors Democracy in Danger The Intolerance of the RSS RSS Terror Secularism and Minorities Strong Centre, Content States The Liberation of Women is Essential to the Liberation of Our Society as a Whole Uphold the Red Flag to Build an Alternative to Neoliberalism and Communalism A Quarter Century of Neoliberal Policies Has Only Sounded the Death Knell of Agriculture in India Advasis Are a Most Important Contingent in the Struggle for Revolutionary Social Change Muslims of Malabar and the Left

Note from the Editors As the Right rises, everyone else, whether they like it or not, are branded Left. Many of them are not, of course. There is little, if anything, in Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, or Sonia Gandhi and Mamata Banerjee, that can be reasonably described as Left . On the contrary, there is much in their agendas and actions that can be legitimately labelled Right . Yet, the hard Right, ranging from Trump to Modi, from Erdogan to Duterte, routinely label anybody who opposes them as Left. Where is the real Left? What does it stand for? What does it oppose? One political figure holding elected office has emerged in the midst of Narendra Modi’s term as Prime Minister as his most forthright critic: Kerala’s Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. What gives Pinarayi Vijayan the strength to be so bold against the government of Mr. Modi? One part of it is of course that he represents the state of Kerala, a bastion of literacy and reason, but more importantly, that he is member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). While various political sections in India have problems with one or another aspect of the governance of Mr. Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Communist movement stands in direct opposition to the entirety of its social, political and economic vision – not only its theory of Hindu Rashtra and Hindutva, but also its upper caste supremacist outlook, its neoliberal economic policies, and its pro-American foreign policy. For Communists, there is no compromise with any part of the BJP’s philosophy, outlook, and policies. This is not true of any other anti-BJP party in India. If the Congress party inaugurated the neoliberal policy slate and pro-American foreign policy, the other parties, including parties representing regional bourgeoisies, have

either gone along with these, or been in active alliance with the BJP at one point or another. Only the Communists stand irreconcilably in opposition to Hindutva and all that it represents. The Communists recognize that the BJP and its policies have already begun to unravel the social fabric of India and to disrupt the possibility for the people to achieve their aspirations. The BJP and its Sangh Parivar are acquainted with the way the Communists will not budge from their firm sensibility to encourage the diverse social development of India. They know that Communists – unlike the followers of the BJP and the RSS – want to create a society run by the people rather than the plutocracy. After the BJP won the election in Tripura, vindictiveness against the Left was openly on display – whether in the way the statue of Lenin was broken or in the way homes and offices of Communists were attacked. Mr Modi spoke out against the breaking of statues – not Lenin’s, but when Periyar’s and Shama Prasad Mukherji’s statues were vandalised. There is something deeply duplicitous here. Mr Modi, after all, has nothing to say about the Sangh Parivar’s destruction of the Babri Masjid, or the pogrom of Muslims in Gujarat when he was the Chief Minister, or the routine vandalism of Dr Ambedkar’s statues, or the lynchings of Muslims and Dalits. His is an ideology steeped in hatred, which he hopes to camouflage with a mask of occasional and selective sobriety. The Communists are a political force. They have a singular project – to fight injustice and to build socialism. No other political force in India is as firm against the Sangh Parivar. No other political force is as hated by them. In fact, as we suggest, the Sangh Parivar hates the Communists as much as they despise Dalits and Muslims. This small book collects some of the speeches and writings of Pinarayi Vijayan. At its core is Vijayan’s forthright criticism of the BJP and the central organization of the Sangh Parivar – the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). In an interview, Vijayan offers his view of the dangers that are posed by the BJP and the RSS,

If you look at the current political climate in the country, we are going through a very dangerous phase. Because the BJP is not just a political party like other political parties. What distinguishes the BJP from other parties is that it’s controlled by the RSS. The RSS’s ideology is the same as what Hitler implemented in Germany. Their organisational structure is Mussolini’s fascist organisational structure. So when an organisation with fascist organisational structure and Nazi ideology leads a party, its dangers are huge. That’s why we see fascistic tendencies in today’s India. The BJP is a party that’s bound to establish the RSS’s policies in the country. We have seen that on several occasions. It’s clear that the RSS is directly taking key decisions on behalf of the BJP. RSS policies are not compliant with our country’s interests. The RSS doesn’t accept secularism. There were occasions when even Union ministers attacked the reference to secularism in India’s Constitution. This launches a direct threat to secularism. The danger this poses to a pluralistic country like ours is huge. A strong resistance has to be built against this attack on our constitutional values. Both the Congress and the BJP are representing right-wing economic policies. Be it liberalisation, globalisation, or privatisation, the Congress was in the forefront of implementing them. The BJP is following the same economic policies. Since there are no major differences in economic policies, both of them represent a common sphere. That’s why the BJP is not seeing the Congress as its main rival. For the BJP, the Left is its principal enemy. The Left is not a powerful force nationally in today’s India. Still the BJP is scared of the Left. . . . [B]oth the BJP and the RSS are trying to trigger communal issues in society and through that gain political dividends. What we have to do it to mobilise people from across the spectrum against the RSS. All democratic forces have a role to play in building such a resistance.

The BJP and its Sangh Parivar know about this uncompromising attitude, which is why – in the political sector – it is the Communists who have been their main target of attack (in the social sector, the BJP and its Sangh Parivar have gone after Muslims, Dalits and Tribals). No surprise then that the RSS has repeatedly called for the murder of Pinarayi Vijayan (most spectacularly, in March of 2017, RSS leader Kundan Chandrawat placed a Rs 1 crore bounty for the assassination 1 ). The RSS, under pressure, fired Kundan Chandrawat. But the views of Chandrawat – who also took pleasure in the murder of Muslims in Gujarat (‘We sent 2000 to the graveyard’) – have not been substantially repudiated by the RSS. Vijayan exposes the roots of RSS terror in the state and in the region. He shows that this is the RSS-BJP mechanism to overcome their political weakness in the area. This is a point to bear in mind, since the RSS-BJP has been known to use various forms of violence elsewhere for electoral – and eventually institutional – gain. The core of Vijayan’s speeches and writings collected here identify the dangers of the ‘RSS government’, and call for clear and precise resistance from all sectors – not just during the time of elections – against the policies and cultural thrust of the Sangh Parivar. They are essential reading. But this is not all that is within this book. We see also his clear view that there is no alternative to the RSS/BJP within the policy slate of neo-liberalism – and more specifically capitalism. A Left alternative is imperative. It is available in the policies that are driven by the Left in Kerala, but it is also being incubated in the struggles of key sectors of the population – the workers and the peasants, surely, but also the oppressed populations – women, tribals, Dalits and Muslims. The Left, Vijayan’s speeches and writings indicate, are an essential part of this struggle to envision a new future as well as to put in place – as much as possible – these visions in places where the Left holds power, such as in Kerala. This book could not have been completed without essential help from Prabha Varma, Samuel Philip Mathew and Subin Dennis.

Vijay Prashad and Sudhanva Deshpande Editors, LeftWord Books 1

Milind Ghatwai, ‘RSS leader puts Rs 1-cr bounty on Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan, says sent 2,000 to graveyard in Gujarat riots’, The Indian Express , March 2, 2017.

Democracy in Danger I am happy to be a part of this seminar being organized by the Delhi Union of Journalists in association with the National Alliance of Journalists. 1 I say I am happy because the issue being discussed in this seminar is the biased and one-sided reporting against Kerala in certain sections of the media, including in the national media. Having picked such a topic, you who are organizing this seminar are acknowledging that there is a planned campaign against the state. Those of you who have come here to attend the seminar are also concurring with that fact. At a time when several media houses have been ferociously targeting Kerala, it is heartening that journalists themselves are coming out against this campaign against the state. It means that, despite the business interests of their employers attempting to paint a gory picture of the state, the employees are standing by the truth, as far as Kerala is concerned. We live in times when there is a price to be paid for saying the truth. Voices of opposition or dissent are being threatened with dire consequences. We know how sedition charges were cooked up against our students. Cultural activists have also been threatened. The likes of Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare and M.M. Kalburgi, have even been murdered. In the recent past, even journalists – such as Gauri Lankesh and Shantanu Bhowmik – have had to pay the price. Why is the state of Kerala targeted? The answer is that it is the state that champions the values that strengthen secularism, democracy and socialism. Be it communalism, demonetization, neoliberalism or crony capitalism, Kerala is the state that raises the first voice of dissent. It is quite natural that those who are at the helm of affairs get perturbed by this. Hence, the continued attack on Kerala.

The efforts to ridicule and intimidate Kerala have been going on ever since the elections to the state’s Legislative Assembly were held last year. The summer of 2016 was especially hot in Kerala. Temperatures soared even higher as an outlandish comparison was made, equating Kerala to Somalia on Infant Mortality Rates. But, it was not the Malayalis who felt the brunt of that sweltering heat; it was the man who made that bizarre comparison himself. Keralites across political divides and from around the world came together at that single stroke and ridiculed him with a trending hashtag. Figures were soon in circulation that showed that it was, in fact, the state from which he hailed that was a closer comparison to Somalia when it came to Infant Mortality Rates. Next came demonetization. This time the attack was not singularly on Kerala. It was an attack on the whole of the country. But the resistance to it spontaneously sprung up from Kerala, on the very same evening of its announcement. Soon, people across India started questioning the so-called gains of demonetization. They soon realized that the cost that would incur in printing fresh notes would defeat even the so-called purposes behind the withdrawal of notes which were in circulation till that time. Demonetization brought the whole economy to a grinding halt. It took away the lives of more than a hundred Indians as well. It miserably failed in curbing black money. To put it in a nutshell, demonetization was foolishness beyond imagination. It ended up as a disaster. What Kerala pointed out at that point of time, stands vindicated now. Neither the Central Government nor the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has been able to convince the nation as to what prompted them to go in for demonetization. This itself proves beyond doubt that it was an ill-conceived and immature move. Even the Supreme Court was left wondering about the number of notes that came back, the volume of fake currency, the quantum of black money and so on. It appears that the figures are not going to be made public in the near future.

This was the second instance of Kerala speaking in one voice since last summer. This time around, Kerala was setting the tone of the resistance against the anti-people policies of the Centre. Alongside demonetization came the veiled attack on Kerala’s cooperatives. They are the financial institutions that had been instrumental in making Kerala a financially inclusive society. Inequality in Kerala is far less than that of the so-called ‘model’ states of India. Stories were cooked up to suggest that Kerala’s cooperatives were the reserves of black money. In reality, the money in Kerala’s cooperatives is the fruit of the sweat of the toiling Keralites. Since this is known to every Keralite, the attempts to tarnish the cooperatives of Kerala did not hold water, at least among Malayalis. Contrary to what the anti-Kerala campaign said, later it was found that black money in huge volumes was deposited in some of the institutions belonging to the areas from where this campaign emanated. The people of Kerala came out in open support of their cooperatives, narrating stories of how it helped them to tide over their various financial crises. With Keralites unequivocally questioning the Centre’s unequal treatment meted out to the cooperative sector in the aftermath of demonetization, even the Supreme Court felt the need to protect these people’s institutions. Once again, Kerala’s united voice steered the national discourse of resistance. Then came the Gazette Notification on Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which in reality amounted to a ban on beef. Yet again, Kerala was in the forefront of protests against it. Not only did the people throng beef fests, they also talked about how it is a violation of our federal principles, an intrusion into the states’ rights and how it will adversely affect the dairy, farming, meat and leather industries. The harm such restrictions would do to our most disadvantaged communities was also discussed. Other states soon followed suit and those behind it had to concede, saying that they will reconsider, based on inputs from the states. However, they have not moved towards it so far.

Earlier, a month-long campaign was carried out across India on the threat to Hindu lives in Kerala. However, it did not yield much result. Their own leaders got into trouble by hurling death threats. Thus came the national level campaign featuring the hashtag ‘Kerala Killing Fields’ on social media and news televisions. Keralites en masse responded to this orchestrated campaign with spontaneity, featuring the hashtag ‘Kerala Leads’ and ‘Kerala Number 1’. As part of a ‘yatra’ that is being held now in Kerala, national leaders including chief ministers of other states have resorted to a malicious campaign against the state. Leaders from states in which children and farmers were killed, came in quick succession as if they are to rescue the people of Kerala. Yet again, trending hashtags in social media welcomed them. They were ridiculed for bringing people from other states to conduct a rally in Kerala and asked to set things right in their own states. BJP leaders made irresponsible and dangerous statements depicting Kerala as the hotbed of Islamic terrorism. Slogans such as ‘Love Jihad’ were invented to disrupt the centuries-old communal harmony in the state. News was planted in the media in order to bring to ruin the reputation of the state. The people of Kerala saw through the malicious campaign and have come out ultimately to oppose the RSS game plan. The BJP ‘yatra’ – with provocative slogans – was routed through the constituency where a by-election was being held. But, the result that has come today has shown where the BJP stands. Despite all these dirty tricks and attempts for communal polarization, BJP has been relegated to the fourth position with a much-reduced vote share. This is a pointer and stern warning to the BJP: that they cannot mess with Kerala. It is needless to state that the people of Kerala extended a warm welcome to the BJP leaders who descended on Kerala in the name of the ‘yatra’. On the one hand, Keralites requested them to enjoy the hospitality and exquisite cuisine of the state, at its mesmerizing tourist destinations. On the other hand, Keralites showed that they never

grow tired of flaunting statistics that shows how Kerala is leading India. So much has been talked about the so-called violence in Kannur, the district from which I come. The historical facts, as well as the statistics, would expose the RSS. There they have made numerous attempts to disrupt communal harmony. At first, they raised a private army to take on the workers in the beedi sector who were agitating against the despicable working conditions. In the early 1970s, the RSS tried to create communal riots in Thalassery. The Justice Vithayathil Commission has clarified the positive role of the CPI (M) in defeating this heinous agenda. Thereafter, the RSS has made a series of attempts to create communal disharmony; every instance of violence is a result of their grand plan to create a foothold in the district. Everyone knows the role played by the RSS during the freedom struggle. They neither participated in nor cooperated with any of the popular uprisings. In fact, in Kerala, they were against all reformist movements. The biggest contradiction now is that they want to appropriate the social reformers in the name of religion. Let me get to some facts about Kerala now. No matter what the sponsored campaigns say, the facts remain irrefutable. Some time back, while speaking at the launch of the International Centre for Human Development, a collaboration of the United Nations Development Programme and the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies in Delhi, renowned economist and Nobel laureate Professor Amartya Sen said, ‘There is a lot to learn from Kerala in delivering quality of life.’ Advocating the much acclaimed ‘Kerala Model of Development’, Sen also rolled out data which proved that we were far ahead of other Indian states in terms of social indicators. Subsequently, Kerala was declared by the United Nations as the only state in the country which figures at the top of the Human Development Index. More recently, particularly since the LDF assumed power in the state, Kerala was adjudged by India Today as the best state in India in the category of Law and Order. India Today judged Kerala as the leader on several other fronts too. The Centre for

Media Studies rated Kerala as one of the least corrupt states in the country. Based on a study conducted by the Public Affairs Centre, Kerala topped other Indian states in the Public Affairs Index. Kerala Police bagged the Police Excellence Award from Cops Today International as well, during this period. Kerala is a state that continues to lead the country in literacy and it is has furthered its enviable position in leading the Indian states on various counts during the current LDF Government’s tenure. Kerala became the first Indian state with high population density to become Open Defecation Free. Kerala became the only state in the country to achieve 100% electrification. Kerala is the only state that has a population-proportionate allocation for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in the state budget. The percentage allocation made under those heads is higher than what is allotted in any other state in the country. In fact, Kerala even went to the extent of becoming the first to declare access to Internet as a right to its citizens. The list of firsts associated with the state of Kerala is almost endless. It is the first state in India to have a transgender policy, and transgenders have been employed in the Kochi Metro. Kerala leads the country with the lowest infant mortality rates, highest sex ratio, highest health and life indices, highest foreign remittances, presence of modern roads in villages, availability of free education, access to free health and so on and so forth. Giving further focus on women, Kerala even set up a separate department for them and reintroduced gender budgeting with a share of 16% in the state’s budget. We are also moving towards increasing the strength of women in our police force to 25%. We have a dedicated battalion that consists of only women. We also have police stations entirely run by women. We are also the first to maintain a registry of sex offenders. With the highest minimum wage in the country, Kerala attracts a large number of migrant labourers and has even instituted a health insurance scheme for them. They are accorded a warm reception in the state and are treated at par with fellow citizens. Yet, recently there

was a heinous effort to spread fear among them, circulating fake images and voice messages on WhatsApp and other social media. But, all those who went to assess the situation on the ground realized that there is no threat to migrant workers anywhere in Kerala. Right now, the state government along with the district administrations is ensuring that they are reassured of their security. Similar to this, there have been several attempts to tarnish the image of Kerala over the last year or so using fake propaganda on social media. In the effort to paint Kerala as an unsafe place, a video was shared on Twitter by a few influential people, to create a false impression among the larger public that a murder was being celebrated in Kerala. However, it was later found that the video was of people celebrating their victory in a football match. Similarly, a video of a riot elsewhere was shared on Twitter as something that happened in Kerala. On Facebook, pictures of dead cows on the road were shared with posts saying that cows are being ruthlessly butchered in Kerala. This claim was also disproved later. A video of a street play on the murder of Gauri Lankesh was shared widely, alleging that a Hindu woman was being killed in broad daylight in Kerala. That hoax was also busted. Clearly, such campaigns were orchestrated to create communal tensions. There has been a great deal of propaganda against Muslims in the state. One campaign stated that Hindus are not allowed to buy land in Malappuram. This was disproved by the Hindus of Malappuram itself, including the former Foreign Secretary. Tensions were sought to be created by spreading rumours on social media that during the holy month of Ramzan Muslims desecrated a temple at Nilambur. However, police caught the culprit within 24 hours; it turned out that he belonged to the Sangh Parivar. There were messages which said that the Muslims of Perumbavur do not allow the selling of pork there. That too proved to be fake propaganda. Amidst all this, a ‘Boycott Kerala’ campaign is being run with the call to bring the tourism industry in Kerala to its knees. People of

other states are asked not to come to Kerala so as to bring our tourism industry to a standstill. Malicious campaigns such as this might affect the economy of Kerala to a certain extent. It is clear that those who are behind such fake news have no regard for the lives and livelihoods of the people of Kerala. On the one hand, Malayalis accept all Indians as brothers and sisters in the land of Kerala. On the other, all around the world, Kerala is doing India proud by way of its migrant engineers, nurses and doctors. Thus, Kerala is at the forefront of earning the much essential foreign exchange for our country’s exchequer through our human resources. Export of spices, cashew and rubber also strengthens our foreign exchange reserve. Even for international tourists who are another prime source of foreign exchange for the nation, their trip to India is not complete without visiting Kerala, popularly known as ‘God’s Own Country’. Kerala is a state where secularism thrives and communal riots are totally absent. It is a state which offers the best living conditions for our Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. It is also a state where women are better off than they are in many other parts of our country. It worries a few that this small state has made such giant strides in individual and social progress. The fact that they have no role to play here is the guarantee for Kerala’s further prosperity, peace and communal harmony. As you know, the LDF Government has been taking a consistent stand against corruption. You may be aware that there had been a scandal relating to solar schemes during the previous UDF rule. Following a mammoth rally against corruption held in front of the secretariat, the then government was forced to constitute a judicial commission to inquire into the scandal. It was the UDF government that instituted the inquiry and prescribed the terms of reference for the probe. The judicial commission submitted its report to the government two weeks ago. The cabinet after examining the report threadbare decided to take action on it based on the legal opinion it had got. Now, the allegation is that the action taken on the report is politically

motivated. How can that be? Action taken on the report of a commission constituted by their own government cannot be politically motivated. The government has taken the steps that were required by the law of the land. It was the responsibility of the government to submit an action taken report (ATR) on the report submitted by the Judicial Commission. The government policies are that ‘let the law take its course’. The UDF is perturbed by the fact that a commission constituted by them is sending many of them behind bars. Along with ensuring that corruption is uprooted, we have developed a two-pronged strategy to guide us. On the one hand, we will vigorously champion long-term projects to achieve comprehensive and sustainable development of the state. To enable that, we have reconstituted the Kerala Infrastructure Investment Fund Board (KIIFB) so as to attract investments outside the budget for infrastructure development and capital investment. On the other, we will relentlessly proceed with short-term relief measures to provide succour for our disadvantaged sections in their distress. Our social welfare pensions for various sections of the population are a step in this direction. Contrary to popular perception that public sector units cannot be profitable, we have been able to turn the fortunes of several lossmaking public sector units in the state. We are also administering specialized missions to revive our environment and increase agricultural production, to improve our already world acclaimed health care system and public education system, and to ensure housing for all. The four missions, Haritha Keralam Mission, Ardram Mission, Education Mission and LIFE Mission will bring about a lasting change to Kerala’s society. Haritha Keralam Mission intends to preserve nature, clean up the water bodies and ensure scientific waste disposal. Ardram is an ambitious plan to provide quality health care to all the citizens. On the basis of the Education Mission, the classrooms will be converted into Smart Classrooms and schools will be upgraded to centres of excellence. LIFE will ensure land and homes for everyone in

the state. And it also has a scheme to provide at least one job each to the present landless and jobless families. While doing all this, Kerala also bursts the various myths propagated by those few, about this nation, its history, its communities and its path forward. Therefore, it is imperative for them to spread canards so as to tarnish the image of this state that over the years has become a role model. It is heartening to note that even in the face of sustained and orchestrated assaults on the state, Keralites stood together in defence of the concept of Nammude Keralam, which means ‘our Kerala’. Now we are marching towards Nava Keralam, a New Kerala. It is this beacon of hope and model for the rest of India that is being sought to be tarnished for political gains. Carrying forward the tradition of Kerala’s renaissance movement, we have made a bold decision to allow entry for Dalits to the sanctum sanctorum of temples for performing rituals. Thus, we have put forward yet another model of social justice. Yet, it is this society that is being targeted. You are aware of the calls from some quarters to dismiss the present government in Kerala invoking Article 356 of our Constitution. Surely such campaigns will gain momentum in the search for an opposition-free India. But, the progressive, secular and liberal people of Kerala and the country as a whole, will trounce such malicious efforts. Let me conclude by making a request to the journalists who are gathered here. You are expected to uphold the principles of truthfulness, accuracy, objectivity, impartiality, fairness and public accountability in your profession. I am sure you hold journalistic ethics and its moral tenets close to your heart. The values that you cherish demand that you should find out the truth behind the campaign that seeks to tarnish Kerala. All of you are welcome to Kerala to ascertain the facts and truths. Once you drop in, I am sure you will be convinced that the land of Kerala in every respect is peaceful and prosperous.

