• Government refuses to reveal former President Narayanan’s letter on Gujarat genocide:
  Covering up criminal conspiracy in the name of “public interest”

• Panel Discussion on Punishing the Guilty:
  When the rulers are guilty then who is to punish them?

• Act to Protect Women from Domestic Violence:
  An important gain but much more is needed for effective protection

LETTER TO THE EDITORS

• Bihar elections

WORLD

• Towards a principled international policy in the interest of the peoples of India and of other countries

TOILERS & TILLERS

• State Convention of Rajasthan School Teachers

Government refuses to reveal former President Narayanan’s letter on Gujarat genocide:

Covering up criminal conspiracy in the name of “public interest”

On 13 th October, the Congress Party led UPA Government turned down the request of the Nanavati-Shah Commission to furnish a copy of the letter sent by former President Narayanan to the then Prime Minister Vajpayee, soon after communal violence had broken out in Gujarat in 2002. The Manmohan Singh government has filed an affidavit before the Commission stating that the disclosure of the contents of that letter would “cause injury to the public interest and the public interest will suffer thereby”.

What the contents of the letter must be like can be understood from a recent press interview given by Mr. K. R. Narayanan. He is reported to have said, “There was governmental and administrative support for the communal riots in Gujarat. I sent several letters to Prime Minister Vajpayee in this regard. I met him personally and talked to him directly, but Vajpayee did not do anything effective. I requested him to send the army to Gujarat and suppress the riots. … I feel there was a conspiracy involving the State and Central governments behind the Gujarat riots.”

Revealing President Narayanan’s letter to the public would establish beyond any shadow of doubt what the majority of people already know or suspect – namely, that the BJP governments in Gujarat and at the centre together organised the communal genocide that followed the Godhra incident. Lawyers fighting for the victims have gathered evidence from courageous individuals in the police and administrative services who refused to obey the orders of their senior officers. All the evidence available so far points to the fact that the Modi Government used the state apparatus to organise the communal violence, with full backing of the Vajpayee Government at the centre. It was the political leaders who ordered officers of the administration and police to permit communal violence to be unleashed.

The refusal of the UPA government to produce the correspondence between the former President and former Prime Minister at the time of the Gujarat genocide is clear proof that this government does not want the full truth to be established with legally admissible evidence. The UPA government wants to cover up the criminal conspiracy behind what continues to be called the “Gujarat riots”.

Why does the Congress Party want to cover up the crimes of its arch rival BJP? The reason is that the Congress Party is guilty of similar crimes. It does not want a precedent to be set. If the letters exchanged at the highest levels of state authority at the time of the Gujarat genocide are made public, what will happen with similar letters exchanged at the time of the November 1984 genocide? It is known, for instance, that the then President Zail Singh expressed his concerns in many ways to Rajiv Gandhi. He was overruled. Chiefs of the armed forces appealed to the then Home Minister Narasimha Rao, who refused to deploy the army for several days when Delhi and Kanpur burned. A demand that the communication from Zail Singh and army chiefs should be revealed would prove uncomfortable to the Congress Party and the present government it heads.

The vast majority of people in India are interested to ensure that the truth is established and those guilty of mass communal crimes are severely punished. A minority class is interested in ensuring that the truth remains hidden or in doubt, so that the criminals are not punished. This is the ruling class headed by the big capitalists, and the parties that represent this class, headed by the Congress Party and BJP. Neither of these parties wants the guilty to be punished because it is their top leadership that is guilty. The ruling class does not want the truth to come out into the open because it does not want to lose the opportunity of unleashing communal violence again, to keep the people diverted, divided and subjugated.

It is clear that the “public interest” that the Manmohan Singh government is talking about is nothing but the interest of the minority class that benefits from communal violence.

