Statement of the Communist Ghadar Party of India, July 10, 2009

A massive military operation is underfoot in Lalgarh, West Bengal. The specially trained elite ‘anti–naxalite’ force called COBRA has been deployed along with the Central Reserve Police Force and the West Bengal police, under a unified command, to crush the resistance of the adivasis of the region to their eviction from traditional lands.

Since the beginning of police operations in mid June, thousands of poor adivasis of the area have abandoned their homes and villages. Their past experience with the law and order machinery has led them to hide in the nearby jungles in fear of the impending reign of terror.

What is the source of the problem and who is the trouble maker in Lalgarh?

Lalgarh is a neglected and under-developed region in the tribal belt of West Midnapore district in West Bengal. For decades, the people of this area have lived in abysmal poverty and the state government of West Bengal did nothing about it. In 2004, following the formation of the UPA Government headed by Manmohan Singh at the centre, the West Bengal government went on an overdrive to offer the best concessions to different capitalist groups. It signed a deal with the Jindal group, with huge concessions, to set up a steel plant in the vicinity of Lalgarh. The Left Front government offered 4,500 acres of land at throwaway prices to the Jindals, claiming it was state owned land. In fact, it is forest land that has traditionally belonged to the adivasis. The proximity of the site to Haldia and Paradip ports, as well as the willingness of the government to give the project a Steel SEZ status with all the accompanying tax concessions, ensured that Jindals got the best deal possible in West Bengal, in comparison to other states. What the people of the area received, after years of neglect, was a further assault on their livelihood by depriving them of access to their traditional lands.

The people of the area began to organise protests against the Jindal project. The struggle against similar projects in Singur, Nandigram and other places against the grabbing of land and resources of the people by capitalist companies with full state support, gave a boost to the struggle in Lalgarh. The state responded by unleashing terror against the fighting people. This state terror was stepped up following a bomb blast that missed Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharji and the then Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan when they went to inaugurate the Jindal steel SEZ in November 2008.

Report after report by various fact finding teams have confirmed widespread police torture, molestation and brutality against women and young girls. The West Bengal Government refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the people’s struggle in defence of their hereditary collective rights. It used the event of the bomb blast to let loose a reign of terror and a slander campaign that the adivasis were terrorists and extremists.

Those in authority thought they have the “right” to impose their will on the people with force of arms, while the resistance refused to recognise this authority. In the course of their struggle, the people of Lalgarh formed the Pulishi Santrash Birodhi Janasadharoner Committee (PSBJC) or the People’s Committee against Police Atrocities. It is this committee that has been leading the people’s resistance to police atrocities since the last 6 months. They dug up the roads to prevent police from entering, and through mass action, they effectively removed the state authorities from the villages under their influence.

For the past decade and more, the Indian bourgeoisie has begun to focus on exploiting the rich mineral resources of our country as part of its imperialist drive. These resources are concentrated in the adivasi and forest belt. Massive projects have been signed between the Indian state (both Central and State governments) and various Indian and foreign companies for the exploitation of these resources. In many of these areas, the people are organising themselves to fight for their rights against a capitalist development which promises to deprive them of even the miserable means of livelihood they now possess.

The agenda of the Manmohan Singh government has been clearly expressed through the President’s address to the parliament. His government will facilitate in every way the penetration of Indian and foreign big corporations into the mineral belt of central India.  At the same time, it will show “zero tolerance” towards “insurgency and left wing extremism” which is opposing capitalist development. The centrally coordinated state repression unleashed against the people of Lalgarh will be extended to Orissa, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh and all places where the bourgeoisie finds its plans of plunder blocked by the resistance struggle of the toiling people.

The situation demands that communists steadfastly defend the rights and interests of all sections of the toiling people, uniting them against the bourgeois offensive, and chart the course to replace bourgeois rule with worker-peasant rule in our country.  The Communist Ghadar Party of India calls on all communists and activists of workers, peasants, women and youth to join hands against state terrorism, in defence of the rights of peasants and adivasis over their land, against the corporate land grab and in stern opposition to those who justify state terrorism under any pretext.