Comrades,

We have assembled here to commemorate and learn from the great Ghadar of 1857. We want to remind ourselves of what the martyrs of that great Ghadar stood for, fought for, and laid down their lives for. We want to absorb the lessons from what they achieved and to accomplish what they could not at that time. We want to accomplish the complete liberation of Indian society from slavishness of all forms, from the colonial and imperialist system of plunder, from all forms of oppression and bondage.

Facts show that the Ghadar of 1857 was an Indian subcontinent wide revolutionary uprising against firangi rule. It shook the global system of colonial plunder that was growing at that time. It threw the money bags of London and Paris into a frenzy. The British colonialists bribed and mobilised numerous traitors, to divide and weaken the fighting forces from within. They crushed the revolution brutally, but they could not crush its spirit. The ideas and aims of the Ghadar of 1857 could not be killed. The aspiration for complete freedom from all forms of bondage has continued to inspire our people again and again during the past 150 years.

Ever since the British East India Company, which supposedly had come here to trade, started recruiting armies and conquering territories, people of this subcontinent have been rising in revolt, in one place after another. The numerous currents of opposition to colonial rule combined to form a massive outburst in 1857. It posed a serious threat to colonial rule, and finally led to even soldiers within the British Indian army revolting and joining hands with the peasants, princes and others .

The peasants, artisans and local traders in the villages and towns were revolting against the plunder of the Company. The labouring classes were revolting and inspiring all members of society to join this revolt. This naturally had a profound influence on the sipahis, who came from families of peasants, other toilers and petty traders. The sipahis stood up for their self respect. They rose against the racism of the white ruler. They revolted against being used as cannon fodder in numerous wars in different parts of the world, in the service of British colonialism. The rebellion of the sipahis in turn inspired more peasants and artisans to rise up in various regions.

The kings and princes in India were getting divided between those who sold out to the colonialists in return for gold and promised concessions, and those who refused to trust the colonialists and took to the path of revolt. The aspirations of the revolutionary forces found expression in the proclamations of those patriotic rulers who sided with the people and led the armed assault on Company bases. Bahadur Shah Zafar, selected by the insurgents to head the new Hindostan after the colonialists have been driven out, called on the people of all faiths not to trust the colonialist. He called on them to rise up to overthrow this oppressive foreign rule.

The program of those who rose up in revolt was to drive out the colonialists and to establish a new order in India. It was not a small thing, to unite peoples of different cultures, speaking different languages and following different religious faiths, to join hands across the length and breadth of this vast subcontinent, in one common struggle to drive out the British plunderers. This required advance planning and preparation. There is historical evidence showing that a lot of preparatory work had indeed been done by the organizers of 1857. Letters written by Nana Saheb, Bahadur Shah Zafar and other patriotic rulers are part of this evidence.

The insurgents created a flag of the Ghadar, and even had a Flag Song. It was part of the plan that as soon as the flag of Ghadar is unfurled in Delhi, attacks on colonial posts would be unleashed in other parts of the subcontinent. These are all signs of an organised political movement with a clear political aim. The aim of the revolution was to end colonial rule and open a new chapter for HIndostan. This captured the hearts and minds of the majority of peoples in this subcontinent. The Ghadar of 1857 was thus an all-India revolutionary uprising to create a new Hindostan. It was a stupendous effort that was defeated, mainly due to treachery.

We are struggling to establish a new Hindostan today. We need to defeat the anti-social offensive of the bourgeoisie and implement the program for the Navnirman of India. This is the way to open the door to the revolutionary transformation of society -- that is, to the overthrow of capitalism as the condition for sweeping away all remnants of feudalism, colonialism and imperialist plunder, and for the building of socialism, the first stage of communism. We have to learn from our ancestors, from their heroic effort to smash the old and give birth to the new in their time.

As far as our party is concerned, drawing inspiration from the Ghadar of 1857 is not a matter of one event on one special day, or even one special year. Ghadar is in the very name of our party. It is at the back of our minds in everything we do, every day of our lives. The essence of Ghadar is Inquilab -- the revolutionary transformation of society, a radical rupture, the smashing of the old to give rise to the new. So comrades, let us proudly declare as always, that Ghadar is in our every heartbeat, in our every breath. We must not and will not let anyone remove Ghadar from our heritage or from our agenda!

