• Neither BJP nor the Congress Party can provide protection from communal violence and terror!
  Build the revolutionary front of workers, peasants, women and youth!

• Condemn the terrorist killings in Jammu!

• Citizens Tribunal releases its findings on the state organised genocide in Gujarat

• Innocents being branded as "terrorists" and killed in Kashmir:
  The real terrorist is the Indian state

• Tenth anniversary of the Babri Masjid Demolition

• Working people of Tamilnadu step up united struggles

• Tamilnadu construction workers struggle for implementation of the Welfare Board promises

• Students in Delhi protest against sexual assault

• Joint actions of working class on all-India scale

• Escalating cycle of terrorist violence in Andhra Pradesh a matter of grave concern

• Protests in Haryana and Rajasthan against killings

Neither BJP nor the Congress Party can provide protection from communal violence and terror!
Build the revolutionary front of workers, peasants, women and youth!

Statement of the Communist Ghadar Party of India on the Gujarat elections, November 28, 2002

In the name of "maintaining communal harmony" and "defending law and order", the Indian State has unleashed a reign of terror. Legitimate political activities against the communalisation and criminalisation of life have been banned and Gujarat has been turned into an armed camp. The carnage at Godhra, the state organised bestial genocide of people of Muslim faith, the terrorist massacre in the Akshardham temple, the systematic whipping up of an atmosphere of terror and distrust amongst the people — such is the backdrop in which elections are being imposed on an unwilling people at the point of the bayonet.

The bourgeoisie has once again placed the BJP and the Congress Party as the only two options before the people. This is like choosing between the devil and the deep sea. The Communist Ghadar Party of India appeals to the workers and peasants, women and youth to reject the bourgeois propaganda that there is no alternative except to vote for the "lesser of the two evils". The party appeals to all communists and progressive political activists to pour their collective energy into building the front of the workers, peasants, women, youth and all the oppressed! The challenge facing all those who stand for progress is to forge a revolutionary front without the bourgeoisie and against the bourgeoisie!

The BJP makes out that the problem of Gujarat and India is the handiwork of people of the Muslim faith, of "Islamic fundamentalism". By repeating faithfully the lies of the US imperialists and all the reactionaries of the world today, the BJP is hoping to win the elections on an openly communal anti-Muslim platform.

The Congress Party is peddling the worn out theory that the problem lies with "extremism" of both the Hindu and Muslim communalists and that the solution lies in the "middle path" of 'tolerance' and defence of the "secular foundations" of the Indian State. This party hopes that the people will forget the history of communal massacres that the Congress has organised or collaborated in, while preaching tolerance and secularism, including the Partition and the genocide against Sikhs in 1984.

Both the BJP and the Congress Party are united in hiding the truth from the people that the problem of Gujarat and India stems from the oppressive rule of the bourgeois class whose interests they represent. Both the Congress and BJP are united in their defence of the rule of the bourgeoisie and the capitalist system, as well as the program of globalisation through privatisation and liberalisation.

The problem of communal violence and terror is not the creation of some "extremist" Muslims or "extremist" Hindus, as the propaganda of the bourgeoisie and the imperialist news media makes out. Organising of violence targeted against people on the basis of their religious faith and at the same time calling on them to rely on the State to maintain peace and communal harmony -- this is the method being employed today by the Indian ruling class so as to stabilise its rule. This is the same method developed and employed by the British colonialists to subjugate our people in the past. The BJP and the Congress Party are the two main vehicles for dividing and ruling over the people today.

The root of the problem lies in the anti-worker and anti-peasant rule of the Indian bourgeoisie and the increasing imperialist domination and plunder. Under this rule, the livelihood and rights of workers and peasants will continue to be attacked. The future of youth will remain dark and bleak. Communal violence will continue to be unleashed so as to 'divide and rule' over the exploited masses of people.

The Communist Ghadar Party of India firmly believes that to put an end to communalism and communal violence, we must prepare to put an end to the rule of the bourgeoisie. This is the aim with which we must build the revolutionary front of the workers, peasants, women and youth. The capitalist-imperialist system of global plunder, and the bourgeois class that defends this system on the world scale, constitutes the source of communalism, racism, fascism and dangerous wars of conquest today. Putting an end to the rule of the bourgeois class and the colonial legacy in India is an important part of the struggle to defeat imperialism and secure lasting peace on the world scale.