The working class and people cannot and must not accept this justification for covering up the truth about such a monstrous crime as the Gujarat genocide. We must demand that not only to this one letter from former President Narayanan, but all the letters exchanged between the Gujarat and Central governments in Feb-April 2002, along with minutes of cabinet meetings in Gujarat and in New Delhi, must be placed before the Commission and the public. We must demand the same with respect to the November 1984 massacre and the communal violence of 1992-93 following the destruction of Babri Masjid.

A “Right to Information Act, 2005” has been passed recently in Parliament. However, the Government of the day retains the right to withhold information from the people in the name of “public interest”. The case of the UPA Government’s refusal to furnish the letter from Narayanan to Vajpayee shows the serious limitation of the Right to Information Act, that it has a clause permitting those in power to hide the truth permanently from the people, in the name of “public interest”.

People have the right to know the truth. Knowledge of the truth is not and cannot be deemed to be against the general interests of society. It is not the public interest that is threatened by releasing the letter from Narayanan to Vajpayee and other such vital correspondence. It is the credibility and political future of the BJP and the Congress Party that are threatened. It is the interest of the reactionary bourgeois class that will be hurt – that is, their interest to pursue an anti-popular imperialist course and use communal violence as a tool to keep the people divided and diverted.

Panel Discussion on Punishing the Guilty:

When the rulers are guilty then who is to punish them?

Participants at a panel discussion forum in New Delhi, on ‘Punishing the guilty – problems and prospects’, emphatically declared that those in positions of authority are guilty of mass communal crimes, including Home Minister Narasimha Rao in November, 1984 and Chief Minister Narendra Modi in 2002. Panelists included D.S.Gill, Professor Bawa, Subramanian (IPS Retd.), Chhatwal, S. Muralidhar, Prashant  Bhushan and Kamala Sankaran. Lawyers, professors and students, workers and retired officers from the services participated in this forum organised by Lok Raj Sangathan at the Indian Social Institute on 19 th October, 2005.

The panelists presented hard facts and powerful arguments to show that it is those in senior most positions of authority who are guilty. They are guilty of failing to provide protection to the people from large scale communal killings and looting. Worse still, it is they who give orders from behind closed doors and make declarations to incite violence. Examples were cited of Rajiv Gandhi declaring that “when a big tree falls, the earth will shake”, soon after the assassination of Indira Gandhi, and of Narendra Modi ordering senior administrative and police officers to be supportive of an upcoming “bandh” and to “respect Hindu sentiments”, soon after the Godhra episode.

The discussion highlighted that the leaders of parties like the Congress and BJP were not only guilty of communal crimes, they are also guilty of obstructing justice and protecting the criminals. The panelists pointed to the need for overhauling the Rule of Law that is based on a colonial 1861 Act, which provides immunity to the ruling elite.  The police are trained to maintain “order” while they know nothing about law. And maintaining order means to forcibly suppress the people, They pointed to the need for the mass movement of the people to give rise to a new Law as well as to establish implementing mechanisms involving people in their local areas.

The forum concluded with the decision to step up the mass campaign to punish the guilty of November1984, of 1992-93 and of Gujarat in 2002, and to put forward the view of the majority on the proposed draft Bill against communal violence. In particular, participants were vehement that to be effective, any new law against communal violence must have provisions to fix ‘command responsibility’ on those in charge.

This panel discussion highlighted the necessity for the mass movement to gain the strength to ensure punishment to the guilty, as the existing parties in power have shown themselves to have neither the interest nor the capacity to see that justice is done.

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Bihar elections

Sir,

I am writing to congratulate you on the excellent article in the columns of PV on the ensuing elections in Bihar in your issue of October 1-15, 2005. The previous elections led to a ‘hung assembly’ followed by the dissolution of the house before a Government could be formed. What the state of Bihar has seen is some kind of direct rule with many stories floating around about the arbitrary and dictatorial rule of the Governor, Mr. Buta Singh, and indeed that of his off springs and other relatives. The opportunity to carry out a direct and massive loot of the public exchequer was one that those surrounding Mr.Singh could obviously not resist. Indeed, those that are complaining about it are probably ruing that fact that they did not have such a wondrous opportunity themselves! These activities should not distract communists from directing their massive fire power, from completely exposing the character of the bourgeois state that rules Bihar, and indeed the rest of India. Their energies should be directed at elaborating on the Government of workers and peasants that should replace this state of affairs.

