The Editor,

Sir,

I am happy to quote from the article on '1857 Ghadar jaari hai...abhiyan' posted on the Lok Raj Sangathan web-site, which reads, "...This committee met in Lucknow and asked Comrades from the CGPI to prepare and organise for the next meeting in Delhi to further plan the campaign'' and would like to extend my congratulations to the CGPI for providing hospitality to the Organizing Committee of the abhiyan held on February 3-4, 2007 in Delhi. I am also delighted to know that the LRS web-site's offer to disseminate the information about the initiative has been accepted by the Organizing Committee.
Indeed, as the country goes into the 150th anniversary of the great uprising of 1857, it is more a need rather than a mere opportunity to reflect on what took place then, and what is taking place now. The then emergent capitalist class has by now become a mature and deeply entrenched one, whose dictat has become binding on the peoples of the country. This capitalist class has enriched itself in the post 1947 era. It has grown at an alarming pace to emerge as a class that envisages India as a big power, much in the same league as Great Britain and France, with a manifest destiny to call the shots in its sphere of influence. It is following in the footsteps of the bourgeoisie in western capitalist countries, which crushed underfoot the aspiration of its own peoples and led the countries into vast adventures of colonial conquest, loot and plunder and horrific wars. India is entering an era where for much of its toiling peoples there is nothing except indebtedness, starvation and suicide, unless one is a mega-agriculturist, the worst kind of wage slavery in the so-called Special Economic Zones, squalor and filth, unless one is a bourgeois oneself. It is also a time of total conciliation to the line of social-democracy in significant sections of the communist camp, which states that the people of India deserve nothing better than the 'democracy' of the Westminster model, viz., party-based representative democracy. It is a time when millions of Indian people are being asked to totally surrender to the vision of India as an economic and military power in which they shall live in penury while the country will have a small section of super-rich elites and be a military power sharing the high table of imperialism with the USA, UK, France, Russia and China.The engagement with the issues thrown up by the great Ghadar of 1857 will be one which will assist in throwing open the doors to a different vision of India and its future for its peoples. This Ghadar threw up the slogan of the people of India choosing their own destiny, as opposed then to the British Crown deciding what its destiny should be. Today the question presents itself as: what is the destiny of India and who shall choose it? Will it be the agents of the capitalist class from their parliamentary talk shops and party offices, or will it be the toiling masses of India? The working class must engage itself with this question as the head of this camp, as opposed to the camp of the bourgeoisie and its agents. I am hopeful that CGPI will provide valuable leadership to the working class in this regard.sincerely,