• Workers’ march to Parliament on Feb 26^th

• Mass protests in India against the war on Iraq:
  India must cut all links with the US war machine!

• 2002- A year of Mounting struggle of the workers, peasants and working people against the anti-social offensive

• Misery of the rural masses intensifies

• State of the Union address of George Bush – manufacturing lies!

• Mounting opposition to the increasing fascisation of life in the US

• The Indian ruling class and the imminent war on Iraq

Workers’ march to Parliament on Feb 26^th
Halt Privatisation and Liberalisation!
Fight for a program to address the needs of the toilers!
Unite around the aim of replacing capitalist dictatorship with worker-peasant rule!

The Indian big bourgeoisie, headed by Reliance, Tatas, Birlas and other business houses, in alliance with other propertied classes in various regions, hold monopoly control over the principal means of production and financial resources in the country. The Indian big bourgeoisie in collaboration with multi-national monopolies and financial oligopolies wield effective monopoly control over the biggest markets. They finance the majority of Members of Parliament and in actual fact run the Government of India.

Faced with an unprecedented world economic crisis with wide spread recession and steep fall in corporate profits, the big monopoly bourgeoisie and its foreign collaborators are resorting to large-scale attacks on the livelihood of workers and peasants so as to keep their super-profits intact. The pursuit of maximum rate of profit by the big bourgeoisie is the real aim of the market-oriented reforms. It is a minority of exploiters who are pushing India on a course, which is detrimental to the interests of the workers and peasants, who constitute the vast majority in Indian society. War, militarisation, communal pogroms, fascism and state terrorism are all elements of this course. Draconian laws such as POTA are for the purposes of suppressing with brute force the workers and peasants who protest against this course.

The aim of the workers’ march to Parliament on February 26^th is to unequivocally declare to the ruling bourgeoisie that the Indian working class is not in agreement with this course that is being followed. It is to tell Vajpayee and his government that the working class does not agree with or accept the logic that selling public property to private bidders is in the best interest of Indian society. It does not agree with or accept the logic that opening up Indian markets to indiscriminate imports, without any regard to the impact on the livelihood of workers, peasants and tribal peoples is good for the country as whole. The working class of India is gathering in New Delhi to roundly condemn the program of globalisation through privatisation and liberalisation in one voice as an anti-worker, anti-peasant, anti-national and anti-social program. It is to demand nothing less than an immediate halt to the privatisation and liberalisation program!

The official spokesmen of the bourgeoisie, i.e., all their political parties claim that there is no money with the government to look after the welfare of the toiling people. Let each one fend for oneself in the market, they say. This is a false assertion. There are many ways in which the Indian State can gather resources to attend to the problems of the workers and peasants if it so wishes. For instance, thousands of crores of rupees can be collected at one stroke by the Government of India, by confiscating the property of those big capitalists who have not repaid their bank loans. All the hoards of black money held as cash could be unearthed if the Government of India decides to issue new Rupee notes and declare all old notes invalid after a cut-off date. Thousands of crores of rupees could be saved by issuing a moratorium on debt service payments to the World Bank, IMF and the Asian Development Bank. Halting the arms race and working for peace in South Asia would save precious resources from totally unproductive use. These are but a few ways by which capital can be made available for investing in the provision of the basic needs of the working people.

The bourgeoisie claims that there is no alternative to capitalism and market oriented reforms. This is too is a lie. There IS an alternative to this man-eating system and this anti-people policy. The alternative to privatisation is socialisation of ownership and control over the means of production. The alternative to liberalisation is self-reliant and balanced development of the economy, including trading relations with other states on the basis of mutual benefit. The alternative to the globalisation of agriculture in the interests of capital is for the Government of India to regulate whole sale trade in the interests of the workers and peasants. The alternative to cutting agricultural subsidies is for the State to extend liberal assistance to the peasantry and encourage, over time, their progressive collectivisation so that the benefits of modern technology could be put to use by the peasant co-operatives, and the urban-rural divide could be progressively narrowed and eliminated. The alternative to capitalism is scientific socialism and communism.

But the problem today is that the workers and peasants do not have the power to implement this alternative program. They have no power at all in this ‘largest democracy of the world’. The democracy that exists in India is a capitalist democracy, where only the capitalists enjoy the power to run governments and make all the decisions, which will benefit them and them alone. It is a dictatorship over the rest of society. Numerous theoreticians are hired by the capitalists to assert, without letup, that what is best for big business is best for all.

As long as this capitalist dictatorship remains in place, the workers and peasants will have no say. It does not matter how many elections are held and how many parties change places between the ruling and opposition benches in Parliament but the Government managing this Central State will continue to act in the narrow interests of big businessmen, dragging India on a dangerous imperialist course. The course of India will not change until and unless the working class emerges on the scene with an independent program for the renewal of India.

The workers and peasants need political power in their own hands in order to carry out an alternative socio-economic program, which will fulfil their interests. They need to organise to get political power in their hands. They need to build and wield a state that will relentlessly pursue a course whose aim and motor is to provide for the workers and peasants. Such a state must suppress with an iron hand the power of the big monopolies, the financial oligarchies and the foreign imperialists to loot our land and labour. Such a state would take the social surplus in its hands and use it to invest in programs that will provide livelihood for all, improve their housing and living conditions provide health and education for all the toilers. This is the real content of the program of renewal of India.

Renewal means to start afresh. It means to dump the capitalist democracy, which is part of the colonial legacy of India, and establish a modern democracy that would empower the masses of working people. This is the aim of the program of the working class. The Indian working class is one class with one single aim. It must have one fighting program aimed at establishing a Worker-Peasant rule – with a government that would carry out the renewal of India and its reorientation to provide sukh and raksha for all the toilers.

The Worker-Peasant rule must take up the task of reconstituting the Indian Union on a voluntary basis. India must become a free and equal union of peoples who want to benefit from the union, not held down by force or occupied by central troops, as is the case today. The old colonial structures of power, including the centralised bureaucracy and armed forces that suppress the rights of all the nations, nationalities and tribal peoples living in the territory of India, in short the colonial and imperial Indian State must be dismantled.

Only a fighting program to establish a Worker-Peasant rule, with the aim of a complete revolutionary transformation of India can liberate the peoples inhabiting this vast sub continent from all forms of exploitation, national oppression and enslavement.

However, there are not a few leaders within the working class movement, including some who call themselves communists, who say that the time is not yet ripe for the working class to go for political power. The workers and peasants are not fit to rule at this time, they say. They say that the workers can be at most a ‘pressure group’ and a vote bank for this or that parliamentary party or coalition. In other words, they are misleading the workers by asking them to confine their political activity to periodically changing the government through the electoral process. They are advocating the line that the working class should form the voting cattle for this or that coalition or front of this or that bourgeois Party without changing the nature of political power or the direction of the economy.

It is high time that workers defeated such pernicious thoughts. It is high time that working class refused to become the tail of this or that bourgeois coalition. The working class must refuse to tone down the class struggle under the pretext that this will lead to fascisation. The trade unions must become the forums for lively political discussion and debate among the workers, about how to implement the fighting program of the class and how to break with the program of tailing the bourgeoisie. The workers must develop the unions as organs of class struggle and collective decision-making. Workers must demand and fight for one single union in every factory.

Life experience shows that those parties that claim to be serving all classes in society, in reality, serve the interests of the big bourgeoisie and its foreign imperialist allies. The working class needs a party that would strictly serve the interests of those who labour, which cannot be reconciled with the interests of those who live by exploiting the labour of others.

The Indian working class needs one revolutionary communist party at its head. From every party that calls itself communist, the workers must demand that they address the necessity of the restoration of unity of communists in one party. This unity must be established around one single program aimed at replacing bourgeois power by worker-peasant rule. The workers must reject any other program, such as to replace BJP by the Congress Party or to support some ‘secular’ coalition of capitalist parties. Parties within the workers’ and communist movement that claim to be acting in the interests of workers but actually serve the interests of the exploiters must be exposed and their influence must be defeated.

A powerful united front workers and peasants of different nationalities and languages, cutting across all party affiliations must be built. This political front rising above all differences based on religion, caste or any other consideration, must be imbued with the need to wrest power from the bourgeoisie. Workers and peasants of India have nothing to lose but everything to gain from replacing the rule of the bourgeoisie with the rule of the toiling people. The need of the hour is to unite around this aim.

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Mass protests in India against the war on Iraq:
India must cut all links with the US war machine!

The plans of US imperialism to subjugate Iraq by the force of arms and organise a ‘regime change’ there is in complete contempt of world public opinion. It is as clear as daylight that this war is to serve the narrow interests of American imperialism. It is part of its drive to conquer Asia as a stepping stone to conquering the world. It is a war against the interests of the working class and peoples of the whole world, a war by a rapacious power to gain control of key sources of raw materials and markets.

The US imperialists and their allies, such as British imperialism, are unable to hide the fact that the aim of this war has nothing to do with terrorism. The ‘war against terrorism’, championed by US President Bush, stands revealed as nothing but a war to assert the supremacy of US imperialism in a uni-polar world.

What can the Indian working class and people do to stay the hands of the warmongers? First and foremost, it is our duty to strive to stay the hands of the Indian rulers, to prevent them from extending support to the US war machine. The Government of India, in spite of whatever its representatives may say today, has been engaged in regular joint military exercises with the US armed forces in recent years. US armed personnel are being allowed to land on our shores for ‘rest and recreation’. This must stop! The Indian working class and people must raise their voices and demand an immediate end to Indo-US military co-operation. We must demand an end to any kind of facilities on Indian soil being offered to the US war machine.

We must demand and fight for a government that would work to forge lasting and close friendly relations with Pakistan, Bangladesh and all neighbouring states, while resolutely opposing all imperialist interference in South Asia. We must demand and fight for a government that would work to rid our region of the military presence of Anglo-American imperialism.

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2002- A year of Mounting struggle of the workers, peasants and working people against the anti-social offensive

Workers all over the country organised and participated in widespread protest actions throughout the year 2002. These manifestations centered on the struggle against the anti-worker policies of the State, carried out under the program of globalisation through liberalisation and privatisation.

March 14 was observed as countrywide protest day. Lakhs of workers participated in these actions. On that day, workers in all the states of India organised marches to state capitals while the workers in Delhi marched to Parliament. In Delhi, 15,000 workers participated in the protest march. In Mumbai, over 150,000 workers took part in the march to the state Assembly. Workers came out on the streets in hundreds and thousands in Chennai, Hyderabad, Thiruanantapuram, Kolkata, Lucknow, Patna, Chandigarh, Bhubhaneshwar, Bhopal, and other capitals.

Workers of Modern Food Industries Limited and BALCO (Bharat Aluminium Company) waged militant protests against privatisation and the attacks on their livelihood and rights. So did workers of other PSU’s facing the axe of praivatisation. The decision to privatise National Aluminum Company Ltd. (NALCO) led to widespread outrage and protests all over Orissa. Six lakh coal workers participated in countrywide mass actions in August. They organised a massive demonstration before the Coal India headquarters in Kolkata, protesting the government’s move to close down mines saying that they were "uneconomic".

The large scale drought resulted in massive protests in the drought hit states, particularly Rajasthan. September 20 witnessed a countrywide campaign demanding immediate measures to provide for the starving millions in more than 11 states in the country. In the capital, workers from various areas came together demanding among other things the opening of the FCI godowns and release of food grains to all those affected by severe drought.

Farmers all over the country have been resisting the mounting attacks on their livelihood. Haryana farmers carried on a vigorous agitation against the forcible recovery of electricity arrears by the Chautala government. The Indian National Lok Dal of Chautala had come to power in February 2000 with the promise of waiver of electricity dues. But in late 2001, the Haryana government started forcible recovery of dues, arresting farmers and so on. When the farmers protested these arrests, police repression was unleashed against them, resulting in the death of many farmers. The agitation spread from Jind to all parts of the state.

Over one lakh peasants and agricultural workers in Maharashtra organised a massive demonstration. There were large contingents who braved imprisonment and repression of the police and other armed forces of the State. Farmers in Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and other states have also organised many militant actions throughout 2002.

Agitations by students and youths also developed over the year. On November 29, in the capital, thousands of students and youth expressed their anger towards the anti-people economic policies and demanded right to education and employment. They came from different parts of the country and held aloft their banners and shouted slogans for jobs, and against commercialisation of education.