1

Inaugural Address given at the Delhi Union of Journalists and National Association of Journalists seminar on ‘Democracy in Danger’ at Kerala House Conference Hall, New Delhi, October 15, 2017.

The Intolerance of the RSS At the outset let me express my happiness at being able to participate in such a rally, particularly a rally for communal harmony. 1 Today, in our country, preserving communal harmony is of utmost importance. Several efforts are on across the country to create fissures in our communal harmony. What is especially striking is the fact that it is the Rashtriya Swayaksevak Sangh (RSS), which is leading the Government of our country, that is behind these efforts. The RSS has always been open about this – since its inception, the RSS has propagated discord among religions and sought to spread communal hatred. RSS is not an organization that is in the mainstream of our society. Unfortunately, it is this organization that has the right to decide the policies of our country. The leadership of our Government, including the Indian Prime Minister, functions according to the dictates of the RSS. RSS was formed in 1925, when the Indian freedom struggle was intensifying. RSS functioned for 22 years – from 1925 to 1947 – as the Indian freedom struggle was at its peak. But, we need to recall that the RSS played no role in the Indian freedom struggle. While the RSS played no role in the freedom struggle, they did play their own role during that era. Almost all organizations formed during that period participated in the freedom struggle and adopted the stance that the British should leave the country. There were differing opinions among those who participated in the freedom struggle about how the British should be ousted from India. But all of them were united in the stand that India should be independent and that the British should leave our country. This is where the RSS was different. The RSS at that time not only kept away from the freedom struggle, but they even refused to demand that the British should leave India.

On the contrary, they adopted a stand in favour of the British staying on in India. V. D. Savarkar himself had met the Viceroy and informed him that the Sangh Parivar was not part of the freedom struggle and that their interests were the same as that of the British. 2 RSS has the tradition of having betrayed our freedom struggle. RSS was never ready to see the country as one and to unite the people. Right from the beginning they have attempted to divide the people on communal lines. Thus, the RSS went on to lead communal riots in our country. We need to remember that the RSS is an organization that is against the unity of our country and our people. They have always tried to divide our people. Naturally a pertinent question comes up here. Why was Mahatma Gandhi killed? We need to remember that when Gandhiji was killed, the RSS distributed sweets in the places where they were present. 3 Public anger rose up against the RSS after it killed Gandhiji. The RSS was banned. At that stage, the RSS made efforts to appease some of the rulers at the Centre in a big way in order to get the ban withdrawn. 4 Even after the ban was withdrawn, the RSS has continued on the same path. We need to think about what kind of ideology drives the RSS. Five years after the RSS was formed, in 1930, B. S. Moonje, one of their founding leaders, went to meet a few international leaders of that time. 5 He went to meet the role models of the Sangh Parivar. One of them was the Italian fascist Benito Mussolini. RSS fully adopted the fascist organizational structure of Mussolini’s organization. There were these training centres for Mussolini’s fascist organization where they imparted training to their cadre. Moonje was very excited when he saw them. Moonje discussed with Mussolini the details of that training and how it could be replicated in India. It is that organizational structure which the RSS adopted. It is Mussolini’s fascist organizational form which the RSS follows even today. RSS received its ideology from the Nazism of Hitler’s Germany. There was no other organization in the world that was as overjoyed as

the RSS at Hitler’s annihilation of the minorities. The nations and organizations of the world had condemned what Hitler had done. But the RSS welcomed it and praised it. 6 RSS had publicly said during that time that Germany is the model India should follow in solving our domestic issues. Adolph Hitler annihilated the minorities in Germany. Remember the massacre of the Jews by Hitler. The RSS was excited about such barbaric acts. The godfathers of the RSS, including Golwalkar, have written in praise of such policies of Hitler. Those were the kind of policies which the RSS adopted as their own. The RSS adopted those policies fully in India. In other words, the policies of the RSS and the policies of Hitler are the same. RSS has accepted Hitler’s Nazism as its own ideology. You could see that the language of the RSS is similar to that of Hitler. Hitler wrote about how to deal with the minorities. The RSS adopted the same policy here, in the same form. For Hitler, there was only one group which was a minority in Germany – the Jews. Hitler saw the Jews and the Communists, whom he referred to as Bolsheviks, as the domestic enemies of the country. The same stand and the same policy were written down in their books by the RSS as their own policy. And they have gone on to implement it. Here they said that the major minorities in India – the Muslims and the Christians – are the domestic enemies of the country. Along with them, following up on Hitler, they depict the Communists also as the country’s domestic enemies. Thus, just as minorities and the Communists became domestic enemies for Hitler in Germany, the Muslims, Christians and Communists became the domestic enemies for the RSS in India. This is the policy that the RSS implemented all over the country. It can be seen that it was the RSS which led the communal riots which occurred in India. 7 It is worthwhile to read some of the findings of eminent justices on their investigations of riots in our country. For example, here is an extract from the Justice Joseph Vithyathil Commission on the Tellicherry (Kerala) riots, In Tellicherry, the Hindus and Muslims were living as brothers for centuries. The ‘Mopla riots’ did not affect the cordial relationship

that existed between the two communities in Tellicherry. It was only after the RSS and the Jan Sangh [the precursor to the BJP] set up their units and began activities in Tellicherry that there came a change in the situation. Their anti-Muslim propaganda, its reaction on the Muslims who rallied round their communal organization, the Muslim League, which championed their cause, and the communal tension that followed prepared the background for the disturbances. The Justice Vithyathil Commission heard that the rioters threatened a man named Mohammed, ‘If you want to save your life, you should go around the house three times repeating the words Rama, Rama ’. Muhammed did just that. ‘But you cannot expect the 70 million Muslims of India to do that as a condition for maintaining communal harmony in the country’, the report noted. ‘This attitude of the RSS can only help to compel the Muslims to take shelter under their own communal organization’. The Justice Venugopal Commission on the Kanyakumari riots of 1982 between Hindus and Christians pointed out with some detail how the RSS operated in the area to create a riot, The RSS adopts a militant and aggressive attitude and sets itself up as the champion of what it considers to be the rights of Hindus against minorities. It has taken upon itself to teach the minorities their place and if they are not willing to learn their place to teach them a lesson. The RSS methodology for provoking communal violence is – a) rousing communal feelings in the majority community by the propaganda that Christians are not loyal citizens of this country; b) deepening the fear in the majority community by a clever propaganda that the population of the minorities is increasing and that the Hindus is decreasing; c) infiltrating the administration and inducing the members of the civil and police services by adopting and developing communal attitudes; d) training young people of the majority community in the use of weapons like daggers, swords, and spears; e) spreading

rumours to widen the communal cleavage and deepen communal feelings by giving a communal colour to any trivial incident. Communal riots in which thousands of people were killed have happened in our country. The RSS had led most of these riots. They have special kinds of training for that. How to organise a riot? How to create communal tension? Once the communal tension grows into a riot, they consider what kind of false propaganda should be used to provoke and excite the common people? The RSS has specific training facilities for all of these, as the Justice Venugopal Commission found. This uniformity can be seen in all the communal riots which the RSS led. It can be seen that the particular methods that they learned through their systematic training have been widely used in those riots. RSS is against secularism. That India should not be a secular country has been their stand from the very beginning. On 17 July 1947, Organiser , the RSS mouthpiece, wrote an editorial titled ‘National Flag’. Our national flag – the tricolour – was decided upon after extensive discussions. However, the RSS was absolutely against it. They unleashed a scathing attack against the flag saying that it did not have any elements of our country and that it was not suitable to our country. The name India was also objected to by the RSS. On 31 July 1947, the same Organiser wrote that the name of the country should be Hindusthan [which is different from Hindustan] and not India. All these were as a result of their policy. Their understanding from the very beginning has been that India should be a country with a religion-based state. They are opposed to the idea of a secular country. That is why inside the Parliament, one of our rulers, the Home Minister himself, said that the inclusion of secularism in our constitution was the reason for all our troubles. 8 We should realize that this is what the RSS is about. It is this RSS which today has got the power to decide on the destiny of the country. They are proceeding with utter intolerance. Several hours would be needed to talk about them. Such cruelties have been imposed on our country under their leadership. The RSS has become the manifestation of intolerance. That intolerance has spread

to our country’s rulers as well. Just as they killed Mahatma Gandhi, the Sangh Parivar has killed several people who are important for the country, and who are dear to the people. We have to keep those people in mind. In addition, M. M. Kalburgi’s killing is still on our minds. The secular mind of our nation was pained at that murder. Kalburgi was a progressive writer. Why was he killed? Not just Kalburgi, but Govind Pansare – he was somebody who well exposed the RSS. He exposed their false campaigns on the basis of historical facts. 9 Govind Pansare was killed because of intolerance. Narendra Dabholkar fought strongly against superstitions and evil customs. He was also murdered. None of these three people who were killed had done anything wrong. As progressive writers they were constantly engaged in debates, for our country, for our people. 10 There are so many people here who have been threatened by the RSS. Not just those who have been murdered, but also those who have been working for the benefit of our society, those who are well known within our country. You know of K. S. Bhagawan, you know about the threats against him by the Sangh Parivar. 11 Similarly, Girish Karnad, the Jnanpith award winner, was also not spared by the Sangh Parivar. The RSS has been following a policy which says that they would not tolerate anybody who is not ready to agree with the ideas of the RSS and to surrender to them. Huchangi Prasad is a young poet from Karnataka. He is a Dalit youth. His hand was the target of their knives. Blood was shed. He was threatened that his fingers would be cut off if he writes again. Journalist and writer Chetana Thirthahalli was threatened for not surrendering to the dictates of the RSS. Ignoring the threats, she participated in a DYFI programme, and then she was threatened further. Extremely heinous threats were made against her by the Sangh Parivar: that acid would be poured over her and that she would be raped. The attacks against writer Perumal Murugan, the author of important books about oppression in our society, are well-known. Such was the state of affairs that Perumal Murugan was forced to say that the writer in him

has died. All of these things happened in our country. The things that I mentioned earlier were events that happened in Karnataka. The widely revered intellectual U. R. Ananthamurthy was on his deathbed. That was the moment the RSS chose to spew its venom against him. They sent him an air-ticket to Pakistan! RSS is very keen to pack off many geniuses and distinguished persons to Pakistan. Apart from many prominent persons in our State, they would also like to send famous actors like Shah Rukh Khan and Aamir Khan to Pakistan. M. T. Vasudevan Nair, winner of the Jnanpith award and Padma Bhushan from Kerala, happened to talk about the difficulties faced by the people in the wake of the currency ban. The Sangh Parivar, the RSS, wanted to send him also to Pakistan immediately. They wanted to send Kamal, a famous film director from Kerala, also to Pakistan. They want to send Nandita Das to Pakistan. What is this? All the distinguished persons of our country are supposed to yield to the wishes of the RSS! They are supposed to surrender to the RSS! They should not think independently, they should not express their own ideas! If they do that, if they express ideas different from that of the RSS, they will not be allowed to live in this country, says the RSS. The secular forces of this country have one thing to say, in unity, to the RSS – this country belongs to all of us. The RSS has no special rights here. Everyone who resides here has the right to live here, to express their opinions freely and to write what they want to. The secular forces must in unity take a strong position against the intolerance of the RSS. The RSS has tried to do away with the minorities. It even came down to the RSS attempting to decide what one should eat. This is what led to Mohammed Akhlaq Saifi being beaten up and murdered in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh. You are against us since you belong to a minority, says the Sangh Parivar. An innocent man was killed because of that. Food – in this case beef – was used only as an excuse to kill him. It was later proven that the meat taken from his house was mutton – not beef. Even as minorities were being targeted in Una, Gujarat, this country and the world saw four Dalit boys being stripped naked, tied to a car and beaten up. Dalits are supposed to

skin dead cows and clean others’ toilets; they are supposed to do only certain kinds of jobs. That is what the RSS says. The methods of the same old chaturvarnya (four-varna) caste system were being used against Dalits by the RSS. What we witnessed in Mewat, Haryana was another version of this. A poor farmer and his wife were killed by the RSS. Two young girls of the family who had managed to escape were forced to come back as the criminals pointed a knife at the baby of one of them. They said that the baby’s neck would be slashed if they didn’t come back. This was a direct threat. The girls returned. The girls were gang raped. Everyone else in that family was beaten up brutally. This is what the RSS is doing in our country. Apart from the places I mentioned now, the states of Jharkhand, Jammu & Kashmir and Punjab have all seen attacks on a big scale in the name of beef. You all know about Kerala, about the reform movement led by Sree Narayana Guru. Some comrades told me earlier about the Guru having come to Mangalore and spoken here as well. The result of the continuation of the renaissance movement led by him was that Kerala developed into a strongly secular society. It is in such a place that the RSS set off to establish themselves. The strongest force in Kerala, the Communist movement, the CPI (M) in particular, is their primary enemy. They think that by destroying the Communist movement, they can establish the influence of communalism over Kerala’s society. That is why attacks by the RSS were initiated there. If you examine the history of Kerala, around 600 comrades have been martyred in the State. 205 of those comrades were killed by the RSS. They had not done anything wrong. These comrades took a strong position against communalism as part of their strong stand in defence of secularism. The RSS is intolerant towards that. The RSS is trying to weaken the movement of the comrades who are ready to fight and sacrifice their lives to protect secularism by murdering them. This is what the RSS has been doing continuously in Kerala. Our comrade Sreerama Reddy invited me several months back to participate in this Communal Harmony rally that you have organised. It became possible for me to come only now. When I decided to participate in this rally and the news became public, the intolerance of

the Sangh Parivar came out in the open. Leaders of the RSS and the BJP said that they would not let me set foot here. Some even bragged that they will not let me set foot anywhere outside Kerala. This is what I have to say to the RSS. Quite naturally, in my journeys after I became Chief Minister, I have the protection of the police force, which has the responsibility to protect me. They have weapons to ensure that. It could be said, if you like, that I travel in the midst of the protection of their weapons. It is something that is a customary part of our governance system. But this is what I have to say to the RSS and to those who challenged me: I, Pinarayi Vijayan, did not drop down from the heavens one fine day into the chair of the Chief Minister. I am not someone who doesn’t know you, the RSS, directly either. My political activism all along has proceeded by seeing you and knowing you. Now I travel in the midst of the protection of the weapons of the police. But there was a time when I travelled without it, when I had come to public life after completing my studies at Brennen College, Thalassery. If the new RSS men do not know about those times, they should ask the old RSS men. Then, I had walked amidst the knives you had drawn out and amidst the swords you held up. When you couldn’t do anything to me during those times, what do you think you are going to do to me now? You have been talking about having managed to stop my journey to Madhya Pradesh. As a serving Chief Minister, when I go to another state, it is with basic courtesy that I accept certain things that the government of that State tells me. That government asked me not to go there, and I accepted it. But had it been the Pinarayi Vijayan who was not a Chief Minister, not even Indra (the king of Hindu gods) or Chandra (moon) would have been able to stop me. So, your threats are not going to intimidate me. Then why make such unnecessary statements? Our country has always responded firmly to such forces. All the progressive people here spoke up against the arrogant stand that

somebody would be prevented from coming and speaking here. I thank all those progressive people, and the media, which came out against the RSS stand in this regard. My greetings to all. 1 Speech delivered at the ‘Rally for Communal Harmony’, Mangalore, 25 February

2017.

2

A.G. Noorani, ‘Savarkar and Gandhi’, Frontline , March 15-28, 2003, and ‘Savarkar’s Mercy Petition’, Frontline , March 12-25, 2005.

3 Report on Commission of Inquiry into Conspiracy to Murder Mahatma Gandhi ,

New Delhi: Ministry of Home Affairs, 1970, p. 236.

4 Sanjeev Kelkar, Lost Years of the RSS , New Delhi: Sage Books, 2011. 5 Marzia Casolari, ‘Hindutva’s Foreign Tie-Up in the 1930s: Archival Evidence’,

Economic and Political Weekly , January 22, 2000.

6 A. G. Noorani, ‘Soldiers of the Swastika’, Frontline , January 23, 2015. 7

For evidence, see Report of the Justice Jaganmohan Reddy Commission of Inquiry investigating the Ahmedabad riots of 1969 , Report of the Commission of Inquiry, Tellicherry Disturbance, 1971 , Justice Joseph Vithyathil, Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Communal Disturbances at Jamshedpur, April 1979 , Justice Venugopal Commission of Inquiry into the Kanyakumari riots of 1982 , and so on.

8 Nistula Hebbar, ‘Don’t distort secularism: Rajnath’, The Hindu , November 27,

2015.

9 Govind Pansare, Who Was Shivaji? , New Delhi: LeftWord Books, 2015. 10

Narendra Dabholkar (1945-2015) was a doctor and rationalist who founded the Maharashtra Andashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti (Committee to Eradicate Superstition). He was shot dead by two unidentified men. Govind Pansare (1933-2015) was a leader of the Communist Party of India. He was shot dead by two unidentified men. M.M. Kalburgi (1938-2015) was a scholar of Vachana literature as well as vice-chancellor of Kannada University (Hampi). He was shot dead by two unidentified men.

11 K.S. Bhagawan is a philosopher who has written about Adi-Shankara and is the

translator of William Shakespeare’s plays into Kannada.

RSS Terror One should never ignore the fact that the so-called political violence in Kerala, particularly that of Kannur is being sought to be made a subject of discussion all over the country with a political motive. 1 The political motive is to create an impression that law and order is in dire straits in the state of Kerala. This is not the first time that law and order in Kerala is sought to be made an issue with an ulterior motive. Right from the beginning, that is from 1957 onwards, efforts were on to make it a reason to topple Kerala’s democratically elected Left Government. I need not have to go in to the details of the past as all those things are in everybody’s knowledge. 2 It goes without saying that the government of 1957 was toppled by the Centre following a combined campaign of both the communalists and the imperialists. The present happenings are to be seen against the backdrop of that past. Now, let’s take a look at the recent facts. On the one hand, since the Left Democratic Front (LDF) has come to power in 2016, 6 CPI (M) activists have been killed by the RSS in the state. Over 200 have been attacked and seriously injured as well. Apart from that, more than 80 houses and 35 party offices have also been attacked and destroyed. These have been organised attacks. On the other hand, the Congress and United Democratic Front (UDF) have been endorsing these attacks, with their betraying silence. The CPI (M) has made it amply clear that it is ready for talks with the BJP leadership to put an end to the violence in Kannur. The party is committed to ensure that peace prevails. It is with this in mind that the government took the initiative to put an end to the existing tensions in Kannur. The RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat, on his visit to Kochi during the elections, had expressed his interest in ensuring a

permanent peace in Kannur through talks to sort out the issues. But the fact remains that both the RSS and the BJP are reluctant to send any one in person to participate in serious reconciliation talks. All through, this has been their stand. Earlier also all-party conferences were convened to discuss the issue of a permanent peace. But, generally the BJP abstains. It was because of their attitude that the allparty conferences failed to deliver on their promise. While this is the attitude of the BJP, the fact remains that the CPI (M) supporters have the experience of rushing to the all-party meetings, even when the body of their comrade was on the funeral pyre. I am detailing all this to set the record straight. Deccan Chronicle reported last year (September 2, 2015) that of the 31 political murders that had taken place in the previous 5 years in Kerala, 60% of the victims were from the LDF. All those who cry foul about violence in Kerala should realize that Gujarat leads in the rate of murders, according to the data provided under the Digital India Initiative of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The census 2001 figures of population was used to calculate the number of murders per million. According to that data, in every single year from 2001 to 2010, Gujarat witnessed far more murders than Kerala did. Yet Kerala is sought to be depicted as a State that is marred by a law and order problem. It is to be noted that 198 activists of CPI (M) have been killed by the RSS in a span of 46 years. In Kannur district alone, 65 CPI (M) workers had been annihilated since 1970. Those who are on a spree of gruesome murder in Kerala are trying to portray Kerala as a state marked by violence. It is true; violence is there. It is there because the BJP-RSS combine is there. The first martyr who fell to RSS terror was U.K. Kunhiraman, who was killed by the RSS for having defended the lives of the minority community during the Tellichery communal riot of the 1970s. He did not lose his life on 4 January 1972 in a confrontation. There was no confrontation at all. The only thing that provoked the RSS was that he chose to protect the minority. He was guarding the Meruvambayi

mosque from an RSS attack. It was against the Muslims that the RSS unleashed their onslaught. ‘Kill this son of the Mappilas’, they said as they attacked comrade Kunhiraman. It was against this backdrop that Vithayathil Commission complimented CPI (M), and its intervention in defence of secularism. 3 The present series of killings began with the murder of Com. C.V. Raveendran, who happened to be in a victory celebration procession of the LDF, following the announcement of the results of the assembly election of 2016 at Dharmadam. Not only was he killed, but his children were also attacked. A bomb was thrown towards them and they survived miraculously, even though they received serious injuries all over their body. After the elections I had to leave my constituency for Trivandrum. That gory scene cannot be wiped out even as time passes by. Since the assumption of power by the LDF in May 2016, six CPI (M) workers have been killed by the RSS. The last one who fell victim to this series of atrocious attacks was Com. Mohanan who was a worker at a local toddy shop. He happened to be the branch secretary of the CPI (M). Hence the murder. The design behind these attacks is to terrorize people and drive them away from CPI (M). But what happens in Kannur is the opposite of it. While the vote share of the left registered a meteoric rise, in the assembly election, in comparison to that of the local body election, the share of BJP votes took a nosedive. The BJP is getting alienated from the people day by day. Fed up with the gruesome murder and violence on the part of the BJP, many of its leaders and workers have quit that party and expressed their desire to get associated with the CPI (M). Why does this happen? It happens only because of the fact that even the rank and file of the BJP have started realizing that the CPI (M) is the party that stands wholeheartedly for peace and development. When a claim was there to the effect that the Modi wave was sweeping across the country, dozens of BJP activists led by their National Council Member and their District Secretary left the party and moved towards the CPI (M).

