Call of the Communist Ghadar Party of India, July 12, 2017
Peasant brothers, you have come here to Delhi from every corner of India to declare to the whole country that you will fight against injustice and for your rights. The Communist Ghadar Party of India stands firmly in defence of your struggle.
Call of the Communist Ghadar Party of India, July 12, 2017
Peasant brothers,
You have come here to Delhi from every corner of India to declare to the whole country that you will fight against injustice and for your rights.
The Communist Ghadar Party of India stands firmly in defence of your struggle.
You have been forced to come here because the callousness of the rulers of our country towards the peasantry has crossed all limits. The cup is full and overflowing.
You are demanding that the state upholds rajdharma by fulfilling its duty to you, the producers of food. You are fulfilling your dharma to society by feeding the whole country. But the bitter reality is that the rulers are refusing to carry out their rajdharma. They are not ensuring sukh and surkasha for the tillers of our land.
You are demanding that the government guarantees procurement of all farm produce at a price that is 50% above the cost of production. You are demanding that the procurement price be set at the beginning of the season, before the sowing of crops. You are demanding that the government waive all loans to farmers, without any conditions. These are completely just demands, which it is the duty of the state to fulfill.
You are turning the earth into gold, through the labour of your families, including children. The food grains, pulses, sugarcane, fruits, vegetables, milk, ghee, oil, and other food items that people consume, are the product of your hard labour and sweat. You produce the cotton that is turned into yarn and provides clothing for people. But what is the reward that you get in return for your service to the country?
If your crop gets ruined for any reason, you go bankrupt. If there is a bumper crop, then you are forced to throw away your produce onto the roads, or let them rot in the fields, because you will not even recover the cost of the sacks and transportation to the mandis. You listen to the exhortations of the authorities and plant a particular crop, in the hope that you will be able to get good returns — only to see your dreams turn into ashes. At the end of the season, the reward you get for fulfilling your duty to society is the dreaded knock of the banks and the moneylenders threatening to seize your lands. Every day, we hear the horrific news of hardworking peasants committing suicide because the rulers of our country do not care for the wellbeing of the peasantry.
Next month, the rulers of our country will be celebrating the 70th anniversary of independence from British rule. Peasants all over the country are asking the question — are we really free?
The direct rule of the colonialists has no doubt ended. But the exploitative and oppressive system of rule continues. Every peasant has firsthand experience of the anti-people attitude of government authorities at every level. They make you run from pillar to post, whether certifying the quality of your produce, it be getting bank loans, or anything else that the government promises. You have to pay bribes, to get any work done. Even when the government declares that it will purchase your produce at a certain rate, it makes you run around between different authorities, making you feel like you are begging for favours.
The anti-peasant anti people character of this state comes out clearly from the demonetisation that was carried out by the government claiming that this will root out corruption. Every peasant will vouch that it has not changed anything. It has only led to the ruin of many peasant households. It led to the ruin of lakhs of small industries, throwing lakhs of workers out of their jobs. Only the biggest monopolies, Indian and foreign benefited.
The Indian state remains an instrument for robbery of the peasantry just as it was in colonial times. It is an instrument in the hands of the biggest Indian and foreign monopolies to guarantee maximum profits for themselves while savagely exploiting the labour of workers and peasants, and plundering the natural resources of our country. It has been forcibly taking over the land of the peasantry to hand over to Indian and foreign monopolies. The united struggle of the peasantry forced the previous Manmohan Singh government to repeal the Colonial Land Acquisition Act. The Modi government is desperately trying to pass a new law that will permit it to forcibly takeover land of the peasantry without their consent, and hand it over to private capitalist monopolies.
Peasant Brothers,
In every election to the parliament or state assemblies, the political parties of the capitalist class promise heaven on earth to the peasants. They make out that their heart bleeds for you. In reality, they turn their backs on you and favour the capitalist monopolies, the moment they come to power. This is what life experience with every election and every capitalist party teaches us.
The time has come to chart a new course. We must make a break with the path of lining up behind this or that capitalist party — whether the parties of the big monopolies like Congress or BJP, or the state level parties of the capitalist class. Hundreds of peasant organisations have come together under one banner of struggle for the rights of peasants. This is an extremely positive development. We must build our own organisations of united struggle.
The Communist Ghadar Party of India calls on the fighting peasants to make a clean break with the capitalist class controlling state power which is deliberately ruining the broad masses of peasants in order to make maximum profits.
Your real and staunch ally is the working class of our country. The working class has been waging a militant struggle against the anti-worker, anti-peasant, and anti-social course of the ruling capitalist class which is wrecking the whole of our society.
The present state and political and economic system works in the interests of about 150 big monopoly houses who are running roughshod over the interests of vast masses of the people. What India needs is a thoroughgoing Navnirman of the Indian state and society. We need to establish a new state that will ensure prosperity and security to all.
The Communist Ghadar Party is organizing the workers, peasants and all the exploited and oppressed to fight to establish such a new state in place of the existing state of the capitalist exploiters headed by the monopolies.
Such a state will establish a public procurement system that will guarantee remunerative prices for all agricultural produce, and ensure prosperity and security of livelihood for the peasantry. It will invest in irrigation and other public works in the countryside. It will prohibit the buying and selling of agricultural land between private parties in order to protect the peasantry from capitalist land sharks. It will assist the peasantry who are tilling small plots of land to voluntarily cooperativise and provide seeds, fertilisers, pesticides, technical knowhow, tractors and other inputs to agriculture, free of cost to such cooperatives.
One hundred and sixty years ago, the peasantry from all regions of India along with other patriotic forces rose up like a mighty storm in the Great Ghadar of 1857. Their aim was nothing less than to throw out the colonialists and free our country from British colonial rule. The slogan of the revolutionaries was “Hum hai iske malik, Hindostan Humara”. The history of the anti-colonial movement is full of heroic struggles of the peasantry from all regions of the country, North to South and East to West. The tragedy for our country has been that while it was the peasants and workers who shed their blood for freedom, it is the capitalist class headed by the monopolies which got state power 70 year ago.
India belongs to the workers, peasants, and broad masses of people of our country. It cannot be allowed to be the private property of the big monopolies. The workers and peasants have to become the maliks of what rightfully belongs to them. Until and unless this is achieved, the lot of the peasantry will go from bad to worse.
The Communist Ghadar Party of India appeals to the leaders of the fighting peasantry to build and strengthen the united peasant movement with this aim. Let us wage the struggle with the aim of establishing the rule of workers and peasants in our country so as to reorient the economy to ensure prosperity for all.
Hum Hai Iske malik, Hum hai Hindostan, Mazdoor Aur Kisaan, Aurat aur Jawan!
Long live worker-peasant unity!
Mazdoor Kisan Ka Hai yeh maang, Hindostan ka Navnirman!