Comrades,

There were two tendencies within the anti-colonial movement, from before 1857 and after. The clash between two opposing tendencies exists today as well. It is a clash between sticking to one's principles in the interests of the motherland, on the one hand, and compromising with the enemy, on the other hand. It is a clash between patriotism and treachery.

In the years preceding the Ghadar of 1857, the British colonialists were facing revolts in several of their colonies. They had lost their colonial possessions in North America following the revolution that took place there. Lord Cornwallis was sent to India after the British lost their colonies in North America. Learning from the loss in America, Lord Cornwallis wrote to his Queen that it was necessary to create a class of people in India in whose interest it would be to preserve colonial rule. The colonialists went about the task of creating and grooming a class of traitors, such as big landlords, big capitalists and merchants linked to British trade and business interests.

The British colonial rulers established a State in India to serve their own interests of maximizing plunder -- a State in their own image. They established their own laws, following the political theory prevailing in Britain at that time, based on the notion of the Divine Right to Rule. They established universities and colleges to produce ideologues and clerks for their rule. The proclamation of Queen Victoria in 1858 laid the basis for systematically rewarding and grooming traitors and loyal servants from among well-to-do Indian families. Such families included those of Scindia, Nizam of Hyderabad, Rajas of Patiala, Kapurthala, Jind, Kashmir, Nepal, Indore etc. It included Gangadhar, the kotwal of Delhi in 1857, the great grandfather of Jawaharlal Nehru. It also included Sir Sayyid Ahmed Khan, founder of the Mahomedan Anglo Oriental College in Aligarh; and Ali Shah, father of the Aga Khan III, who became the first president of the All India Muslim League.. On the other hand, those who asserted the right of Indians to rule themselves were mercilessly dealt with, such as Bahadur Shah Zafar, Tatya Tope, Begum Hazrat Mahal, Nana Saheb, Kunwar Singh, Rani Laxmi Bai, etc Lakhs of patriots were put to death, with at least one martyr hung from every tree on the Grand Trunk road. Laws and regulations to legitimize repression against anyone who dared to uphold the tradition of 1857 followed the queen’s proclamation. .

Gaddari was institutionalised by the British rulers. One of the steps they took was the formation of the Indian National Congress (INC). The Indian National Congress was founded in the year 1885 by one A.O. Hume, a British Colonial administrator till the year 1882. Hume initially proposed a yearly gathering of leading Indian politicians to discuss 'social matters'. However, the Viceroy Lord Dufferin pointed out that something more in the nature of 'Her Majesty's opposition' in England was necessary. The Congress Party eventually took the form of a party that is loyal to Her Majesty's government while playing the role of representing the opposition to colonialism. Hume himself described the Congress Party as follows: " A safety valve for the escape of the great and growing forces, generated by our own action, was urgently needed and no more efficacious safety valve than our Congress movement could possibly be devised."

With the establishment of the INC the colonialists had given birth to an instrument to co-opt the new ruling classes into the colonial state, an instrument to sabotage Indian people’s struggle from within. Despite millions of people rallying behind it later, with the aim of fighting colonialism, the leadership of the Congress Party fully played this treacherous role.

The Congress Party, despite its size and membership, was essentially a party of the bourgeoisie. Its leaders came largely from the families of big landlords and capitalists who were educated in English and who propagated that essentially British colonialism was a civilizing and modernizing force, despite a few excesses. The Congress Party became a major vehicle for transplanting European political thought and concepts in the minds of Indian elite. It acted as a vehicle for grooming a politician caste that would rule India after the British left, in a way that is suitable for the growth of capitalism and imperialism. The leaders received their political and ideological training in Oxford and Cambridge universities. They were trained in the art of speaking what the masses of people want, while acting strictly in the interests of the propertied and privileged elite.

