Condemn India's attempts to silence critical voices on Kashmir

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Published on Monday, 08 November 2010 17:42

India Bans US Professor from Kashmir, threatens Indian writer with sedition charges

JAMMU KASHMIR COALITION OF CIVIL SOCIETY

 

November 2, 2010

On November 1, 2010, shortly after 5.10 am, Professor Richard Shapiro was denied entry by the Immigration Authorities in New Delhi. Richard Shapiro is the Chair and Associate Professor of the Department of Anthropology at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco. He is also the life partner/husband of Angana Chatterji, who is the Co-convener of the International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Indian-administered Kashmir (IPTK) and also Professor of Anthropology at CIIS.

Richard Shapiro, a US Citizen, has been accompanying Angana Chatterji, a citizen of India and a permanent resident of the US, to India since 1997, and has travelled here approximately thirty times. His area of work is not India or Kashmir, but focuses primarily on issues of race, class, gender, and alliance building in the United States, and discourses on power and subjectivity. He is not someone who has made India a “career,” but invested in thinking and learning through the various struggles that Angana has been a part of across India.

Since July 2006, Richard regularly travelled to Kashmir, and interacted with various human rights defenders, scholars, youth, to bear witness and learn from their experiences. He has been conscientious in not violating the conditions of his tourist visa. He has not participated in formal conferences, and has not conducted any applied research in Kashmir or in India. He also helped form a Jewish-Muslim Friendship Circle. Richard Shapiro had written an op-ed in 2009 and another in September 2010. These were analytical pieces based on articles and newspaper reports, and not on primary research that had been conducted by him. Any scholar can do that. This is a matter of academic freedom, and beyond the control of states and their desire to regulate thinking on the injustices they perpetrate.

This Monday, Richard Shapiro had travelled a long way from San Francisco to be with Angana Chatterji, who was traveling to Kashmir for work, to think and learn. When he first presented his passport to the Immigration Authorities, he was stamped an entry permit. Then, they started processing Angana Chatterji’s passport. She has been stopped regularly since the inception of IPTK in April 2008. As they paused over her passport, the Immigration Officer again asked Richard Shapiro for his passport. Then, he was informed that he may not enter India, and that the ban was indefinite. The Immigration Authorities insisted that Richard return immediately. They stamped “cancelled” on the entry stamp they had provided minutes ago. They did not stamp “cancel” on his visa. However, Professor Shapiro was not deported. His visa was not cancelled. The Immigration Authorities refused to pay for his return airfare. He was made to leave at 11.50 am that same morning. The Immigration Authorities refused to give any reason, while stating that Professor Shapiro had not been charged with anything.

While no charges were framed against Professor Shapiro, the persons at the airport were categorical in stating that he is not to return to India, impinging on his academic freedom, freedom of movement, and rights to travel with his legal partner, and visit his family in Kolkata.

The Government of India has initiated various “peace” processes and confidence building measures without the consent of the Kashmiri people. With friends like Richard Shapiro, we are able to think and learn together. This is what is urgently required to build an atmosphere in which Kashmiris are not isolated from new ideas, other worlds, from the friendship and hospitality offered by those who seek out a place that has been forsaken by so many. The ban on Professor Shapiro days before the visit of the US President speaks volumes to the arrogance of the Indian State. It is ironic too because the Government of India desires that the US Government grant more visas to Indians, even as it just evicted a US Citizen without warning or due cause.

The ban on Richard Shapiro also further seeks to intimidate and target Angana Chatterji and the work of IPTK with Parvez Imroz, Gautam Navlakha, Zahir-Ud-Din, Mihir Desai, and Khurram Parvez. JKCCS condemns this ban.

The ban on Richard Shapiro is also a ban on Kashmiris, condemning them to isolation.

The Indian state has targeted those that have been outspoken on injustices and military governance in Kashmir. Since 2008, Parvez Imroz and his family have been attacked in their home. Angana Chatterji and Zahir-Ud-Din have been charged under Section 505 of the Ranbir Penal Code, with writing to incite against the Indian State. Last week, Arundhati Roy has been threatened with charges of sedition. JKCCS condemns the attack on the home of Arundhati Roy in New Delhi, and the continued targeting of her stand on Kashmir, and the dangerous role being played by the mainstream Indian media in inciting violence against her.

These actions speak to the intent of the Indian State as it continues it impunity rule in Kashmir, with deliberate actions to isolate Kashmiris from the world and the world from Kashmiris. In the past, several academics and journalists have been banned from entering India, and numerous Kashmiri scholars, journalists, and activists have also been banned from leaving Kashmir to travel abroad.

The Russian Revolution: A Brief Guide

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Published on Sunday, 07 November 2010 03:49

THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

Soma Marik and Kunal Chattopadhyay

[Note. This was prepared as a study material for student radicals and young activists coming into the political movement. The material was prepared by looking at a number of books, articles and internet resources. But as it was not intended for publication, citations had not been provided, as it was our experience that for people who are not specialists, such large scale footnoting has a negative impact. In publishing this note on the occasion of the 93rd anniversary of the Russian Revolution in the Radical Socialist website, we apologise to all who may feel their works have been used without proper acknowledtgements, and if there are specific complaints we offer to immediately provide the due acknowledgements. We have, however, mentioned the principal books and articles within the text itself. We also acknowledge that this is a very sketchy outline, and wuld suggest a reading of Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution as the classic narrative, as well as books like Rabinowitch's The Bolsheviks Come to Power, for those who want more in depoth studies. For Lenin and the party, we recommend Paul LeBlanc, Lenin and the Revolutionary Party. We would also suggest Soma Marik, Reinterrogating the Classical Marxist Discourses of Revolutionary Democracy.]
At the beginning of the 20th century Russia was a backward country – one of the developing countries of that age. In the mid-19th century, the huge, but untrained Russian army had been roundly defeated by Anglo-French forces at the Crimean War(1853-56). This had awakened a sense of peril, and under the reforming impulses of Tsar Alexander II, limited modernization had occurred. This involved the following steps:
(a)    Most crucial was the emancipation of the serfs. Till that time Russia continued to be a feudal autocratic state. Most peasants were serfs. Conscripted serfs formed the bulk of the army. Industrialization was practically unknown. Yet a modern army needed both an industry to provide equipment, and relatively better educated soldiers. This was the basic consideration that led to the emancipation of the serfs. In addition, Alexander was afraid of a peasant revolution, and told his nobles in a meeting: “It is better to abolish it [serfdom] from above before it abolishes itself from below.” But since it was a feudal state abolishing serfdom, it had limited reform motives. Personal freedom was granted free. But land, as demanded by the peasants was not given free. Instead, they had to accept a “redemption payment”. The state paid this amount to nobles in a lump sum, and the peasants were bound to repay the amount in many yearly installments to the state. Moreover, the repayment was imposed, not on individual peasants, but on communities (mir) as a whole. As a result, the peasants became tied to them. [For a detailed analysis see Rural Russia Under the Old Regime, by G. T. Robinson].  At the same time, the very promise of reform, and the coming of liberal and radical ideals from abroad, generated an expectation of greater reforms. Theda Skocpol (States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China, Cambridge University Press (New York), 1979) argued that attempts by the state to modernize had only a partial success, and was substantially responsible for a revolution that would drive on to modernity. Even when peasants blessed the tsar for his act, they blamed the “evil counselors” of the tsar, who had tricked the peasants out of their land. Moreover, the entire land did not go to the peasants. Rather, a considerable part remained with the landlords. Among peasants, this gave rise to hopes for a later chernyi peredel [black or total repartition].
(b)    The abolition of feudalism meant an inevitable administrative reform, for hitherto peasants had been governed by their lords, while emancipation meant the need for courts, and different law enforcement agencies, and so on. So local self government bodies or zemstvos were set up. Some educational efforts were undertaken, both to produce a layer of workers who would have some skills, and for as very thin layer of middle class technical and other elements. But there was no democratization of the state. The state sponsored industrialization effort, begun under Alexander, but intensified during the reign of his son Alexander III by Count Sergius Witte, saw the growth of a few very modern, highly industrialized centres, like St Petersburg, Moscow, Ivanovo-Voznesensk, Baku, etc. But the bulk of the country remained rural, mired in backwardness, oppressed by heavy taxation combined with the burden of redemption payment, ruled by local self-government bodies in which nobles remained the dominant class. Nonetheless, the educational reforms, the creation of zemstvos and city municipalities, created some scope for liberal oppositions to develop.
However, fundamentally Russia remained an autocratic state. There were no constitutional liberties. Under Alexander III, the slogan of One Church, One Nation and One Tsar meant the imposition of absolutist rule, the dogma of the Greek Orthodox Church, and the imposition of the Great Russian language and culture over all the national minorities. Jews were very badly treated, and anti-Semitism reached a level of pogroms and murders not surpassed till the Nazis. Non Russians were not allowed education in their own languages.
To keep up economically and militarily with the other major world powers, the Tsarist regime encouraged the development of industry in the later 19th century. One new class that resulted from the development of industry was the capitalists, or big-business men. The capitalists were little more than junior partners in the tsarist system. State aided industrialisation meant that a sizeable part of the capitalist class was dependent on the state for investments, orders, and so on. The development of industry created another major, and much larger, social class: the wage-earning working class. Some workers viewed the private ownership of the factories and the profit making of the capitalists as inherently unfair and exploitive. The working class made up slightly more than 10% of the population in 1917. However, these workers lived in a few large cities, many knew how to read and write, and they were receptive to a growing variety of new social and cultural influences. Moreover, their labour was essential in producing the goods and services of Russia’s new factories and service industries. For all these reasons, the working class was a major force for social change. However, both the tsarist regime and the capitalists often repressed their efforts for reforms. This repression, combined with poor working and living conditions, led many workers to become highly political and to support revolutionary organizations.
A significant number of men and women from the intermediate layers—as well as small numbers from the upper classes—became critical-minded intellectuals who were drawn in a revolutionary direction. Since Russia was a peasant majority country, inevitably, the first ideas about emancipation focused on the peasantry. They hoped to build a society free of exploitation basing themselves on the peasant Mir. When their propagandas failed, they turned to more direct action. This resulted in a split in their revolutionary organization, between the groups Narodnaya Volya (People’s Will) and Chernyi Peredel. The former was led by Zhelyabov, Perovskaya, Kibalchich, Figner and others, and they turned to revolutionary terrorism, ultimately killing Tsar Alexander II. The other group was led by G. V. Plekhanov, Vera Zasulich and Pavel Axelrod, and ultimately turned to Marxism, forming, in exile, the first Russian Marxist political group. The descendants of the peasant socialism believers ultimately united in 1901 to form a more modern political party, the Socialist Revolutionary Party [SR], though even this party had a terrorist wing.

