Call of the Communist Ghadar Party of India on May Day, 2003
Comrade workers!
Call of the Communist Ghadar Party of India on May Day, 2003
Comrade workers!
We are approaching this May Day at a time when India and the whole world face grave dangers. The criminal and destructive war on Iraq has revealed the dangerous and aggressive course of world imperialism, spearheaded by US imperialism. The rulers of India are taking an equally reckless course of globalisation through liberalisation and privatisation. This course is devastating the Indian economy and causing untold suffering.
In the name of privatisation, the assets of the peoples of this subcontinent – the industrial plants, mines, land and water – are all being put up for sale to private profiteers. In the name of liberalisation, all commodity markets are being opened up to imports. This is leading to the ruination of millions of small and medium-scale producers. Workers are losing jobs. Unemployment is soaring. Trade union rights are under attack. Contract labour is being legalised. The peasants are getting ruined and are being driven to suicide all over the country. The bourgeoisie is doing all this in the name of ensuring global competitiveness of Indian industry and agro-business.
The drive of the Indian and international bourgeoisie towards converting Indian agriculture into a base for global agro-business, is leading to disastrous consequences for the peasantry. The policies in tune with the WTO agreements are ruining Indian agriculture. They are destroying the natural environment. They are leading to impoverishment, pauperisation and ruination of the peasantry.
While cutting back on public procurement of food grains and expanding the space for contract farming by private capitalist monopolies and multinational companies, the Indian State is asking the peasants to fend for themselves in the global market. Agricultural policy is openly being oriented to facilitate fulfilment of the greed of international cartels and Indian monopoly houses to reap the maximum rate of private profit. The Indian State is abrogating its responsibility to ensure the conditions that provide secure livelihood for the tillers and toilers of the land.
The ruling bourgeoisie and its parties in power are raising the budget allocations year after year on the parasitic armed forces and state apparatus. However they ruthlessly declare that expenditure on social services and public distribution of food have to be cut to avoid a fiscal crisis or debt trap. Tens of thousands of crores of public money are spent periodically by the Government of India to keep up the profit rate of the big corporations of the Tatas, Ambanis, Birlas and other monopoly houses. The UTI bail out was one such instance. Hundreds of thousands of crores are spent every year in paying the richest individuals and capitalist-imperialist institutions, including huge amounts as interest and loan repayments to the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. However, the ruling political parties of the bourgeoisie in unison declare that there is no money to provide for the people. They are destroying the Public Distribution System and letting millions of people starve even as the government godowns are overflowing with food grains.
The spokesmen of the ruling bourgeoisie claim that liberalisation and privatisation are in the ‘national interest’. The workers and peasants, who constitute the vast majority of the Indian population, are being deprived of their livelihood and threatened with total ruin. How can such a wholesale sell-out and anti-worker and anti-peasant course be in the 'national interest'? All available facts clearly show that this so-called reform program is strictly in the interest of a tiny minority in society.
On this May Day 2003, the Communist Ghadar Party of India calls on all activists of the working class to continue the uncompromising struggle to halt the anti-national and anti-people course of globalisation through privatisation and liberalisation.
Comrade workers!
Faced with the growing opposition among the broad masses of workers, peasants, women and youth to the anti-social offensive, the ruling Indian bourgeoisie is resorting to brute force and the organising of communal and sectarian violence to drown in blood the struggles of the people. It is evoking the threat of ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ and terrorism, as the justification for inciting communal passions, as in Gujarat. The organising of bomb blasts and other terrorist acts by secret gangs sponsored by the intelligence agencies are used as the pretext for stepping up state terrorism. The Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) has become one more black law in the arsenal of fascist legislation of the Indian State, to attack the rights of all those who raise their voice against the status quo.
Sitting at the head of an "emerging market" and with billions of dollars of foreign exchange reserves, the Indian bourgeoisie is militarising the economy. It is seeking newer ways to reap super-profits and emerge as a big power through participating in the imperialist wars of conquest and re-division of the world. It is engaged in war preparations and warmongering against Pakistan constantly. It unabashedly uses chauvinist propaganda to blame Pakistan for all kinds of ills in Indian society. The participation of the Indian bourgeoisie and the Indian State in imperialist plots and machinations has made the situation in South Asia especially dangerous.