People are increasingly realizing the real facts that are buried underneath the BJP campaign of falsehood. Payyannur is a citadel of the CPI (M) where the BJP’s presence, if at all there is any, is microscopic. Even in such places, where there cannot be any confrontation worth the name, Dhanraj, a CPI (M) activist was brutally murdered by the RSS, without any provocation. Cheruvanchery is an area where the CPI (M) does not have much influence. There, some workers of the Sangh Parivar led by a prominent leader of the BJP chose to cooperate with the CPI (M). Following that one of their leaders became the Block Panchayat President of Koothuparamba. Provoked by this, the CPI (M) office at Cheruvanchery was attacked more than thirty times, by the RSS-BJP forces. Because of this attack, the CPI (M) had to build its office on another spot. The indiscriminate killing is aimed at scoring points, it seems. An armed gang, allegedly connected to the RSS, rushed to the house of Sivaprasad, an SFI activist, and as he was away from home, his father, Mr. Narayanan Nair, an office bearer of a temple committee, was brutally killed. Recently the national conference of the BJP was held at Calicut in Kerala and the focused call made there was to ‘react’ to the Marxists. Before that, a special ‘Baitak’ of the RSS, in which Mohan Bhagwat, the RSS Sarsanghchalak had attended, also called upon their followers to ‘react’. It is to be noted that the BJP intensified its politics of violence, after that conference. It was after that conference that five comrades of the CPI (M) were killed in quick succession. Recently, A.K. Balan, Minister for Social Welfare convened a reconciliatory conference and it was agreed that there should not be any kind of provocation from any quarters. Within hours of its conclusion, a bomb was hurled against a DYFI demonstration, and two DYFI workers sustained serious injuries. This is the way in which they disrupt the conciliatory efforts.

It is everybody’s knowledge that Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the nation was assassinated by a fanatic. Nathuram Godse is not a person, but an ideology. The forces that are driven by that venomous ideology have on the one hand started demanding that a shrine needs to be built in his name, and on the other, started disrupting the secular social fabric of the country with an ulterior objective of setting up a theocratic state. 4 It is with this larger concept in mind that the party wedded to communalism and racism is trying to do away with the secular democratic parties that hold the national values close to their heart. The CPI (M) is made a target, as it stands apart with the high ideals ranging from humanism to secularism, which are anathema to the Sangh Parivar. The only guarantee for secularism in the present day India is the vigil and alertness on the part of the Left. That is why the Left is the declared foe of the Sangh Parivar forces. History gives us ample evidence to prove that the character of the Sangh Parivar is in no way different from that of the Nazi-Fascist forces. Dr. B. S. Moonje, who was the mentor of Dr. Hedgewar, who founded the RSS had been to Italy to meet Mussolini, the fascist dictator, before establishing the Central Hindu Military education society in Nasik. The founding father of the Hindutva forces have gone on record that racist pride is at its zenith in Germany and we in India have to emulate it and reap the benefit of it, by purging the Muslims, Communists, Christians, Parsis and others. Golwalkar wrote that the ‘hostile elements within the country pose a far greater menace to national security than aggressors from outside’. 5 He identified three major ‘Internal Threats: 1: The Muslims; 2: The Christians; 3: The Communists’. He also went on to write, ‘To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic Races – the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how impossible it is for Races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by’. What

Golwalkar proclaimed in 1939 was that ‘If we have to make gains in Hindustan, we should emulate this lesson’. What lesson? Fascist lesson or Nazi lesson or both! The terror unleashed by the Sangh Parivar forces in Kerala is part and parcel of their grand design to establish fascist hegemony by imposing communal frenzy, by disrupting the secular fabric of the society and then by converting India into a theological state that wipes away the minorities, the marginalized sections and the dispossessed. It is against this backdrop that this exhibition in Delhi depicting the gruesome scenes created by the RSS assumes greater significance. It puts the record straight, removes the misgivings, corrects the misunderstandings and above all exposes the gory face and the true nature of the blood thirsty Sangh Parivar once again. The RSS is an organization that has grown on lies and deceit. Golwalkar, its ideologue had claimed that the Communists were an internal threat to their design for India, along with the minorities, in his book Bunch of Thoughts (1966). The Sangh Parivar refuses to accept the Indian Constitution and the Indian National Flag and their brazen disrespect to both on multiple occasions are there for all of us to see. It is necessary to go into the history of political murders in Kerala, particularly North Kerala and read it alongside the politics of RSS that excludes and discriminates against people. Muslims, Dalits, Tribals, North Easterners, Women, Sexual Minorities and so on are always portrayed as ‘the other’ by the RSS, fostering a politics of hate. That is combined with the false nationalism that worships V. D. Savarkar. It conveniently forgets the fact that he was not part of the Indian freedom struggle. We need to be critical of the communal riots that seeped in across the country under the aegis of the Sangh Parivar and their growth on the back of violent assaults on the communists in Maharashtra and so on. Their efforts to create riots in Thalassery was thwarted by the CPI (M) in 1971. The Vithayathil Commission which probed the riot was on record that the only political party which came in defence of the minorities there was the CPI (M). It is to be noted that this remark

was made even though the CPI (M) had not deposed before the commission. Later the communists resisted the menacing influx of heavily armed Sanghi elements from across the states border. Particularly the agricultural workers, beedi workers, youth and students were in the forefront of the fight against communalists. This resistance has resulted in about 200 comrades of ours falling to the blades of the Sangh Parivar over the years that followed. In Kerala, the CPI (M) is the biggest enemy of the RSS because the CPI (M) has great support amongst the masses, unlike the RSS. Despite their efforts to make inroads into the state, they have not been able to win over the minds of the masses which strongly stand by the Left. It is precisely because of this popular support that the CPI (M) and the Left enjoys among the vast majority of the people in the state, and Kannur in particular, that the RSS does not have any option but to resort to arms. This is the social factor that prompts the RSS to physically terminate the communists who steadfastly stand in defence of secularism, which they seek to do away with. What strikes me is the fact that there are no reports in the mainstream media on the brutal murder of Communists by the RSS in Kannur. On the afternoon of October 10, 2016, Hartal in Kannur Tomorrow was the news headline. This ran non-stop on the television media. What was hushed up behind those lines was the brutal killing of a widely cherished communist leader, Mohanan. He was the CPI (M)’s Paduvilayi local committee member. He was hacked to death at work in Pathiriyad, Kannur district. I would request you to recall that there was a march by the BJP to the CPI (M) Central Committee Office here in New Delhi. While the protest was being held here, their own fellows were murdering one of our comrades in Kannur. The slogan they raised here was that the LDF Government in Kerala is aiding violence against them in the state. Though the CPI (M) has been reiterating that it is at the receiving end of the violence in Kerala, and even in West Bengal, over the last few years, the national media hardly takes notice of it. It is imperative

for us to take this message to the masses now. Hence, the Kerala State Committee of the CPI (M) deemed it fit to conduct this exhibition and to make materials of the RSS violence available in English. I hope that this exhibition would touch the hearts of the viewers and make them aware of what really happens in Kerala. 1 Speech at the Inauguration of the Exhibition of ‘RSS Terror in Kerala’ (New

Delhi), 16 November 2016.

2 In case they are not: in 1959, the central government pushed an agenda to use

anti-democratic means to remove the Left government led by E. M. S. Namboodiripad. The Vimochana Samaran, the anti-communist movement, was used as the weapon by which to invoke Article 356 of the Indian Constitution and dismiss the government.

3

Report of the Commission of Inquiry (Tellicherry Disturbances, 1971) – the Justice Joseph Vithayathil Report.

4 Mohammed Ali, ‘Hindu Mahasabha to install Godse statues in temples’, The

Hindu , January 29, 2015 and Rajiv Srivastava, ‘Hindu Mahasabhat to build Godse’s temple’, Times of India , December 23, 2014.

5

M.S. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts (1966, reprint Bangalore: Jagarana Prakashana, 2nd edition, 1980), p. 232-33.

Secularism and Minorities We have gathered here to carry forward the efforts to strengthen the ideals of secularism. 1 Kozhikode is a land which safeguards secularism very strongly in its politics, in its culture and in the foundation of its social life. This is a land which forged links long ago with different regions. The culture of this place developed through interactions with the Arabs, the Chinese and people from other parts of the world. This is a land with a blend of different kinds of music, for example, the ghazal. This is the land of Kunjali Marakkar, the brave warriors who scripted a courageous episode in the anti-colonial struggle. This Kunjali, the fourth in the late 16th century, had a Chinese lieutenant – Chinali – who converted to Islam and joined the Kunjali in his battles against the Portuguese. Kozhikode is a place where there were speeches in mosques which honoured both the Zamorin and the Caliph. The soil of Kozhikode is one where the leaders of the national movement waged their struggles. It is a place where fighters like P. Krishna Pillai and Muhammad Abdul Rahman endured brutalities during the freedom struggle. We should recognize that struggles like these were the ones which provided the basic energy for the secularism that our country was based upon. Our constitution and rules of social life were shaped by such struggles. The outlook on secularism, parliamentary democracy, federalism and socialism are the most noteworthy among the fundamental perspectives put forward by the Indian constitution. When combined with the idea of ‘unity in diversity’, these ideas of federalism and socialism constitute the fundamental features of our country. Such a vision evolved in the Indian constitution on the basis of the

perspectives put forward by the national movement given the international context. It is true that the Congress governments which came to power later diluted this vision. However, popular struggles had been able to build a foundation in the country which was strong enough to prevent the destruction of such values. But today things are changing, and that is something that should shock anybody who loves the country. BJP, the party which rules the country today, is led by the RSS. Its ideals came from Hitler, who was the Nazi leader in Germany. That is why the RSS ideologue Golwalkar said the following in his book We, or Our Nationhood Defined (1939) about the RSS philosophy, on the basis of the German experience, Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for Races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by. What becomes clear from this? It shows that the RSS cannot accept the outlook regarding our nationalism which includes diverse cultures and ways of living. Because of this, the BJP, which is controlled by the RSS, cannot countenance this feature of Indian nationalism. This is why the CPI (M) takes the position that the BJP is a party which is different from other political parties and which ought to be more strongly opposed. For the same reason, the CPI (M) takes a strong stand against the ideals of the BJP. People’s interests cannot be protected in a country which is polarized on communal lines. It is the responsibility of working-class politics to eliminate such a condition in order to move the lives of the workers and the peasants forward. The RSS’s organizational form is taken from the fascists of Italy. The views of Mussolini from Italy are behind this. B.S. Moonje, one of the founder leaders of the RSS, visited Mussolini. Moonje noted in his diary about copying the Italian fascists’ organizational form into RSS.

This points to the fact that the ideals and organizational form of the RSS, which often talks about ‘foreign ideologies’, come from antihuman theories such as fascism. Encouraging communal thinking was one of the ways that the British used to divide the Indian national movement during the freedom struggle. While the British adopted the strategy of ‘divide and rule’, the RSS framed its policies in keeping with this strategy. Not only did this organization, formed in 1925, not take part in the freedom struggle, it also adopted positions which amounted to a rejection of the freedom struggle. In his book Bunch of Thoughts (1966), RSS ideologue M.S. Golwalkar treats the idea of HinduMuslim unity with contempt. He says in the book, Those who declared ‘No swaraj without Hindu-Muslim unity’ have thus perpetrated the greatest treason on our society. They have committed the most heinous sin of killing the life-spirit of a great and ancient people. . . . [This] has no parallel in the history of the world for the sheer magnitude of its betrayal. We should remember that it is this idea which resulted in the assassination of Gandhiji who gave utmost importance to HindiMuslim unity. The freedom fighters in India’s First War of Independence of 1857 declared the Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar as India’s emperor. But the RSS has not been able to accept it. When the British ridiculed the 1857 War by calling it a ‘Sepoy Mutiny’, it was Karl Marx who wrote, while it was still going on, that it is the first Indian freedom struggle. The RSS notion of patriotism – drawn from fascism – is utterly different from the Communist notion of patriotism – drawn from our own history of struggle against colonialism. We need to remember that the Jan Sangh, the political wing of the RSS, had adopted anti-people ideas with regard to economic policy from its origin in 1951. The Jan Sangh was opposed to the establishment of public sector enterprises from the 1950s. On whose

side the Sangh Parivar is with regard to economic policy becomes clear from its support for the ‘free market’. They put forward the policy of letting the market loose in an unrestrained manner while intensifying communal polarization.

The major characteristic of Indian society is its diversity. Indian nationalism is something that accepts and includes all these diversities. Nationalism in each country will have its own special feature. The notable feature about India is its ability to develop while including diversities. That is something that differentiates our nationalism from many other nationalisms. There is no common language that all Indians speak, nor is there a common culture that all Indians share. But the sentiment of being Indians exists strongly among the people. This feature of Indian nationalism includes the country’s diversity as essential to its idea of society. Strengthening this is indispensable to move our country forward. We should recognize that any attitude which is opposed to this will lead to the fragmentation of our country. We should also realize that a fragmented polity is only beneficial to the interests of imperialism. The basis of the formation of Indian nationalism was, among others, the fight against the British. It was the national movement which led to the development of the sentiment of a nation called India, from the situation earlier where India existed as various princely states. Our own Kerala was formed through the merger of three regions – two princely states and one district of a British province. Thus, the national consciousness that the freedom struggle gave rise to tried to grow by including a diverse social world. The idea of our nation developed through the unity of various languages and cultures. The vision that we had was to see the country as one, while each region retains its specialities. That is why an approach that supports federalism emerged here.

The idea of forming linguistic states is part of that. We should not forget that the RSS was against the formation of linguistic states. During the time of the national movement, India raised popular patriotic slogans in different languages. The beautiful patriotic song Saare jahaan se achha Hindustan hamaara (Better than the entire world is our Hindustan) was written by Muhammad Iqbal. While Iqbal wrote the song in Urdu, Subramania Bharathi wrote Paarukkulle nalla naadu, yengal Bhaaratha naadu (Our land India, the best in the world) in Tamil, on the same theme. In Kerala, Vallathol Narayana Menon sang Bhaarathamenna peru kettaal abhimaana poorithamaakanam antharangam (Our heart should fill with pride when we hear the name ‘India’). India’s feature is that we declare that we are one while staying rooted in diverse languages and cultures. But the Sangh Parivar and other communal forces are unable to accept social and cultural diversity. All cultures of the world have grown by absorbing other cultures and lifestyles. No land or culture has grown without such mutual inclusion. There is no region in the world where the people have managed to develop their culture or language without learning from people from elsewhere. Whether it is the Malayalam that we speak or any other language in India, all of them have grown by taking in words and idioms from many other languages. Our way of dressing also developed through interaction with various cultures. Many things including our cuisine were systematized in this manner. Even our technology took shape through such giving and taking, and grew as per the specificities of our land. Even Onam celebrations in Kerala take place in diverse ways. Vegetarian food is not so important for the people of Malabar while celebrating Onam. Things are different, on the other hand, when we come to the south of Kerala. Thus our legacy is something which has developed into an ocean of diversities. Such ways of fusion at the grassroots level stand as the bedrock of secularism. Precisely because of that the Sangh Parivar seeks to eliminate such practices. They

clamour against our unity beyond religions with regard to food and attire. We must resist all attempts to interfere in the micro-aspects of life carried out with the objective of dividing us along communal lines. For that, we have to be able to form platforms which will help people understand and be inclusive of the cultures and lifestyles of our land. Through such platforms, people should be able to share experiences and understand each other. The state government has been intervening to strengthen our art and cultural platforms and cultural institutions in order to strengthen the apparatuses of secularism at the grassroots level.

We should recognize that protecting the rights of minorities is also important for the synthesis and protection of cultures. Protecting minorities is indispensable for the protection of secular culture and of the principle of unity in diversity. A culture which protects the culture and lifestyle of minorities needs to develop for an inclusive nationalism to stand firm. We need to be able to develop this as a view of life itself. That is part of a democratic outlook. When the majority community has an upper hand in the ways that we organize social life, minority communities would inevitably require special protection in order to safeguard their cultures and ways of living. Only then would the minority communities feel that their ways of living are also being included along with those which have had an upper hand. This will help remove feelings of insecurity among the minorities, and the alienation that develops along with such feelings. Protection of minority rights is also crucial to resist the penetration of communal and terroristic ideas. We should recognize that protecting minority rights amounts to strengthening secularism, not destroying it. Whether the minority communities of a country are secure is also one of the yardsticks of the strength of secularism and democracy in that society. What the Sangh Parivar is doing in today’s Indian context

is to create insecurity among the minorities. It is such insecurity which produces fertile ground for communal and extremist views. We must realize that the strengthening of minority communalism is a result, apart from other things, of the Sangh Parivar’s wrong policies. The RSS often talks about terrorism. But it is the RSS itself which is working in the most wide-ranging manner as the sponsor of terrorism in the country. It can be seen that the Sangh Parivar was behind terrorist acts such as the Malegaon blast, Mecca Masjid bombing and the Samjhauta Express blast. Many of these were terrorist acts they perpetrated in order to brand people from the minority communities as terrorists. These incidents expose the hollowness of the Sangh Parivar’s propaganda. All citizens have the freedom to have their own beliefs. They have the right to adopt whichever religion they want. Steps which hamper this right are an encroachment on the rights of citizens in a democratic society. Believers should have the right to believe, and non-believers should have the right to remain so. We have to develop a secularism where religion does not interfere in politics, and politics does not interfere in religion.

The Sangh Parivar knows that in order to implement its communal agenda in India, it has to destroy our secular culture, our system of parliamentary democracy and our federalism. The Sangh Parivar is afraid of the national vision of unity in diversity. Therefore, they have been using government machinery to dismantle all of these. As soon as the BJP government took charge, they dissolved the Planning Commission. They struck at the roots of federalism. The NITI Aayog which was formed in place of the Planning Commission has been trying to introduce centralized modes of operation by even directing gram sabhas . Even the right of the states to decide their own taxes has been removed by means of the Goods and Services Tax (GST). They have been trying to push debates on introducing the Presidential system, which centralizes power, in place of the

Parliamentary system. In this manner, the federal system which protects diversity is being destroyed. The Sangh Parivar is implementing plans to communalize history. When the British were in power in India, they tried to implement similar plans to communalize history. It was James Mill who divided Indian history into a ‘Hindu period’, a ‘Muslim period’ and a ‘British period’, and indulged in communal history writing by propagating the claim that pre-British India was one where fights between Hindus and Muslims were rife. History also records that it was the British historians of those times who propagated the claim that there was a temple beneath the place where the Babri Masjid existed. The BJP government is implementing the same imperialist agenda of communalizing history and dividing people. Appointing Sudershan Rao as the head of the Indian Council of Historical Research is part of this process. The attempts to destroy campuses which uphold secular culture are part of the efforts to implement the Sangh Parivar agenda in history and thought. We must rise up to support the resistance against this being put up countrywide by the academic community. The Sangh Parivar’s government machinery has been trying to weaken the popular protests against the policies of the government by creating communal polarization. If we examine the history of communal violence, we would find that such incidents used to happen mostly in urban areas. But today the Sangh Parivar has been deliberately spreading communal tensions in India’s villages. They are trying to see if they can keep themselves in power by creating communal polarization in rural areas. They had instigated communal violence in the run-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections in order to gain power. In Uttar Pradesh, after Yogi Adityanath came to power, innocents have been killed in the name of beef with the objective of creating communal divisions. Agonizing incidents of common people being beaten to death and hung from trees are taking place. The tragedies of our sisters and brothers such as Junaid, who was attacked and killed in a train just because he was a Muslim, have brought disgrace to our

country. The Sangh Parivar’s game plan is to eliminate everybody who is opposed to their agenda. After Kalburgi, Dabholkar and Govind Pansare, they have now killed Gauri Lankesh as well. The reality is that the Sangh Parivar, which waxes eloquent all across the country about terrorism, is the biggest terrorist organization in India.