THE REVOLUTION OF 1905
The background to the revolutions of 1917 starts properly with the revolution of 1905, known as the Dress Rehearsal of the revolution of 1917. All the issues of 1917 first came out in 1905, and all the major theoretical and political arguments were made. In the years before the revolution of 1905, the political consciousness of the working class and the peasantry was growing. This was due to two factors. On one hand, the very passage of time and the consolidation of the new society, a semi-feudal autocracy along with a limited growth of capitalism, brought to Russia the worst ill-effects of capitalism without getting rid of the exploitations of feudalism. Factory life in Russia was far worse than factory life in Western Europe or Germany. Witte’s policy of industrialization involved imposing a heavy tax on the peasantry in order to get the necessary finance. As a result, especially after the famine of 1891, there was a growth of peasant radicalization.
On the other hand, there emerged several political currents, which also played a role in developing the political consciousness of the mass of people. In 1898, the different Marxist groups, who had already been working to form trade unions, workers’ study circles, etc, united to form the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party [RSDLP]. By 1903, when their second Congress was held, rival strategies were being debated, and the Iskra group, led by Lenin, Plekhanov and Martov, was advocating a sharply political orientation instead of Economism. At the congress, after the early victories of the Iskra group, it split between the Majority (Bolsheviki) and the Minority (Mensheviki). The Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, eventually developed a tighter revolutionary organization, with the development of a core group of professional revolutionaries, that is people who were full time party workers, and advocated distrust to the liberals, while the Mensheviks were in favour of a loose organisation where revolutionary activists and supporters would all find place, and were distrustful towards the peasantry. Party building showed that the core group of professional revolutionaries helped the Bolsheviks to recruit younger, militant workers. However, given the early age of marriage for women and their domestic burden in a highly patriarchal society, it also meant that working class women were not often recruited. The few women who became prominent in the Bolshevik current were mostly women of middle class or upper class background in this early phase. Indeed, only two working class women eventually became leaders -- Alexandra Artiukhina and Klavdiia Nikolaeva. Between 1901 and 1910, the number of women employed in the workforce went up by 18% at a time when male employment rose by only 1.3%. The first major attempts to recruit women in a big way was made during the revolution of 1905, when Alexandra Kollontai tried to mobilise women in the party. However, the resistance she faced, from both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, slowed down any progress. It would only be well after 1905, during the period from 1910 to 1914, when there was a revival of working class struggles and a need to mobilize the women workers, that Bolsheviks launched a journal Rabotnitsa, specifically for women workers.
Meanwhile, the SRs tried to organize the peasants, and advocated agrarian revolution. Their leadership included Victor Chernov, Natanson, Catherine Breshko-Breshkovskaya, and others.
A third group that developed was the liberal current. It was initiated by intellectuals like Pyotr Struve and Pavel Miliukov. But it also had the support of two important social groups. On one hand there were the zemstvo intelligentsia, that is, non-noble but well to do, educated people in the zemstvos and other places, who were there as professionals,  who stood in favour of a responsible ministry, some kind of rule of law instead of autocracy, freedom of the press at least for the upper classes, and so on. A second group were the emerging capitalists. By early twentieth century, sections of the capitalist class had come to desire political and economic reforms. Though their own goals were much more modest, they found it useful to support the radicals, as radical pressure would, they hoped, force Tsarism to give some reforms, or even a constitution.  Since the liberals were also repressed harshly by the autocracy, at times there could be alliances between the liberals and the socialists. Moreover, zemstvo liberals had certain rights, and could organize mild, but open campaigns.
A third factor that precipitated the revolution of 1905 was the Russo-Japanese war. Popular unrest had been growing since 1901, and strikes, peasant uprisings, as well as middle class discontent was increasing according to police reports. The Tsar’s advisers thought that a small war would rally public support behind the state. But the Russian defeat at the hands of the Japanese had the opposite effect. Following the fall of Port Arthur, discontent came out into the open. A trade union, formed by a priest in police pay, named Father Gapon, tried to organize a Sunday demonstration on 9 January 1905 to the Tsar. Though it was meant as a purely peaceful gesture, where the Tsar was being humbly petitioned, the army, under orders from General Trepov, shot down hundreds of people. This day, known as Bloody Sunday, initiated the revolution of 1905.
However, as the revolution unfolded, different parties and classes started reacting in different ways. The Liberals were not prepared to fight resolutely for democracy. The more moderate wing of the liberals accepted a decree of the Tsar, issued on 18 October 1905, after a heroic general strike of workers that had paralysed the two capitals of St Petersburg and Moscow. The decree promised certain civil liberties, and an elected Duma, but kept intact the powers of the autocracy to hit back. A full-fledged constitution was not promised. The moderates who accepted this came to be called the Octobrists. Slightly more radical were the Constitutional Democrats[Kadets]. However, even this major liberal party did neither campaign for universal suffrage or for abolition of semi feudalism with any compensation.
The general strike of October was not called by the parties. The strike grew out of an originally economic strike, and was coordinated by elected delegates from the factories. They set up a council of Workers’ Representatives. The Russian for Council was Soviet, and this is how the concept of soviets was born. The leading spirit in the St. Petersburg Soviet was Trotsky, who advocated a line of working class leadership and peasant support, based on the extension of such councils throughout Russia. He called this idea the permanent revolution, to culminate in the dictatorship of the proletariat and the struggle for socialism.  Lenin disagreed, and advocated a short-period of worker-peasant ascendancy when the democratic revolution would be carried out. The Mensheviks argued that since this was a bourgeois-democratic revolution, leadership would remain with the bourgeoisie, and opposed any idea of working class leadership in the revolution. As a result, the rise of Soviets and working class militancy was minimised by them. One dimension of the rise of soviets was the inflow of women in the Soviets, especially in a textile town like Ivanovo-Vozhnesensk, but also in St. Petersburg.
Through the October Manifesto, the Tsar sought an alliance with the liberals. This was further strengthened after the waning of the revolution. With liberal landlord and bourgeois support assured, during 1906-7, the Tsar and his ministers, especially Pyotr Stolypin, took steps to smash the revolution. By 1907, the original promises of the October Manifesto were much curtailed. Civil rights were very restricted. Trade unions were openly put under police surveillance. Electoral laws were made in such a manner that rightwing parties would always get a majority, with seats being apportioned according to class etc. The resulting representative assemblies, called Stolypin Dumas (the 3rd and the 4th Duma) saw an alliance of Tsarist, anti-Semitic, anti-worker parties like the Black Hundreds, along with the Kadets, Progressists and the Liberals. Peasant deputies formed a left leaning party called the Trudoviks, (infiltrated by the SRs), and the RSDLP had a small number of deputies. Stolypin attempted, through the right-wing alliance, to develop a kind of agrarian capitalism. By the time of his death, only partial success was achieved. He failed to break the peasant attachment to the Mir and to develop a class of well off peasant proprietor, who would be the large, lowest rung of the capitalist class.
The most important works on 1905 include Sidney Harcave, First Blood, S.M. Schwarz, The Russian Revolution of 1905, and L. Trotsky, 1905. Schwarz tried to put forward a thesis that the Mensheviks were the real leaders of the revolution of 1905. Trotsky developed the thesis of working class self-emancipation and autonomous struggle. Harcave’s book provides a detailed history, including the struggle of peasants and the nationalities.
WORLD WAR I
The coming of World War I meant a new crisis for Russian society-- a disaster for the tsarist regime as well. Russian industry lacked the capacity to arm, equip, and supply the 15 million men who were sent into the war. And the casualties were greater than in any previous war. Factories were few and insufficiently productive, and the railroad network was inadequate. Repeated mobilizations, moreover, disrupted industrial and agricultural production and the transportation system became disorganized. Discontent became rife, and the morale of the army suffered, finally to be undermined by a succession of military defeats. When the Duma protested against the inefficient conduct of the war and the arbitrary policies of the imperial government, the tsar and his ministers simply brushed it aside. As the war dragged on, Russia experienced increasing inflation, food shortages, bread lines, and general misery and by 1917 famine threatened the larger cities. The growing breakdown of supply, made worse by the almost complete isolation of Russia from its pre-war markets, was felt especially in the major cities, which were flooded with refugees from the front. Despite an outward calm, many Duma leaders felt that Russia would soon be confronted with a new revolutionary crisis. By 1915 the liberal parties had formed a progressive bloc that gained a majority in the Duma. It demanded the removal of Rasputin, the peasant monk from the court and a constitutional form of government. Rasputin’s assassination by a group of aristocrats, led by Prince Feliks Yusupov, failed to remove this faction from the court. Talk of a palace revolution in order to avert a greater impending upheaval became widespread, especially among the upper classes.
Meanwhile, among the masses, important changes had taken place. First, the working class had recovered, between 1910 and 1912, from the defeat of 1907. By 1913-14, political strikes had become common again. The war halted this process. Many militant workers were conscripted into the army. Many women were brought into the industrial labour force, which in the capital St. Petersburg (renamed Petrograd in a patriotic fervour during the war) had about 43% women. The number of women headed households increased as men were taken into the army. The new working class was less politicised, but it also had less memories of past defeats. Thus two distinct layers developed – the older, more mature workers, who often had party links from 1905-6, when all the socialists had become mass parties, and the younger workers.
War enabled the bourgeoisie to profit enormously. With capitalist development, liberal nobles, capitalists, and a significant part of the intelligentsia formed a wide bloc. Leopold Haimson, in his famous essay, ‘The Problem of Social Stability in Urban Russia’, discerns a threefold fragmentation. At the top were the Tsar and his coterie – the autocracy and the extreme reactionaries. Then came the bloc of liberal nobles, bourgeoisie and intelligentsia. Finally there were the workers, and during the war also the soldiers, often peasants in uniforms.