Without any consultation among the broad masses of people or even among the elected members of legislative bodies, the Government of India has been allowing increasing space for US and British imperialist interference and intervention in South Asia. This includes close collaboration in the military sphere as well. The working class and peasantry and all the freedom and peace loving people of this country do not approve of this growing interference by the US and British imperialists in South Asia. The growing mass sentiment all over Asia in defence of Iraq and against the criminal aggression by the US and Britain forced the Indian State to formally take a position against the Bush-Blair doctrine of using force to achieve 'regime change'.
Internal contradictions are sharpening within the Indian bourgeoisie between the path of closer collaboration with the US and Britain, and the path of pursuing a multipolar world in collaboration with various states in Europe and Asia.
The peoples of India and Pakistan do not want a war over Kashmir. They do not want a war between India and Pakistan on any pretext. The strength and depth of the mass sentiment of the peoples of India and Pakistan, along with other factors, is forcing the leadership on both sides of the border to bring down the level of hostility and re-open the dialogue towards resolving the conflicts.
We must demand that no space is permitted for military collaboration with the US or Britain! We must demand that not an inch of space is given for Anglo-American forces in South Asia. We must reiterate our demand that the Government of India works for peace and not for war in South Asia. We must unleash a movement to force the Indian and Pakistani governments into a peace process, including a no-war pact between the two countries.
Comrade workers!
India is not safe in the hands of the ruling bourgeoisie. The continuation of the rule of the bourgeoisie means ever rising danger of fascism and war. Only the working class can save India from the disasters that the bourgeoisie has in store. This it has to do by leading all the oppressed people in a revolution. The working class must forge a fighting alliance with the peasantry, its biggest and most reliable ally, in opposition to the bourgeois offensive. It must forge a broad political alliance of various sections of society that are opposed to the present system, around a program which will immediately lift India out of the crisis.
The aim of the immediate program of the working class is to bring the concerns of the toiling masses to the centre-stage. It is to prepare to replace the rule of the bourgeoisie by worker-peasant rule. In the sphere of the economy, the working class fights for an immediate halt to privatisation and liberalisation, and for reorientation of government policy, by stopping payments to the rich and reallocation of those resources to provide for the well being of workers and peasants. In the sphere of the political process, the working class fights for a process of direct democracy that will serve to ensure that workers and peasants have a say in decisions that affect their fate, while political parties play the role of enabling the working people to rule themselves.
Comrade workers,
The working class is one class, with a single aim of thoroughgoing socio-economic transformation of India. The aim of the working class is not merely to replace one party in power by another, but it is to replace one economic and political system by another. Our immediate program is aimed at opening the path for the revolutionary transformation of society from capitalism to socialism. We must stick to and fight to implement this program.
The bourgeoisie has been using us as voting cattle, election after election. Using this vote-bank politics, it has kept us divided. It has manipulated us into multiple unions led by their different political parties. On this May Day, we must resolve to make a clean break with this kind of divisive sectarian politics. We have to fight for unity of the class at all levels, from one union in one factory to one program, the program of the democratic renewal of all of Indian society.
In order that the working class plays its rightful role in Indian politics at this time, we must address the problem of disunity in the vanguard of the working class. Different parties and groups, all calling themselves communists, are continuing to send different signals to the working class. This disunity among Indian communists can and must be put to an end, if the working class is to have any influence over the course of Indian society.
As the first requirement to restore the unity of Indian communists, we must all unite to develop the revolutionary political program for the democratic renewal of India. The Communist Ghadar Party of India believes that it is the duty of all Indian communists to contribute to this task. All workers must demand this of every communist party. It follows that no communist party must tail behind any bourgeois alliance, such as a ‘secular’ bourgeois front whose aim is to safeguard the existing system. All communists must co-operate to build only one political front, the revolutionary front with the worker-peasant alliance as its backbone.
It is we, the workers, peasants, women and youth, who constitute India. There can be no India without us, but there can certainly be a flourishing India without any exploiting classes, native or foreign. Today, the bourgeoisie rules over the whole of Indian society. Speaking in the name of India, the ruling bourgeoisie is looting and plundering her wealth and sharing the loot with foreign imperialists. It is in our hands to change this situation. We must unite and fight to establish the conditions in which sovereign power shall vest in us—the workers, peasants, women and youth of all nations, nationalities and tribes. We will use this sovereign power to transform the lives of the vast masses of our people, and secure a bright and prosperous future for the coming generations.
Long Live May Day!
Inquilab Zindabad!
Hum Hain Iske Malik Hum Hain Hindustan! Mazdoor, Kisan, Aurat aur Jawan!