On the Occasion of the 71st Anniversary of the Indian Republic:

Let us Organise to establish a Workers’ and Peasants’ Republic!

Call of the Central Committee of Communist Ghadar Party of India, 24 Jan, 2021

For the first time in the history of independent India, this year’s Republic Day is expected to witness not only the official parade but also a mass protest march against recently enacted farm laws. The unofficial parade is expected to take the form of a tractor march on the streets of Delhi, with participation of lakhs of women and men from numerous states of the Indian Union.

What began as a protest by peasant unions has grown into a popular revolt of broad masses of people. Workers, peasants, women and youth are revolted by the fact that the Republic of India is acting as the agency of monopoly capitalist corporations, Indian and foreign. Far from serving the public interest, this Republic is a tool of self-serving private interests of a super-rich minority.

Seventy one years after the proclamation of the Indian Republic, workers and peasants are asserting their claims on the fruits of their toil. They are demanding their rightful share of the material wealth they create. The State is refusing to fulfil their rights. It is fulfilling only the exorbitant claims of monopoly capitalists. Parliament has passed four anti-worker Labour Codes and three anti-peasant Farm Laws to fulfil the illegitimate “right” of monopoly capitalist corporations to pocket maximum profits from all possible spheres.

Workers and peasants are angry that they have no say in the enacting of laws which have a major impact on their lives. The preamble to the Constitution proclaims that we, the people, have constituted ourselves into a democratic republic. It gives the impression that we, the people, are the decision-makers. Life experience, however, keeps exposing the fact that we, the toiling majority of people, are completely excluded from the process of decision-making in this so-called democratic republic.

Until 15th August, 1947, sovereignty over the territory of India, the power to decide the fate of the crores of people who live here, resided in the British King or Queen in Parliament. Under the India Independence Act passed by the British Parliament and signed by King George VI, sovereignty over the post-partition India was transferred into the hands of a Constituent Assembly. Executive power was delegated by the British rulers to an interim Congress Party government headed by Nehru. The Constitution adopted and proclaimed in January 1950 vested sovereignty in the hands of the President in Parliament, who is bound to follow the advice of the Cabinet headed by the Prime Minister.

For the past 71 years, we, the people of India, have been at the receiving end of the official propaganda that the existing State represents all classes of people in our country. We have been fed with one false promise after another. We were promised a socialistic pattern of society. We were promised the elimination of poverty. After “garibi hatao” came “growth with equity” and “capitalist reforms with a human face”. The latest of the false promises is “sab ka saath, sab ka vikaas”. All these sweet words have been negated by the reality that the existing State is an organ of dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, headed by the monopoly capitalists.

Ours is a class divided society. At one pole is the class of owners of capital, headed by the monopoly houses, who are closely connected to the monopoly capitalists of the world. At the other pole are the exploited majority, headed by the proletariat, the most numerous class which owns nothing except its own labour power. In such a class divided society, the State must necessarily be the organ of rule by one or the other class in contention. The Indian Republic is an organ of rule by the bourgeoisie.

The Indian bourgeoisie has perpetuated the system of rule which the British bourgeoisie created, to enslave and plunder India. When the Second World War came to an end in 1945, the British bourgeoisie was faced with the prospect of a revolution by the workers, peasants and soldiers of India. To prevent this, they struck a deal with the Indian bourgeoisie and transferred political power into its hands in 1947. The Indian bourgeoisie decided to retain the laws and system of rule inherited from the British bourgeoisie. The aim and aspiration of the workers and peasants for an end to the exploitative and oppressive system was betrayed.

One of the results of that historic betrayal is that the Republic of India is based on a political theory which is completely alien to this subcontinent. It is based on centuries-old English political theory, premised on the “divine right of kings”. In Britain, the highest decision-making power is vested in the king-in- parliament, while in post-colonial India it is vested in the president-in-parliament. Unrestricted right to decide public policy and initiate legislation is enjoyed by the party in charge of executive power, which acts as the management team for the ruling bourgeois class. The debates in parliament and interventions by the judiciary create the impression that there are “checks and balances” against arbitrary decisions and actions of the executive. This is an illusion created to hide the fact that an exploiting minority enjoys unrestricted power in this system.

Once a party of the bourgeoisie captures the majority of Lok Sabha seats as the BJP has done at present, it is able to impose the dictate of the monopoly capitalists without even the drama of parliamentary debate. The Cabinet issues Ordinances as and when it pleases. These Ordinances subsequently become Acts of Parliament. The judiciary intervenes in the interest of maintaining capitalist rule in the name of “public order”.