THE FEBRUARY REVOLUTION
In February 1917 socialists organized mass protest rallies in Petrograd. These protests took place on February 23, International Women’s Day, rallying women workers of the cotton textile industry to demand bread, peace, and liberty. But, as a contemporary police report stated, the women workers “got out of hand.” They attracted the support of large numbers of male workers as well. The police proved unable to contain the growing and increasingly volatile protests. Soon 385,000 workers were on strike, and many engaged in confrontations with the police in the streets. Troops were brought in, but they proved unable to quell the disturbances that engulfed the city over the next five days. In fact, the bulk of the soldiers, who were largely peasants in uniform, joined the insurgency. Consequently, a demand for land reform—to break up the large estates of the nobles and distribute the land among landless peasants—also became a major revolutionary demand. The workers and soldiers organized a growing network of soviets to coordinate their efforts and to establish control throughout the city.
On February 28 the last of the troops loyal to the tsar surrendered, revolutionary soldiers arrested the tsar’s ministers, and the tsar abdicated. At this point the Duma moderates, hoping to thwart the coming to power of what one of them called “the scoundrels in the factories,” established a government that became known as the Provisional Government[PG]. The Prime Minister, Prince Georgy Y. Lvov, was a wealthy landowner and a member of the Kadets, who favoured an immediate constitutional monarchy and ultimately a republic. The outstanding personality in the PG until early May was Pavel N. Milyukov, minister of foreign affairs and the strongest leader of the Kadets since its founding in 1905. He played the principal role in formulating policies. The most prominent of the moderate socialists was Aleksandr F. Kerensky, the minister of justice, who was associated with the SRs and had been the leader of the Trudovik faction in the Duma. At this time the now powerful soviets of the working-class districts were under the control of Mensheviks and SRs, and they mobilized popular support for the new coalition regime.
The strike wave had turned into a general strike almost spontaneously. The grassroots leadership had been provided by militant workers belonging to the Bolshevik party and to other radical left groups that would merge with the Bolsheviks during 1917. The first call for a general strike had been given by the Mezhraiontsi or Inter-Borough Organization of Social Democrats, a mainly St. Petersburg/Petrograd based group. Earlier, official Soviet claim had been that the Bolsheviks had called for a general strike. But the Russian historian Eduard Burdzhalov, after 1956, searched the archives and showed that the Mezhraiontsi had called for the strike. He was opposed by the historian I. I. Mints (articles published in Voprossi Istorii), but subsequent research has borne him out. But the Bolshevik and other radical workers lacked at that point a central leadership. Many of their leaders were in emigration. Others had been arrested and were in exile. Bolshevik Vyborg leader Kayurov later recollected in his memoirs that he had spent the night of 22nd February arguing with women that they should not call for a general strike, which may result in repression. Yet the next day the women did go ahead with the strike and called the men out on strike as well. Alexander Shlyapnikov, the Bolshevik leader, too was hesitant to issue a call for general strike, or for any insurrection, for they lacked sufficient organization as well as weapons. Yet the very fact that workers turned to Bolsheviks, or to smaller radical groups like the Inter-Borough Organization, is indicative of their mood.
The workers and soldiers were clear that they did neither trust the bourgeoisie, nor the autocracy or its agents. The collapse of the tsarist regime thus left in its wake two centres of political authority: (1) the traditional politicians of the PG, who had little control over the people, and (2) the democratically elected soviets, which exercised more political power owing to support from the great majority of workers and soldiers. This system of dual power proved to be unstable. The instability grew as the moderate politicians proved increasingly unable to meet the rising expectations of the labouring masses.
The Bolshevik party, though much more revolutionary, and though rank and file Bolsheviks had played a prominent role in the five days of the February Revolution, was unable to formulate an adequate strategy. The most important leaders who came back from exile, Lev Kamenev and Joseph Stalin, were basing their strategy on a line created during the earlier revolution of 1905. According to both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, the Russian Revolution was a bourgeois democratic revolution. It would end with the coming to power of a radical bourgeoisie who would carry out capitalist development and thereby make possible a socialist revolution some time in the future. Only one Marxist, Lev Trotsky, had put forward the idea that because of the fact that the bourgeoisie was a junior partner of tsarism, it would not fight for a revolution (Results and Prospects). So even the bourgeois democratic revolution, that is, introduction of political and civil liberty, and the carrying out of a radical agrarian revolution, would need the leadership of the working class. Lenin had agreed only partly. He believed in 1905 that workers must play a leading role, but only temporarily, till the democratic revolution was achieved. (Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution) Trotsky had argued that even the minimum goals of the socialists could not be achieved that way, because the capitalists would oppose even such things as setting up an eight hour working day. So, he argued, the workers, supported by the peasants, must take over power, and the result would be a combined revolution – where the bourgeois democratic and the socialist tasks would come together. In 1917, concluding from that old position of Lenin that the working class should not try to take power, Stalin and Kamenev argued that the task of the Soviets was to support the PG, but at the same time keep pressure on it.
In Petrograd the network of soviets quickly reorganized itself as a single soviet, a representative body of deputies elected by the workers and soldiers of the city. The Petrograd soviet immediately appointed a commission to cope with the problem of ensuring a food supply for the capital, placed detachments of revolutionary soldiers in the government offices, and ordered the release of thousands of political prisoners. On February 28 the soviet ordered the arrest of the Tsarist ministers and began publishing an official organ, Izvestia (Russian for 'the news'). On March 1 it issued its famous Order No. 1. By the terms of this order, the soldiers of the army and the sailors of the fleet were to submit to the authority of the soviet and its committees in all political matters. They were to obey only those orders that did not conflict with the directives of the soviet, and they were to elect committees that would exercise exclusive control over all weapons. Also, they were to observe strict military discipline on duty. Disputes between soldiers' committees and officers were to be referred to the soviet for disposition; off-duty soldiers and sailors were to enjoy full civil and political rights; and saluting of officers was abolished. However, it is because the socialist leaders were reluctant to keep power in their own hands, and, guided by a dogmatic idea that since it was a bourgeois revolution the bourgeoisie must lead, refused to take any step beyond what the bourgeoisie would accept, that the Provisional Government received even the shortest of stability. Even Marc Ferro, the social historian critical of the Bolsheviks, admits that a dual power was set up because of this limitation of the intelligentsia socialists. However, western historians have, sometimes, tried to draw a contrasting picture of a perfectly spontaneous February and a conspiratorial October Revolution, (e.g., Richard Pipes – The Russian Revolutions, or J.L.H. Keep, The Russian Revolution—A Study in Mass Mobilizations)
THE DUAL POWER SYSTEM
This system continued throughout the period from February to October. The PG consisted of the previous bourgeois-landlord opposition to the policies of the Tsar. The Prime Minister was assisted by the War Minister, Guchkov, the Octobrist and by the Foreign Affairs Minister, Miliukov, the Cadet. The Mensheviks and SRs who dominated the Soviet took the position that since this was a bourgeois democratic revolution, the bourgeoisie should form the government. But the mass of workers and soldiers, the majority of the latter being peasants in uniform, trusted only the soviets and the socialist parties leading the soviets. So it was only because the socialist parties, in the Soviets, gave support to the PG that it survived. Initially Shlyapnikov had taken the position that the PG should not be trusted. But when Stalin and Kamenev returned from exile, they advocated a division of labour, between the PG consolidating the gains of the revolution and the soviets acting as working class leaders. In effect, this meant trusting that the bourgeoisie would consolidate the revolution.
The most surprising evolution was in the case of the SRs. They had in the past advocated armed revolution and a direct transition to socialism. Their leader Victor Chernov had developed a programme of agrarian revolution. Yet, they came under the sway of Mensheviks, especially of rightwing Mensheviks like Tseretelli, rather than left wing Mensheviks like Sukhanov or Martov. As a result, using their influence over peasants, they called for trust in the PG. It was only because of this support extended by the two socialist parties that were initially most widely known among workers and soldiers (especially as they had many more intellectuals than had the Bolsheviks) that the soviets accepted the PG. But at each step, they also put their own influence. Thus, Order No.1, dictated by a soldier to the Socialist Skobelev, had to be accepted by the army. When some generals wrote a little later to Guchkov, protesting that it took away their powers, he told them that without soviet support he could not modify the order. Again, the Soviet had to issue a statement saying that it stood for immediate and just peace. By contrast, Miliukov, had secretly assured the Allied Powers that Russia would continue to honour all international treaties and take part in the war. When this became known, there was such uproar that Miliukov had to resign. Thus, the recognition of the PG by the Soviet did not end dual power but institutionalized it.
THE FEBRUARY REVOLUTION AND THE MAJOR PROBLEMS BEQUEATHED BY TSARISM:
a)    The PG, at the behest of Miliukov, carried out secret dealings with the Allied forces. They promised to conform to the treaties signed by the Tsarist government. Though Miliukov was forced to resign, leaders of the PG never gave up this aspiration, for the secret treaties corresponded to long held goals of the Russian state and the ruling class, including an outlet to through the Black Sea. Hence the popular demand for peace remained a dream.
