Statement of CGPI, November 1984
Thousands of Sikhs have been brutally massacred in the unprecedented communal fascist terror unleashed by the Indian ruling classes immediately following the assassination of Indira Gandhi.
Statement of CGPI, November 1984
Thousands of Sikhs have been brutally massacred in the unprecedented communal fascist terror unleashed by the Indian ruling classes immediately following the assassination of Indira Gandhi. As the state- organized gangs of murderers, marauders and looters went around all over Delhi and other towns and cities of India, they left in their wake death and destruction on an unprecedented scale. Thousands were slaughtered in Delhi alone, while thousands more were killed in various towns and cities of U.P, Bihar, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, West Bengal, etc. People were burnt alive in their homes and in the streets. Sikhs were pulled out from buses and trains and mercilessly slaughtered in the most bestial manner. The homes and properties of tens of thousands of people were looted and destroyed; thousands of women have been turned into widows and children orphaned, and over 50,000 rendered homeless in Delhi alone, in the course of this murderous holocaust.
With utmost anger and hatred, the Communist Ghadar Party of India condemns the fascist Rajiv Gandhi government of big capitalists and big landlords for this heinous unpardonable massacre of the people.
This bestial slaughter of the Sikh people has been organized by the government of big capitalists and big landlords to terrorise and crush the struggle of the Punjabi people for their rights; it is aimed at further fomenting communal divisions amongst Hindus and Sikhs, smashing the unity of the people in struggle for their rights, subverting the struggles of all sections of the toiling people and strengthening the dark and criminal rule of the big capitalists and big landlords over the toiling people of India.
The reactionary government and the bourgeois press have gone all out to blame the people for this carnage. They blame the Sikh community as having "provoked" it. They blame Hindus saying the carriage was a massacre a Sikhs by Hindus. They blame poor saying that it was the poor who indulged in looting and massacres for their own ends. All the parties of the ruling classes — both the Congress and the bourgeois – revisionist "opposition" are spouting such filthy lies. It is not the people who were behind the carnage but the government of Rajiv Gandhi. It is the reactionary ruling classes who are thoroughly communalist; it is the parties of the ruling classes who are thoroughly communal, and not the people.
All facts clearly show that the massacre were not communal violence amongst the people in the sense that ordinary Hindus and Sikhs neighbors did not slaughter each other. On the contrary, they united and fought together to defend themselves from the murderous state organized mobs. It is the state of the big capitalists and big landlords, the fascist Rajiv Gandhi government, the criminals of the Congress Party, the police, who organized and unpleased the communal holocaust. It is precisely they who ordered and incited the criminal and lumpen strata to of about killing, looting, raping and burning indiscriminately and slaughter men, women and children of the Sikh religion in the most cruel and bestial manner. The criminal police were active participants in the massacre, they incited and goaded the mobs they had organized and transported, and in many places, in Delhi, Jammu etc, they led in the killings. It is to cover up its criminal hand as the organizer of these inhuman massacres that the government is blaming the ordinary people for it.
The induction of the army and paramilitary forces into Delhi and thirty other towns and cities in many provinces of India was aimed at reinforcing the fascist communal terror unleashed against the people. The army was not brought in to "put down" the communal terror as the government alleges. In fact, the killing and massacres continued and even increased while the army patrolled the streets. The army was brought in to put down the resistance of the people, particularly the Sikhs, to the terrible communal fascist terror unleashed against them by the government. The army is being used to terrorise and harass the mass of workers and poor in the name of finding the "criminals" and recovering loot etc.
In Punjab, army rule has been further strengthened to crush and prevent the people form protesting against the massacres of Punjabis in Delhi, and other parts of India. All leaflets and publications talking about the holocaust against the Sikhs have been banned in Punjab. For a whole week, while the massacres took place in other parts of India, Punjab was completely cut off, all news was completely censored. Now the army is harassing all those entering Punjab, sending the refugees from other parts of India into separate camps in order to isolate them from the other Punjabi people. All these fascist measures are intended to quell the resistance of the Punjabis people to these massacres.
All the political parties of the ruling classes, including the "C"PI and "C"P"M", have been vociferous in their support for the induction of the army to allegedly "restore peace". All of them are criminals and traitors, enemies of the toiling people. In the first place, they are trying to cover up the criminal role of the state and the government in the massacres and striving their utmost to make the people defenseless and disunited in the face of the fascist terror unleashed by the state. The experience of army rule in the North East and Assam, in Punjab etc, clearly and irrefutably shows that army rule is anti-people; it is aimed at crushing the struggle of the people, escalating the communal and fascist terror against the people and safeguarding the hated, unpopular rule of the big capitalists and big landlords.
The escalated use of communal and fascist terror by the government of big capitalists and big landlords against the toiling people show that the ruling classes are mortally afraid of the mounting revolt of the workers and peasants of India and of the people’s different regions and nationalities. It shows that in their striving to defend the hated exploitative order and their unpopular rule, they will go to any extent, including the mass slaughter of the people to crush the people's resistance. The unleashing of communal terror, the fomenting of communal divisions has always been the preferred policy of the big capitalist and big landlords, to smash the unity of the toiling people and their struggles against exploitation and oppression.
The central issue for the working class of people is to escalate their diverse struggles against the hated ruling classes and their government, against the unbearable exploitation and oppression and the communal and fascist terror of the government, in defense of their right and liberties, and forge the fighting unity of all the toiling people in the course of these struggles. Relying on their own strength, on the united might of the fighting people, the Indian people must fight for an end to this hatful system which offers nothing but savage exploitation and unbearable oppression, death and destruction, poverty and destitution, and fight for the realization of a People's Democratic India, an India of their dreams, where there will be no place for exploitation and oppression, where the people will be masters of their own destiny.