Till today, the Congress Party has played the role of bulwark against revolution, and in defence of imperialism. One of its representatives, Manmohan Singh, the current Prime Minister of India, bows to Oxford University as the source of all his wisdom. He says we must learn democratic values from Britain. In his speech to the parliament on 1857, the only lesson he draws from the Ghadar of 1857 is that violence does not pay. He is preaching to the Indian people that they must be non-violent, thereby blaming the heroes of 1857 and justifying the brutal genocide unleashed by the British against them. . On the other hand, Manmohan Singh is following the Congress tradition of demagogy by lecturing the big capitalists in CII that they should not rob and plunder too much because then there would be a revolution. It shows that the fear of revolution continues to spoil the sleep of the ruling bourgeoisie.

The Congress Party led the anti-colonial movement along the path of independence without social revolution. It was a path of compromise with imperialism and colonialism. Political power was transferred in 1947, from the British Crown to the traitorous classes they had created, the big landlords and capitalists. The economic system and political institutions created to plunder India and suppress our people were kept intact. India was divided on a communal basis, and sectarian strife was laid as the foundation of the partitioned states of India and Pakistan.

The independence of 1947 has left us with a feeling of emptiness. What is this freedom where the majority of our people are not even free from want, from hunger and disease, from unemployment and inflation? We are not free from the old caste based oppression and gender discrimination, or from arbitrary displacement and terror unleashed by the State and by power hungry parties. We are not free from the domination of foreign capital, of foreign culture and ideology. We are not free from the colonial law, the Penal Code established after 1857, the Land Acquisition Act of British colonialism, nor from the colonial style organisation of the army.

The path of independence without ghadar has meant a further extension and perfection of the colonial system of plunder, without the colonialists in command. Now the Indian capitalists, headed by the likes of Reliance and Tatas are in command. We are asked to celebrate the acceleration of capitalist plunder, which is leading to devastation among workers and peasants. We are asked to celebrate the rapid GDP growth allegedly because India is on its way to become a superpower in the world!

It is the class of traitors who are ruling our country today, comrades, while the patriots remain suppressed. The descendents of those who rose in revolt in 1857 are today oppressed and living in poverty, while the descendents of the traitors and collaborators are living in luxury and enjoying political power.

Comrades,

The British colonialists and their followers have tried their best to suppress and distort even the basic facts concerning the Ghadar of 1857. For fifty years after the Ghadar, the colonial rulers systematically destroyed historical sites and monuments of that revolutionary event. They prevented any Indian from publishing anything about the Ghadar, so that people will have to rely on British writers and their biased versions. The task of historical research is further complicated by sectarian views within the communist movement, about which Indian author should be read and who should not be read.

Many of you would have heard about the controversy surrounding the name of Savarkar. A fact that cannot be disputed is that Savarkar's book on 1857 was the first book on the Ghadar to be published by an Indian. It was published on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Ghadar. A second edition of this book was published by Lala Hardial, one of the founding members of the Hindustani Ghadar Party, in 1912. The third edition of Savarkar's book was published by Bhagat Singh.

Our party believes that communists must read all the books that have been written by Indians about the Ghadar of 1857. It does not matter if the authors were or later became part of the Congress Party or of the Jan Sangh, Muslim League or Hindu Mahasabha. Scientific pursuit requires broadmindedness. It does not behoove a communist party to be recommending that only some books must be read and not others, because of the political affiliation or ideology of its author. That is not communist conduct. It is the height of sectarianism. We should use our brains, and the knowledge gained from science, to evaluate the thought material from the past and bring forward that which is useful to the present day struggle. We must reject those thoughts that reflect the influence of Euro-centrism, of concepts introduced and implanted by the colonizers, and all thoughts that serve the current interests of the imperialist bourgeoisie.