b)    War had devastated Russian industry. Some sectors were producing well because of military demands. But other sectors were hit hard. Several of Russia’s important areas were under German control. Many industries were not making good profit and workers were facing serious hardship, including also the sharp price rise due to food shortage. The working class demand for pay rise and an 8 hour working day could not be easily met. But the Soviet leaders told the workers to maintain an industrial peace and not to go on strike. Thus, in the name of giving opportunity to the revolutionary government, for two months there was a total freeze on strikes, despite the rising economic crisis. This was ultimately broken in the capital by the women employed in laundries. Several thousands of them struck work demanding shorter hours and higher wages, under the leadership of women Bolsheviks. Another development where the Provisional Government was found to be silent was over reforms of the factory regime. The factory regime in Tsarist Russia was terrible. Foremen had extremely arbitrary powers over the workers. Wage deductions were imposed for trifling reasons. Women workers were regularly subjected to sexual harassment. Workers themselves fought against this and created a democratic factory regime, by setting up factory committees.  Subsequently, as the economic crisis worsened, these committees demanded the establishment of workers’ control of production.
c)    In the countryside too, war had intensified economic crisis. The peasantry wanted the distribution of land and for them, the revolution meant nothing if landlordism was not abolished. But it was decided by the PG that no land reforms should occur before the convocation of a Constituent Assembly.
d)    The leaders who had come to power had done so almost accidentally. They did not represent the mass of people. The PG was formed chiefly out of the members of the Fourth Duma. So they were upper class opponents of the Tsar who had no sympathy for workers and peasants. To create a democratic polity, the first pre-condition was the convening of the Constituent Assembly. Yet the PG, having received power, was in no hurry to call a Constituent Assembly. The popular mood was clearly one where a republic would be declared. But as Miliukov wrote later in his book, this was not to the liking of many members of the PG and more generally within the upper classes. The Soviets, under the leadership of the Mensheviks and the SRs, had abdicated their powers. But every local election showed that the bourgeois parties were in a minority. Parties to the right of the Kadets virtually disappeared, and their members swelled the ranks of the Kadet party. Nevertheless, municipal and borough elections in Moscow, Petrograd, and other cities confirmed the trend, that the Menshevik-SR bloc formed the biggest grouping, the Cadets a minority on the right wing, and the Bolsheviks and assorted leftists a leftwing minority. Under such circumstances, pushing ahead for democracy was something the Cadets hardly desired.
THE FAILURE OF THE PG: THE RISE OF THE BOLSHEVIKS:
In April the Bolshevik leader Lenin returned to Russia. Lenin had lived abroad, mainly in England and Switzerland, from 1900 to 1905 and again from 1907 to 1917. He had become convinced that consistent struggles for radical democracy in Russia would encourage workers and peasants to struggle for socialism. Lenin also believed that the devastation of World War I would inspire working people throughout the world to fight for socialism. He rallied the swelling ranks of Bolsheviks around slogans such as “Bread, Peace, Land” and “Down with the PG —All Power to the Soviets!,” formulated in his famous April Theses. His party became increasingly attractive to large numbers of bitter and disillusioned young workers, soldiers, and sailors.
At the end of May 1917, Leon Trotsky returned to Petrograd from a 10 year exile abroad. He found that the programme of the Bolsheviks had come essentially to include his ideas about “permanent revolution,” and he soon joined their ranks. Much of the rank-and-file membership of the Mensheviks also went over to the Bolsheviks at this time. Among the SRs, the rank and file and some of the younger leaders turned away from Kerensky and the older leaders associated with him. Various anarchist groups also came to advocate a socialist revolution. Eventually, shortly before the October Revolution, the left wing socialist revolutionaries split and formed a separate party.
Lenin’s return brought about a sharp struggle in the Bolshevik Party, after he published his April Theses and argued that there could be no separate bourgeois democratic revolution, even in the form of a “revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry”, and that the task was to oppose the PG and to fight for the establishment of Soviet Power. This was also the line advocated by Trotsky in articles in a New York socialist journal before he could return to Russia. On the basis of this convergence of ideas, Trotsky joined the Bolshevik party and became, after Lenin, its most important leader.
Another important influence in Bolshevism in 1917 was that of a number of women leaders, above all that of Alexandra Kollontai. Traditionally, the working class had been quite patriarchal, and even the leading layers, like the socialist parties, were not free of this outlook. But feminist Bolsheviks like Kollontai and others fought hard inside the party to change its attitude. By 1917, 2500 of the Old Bolsheviks were women, that is, within the party women formed 10% of the membership. They were able to bring out a journal specially addressed to women workers, entitled Rabotnitsa (Woman Worker) in Petrograd and Zhizn Rabotnitsii (Life of Women Workers) in Moscow (where the leading spirit was Inessa Armand). It was their tireless organizing work that broke the social peace with the laundry worker women’s strike. Thus, women workers were a constituency where Bolshevik appeal was unusually strong in 1917. However, while the Bolsheviks emphasized class demands, they were not adequately sensitive to the gender issues within class, and only the women Bolsheviks paid attention to these issues, including equal pay for equal work, maternity benefits, and so on, along with the right and the opportunity for women to take part in political work. One demand that they repeatedly made but failed to obtain was the demand for a separate organisational structure to bring women into the party. Barbara Evans Clements [Bolshevik Women] and Ann Bobroff ['The Bolsheviks and Working Women 1905 - 1920', Soviet Studies, October 1974,] are historians who have shown both their work and their limitations in this respect. But the women Bolsheviks were able to persevere in their work, so that by November 1917, they had held a Conference of Women Workers, to mobilise hundreds of thousands of working class women to the Bolshevik and the Soviet cause. This would become the base from which, a year later, in late 1918, they would organise an all-Russian women’s meeting and launch a party women’s section or the Zenotdel.
The Bolsheviks supported all the demands of the workers, peasants, soldiers, and also of the oppressed nationalities. They advocated the Right of Oppressed nations to Self Determination. In effect, this meant they were proclaiming the right of Poland, Finland, and a number of other nations, forcibly kept in the Russian Empire, to independence. They strongly supported the workers’ control movement among the factory committees. This involved control over production and monitoring the factory management and their accounts to see whether factory closures were really due to losses. In essence, Lenin and his comrades won over the masses by three simple slogans – Peace, Land and Bread.
By the middle of 1917, workers, peasants and soldiers, all had lost faith in the PG. In June the First Congress of Soviets was held. Delegates of the soviets from all over Russia came to create a national network, and to elect a national leadership of the soviets, the All Russian Central Executive Committee or the VTsIK. At this Congress, the Bolsheviks though a minority ( about a fifth of the delegates), demanded the assumption of power by the Soviets. This proposal, if accepted, would have led to a government in which not the Bolsheviks, but the Mensheviks and the SRs would have been dominant. Yet the latter rejected this demand. This shows that the Bolsheviks stood, not for one-party rule, but working class democracy, while the Mensheviks and the SRs, indeed by this time, had made up their minds to work more directly with the bourgeoisie. In May, the first PG had resigned. A second PG was formed. This time, there were 10 capitalist ministers and 6 socialist ministers. But this did not imply any progress to socialism. Indeed, despite the entry of socialists in government, the PG did not declare Russia to be a Republic. This submission to the bourgeoisie was why the socialists rejected the idea of a soviet government, where the bourgeois parties would have no space. However, in order to gauge the mood of the workers, towards the end of the Soviet Congress, they called a mass rally of workers after banning a Bolshevik rally which would have called for Soviet power. The congress voted to organize an antiwar demonstration on June 18. In Petrograd on that day more than 300,000 people marched and rallied, calling for an end to the war and for the removal of the capitalist politicians from the PG, thereby showing a greater affinity with the Bolshevik political line. This showed that while in the country the Bolsheviks were still a minority, in the capital they had already come to occupy centre stage.
In early July 1917, a section of soldiers who had been won over by the Bolshevik slogan of power to the soviets became impatient. They, with the support of some sections of militant workers wanted to start an insurrection by themselves. The Bolsheviks opposed this, but they also felt that a revolutionary party could not abandon the militant workers and soldiers. So they participated, aiming to turn a planned insurrection into a simple demonstration. The workers and soldiers surrounded the Soviet Executive, and one soldier told Victor Chernov, Take the Power you **** when it is given to you. Chernov was saved from possible violence only after the intervention of Trotsky. After the demonstration was finally dispersed, the government and the VTsIK called in troops loyal to them, and began a witch-hunt. Trotsky, Kamenev, and a large number of other Bolsheviks were arrested. Lenin and Zinoviev went underground.
However, the new government that emerged, with Kerensky as Prime Minister, soon overplayed its hand. Kerensky appointed General Kornilov as the commander of the army. Kornilov was a courageous general, personally relatively popular with the troops. After the summer 1917 offensive failed, Kornilov vigorously advocated using harsh measures to restore discipline in the army. Mostly conservatives and liberals along with some socialists, who were interested in restoration of order, found him more acceptable. The problems that lay ahead were signalled by Kornilov's remarkable acceptance conditions, especially that he would be "responsible only to [his] own conscience and to the whole people," and his insistence on a free hand to restore military discipline. During August, tensions surrounding Kornilov's presumed intentions grew. Leftist newspapers and orators warned that he was a potential counterrevolutionary military dictator, while conservative newspapers and speakers hailed him as the prospective saviour of Russia. People looking to break the power of the soviets and change the political structure began to organize around him, who clearly saw himself as a key figure in the regeneration of Russia and the reconstruction of Russian politics, perhaps by force. The problem lay in the fact that both Kerensky and Kornilov aspired to the position of Bonaparte of the Russian Revolution, and therefore there was sustained distrust between them. By September political tensions in Petrograd were high. Kerensky became convinced that the General planned a coup not only against the left, but also against him. Even his dismissal on September 9, could not stop Kornilov from launching army units toward Petrograd. But this quickly collapsed as delegates from the Petrograd Soviet convinced the soldiers that they were being used for counterrevolution. By September 12 the Kornilov revolt had foundered, and Kornilov and some other generals were arrested.
