Thousands of women, students, peasants and workers, participated in a militant rally outside the DC office in Ferozepur on April 7, 2007. They came from all districts of Punjab, as well as the bordering districts of Haryana. The rally was organized by the Tarksheel Society of Punjab (Rationalist Association). Those participating in the rally included members and supporters of many different parties and organizations, including CPI, CPM Punjab, CPI ML Liberation, the Communist Ghadar Party of India, youth and student organizations, and agricultural workers organizations. A representative of the Communist Ghadar Party of India addressed the meeting. .

The Tarksheel society has been carrying on a long standing campaign to inculcate in the masses of toiling people the scientific spirit, as well as to expose the activities of various godmen who try to fool the people. The immediate cause for the rally was the provocations and attacks organized by the state and the BJP and allied organizations on the activists of the Tarksheel society in Fazilka, Ferozepur and other areas. Not only did the Punjab government do nothing to punish those responsible for these attacks, what is more, Punjab Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal even agreed to the demand raised by the BJP in the Assembly for a ban on the literature of the Tarksheel Society, as well as threatened to issue charge sheets against its leaders!

Speakers at the rally condemned the attack on the right to conscience by the Punjab government. They pointed out that Punjab is the land where Guru Nanak Dev and other Bhaktas and Sufis relentlessly exposed the attempts of the priests and various godmen to fool the peasantry. But today, it is the sign of capitalism in decay that the ruling circles, both in Punjab and all over India, are desperately pushing forth irrationalism. And those who dare to expose this are the target of state attacks.

In his address, the representative of the CGPI said that the party has always defended the right to conscience of the people, whatever their faith or belief. The right to conscience is inviolable and state attacks on persons, on account of their particular faith or belief, can never be justified. Wherever the state has attacked the people under any pretext, including when it attacked the youth of Punjab saying they were separatists and terrorists, and Khalistani supporters, our party defended the people and resolutely condemned the state terror. It is important to recognize that whether the state attacks someone in the name of defending “secularism” and “unity and territorial integrity” of the country, or it attacks the people in some other name, as it is doing now with the Tarksheel society, its aim is to attack the masses of workers and peasants and those fighting for radical transformation. He pointed out that the struggle for the victory of the rationalist outlook, the scientific method, is closely connected with the struggle for liberation of the working and oppressed people from all forms of exploitation and for establishing proletarian power.