The BJP has been vigorously implementing globalization policies. Of course, the successors of the Jan Sangh which put forward ideas supporting the free market very early on would not find any problem in this. Even as they implement such policies, they are trying to create communal polarization in the country so that the protests against their economic policies are weakened. Globalization policies are creating widespread misery among the people. We have to mobilize the people to fight against such policies while putting forward alternative economic policies. At the same time, we have to mount a powerful resistance against the Sangh Parivar agenda of violent communalism. The Congress Party made people’s lives miserable by implementing globalization policies since 1991. They also compromised with communalism for political gains. The Congress Party abandoned our anti-imperialist foreign policy which was the legacy of the freedom struggle. They did not take measures to improve the living conditions of the people of the country. The BJP came to power by taking advantage of this situation, by creating a smokescreen around its propaganda on ‘development’ while sneaking in their communal agenda and creating communal divisions. While looking at India’s political history, it becomes clear that these compromises by the Congress created the conditions for BJP’s growth.

It has become clear that the Congress cannot lead the struggles to defeat the BJP. The Congress made an alliance with the Samajwadi

Party in Uttar Pradesh and contested against the BJP. They ended up losing heavily. Some secular parties allied with the Congress in the name of a grand alliance in Bihar, without a clear policy programme. Although they had temporary success, the alliance ended up delivering the dominant faction of the Janata Dal (United) to the BJP-led alliance. This shows that what we need are anti-BJP fronts on the basis of clear policies and programmes. To defeat the BJP, an alliance which has a firm stance against globalization policies and communalism needs to be forged. It is the Left which has a strong position on these issues. What we need in the country is an alliance on the basis of strong Left unity, and which also brings together the democratic forces which agree with this position. The alliance should be one based on united struggles and clear, alternative policies. Experience reminds us that the regions where the Left gained strength have been the places which remained free of communal riots. We remember the alliances made by the right-wing in Kerala with the BJP as part of their attempt to destroy the Left. From the VatakaraBeypore experiment to the BJP’s alliance with caste organizations in the last Assembly elections, it was the Left which strongly fought and defeated such efforts. We should remember that the Congress-led United Democratic Front was at that time making compromises such as withdrawing cases against people like Pravin Togadia. Bengal was a region which witnessed numerous communal riots in the 1940s. But as the Left gained in strength there, Bengal became a centre of religious harmony. When Muslims were chased out of Bombay, when there was an inflow of refugees from Bangladesh, and when the Gujarat pogrom occurred, West Bengal became a refuge for those people. But after the Left lost the elections in 2011, communal riots have been happening in various parts of Bengal. At the same time, Tripura has been free of communal riots, even as the BJP has been trying to make the Bengalis and tribals fight each other. Needless to say, Kerala has been free of communal riots as well.

It is the Left which has been strongly fighting the Sangh Parivar’s ideas all across the country. The CPI (M) has been taking a leading role in this fight. This is precisely why the Sangh Parivar has been unleashing intense attacks against the CPI (M). The Central Committee office of the CPI (M) was attacked several times. There was even an attempt to manhandle the Party’s General Secretary. The house of Kerala State Secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan was also attacked. The CPI (M) is being attacked in this manner because it resists the Sangh Parivar agenda firmly. The CPI (M) is committed to protecting the rights of minority communities and the overall interests of the country. The Kerala State government has been taking a strong stance to safeguard secularism. The state government is oath-bound to protect all rights of religious minorities. Let me conclude by reminding everyone that all of us should vigilantly work together to strengthen the ideals of secularism and to protect diversities. 1 National Seminar Against Communal Fascism, Kozhikode (Kerala), September 6,

2017.

Strong Centre, Content States Centre-State relations have emerged again as an active issue. 1 Of course, it has a long history, from the time of our freedom struggle when Gandhiji emphasized the idea of ‘Grama Swaraj’. Discussions about Centre-State relations increased in independent India, where we are governed by the Constitution which was influenced by the ideals of secularism and federalism – key values of the freedom struggle. The concept of our nation is influenced by these debates, which gave rise to the ideas of ‘unity in diversity’ and parliamentary democracy. The present structure of federalism in India has several limitations. Such limitations have been subject to discussion in the country. The structure has been described as a unitary structure with federal characteristics. The fact that the Centre has more fiscal and monetary power than the States and that it has the power to dismiss the state governments has come to the fore in these discussions. Despite these limitations, it is true that the Indian system has beneficial federal characteristics and a system of governance that is allied to that structure. The Left has always intervened so as to strengthen India’s federal structure – from within the freedom struggle to the present. To further democratize our structure of governance, our Centre-State relations have to be revamped in such a way that it strengthens our federal structure. We should have a realistic understanding that only such measures can strengthen our unity and integrity while moving forward. The BJP – led by the Sangh Parivar – has a political agenda that seeks to destroy our federal structure. In power now, the BJP has unleashed a political agenda to destroy our federal structure. The BJP government is pushing the RSS slogan of Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan .

This is its alternative to the federal structure. Resistance to the BJP’s efforts to push this centralized structure has begun across the country.

If we analyse the formation of our federal system, we see that there are three phases to it. FIRST PHASE In the first phase came the struggles for the linguistic reorganization of states. We saw the struggles for Vishala Andhra, for Aikya Kerala and for Samyukta Maharashtra. In Tamil Nadu, we saw several struggles to preserve the rights to the Tamil language. The Congress was not prepared to adopt the policy to re-organize states on linguistic lines. The Jan Sangh – the parent of the BJP – was completely against the idea as well. However, the re-organization of states on linguistic lines paved the way for the formation of states with a distinguished identity. This was the first phase of the struggle with regard to the identity of states. In the first decades of independent India, we had the same party rule both at the Centre and the States. This was the era of single-party rule. The issues related to the States were not discussed actively in those days. In 1957, when the Communist Party of India came to power in Kerala, the state experienced drastic changes in varied fields, including land reform. The Centre dismissed the Communist-led government. It was a grave attack on the federal structure of India. SECOND PHASE Towards the end of the 1960s, a new situation emerged in India. Regional parties came to power, forming governments in the States. Left Front governments in Kerala and later in West Bengal brought to the limelight the need for reframing Centre-State relations with added federal characteristics. The Kerala government under the Communist Party even submitted a set of recommendations to the National

Development Council in this regard. Issues based on the Centre-State financial relations were mentioned in this memorandum. A similar trajectory can be seen in Tamil Nadu at this time. On August 19, 1969, a committee chaired by Dr. P.V. Rajamannar studied the Centre-State relations and discussed what powers needed to be handed over by the Centre to the State. The Rajamannar Committee submitted its report, with its recommendations, on May 27, 1971. On the basis of this Rajamannar Report, a resolution was adopted by the Tamil Nadu government that the Centre should accept the Rajamannar Committee Report, which represented the Tamil Nadu government’s views on the autonomy of States. They sought a constitutional amendment to protect the rights of the States. This was how the Left and regional democratic forces argued for a Federal structure. In 1989, when the National Front government came to power, there were efforts to strengthen our federal principles. An Inter-State Council was formed in 1990. We need to realize that it was the intervention of the Left and the democratic forces which emerged as the voice for strengthening federalism in our country. THIRD PHASE In our times, we cannot discuss Centre-State relations in isolation. We have to incorporate the problems created by neoliberal policies when we look at Centre-State relations. As regulations have been eroded, a free-market economy driven by capitalist competition has emerged in which the big bourgeoisie plays a key role. Through instruments such as the NITI Aayog and by wielding undemocratic monetary and fiscal powers, the Centre is thrusting neoliberal reforms on the States. The Centre, using its power against the States, can take a partisan attitude towards governments from parties that do not subscribe to its views. Even funds for the States are being cut down if they do not implement the Centre’s policies. This prevents the States from devising programmes that are best suited to the needs and interests of the people – as understood by state governments. It needs to be noted that people vote for their state governments as an approval of the

manifestos presented to them. Particularly in instances where the state government’s manifestos are against neoliberal policies, the attitude of the Centre is a hurdle to fulfilling their promises to the people. States even have to compete with each other to attract capital investments. It is creating a situation where competition and imbalance between the States are on the rise. As the Centre has cut down on the general allotment of funds for the States, some States are even experiencing economic hardships. Neoliberal policies are today weakening the federal system. The Planning Commission itself has been done away with. A situation has emerged in which the Central government is bypassing the state governments and directly engaging with the village panchayats. Even bodies meant to strengthen federalism, such as the National Development Council and the Inter-State Council, are not being convened. In short, the country is being driven to a unitary system where the States have hardly any avenues for expressing their concerns. This approach, which is being presented as part of the neoliberal policies, fits in neatly with the Sangh Parivar’s ideas. The Jan Sangh was in favour of free-market policy frameworks from the early years of our republic. They were against the formation of linguistic states as well. We have to realize that Federalism is based on the principle of unity in diversity. It is also essential to retain democratic institutions to ensure that it continues to remain so. Essentially, federalism, democracy and unity in diversity are all linked to one another. What the Sangh Parivar is doing is to purposefully destroy all this. The Sangh Parivar promotes the idea of Presidential Democracy, to replace our existing Parliamentary Democracy. Indian nationalism is special because it includes in itself diverse cultures. Our freedom struggle had imbibed this understanding. However, the Sangh Parivar is unable to accept this speciality of ours which accepts diversities and prosperity on the basis of that.

Our country has several diverse languages. Our duty is to enrich all those languages. However, the BJP government and its allies seek to impose Hindi above all our languages. The RSS idea of Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan seeks to destroy our idea of unity in diversity. As the RSS and its Sangh Parivar were not part of the freedom struggle movement, they will not be able to imbibe this grand idea of our national movement. There is no language that is commonly spoken by all Indians. There is no common culture either. Yet, the sentiment of Indian-ness runs strongly in the people. The idea of ‘we’, which encompasses all diversities, is the essence of Indian nationalism. Even during the national movement, we raised our most patriotic slogans in different languages. Iqbal wrote the most beautiful patriotic song ‘Saare Jahaan Se Achha’ in Urdu. Bharathi sang in Tamil as ‘Paarukkulle Nalla Naadu Yengal Bhaaratha Naadu’. In Kerala, Vallathol sang it in Malayalam as ‘Bhaarathamenna Peru Kettaal Abhimaana Poorithamaakanam Antharangam’. What sets India apart is the fact that standing firm in different languages and cultures, we proclaim that we are one. We should be able to go forward, imbibing this grand idea. We should work together to realize a system where a strong Centre, content States, and local bodies that develop into regional governments exist. A nation that is divided will only be beneficial for the imperialist forces. What is the stand that we need to take at this juncture? We should be able to put forth this idea of a strong Centre and content States. Planning and coordination of economic progress should come under the Centre. But, in other areas, the States should have the freedom to act according to their situations. The Centre should try to enable the States, not disable them. Even with regard to the tax structure, changes should be brought in to this effect. States should have the freedom to formulate even centrally sponsored schemes in such a way that it suits their interests. We should be able to do away with Article 356 of the Constitution, which the Centre uses to arbitrarily dismiss State governments.

Our country needs a structure which strengthens a federal system rooted in the resources of the states. Such an approach is essential to overcome the problems of development in the states. However, in our country, instead of developing something like this, what happens is that political parties who have formed state governments exert pressure on the Centre to secure the resources they need. This forces the regional parties to support the policies of the party ruling at the Centre. It also leads them to become part of faulty political practices. The Congress and the BJP have tried to make use of this situation for their benefit at the Centre. Instead, we need to fight to establish a truly federal structure. Both the Congress and the BJP have only undermined the spirit of Federalism. We have seen that it is the Left and the regional democratic forces that have stood for the strengthening of a federal structure. We need to realize that the struggle to safeguard secularism and parliamentary democracy is also part of the struggle to strengthen Federalism. We need political alliances emerging in the country towards this end. We need to realize that simply raising the slogan of the autonomy of the States cannot solve the issues our people face. Alongside this slogan, we have to be able to champion policies that cater to the needs of ordinary people. Left parties and democratic forces need to go forward on the basis of a common programme to that effect. Along with attempting to strengthen Federalism, Kerala’s Left Democratic Front government is championing policies that have the characteristics of the people’s alternative to globalization. The public sector is being protected and public expenditure in agriculture has been increased. Alongside this, schemes are being chalked out to create basic infrastructure across the state. Through LIFE Mission efforts are underway to ensure housing for all. Public education is being protected through another mission as well. Quality healthcare is also being ensured to all through the Ardram Mission. Even when the country is rife with communal tensions and riots, Kerala is free of

communal and caste-based tensions, thanks to the presence of a formidable Left. The state government in Kerala is presenting an alternative to globalization, upholding secularism and strengthening federalism through its programmes. We should be able to implement similar programmes across the States in our country and convince the public that a people’s alternative is possible. The performance of state governments in Tripura and Kerala makes it clear that much can be done which is useful for the public at large by bringing Left, Progressive and Democratic forces together to create a people’s alternative. The rights of the States can only be protected by an alliance based on a common programme which fosters Left unity with the democratic forces. Our country needs a Federal structure, where a strong Centre, content States, and local bodies that develop into regional governments exist. There is no doubt that conferences such as this will help to be actively involved in the struggles to achieve the same. 1 State Autonomy Conference, Chennai, September 21, 2017.

The Liberation of Women is Essential to the Liberation of Our Society as a Whole Revolutionary Greetings to all the delegates and guests at this historic All-India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) national conference. 1 It is with immense happiness that I address this gathering, which consists of valiant fighters who strive for ushering in an era which will be marked by the progressive values of gender equality and social justice. I am aware that AIDWA all along has been in the thick of struggles and that is why more and more sections of women get increasingly attracted towards this movement, which has always stood for the demands of women and fights in their defence. In our country, the remnants of feudal values continue to exist. Along with the capitalist dispensation, these feudal values are highly detrimental to the important cause of women’s liberation. The ideas put forward by such feudal mind-sets only paves the way to ensure that women are restricted even in their domestic lives while they are already relegated to a secondary role in the public sphere. In these disheartening times, it is encouraging that our comrades under the banner of AIDWA have resisted such anti-women moves in the society at large like moral policing, Khap Panchayats and honour killings. They have also been at the forefront of protests against various antiwomen measures imposed by the various state and central governments, be it budget cuts, wage inequality, attacks on their voting rights and so on. On the much-hyped National Food Security Act (2013), which has a direct bearing on women as they manage the

households of our country, the government did not raise the per capita availability of subsidised ration, even though the AIDWA had vociferously campaigned for it. On the issue of honour killings, AIDWA fought relentlessly for Public Hearings. On the issues of Dalit Women, all AIDWA state units have organised conventions for their rights and against untouchability, even in the neighbouring state of Uttar Pradesh that has the higher number of atrocities against Dalits in the country. AIDWA has been at the forefront of struggles for civic amenities, wages, food, employment, land and against dowry and domestic violence. I salute the resilience and endurance of AIDWA and its cadre that has given a fillip to women’s liberation in our country. I am sure the spirited fighters of AIDWA gathered here have several experiences to share, of how they have fought and defeated inequality and violence through immense struggles. At the moment, I am reminded of the legendary leaders of AIDWA, such as Pappa Umanath and Susheela Gopalan and the formative years of the organization working for women’s rights and for their education, employment and status, along with issues like casteism, communalism and child rights. I recall the inaugural session of AIDWA’s 10 th National Conference, which was held in Bodh Gaya, Bihar, in 2013. It featured a special session titled ‘Women against Violence: Fighting for Justice, Resisting Violence, Claiming Rights’, where women from across the country who had been fighting the battle against violence, discrimination and social injustice in various forms which includes domestic and political violence, sexual assault, fight for land rights, fight against caste and communal discrimination and against terrorism spoke. Their stories continue to inspire us. The status of women in India need not be elaborated to this gathering. Indices on employment, education, wage-pay gap and safety reveal a sad state of affairs. The situation is all the more telling particularly with regard to Dalit and minority women in India, where it is a story of double if not triple if not quadruple oppression. No matter what is being said about the girl child, the fact remains that female employment is falling in the country. Wage discrimination

between men and women workers in several sectors is increasing. Amid a raging debate over gender pay gap globally, a new report shows the figure for India stands as high as 25.4 per cent, where men earn a median gross hourly salary of Rs. 288.68, while women earn Rs, 207.85 per hour. 2 The IT services sector has a huge gender pay gap of 34 per cent. Men in IT services earn Rs 360.9 per hour, while women earn only Rs 239.6 per hour. A sector-wise analysis shows the gender pay gap was highest in the manufacturing sector, 34.9 per cent and lowest in the BFSI and Transport, logistics, communication, equally standing at 17.7 per cent. In the Monster Salary Index Report 2015 India ranks sixth at the Gender wage pay gap. Gender discrimination has been reported in worsening conditions of work, lack of access to credit and social security. Scuttling down of NREGA is another hallmark of the attack on women’s financial independence these days. 3 This is because a majority of NREGA workers are women, and close to half are Dalits or Adivasis. The UPA (United Progressive Allance)-led government explicitly killed this scheme by reducing budgetary allocation in a cynical way, which also let to huge arrears in wage payments to workers. Now, the present NDA (National Democratic Alliance) government has gone a step ahead and is on the way to openly extinguish the scheme. By restricting the scheme to only 200 most depressed districts, the universal right for all households to livelihood would get infringed. The Khap Panchayats, which takes the law into their own hands and carries out legal dispensation on gender and caste based lines as per the dictates of Manusmirit and such other obscure social laws, do immense harm to the liberation of women. In the wake of rising honour killings and rapes, the Nirbhaya Fund was set up. It was supposed to take care of women who faced violence. But sufficient funds have not been allocated to it and the government has time and again revealed through its actions that it is not serious about such measures for women’s safety and security. The growth of right-wing fringe groups, such as the Ram Sena and the Bajrang Dal, as the self

styled protectors of Indian culture is posing further threats to the choice, freedom and security of women. Even in religious spaces, the freedom of women is being infringed upon, be in temples, mosques or churches. Regarding the harassment of women at the workplace the implementation of the Justice Verma Committee recommendations and the observations made by the Supreme Court in the Vishakha Case are being taken too lightly. 4 It is not enough to just talk of the general situation of women, in the country; the specifics of how women have been treated in the last few years by the successive neoliberal regimes, led by both the UPA and the NDA also have to be discussed to really capture the essence of how women are at the receiving end of the systemic violence unleashed by neoliberalism. The BJP government has been in power at the centre for two and a half years now and yet, they have failed to fulfil any of the gazillion promises they made during the campaign for the 2014 general elections. They had projected Narendra Modi as the saviour of the Indian people, our own knight in shining armour, leading us rapidly to achhe din . The people believed in them, at least 31% of the people, and BJP got the majority in the Lok Sabha. On many occasions, during the campaign and after winning the elections, Modi has spoken about the women of this country and how the development of the nation is impossible without their development. His views on women are so generous that one might think that during the two and a half years in the office he must have worked tirelessly to improve the situation of Indian women in public and personal life. But, on the contrary, the reality is that the BJP and the Prime Minister are only interested in making speeches and are not keen to transform their words into action. The BJP in its election manifesto for the 2014 general elections had called the women of this country ‘nation builders’. In spite of this, they are formulating such ‘development plans’ which will eventually kick the already marginalised Dalits, women and minorities further away from the mainstream. Let us have a look at some of key issues

on which the BJP governments, both at the state and central levels, have betrayed women. The fact remains that under the Modi government we have seen the bitterest form of discrimination against women with a dangerous combination of neoliberalism and patriarchy. Bourgeois Indian politics has been toying with the Women’s Reservation Bill for 18 years. The Women’s Reservation Bill is amongst the many issues that have been met with either silence or vague promises by the Modi government. The BJP in its manifesto clearly mentioned that the party is committed to pass the bill in Parliament. It has been two years now and the Bill, which has been passed by the Rajya Sabha, is nowhere on the agenda of the Lok Sabha. The government promises to bring it soon, but their definition of the word ‘soon’ must be different from everyone else’s. Next year will mark the 70 th anniversary of Indian Independence but the representation of women in the 16 th Lok Sabha is merely 11%. The idea behind the Women’s Reservation Bill was to improve the representation of women in Parliament, as it has been done in panchayats and urban local bodies, and in some state Assemblies. The BJP’s silence might have been tolerated, as none of the previous governments had been very enthusiastic about increasing the participation of women in mainstream politics. But the BJP governments in the states of Rajasthan and Haryana have directly attacked the constitutional right to contest election by putting arbitrary conditions on the qualifications of candidates in panchayat elections. This assault has been strongly resisted by the democratic and progressive forces of the country. The BJP government in Rajasthan put forward an ordinance on 20 December 2014, just before the announcement of the panchayat elections in the state and the commencement of winter holidays in the courts. In the ordinance, the government has made it mandatory for all candidate to the panchayat elections to have a minimum educational qualifications of class V, VIII, and X for different posts, and having a functional toilet in the dwelling unit. Due to these