The Kornilov Affair discredited the moderate socialists and the liberals while the Bolsheviks and radical left, who had warned against the danger of a military coup, were now vindicated. Within a short while, Bolsheviks had defeated the moderate socialists in the Petrograd Soviet. Trotsky, released from jail, was elected the new President of the Petrograd Soviet, and this would be the position he would use to lead the October revolution. Bolsheviks won majorities, either alone, or in alliance with left wing Socialist Revolutionaries and Anarchists, in a great many city, regional, and military soviets. By early October, the slogan of All Power to the Soviets was being accepted by sizeable sections of the workers and soldiers. Moreover, as Steve Smith (Red Petrograd) and David Mandel (The Petrograd Workers and the Soviet Seizure of Power) have shown, the demand for workers’ control became very popular, and the Bolsheviks led the movement.
Led by Lenin and Trotsky, from May to October, the Bolsheviks campaigned for a workers revolution, and ultimately on 26th October (7th November) the second revolution occurred. This has often been considered a coup. So we need to ask whether indeed it was a coup, plotted by Lenin, or whether it was a democratic revolution.
1. The Bolshevik slogan was All Power to the Soviets. They did not call for power for their party, but for workers and peasants. But at the First Congress of All Russian Soviets, the Menshevik-Socialist Revolutionary majority turned down their call. Between August and September, after Kornilov tried to carry out a coup d’etat, the influence and power of Bolsheviks within the Soviets began growing. Trotsky was elected Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet even though the Government had a case against him for trying to foment an uprising.
2. The Bolsheviks demanded, through the Soviets, the calling of a Second Congress of Soviets. Initially the Menshevik-SR leaders of the All Russian Executive Committee did not want to call a new congress. In a large number of regional Congresses they won majorities for the slogan All Power to the Soviets.
3. At the Second Congress of Soviets, the proposal that the soviets should take power, that they should call for immediate peace and that the Decree on Land proposed by Lenin, based on the demands of the peasants themselves, were overwhelmingly adopted.
4. Critics have argued that the insurrection against the PG was undemocratic. Such critics include, in recent times, Orlando Figes. Earlier writes include Alexander Kerensky, The Crucifixion of Liberty, David Shub, Lenin, Robert Payne, The Life and Death of Lenin, and others. In fact, it was the PG that was undemocratic. It had not been elected. Its composition had been repeatedly changed without the sanction of any elected Parliament. By September, the new Prime Minister, Kerensky, was behaving like a dictator. In order to give a semblance of legality, he convened a so-called Pre-Parliament, the composition of which was heavily tilted in favour of the wealthy classes, and which was set up by allotting an arbitrary number of seats to different groups of people. By early October, even army units in Petrograd were not obeying any orders of the Provisional Government unless countersigned by the Petrograd Soviet, led by the Bolsheviks.
5. It is often argued that Lenin and Trotsky were motivated by personal desire for power, or for purely party power, rather than for democratic soviet power. If we look at the events, this is not proved. As late as late August-early September, after the defeat of Kornilov, Lenin had again proposed that the Menshevik-SR bloc should take power at the head of the soviets, not because he supported these parties, but because he wanted power to the soviets, which represented the workers, peasants and soldiers, or the toiling people of Russia. Finally, the Bolshevik strategy, devised by Trotsky, of moving through the soviets rather than using only the party to call for an insurrection, showed a commitment to maximization of popular involvement and democratic sensibilities.
6. A recent recurrent argument is that the archival material has proved that the Bolsheviks destroyed a democratic alternative. Orlando Figes’ A People's Tragedy: Russian Revolution 1891-1924, is often cited as a major study. Yet his story contains nothing new, unless we look at some his more esoteric discoveries, such as the fact that Lenin used to exercise with barbells to build up his muscles, and was therefore macho character. Christopher Reed, From the Tsar to the Soviets, by contrast, looks at popular movements and the politics of common people.
Archival sources had already been tapped by social historians like Smith, Koenker, David Mandel, Suny, Rosenberg and others. What their studies, including those carried out after 1991 (like Mandel’s later book on factory committees) stressed was that the vast mass of workers and peasants rejected all alliances with the bourgeoisie, and that likewise the bourgeoisie refused any significant concessions to the workers along what would later be called a welfare state model. This class against class divide destroyed the hopes of the moderate socialists. Taking West European models, they assumed that democracy must mean a working partnership with liberals. But in Russia, the Liberals of the Kadet party were committed to counterrevolution, and had moved rapidly rightwing in 1917, as a result of the collapse of the parties of traditional right and a massive influx of members from those parties to the Cadet party.
The majority of the Mensheviks were under the leadership of Iraklii Tseretelli, who had immense prestige as he had been sent to Siberia as a hard labour convict. But unlike left Mensheviks like Sukhanov, or even Martov, Tseretelli was categorical that there must be an alliance with the liberals. Since the liberals, says William Rosenberg,(The Liberals in the Russian Revolution) did not even want a stable alliance with the Mensheviks (at the Kadet Party Congress the left liberal Nabokov was defeated by the Right Liberal Miliukov), all Tseretelli’s line could achieve was restrain the Mensheviks. At the First Soviet Congress, with over 800 delegates, the majority supporting Mensheviks and SRs, the question of power was avoided. At the Democratic Conference and the Pre-parliament, both artificial bodies created by Keresnky to prop up his Bonapartist ambitions, the Mensheviks and SRs rejected alliance with the Kadet party under pressure from their base, but then voted for a national government including representatives of the bourgeoisie (a meaningless exercise if the main bourgeois party was excluded). That the liberals wanted no stable democracy is shown by their refusal to convene the Constituent Assembly at an early date, and further by their systematic support to the Kornilov coup plan. George Katkov in [Russia 1917, the Kornilov affair: Kerensky and the Break-up of the Russian Army, London; New York: Longman, 1980], denied that there had been a coup actually planned. But Rosenberg cites a series of Kadets to show their support to Kornilov. Z. Galili, in The Menshevik Leaders in the Russian Revolution: Social Realities and Political Strategies (1989) points out that Kerensky refused to submit his government to any accountability even to the Pre-Parliament that he created in September-October in order to provide a fictitious political basis for his government. Thus, it is clear that there was, in 1917, no democratic alternative to the Soviets, which indeed were the most democratic bodies.
ROLE OF LENIN:
Lenin has been seen, by critics, as an authoritarian with a drive for power in an opportunistic manner. Such critics include L.B. Schapiro – The Origins of Communist Autocracy, Adam Ulam – Lenin and the Bolsheviks, David Lovell – From Marx to Lenin, etc.
(1)    Party building – a workers’ revolution is not possible without revolutionary leadership. Without self organization the working class is a mass for exploitation. So the vanguard party should be proletarian and democratic. The party should not lag behind the mass movement. To build the party meant to unify and centralize the vanguard layer. According to his analysis in What is To Be Done?, the working class was segmentary. The fragmentary experiences of the class had to be overcome and a rounded view developed. A problem mentioned by critics with his theory was the insistence that revolutionary theory was a science produced by bourgeois intelligentsia. But this was a position that he gave up after the revolution of 1905.
(2)    In 1917, his role was essential in changing the political line of the party from one of being leftwing critical supporters of the dual power to revolutionary opponents who wanted to overthrow the bourgeoisie.
(3)    Lenin’s pressure was important for the ultimate decision of the Bolsheviks to take the path of insurrection in October 1917. Leaders like Zinoviev and Kamenev were arguing against an insurrection. By appealing to the party ranks over the heads of the leadership, it was Lenin who got the party to turn to majoritarian revolution through the soviets.
(4)    It was Lenin who, due to his commitment to majority views, changed the agrarian programme. At the Second Soviet Congress, where power was taken by the Bolsheviks, the land policy that Lenin put forward through his Decree on Land was essentially a SR programme as developed by the Congress of peasant Deputies.  At the time of the April Theses, this had been Lenin’s Agrarian Programme: “In the agrarian programme, the emphasis must be shifted to the Soviets of Agricultural Labourers' and Peasants' Deputies. A separate organisation of Soviets of Deputies of the poorest peasants. Creation of model agricultural establishments out of large estates (from 100 to 300 desiatins, in accordance with local and other conditions and with the estimates of local institutions) under the control of the Soviet of Agricultural Labourers' Deputies, and at public expense.” This was changed after the Congress of peasant deputies, which showed the democratic will of the peasants, and which, Lenin felt, could not be ignored. A whole series of studies show that the revolution was democratic and working class in character. One can mention David Mandel’s book, as well as Ernest Mandel – October 1917 – Coup d’Etat or Social Revolution? Or Alexander Rabinowitch’s The Bolsheviks Come to Power. Any serious examination of Lenin’s role in the Bolshevik party will show that he insisted on democracy, majority decisions, and wide ranging debates within as well as outside the party.  This is seen in two major studies – Marcel Liebman – Leninism Under Lenin, and Paul LeBlanc – Lenin and the Revolutionary Party. 4 occasions can be mentioned: (a) The conflict between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks – Lenin openly campaigned for a third party congress to settle the debate. (b) The formation of the Soviets for the first time in 1905, and the attitude of Bolsheviks to it. Lenin was in favour of the party not dictating terms but joining it. Other Bolsheviks wanted to have nothing to do with the Soviets. There was extensive discussion over this. (c) The liquidationism controversy in the party. There were several positions over this. And the party saw extensive debates. There were the majority of Menshevik intellectuals, who wanted to do away with the underground party and work within the limited liberties given by the repressive Stolypin regime. There were the Bogdanovists or Recallists, who were opposed to using the legal structures altogether. They opposed sending party members to the Duma, and wanted party work in the working class to be concentrated on the underground committees. Lenin opposed both of these positions, for he wanted a combination of legal and underground work. (d) During the month of April 1917, the Bolshevik party debated openly, including in the pages of the party press, the rival lines of Lenin (the April Theses) and Kamenev.
Thus, when we assess the role of Lenin, we should see him as a leader of a mass revolution, not a conspirator.