The enactment of the recent anti-worker and anti-peasant laws by the parliament in the midst of the corona virus crisis and prolonged economic lockdown exposes the fact that there is really no check on the executive. The majority of people have no means of counteracting anti-people actions of the government.

The “rule of law” which is practised in our country was imported from Britain to serve the exploitation and plunder of our land and labour. It defends the “right” of capitalists to accumulate private property through the exploitation of human labour and robbery of peasants and other small commodity producers in the market.

The concept underlying this rule of law consists of three elements, called peace, order and good government. Once the capitalist system of exploitation and plunder is accepted, then maintaining peace means to suppress any resistance or revolt among the exploited and oppressed people. Maintaining order means to ensure obedience to the class and caste hierarchies in society. Good government means that after elections, the ruling and opposition would dutifully exchange places, while always remaining loyal to the capitalist class.

The capitalist class, by its very nature, says one thing while doing the opposite. All the politicians of this class are trained in this two-timing activity. There is thus a glaring gap between the words and deeds of the Indian Republic. It calls itself a democracy which represents the entire people while life experience shows that rights and freedom are enjoyed only by the bourgeoisie. For the toiling majority of people it is a brutal dictatorship.

Tens of thousands of toiling people have been braving the cold and rains at the borders of the capital city for the past two months, demanding their right to secure livelihood. The State has tried every foul trick to disrupt the protest by defaming the protesters as terrorists and anti-national elements. The National Investigative Agency has sent notices to numerous individuals alleging that they are aiding and abetting terrorism.

The tens of thousands of women and youth who participated in the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Bill were also treated as a threat to the Republic. They continue to be arrested under the UAPA. Anyone who is fighting for people’s rights is seen as a potential threat and thrown into jail, branded as an anti-national element of one kind or another. In many parts of the country, such as Kashmir and the north-eastern states, armed forces enjoy the right to even kill people on the streets on mere suspicion and organise encounter killings.

The bourgeoisie rules through the ballot and the bullet. The parliamentary process is used to keep people diverted and divided. The police and other armed forces are used to crush any united resistance to bourgeois rule.

The agenda of the bourgeoisie gets implemented through one or another of its trusted parties. When the anger of people rises, we are told to wait until the next round of elections. However, a change of party at the helm does not lead to any change in the bourgeois class character of the Republic.

For the past 73 years, it is the traitorous bourgeois class which has been setting the agenda, in collaboration and competition with foreign capitalists. The economic system has been oriented to fulfil the insatiable greed of capitalist monopoly houses. We workers and peasants, who constitute the vast majority of the population, have had no say in deciding the course of development. We are denied our legitimate share of the fruits of our toil. We are deprived of our rights, including even the right to protest.

The vast majority of people are excluded from political power in this system. Our only role is to cast a vote once in five years, to choose among candidates selected mostly by parties of the bourgeoisie. Once elected, the “people’s representatives” are not at all accountable to those who elected them. Decision-making power is concentrated in the Parliament, and within the Parliament it is concentrated in the hands of a Cabinet headed by the Prime Minister.

The tractor march on Republic Day, for which active preparations are going on, is an expression of the determination of kisans to oppose the monopoly capitalist takeover of Indian agriculture and to fight for state guaranteed minimum support prices for all crops. It is an expression of the firm opposition of masses of working people to the present system in which Parliament can make laws aimed at robbing us and trampling our rights in the mud. We, the people, are asserting our right to have a say in decisions that affect us.

We, the hardworking people of India, must organise to deprive the bourgeois class of the power to exploit and plunder our land and labour. We need to replace the existing Republic, which is based on an alien and out-dated political theory, by a new Republic, based on the best of Indian political theory. Sovereignty must be vested in the people and the State must be committed to ensure prosperity and protection for all.

According to Indian political theory, it is the people who create a system of political institutions, whose Dharm is to ensure prosperity and protection for all. The struggle being waged by workers, peasants and other oppressed masses of people at this time is for the realisation of this principle of Raj Dharm in modern conditions. It is a struggle to establish a workers’ and peasants’ Republic that would be duty bound to guarantee prosperity and protection for all.

It is we workers, peasants, women and youth, belonging to different nations, nationalities and tribal peoples, who constitute India. India belongs to all of us. It is in our interest to bring about those changes in the system which will lead to our empowerment and ensure that prosperity and protection are guaranteed for all. Let us organise to usher in the new India, with full confidence that Dharm will certainly triumph over Adharm!

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