conditions a large number of people have been exempted for contesting panchayat elections, especially Dalits, women, and minorities, because educational backwardness is more rampant among these sections. After all, that is why they are marginalised. This anticonstitutional move on the part of the BJP government in Rajasthan deprived almost 80% of the women in the state of their right to contest the elections. This figure was revealed by the petitioners – Norati Bai and Kamla Meghwal – in the case against the Rajasthan government’s ordinance. They didn’t find any relief from the court. As a result, many of the seats in different panchayats across Rajasthan are vacant because no eligible candidates could be found. In many seats, candidates won unopposed because of this. This goes against the very concept of democracy. A similar ordinance was brought by the BJP government in Haryana. It was stayed by the High Court of Punjab and Haryana. But the government surreptitiously placed it in the Assembly as an amendment Bill and, without due discussion, got it passed in a very undemocratic manner. The Bill was amongst the last few agenda items, and it was passed in a hurry, with the Governor signing it late at night. The next day the panchayat elections were announced. AIDWA filed a petition in the Supreme Court against the amendment, but in a highly controversial judgement the Court decided against the petition. The Rajya Sabha compelled the government to include a criticism of the Supreme Court’s judgement in the President’s address. Because of this anti-constitutional amendment around 83% of Dalit women and 67% of women from other sections have been excluded from contesting in the panchayat elections. The BJP came to power by popularizing their promise of ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikaas’. But the amendments made in the Panchayati Raj Act in the BJP ruled states of Rajasthan and Haryana have stripped a large number of women of their constitutional right to contest elections. They have not only stalled the Women’s Reservation Bill in the Lok Sabha, but also have driven out a vast majority of women from the decision making process at the lowest level of our democracy. This shows that they are only interested in ‘Sabka Saath’,

everyone’s vote, but not in ‘Sabka Vikaas’. They are booting out the ‘nation builders’ out of the public sphere where they can be active members of our constitutional democracy. Apart from these anti-women moves at the state level by the BJP, the Modi government is also displaying its inherent ideological bias against women in its actions. The Union Minister for Women and Child Development, Maneka Gandhi, suggested making pre-natal sex determination compulsory and then monitoring the mother. This suggestion was severely criticized by women’s organizations as it goes against the PCPNDT Act, 1994. 5 This 1994 law was created to tackle the inhumane practice of female foeticide. The law made it illegal for the doctors and ultrasound technicians to tell the parents the sex of the foetus. The doctor’s lobby has been trying to get the onus removed from them for a very long time now and the Union minister has also gone on record to say that the very same thing. This shows exactly how serious the Modi government is in the matter of female foeticide. The declining sex ratio amongst children in India is already a glaring problem that our society is facing. The patriarchal system prevalent in India makes it difficult for women to lead their lives on their own terms and in a dignified manner. The girl child is not allowed to be born in most parts of our country and in this situation the Union minister’s suggestion can only be called anti-women. Because we are aware of the fact that medical science has also become a very lucrative money-spinner, driven by profit like everything else in the capitalist system. The nexus of pharmaceutical companies, medical equipment makers, and the immensely rich doctors lobby treats this noble profession as a money making scheme. If the government makes the pre-natal sex determination compulsory for parents, it will only open a new area for making money. Can the government honestly assure the nation that they have the resources and machinery to monitor each and every mother-to-be in the country? The governments, at the centre and states, are not able to monitor the existing ultra-sound centres to stop the pre-natal sex determination and they are daydreaming about following the many mothers-to-be. In reality this approach is to let

medical equipment makers and doctors off the hook and shift the whole onus on to the women themselves. And this wasn’t the only time that Maneka Gandhi has taken an anti-women stand. In March 2016, just a few days after International Women’s Day, she said that the ‘concept of marital rape can’t be applied in Indian context’. She, like her ideological colleagues, has a very archaic and brutal concept of what should be seen as an ‘Indian’. If the BJP’s and their ideological fathers’ version of ‘Indian’ is applied to the whole Indian society, then it would be impossible for the women of this country to ever become equal citizens. RSS head Mohan Bhagwat defined this archaic view of gender relations, ‘A husband and wife are involved in a contract under which the husband has said that you should take care of my house and I will take care of your needs. I will keep you safe. So, the husband follows the contract terms. Till the time the wife follows the contract, the husband stays with her. If the wife violates the contract, he can disown her’. 6 The BJP and the RSS allow a man to rape his wife and get away with it. BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh has the highest number of reported rapes in India – eleven per day – and the highest rate of gang rapes in the country – six per week, as BJP home minister of Madhya Pradesh Bhupendra Singh said in the Assembly on June 30, 2016. Rape cases in that state have risen by 74% and kidnapping cases of women has increased by 630% between 2006 and 2015 (as suggested by Vikas Samwad, a local NGO). 7 The Union minister Maneka Gandhi also said that if we criminalize marital rape, it would strain family ties. Does she think that ‘family’ and its unity can be preserved on the basis of violence and crime? The Modi government with utmost pride announced the ‘Beti padhao, Beti bachao’ scheme. According to reports, the Rajasthan government has closed down around 13,000 schools. This is the same state which has decided to make minimum educational qualification essential for contesting the panchayat elections. The female literacy rate in Rajasthan is just 52%, lower than the national average of 65% according to the Census of 2011. Shutting down government schools

will have the most dire effect on the girl child, as girl children would not be allowed to go to schools in other villages or to ones that are very far. Even the Haryana government is considering shutting down schools. A recent incident of rape of a school going girl in Rewari (Haryana) shows how the concern of security also becomes a crucial factor in the issue of educating the girl child. After the rape incident of a girl who went to school in a different village, all the girls from her village have stopped going to school as they don’t want to fall victim to such a crime. 8 This is not an isolated incident; we can easily find other examples. If the government starts shutting down schools then education will become even more inaccessible to the girl child. The Modi government has now presented one interim budget and two budgets. In the previous two budgets the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) has seen huge budget cuts. 9 This is same programme that the government flaunts while highlighting their commitment to social welfare. Only women are employed under this programme and even though the working hours are similar to that of a common teacher, they are not considered workers. As they are not recognised as workers they are not paid salaries but an honorarium, which varies from state to state. Their conditions under the rule of previous governments hasn’t been very good either but this government’s decision to make massive budget cuts in the ICDS directly affect the people, i. e. women employed under this scheme. In the budget for the year 2015-16 the allocation for the ICDS was cut down by 50%, a figure provided by the Union Minister for Women and Child Development in the Lok Sabha. These are workers who take care of our children. It is worth noting that the National Family Health Survey found that in fifteen states, 37 per cent of children under the age of five are stunted, 22 per cent are wasted, while 34 per cent are under weight. To underpay the very women who will take care of these children serves to undermine the system. In the general budget for the financial year of 2016-17 this scheme saw another decrease of around 6%. A woman’s labour under the patriarchal system never amounts to anything; it has always been

called her service and love for the family and society or an integral part of who she is. It is argued that such service can never be reimbursed in any monetary form, for doing so – they argue – would be dishonouring the woman. Women employed under this scheme are already struggling to survive as they get an utterly meagre amount of money as an honorarium, these budget cuts are sure to make their survival even more difficult. These were a few examples of how the Modi government, along with the state governments run by his party, is betraying the women through formal means. There is a continuing list of how BJP MPs, MLAs and other party members or the Sangh Parivar people are continuously creating an anti-women environment in the country through offensive and derogatory statements and movements. This comes right from the top. In June 2015, the Prime Minister said that Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has taken a strong stand against terrorism ‘despite being a woman’. The BJP’s Uttar Pradesh vice president Dayashankar Singh sat next to Narendra Modi at an election rally and compared BSP leader Mayawati to a sex worker; the PM did not flinch. Madhya Pradesh home minister and BJP leader Babulal Gaur said that rape is ‘sometimes right, sometimes wrong’. Then there was BJP leader and former IPS officer Kiran Bedi, who said, ‘Male pigeons always chase female pigeons. It’s an animal instinct’. If this takes us to nature, others in the Sangh Parivar bring us to idea of culture. RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said that rape only happens in ‘India’, not in ‘Bharat’, meaning that ‘the influence of Western culture’ has eroded ‘the actual Indian values and culture’. This is the Sangh Parivar’s assertion that India’s people should follow values that emanate from the Manusmirit , which specifies that women should get confined within the four walls of kitchen. The Hindu fundamentalist ideology, which the Sangh Parivar and the BJP uphold, is itself detrimental to the status of women in the society. This ideology also objectifies women, and understands and defines the woman and her rights only in the context of the traditional role they play in a man’s life. This is why they notice when women’s dupattas slide off their shoulders claiming to bring disgrace to the

male members of families; they see women’s jeans or pants and skirts distracting the whole male community; they have decided that if a woman marries a person belonging to another religion it has to be because the male is conniving and not because a woman with a fully functional brain has the ability to make her own choices and face the consequences whatever they may be. When it comes to the political, social, and economic rights of women, the entire community of women becomes invisible to them. Consumerism, which is an offshoot of late capitalism, is also bent on objectifying women and projecting them as commodities. It is quite evident in almost all advertisements that appear both in the print media and electronic media. The Modi-led BJP government is working to implement the agenda of the RSS and the big corporates. Women are the ones at the highest risk of losing everything they have achieved through continuous struggles. The last brazen violation of all democratic norms and institutions was conducted by the Modi government through the mere rhetoric against black money, which was the most brutal and ruthless attack on the lives and livelihoods of our people, which manifested as demonetization. 10 That major misstep tore asunder the lives of the poor across India, promoting inequality on a scale unprecedented since independence. In my lifetime, truly, nothing has been as devastating in our country. I am not forgetting the economic reforms of 1991 that has led to all this nor the National Emergency declared in 1975 either. We should not forget that the impact of demonetization was most fiercely felt on women, as they are the most vulnerable sections when the family budget is affected. Even in the long queues before banks, most of them are women. The first casualty of this historic blunder was also a woman – Tirtharaji (age 40), a washerwoman from Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh. She died of shock when she learned of the demonetization policy. Anger is rife across the country, particularly among the women and the time is ripe for us to translate it into political action.

We have assembled here in Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh, not too far away from the RSS centre in Nagpur. Clearly, this state under the BJP has suffered under the sustained attacks orchestrated by the RSS. Vyapam, the largest case of corruption with regard to the Public Service Commission in the country, in which more than 3000 cases were charged and 1800 people were arrested is still fresh in our minds. 11 The murder of around 50 people connected with Vyapam haunts our country’s conscience. The mystery surrounding the case and lack of proper investigation clearly points to the fact that Vyapam was orchestrated by brains elsewhere and deeply influential in the state. Had it not been for the life-risking interventions of whistle blowers, this would have remained an unnoticed scam. The agenda behind scams like Vyapam is clear for all of us to see. By appointing people subservient to the Sangh Parivar in the bureaucracy, a state machinery is being built to carry forward the Sangh’s agenda which would clearly be anti-women, anti-dalit and anti-minority, as we have seen thus far in their history. We have to resist such devious attempts to destroy the secular fabric of our country. Though stories of police encounters emerge from different parts of the country, BJP governed states are notorious for fake encounters. Reports have come in from several quarters that the recent incident in Bhopal in which 8 Muslim undertrials were shot dead was a cold blooded fake encounter. 12 Stories of jailbreak have long been rubbished. In the jail with a capacity of 2650, there were 3400 inmates and it is astounding that the 8 undertrails escaped without anybody noticing them. It is mysterious that the CCTV and searchlights in the watchtowers went out at the same time. The question of how they jumped a 32 foot high wall using just sticks still remain unanswered. The audio recordings which mentions that ‘the game is over and all 8 are dead’ and Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s statement expressing concern on ‘how long can they stay as undertrials’ clearly points to this incident having been a planned and executed fake encounter.

Fake encounters particularly against the minorities have become repeated instances in BJP ruled states. Fake encounters like Sohrabuddin Sheikh, Israt Jahan and communal pogroms in Gujarat when Modi was the Chief Minister in that state are not distant memories. 13 Such serious violations of human rights are in tandem with the RSS brand of nationalism which creates a sense of otherness among the minorities of our country and alienates them. In 1978, the socialist Madhu Limaye wrote to Prime Minister Morarji Desai about the Aligarh riots of that year. He suggested that the actions of the ‘local RSS’ had ‘completely alienated the sympathy of the Muslim minority’. Matters are worse now. The skewed notion of RSS nationalism feeds on and survived upon these orchestrated attacks on minorities. The communal dispensation of the RSS and the BJP, across the country and particularly in this state will surely face the people’s wrath in the times to come. In Kerala, the state I come from, in the past taxes were imposed on women’s breasts ( mulakkaram ). Women were not allowed to cover their breasts and they were forced to wear necklaces made of stone around their necks as a mark of servitude. The brave women of my state have had to wage pitched struggles to overcome these oppressions and attain an equal status. The Renaissance movement and the Left movement which came close on its heel in Kerala did a lot for the emancipation of women from the clutches of the age-old subjugation which manifested in a variety of taboos and traditions. For example, women were not allowed to get out of their harems even in the initial decades of 20 th century. It was mandatory for them to keep themselves behind the veil. It was the Left Movement which brought them out of this dark period. Undoubtedly, it is the Left that has paved the way for their acceptance in the mainstream of social life. The intervention of the successive Left Governments in Kerala ensured equal opportunity in such areas as education and health care. Women’s success stories in traditional industry and self-help groups in the state have become an inspiration to the world. The present Left Democratic Front (LDF) government follows in this tradition and is establishing a separate department for the welfare of women. We are

also trying to ensure that the title deed of both land and house allotted as part of the LIFE project which is being launched, will be in the name of the women in each household. While we promised school uniforms to students, we were also providing a boost to the handloom sector, whose the majority of employees are women. When we opened up shut down cashew factories, it primarily benefited women, as they formed the bulk of its work force. We are also committed to women’s security and have initiated a Pink Police Patrol and have started appointing women as Station House Officers in police stations, so that women need not have any fear in approaching the police for any help. Women in India face three types of exploitation, as women itself, as citizens at large and as workers. The time has come for us to forge larger unities, larger alliances, as women comrades, with students, youth, labourers, farmers, workers, Dalits, Tribals, religious minorities, and sexual minorities, as well as to organise women comrades among all these sections, to resist and overcome the onslaught of the neoliberal forces who are in collusion with the rightwing communal forces in our country. The point that we should bear in mind is that the liberation of women is essential to the liberation of our society as a whole. It is against this backdrop that the slogan of this conference, ‘Stand up and Fight for Rights: Uniting Women, Defending Democracy’ attains greater significance. Women have a greater role in resisting the onslaught of the neoliberal policies, which are being implemented at the behest of the capitalist and imperialist forces, and the heinous genocide, which are being organised through communal riots in regular intervals by the fascistic communal forces. I am sure that AIDWA will chalk out a comprehensive strategy to fight all the reactionary forces that are hell bent on balkanizing our country, disrupting the communal harmony and on doing away with the secular framework of our constitution. On behalf of the people of Kerala and my own behalf, I take this opportunity to extend good wishes to this AIDWA Conference, which

will surely be of great historical revolutionary greetings to all of you. 1

significance.

Once

again,

Speech delivered at the public meeting on the eve of the 11th National Conference of the All-India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) at Dussehara Maidan, Bhopal, 10 December 2016.

2 ‘Gender pay gap in India at 27%: Monster Salary Index’, Business Standard ,

May 18, 2016.

3 The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) was passed in 2005. It

aimed to increase livelihood of people in rural areas, where the crisis of employment and food security had become acute. The government of Narendra Modi has endangered this significant reform. In 2014, AIDWA joined other mass groups to demand the expansion of NGREGA.

4 Report of the Committee on Amendments to Criminal Law , Justice J. S. Verma

(chair), with Justice Leila Seth and Gopal Subramanium, January 23, 2013. The Vishakha and others vs. State of Rajasthan (1997) was a case brought by Vishakha and other women’s groups to enforce the fundamental rights of working women under Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Indian Constitution. The Court produced the Vishakha Guidelines, which delivered the basic understanding of sexual harassment at the workplace and provided a policy framework for ending such harassment.

5 The Post-Conception Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act, 1994, was enacted by

the Lok Sabha to stop female foeticides and ban prenatal sex determination. The Act was amended in 2003 to ensure that the law would keep up with developments in the technology of sex selection. It has been suggested that the Act has not been properly implemented in practice. Sabu George and Sudha Sundararaman, ‘India’s Medical Community Must Aid, Not Implede, Law on PreNatal Diagnostics’, The Wire , July 12, 2017.

6 ‘RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat at it again, says women should be just housewives

and husbands should be the breadwinners’, India Today , January 6, 2013.

7 Neeraj Santoshi, ‘Unsafe women in MP: 11 raped every day, 6 gang-raped every

week over last year,’ Hindustan Times , March 1, 2017.

8 ‘Many girls stop going to school after rape of student in Haryana’, The Hindu ,

May 8, 2016.

9 Vidya Krishnan, ‘Huge budget cuts for ICDS’, The Hindu , March 3, 2016. 10

Jayati Ghosh, C.P. Chandrasekhar and Prabhat Patnaik, Demonetization Decoded. A Critique of India’s Currency Experiments , New Delhi: Routledge

India, 2017. 11 The Vyavsayik Pariksha Mandal or Vyapam scam involved the highest levels of

politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen in an admission and recruitment. The Vyapam agency was an autonomous body that conducted entrance exams in the state of Madhya Pradesh. It was found that undeserving candidates had bribed politicians and bureaucrats to get high marks in these tests. The scam was revealed by an Indore police investigation in 2013. There have been allegations that go to the door of the BJP leader and chief minister of Madhya Pradesh – Shivraj Singh Chouhan. Sunil Gatade, ‘Why Has No Action Been Taken Against Shivraj Singh Chouhan in Vyapam Scam?’ The Wire , 16 February 2017.

12 Akshay Deshmane, ‘Hollow Claims’, Frontline , November 25, 2016. 13

On the Shorabuddin Sheikh and Israt Jahan cases, see Anupama Katakam, ‘Getting away with murder’, Frontline , November 25, 2016, and see Teesta Setalvad, Foot Soldier of the Constitution: A Memoir , New Delhi: LeftWord Books, 2017.

Uphold the Red Flag to Build an Alternative to Neoliberalism and Communalism Revolutionary greetings to all my comrades who are gathered here at this Telangana Samajika Sankshema Samara Sammelanam that marks the culmination of the Mahajana Padayatra. 1 Special greetings to the CPI (M) Telangana State Committee and the secretary Com. Tammineni Veerabhadram, for successfully taking up this challenging task. I understand that ever since it was launched at Ibrahimpatnam by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar’s grandson Prakash Ambedkar, over a hundred and fifty days ago, the Padayatra has covered more than 4000 kilometres, eliciting the views of the common people of Telangana on a wide range of issues relating to their lives. In these days when helicopter tours, car and bike rallies are more fashionable, the Mahajana Padayatra is a telling example of how the CPI (M) is committed to the people on the ground, to their hopes and to their aspirations. The fact that the people were asked to obstruct the Mahajana Padayatra is enough proof to understand that we are on the right path. Rather than making such undemocratic calls to obstruct people’s movements, a plan for alternative development of the State should be launched, or the proposal made by the CPI (M) Telangana State Committee should be taken up. I salute the brave people of Telangana for receiving the Mahajana Padayatra with warmth and wide-open arms. The unprecedented response we have received is evident from the fact that attempts to obstruct this Convention on flimsy political

grounds have also been thwarted by the progressive people of this State. I need not go into the details of the BJP MLA’s nefarious statements. I am sure that this convention will stay true to the objectives of the Mahajana Padayatra and provide a platform for alternative politics in the State, to discuss an alternative plan of action for social justice and all-round development and solution for the problems faced by the people of Telangana. The opinions collected from the people during the Yatra have made it clear that the slogan, ‘our share is as much as we are’, which was raised by the Padayatra, is the true solution to the problems ailing the State. Several promises were made to the underprivileged sections of this state and none of them have been kept. Sub-plans to devolve funds for the deprived sections is the only way for development of the State of Telangana, as these sections including Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Backward Classes, Most Backward Classes and minorities constitute 93 per cent of the State’s population. They are far from the mainstream of the so-called development project, as proven by their health and education parameters which remain far below the national average. Let me reiterate that social justice can be achieved only through economic, social, cultural and political equality. A radical change in the government’s policies is required to achieve this, as envisaged in the alternative manifesto released by the CPI (M). I would like to recall the heroic struggle of the peasants of Telangana in the late 1940s, which placed the issue of land reforms on the agenda of the country. It is with the spirit of that struggle that powerful movements of the people should be conducted for building a new India. We should not forget that Telangana came into existence by riding on the movements that challenged the socio-political and economic exclusion of this region while it was part of undivided Andhra Pradesh. Naturally the slogans that rallied the public and aroused their sentiments focused on this exclusion, the exclusion of regions and classes from benefiting from economic development. This enthused the public to plunge into historic protest actions on a sustained basis. Even the formation of a separate state of Telangana

did not help in achieving the objectives of social justice. Only certain political leaders, who amassed wealth disproportionate to their sources of income, were the beneficiaries. That is why the CPI (M) in Telangana embarked on this historical Padayatra. It was revealed in the Padayatra that those who the people of Telangana thought would fight for their justice are only interested in themselves. They are implementing the same policies of globalization and liberalization, which have widened the developmental gap between various sections of people as well as regions, across the country. Instead of pursuing alternative policies, they are branding those who ask for inclusive development policies and put forth alternative development agenda, like the CPI (M), as anti-Telangana. While all sections of the people of Telangana are struggling for justice under the present regime, they are doubly denied justice, due to the anti-people policies of the Central Government. Time and again, we have seen the anti-people and pro-corporate policies of the BJP government. Demonetization was a thoroughly thoughtless act. South Indian states are facing the severest drought that they have experienced in the last 115 years. The drought may be described as a natural disaster. But the disaster induced by demonetization is completely man-made. More than 100 people lost their lives in the country while waiting for withdrawing money from the banks. Though the Union Government had claimed that by demonetization, black money can be arrested, funding for terrorists can be stopped, fake currency can be seized and corruption and scams can be put to an end, nothing in that direction has been achieved so far. In fact, the recent biggest catch of fake currency was from Gujarat. It was said that everything would be rectified in 50 days. Not just 50 days, 5 months have passed and the economy is still in a limp. Even with falsified numbers, the Central Government could not show an increased growth rate. Workers and farmers were worst hit by demonetization. Over five lakh daily workers had already lost their livelihood and farmers were forced to sell away their paddy for about half of the minimum support price. Even while claiming that there is no money to waive loans of