Your article on the subject is a noteworthy effort in this direction. By pointing out that Bihar is the field in which the big bourgeois parties plan to fight out their differences and plan on bringing out which one of them will lead the bourgeois anti-social offensive, you have spelt out the essential contours of the fight. You have also pointed out that the tactics of many others in the field will reveal which one of them will emerge as the leaders of the oppressed masses, of the peasantry and the working classes. You have also emphasized that there are those also in the revolutionary camp who will assist in stabilizing the rule of the fascist Congress led UPA by harping on the issue of ‘communalism’ vs. ‘secularism’, while others will beat the tired bourgeois drum of ‘good governance’ to divert the genuine struggles of the people, and yet others who will offer to contribute to both planks. None of them, however, will serve to advance the genuine path of progress to a new tomorrow which will see the rule of the peasants and workers, the true sons and daughters of India, whose problems are increasing on a daily basis, under the burden and yoke of the rule of the bourgeoisie.

I hope that your clarion call for the Government of the peasants and workers will be heeded on a timely basis by all that wish to see India’s future redeemed from its present grim reality.

Sincerely,
A. Narayan, Bangalore

Towards a principled international policy in the interest of the peoples of India and of other countries

Various moves and stands taken by the UPA government of Manmohan Singh in recent times have opened the eyes of people towards a dangerous trend in the international relations and policy of India.

In September, the Indian government shocked public opinion by voting in favour of the US resolution in the meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which was critical of Iran's nuclear energy program and directed towards taking this matter before the UN Security Council. As everyone knows, US imperialism has targeted Iran as part of George Bush's notorious campaign against the “axis of evil”, and has been mounting pressure on it in many ways, in a manner similar to what it had done to Iraq before it openly aggressed on that country. By voting along with the US-sponsored resolution against Iran, at a time when many other countries including Russia and China refused to do so, the UPA government has given much-needed support to the ill-intentioned campaign of US imperialism.

Of even more significance has been the Government of India's moves to forge a “strategic alliance” with the US. This was consolidated during Manmohan Singh's visit to the US in July. As part of the price for this “strategic alliance”, the Indian government agreed for the first time to open up its civilian nuclear facilities for “international” inspection. US Under Secretary of State Burns visited New Delhi last week to review the implementation of the agreement. Earlier, on June 29, another agreement had been signed which envisioned vastly increased collaboration between India and the US in military matters. In 2004, the NDA Government had very nearly decided to send Indian troops to Iraq, but was stopped from doing so only because of the strength of outraged public opinion within the country.

In undertaking these moves, the UPA government has acted without calling for any public debate, and without even seeking the approval of Parliament, despite the known antipathy among large sections of Indian people to military collaboration of any kind with US imperialism, and to the dilution of the country's sovereignty in military matters. The UPA government is undoubtedly confident that its main rival for power, the BJP-led alliance, would not by itself take up the cudgels against it over this direction of foreign policy.

What lies behind these moves of the government, and what do they represent? It is clear that the ruling class, headed by the big bourgeoisie, wants to get on the fast track towards being recognized as a big power, and is willing to do anything to serve this end. In the earlier Cold War scenario before the collapse of the Soviet Union, India had been projected as a leader of the newly independent and “non-aligned” group of countries. Now, in the current world scene, the Indian big bourgeoisie, as the ruling class of a big country, hopes to realise its ambitions of being recognised as a great power by fully embracing the policy of globalisation and liberalisation and unabashedly dovetailing its foreign policy with the interests of US imperialism, the sole superpower, while continuing to engage with other European and Asian powers. If this means abandoning some its friends, and going back on some of its long-held postures – such as on nuclear policy and military collaboration – so be it. This is the thinking of the big bourgeoisie. If it means keeping quiet about even the most brazen warmongering and domineering moves of US imperialism – at a time when various other countries, many of them much smaller than India, have come out in open opposition – then the Indian government had better keep silent.