Comrades,

Corresponding to the two trends within Indian society, there are two opposite approaches and worldviews, two sides on the question of 1857 today. The class of traitors are hiring many so-called scholars to repeat the British lie that 1857 was only a mutiny of the sipahi s. They hire historians to exaggerate the role of this or that individual, and then bring out so called facts to discredit that individual -- be it Mangal Pandey or Bahadur Shah Zafar. There are some who say that it was not countrywide in scope, it was confined only to a few places, that only some castes participated in it, hence it did not represent a true war of independence of national proportions and so on. There are others, like Nehru, who say it was heroic but basically feudal reaction. Then there are some parties within the communist movement, who essentially agree with Nehru, claiming that while it was a countrywide uprising it lacked vision and a clear program. Our investigation and study of available facts about 1857 indicates that these are all a pack of lies, aimed at discrediting or under-estimating the Ghadar of 1857. Precisely that class in whose interest it is to preserve the legacy of colonialism and prevent the possibility of revolution is spreading these lies and slanders.

We revolutionaries believe that to uphold the best patriotic traditions and lessons of 1857 means to organise to overthrow the present day Indian state. This position follows logically from our recognition that the Indian state is a colonial legacy, an instrument of oppression and plunder, and that we need to make a clean break with this legacy. We need a new economic and political system in our country, a new State that would enable the working class and toiling peasants to be the masters.

The enemies of revolution claim that the aspirations and aims of the Ghadar of 1857 were fulfilled in 1947. They claim that the issue today is to defend the so-called secular and democratic Indian Republic. According to this belief, the main issue is to defend the unity and integrity of the existing Indian Union from foreign threats, from communal, extremist and secessionist forces. This is not only the official line of the Manmohan Singh Government and the principal parties of the bourgeoisie. It is also the official line of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

The editorial of the 1857 special issue of People’s Democracy, weekly organ of the CPI(M), says that 1857 sowed the seeds of Indian nationalism. It also says, “More importantly, this was nationalism with a distinct secular identity. An evolution that finally culminated in the declaration of the modern secular democratic republic of India in 1947”. It calls on the people to defend the existing Indian Republic and its secular foundations.

Thus it is clear that the line of CPI(M) and its followers is diametrically opposed to the line of revolution. They say 1947 was the culmination of ghadar, while in fact it was a great gaddari. They say that the Indian Republic is an instrument of independence, democracy and secular unity, whereas in reality it is a continuation and further perfection of the colonial state. They want to defend this state and become part of it. We want to make a clean break with this state, to overturn it.

Can there be any doubt that the line of CPI(M) serves our enemies? There can be no reconciliation with this rotten line of defending the existing Indian state. Only by defeating and expelling this line can the communist movement in our country make an advance and address the problems of revolution today.

Comrades,

Facts show, without a shadow of doubt, that British colonialism carried out a genocide in our country. It not only put to death lakhs of patriots but also carried out a cultural genocide, to wipe out even the thought underlying their revolt. The colonialists distorted historical facts to assert that Indians had no science, no philosophy, no theories of statecraft worth their name. They asserted that Indians are unfit to rule themselves, and need English educated men of property to rule over them. They claimed that it was the white man's burden to civilize the peoples of South Asia.

The fact is that for over 5000 years these questions of philosophy, natural science, political theory and principles of economic organization have been discussed and debated, implemented and reviewed in the Indian subcontinent. Our ancestors are well known for having a developed philosophy and value system, as well as theories of statecraft and economic organization, centuries before Europeans established their first form of democracy. Colonialism denigrated and sought to destroy the best traditions and theories of the peoples of this subcontinent..

As a communist party, we look at this question from the vantage point of the working class and its movement for emancipating itself and all of society. We draw on the experience of the revolutionary movements in India and on the world scale. We recognize that the working class is an international class, with international experience summed up in the science of Marxism-Leninism and contemporary Marxist-Leninist thought. We recognize that as the party of the Indian working class, we have to settle accounts with the Indian bourgeoisie and the thought material that has come down from our ancestors.

Marx and Engels took great pains to settle scores with their own philosophical conscience, and they called on the communists of other countries and civilizations to do the same. They stressed that the working class and communists of each country have to settle accounts with their own bourgeoisie and what has been inherited from one's specific history.

Our party believes that the most important ingredient that is needed today is Indian theory, which will illuminate the path of revolution to the millions of Indians who have to carry it out. Indian theory is the sangam, the meeting point of drawing on the experience of the international working class, in general form, and the lessons of the Indian experience in particular. The study of the political theory that the Ghadar of 1857 gave rise to is an important part of developing Indian theory.