The situation will not change for the better if the BJP is re-elected or if it is replaced with Congress rule in Gujarat. The political situation of India will begin to change if and only if a revolutionary front emerges on the political scene, led by the working class and directed against the bourgeoisie.

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Condemn the terrorist killings in Jammu!

According to the Union Home Ministry the alleged terrorists were shot dead by security forces in the temple complex. The government also announced that a terrorist strike in another temple in Jammu had been foiled and the alleged terrorists killed. The killings in Jammu follow close on the heal of the shoot out by the police in Ansal Plaza, Delhi, and the Akshardham temple complex massacre of Ahmedabad.

Who is responsible for these terrorist killings? Home Minister Advani has immediately declared that Pakistan is behind these killings. At the same time, the ruling NDA has linked the Jammu killings with the release of so-called militants by the newly elected Kashmir government. The opposition Congress Party, on its part, has been quick to point out that the so-called militants were released with the concurrence of the Union Home Ministry headed by Shri Advani. The opposition has accused the NDA government of trying to destabilise the Kashmir government. The BJP and Congress have hurled accusations at each other of utilising the Jammu massacre for their own advantage in the Gujarat elections.

Terrorism, creation of fear psychosis amongst the people, along with whipping up of communal chauvinist hysteria are integral part of the method of rule in India, and for that matter, in all the capitalist countries. At this time, the Indian ruling class is extremely isolated and discredited. The anti-social offensive launched by the rulers is leading to impoverishment and ruin of workers, peasants as well as many of the middle strata of town. The capitalist system in India and worldwide is in the throes of a deep crisis. In these conditions, the rulers are seeing in whipping up communal and chauvinist hysteria, in militarising the economy and fascising the state and preparing for wars of conquest, a way out of the crisis.

The organising of terrorist killings by the state and its agencies serves this course. It is important for people to fully grasp this. Otherwise, the working class and broad masses will fall into the trap set by the rulers. People must have no illusions that the Indian ruling class will ever end terrorism against the people. The people must step up their united struggle against the attacks on livelihood and rights, against communal and fascist violence, against state terrorism and the negation of human rights, and against militarisation and war. The course the Indian ruling class is taking is one fraught with dangers for the masses of people. This course must be blocked.

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Citizens Tribunal releases its findings on the state organised genocide in Gujarat

The Tribunal concluded after extensive investigations that the Gujarat government had organised a meeting in the immediate aftermath of the Godhra tragedy. In this high level meeting, it was decided to organise a 72 hour massacre of people of the Muslim faith. This meeting was held in Lunawada with the active participation of ministers of the Gujarat government. The Tribunal has characterised the massacre that took place in Gujarat as genocide. It has demanded that the Government of Gujarat headed by Narendra Modi be tried for genocide.

The Tribunal has declared the Indian judicial system incapable of dealing with state-organised genocide. It has called for the enactment of a law for the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide, in compliance with the International Genocide Convention to which the Indian state is a signatory.

The report of the Tribunal has noted the terrible humiliation faced by women in particular. It points out that crimes against women have been "grossly underreported and had been carried out, in the presence of, and in many instances even at the behest of the police and other State authorities."

On the basis of the evidence gathered by it, the tribunal has indicted the Chief Minister and a number of his cabinet colleagues for genocide. It has recommended their prosecution under the relevant provisions of Indian Penal Code, POTA and Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. The tribunal’s findings confirm that the government had expressly instructed the police and administration to supervise the genocide. The tribunal indicted top police and administration officials of Ahmedabad as well as the districts of Panchmahals, Patan, Dahod, Baruch, Vadodara, Sabarkantha, Mehsana and Rajkot. It recommended prosecution of these police officials and administrators.

The report of the Tribunal had been sent to the Central and State Governments as early as August 20, 2002 with a view to enabling the respective governments to respond to its findings and contradict them if they so desired with their own evidence. Sufficient time was given for this. The Tribunal noted that neither the Central government nor the state government’s responded to its request, but instead chose to ignore it. The members of the Tribunal are Justice VR Krishna Iyer and Justice PB Sawant, both retired judges of the Supreme Court, Justice Hosbet Suresh and Justice Lone, retired judges of the Maharashtra High Court,
KS Subramaniam, former Director General of Police of Tripura, social activist Aruna Roy, PUCL President KG Kannabiran, academician Ghanshyam Shah and historian Tanika Sarkar. The Tribunal’s two-volume report is based on evidence not only of victims and survivors, but also senior government officials, police officers, and one minister in the Gujarat government. The Third volume of the report is expected to be released soon.