The drive to be recognised as a big power is reflected in the desperate campaign to obtain the status of a permanent member of the UN Security Council. Indian ministers and diplomats have been canvassing in all the capitals of the world to get support for this campaign. The interests of the vast majority of countries and peoples of the world demand the restructuring of the UN in the direction of greater democratisation and greater equality of member states, big and small. It demands the revision of the present structure of the Security Council, in which a handful of powers alone possess the right to veto decisions of others, in favour of a more egalitarian one, as well as greater powers for the General Assemblyvis a vis the Security Council. But what the Indian government is striving for is to preserve the existing structure with room for itself at the high table.

The international stand that India is taking at the present time is a thoroughly unprincipled, pragmatic position and policy that goes against the interests of the majority of the Indian people and other peoples of the world. While the spokesmen of the establishment crow that this is a “realistic” policy in the “national interest”, it is a policy that is only in the interest of a small class that wants to strengthen itself through militarisation and the increasing exploitation of the people within India and in other countries.

For the big bourgeoisie, the sovereignty of the people and their wellbeing are secondary considerations and subordinate to its imperial ambitions. Its policy is sure to win more enemies rather than friends for India. While the Government of India likes to show that it is making moves to reduce tensions with neighbouring countries like Pakistan and China, in the long run the course on which it is headed will only speed up the arms race and heighten tensions and rivalry, as well as increase the danger of outside interference in this region. It will definitely lower the prestige of our country in the eyes of the peoples of the world.

There is an urgent need for the working class and all peace and freedom-loving people of India to take a clear stand in opposition to the entire thrust of the self-serving and dangerous foreign policy of the present government. The interests of the people of this country demand an international policy based on principles, one that resolutely opposes US imperialism and all forms of imperialist aggression and interference, a policy that abjures the use of force to settle disputes between countries and actively promotes peace and friendly relations. We must demand that the Government of India must uphold the right of every country and people to pursue their own destiny, and respect the equality and sovereignty of all nations, peoples and states, not just in words but in deeds. In particular and most urgently, we must insist that the Government of India makes a clean break with the path of forging a strategic alliance with the most dangerous imperialist power on earth, the United States.

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Act to Protect Women from Domestic Violence:

An important gain but much more is needed for effective protection

On August 23, 2005, the Lok Sabha unanimously approved the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Bill, 2005. This has now become an Act of law. The introduction of this legislation is a political gain for the movement for the emancipation of women. It signifies the recognition by society that physical abuse and oppressive treatment of women within the family is a crime and that women need legal protection against domestic violence. It is a reflection of the rising assertion by women that they are human beings and deserve to be treated as such.

The Act adopts a broad definition of ‘domestic violence’ to include physical abuse and mental torture, not only of wives but also of sisters, widows, mothers, single women, or anyone who is living in the same house as the abuser. It provides for the rights of the woman to reside in her matrimonial home or shared household, whether or not she has any title or rights in such a home or household.

While this concrete gain in legal recognition of the rights of women in the context of domestic violence is a cause for celebration, women need to be aware of its limitations as far as effective protection is concerned. Firstly, this Act recognises the rights of the woman who is the victim of domestic violence to live in her husband’s house, but not her right to live on her own if she prefers.

When a woman is beaten up by her husband or some other member of her husband’s family, where can she go for protection? Going back to her parent’s house is a course that is denied to many women on account of the social pressure that weighs on most parents of married women. The Act that has been enacted recognises the right of the woman to live in the house where she faces violence. But what if she wants to live on her own, say in a women’s hostel? The Act stipulates that the husband is responsible to assist the woman to do so. And what if the husband refuses? The Act does not call on the State to ensure safe shelter to women in such conditions.