Hum hain iske malik, Hindostan humaara – so said the heroes of 1857. We must examine this concept deeply. What does it mean to say that we are the masters of India, and that this country belongs to us? Who is this ‘we’ to whom the country belongs?

Research and study of the facts, of what all happened in 1857 and 1858, shows that the hum at that time consisted of varied sections of society. It included all the peoples' of India, toilers in the shops and tillers in the fields, traders, thinkers, warriors, princes and queens, a remarkable united front of Hindus, Mussalmans and Sikhs, of men and women, young and old. Available evidence shows that the leaders of the uprising were calling on the people to take action against the rule of the firangi, by appealing to their dharma, not in the sense of religion but the sense of duty or obligation to society.

Compared to those times, we have a distinct advantage today. There was no economic class in 1857 that was capable of leading a large-scale all-India war against imperialism to victory. Today there is an all-India working class in combat with the all-India bourgeois class and the imperialist system. The working class is objectively the most revolutionary class in society. It is the class that can and must lead the Ghadar in today's conditions. It must do so by developing the Indian theory of revolution as its guide to action.

When we analyse the concrete conditions of India armed with the science of Marxism-Leninism, we find that in addition to the working class, there is a huge army of peasants in our country, who are suffering under the rule of the bourgeoisie. The vast majority of peasants are potential allies in a revolutionary struggle against imperialism, capitalism and all remnants of feudalism and colonialism. There is the army of women who also suffer oppression and discrimination under the existing order, and are a potential revolutionary force. There is the youth of our country, a mighty force that is naturally inspired by the new and rejects the old order. Based on assessing the class forces, we have come to the conclusion that the ‘ hum’ today consists of workers, peasants, women and youth of all nations and peoples that constitute India. We have to organise and inspire this ‘hum’ to assert their right to be the malik of India.

This land belongs to us, say the Kashmiris, the Nagas and the Manipuris. They have been fighting valiantly for many decades, not willing to give up their rights over their respective territories, and the natural resources in that territory. There are numerous tribal peoples who are fighting against the encroachment of their traditional lands by the central State or by private timber or mining corporations. The State turns the truth on its head and calls the people ‘encroachers’, after having seized their land by force. In each case, there is a ‘hum’ – a specific group of people who are asserting their identity and their inalienable rights.

Can we create an Indian identity that denies and negates the identity and rights of each constituent people? This is the kind of Indian identity that the colonialists created, and which the reactionary bourgeoisie and its conciliators defend today in the name of “unity and integrity of India”.

How did the heroes of 1857 deal with this problem of creating a Hindostan out of the numerous distinct nations and peoples in this sub-continent – peoples with a common philosophical heritage as well as varied languages, and varied political and cultural development? We must study this question and seek to learn from, and further develop, the thought material that our forefathers have left behind for us.

Bahadur Shah Zafar, in his firmans issued in 1857, clearly states the basis for the authority he wields. He says that he has been placed in the position of leader by the masses of insurgent people, so he is accountable to them and not to British law. However, Queen Victoria, in her proclamation of 1858, does not lay down the basis for her position as the sovereign of India. Who placed her there and for what purpose? She simply says that the East India Company had been administering the Indian possessions of the English Crown until then, and from now on it will be the responsibility of new officers that Her Majesty will appoint. Her authority is pre-ordained and arbitrary. It has no logical or moral basis. It has been acquired by brute force and will be defended by brute force. And justified by the assertion that God Almighty gave Her Majesty the right to rule over any part of the world.

The authority of the present day rulers of India is likewise arbitrary. The political system and all those parties that champion it are getting extremely discredited in the eyes of the people. They have authority only because they have armed forces and police under their command. Not because the people respect and trust them.

In place of this arbitrary power, the workers, peasants, women and youth must establish a power of an entirely new kind. Such a power will be legitimate because the masses of people will be part of it. We, the workers, peasants, women and youth, will be the decision makers, to whom elected deputies will render accounts. This is the most advanced theory of proletarian democracy. It is at the same time a higher development of Indian political thought -- the concept that 'hum hain iske malik!'