about Rs. 75,000 crores taken by the farmers, the BJP government, during the last three years, has written off dues of loans taken by industrialists and corporates to the tune of Rs. 1.12 lakh crores. It was admitted that 90 per cent of black money was abroad and that funding for terrorists was taking place online. It was even said that there was a list of Indians, who have stashed away their black money in foreign bank accounts. But, it is not being made public. Despite the Supreme Court asking the Government to do so, and in spite of the fact that the foreign governments had passed on the list of black money investors to the Union Government, it is kept away from the public. It is not disclosed even in the parliament, where the representatives of the people gather. While the Central Government is keen to protect the interest of their crorepati corporate friends, they have no regard for the interests of the ordinary citizens of this country. There was a long-standing demand for ensuring that 100 days of work is provided through the MGNREGA – the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (2005), which gives employment to a vast majority of the people in rural India. Scuttling down of funds for MGNREGA has become a hallmark of the Central Government. The UPA-led government explicitly killed this scheme by reducing budgetary allocation in a cynical way, which also let to huge arrears in wage payments to workers. Now, the present NDA government has gone a step ahead and is on the way to openly extinguish the scheme. By restricting the scheme to only the most backward districts, the universal right for all households to livelihood is getting infringed. The Central Government has time and again violated the federal principles enshrined in our constitution. We have seen such blatant violations while imposing President’s rule in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Earlier this week, we saw their utter disregard for democratic rights when Governors’ of Goa and Manipur were made puppets in the hands of the Central Government to call the BJP to form the Government in both those states. The people’s mandate was clearly not in their favour, and yet this manipulation was done. The Central Government has a hostile attitude towards states that are not

ruled by the BJP. 2 We have seen it manifest in different forms over the last three years. South India has given the stiffest resistance to the Sangh and now they are using all their might to disrupt our peaceful lives. Minorities in particular have been at the receiving end of saffron terror over the last few years. We have seen the Sangh-orchestrated riots in Muzaffarnagar, Meerut, Assam and Saharanpur in the recent past. 3 In the Ajmer blast case, members of the RSS have even been convicted. Yet, the saffron brigade is allowed to go scot-free. 4 They are free to roam into our kitchens and beat us up and kill us because of the food we eat. The perpetrators of such violence are then draped in the ‘Tricolour’. Even cattle traders are not spared, despite their profession being legally allowed. The incident from Jharkhand is fresh in our minds, I need not go into the details. 5 It was only recently that the cold-blooded murder of 8 Muslim under-trials in Bhopal shook this nation to the core of its heart. Now, we even have Yogi Adityanath, who has charges against him for inciting communal tensions, being made the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. 6 Yogi Adityanath has always been the symbol of communal violence, riots, intolerance and hatred. The politics that he championed was meant for doing away with whatever communal harmony that was left in Indian politics. It was he who had spearheaded a series of communal riots in 2007. 7 One cannot forget the fact that he had gone to the extreme extent of comparing Shah Rukh Khan with Hafiz Muhammed, who was the kingpin of a Pakistan-based terrorist group. He had also tarnished a number of socio-cultural leaders ranging from Amir Khan to Mother Teresa. Yogi Adityanath also asked those who were reluctant to practice ‘Surya Namaskar’ to leave the country for Pakistan. Even at a time when Ayodhya was relegated to the background of Indian politics, it was he who had triggered off a venomous communal campaign to bring it back to the top of the BJP agenda. Being a leader of Brahmanical Hinduism, he has all through maintained some sort of contempt towards the politics that has highlighted Dalits, backward

classes and minorities. By making a person from such a criminal background the Chief Minister of our largest state, the message BJP sends to the nation is that they will continue to try to capture power by resorting to communal riots. Only a party which has sheer contempt towards secularism and democracy can elevate such a person to the office of Chief Minister. On the one hand, we have so often seen the calls by the right-wing to instil nationalism among the minorities, as if they are not Indian citizens. On the other hand, BJP and RSS members have been caught spying for the Pakistani intelligence (ISI) in India. 8 The Sangh is the epitome of hypocrisy. If minorities are the victims on one side, on the other side the victims of the Sangh hooliganism have been the Dalits. Even children were not spared, as we saw in Haryana. Yet, a BJP central minister had the audacity to equate these children to dogs. 9 Self-styled ‘Gau Rakshaks’ went to the extent of publicly flogging four young Dalits for allegedly skinning a dead cow in Gujarat. Imagine what our country has come to. With the growing Sangh influence, life for Dalits has become so miserable that even educated young Dalits are driven to a spot where they do not have any option but to commit suicide, unable to fight the injustices meted out to them. We have seen this tragedy in this very city, with the death of Rohith Vemula. Yet, the man who pushed him to suicide was honoured by the Central Government. We saw it recently in Delhi also, in the case of Muthu Krishnan of JNU. Allocation for Dalit scholarships has been cut down by the Central Government. 10 Even funds for institutions studying discrimination and exclusion are being withdrawn, forcing them to close down. Our leaders wax eloquent about skill development. How do they think skills can be developed without financially supporting those who are trying to acquire them? The attack on educational institutions in our country is not just limited to reducing the funds made available to them. The larger issue is the planned effort at saffronization of our educational institutions and texts. 11 We know what has happened with textbooks in Gujarat. 12 Active members of various organizations with declared

commitment to the RSS vision are being placed in institutions of importance, without any reference to academic or professional credibility. The saffronization of the Indian Council of Historical Research even led to the resignation of its Member Secretary. We have seen students’ struggles against the right wing attacks on our educational institutions in – among other places – Pune, Hyderabad, Delhi, Puducherry, Himachal Pradesh, Jadavpur, Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Allahabad. I salute the students who have bravely fought the Sangh against cooked up charges of sedition. 13 At the same time, I would remind the students that their movements need to have organic links with the farmers’ and workers’ movements around them for a true resistance that is worth its weight to be built. We should make conscious efforts to create such lasting resistance. Women are possibly the worst affected by the saffronization of our society as a whole. When it comes to their political, social, and economic rights, women become invisible to the Hindu fundamentalist ideology, which the Sangh Parivar and the BJP uphold. The Khap Panchayats, which take the law into their own hands and carry out legal dispensation on gender and caste based lines as per the dictates of Manusmirit and such other obscure social laws, do immense harm to the liberation of women. It was in the wake of rising honour killings and rapes that the Nirbhaya Fund was set up. It was supposed to take care of women who faced violence. But sufficient funds have not been allocated. The government has time and again revealed through its actions that it is not serious about such measures for women’s safety and security. More than enough proof for it lies in the fact that it takes the implementation of the Justice Verma Committee recommendations and the observations made by the Supreme Court in the Vishakha Case too lightly. The growth of right-wing fringe groups, such as the Ram Sena and the Bajrang Dal as the self styled protectors of Indian culture, are posing further threats to the choice, freedom and security of women. It is hard to forget the 2009 pub attack in Mangaluru, where Ram Sena thugs physically assaulted women who were in the pub. 14

A conscious attack is being made on efforts to uphold the scientific temper and rationalism. It is not surprising that the public conscience goes on such tangents, when the highest offices of the country itself are peddling myths as facts, such as the existence of aeroplanes, stem cell research and plastic surgery in the Vedic period. The killings of Narendra Dhabolkar, Govind Pansare and M. M. Kalburgi are blots on the conscience of this nation. It is the price we have to pay for upholding principles of scientific temper and rationalism. The Left will gladly pay this price to ensure that our society remains sane on the basis of logic and rationale. Even freedom of speech is under threat. I was stopped from attending a program in Bhopal and threats were issued against me in Mangalore. Yesterday, even our General Secretary’s programme was cancelled by Nagpur University following the dictates of the Sangh. We have come to such times that even national leaders of political parties are not free to move about and do their politics. This also means that we are on the right path, when the Sangh sees us as their primary opponents. It is also the need of the hour to expose the skewed notions of nationalism that are being propagated these days by the ruling dispensation. Despite the tall talks about nationalism and claims of defending our country against terrorist attacks, we have several examples before us where we have been mute spectators to such attacks, unable to defend our nation. That was the sad state of affairs in the case of attacks in Gurudaspur, Pathankot, Pampore, Uri, Baramulla and so on. Certificates of nationalism are being issued to people. People are being threatened, told to leave for Pakistan. We should realize that this nationalism that is being hyped is jingoism and not true patriotism. While they say they are nationalists, the BJP keeps the gates of our industries open to multi-national corporates. They are keen to sell off our public sector companies to private entities. Even the railways, our biggest national asset, is under the threat of privatization. They are giving up our land, water and natural resources to big corporates, when it should be the collective wealth of our country. They have ruined our public distribution system, and soon ration shops will

become history. Even mid-day meals for our school children are being meddled with by the BJP. They have done away with price ceilings on medicines, making health care unaffordable to the vast majority of Indians. They even plan our country’s defences to the tune of the imperial forces. One should not expect anything better from them, as they belong to the RSS, who disowned our freedom struggle, wrote apologies to the British and had a role in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, the father of our nation. Before I conclude, I think it is imperative to burst the myth that the BJP and the Sangh Parivar are undefeatable. In the wake of the current assembly election results, many are expressing the opinion that they cannot be defeated. However, I do not think that it is true. I mentioned earlier how in Goa and Manipur, the BJP used undemocratic means to form the Government, despite clearly being the losers. In Punjab, they came fourth, winning only 3 seats. Let us take the example of UP. In 2014, the BJP had won 42.3 per cent of the votes. In this assembly election of 2017 they have won only 41.35 per cent of the votes. Those who are saying that the BJP has won a stellar victory are conveniently overlooking the fact that 60 per cent of the people in UP have voted against the BJP. In UP, the BJP won by spreading communal hatred, through heavy injection of money and the concentration of the entire machinery of the Central Government in the state. Let us also not forget that against the right wing, the opposition was not united in UP. We should not be led to believe that this victory is here to stay. Take the case of Bihar, for example. Though the BJP won hands down in 2014, the very next year they were routed in Bihar as the opposition stood together against communalism and fascism. Even in the entire country, in 2014, the BJP got only 31 per cent of the votes. It means that close to 70 per cent of the entire voters of the country do not agree with the politics of the BJP. Therefore, it is more than clear that in the fight against communalism, the people of India will win, provided they stay together.

Who can we count on to fight communalism? In Goa, out of the 40 seats, Congress won 17 and BJP had only 13. In Manipur, Congress won 28 of the total 60 seats, when BJP got only 21. Despite coming first in both these states, the Congress did not even stake claim to form the Government. It means they were clearly helping the BJP. There are several examples of Congress leaders joining the BJP in recent times. S. M. Krishna in Karnataka, Rita Bahuguna Joshi in UP, Krishna Thirath in Delhi and Rao Inderjit Singh in Haryana are only a few to mention. Even historically there are plenty of instances where the Congress has been soft to communalism. Thus, they have lost their identity and those who once used to call themselves the guardians of secularism, are not even a force to reckon with now. The Congress has ceased to exist as a political party. Public Relations companies take political decisions for them. We have seen its results in the last few elections. Therefore, we have to be vigilant against such forces that pander to the right wing. History has shown us that any political party that goes soft on the right wing will be devoured by the right wing itself. The Congress dug its own grave and is now no longer a credible ally against communalism. Therefore, it is clear that the time has come, for all democratic and progressive forces to come together, to let go of old and spent political forces and to forge people’s alliances to defeat communalism and neoliberalism, which are the bedrock of all injustice, inequality and misery that exists in our society today. The Red Flag has a distinct significance in the politics of the country and it has been in the forefront of the fight for social justice, democracy and secularism, none of which can be achieved by forgoing each other. It has a history of sacrifice. With the cooperation of the people, the CPI (M) would put forth a people’s alternative programme for development, as we are doing in the state of Kerala within the purview of the Constitution. We realize that a solid commitment to the people’s interests alone can make a government relevant to those it governs. It is precisely why we have developed a two-pronged strategy that will guide us. On the one hand, we will vigorously champion long-term projects to achieve comprehensive development of the State

and on the other hand, we will relentlessly proceed with short-term relief measures to provide succour for our disadvantaged sections in their distress. To ensure that the aspirations of those who have not received the benefits of development are catered to, we are implementing four missions to build a ‘Nava Kerala’: • Haritha Keralam Mission will manage our waste, reclaim our wetlands and cultivable lands and ensure agricultural selfsufficiency. • LIFE Mission will provide housing to all the homeless in the state and give them means of livelihood as well. • Ardram Mission will make our hospitals people-friendly and make health care affordable to all. •

We are also administering a Mission to Protect our Public Education, so that while our public schools develop to international standards, our students will acquire the same set of skills and knowledge that can make them at par with any student of their age, across the world.

The time has come for us to forge larger unity, larger alliances, as comrades, with students, youth, women, labourers, farmers, workers, Dalits, Tribals and minorities, to resist and overcome the onslaught of the neoliberal forces who are in collusion with the right wing communal forces in our country. The point that we should bear in mind is that the liberation of each of those sections is essential to the liberation of our society as a whole. Once again, I salute you all. Thank you. 1 Speech delivered at the end of the Mahajana Padayatra, Hyderabad, March 19,

2017.

2 M. K. Venu, ‘Cynical Use of President’s Rule Exposes the BJP’s Desperation’, The

Wire , March 28, 2016.

3 For a critical look at the Justice Vishnu Sahai Inquiry Commission on the 2013

Muzaffarnagar riots, see Mohammed Ali, ‘A strategic omission of inquiry’, The Hindu , March 11, 2016.

4 On the Ajmer Blast case and the RSS, see Leena Gita Reghunath, ‘The Believer’,

Caravan , February 1, 2014, and Leena Gita Reghunath, ‘How Swami Assemanand And Other Hindu Extremists Planned and Executed Attacks Such as the Malegaon Blasts’, Caravan , May 14, 2016.

5

The incidents have come fast and furiously – first two Muslims lynched in Jharkhand, then seven lynched after a WhatsApp message spread malicious stories. To get a sense of the violence in Jharkhand against the cattle traders and the role of the Sangh Parivar, see Vijay Murty, ‘Hindu seer may have incited mob that hanged Muslim herders’, Hindustan Times , March 22, 2016, and Brinda Karat, ‘A Letter from Latehar’, Indian Express , April 5, 2016.

6

Dhirendra K. Jha, ‘Yogi Adityanath as Uttar Pradesh chief minister: What happens to the cases against him’, Scroll , March 21, 2017.

7 Apoorvanand, ‘Riot, manufactured in Gorakhpur’, Tehelka , February 17, 2007. 8 Angshukanta Chakraborty, ‘BJP disowning “ISI spy” Dhruv Saxena is Hindutva

hypocrisy at its worst’, Daily O , February 15, 2017.

9 ‘Dalit killings: BJP comes to V. K. Singh’s defense over dog remark’, Indian

Express , October 22, 2015.

10 Sujatha Raghunath, ‘Delaying scholarship for Dalits is also discrimination’, The

Hindu , January 24, 2016.

11 Danish Raza, ‘Saffronising textbooks: Where myth and dogma replace history’,

Hindustan Times , December 8, 2014.

12 Rahi Gaikwad, ‘Gujarat textbooks never far from controversy’, The Hindu ,

July 30, 2014.

13 Vikram Singh, ‘Two years of attacks and struggle of students’, Student Struggle ,

April 2016.

14 Pushp Sharma and Sanjana, ‘Rent a Riot: Cash for Chaos’, Tehelka , May 20,

2010.

A Quarter Century of Neoliberal Policies Has Only Sounded the Death Knell of Agriculture in India Revolutionary greetings to all the delegates and guests at this Andhra Pradesh state conference of the Agricultural Workers’ Union. 1 We are at the historic city of Kurnool, which was the first capital of Andhra Pradesh when it was formed in 1953. It is a matter of pride for us that Comrade P. Sundarayya was the first Leader of the Opposition in this state. Kurnool is a city of communal harmony and it is places such as these that provide hope in these disturbing times, with communalism on the rise. Agricultural workers and farmers are the backbone of the workers’ movements in this country. Ours is a country in which around 50 percentage of the population is dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods. Yet, we see that the perils of those who are working in this sector are increasing day by day. To get a real sense of the desperation that our agricultural sector is experiencing, it would suffice to look simply at the number of those who have abandoned agriculture and those who have committed suicide over the years, as agriculture became unviable. Since 1991, when India took the devious turn to neoliberal reforms, fifteen million main cultivators have left agriculture. If that is the case of proper farmers themselves, then it surely is possible to fathom the plight of our agricultural workers. Over three lakh twenty thousand farmers have committed suicide since 1995, at the rate of one every half an hour. According to statistics available since 2015, fifty-two farmers are putting an end to their lives every day. These

figures are enough to point to the absolute misery of farmers and agricultural workers in our country. Farmers’ suicide is a regular occurrence in this state too. These suicides undoubtedly show the stark reality that agriculture in India is in absolute doldrums. At the Centre we have a Government with capitalist, communal and authoritarian characteristics. The BJP-led NDA Government that came after the UPA is implementing neoliberal policies in the agrarian sector with a renewed vigour that is wreaking havoc on the lives of our farmers. Budgetary allocation for agriculture has been cut down year after year. Even in budgets that have been celebrated as farmer friendly, the reality was that there was a massive cut in the funds allotted for agriculture. Undoubtedly, a quarter of a century of neoliberal policies has only sounded the death knell for agriculture in our country. If the growth of agriculture in 2014 was 3.7%, it has plummeted to 1.1% now. It means that the NDA, which came into power vowing to put an end to the anti-people measures of the UPA, is only furthering such measures. Both the UPA and the NDA governments are two sides of the same coin. The only difference is that the latter is overtly communal and ultra-national. On the one hand, as public investment in agriculture is drastically reduced, agriculture becomes non-profitable. Hence, it results in a drop in agricultural production itself. Attaining self-sufficiency in agricultural production should be a most serious concern of the Central Government. On the other hand, as the Government withdraws from investing in agriculture it drives the farmers and agricultural workers towards private moneylenders, leaving them absolutely at the mercy of those cutthroat businessmen. Even seeds are being patented by multinational corporates. With the heavy influx of funds needed to acquire seeds, the primary capital expenditure required to initiate agriculture itself has skyrocketed. The result is that, 60% of those engaged in agriculture in the rural areas have ended up in a debt trap. While price regulations have vanished, import duties have been lowered to ridiculous levels.

With the implementation of agreements like ASEAN-India Cooperation in Agriculture, which are against the interests of our farmers, the farmers are being forced to compete with farmers from abroad who enjoy the support of subsidies. Due to these agreements the subsidies that were earlier available for fertilisers, seeds and insecticides are no longer available. The same variety of agricultural products that are produced here are imported without any restrictions whatsoever. The domestic agricultural sector is destroyed and our markets are flooded with imported agricultural products. Agriculture becomes more and more unviable as each day passes by. At the same time, with inadequate domestic production, there is rampant price rise in several parts of the country. It not only increases the primary expenditure for initiating agriculture, but also creates a severe hike in the cost of food. In several instances, such steep rises in the cost of food leads to inadequate food consumption and malnourishment. Apart from the economic hardships, this further makes those engaged in agriculture, physically unable to pursue it as well. Those who are engaged in contract farming are not even able to preserve the food grains that are needed for their domestic requirements. On top of all this comes the threat from the moneylenders. In short, in a sector that requires serious physical strain, the added economic strain leaves nothing in it for the farmer and agricultural worker to continue on. They are forced to migrate in search of greener pastures. They become migrant workers in different parts of our country itself. The state of our farmers and agricultural workers are that pitiable. This conference is happening at a time when our country is being sold to the interests of capitalists and imperialists. The interests of the capitalists and the imperialists are seriously detrimental to the interests of our farmers and agricultural workers. Neoliberal policies that aid the capitalist forces are being implemented at a rampant pace. Earlier this month we saw how a few of our brothers were shot dead in cold blood in Madhya Pradesh. 2 They were only standing up to be treated

and remunerated fairly. Despite those killings, the national media did not make it a point of discussion. 3 It reveals the absolute apathy this nation and its ruling classes have towards agriculture, farmers and agricultural workers. To stay mum at the death of fellow human beings shows nothing but utter disregard for their lives. At the same time, it is heartening that our interventions brought the Maharashtra Government to the realization that farmers and agricultural workers are truly in distress. We need to press on to ensure that our demands are met. Without agricultural workers, where will this nation’s food come from? We should continue with militant agitations which ensure that the question is heard loud and clear across this country. 4 Agricultural Workers’ Union was formed to put an end to the exploitation that agricultural workers around our country were being subjected to. At each turn of event, the Union has made the correct assessment and taken the most pragmatic step to press forward towards its goals. We have several martyrs who have selflessly laid down their lives as part of our struggles. It is on the foundation laid by their blood that this union has been built up. I pay my respects to them. In the past, this vicious propaganda was unleashed against us: if we, the Communists, were to come into power, we would take the land of our farmers away, making them landless. But, what is the reality? Land reforms were implemented to the extent that they have been only in states where Communist-led Governments were in power. The agriculture worker, who tilled and cultivated the land, became the owner of that land. It means the Communists protected the interests of the agricultural workers. Those who spread lies about the Communists are now busy appropriating every single piece of land owned by the farmer, and transferring them to the corporate houses. Successive Central Governments prepared the ground for it. Situations are no different in this state either. We have experienced agricultural land being snatched away from farmers at throwaway prices. In fact, most of the agricultural workers here are landless and poor.

