Working class must emerge as political leader of Hindostan

Workers in Mumbai and other parts of the country are celebrating the centenary of the historic political strike of 1908. In that year, tens of thousands of workers struck work, demanding the release of the patriot Tilak and five others who were arrested for fighting uncompromisingly against colonial rule. The workers clashed with the colonial armed forces and shed their blood on the streets of Mumbai. Over 200 workers were martyred during that epic struggle.

The significance of the 1908 strike was that the workers were not fighting just for their economic demands. They were fighting for the political aim of freedom from colonialism.  It was an act that showed that the Indian working class was potentially a powerful political force in its own right. It showed that the working class has the capacity to bring the capitalist profit making machinery to a grinding halt.

A century has passed since that historic political strike. Colonialism has ended but not the rule of the capitalist class and the exploitation of the workers and peasants. At one pole the number of Indian millionaires and billionaires is growing. At the other pole over 70% of the population has less than 20 rupees to spend daily. 

One of the main reasons for this state of affairs is that the working class has been sidelined from the political arena.  It is not acting as an independent political force. It is divided along rival party lines and reduced to being vote banks for different parliamentary parties that serve bourgeois rule. 

The times are calling on the working class to make a break with this path of tailing bourgeois politics and parliamentary parties. The working class must set its own political aim, unite firmly around this aim and rally the peasants and all sections of exploited and oppressed masses around it. 

The aim of the working class is to eliminate capitalism, which is the root cause of growing exploitation, hunger and poverty, illiteracy and ill health. It is to establish socialism, a system where the available human and material resources are deployed to constantly raise the standard of living of all sections of our people. This requires a radical change in the direction of the economy. It requires an immediate halt and reversal of the liberalisation and privatisation program of the bourgeoisie.

It is high time that the agenda of the working class becomes the agenda for the country. For this, the working class, all its different organizations, political parties and trade unions, must focus single-mindedly on forging a revolutionary united front of workers, peasants and all the oppressed. Such a united front can and must be forged on the basis of resolute and uncompromising opposition to the capitalist reforms and imperialist drive of the bourgeoisie. 

This is the way that the working class can and will emerge as the political leader of Hindostan. This is the necessary condition for solving the grave problems facing the toiling masses in our country.