India
Indian Farmers Stand Resolute Against Injustice
– J. Singh –
Farmers on march from
Shambhu border to Delhi, December 6, 2024
Security forces and police attacked a group of 101 Indian farmers with tear gas shells on December 14 when they tried to cross the barricades erected on the Punjab and Haryana borders as they made their way on foot to the capital Delhi to present their demands. The battle continued all day. They had been similarly blocked December 6 and 8. Farmers state that they will not give up their fight for their rights.
Social organizations in Haryana in a unanimous decision declared their support for the farmers' demands, which include the Minimum Support Price. They said that they stand with the farmers who have announced they are marching to Delhi to present their demands and to show the whole world that the government of India has repeatedly betrayed them. The leaders of various community organizations pointed out that the government wants to steal the farmers' lands and turn these over to the corporations. It is a life and death struggle for the villages and farmers of India.
Farmers at a Mahapanchayat (mass meeting) in Greater Noida condemned the decision to hand over Uttar Pradesh's electricity system to private owners. The government of Uttar Pradesh is planning to give its power companies to the private sector using public-private partnerships. At a meeting in Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh, it was pointed out that farmers have consistently agitated through the Karamukhedi Electricity Movement against the policies of the government on electricity issues. The first attempt to privatize electricity, in 2001, failed. In 2009, the then state government gave the Kanpur and Agra electricity system to Torrent Power, but in 2015 the subsequent state government had to cancel the agreement due to the people's opposition. In 2013, the electricity system of Lucknow, Varanasi, Gorakhpur, Moradabad and Meerut city was handed over to private hands but later had to be withdrawn due to protest.
December 6 marked the 32nd anniversary of the destruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. Broad state-organized and sanctioned communal violence by the Indian ruling elite and their state headed by the Congress government in Delhi accompanied the destruction, egged on by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Thousands of people were killed. Analysts at the time pointed out that it was a distraction and diversion organized by the rulers in order to impose their neo-liberal offensive on the people of India through policies of liberalization, privatization and globalization. Imposing this diversion, anarchy and violence, the governments of Narasimha Rao, Chidambaram and Manmohan Singh carried out their neo-liberal offensive against the people and the natural environment as well.
Today, such activities, which have never stopped, are again being organized using various organs of the state to attack the unity of the people and the unity of the farmers, workers and other toilers, who are fighting for the affirmation of their rights and the rights of all. More than 30 years of neo-liberal offensive have led to devastation, destruction and immiseration of the people while enriching the heads of huge corporations such as Adani and Ambani. The ruling elite is using the courts and other agencies to carry out its anti-people agenda.
December 3 marked the 40th anniversary of the Bhopal tragedy, also known as India's Chernobyl, a corporate crime committed when Union Carbide ran the plant in Bhopal. Thousands of people died during the night as they slept due to the gas leak, while many others still face health issues and children continue to be born with birth defects. The Central Government of India at the time and governments to this day continue to white-wash that crime and to protect corporate criminals such as Dow Chemical, which bought Union Carbide.
Rally on 40th anniversary
of Bhopal tragedy.
The Indian ruling elite is so much in denial about basic facts that they refuse to take any serious action against the pollution created by their policies in service of the corporations. According to reports, more than 2 million people die every year due to pollution but the corporate criminals and functionaries of the state refuse to do anything.
December 1, was the 138th birth anniversary of the great anti-colonial fighter Raja Mahendra Pratap. On December 1, 1915 he established the first Provisional Government of India at Kabul in Afghanistan as a government-in-exile of Free Hindustan, with himself as President, Maulana Barkatullah as Prime Minister, and Maulana Ubaidullah Sindhi as Home Minister. This government declared jihad on the British.
Raja Mahendra Pratap was one of the leaders of the Ghadar Party which fought for Indian freedom. He formed the original Indian National Army (Azad Hind Fauj) in 1915 in Kabul which was supported by many nations including Japan. In 1911 he had taken part in the Balkan War along with his fellow students at the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College. He was nominated for a Nobel Prize in 1932. He formed the Executive Board of India in Japan in 1940 during the Second World War.
This article was published in
Volume 54
Number 12 - December 2024
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2024/Articles/M5401215.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca