Statement of the Central Committee of the Communist Ghadar Party of India, 21 January 2025
The 26th of January this year is the 75th anniversary of the proclamation of India as a democratic republic. The rulers of our country claim that this republic has served all the Indian people very well. However, the mass protests of workers, peasants, women and youth all across the country show that the Indian Republic is not providing prosperity and protection for all its citizens. It is only serving the interests of a wealthy minority – the bourgeois class, headed by the monopoly capitalist houses.
At one pole, more and more Indian capitalists are joining the ranks of the richest persons on earth. At the other pole, workers, peasants and other working people are suffering from acute economic hardship. Wages of workers are lagging behind the persistently high rates of inflation. Incomes of most peasants are declining and the burden of debt is rising. Youth face widespread unemployment.
Insecurity and social oppression are on the rise. Women face discrimination, harassment and the danger of physical attacks on a daily basis. Various nationalities and tribal communities face savage oppression. People continue to be the victims of caste oppression and communal violence.
A republic is supposed to be a form of rule by the people. However, the toiling majority of people in our country have no power to change their miserable conditions. Crores of workers are opposing the four labour codes enacted by the Parliament. They are demanding a halt to the privatisation program. Kisans are opposing the liberalisation of agricultural trade. They are demanding legally guaranteed minimum support prices for all agricultural products and waiver of farm loans. The demands of workers and peasants are disregarded by the Indian Republic. Their struggles are treated as a “law and order problem”. Those who demand their rights are treated like criminals and kept in jail for years on end using draconian laws such as the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).
The root cause of the powerless condition of the working people and their ever-growing exploitation and oppression lies in the fact that the existing Republic is an organ of rule by the bourgeoisie. It came into being as a result of a deal that was struck between the British rulers and the Indian bourgeoisie in 1947. They struck a deal in order to prevent the masses of working people in India rising up in revolution.
The colonialists transferred power to the Indian big capitalists and big landlords, in whose interest it was to preserve the oppressive state and benefit from the exploitative economic system that the British had created. Sovereignty was formally transferred from the British Crown to a Constituent Assembly. The Constituent Assembly adopted a Constitution on 26 November 1949, which came into operation on 26 January 1950.
While conceding the popular demand for universal adult franchise, the 1950 Constitution perpetuated the political system which the British rulers had established, to enslave the Indian people and exploit our land and labour. The right to vote has only served to create an illusion that people are deciding their own fate, when it is in fact the bourgeois class which is ruling.
While one or another political party forms the government and appears to be in control, behind that party stands the bourgeois class headed by the monopoly houses. The capitalists set the agenda, which gets implemented by the Cabinet and the bureaucratic machinery.
The Preamble of the Constitution refers to “we, the people” as the supreme decision makers. However, the operative part of the Constitution vests sovereignty, the supreme decision-making power, in the President in Parliament, who is duty bound to act as advised by the Cabinet. The Cabinet headed by the Prime Minister has exclusive right to make policy decisions. The Parliament has exclusive right to make new laws. People have no role in deciding what should be the laws and policies.
The Constitution is supposed to protect fundamental rights. However, every article on fundamental rights includes a clause that permits the state to violate the people’s rights. For instance, Clause 1 of Article 19 states that all citizens have the right to “freedom of speech and expression”. Clause 2 of that article states that the state can impose “reasonable restrictions” on the exercise of this right, in the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India, security of the state, public order, etc. This clause permits the state to arrest anyone who dares to raise his or her voice against those in power.
All the institutions of the Indian state — the executive, legislature, and judiciary — work to maintain the rule of the bourgeoisie and implement the program of this ruling class. Since independence, Indian capitalists have used this state to enrich themselves and develop into an imperialist bourgeoisie, while the masses of working people have remained poor and super-exploited.
Way Forward
The first step for the workers, peasants and other working people is to recognise that the existing republic has served and will only serve the interest of the bourgeoisie. It will never serve the interests of the exploited masses. In a society divided into antagonistic classes such as ours, the state can either be in the service of the exploiting bourgeois class or in the service of the exploited workers and peasants. It cannot serve both sides.
An erroneous idea that is promoted by many bourgeois scholars and politicians is that the Indian Republic and its Constitution are designed to serve the toiling and oppressed people, but they have been misused by evil people and corrupt parties. Workers and peasants must reject this idea. To think that the class nature of the existing state can be changed by voting for good persons or for a clean party is a harmful illusion. The existing bourgeois state must be replaced by a workers’ and peasants’ state.
The 20th century witnessed the creation of workers’ and peasants’ states in the Soviet Union and several other countries. Such states did not claim to represent all classes, exploiters and exploited, as the bourgeois republics in the USA, France and other capitalist countries did. The republics of Russia and other member nations of the Soviet Union openly proclaimed that they were organs of rule by the working class in alliance with all other working people. They were instruments for getting rid of the exploiting classes and ensuring the fulfilment of the ever growing material and cultural needs of the entire people.
The 1936 Constitution of the Soviet Union, which was adopted after extensive discussion among the people, guaranteed that all adult women and men not only enjoy the right to elect and be elected, but also the right to select the candidates for election and to recall the person they elected at any time.
Even though the imperialists and their agents succeeded in sabotaging the rule of the working people and restoring the rule of capitalist exploiters, the experience of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries shows that it is both necessary and possible for the toiling majority of people to rule.
As long as the bourgeoisie continues to rule India, the country will be dragged along an extremely dangerous course. Exploitation and oppression of the toiling people will go from bad to worse, as will the danger of communal conflicts and of India getting involved in imperialist wars. In order to prevent such a disastrous course, it is necessary to end the rule of the bourgeoisie and establish a workers’ and peasants’ state.
A workers’ and peasants’ state in our country will be based on a constitution which vests sovereignty in the people. It will ensure that working people have the right to select candidates for election, to recall the person they elected at any time, and the right to initiate laws and policies. It will guarantee the rights of workers and peasants, and deprive capitalists of the “right” to accumulate wealth by exploiting the labour of others. It will protect the rights of all the nations, nationalities and peoples within India. It will end all forms of state terrorism and persecution based on religious, caste, national or tribal identity. It will be an instrument to get rid of capitalist exploitation, imperialist plunder, all remnants of feudalism, the caste system and the entire legacy of colonialism. It will take over the means of large-scale production from the hands of capitalist exploiters and convert them into social property. It will change the orientation of the economy, from the maximisation of capitalist profits to the fulfilment of the ever growing material and cultural needs of the entire people.
On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Indian Republic, the Communist Ghadar Party of India calls on all those who care about the future of our country to rally around the program of replacing the existing bourgeois republic with a workers’ and peasants’ state.