The Gujarat genocide, which was blatantly organised by the Indian State, has raised very important and disturbing questions in the minds of vast masses of people. It has raised the question of how to put an end to such state organised communal genocide’s, once and for all. The genocide of people of Sikh faith in 1984 which was supervised by the then Congress government of Rajiv Gandhi raised similar questions. Demands for the prosecution and punishment of the guilty were incessantly raised. Similar questions have been raised by men and women of conscience after each terrible crime against humanity perpetrated by the Indian state. However, the guilty have never been punished. The people still have no mechanism, no power to prevent communal massacres.

It is clear that if people had power, they will not permit the organising of such genocides. However, in the face of the state, people are powerless under the present system. The work of exposing the state and the role of the political parties of the ruling class in the organising of genocides is extremely necessary. It is equally important that the workers, peasants, women, youth, the men and women of conscience, all the exploited and oppressed take up for solution the key problem of the day. This is to organise themselves in order to replace the present political system which disempowers them with a system that empowers them, in order that state organised communal massacres will once and for all become a thing of the past.

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Innocents being branded as "terrorists" and killed in Kashmir:
The real terrorist is the Indian state

Mr. Shah has openly accused the Director General of Police and other top police officials of organising such fake encounters and killings of innocent people. To substantiate his point, he cited several examples, such as the murder of Mustafa, chauffeur of Hurriyat Conference leader M.A.Ansari, in a fake encounter at Ganderbal, who was later declared to be the "commander" of a terrorist outfit "Al-Badr". He cited the examples of ordinary working people such as auto-rickshaw drivers and others who have been killed in the same way. The bank robbery and shoot-out at Haiderpura, which was declared to be a terrorist strike, was actually masterminded and executed by the police, according to Mr. Shah. Similarly, in a recent incident at Pantha Chowk, the police organised the hijacking of a truck and then later blamed it on "terrorists". The assassination of well-known journalist Jaffer Mehraj in 1996 was also organised directly by the police and security agencies of the state and then attributed to "terrorists".

Mr. Shah has suggested that various bomb blasts, including the parcel bomb blast at the BBC office in Srinagar in 1993, in which a journalist and a cameraman were killed, were actually organised by the police, but declared to be the work of "terrorists".

Mr. Shah has also revealed the completely fraudulent manner in which the so-called "terrorists" are "identified" in court, with ordinary people being threatened, tortured and pressurised to appear as "eye witnesses" and give false "identification" statements.

These revelations of Mr. Shah, come close on the heels of the killing of some youth under suspicious circumstances in Bangalore, alleged to be "terrorists" behind the Coimbatore bomb blasts, the extremely suspicious "encounter" at Delhi’s Ansal Plaza recently, in which two unarmed youth who offered no resistance, were shot down in cold blood by the police and declared to be "terrorists", and scores of other such incidents. Before this, DNA tests revealed that those who were shot down as "terrorists" in Chhattissinghpura, were actually innocent villagers. And there have been scores of such revelations in the past, in Kashmir, Punjab, North-East, Andhra Pradesh and many other parts of the country.

These incidents and revelations once again confirms what, the communists, human rights activists and concerned citizens have been pointing out for a long time, that the Indian state and its security and intelligence agencies are the biggest organisers of terrorist attacks which claim the lives of hundreds of innocent people. They also point to the sinister designs of our rulers in declaring "terrorism" to be the "main danger" at this time and "crushing of terrorism at all costs" to be the "main agenda", on which the public is sought to be mobilised.

Declaring "terrorism" to be the "main danger" helps the ruling bourgeoisie to cover up the fact that their system is in deep crisis and has no solutions to the most basic problems of the people, such as food, shelter, livelihood, security of life, etc. To justify their claim, more and more terrorist attacks and "encounters" have to be organised and ordinary people branded as "terrorists" and killed or incarcerated. When it comes to safeguarding their system and their rule, the security of lives of people is of little concern. State-organised terrorism also serves to spread fear and panic among people, sow doubt and suspicion, break their fighting spirit and make them easy targets of the all-round anti-social offensive of the bourgeoisie. Declaring "crushing of terrorism at all costs" as the "main agenda" helps the ruling bourgeoisie to justify its fascist attacks on the rights and liberties of people, their right to organise and their right to dissent. It is perhaps not a coincidence that POTA, which met with stiff opposition from political and social activists, lawyers, working people and the concerned public at large, was passed following a "terrorist strike" on the parliament.

