Statement of the Central Committee of Communist Ghadar Party of India, August 10, 2008

Barely a week after the UPA won the trust vote in Parliament, bombs exploded in Bengaluru and Ahmedabad, killing dozens and maiming hundreds of innocent people. This has been followed by large scale propaganda against Islamic terrorists threatening India, and fingers have been pointed at Pakistan and Islamic groups within India. That all this is happening at the same time that the Indo-US deal is being forged, and just before a major set of further privatisation and liberalisation measures are expected to be introduced in Parliament, is more than a chance coincidence. 

Who stands to gain politically from such bomb blasts?

Spreading terror serves multiple purposes for the ruling bourgeois class and the parties through which it rules. Terror serves to divert people’s attention and anger away from the bourgeoisie and its parties, away from the anti-social reform program and imperialist agenda being pursued. It serves to confine people to their homes and prevent them from organizing protests out on the streets. It serves to justify fascist laws to deprive people of their basic rights. It serves to justify further use of force by the state to suppress and crush all resistance to the bourgeois offensive. It serves to line up the oppressed classes and strata behind the imperialist aims of the bourgeoisie, under the cover of waging a “war against terrorism”.

Historical experience on the world scale shows that terrorism is a preferred weapon of the capitalist imperialist states to justify fascist repression and to justify external aggression. Adolf Hitler’s regime organized covert terrorist actions to justify cracking down on communists within Germany and to justify invading other countries.  The Bush regime used the 9/11 terrorist strikes to clamp down on civil rights within the US and to justify its invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Recent experience in our country shows a clear link between the capitalist reform program, the drive for big power status, and the use of state terrorism.  State terrorism was unleashed in Punjab in the mid eighties in the name of fighting terrorism, when the Congress Party was calling for India to gear itself for the 21st century. Indira Gandhi was assassinated and this was the pretext for state organised massacre of Sikhs in 1984.  Rajiv Gandhi, who championed the first initiatives at modernization and globalisation of Indian capital, became Prime Minister by riding a tide of communal frenzy and outright state terror

State terrorism was unleashed all over the country following the destruction of Babri Masjid in December 1992, at a time when the first round of liberalisation and privatisation measures had been introduced by the Narasimha Rao regime.  After nine more years of this reform program, genocide of Muslims was organized in Gujarat in 2002, at a time when the BJP had unveiled the so-called second generation of capitalist reforms.  Today, six and half years later, the Indian bourgeoisie is racing ahead with its imperialist agenda and the next set of liberalisation and privatisation measures. Organized acts of terror have been unleashed once again, in the name of fighting ‘Islamic terrorism and fundamentalism'. This is the slogan of international reaction headed by US imperialism.

The spreading of terror is taking place at a time when the reactionary bourgeoisie of India and the US are strengthening their collaboration.  This includes collaborating in the tactics of terrorism and counter-terrorism, to advance their respective imperialist interests, and pressurise others to submit to these interests.

The anti-social offensive of the bourgeoisie has both economic and political dimensions.  The drive towards globalisation of capital through liberalisation and privatisation is accompanied by fascist measures to curb people's rights.  It is accompanied by the communalisation of politics and criminalisation of dissent.   The offensive includes attacks on basic democratic and human rights, including passage of fascist laws and perpetuation of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act in the so-called disturbed areas.  It includes all forms of state sponsored violence and terror, whether in the name of fighting ‘Islamic terrorism’, ‘naxalite extremism’ or ‘separatist militancy’.

The struggle on the economic front, against the privatisation and liberalisation program, cannot be separated from the struggle on the political front, against all forms of state terrorism including communal violence and fascist laws to suppress basic rights.  The struggle against the imperialist agenda and the Indo-US alliance cannot be separated from the struggle against capitalist reforms and against state terrorism.

It is one struggle that we have to wage, which must be directed against the ruling bourgeois class and its anti-social offensive. It is a struggle against both the Congress Party and the BJP, and against anyone else who comes forward to implement the bourgeois offensive. 

We must unite all those who can be united, against capitalist reforms, against state terrorism and against the imperialist agenda.  This is the key to halt the bourgeois offensive, as a prelude to end the capitalist imperialist system.