An Assault on Free Speech by Chauvinistic Nationalists: SAR Geelani, Siddhartha Guha Roy and J.U. Students its victims

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Published on Monday, 01 November 2010 17:42

Bharatiya Janata Party’s Nationalistic Chauvinism’s latest victim, students of Jadavpur University. A Seminar ‘Azaadi: The Only Way’ organized by the United Students Democratic Front (USDF) a Students organization mainly representing students of colleges and universities of Kolkata was attacked by a mob of B.J.P. /R.S.S. activists on Saturday, 30^th October 2010. The Speakers were SAR Geelani, Delhi University Teacher, Siddhartha Guha Roy, Academic and Malen, an activist from the Campaign for Peace and Justice, Manipur. While the standard was the usual RSS/BJP chauvinistic one, what was new was first, that the target was a student seminar, and second, that it happened in West Bengal, where the BJP is considered a weak organization.

Jadavpur University students lead from the front in the state of west Bengal, when it comes to voicing concerns on National and International issues. The vibrancy of the student community on campus and off campus since the University’s inception in 1956 has been demonstrated again and again by their active support to democratic and progressive struggles worldwide. This University, which has been given a five star university status by the UGC, and recognized as one of the leading universities with “Potential for excellence”, also has had sustained student activism which has played no mean role in preserving freedom of speech in the campus, the most recent event being a fight to resist the installation of closed circuit televeisions in the campus in the name of security. The concern for recent happenings in Kashmir has echoed in the student’s demonstrations and the suppression of people in the disguise of national security claimed by the Central Government led by Congress and the State Government led by CPM.