As more such facts come to light, people across all sections of society are coming to realise that the real terrorist is the Indian state and that the ruling class agenda of "crushing terrorism" is actually an outright attack on the people and a means to justify and safeguard their rule of exploitation and oppression. State-organised terror must be vigorously opposed and confronted with the united and organised resistance of all sections of the people.

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Tenth anniversary of the Babri Masjid Demolition

The demolition of the Babri Masjid by the then ruling Congress and the BJP, then in parliamentary opposition, and the communal massacres they supervised in UP, Gujarat and Mumbai in its wake, revealed that the ruling class parties were unable or unwilling to arrange the "peaceful transfer" of power from one bourgeois party to another through their political system of multi- party parliamentary democracy. Political parties of the ruling class would indulge in competitive and fierce battles that would plunge the country into disaster after disaster, in order to gain control of the powerful state machinery at the Centre or at the State level.  In the wake of these events, communal riots of the type that the country had already seen in the past, during the colonial and the partition days and in the first forty or so years after independence were to become the order of the day. 

The Indian bourgeoisie has always unleashed state organised communal and fascist terror and the whipping up of communal passions at times when it is engulfed in crisis. The events before, during and soon after the Babri Masjid demolition can be clearly associated with the decision of the Indian bourgeoisie to push through the first generation of economic reforms and sign the WTO in the face of the growing opposition of the working class and peasantry. It is no wonder that just as the talk of a second generation of reforms has appeared in the press, that the horrific riots of Gujarat of 2002 have taken place.

The events surrounding the demolition of the Babri Masjid and all the development in the past decade clearly point to the necessity for the empowerment of the Indian people as the only way to block the criminal, communal and anti-worker, anti-peasant and anti-national agenda of the bourgeoisie. The existing political system and political process of multi-party parliamentary democracy acts as a gatekeeper to prevent the workers and peasants from acquiring political power. The solving of this problem by the creation of a modern political system and political process that would empower rather than act as gates keeper has been posed as the order of the day.

The Indian bourgeoisie is on a dangerous course today. Along with the program of second generation reforms, fascism and war is on its agenda. The situation calls on all the progressive and democratic forces of India, first and foremost the workers and peasants, to unfurl their own program and block this anti-social offensive of the bourgeoisie. The empowerment of the workers and peasants and broad masses of working people is central to this program.

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Working people of Tamilnadu step up united struggles

For 3 months from August to October, the teachers and students of government colleges of Tamilnadu organised and participated in militant agitation. The immediate provocation was the Act enacted by the Tamilnadu government merging the 67 government colleges with respective universities. The move is part of the privatisation program of the Tamilnadu government. The College teachers under the banner of the Tamilnadu Government College Teachers Association struck work from August 24, 2002 for 10 days. Subsequently, the students of government colleges also joined the protest. The students feared that following affiliation of the colleges with the respective universities, there would be a massive increase in the fees to bring them on par with the fees for the same courses in the Universities. They also feared that the Act would lead to cut in admissions of students from dalit and other disadvantaged background. Ultimately, the State government issued a Government Order clarifying its stands. The order assured the teachers that their status and rights as government employees would not be changed under the act. Further, the order assured the students that the fee structure would not be changed, nor would the reservation quota be affected. However, the Act merging the government colleges with the universities would not be annulled. Finally, the government college teachers resumed work on October 21, 2002.

10,000 mazdoor of road workers Tamilnadu have been militantly agitating for their livelihood. Recruited 5 years ago in 1997, these workers were retrenched on October 5 by the State government under the plea that the government has no money. The workers laid a seige of the State headquarters, Fort St. George on October 24, 2002. The picketing and demonstrations were organised in a number of district towns as well, including Dharmapuri, Namakkal, Karur, Erode, Coimbatore, Pudukottai, Nagapattinam, Thiruvarur and Thirunelveli. In this picketing, thousands of gang mazdoors including 500 women and children were arrested. However, the government has till date refused to concede their just demands.