Comrades,

In Europe, the tradition emerged from around the 15th century, of kings and queens who justified their supreme power on the basis of claiming that they had the Divine Right to Rule. The supreme power was exercised by the crown, acting together with the propertied interests.

In India, the tradition was different. Political power was not arbitrary. It had to be justified on the basis of the rulers carrying out their duty of providing protection and prosperity to the people. If the raja did not carry out his duty, it was considered the right of the praja to overthrow him, or even behead him if he was a tyrant.

The word praja means those who give birth to raja. The word raja comes from the word praja. What does this show? It shows that the people existed without a raja in their primitive stage, and at a certain stage in their development, the people, organized as sabha chose a raja. This raja had well defined duties, while the sabha of the people remained the supreme decision making body. It was a system of rule aimed at protecting the people and allowing them to prosper. Such an arrangement is reflected in the Rig Veda in the following words: " With the best of weapons, with the seven organs, our leader destroys the cities of our enemies, he showers prosperity on us like the sun showers light on everyone." (Mandal 1, Sukta 63, Shloka 7). The political theory of that period recognised and respected the right of the people as a whole to decide on common affairs, including who should be king.

At a later period, the right of the praja to select the raja was negated by the rise of a state power and hereditary king system, with the village system at the base. This system, which is well elaborated by Bheeshma in the Mahabharata, recognised the right of people to overthrow a ruler who does not fulfill his duty of providing prosperity and protection to the people. But the people had no say in who would become the new ruler. It was the preserve of a ruling elite to decide who would become king. Even then, the concept that the raja had the duty to provide prosperity and protection to the praja did not disappear.

When the East India Company arrived, a struggle was developing within Indian society on the question of the right to rule. Revolutionary forces, such as the bhaktas and sufis, were contesting the brahmanical and islamic orthodoxies, and protesting against the exclusion of the toiling people from knowledge and from decision making power.

The colonial conquest and its consolidation after 1858 negated Indian political thought altogether. It imposed a new orthodoxy according to which only the firangi was fit to rule over the people of India. The transfer of power in 1947 did not smash this orthodoxy. It only altered its form. In the post-colonial period, a privileged caste of political netajis claim that the people cannot manage without them. The people are told that they are only fit to choose by which set of netas they will be ruled. The parliamentary system and its political process of representative democracy negate the right of Indian people to rule themselves.

The right to rule, or sovereignty, which means essentially the same thing, has been taken away from the hands of the Indian people. First it was taken away by the hereditary king system and by successive aggressors who maintained that system. Then the situation was further aggravated by the colonial conquest and measures by the British bourgeoisie to eliminate Indian thought itself. To regain the people's sovereignty, the negation which has deprived them of their rights, has to be negated through revolution. In simple words this Indian state which protects the rule of the Indian bourgeoisie has to be overthrown and replaced by a new state which vests sovereignty in the people. This is the essence of Ghadar today.

We, the workers, peasants, women and youth, constitute India. We are the real masters of this society. For this to become a reality, we the people have to give birth to a mechanism through which we can contest the arbitrary power of the privileged elite, and come into power ourselves. This new power will subordinate the executive power to the requirements of the empowerment of the people. The political process of representative democracy will be replaced by a process of direct democracy, where people themselves rule without political parties acting as intermediaries. We, the people will be vested with the power to select the candidates for election. We will enjoy the right to recall elected persons at any time. We will be able to make or change the laws that affect us. In short, the praja acting through their sabhas will be supreme. In such a system there will be no place for any raja or any form of intermediary. This New people's power will continuously revolutionise the political process in order to ensure that it is the people's will and claims that are supreme. Such a political power will create systematically the conditions when the state itself will wither away along with the dissolution of classes, to give birth to Communism.

The line of developing people’s candidates or jan pratinidhi s, of building sangursh samitis in mohallas and work places, and an association or mechanism on an all India basis dedicated to the empowerment of the people, are all the result of the work of the party to develop the theory that is required to carry the Indian revolution to victory.