In 1987-88, if only 35% of the people had land below 1.1 hectare, in 2011-12 their number rose to 49%. The Land Acquisition Ordinance introduced in 2014 made it all the more easy to appropriate agricultural land. Only the Communist parties and their organizations like Agricultural Workers’ Union and Kisan Sabha raised any voice against it. We had taken the lead to set the ordinance on fire in three hundred places across the country. What we need today at the Central level is an alternative model that stands by the interests of the farmers, on the lines of what the few states did under their Left Front Governments. It should be a policy that puts an end to the influence of moneylenders and middlemen. We can save India only if we save our agriculture and those who are engaged in it. The issues of inadequate wages and wage differences between men and women workers exist across the country. Minimum wages in the agricultural sector should be raised to Rs. 15,000 at the national level. Only then can our agricultural workers lead respectable lives in today’s circumstances. Land should be allotted for those who are landless and for those who lost their lands due to the implementation of faulty development agendas. The agricultural loans of small-scale farmers and agricultural workers should be written off. Interest free loans should also be made available to farmers and agricultural workers. Pensions should also be instituted for those who are above sixty years of age and had made a living through their toil in this sector. It goes without saying that compensation should be given to the families of all those farmers who were forced to commit suicide. All those engaged in agriculture are going through untold miseries and are forced to leave the sector as I had already mentioned. Therefore, the Central Government should ensure that two hundred days of work is made available through the rural employment guarantee scheme. Though it is stipulated that work should be made available for one hundred days, the reality now is that, work is available for only thirty five to forty days. There is no guarantee of

adequate minimum wage under this scheme and hence it should be fixed at Rs. 300 per day. A minimum support price should be devised so that it not only meets the expenditure of the cultivator, but also ensures fifty per cent of income over the expenditure. At the national level, an agricultural insurance program should also be devised and for crop loss due to natural calamities, adequate compensation should be ensured. With the amount of resources available with them, only the Central Government can take such over arching steps. They should be ready to do so and we should be able to force them to do so. Recently, we saw that distressed farmers from Tamil Nadu even went to the extent of stripping themselves naked over their two weeks long protest stay in Delhi. 5 They even drank their own urine – that too in front of the Prime Minister himself. Yet, there was no answer to their cries. By refusing to help the States by financing a loan waiver programme, the BJP has made it clear that they do not intend to help the poor farmers and agricultural workers of this country. What is happening is that farming and agriculture are purposefully being made non-profitable so that the majority of our farmers leave farming for whatever other jobs they can find, if at all they can find any. Every year lakhs of agricultural workers are migrating to big cities around the country. This will enable big corporations to take up farming on large tracks, which will be supported by ruling classes in the name of the national interest. Undoubtedly, the argument that we need food to live and if the farmers can’t do it then let those who are capable of doing it be allowed to farm, will become the common chorus. Similarly as their counterparts in IT and real estate sectors have been getting subsidies, these large companies will also get subsidies. Such subsidies have been denied to our small farmers year after year, the absence of which has made agriculture non-profitable in the first place. Farmers who are being made jobless will be occupied in these large farms by big corporations as their employees. A new kind of feudalism is set to emerge.

Alongside big corporations engaging in agriculture, we will see them entering into animal husbandry and agro-processing as well. If we have the likes of Patanjali finding the central Government’s undue favour now, more such firms are going to spring up, especially in animal husbandry as our ordinary farmers are going to face several difficulties with the recently introduced restrictions on cattle trade. 6 Have no doubt that in the guise of religious sentiment, which is the first step to create communal hostility, what is happening behind the stage is the preparation of the means for large corporations to enter into such spaces that are being left vacant for them by the average Indian farmer and trader. They are being forced to do so by the present Central Government’s calculated moves. Once again those who have been rendered jobless by this Government’s onslaught on their livelihoods, will be employed in such big business ventures making more and more Indians directly linked to the international finance capital for their income and livelihoods. If the Sangh Parivar supported the British colonisers during our freedom struggle, now they are the supporters of big corporates. In the false pretext of the national interest their entry into our agriculture and allied industries will be supported. Criticism of any agreement that is harmful to our national interests is brushed aside as anti-national sentiment, especially when the Left is at its forefront of making the criticism. Questioning war-mongering becomes anti-nationalism and demanding the recall of AFSPA becomes anti-army. The fact that the Left is fighting for adequate pay and benefits for our soldiers is conveniently overlooked. The Left’s opposition to demonetization is portrayed as support for terrorism, so that the benefit it does for private service providers does not become part of the public consciousness. When the Left talks of the farmers’ rights being scuttled through the restrictions on cattle trade, it is hurting religious sentiment. In that public sentiment where the Left’s opposition is being reduced to something that is aired merely because of a choice of food, the

discourse on resisting neoliberalism should not be allowed to be sidelined. The RSS masquerades as a social and cultural organization. But what it truly does is prepare the ground for the widespread acceptance of communal and ‘nationalist’ frenzy. It resorts to violence to make the dissenters adhere to its line. Meanwhile, in the midst of all this, the BJP implements policies that will further strengthen neoliberalism in the country. The BJP governments go soft on the wayward and unlawful excesses of the Sangh Parivar, particularly the RSS. These groups – led by the RSS – are allowed to set the groundwork for mayhem. In this charged atmosphere where communal and ‘nationalist’ sentiments are running high, the BJP-led central government gains public acceptance. While the beef ban, demonetization, the surgical strikes on Pakistan and the attack on educational institutions may come across to the public as sudden and unrelated, clearly they are all linked by the neoliberal agenda of the BJP which is planned and executed – riding on the communal agenda of the RSS. Both feed each other and benefit from each other. Therefore we cannot fight communalism and neoliberalism in isolation; both of them need to be fought simultaneously, as two sides of the same coin. In the Indian context communalism and neoliberalism need to be fought vigilantly with the realization that both are detrimental to the fundamental principles of our constitution, namely, independence, democracy, secularism, socialism and federalism. Upholding them should be the ultimate challenge of genuine nationalism. I would like to conclude by mentioning what we are doing with agriculture in the state of Kerala as an alternative to this communalcorporate nexus. We are determined to achieve self-sufficiency in agricultural production. With the Haritha Keralam Mission, which is being championed by the Left Democratic Front Government in Kerala, we are not merely seeking to manage our waste. We are

reclaiming agricultural land and ensuring that agriculture is carried out even in lands that have been lying fallow for decades. We are providing assistance to those engaged in farming, by moving ahead with writing off agricultural loans and encouraging contract farming. The Government itself is in the forefront of increasing the land under cultivation and providing incentives to farmers and agricultural workers, so that the goal of self-sufficiency in agricultural production is achieved. Our goal is to have paddy cultivation in 3 lakh hectares. We have raised procurement prices of agricultural commodities and conducted several fairs so that the public has access to organic and insecticide free products at reasonable prices. To ensure that the agricultural products of Kerala are promoted, we are setting up parks for the Value Added Products of Kerala. It will also provide an incentive for people to continue with agriculture. We realize that agriculture should become profitable so that even educated young people will engage in it. Therefore we are moving towards instituting minimum wages and insurance for those engaged in agriculture. To ensure that our children have an exposure to plants and agriculture, we are introducing bio-parks in schools as well. I have already laid out in detail how neoliberal policies are bringing our agricultural sector to a standstill and bringing those engaged in agriculture to their knees. Now, 100% Foreign Direct Investment is being allowed in agriculture. This will only further accentuate the crisis. Indian agriculture as a whole will be made to dance to the tune of multinational corporates. What should be cultivated, when it should be cultivated, where should cultivation occur, how should it be cultivated and by whom it should be cultivated will be determined by these multinational corporations. We cannot allow it. Ultimately, they will even dictate what prices are to be set for our crops. This cannot be so. The Central Government should immediately withdraw from this decision.

To ensure that an alternative that favours our agricultural workers and agriculture itself is championed at the national level, the Left needs to be strengthened. Only if such an alternative is implemented at the national level can we find a genuine and long lasting solution to the problems ailing our agriculture and those engaged in it. I need not reiterate that only the Left can resist and defeat neoliberalism. Therefore, the time has come for us to forge larger alliances with workers, farmers, youths, students, Dalits, Tribals, women and so on, cutting across differences of castes, religions, regions and languages to fight and defeat neoliberalism. I am sure that the Agricultural Workers’ Union will continue to play a leading role in the days to come in this direction. Once again, my revolutionary greetings to all of you. 1 Speech delivered to the All-India Agricultural Workers’ Union, Kurnool, Andhra

Pradesh, 19 June 2017.

2 Mahesh Langa, ‘Police shot the agitating farmers, admits Madhya Pradesh govt’,

The Hindu , June 8, 2017.

3 ‘Media failed to document agrarian crisis, says Sainath’, The Hindu , September

8, 2017.

4 Vijoo Krishnan, ‘Rallying point’, Frontline , July 7, 2017. 5 ‘Tamil Nadu farmers detained outside PM’s residence’, The Hindu , July 16,

2017.

6 Priyanka Pathak-Narain, Godman to Tycoon. The Untold Story of Baba Ramdev

, New Delhi: Juggernaut, 2017.

Advasis Are a Most Important Contingent in the Struggle for Revolutionary Social Change Revolutionary greetings to all the delegates and guests at this historic Adivasi Adhikar Rashtriya Manch national conference. 1 It is with immense happiness that I address this gathering, which consists of valiant fighters who strive to usher in an era which will be marked by the progressive values of equality and justice for the Adivasis around the country. I am aware that the Adivasi Adhikar Rashtriya Manch has been in the thick of struggles all along since its inception in 2010, when it was formed to build a coordinated and effective nationwide movement and intervention in defence of the rights of Adivasis in India and for their advancement. That is precisely why more and more sections of Adivasis get increasingly attracted towards this movement. No movement for radical social change and justice can hope to advance if it does not address in specific terms the oppressions and exploitations of the different social groups in our country. The Scheduled Tribes and the Scheduled Castes face social and economic oppression and exploitation. Women suffer discrimination and oppression on the basis of gender and the minorities suffer discrimination on the basis of their religious beliefs. I am happy that the Manch is making significant advances, which is only because it is fully seized of its responsibilities and possibilities. Therefore, let me also take this opportunity to congratulate all of you for carrying forward this struggle in these days of utter oppression and

repression, which many of us experience in the form of statesponsored violence. I salute each and every one of you. Historically, the Adivasi communities have played a glorious role in the struggle against our colonial rulers and equally against the feudal landlord subjugation. The role of our Adivasi communities in India’s freedom struggle is surely downplayed by vested interests. How else can one explain the fact that, the pioneering Kol, Santhal and Kurichya uprisings and revolutionary leaders like Birsa Munda and Andhra’s own Alluri Sitarama Raju are not part of our prominent historical narrative? The heritage of resistance and heroic deeds against injustice runs deep in the culture and traditions of many Adivasi communities spread across India. In today’s context, the large majority of Adivasis belong to the exploited classes and thus form a most important contingent in the struggle for revolutionary social change. Ever since the colonial period, the overriding characteristic feature of the exploitation of Adivasis in India is the alienation from their land, livelihood and common ownership of forest resources through violent and coercive displacement from their original habitations. This process was greatly intensified by the post-independence policies of capitalism followed by successive governments of independent India. This alienation is accentuated in the present day under the BJP-led NDA government, though the process differs from region to region. The government and its allies make a great hue and cry over the name ‘Bharat Mata’. But the reality is that they allow the land to be unscrupulously exploited by corporates and they turn the police forces across various states to suppress the voices of resistance against this exploitation. This is the ‘nationalism’ of the BJP-led NDA government. We should not hesitate to identify and alienate those methods that are being devised by the ruling classes themselves to create confusions in our minds and lead us towards infantile extreme methods. In the guise of resisting the onslaught of corporates on our land, lives and

livelihoods, such efforts will only cause great harm to the people’s movement at large. We should be ever vigilant to expose them. In the current phase of neoliberal policies, capitalism has spread to Adivasi inhabited villages through intensified and aggressive takeover by the corporates of Adivasi and forest land. It is being facilitated by government policies in favour of mining and quarrying. It is a tragic reality that the Adivasis, who are the country’s poorest people, live on the country’s richest land in the form of mineral wealth. Valuable iron ore, bauxite, coal, stone quarries and so on can be found in areas denoted under the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution or in Adivasi dominated areas. The nexus of capitalist-trader-contractor-forest officer has been joined by touts of big corporates and multinational corporations to facilitate the forcible takeover of Adivasi land leading to massive displacement. The trend of displacement of Adivasis who are then forced to seek jobs elsewhere as migrants is taking place at a time when capitalintensive industries are imposing a pattern of jobless growth. The old world of the Adivasis is being destroyed, but in the alternative structures, Adivasis find that they are at the extreme margins, prevented from being integrated into so-called ‘modern India’. The reality of tribal lives is nothing but a mockery of the descriptions of India as a modern democratic republic. Sadly, it is true that the deep regional disparities and inequalities created and increased by the path of capitalist development in India is further accentuated in the case of Adivasis. Adivasi communities because of locations of habitations in remote and ecologically rigorous areas, away from the fertile river valleys, actually require a decentralised and location-specific approach to development. Such an approach would have strengthened the democratic structures within the communities to enable Adivasis to take proactive decisions for the protection of their land and livelihoods. It would have even enabled them to access the rights to education, health, civic facilities and so on. But on the contrary, the British colonial policies of placing and displacing tribal communities according to the perceived

requirements of the State have been a continued feature in independent India. Currently such policies are being determined by the urgent corporate requirement of access to mineral wealth located in tribal areas. Democracy has been brutally butchered in tribal areas reflected in the arbitrary decisions taken by the State, which virtually transformed tribal communities into encroachers on their own land. Their traditional rights and common ownership of forest resources have been minimised to gestures of generosity by the State ‘granting’ them highly diluted rights and limited access to what rightfully belongs to the community. The Forest Rights Act (2006) is seen as the biggest challenge in the mindless appropriation of lands that truly belong to the Adivasis. Therefore, the Adivasi Grama Sabhas are being made powerless. Additionally, there has been an intentional delay in processing the applications under the Forest Rights Act. While thousands of hectares of forest land is being given out to mining companies that have come to the scene just recently, forest dwellers need to show proof of having been in their ancestral lands for several decades. Even in this state, only fifty-one per cent of the applicants have got their forest rights documents. It is in such a situation that our demand for nationwide review and monitoring committee on the implementation of the Forest Rights Act becomes significant. It is imperative to look at where the Adivasis are in today’s India. At present, several Adivasis are poor and marginal peasants with small unproductive landholdings. Many are landless agricultural workers. Some are workers in plantations, mines and quarries. Some are workers in the unorganised sector as construction workers on daily wages or contract workers in non- agricultural work like coolies. Several others are domestic workers in towns and cities, with no rights as workers. Above all, a large section of Adivasis are migrant workers. Even the miniscule section who have been able to avail educational facilities and get into jobs, particularly in the public sector through reservations, still face different forms of discrimination. The employed

among Advasis is only a miniscule section, because there is absolute apathy towards the fulfilment of reservation quotas in the Centre and several of the State Public Services. Such a continued effort will surely lead to the complete alienation of the Adivasis from the service sector and this is a serious issue that will even affect the national integration of our country. The displacement of Adivasis from the services will leave them more and more at the mercy of private entrepreneurs, who we see have scant regard for labour laws, as is evident from the condition of all the areas mentioned earlier where the Adivasis work. A large section of the Adivasi work force comprises of Adivasi women. In many regions Adivasi women are the mainstay of the economic welfare of their families. They face not only economic exploitation but also sexual exploitation by contractors, forest guards and often the police. The common thread that brings all these sections of Adivasis together is the fact that they are experiencing varied forms and levels of oppression. Hence, all of them are potentially our comrades in the struggle for equality and justice. There are clearly two aspects to the specific nature of the exploitation and oppression of Adivasis. The first aspect concerns the impact of capitalism and neoliberal policies on the lives and livelihood of Adivasis. The other aspect concerns the political, social and cultural context of Adivasi lives. The two are interlinked. The policies of neoliberalization deeply impact Adivasi ways of life in a variety of ways. There is no single homogenous culture or identity of Adivasi communities, just as there is no overarching culture such as that which is now being attempted to be portrayed as Indian culture. But within the 700 or so Adivasi groups across the country there is a richness of cultural expression, of different tribal languages and dialects, of practices related to preservation of nature, of different forms of marriage and customs, of religious and spiritual expression and belief. It is distinct from the religious rituals which are sought to be imposed through the present efforts at the Hinduization of Adivasis.

The relentless spread of capitalist relations in tribal areas, the expansion of the market and introduction of consumerist cultures have their own most negative impact, on the tribal communities. In general, the attitude of the State has been to attempt an artificial separation between the economic status of Adivasis on the one hand and their cultural practices on the other as though the former will not have an impact on the latter. The attitude of the Indian State is symbolised by its reduction of Adivasi culture to merely parading Adivasis in their traditional dresses performing their traditional dances on special occasions. The issue of protection and development of tribal languages, literature, knowledge and histories have been areas of gross neglect and discrimination by the successive governments, which add a further dimension to tribal oppression. This lackadaisical approach to the welfare of Adivasis in our country is evident in the fact that with the installation of the NITI Aayog, the Tribal Sub-Plan which was a means to ensure that adequate financial assistance is provided to the Adivasi communities in our midst during the Planning Commission days, is now done away with. At the same time, properly targeted schemes for the empowerment of the community are not being implemented either. Scholarships for Adivasi students are not being issued and their funds are being cut down. This is only to ensure that the Adivasis do not emerge as a part of the mainstream of our society. It is in such a national situation that the state of Kerala has retained the Tribal Sub-Plan and allocated more money than their demographic dividend to the Adivasis of the state. Schools, scholarships and hospitals are being set up especially for the benefit of the Adivasis in Kerala. This is the alternative that we are presenting, the Left Alternative. With the strengthening of the right-wing in the country, there has been an increased attempt by majoritarian fundamentalist forces to ‘Hinduise’ Adivasis. One of the more common instruments used in this attempt is the promotion of Hindu ‘gods’ and Hindu festivals in tribal areas backed by substantial outside funds. One needs to

remember that Krishna Gopal, the RSS Sah Sar Karyavahak, had said that the Hindu Code is applicable to the Tribals also. At a time when the Central Government is on a war with NGOs that work amidst disadvantaged sections, over their sources of funding, different variants of identity politics have been promoted by foreign-funded NGOs that seek to fragment and separate Adivasi identities by obliterating the class nature of the exploitation they are subjected to. The role of Ekal Vidyalayas and other RSS affiliates in promoting the Sangh Parivar agenda among the Adivasis and the source of their funding needs to be thoroughly exposed. The Sangh’s efforts severely damage the democratic requirement of the protection of Adivasi cultures, languages and identities while building the unity of working people for justice and for the advancement of Adivasi rights. It is all the more evident when one sees that the bourgeois landlord State is often in aggressive opposition to Adivasi demands for more democracy and the recognition of their languages under the 8 th Schedule of the Constitution, which is critical to the protection of the Adivasis identity itself. State repression against Adivasis fighting for their rights is common. Through the local police, the central forces, contractors and supervisors supported by the Government and police, Adivasis are victims and targets of repression in many areas. Of late, in the name of fighting Maoists, the central Government and more particularly the Home Ministry has fashioned an approach which is short sighted as it relies almost entirely on the armed police. The fact that such police excesses are only an effort to safeguard the interests of the corporate houses is there for anyone to see. Bastar itself is a classic example, as there are fourteen big projects by corporate houses in the region. In fact, one has to see the violence unleashed by the state on Adivasis as a ploy to ensure that they do not raise their voices for adequate compensation and rehabilitation. As such, only a miniscule percentage of those who are evicted from their lands are compensated and rehabilitated. At the same time the Maoists have also targeted Adivasis who refuse to toe their line. Thus

Adivasis are caught in the cross-fire between the State and the Maoists, as the case is in Chattisgarh. The Maoists have to be fought politically, through an exposure of their bankrupt ideology as well as administratively. 2 Their mindless violence and brutal killings of innocents has to be ended. At the same time, there needs to be stiff opposition to any and every form of repression against Adivasis and their struggles, including against the sexual assaults and abuse, of tribal women. While we are discussing the oppression of Adivasis, we ought to remind ourselves that under the current dispensation at the centre, all sections of our citizens are experiencing untold miseries. The country is going through a period of the slowest growth in the last few decades. Job creation has become dismal to the effect that it is not even possible to retain jobs that were in existence, let alone keep the promise of creating more jobs. We are forced to beg for the money that is rightfully ours. Our food habits are being meddled with. Animals become more important than humans. Students and teachers are continuously attacked and the autonomy of our educational institutions is at stake. Ultra-nationalism is being pursued to create frenzy in favour of war and enemy bashing. Each day we are bombarded with bizarre news stories that make us feel that nothing could be more bizarre. In such circumstances, let us not forget that such reactionary issues are being dealt with only to divert the attention of our people from the issues that really affect our lives and livelihoods, particularly the dismal public distribution, the absolute lack of jobs, the stagnant economy and so on. This is where our real challenge lies, in exposing the lacklustre and non-performing nature of this current BJP-led NDA government, which has only performed in matters which sow discord, enmity and hatred between the citizens of this country. Let me conclude by reiterating the need to intensify our struggles. The mobilization of Adivasis along with other exploited sections in class struggles against the exploiters is primary. At the same time, it is

equally important to recognize and fight against the discrimination against Adivasis rooted in elitist dominant casteist cultures. They consider Adivasis second-class citizens, and look down on Adivasis as lesser and backward beings. The defence of Adivasi lives, rights, land, livelihood, cultures and languages is equally important and crucial. The concerns of Adivasi communities for justice must hold therefore an equally important place for other organised anti-capitalist, anti- landlord movements; in other words, the people’s movements at large. I am sure that the Adivasi Adhikar Rashtriya Manch will take up this daunting task with renewed enthusiasm in the days to come, so as to ensure that our fight for equality and justice continues unabated till we reach our goal. Once again, my revolutionary greetings to all of you. 1

Speech delivered at the Adivasi Adhikar Rashtriya Manch, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, June 20, 2017.