Women participated in increasing numbers in the struggles. Thousands of women all over India observed December 10, the World Human Rights Day, across 18 states in the country, to assert the basic human right for a life free from hunger. In Delhi, women blocked the road outside the food ministry in a militant protest. 10,000 women marched through the streets of Bankura in West Bengal and held a sit-in at the office of district magistrate. Another 5,000 demonstrated in Kolkata and dharnas were held in 16 other districts of the state. In Bhopal, women broke into the FCI godown demanding distribution of the food grains rotting in the godown. Demonstrations and rasta rokos were held in at least ten districts in Maharashtra, including a morcha of 3000 women in Nasik and a rasta roko with 1000 women, most of them Adivasi women, blocking the national highway in Thane district. In Jaipur, women clashed with the police.

The Tribal Convention held in Ranchi, in November 2002, was attended by a large number of tribal groups from all over the country. Among others, their demands included, restoration of tribal lands, firm action against and check on fraudulent land transfers, restoration of access to forest and its produce, full compensation inclusive of their economic, social and cultural needs in large scale displacement due to developmental projects and an end to all forms of harassment. The Convention called upon the tribal people throughout India to organise themselves to fight for their demands linking their struggles with the struggles of the working class, peasantry and other toiling sections.

People rose against this like a wave and voiced their anger against militarisation, state terrorism, state organised communal violence throughout 2002. The massacre at Godhra and the attack on the people of Gujarat was met with country wide protests and repeated actions by people all over the country as well as by Indians abroad. Thousands of youth participated in anti-war demonstrations and against state organised violence all over the country. At least 50 mass organisations from 16 districts of Rajasthan, met in Jaipur in mid August, and severely condemned the presence of the armed forces along the 1040 km border of the state with Pakistan.

Millions of people from other working and toiling sections also took to the streets. Some examples are captured here. In October more than 40, 000 engineers of the BSNL, MTNL and DoT launched a work to rule on a nationwide scale. This work to rule affected long distance calls to various metropolitan cities. Thousands of bank workers marched to Parliament on November 27, 2002 against privatisation of banks.

On August 5, more than 1000 teachers of Delhi University, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Jamia Milia Islamia and other Central Universities staged a dharna at the UGC Headquarters, to demonstrate their opposition to cutbacks in education and the privatisation of higher education. For 3 months from August to October, the teachers and students of government colleges of Tamil Nadu organised and participated in militant agitation.

On July 6, hundred of journalists held a rally in the capital and broke the police cordon several times in the North Block of the capital. They denounced State attacks on the media.

Between September 2 and 12, half a million people in Kerala took over key government offices in the state (for 10 days). None of these offices could function. Their demands included better prices of agricultural commodities, no commercialisation of education, no violence on women, no mortgaging Kerala to the ADB.

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Misery of the rural masses intensifies

The drastic fall in international prices of agricultural products in the commodities market over the past few years, the opening up the Indian market to agro-business multinationals, the removal of state subsidy to agriculture, the slashing down of import tariffs of agricultural products according to WTO prescriptions, together with a steep drop in investment in agriculture, has led to ruination of peasant masses, distress sales of land by poor peasants, and steeped up misery for the agricultural workers.

Between 1993 and 2000, rural employment is reported to have shown a growth of merely 0.67 % per annum, the lowest since 1947. According to a recent RBI report, the per capita food availability has declined from 505.5 gm per day in 1997, to 470.4 gm per day in 1999, and further to 458.6 gm per day in 2000, i.e. a decline of more than 3 % per annum. The withdrawal or absence of minimum support price and state procurement of food grains in many states has further aggravated the crisis.

The high rate of state subsidy in agriculture given in the US and European Union, the fixing of prices of agricultural products in the international market by the major agro-business corporations have contributed greatly to the fall in the international prices of agricultural products. The Farm Bill 2002, introduced in the US Congress in April, has led to a 58 % increase in agricultural subsidy.