Comrades,

The biggest obstacle to this work of preparing the workers, peasants, women and youth to become the masters of India is posed by the line of CPI(M). The leaders of CPI(M) see the present day Indian State as an instrument for democratic advance and for defending secular unity. They disregard Indian thought material from the past, branding it as feudal or communal. Theyembrace old European theories and ideas, such as Westminster style parliamentary democracy, social-democracy and secularism ( dharm-nirpekshta).

The leaders of CPI(M) have completely departed from Marxism, even though they continue to carry this word in their party name. They have embraced European social-democracy, which is a counter-revolutionary ideology of the European bourgeoisie. They deny the very existence of statecraft other than what has emerged out of the European experience, thereby preaching subservience to Euro-centrism. In the style of European social-democracy, the CPI(M) denies the existence of any nationhood other than what the bourgeoisie has established to expand its capitalist-imperialist empire. It defends the terrorism of the Indian state against the national liberation movements within the country, branding such movements to be a threat to the "national unity and territorial integrity" of India.

The leaders of CPI(M) wage a sectarian struggle in the name of secularism. They do not understand, or wish to understand the role of dharma in Indian thought. They follow the European interpretation, that dharma is nothing but religion. They have embraced the concept of dharma-nirpekshta , which is a concept introduced by the colonialists to deepen the religious divide. The concept of secularism as 'tolerance' and 'equidistance' is part of European social-democracy, an ideology in the service of the imperialist bourgeoisie. The leaders of 1857 did not need the concept of dharma-nirpekshta. They appealed to the people on the basis of their their sense of duty, in defence of their way of life, to unite against the enemy irrespective of their religious beliefs.

Comrades,

Without a revolution that will overthrow capitalism and all forms of exploitation, Indian society cannot really progress. It will continue to move from one crisis to another, with the deep divide between rich and poor becoming even deeper. The main reason why India is still socially backward, even after 60 years of independence from colonialism, is because of the absence of revolution. India needs a proletarian revolution that will place the workers and peasants in power.

With state power in their hands, the toiling majority of people will transform the economic and social relations, so as to get rid of the basis of exploitation and oppression. This will necessarily be a long drawn out process, taking many years to complete. However, the process of revolution cannot even begin without a countrywide upsurge to overthrow the rule of the bourgeoisie. Without the destruction of the old order, the new cannot take shape. And even after that, people will have the right to rebel against any force that may become a roadblock for the new to replace the old, at every stage of socialist development. To rise in Ghadar is a basic right of all people at all times!

Comrades,

Our Central Committee has been organizing Communist Schools to educate its members and supporters, to arm them with revolutionary theory and not confine theory to the activity of a few learned professors. It decided to organize this school on the questions raised by 1857 and their relevance to revolution and the Navnirman of India today. This is an essential part of our work of nurturing the force that can and must lead the great Ghadar of the 21st century.

We are engaged in a life and death struggle, which requires the leading force to be armed with theory suited to the conditions of India. Our struggle is not only against the bourgeois parties that are openly advocating the capitalist path to make India a mighty imperialist power. It is also a struggle against those within the communist movement who are defending the establishment, who view revolution as a threat to the so-called unity and integrity of the existing Indian state.

Yes, revolution is a threat to the present day ruling class of India. It is a threat to imperialism, to the bourgeois class and all its collaborators. It is the dream that inspires our young women, men and children even today. For this dream to come true, it is essential to defeat those within the movement who are conciliating and collaborating with the bourgeoisie, and to arm the working class and people with one clear-cut line and program of action.

I can say with full confidence, that the day is not far off when a new ghadar, a modern professionally organised revolution, guided by modern Indian political theory and led by the working class, will shake this Indian state. That ghadar will uproot this legacy of colonialism and build in its place a new state of the workers and peasants. It will establish a new economic and political order, which will negate all vestiges of colonialism and make the working people of India their own masters. It is this that will be the real monument to the martyrs of 1857.

Long live the memory of the martyrs of 1857!

Inquilab Zindabad!