Since 1977, the appointment of gang mazdoors has been banned in Tamilnadu, with the result that the strength of road mazdoors has greatly reduced in inverse proportion to the increase in road lengths in the state. The total road length in Tamilnadu is over 60,000 KM. The maintenance of road works are executed through gang mazdoors. The union of gang mazdoors, TNRGMU has consistently raised the issue of the necessity for adequate road mazdoors to ensure the maintenance of the highways and interior roads in proper condition. It was as a result of this struggle that the then state government recruited these 10,000 road workers 5 years back. These workers have been retrenched in order to pass the work of road maintenance to private contractors.

The teachers of government schools of Tamilnadu, as well as the university teachers have formed an organisation called Joint Action Council of Teachers Organisation (JACTO). In the recent period, the government employees have also joined the organisation, which has been renamed as JACTO-GEO. The demands of these teachers and employees mainly relate to improvement of wages and working conditions as well as repeal of ESMA, which the state government has been using to attack fighting working people in key sectors of the economy. The demands of the teachers and government employees need to be viewed in the context of the systematic attacks of the Tamilnadu government on this section being carried out under the pretext that the government has no money. The JACTO-GEO gave a call for an indefinite strike on October 23, 2002. The Chief Minister demanded that the strike be called off before she sits down to negotiate with the striking unions. When the employees rejected this demand, the Chief Minister declared that ESMA would be declared against the workers if they did not report for duty by November 1, 2002. However, the workers rejected these threats and decided to step up their agitation. On October 30-31, 2002, thousands of employees and teachers courted arrest by picketing. Meanwhile, employees organisations of Banks, Insurance and other sectors of industry also decided to extend their support to the striking workers.

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Tamilnadu construction workers struggle for implementation of the Welfare Board promises

The agitation was supported by several organisations such as the Tamil Nadu Manual Labourers Union, Pennurimai Iyakkam (Women’s Rights Movement), Fishermen Welfare Union, All-India Narikkuaravar (Gypsies) Sangam, Police Sanitation Workers Union, etc.

After several years of struggle, which united workers belonging to different castes, religion and political affiliation, the construction workers in the state forced the state government to form a welfare board for construction workers. Tamilnadu is one of the few states where workers have succeeded in forcing the government to take action on their demands. Since then, workers all over India have tried to emulate their brothers and sisters in Tamil Nadu and demand that "unorganised" workers have the same right as any other worker.

The formation of the welfare board was a partial victory for the construction workers. However, as with all labour laws that are promulgated because of workers demands, the employers lobby has succeeded in stalling the implementation of any of the provisions under this law for over a year. The welfare board has accumulated a corpus close to Rs 50 crores through central and state levies and membership subscription from thousands of workers. But it has been refusing to disburse immediate relief for affected workers.

This is the reason why construction workers are on the war path in Tamilnadu. They have been demanding immediate monetary relief to workers who have lost their livelihood and to the families of those who have lost their lives while on work. They are demanding pension, relief and education and marriage allowance for members of their families. The workers have also been demanding that the state provide relief to those workers who have lost their livelihood because of the increasing use of ready-mix concrete and mechanised digging operations by the real estate capitalists.

The construction workers are now planning to extend their struggle throughout the state and launch a massive agitation for the fulfilment of their demands.

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Students in Delhi protest against sexual assault

The anger and insecurity of the students is being used by the state machinery to launch widespread repression on people in the name of "catching" the criminals responsible for this heinous act. The state is boasting of how within a short time, thousands of youth were picked up and interrogated. Calls for strengthening the security in the university premises are being made, denying the lessons of the past that increasing police presence in the campus has, far from providing security to students, been directly linked with increasing insecurity. The media is spreading confusion on this issue and promoting the notion that women, in general, are themselves to blame for such crimes against them.

Girls and women in our society are victims of the worst kind of exploitation, discrimination and abuse. This is the case, no matter which section or class of society they belong to. Women are the first and most vulnerable targets of every attack on any section of the society. A very large majority of women are denied even the official minimum wages, are forced to work for very low wages, in extremely difficult conditions, damaging for both their physical and mental health. They are the first to be thrown out of jobs. They suffer constant sexual assault and harassment at work, on the streets and within the family. Women are the worst victims of malnutrition, poverty, illiteracy, sickness, backward social customs and prejudices. Women are the most vulnerable targets of state organised violence against any section of the people, be it communal violence organised against a particular community or state terror unleashed by the state security forces. Dalit and tribal women bear the brunt of the attacks on their communities.