An example of the disastrous consequence of such measures for India can be seen in the case of soya bean. The US government pays 193 dollars per tonne to its soya bean farmers, which is higher than the soya bean price of 155 dollars per tonne. Soya bean is now being imported in huge quantities, with very low import duties, wreaking devastation among the millions of peasants engaged in oilseed production. Similarly, the Indian market is being flooded with foreign bananas, tamarind, milk products, etc., while our own growers and producers are being ruined. In 2001, as compared to 2000, tea exports fell to 13 % while tea imports rose to 23 %. It must be noted that India is one of the biggest tea producers in the world, as also of bananas, milk etc!

Some other examples of commodities whose prices have been thus artificially reduced are as follows:

• The price of winter wheat was $ 18 per tonne in 1999-2000, i.e. $10 less than the corresponding period in 1998.
• The export price for maize was $89 per tonne in 1999-2000, i.e. $6 less than the price in the previous season.
• Cocoa prices have fallen by 37 % between 1999 and 2000.
• Coffee prices have fallen by 22 % in 1999-2000, as compared to the previous year and the current price of 86 US cents per pound is the lowest since 1993.
• Cotton prices have hit their lowest in the last 13 years, at 198 US cents per bale in December 1999.
• Sugar prices too have reached their lowest in the last 13 years, at 4.78 US cents per pound in 1999.
• The price of tea in 1998 was 15 % lower than the price in 1997.

The agro business monopolies and cartels of the US are aggressively pushing to capture the huge markets of India and other populous countries which were relatively out of their reach in an earlier period. On the one hand, they are deliberately depressing the price of agricultural commodities using state support. On the other hand, they are using the WTO regimen to impose on countries like India that it gives up state support to agriculture and open its market for dumping of agricultural produce by the agro-business multinationals.

All these have led to a great increase in imports. According to a report in the Economic Times, October 12, 2002, 300 items have shown a huge boost in imports, to Rs. 5,440 crore during April-August 2002, from Rs. 4,733 crore in the corresponding period in 2001. This would mean an increase of 14.9 %. The import of edible palm oil alone increased from Rs. 2,920 crore to Rs. 3,408 crore during this period.

The handing over of milk co-operatives to multinationals and private companies has also been a big blow to millions of milk producers in the country. The steep increase in prices of essential goods, the increase in prices of vital drugs, following changes in the Patent Act 1970, the cutbacks in government expenditure on health care and other services – all these have intensified manifold the misery of the rural masses.

With increasing ruination of agriculture, the agricultural workers are burdened with increasing unemployment.

These attacks on their livelihood are bringing the rural masses, the toiling peasantry and the agricultural workers, into powerful struggle against injustice.

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State of the Union address of George Bush – manufacturing lies!

The ‘evidence’ presented recently by the U.S Secretary of State, Colin Powell, to the U.N. Security Council, to allegedly show that Iraq had sinister plans and secret stocks of deadly weapons, has been exposed for its dubious basis. The basis for some of the ‘evidence’ that Powell quoted was from a British dossier, which in turn was traced to an academic paper by an Iraqi-American student, using information that was more than ten years old. The British dossier had presented this as ‘recent evidence’ of Iraqi weapons build-up and other ‘dangerous’ activities!

According to President Bush, Iraq and Korea are full of evil designs to conquer the world through the use of nuclear and biological warfare. He warned the world that these are "outlaw regimes that seek and possess nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. These regimes could use such weapons for blackmail, terror, and mass murder. They could also give or sell those weapons to terrorist allies, who would use them without the least hesitation."

Who is an outlaw? According to George Bush, any country which does not subscribe to their system of free market and multi-party capitalist democracy, any country that does not allow imperialist penetration and plunder of its wealth, is an outlaw. But in fact the US is the truest symbol of an outlaw – it makes its own rules and flouts all established norms of international relations.

History shows that the US itself is the only regime in the world that has actually used nuclear power against the people of any country; it was the United States that decimated the population and maimed future generations of Japanese in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The US, more than any other state in the world, is guilty of arming and financing terrorists and armed groups to penetrate different movements of nations and peoples, and secure its own political and economic ends.

Painting a terrifying picture of the ‘enemy’ is a worn-out tactic of US imperialism. This was the response of the United States and its West European allies following the Second World War. The power and might of the socialist Soviet Union, at the head of the anti-fascist movement on the world scale, brought fear into the hearts of the imperialists at that time. For decades thereafter, the biggest capitalist countries and their Presidents and leaders spared no effort to paint the Soviet Union and its leaders, J. V. Stalin in particular, as devils and evil personified. This was the basis on which they could justify their whole espionage activities, their warmongering, weapons build-up and sending their citizens to death on foreign soil.

