Fight for peace in South Asia!
The massacre of innocent men, women and children in Kaluchak, Jammu, has been the signal for the Vajpayee government to raise war hysteria to a fever pitch and to step up war preparations against Pakistan. Hurriyat leader Abdul Ghani Lone was assassinated on precisely the day Shri Vajpayee began his Kashmir tour.
Fight for peace in South Asia!
The massacre of innocent men, women and children in Kaluchak, Jammu, has been the signal for the Vajpayee government to raise war hysteria to a fever pitch and to step up war preparations against Pakistan. Hurriyat leader Abdul Ghani Lone was assassinated on precisely the day Shri Vajpayee began his Kashmir tour. As people try to come to terms with yet another gruesome terrorist slaughter, with yet another case of the politics of assassination, we have the spectacle of Prime Minister Vajpayee revelling in war mongering. The NDA government has secured the support of the major parliamentary "opposition" parties for this war policy. The government has handed over command of the police, paramilitary forces, and coast guards, and local administration in the border areas from Gujarat to Kashmir to the Armed Forces. There has been heavy shelling from both armies in the border areas as well as forced evacuation of tens of thousands of villagers living in the border regions. Various political leaders of India and Pakistan have been threatening a nuclear holocaust, a "final solution" and so on. Side by side, the imperialists of US, Britain and the EU have stepped up their "peace diplomacy"—with the active encouragement of rulers of both India and Pakistan.
It is extremely important that India’s workers and peasants in particular, and all the peoples of South Asia in general, assess the politics of terrorism in a cool and calm manner and not fall for provocations. There is need to assess what is behind the terrorist killings in the subcontinent, who are the forces behind them, and what their aims are. There is need to assess who is benefiting from the war preparations and war hysteria as well as from the "peace diplomacy".
The aim of the Kaluchak massacre was to provoke the Indian Armed forces. Its aim was to facilitate the further whipping up of war hysteria. Things and phenomenon are revealing that the Indian government, the Pakistan government, as well as the Anglo-American imperialists—all have their axe to grind in this situation.
The rulers of India and Pakistan have greatly benefited by the Kaluchak massacre. Facing increasing isolation and discredit because of their anti-people policies, they have seized the opportunity to don the mantle of "super-patriots". Vajpayee and Musharraf have donned the mantle of "defender" of their countries and "champion fighter against terrorism and fundamentalism". The leaders of both India and Pakistan are shamelessly prostrating themselves before the Anglo-American imperialists and pledging to be their most faithful followers in this region.
The US imperialists, who have launched the "global war against terrorism" to conquer Asia, have greatly benefited by the Kaluchak massacre and the subsequent sabre-rattling by India against Pakistan. They have been provided further reasons to step up their interference in the sub-continent, this time with their "peace-diplomacy" to "prevent a nuclear conflagration". They have a chance to impose their aims not only in Kashmir, but also in South Asia as a whole. In a significant study by the US government released to the press, it is claimed that the US does not trust the Indian and Pakistani governments to avert war, that this war could well be a nuclear war, and that US armed forces will definitely have to intervene in South Asia following the outbreak of hostilities! The US imperialists and the reactionaries of South Asia are playing an extremely diabolical game against the peoples, benefiting both from the "terrorism" they are sponsoring and from the "war against terrorism" they have unleashed, and from the "peace diplomacy".
Terrorism has its root in the capitalist-imperialist system. Terrorism is a preferred weapon of imperialist and capitalist states worldwide to achieve their nefarious political aims against the peoples of their own countries and against the people of other countries. At this time, the imperialist and capitalist states, in particular Anglo-American imperialism as well as the Indian and Pakistani states are unleashing terrorism in the sub-continent to wreck the struggle of the toiling masses of South Asia, to prop up the anti-popular regimes in these two countries by whipping up war hysteria and militarisation, and to advance the aims of US imperialism of conquering this sub-continent. Any war between India and Pakistan will not end terrorism in South Asia. Terrorism will be ended in South Asia only when the peoples overthrow the anti-popular regimes, kick out the Anglo-American imperialists lock stock and barrel, and establish their own rule.
The Anglo-American imperialists are greatly worried that the peoples of India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka do not rise up against the anti-popular regimes that are ruling over them and break out of the imperialist chain, the imperialist system of states. The spectre of the people of one or more of the countries of this region rising up in revolution is haunting the Anglo-American imperialists. The imperialists regard South Asia, home to over a billion people, as an extremely important emerging market. South Asia is also strategically located at the junction of the oil rich West and Central Asia, China and South East Asia. The Anglo-American imperialists have, in a calculated manner, encircled South Asia militarily by playing off the ruling class of India and Pakistan against each other. This has been going on in a systematic manner ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Following the September 11, 2001 events, and the joining of India and Pakistan in America’s "global war against terrorism", this process has got a great boost.
War between India and Pakistan, as also the continuing war hysteria and preparations for war, serve the imperialists and the anti-popular ruling cliques—not the peoples of South Asia. India’s working class and people must resolutely oppose the war preparations and war hysteria. The Indian people have to respond to the need of the times. The need of the times is to vigorously oppose the growing military and political interference of the Anglo-American imperialists in South Asia and the alliance of the reactionary ruling cliques of India and Pakistan with these imperialists.
The Indian working class and people must firmly hoist the banner of peace in South Asia. The times are calling on the Indian working class and people to build and strengthen the alliance of all the toiling and patriotic and peace loving peoples of India, Pakistan and other peoples of South Asia against the reactionary warmongering alliance of the Anglo-American imperialists and the traitorous rulers of the sub-continent. It is extremely clear that the cause of peace can never be left in the hands of the reactionary ruling class. Neither can this treacherous ruling class ever defend the sovereignty of the country or the interests of the peoples. It is the people who have to take the cause of peace into their own hands. For this the workers and peasants of India must rally all the toiling and patriotic and freedom loving people of South Asia to throw out the Anglo-American imperialists and their military forces out of the region. Simultaneously they must revolt against the treacherous ruling cliques which are the base for the imperialist domination, for the warmongering and the entire anti-social offensive against the peoples.