2 Maoism: A Critique from the Left , ed. P. Bose, New Delhi: LeftWord Books,

2010.

Muslims of Malabar and the Left This article is an attempt to explain the stand taken by the Left in contributing to advancing the Muslim masses in Malabar, in the background of the prolonged anti-colonial struggle and the tradition of renaissance. 1 There is a conscious attempt from some circles to raise a campaign that the Left never intervenes to solve the issues of Muslim masses. It is in this context that an inquiry as to the steps adopted by the Left in the growth and progress of Muslim masses becomes relevant. The Communist Party has been ready to view in a proper perspective all the distinguishing features of Islam since its formation and the role played by them in history. The founders of the Communist Party have shown no hesitation in highlighting the contributions made by the Arab people to the world. From its inception, the Communist movement in Kerala also follows the same tradition, as it will into the future. CONTRIBUTION OF THE ARABS Since agriculture was not possible in Arabia due to its geographical distinctiveness, Arabs tried to bring food from other regions and tried to earn their livelihood through commerce. Marx and Engels have highlighted the role played by Arabs in propagating all over the world the knowledge they had acquired by traveling and assimilating knowledge from elsewhere. Engels explains the renaissance in the world in the preface of the book Dialectics of Nature . Here he acknowledges the fact that the basis of many European innovations and inventions were based on the knowledge disseminated by the Arabs which they gained from different parts of the world. It has now emerged from recent studies

the Arabs acquired some of their knowledge from Kerala. Communists honour the contributions of the Arab people. Marx and Engels have made detailed studies of world religion. They studied the founding of Islam and noted carefully the changes meted out by it in the society. According to them, Islam was formed as a religion well suited to the urban people engaged in trade and industry on the one side, and to the nomadic Bedouins on the other side. Engels put forward the view that the Islam was formed out of the contradiction of the wealthy urban people and the poor Bedouins. He further states that Islam emerged alongside the generation of the demands of an Arab national consciousness. It was this Arab national consciousness, in a nascent fashion, that drove the Arabs to liberate the Arabian Peninsula from Abyssinia and to regain older trade routes which they had lost. ISLAM COMES TO KERALA Kerala’s advantageous position on the Arabian Sea led to longstanding ties with Arabia. Kerala had developed trade relations with the Arabs even before the advent of Islam. When Islam took shape in Arabia, the message reached our country through the Arab traders. The ideas of Islam found a receptive audience in the port areas of Kerala. The first mosque was established in Muziris (present day Kodungalloor), which was an important trade centre. In Malabar, the Arabs dominated the world of trade. But they did not try to establish their political power in the country or to expand their trade through the exercise of political power. The Portuguese arrived in Kerala in 1498 and began to compete against the Arabs for the trade in Kerala and in the Arabian Sea. The Zamorin did not accept the Portuguese demand to end the Arab monopoly on trade. The Portuguese made moves to establish their power by insinuating themselves in the conflicts between the local princes. This created conflict along the coastal areas of Kerala. The conflict between the Portuguese and the Arabs not only increased, but it also entered the world of the Muslim masses. The Portuguese

strength was clearest in the sea, with their ships allowing them naval supremacy. The Nair soldiers could not go to sea due to a religious taboo. The Zamorin rallied the Muslims who were connected to the sea and to commerce to take up arms against the Portuguese. Through the Zamorin, Islam was mobilised in the war against the Portuguese. The Nair army assumed the responsibility to fight on the land, while the Muslims – led by Kunhali Marakkar – took the battle to the sea. The first ‘anti-imperialist’ movement in Malabar developed in this alliance. Through this experience, the Arakkal dynasty developed a strong naval force. When the Portuguese attempted to convert people in the coastal regions, the Muslims resisted and fought against conversion. Such resistance prevented the Portuguese from establishing their dominance in Kerala. At Kannur, which was the main centre of domination, the local people fought against the imperialist policies of the Portuguese. Since it was Muslims who largely inhabited the area around the Portuguese Fort at Kannur, there were incessant conflicts between the Muslims and the Portuguese in Kannur. The British who established their domination after the Portuguese, strengthened the then existing feudal system. AGRARIAN STRUGGLES AND COMMUNISM Since Islam was free of the hierarchies of caste, sections of people who were considered to be untouchables embraced Islam. Indian Muslims, in this early period, were mainly converts from the most oppressed sections of society. They lived under the feet of the feudal system. Resistance against feudal oppression came from these sections. Their uprising is known as the Mappila rebellion of Malabar. The most well-known rebellion – in 1921 – follow many prior struggles. The British expelled Mamaparam Fazal Pookkoya Thangal from Malabar in 1852 for his role in leading the Majeri revolt (1848), the Kulathur revolt (1851) and the Mattannur revolt (1852). This expulsion did not stop the Mappila rebellions – which the British called ‘Moplah outrages’. William Logan, a Scottish officer in the Madras Civil

Servant, looked carefully at the conditions in Malabar and produced a study sympathetic to the people knwon as the Malabar Manual (1887). Logan found that the Mappilas were ‘labouring late and early to provide sufficiency of food for their wives and children’. The issues behind the rebellions, he points out, were not religious or emotional, but fundamentally agrarian. The Mappila Rebellion of 1921 followed this history of rebellion in Malabar. The British suppressed this rebellion brutally. They killed many of the leaders of the rebellion: Ali Musaliar was hung, while Variamkunnath Kunhahammed Haji and Chembasseri Thangal were shot – three of the thousand people murdered in the rebellion. The British imprisoned 14,000 people. The most famous atrocity is the ‘wagon tragedy’, when the British officers suffocated 67 prisoners to death on November 17, 1921. This atrocity generated general sympathy for the national movement. Muhammed Abdurahman Sahib adopted a strong stand against the British attempt to dismiss the rebellion as a communal upsurge. He saw the national sensibility in the rebellion and named it the ‘Malabar Rebellion’. At that time, the Muslim League and the Congress denounced the rebellion. It was Muhammed Abdurahman Sahib who supported those who had rebelled against the British. While the rich amongst the Muslims opposed the rebellion, it was the poor that rallied behind it. The Muslim League, which protected the rich, denounced the rebellion on their behalf. The Left supported Muhammed Abdurahman Sahib, who then participated in the leftwing Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee as the President while the Secretary was EMS Namboodiripad (who would later help form the Communist Party in the state). The Communist Party’s Travancore, Cochin and Malabar committees met at Kozhikode on August 18-19, 1946 on the occasion of the 25 th anniversary of the Malabar Rebellion. The meeting adopted a resolution – ‘1921: The Call and Warning’, which was later elaborated by EMS into a pamphlet of the same name. The British decided to ban Deshabhimani , when it printed this text. The

newspaper, in other words, was banned for analysing the Malabar rebellion in its truest sense. Some communal elements follow the British in seeing the Rebellion as a mad frenzy, a communal riot. But the leaders of the Rebellion did their utmost to make sure that the Rebellion did not assume a communal character. Variamkunnath Kunhahammed Haji, for instance, rejected the view that this was solely a rebellion of Muslims. In an article written by Sardar Chandroth in Deshabhimani (August 25, 1946), he quotes from a speech by Kunhahammed Haji, ‘I came upon some information yesterday. That it is being said in other countries that this is a war between Hindus and Muslims. We have no hatred towards Hindus. But those who help the government and those who betrayed us to the government will be punished mercilessly. If it is known that somebody harms Hindus unnecessarily, I will punish them. Hindus are our fellow countrymen. We have no wish to make this a Muslim country’. To claim that the essence of the Malabar Rebellion is a religious conflict is wrong. The rebels killed not only those who tried to betray the Rebellion, but also Muslim officials who tried to suppress the Rebellion by joining hand with the police and the army. The rebels killed police officers Aamu Sahib and Moideen and betrayers such as Even Chekkutty Adhikari of Anakkayam. The rebellion was not simply religious. The Communist Party did not fail, however, to note that at some places there were tendencies to divert the rebellion along communal lines. That is why the Communist Party took note of the ‘call’ and the ‘warning’. It pointed to the fact that there were some factors at work where the Communist Party saw not only a call – for anti-imperialist rebellion – but also a warning – for mobilization on communal lines. The Malabar Rebellion caught the eye of Lenin. He recorded the importance of Hindu-Muslim unity that developed in this rebellion and in that period. Lenin had instructed Abani Mukherji, an Indian communist who was in Moscow, to prepare a pamphlet after he had collected all the available facts on the agrarian issue in India and on peasant struggles. Abani Mukherji was an economist. He collected

material and wrote the pamphlet, which was published in Moscow in both Russian and English. A Russian scholar – Kutowski – conducted research on the Malabar Rebellion, for which he earned a doctorate. A British communist – Conrad Woods – also researched the rebellion and wrote a book, which was published as The Moplah Rebellion and Its Genesis by People’s Publishing House in 1987. As the Congress and the Muslim League denounced the Malabar Rebellion, it was communists how highlighted its importance at the international level. Earlier rebellions of the 18 th and 19 th century had a clear antiBritish character. These include the Cotiote War of the Pazhassi Raja (1793-1805), the struggles led by Veluthampi of Travancore (1807) and those of the Paliathachan of Cochin (1809-1810). The patriotic content of these fights gives us strength in our times. The struggles that followed these, which were often led by feudal lords, began to have an anti-landlord character. The Malabar Rebellion is the most important of them. When such rebellions took place at the onset of the 19 th century, the dialectical materialist or Leftist political movements did not exist. It was natural that some weaknesses or limitations appeared in these movements. Jean Chesneaux, a historian of agrarian struggles in China, argues that as long as political ideas and political movements do not provide a clear goal and leadership, religious ideas and religious thought tend to give inspiration to agrarian struggles. 2 The tradition of such anti-imperialist and antifeudal rebellions was absorbed and carried forward in later years by the communists. By the early 1940s, due to the influence of the communists, the atmosphere in Kerala changed. For example, by 1943, the fighters of Kayyur went to the gallows chanting slogans against imperialism and feudal landlordism. What the communists did was to advance and carry forward – as well as correct weaknesses – in the history of struggles, including the Malabar Rebellion. During the period of the LDF government, memorials were erected for the leaders of the Malabar Rebellion, Ali Musaliar (1861-1922) and Madhavan Nair (1882-1933). CPI (M) leader T. Sivadasa Menon laid the foundation stone for the memorial to Ali Musaliar, while CPI

(M) leader Paloli Muhammedkutty laid the foundation stone for Madhavan Nair. A memorial for the Wagon Tragedy was erected in Tirur Municipality during the time of the LDF government. It was the LDF that fought to remove the memorial to the police chief during the Malabar Rebellion – R. H. Hitchcock from Vallumpuram. It was Hitchcock who was responsible for the Wagon Tragedy and for other atrocities. After the Rebellion, Muslims were denied entry into the Malabar Special Police services. The Left government in 1957 amended that order and lifted the ban on the service of Muslims in the police. Muslims were also not permitted to build shrines. The Left government removed that ban as well. SOCIAL REFORM With the crystallization of modern ideas in society the thought that there has to be a shift from traditional ways grew among Muslims as among other sections of society. Renaissance movements rose in the Muslim community as well as in others. One of the main leaders of this renaissance movement was Sayed Sanaulla Makti Thangal (18471912). He was a learned scholar, who knew Malayalam, Arabic, English, Urdu and Persian. Although he had a job under the British government, he resigned from it as his work of religious renaissance developed. He struggled against superstition and evil rites as well as called upon Muslims to reform themselves, including through modern education. He built educational institutions and published books and pamphlets in Arabic, Malayalam and in Arabic-Malayalam. He did not succumb to the criticism of the conservatives. Chalilakath Kunahmed Haji (1866-1919) was a teacher who liberated Islamic religious studies and Islamic education from the traditional format – pushing for more openness in the Darul Uloom to strengthen religious education. He insisted on the importance of girls’ education. Sheikh Mohammed Hamadani Thangal (d. 1922) established schools in remote areas where girls were also welcomed, established adult education centres and formed welfare associations to assist the community. Vakkom Mohammed Abdul Khader Moulavi

(1873-1932) played a central role in the Islamic renaissance through the United Muslim Group (Aikya Muslim Sangham), to raise the consciousness of the Muslim community. He ran important journals such as al-Islam (1918) and Deepika (1931) that concentrated on social and political matters. Swadeshabhimani Ramakrishna Pillai published his work in a newspaper owned by Vakkom Moulavi. Kattilasseri Muhammed Musaliar (1879-1943), a veteran of the Malabar Rebellion, organised tenants in Eranad and Valluvanad. A number of important individuals worked hard to bring modern educational practices into the Muslim community – such as Koyakkunju Sahib, a teacher to members of the Arakkal royal family. C.I. Ahmed Moulavi translated the Quran into Malayalam against objections that it should not even be translated Muhammed Abdurrahman inspired Ahmed Moulavi to do the translation. Following Ahmed Moulavi was Chekannur Maulvi (1936-1993), who provided new and fresh interpretations of the Quran. In Kerala, the main Muslim community draws from the Sunni tradition. Sunnis in Kerala are of the view that it is acceptable for Muslims to live under a secular government that allows for their observations of religious beliefs and rites. The mujahid movement, which developed in Kerala, attempted to modernise Islamic practice, including allowing women into mosques. But these movements are not alone. There is the Jamaat-e-Islami, an organization which does not see religion and the state as separate and which desires to establish an Islamic state against secularism. The communal agenda of the Jamaate-Islami puts forward an agenda for an Islamic State that resembles the RSS view of a Hindu State. What this agenda suggests is to isolate Muslims from the rest of Kerala’s society. IN OUR TIMES US imperialist attacks in the Middle East cause deep anxiety amongst Muslims and others in Kerala. This is particularly so since lakhs of people from Kerala work in the Gulf. The fact is, if stoves in Kerala are to burn, this money is needed. The US attempt to create hegemony

in the Gulf and the in the Arab world in general puts pressure on these workers and their remittances. After regime change operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US attempts to cause disruption in Iran and Syria. Terrorists are encouraged to disrupt Syria, which is one of the few secular states in the region. Muslims in India have protested the interventions of the United States. It is a serious matter that countries such as India are unwilling to resist the imperialism of the US. The USSR was a close ally of many nations in the Arab world. When the USSR was in place, the US could not intervene as they are now doing. The USSR prevented it. Only with the collapse of the USSR has the US been able to exert its war machine into the region. The Sangh Parivar attempts to implement the Hindutva agenda in India. The destruction of the Babri Masjid (1992) in Ayodhya cut at secularism and democracy at its roots. The Congress, which claims to be a secular party, could not prevent the Sangh Parivar’s ascent. The State – under Congress rule – was not willing to give the lead against communal attacks, despite the entreaties by the Left and other secular parties. This created an atmosphere that drew a small section of minorities towards terrorism. Terrorism is not a phenomenon that emanates from any particular religion. The explosions carried out under the leadership of the Sangh Parivar in places like Malegaon, Goa and Mecca Masjid, points the finger to this reality. It should be possible to discern that it is important in the present national context to strengthen the political force that is an alternative to the Congress and the BJP. The Congress and the BJP represent US partisanship in matters including foreign policy and the economic policy they put forward. Muslims in Kerala have been able to be far ahead of their people in any other part of India. The total number of all minorities in Kerala is almost half of the population. Religious discrimination or suppression is not felt here as in other States. A sizeable section of Muslim community has become rich. The leadership of the community is with them. In the name of minority rights what is protected is the interest of the elite of the community. They utilise the support of the community to intervene in power politics. The community’s elite has

no qualms in allying even with BJP to share power. The approach adopted by the Muslim League, which claims that it stands for the rights of Muslims, is to highlight the interests of such richer sections. The RSS tries to propagate a communal agenda, pointing its finger to this richer section and the Muslim League, which protect their interests. In that way, they try to foment feelings against Muslim masses. Political policies of the Right are intended to lead to communal polarization. They are prepared to ally with casteist and religious forces to confront the Communist movement. Such forces started to grow under the shade of the Right. Beypore-Vadakara alliances in earlier elections proved that it is possible for them to ally even with the BJP. The tie-up, which UDF had in the last Lok Sabha elections with NDF belongs to this pattern. When the Left rules there are no communal clashes in our State. That is not the position when UDF rules. This is the result of using religion for political ends. A change is necessary in this. In the history of Muslims in Malabar one cannot perceive the agenda of establishing political power. The path they have generally adopted is to live with all sections of people. Communal forces working among Muslims are going ahead with the political agenda of smashing it. This will isolate Muslims from the general stream and prepare the ground for majority communal forces to grow. It can be seen that all communal forces are targeting the working class movements. What majority-minority communalisms are doing is to destruct the interests of basic sections of people. The agenda of the communal forces is to pit people against each other. This has to be resisted. A common space has to be built. To strengthen public education is central in this context. Institutions where children are believers and non-believers can mix together will function as a strong foundation for secularism. Casteist-religious forces run unaided educational institutions, where children study only with their communal sections. This becomes a hindrance for the development of a secular consciousness. A society where secularism

and democracy must flourish requires the development of a perspective that is congenial to modern times. There must be space for a community to be critical of itself, to speak out against leading members who take retrograde positions. Such harmful positions – such as on the matter of age of consent for marriage – will only hurt society. It is necessary to expand the style of life for members of various religious communities, to bring them together into public celebrations of festivals and family gatherings (those of marriage and those of death). Religious believers must take the initiative to isolate those who propagate communalism and extremism in every religion. The model put forward by freedom fighters including Gandhiji and Maulana Abulkalam Azad must be propagated. Progressive minded people must be able to intervene to strengthen the advance of renaissance within religion. A secular society is most important as far as minorities are concerned, but it is in fact important for the entire society. Instead of strengthening such a society, communal extremist organizations are trying to get the Muslim masses to move away from the mainstream. We must resist their agenda. The Muslim League compromises with such forces. Their intervention to protect the interests of the rich in the Muslim community is against the interests of the majority of the Muslims, most of whom struggle to make a better life. Whichever be the religion one believes in, issues of life are common. Only when they are nourished can unity of common issues be understood. It is such a united stand in terms of social life and political life that is essential for a secular society. The CPI (M) is committed to the organization of life such that it creates the least friction on communal lines. Communists work to advance social life on the basis of class unity, while intervening to solve problems of social backwardness. The party follows the way put forth by EMS on these issues. The party is committed to bestow special attention to the issues of suffering sections of the people. In Kerala, SC-ST, women, minorities, OBCs and economically backward sections of forward communities – all these confront issues. 3 It must be possible to view

each oppression with special emphasis. The party has always taken care to handle issues of Muslim sections with care on that basis It was the Communist movement which continuously intervened taking up the difficulties of the minority section of people. It was the government of 1957 which for the first time in India introduced reservation for Muslims. Muslim tenants got ownership of land as a result of land reforms. The Left government intervened to improve the financial position of the minorites. It was the government in 1967 which formed the Malappuram district in a way that was helpful to tackle the social backwardness of sections of the Muslim minority and which gave leadership to establish a University in Malappuram. Interventions to improve the general education and general health maintenance contributed positive results as far as the Muslim masses are concerned. The Sachar Committee, appointed to study problems of minorities, assessed the prevailing general backwardness of minorities in India. It was the LDF government which on that basis examined the issues in the State and adopted remedial measures. The CPI (M) has been active in taking up the issue of the people – whether the people believe in caste and religion or not. The point of the struggles has been to undermine the intervention of the reactionaries who try to rake up conflicts in the name of caste and religion. The party is a pillar of secularism. The Leftist movement has to be stronger in order to firm up Kerala’s secular society. It has to be discerned that the growth of the Left is essential for the protection of minority sections as well. 1 The Marxist , XXX 1, January–March 2014. 2 Jean Chesneaux, Peasant Revolts in China, 1840-1949 , New York: Norton,

1973.

3

For instance, see E. M. S. Namboodiripad, ‘Perspective of the Women’s Movement’, Social Scientist , vol. 4, nos. 40-41, November-December 1975, and ‘Once Again on Castes and Classes’, Social Scientist , vol. 9, no. 12, December 1981.

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