The fascistic face of US imperialism was revealed by the demagogy of President Bush on America being ordained to save the world and he himself being ordained to lead the country in this noble (sic!) role. He said, "We have the opportunity to save millions of lives abroad from a terrible disease. Our founders dedicated this country to the cause of human dignity, the rights of every person, and the possibilities of every life. This conviction leads us into the world to help the afflicted, and defend the peace, and confound the designs of evil men."

Bush's arguments reflect the same reasoning that the British imperialists used to colonise the world in the 18th and19th centuries. Just as they assumed the "white man's burden" in civilizing the rest of the world, Bush is arguing that America faces a ‘special calling’ to "make this world better". Who gave US imperialism and its chieftain Bush this mantle of the saviour of the world? Not the peoples of the world. Not even the people of his own country. This is nothing but the arrogance of an imperialist superpower, that it can transgress the sovereign right of any other nation and present it as the greatest virtue. The American people, like others around the world, have seen the oil stain seeping through this self-assumed ‘noble’ role of the U.S. President. They have responded, without mincing words, with the message - No War for Oil!

The State of the Union address of the US President George Bush is medieval in its thought content and Hitlerite in its method. It points to the absolute necessity for the working class and peoples of all countries to wage a united struggle against this rapacious and most dangerous power in the world.

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Mounting opposition to the increasing fascisation of life in the US

The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) is keeping a "tracking list" which requires the additional registration of tens of thousands of immigrants. The INS program arbitrarily targets immigrant males 16 or older in the U.S. from specified countries on student, work or visitor visas. December 16 2002 was the deadline for registration for men from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria. January 10, 2003 was the next deadline, targeting individuals from 13 countries including Afghanistan, Algeria, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). February 21 is the deadline for individuals from the most recently added countries, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

On December 16 2002 and after, not only were hundreds detained, but many were forced into brutal jail and detention conditions and "treated like animals," it was reported. Most had come voluntarily to register and had committed no crime. Many were held over 24 hours simply so the INS could "check" to see if they were on the secret "terrorist" watch list. It is generally understood that the INS is not primarily interested in those who register who presumably have nothing to hide, but in justifying raids in the communities to find those who allegedly did not register. It is a program of a Nazi character to divide the American working class and people so as to smash their resistance against attacks at home and war abroad.

On January 16, 2003, Bush offered a sweeping denunciation of direct preferences for racial minorities in university admissions and said his administration would file a brief with the Supreme Court urging that the affirmative action admissions policies at the University of Michigan be declared unconstitutional. His decision to intervene in the case was significant because the Bush administration was not legally involved and did not have to take a position in the case. The statement also comes at a time when some leaders of the Republican Party like Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi have been openly making racially charged statements. Thus the US administration is explicitly indulging in racist attacks on Afro Americans and others.

Many cities and towns across the U.S. have passed resolutions opposing the attacks on rights under the signboard of "war on terrorism". People are demanding that their towns be USA PATRIOT Act-free zones. Among the municipalities that have passed such resolutions are Berkeley, Oakland and Santa Cruz, California; Boulder and Denver, Colorado; Takoma Park, Maryland; Amherst, Cambridge and Northhampton, Massachusetts; Ann Arbor, Michigan and Santa Fe, New Mexico. The resolutions oppose the federal government attacks on rights as part of the "war on terrorism," citing such mechanisms for these attacks as the 2001 USA PATRIOT Act, the 2002 Homeland Security Act. Resolutions also specifically call on local police and other officials to refuse to cooperate with the federal government when local authorities determine that civil liberties and Constitutional protections are being violated. They also require police to report any such requests. The Amherst, Massachusetts measure, for example, states that "to the extent legally possible, no town employee shall officially assist or voluntarily cooperate with investigations, interrogations or

arrest procedures" judged to violate rights or civil liberties.