Secondly, while legal protection is a necessary component in dealing with the problem of domestic violence, it is by no means sufficient. This is because domestic violence is a social problem, which cannot be dealt with purely as a “law and order” problem.

In the immediate sense, a woman who faces domestic violence needs social support as well as legal protection. She needs a safe place to stay, from where she may freely access the kind of social support she wants, such as a women’s organisation, community group or counselor. She must have the opportunity to attempt to resolve the problem through persuasion and negotiation, as well as be able to initiate criminal charges.

The Act that has been passed provides and expands the scope for women who have been victims of domestic violence to initiate criminal charges against their tormentors. However, women still lack any guaranteed safe shelter provided at state expense. They lack access to assured channels of social support and neutral arbiters.

In addition to these factors, there is the overall problem that the police apparatus and other wings of the ‘law and order’ machinery are based on oppressing and not protecting the majority of people. The criminal procedure code dates back to 1861, when ‘order’ was defined to mean the subjugation of the Indian people to colonial plunder. Rapes by police and armed personnel are commonplace in the country. No woman with any sense would want to go to a police station on her own to seek protection from oppression within the family.

Domestic violence against women is a social problem that is related to the prevailing social system. The social system in India is a capitalist system with pronounced feudal remnants. Child marriage, female infanticide and foeticide, torture and harassment for dowry, inequality in nutrition and health care, education and employment opportunities, sexual assault, exploitation of women and girls as commodities in the flesh trade – these are all prevalent and widespread in our country. In a system that is based on the exploitation and oppression of the vast majority of the population by a tiny super rich minority, women face multiple exploitation and oppression. They are exploited as workers within the home and oppressed as women on top of that.

In a vast majority of Indian households, the woman has little or no choice regarding the timing and number of children she should bear. Beating, physical and mental torture and even killing of women and girls who dare to exercise their own choice in life continue to take place unabated. Working women not only encounter inequality and exploitation, including sexual harassment at the work place and on the streets, but are also generally compelled to take on the additional burden of running the household and taking care of the children and the aged. Even in female-headed households, where the woman is the main income earner, she generally has little control over her earnings and hardly any power to take decisions.

The struggle against domestic violence must be waged to advance further beyond the partial gains enshrined in the 2005 Act. It must be waged while keeping in mind the strategic aim of putting an end to capitalism and all remnants of feudalism, as the necessary condition for the emancipation of women.

The struggle to put an end to domestic violence is a component part of the struggle to rebuild society on new foundations, free from all forms of exploitation of persons by persons. Such a society will re-establish the family on a new basis, as an equal partnership between woman and man and in harmony with society, devoid of any consideration of private property. It will be a society in which the rights of women as human beings and as the bearers of new human lives will be constitutionally guaranteed, with enabling mechanisms for women to realise these rights in practice. It will be a society where any violation of any woman’s right, whether in the family or in the public domain, will be severely punished.

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State Convention of Rajasthan School Teachers

The Rajasthan Teachers Union (Progressive), the militant organization of teachers of government schools of Rajasthan, held its two day state level convention in Hanumangarh town on October 24-25, 2005. The Convention began with a discussion on “The role of teachers in building an egalitarian society in a multinational, multicultural society like India”. Delegations of teachers from different districts from this vast state attended this Convention.

The Rajasthan Teachers Union (Progressive) has been leading a militant and long drawn agitation for the solutions of the problems confronting the teaching community and school education. These include the policy of the state government of keeping a large section of teachers in the category of “para-teachers”, who are paid much less then regular teachers, and over whose heads the sword of dismissal is kept permanently dangling.

The state government has been ruthlessly increasing the workload of all the teachers, using their services for sundry activities including election duty, census, pulse polio campaigns, preparation of mid day meals and other social projects of the government. All these have greatly affected the teaching in the schools. The agitation has included dharnas, demonstrations, hunger strikes and so on in all the towns, district headquarters, as well as the state capital, Jaipur. The militant and optimistic spirit of the teachers was in evidence for all to see in the Convention.