The roots of the exploitation and oppression of women lie within the exploitative and oppressive social system we have today. Despite the laws regarding rights of women, that have emerged as a result of the militant struggles of women over the years, most of them, like laws regarding rights of any other section of the oppressed people, are observed more often in their violation. Justice is, by and large, out of bounds for the vast majority of women. Moreover, the social prejudices associated with a woman who has been the victim of rape and sexual assault, acts as a great deterrent to women seeking justice for crimes committed against them. The exploitation of women, the backward social practices and attitudes regarding women are, in fact, actively fostered and kept alive by the rulers.

Women have to organise and fight back against every attack on their person and their rights. Women have to fight with the realisation that the source of their oppression lies within this very system that exploits and oppresses the vast majority of people. Women have to fight the battle for their emancipation, shoulder to shoulder with the working class and all the toiling people, all those oppressed and exploited under this system, for an alternative system, where there will be no exploitation of one person by another.

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Joint actions of working class on all-India scale

Two questions face the workers as they prepare for these actions. One is how to widen the scope of the struggle to include workers cutting across party affiliations, so as to encompass the broad stet of workers of town and country who are the victims of the anti-working class offensive of the bourgeoisie. This requires that workers and trade union activists consciously fight the efforts of those within our ranks who sabotage our unity by imposing divisions on the basis of party affiliation, union affiliation, and trade affiliation. The working class is one, and it has one program.

The second question facing workers is elaborating this program of the working class in opposition and contrast to the program of the bourgeoisie. This is a program that emerges from the very conditions and aims at transforming these conditions. In brief, it is a program of defeating the anti-social offensive of globalisation through liberalisation and privatisation, of fascisation, militarisation, and war, of communal and fascist violence. It is a program of ensuring security and prosperity to the workers and peasants of town and country. And for this program to be realised in reality, the workers and peasants must seize political power from the bourgeoisie.

These two questions are linked. Central to them is the posing of the question of political power. Working class must fight for political power in the hands of workers and peasants and build a united front of workers and peasants to realise this goal. Otherwise, we will be betraying our own cause, our own program, and instead become the tail of the bourgeoisie.

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Escalating cycle of terrorist violence in Andhra Pradesh a matter of grave concern

According to the Andhra Pradesh police, this blast was allegedly engineered by the People's War Group. Again, according to the police, the blast was supposed to have been aimed at a vehicle carrying security forces, and due to a 'ghastly mistake' the bus with ordinary passengers ended up becoming the target of this atrocity. The event has taken place soon after the police announced with great glee the 'encounter' killings of some PWG activists.

It must be noted that the security forces of the Indian State routinely use civilians as a shield in different areas, including Telengana, Kashmir and the North East. In the process, during the clash between the security forces and armed insurgents, civilians invariably are killed. The Indian State blames the killings of the civilians on the insurgent forces. Following the bus massacre, it has now come to light that in Telengana, it is a routine practice for the state to move its security forces from one village to another using innocent villagers as a human shield. It has also been a practice of the Indian State to organise terrorist killings of innocent people and then attribute these killings to the fighting forces.

The prevailing situation in the forests and countryside of parts of Andhra Pradesh, especially in the Telengana region, is a grim and tense one. The conditions of backwardness and tremendous exploitation have led to irreconcilable differences between the rulers and the exploited. The Indian State and its security forces defend the barbaric exploitation of the peasants and tribal people. The security forces have routinely incarcerated and eliminated large numbers of men and women who are involved in the defence of the rights of the oppressed over the last half-century. No regard is paid to either the human or the judicial rights of the people.

The escalation of the cycle of terror and counter-terror in Andhra Pradesh is a bad portent for the toiling people as well as for all the political forces who are fighting in defence of the rights of the toiling and exploited masses. It is important to recognise that it is the Indian state which benefits from anarchy and violence, using it as a justification firstly to avoid addressing the political and economic problems raised by the people, and secondly to justify further fascisation of the state and the stepping up of fascist repression against the toiling masses.

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Protests in Haryana and Rajasthan against killings

In Nohar, Rajasthan, the abduction and killing of a young boy by persons linked with the local police sparked off a wave of protest. On November 6, entire Nohar town observed bandh in protest against the murder and police complicity. On the evening of November 6, 2002, several thousand people gathered at the center of the town to demand punishment of the guilty.

Lok Raj Sangathan and other organisations of the people have been active in these struggles in defence of the rights of the people.