The working class and democratic minded people of the USA are showing through their courageous and powerful protest actions, against fascism and war that they will not take the drive to fascism and war lying down. There is growing consciousness amongst the American working class and people that fascism and war is directed first and foremost against the growing opposition of the working class and people of the US against the anti-social offensive. The 5 lakh strong anti-war demonstration by American people in Washington DC last month, is proof, if proof is needed, as to where the American people stand.

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The Indian ruling class and the imminent war on Iraq

The strategy of the Indian ruling class with respect to the impending war on Iraq is to carefully create the external impression that it is against war, while covertly maneuvering to take advantage of the changing situation for its strategic aims.

Various functionaries of the Indian government have said that India is in a much better position today than in 1991, the previous Gulf War, to withstand any adverse fallout of the War and actually emerge strategically stronger in the region than before. The Indian state has built a massive foreign exchange reserves of $ 70 billion, through selling the blood and sweat of the Indian people. The Prime Minister also announced recently that the Indian state will be building a strategic oil reserve to last it for 45 days to carry it through the war. Of course, it is anybody’s guess that this strategic reserve is meant not only for the US-led war against Iraq, but for its own war in the region, whenever the opportunity for it arises.

Political commentators have also analysed in the media that the fact that the US has not explicitly asked the Indian state to provide bases for its war against Iraq has helped the Indian bourgeoisie to maintain its "neutral" position with respect to the war. "Since we have taken the position that war in the Gulf should be averted, India cannot be part of any action against Iraq," the Defence Minister, George Fernandes, recently declared. When he was asked about the U.S. seeking Indian facilities like during the 1991 Gulf war, Mr. Fernandes said: "I don't think they (the U.S.) need any facilities." He said the U.S. had massed a huge armada and "they have all the troops and logistics support they need.'' But, he could not defend the continuing joint military exercises between the US and Indian armed forces and the "recreation" facilities that the Indian state has agreed to provide the American war machine in India.

On his recent visit to Washington, Foreign Secretary Kanwal Singh commented on the impending war that, "No one wishes a conflict but everyone expects it". In this context, political observers have been analysing how the Indian state has been manoeuvring to fill in the gap in the American flank, arising from the opposition of its NATO partners, France, Germany and Belgium, and also opposition from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. This diabolic strategy of the Indian ruling class found its appreciation in the New York Times columns, where it was argued that the US should work to dump France from the Security Council and replace it with India, which has proved itself to be a much more reliable ally in its "war against terrorism". The columns reported that, "France can’t see how the world has changed since the end of the cold war. India can". These statements reveal the intention of US imperialism to drive a wedge between India and France, particularly after the recent visit of the French Prime Minister, Jean Pierre Raffarin, when both the countries announced their "wish to avert a Gulf War". During this visit, a major major deal with France was signed involving transfer of technology for manufacture of advanced Scorpene submarines.

Echoing similar thoughts to coopt the Indian ruling class in the war preparations, former senator Larry Pressler, writing in the Washington Times last week, said it was time America accorded India a higher status because it had "the second largest Muslim population in the world and a Muslim president, yet religious fundamentalists do not control the country's agenda the way they do in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, America's pre-eminent allies in the region".

Political pundits are also speculating on the calculations of the Indian ruling class that it will have much better access and control over the oil reserves of West Asia if it gets on to the bandwagon of the American war machine. In recent years, the Indian ruling class has been actively pursuing the exploration and refining of oil in Russia, West Asia, Vietnam and other areas to ensure for itself a regular supply of the fuel for its war machine and for the uninterrupted growth of the profits of the Indian bourgeoisie.

In this context, recent reports point out that US imperialism is willing to offer some concessions to Iran and India, in allowing the laying of a pipeline between the two countries, and offering guarantee over its protection where it passes through Pakistan.

All these facts reveal that the position of the Indian state as a thoroughly reactionary and pragmatic position, motivated by its own self interests, and bringing great danger to the sovereignty of peoples in the region. The Indian people cannot forget that during the 1991 Gulf War, while the Indian state projected itself as the champion of peace, it was covertly allowing American war planes overflight and refueling facilities behind the backs of the people. They need to remain vigilant because the Indian bourgeoisie is a fork tongued and perfidious bourgeoisie, least interested in the well being of its people or peace in the region.

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