The Convention began with teacher’s leader Babu Lal Jain giving a brief and militant history of the Union, founded in 1980. He pointed out that the organization refused, from the time of it's founding, to divide teachers on an ideological basis. He pointed out that at every important turn in the political movement in Rajasthan, teachers had played an important role. All governments and parties that had ignored the concerns of teachers or had betrayed them, did so at their own peril. For instance, former Congress Chief Minister Gehlot had publicly acknowledged that his party lost the elections in Rajasthan because it had alienated teachers and government employees.

The present Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje had circulated a signed advertisement at the time of the Rajasthan elections promising to fulfill the demands of the school teachers. Two years have passed since those elections, but the government has not addressed a single concern of the teachers. He asked the teachers to draw warranted conclusions from the fact that whether Congress or BJP, when in power, they always betrayed the concerns of the teachers, and called upon the teachers not to fall for false promises but to develop their own fighting unity and build the unity of all the exploited and oppressed peoples around their concerns.

Following a vigorous kawali “ganga ki kasam, jamuna ki kasam” presented by Ashok Verma and other teachers, the teachers union called on the local MLA Vinod Choudhary, the Chairman of the Nagarpalika Shri Amar Singh Rathod, the Zilla Parishad Chairman Shri Rajender Makkasar and various other leaders of the panchayats and trade unions to address the convention.

Vinod Swami, activist of a samiti seeking official language status for the Rajasthani language, delivered a thought provoking speech, which revealed the injustice done to the people of Rajasthan by denying them the right to education in their mother tongue —Rajasthani. He pointed out that the social and cultural development of a people, their dignity and self respect as a people, was intimately linked with the preservation and development of their language and culture. Rajasthani was not a dialect of Hindi, as was falsely made out by those who wanted to deny the Rajasthani people their language. It was a shame that till recently, no one in the Rajasthan Assembly even spoke in the Rajasthani language, but only in Hindi and English. He called upon the teachers to play an important part in the struggle for the defence and development of Rajsthani language and culture.

The Convenor of the Lok Raj Sangathan, Prakash Rao, addressed the Convention on the main theme of the Convention. He affirmed that teachers have a big contribution to make to the building of the new society, by inculcating a value system into the younger generation and moulding their outlook. It was important for teachers to grasp what was absent in India, and contribute to developing the discussion on overcoming this absence.

There is an absence of Indian theory in solving the problems confronting India. Ever since the colonialists implanted themselves in our country, they had spread the notion that Indians lacked a political theory and philosophy of their own, and imposed European theories on India. Since 1947, the rulers of India have followed these same imposed European theories and adopted them as their own. Indian Political theory, Indian statecraft has existed and developed since the times of the Rigveda. The notion of Raja and Praja and their relation with each other have evolved over the thousands of years, through the times of Bhishma, Chanakya, and Bahadur Shah Zafar.

However, in the present day democracy, we can see the complete break between the Raja and Praja, which is the reason the vast majority of decisions taken by the parliament and assemblies are anti people and serve only minority vested interests. This would not be possible if the people really had a say in ruling. Our rulers declare that the multi party representative democracy, adopted from the colonialists, is the highest development of political theory and refuse to countenance any discussion on an alternative. Hence teachers should develop the discussion on the alternative to the present democracy, which will ensure that the people will indeed become the rulers of society and determine the course society should proceed on.

The discussion on the main theme concluded with a rousing address by the President of the Teachers Union, Hanuman Prasad Sharma. He pointed out that the system was basically exploitative and oppressive for the toilers and tillers and it was futile to expect that teachers will have a solution to their problems separate and apart from the broad masses of toilers and tillers. He called upon the teachers to vigorously plunge into the struggle of the workers and peasants, women and youth with the aim of building a society free from exploitation and oppression.

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