In ‘Azaadi- The only Way’ Siddhartha Guha Roy, a civil rights activist and historian with a book on Kashmir emphatically expressed his concern for human rights violations by minions of the Indian state with ordinary Kashmiris at the receiving end. Only when the Kashmiri masses were rebuffed and deceived by the Indian State and leaders like Abdullah Dynasty (Sheikh Abdullah, the historic leader, often imprisoned in independent India, his son Farooq, and grandson Omar) in failing to deliver promises that some provoked men to take up arms. The Jammu Kahmir Liberation Front (J.K.L.F) he said began with civic demands for improving electrification in the state and for better transport facilities. Immediately after Siddharth Guha Roy finished his speech and SAR Geelani was to address the audience, a mob of seven to eight people frantically shouting slogans, ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ emerged from the hundred odd seminarians. Donned with the B.J.P. flag, they rushed to the stage where the speakers were seated. One of them even hurled a shoe at the speakers, which was intercepted by a student’s chain. On repeated announcements to maintain order by the student organizers the mob did not yield. The student volunteers had to forcibly take the mob outside the seminar hall. The speakers remained seated on the stage, patiently waiting for the seminar to resume. After the seminar resumed, Amitava Roy, State Secretary of the Bharatiya Yuva Morcha (B.J.P.’s State Youth Association) remained in the hall and constantly interrupted the speakers and forced the presenters to take questions. On a question to Siddhartha Guha Roy, as to comment on the Quit Kashmir Movement initiated in Kashmir against the Kashmiri Pandits by B.J.P. State Youth Secretary,  Guha Roy said that he believes that human rights are for all individuals and hence, the eviction of Kashmiri Pandits from Kashmir, he condemned in the same spirit. Geelani on the contrary, said that like the ‘Quit Kahmir Movement a movment by the Kahmiri Pandits called ‘Quit Jammu’ was initiated in Jammu city. But, he making his stand clear on the Kashmiri Pandit’s forcible eviction said that Pandit’s were forced out from Kashmir, but it was not because of they were Hindus. He said that the Kashmiri Pandits were the propertied class of Kashmir. Geelani was rather ambigious on the Kashmiri Pandit’s issue.

Geelani responded to the ruckus created by the B.J.P. as a tactic of vandalism and appealed everyone for behaving rationally. There were heated exchange of words between B.J.P. party men and students mainly provoked by the B.J.P. supporters who constantly intercepted the speakers. Eventually all the hecklers had to be escorted out of the hall.  One Student organizer Chandan Mondal of U.S.D.F. also informed the audience of the seminar that his colleague, a co-organizer girl student was heckled by the B.J.P. party men and also lit a match, with an intention to immolate her. SAR Geelani said, never has the State of Pakistan claimed Kashmir to be a part of Pakistan. He emphasized that the Indian State has prolonged the solution to the ‘Kashmir Issue’ and has instead used force against the Kashmiri masses. There were around a 7,000 Kashmiri men missing from the state, reportedly picked up by the Indian Army for interrogation. He said the Central Government of India is not serious in wanting to address the concerns of Kashmiri masses instead it is just dubbing the Kashmiri masses call for a Azadi (freedom) as a Governance issue, blaming the Omar Abdulla Government at the state. Marlem representing Campaign for Justice and Peace, Manipur responded to a Jadavpur student’s query on the possibility of making a common platform where people’s representatives of Oppressed states like Manipur and Kashmir could come together and fight for the rights of their populace, said, ‘we can only hope that in future we can make such a people’s platform’.

The B.J.P. party-men sat for a dharna after having been evacuated from the seminar hall and shouted slogans like ‘Long live Indian Motherland’. They even blockaded a road adjoining the campus premises. They claimed that in the name of protecting free speech Jadavpur Universty was promoting actions like the burning of the national flag. Later on, some unidentified B.J.P. men even registered an F.I.R. against the student organizers of U.S.D.F. for carrying out ‘anti-national activities’. When the Indian State and the ruling political parties are being exposed for their involvement in Corruption even in defense sector, B.J.P. being exposed in the Tehelka Expose, the latest being the Adarsh Co-op. Housing Society Scam, where a residential plot was acquired for Kargil War Veterans only to have been taken over by top army men and state bureaucrats and politicians. It would rational to evaluate the Indian state’s performance in Kashmir in the Universal of Human Rights and Justice.

 

France: An Unprecedented Movement

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Published on Sunday, 24 October 2010 10:26

An unprecedented movement which is far from over.

Sandra Demarcq

 

Since last May, the situation in France has been marked by the mobilisation against the pension law. Days of mobilisation succeed days of mobilisation, the movement against pension reform continues to develop and put down roots. It is the confirmation of a profound movement massively rejecting not only the pension reform but more broadly Sarkozy’s anti-social, racist and authoritarian policies as a whole. But also the injustices accumulated and accentuated by the crisis, whether among the young or among wage earners.

That is why the demonstrations, although repetitive, are not shrinking and are even beating records, in particular those on October 12 and 19 when 3.5 million people were on the streets. The gatherings are increasingly combative and radical. The private sector is highly mobilised and now youth (at this stage essentially high school students) have also entered into mobilisation. Because the youth have understood that their access to a job in the short term and to a pension at full rate in good health were highly compromised by this reform.

Little by little the environment has changed, many of us, very many, think that victory is possible, that we can defeat Sarkozy. Already, at this stage of the mobilisation, the government has lost the battle of public opinion. 70% of the population support the mobilisations and oppose this reform. Today, the majority of the workers, those in precarious jobs, and youth know that the question of pensions is neither a demographic question nor one of financing as the government has tried to have us believe for some months.

The strike has little by little become a feature of the landscape. With each day of strikes and demonstrations, it has appeared increasingly obviously to numerous sectors that staggered days were not enough to defeat the government. In fact, ongoing strike action has never been so much discussed in all sectors of activity as in recent weeks, to the point that 61% of those polled favour prolonged strikes. The problem is precisely the leaderships of the trade union confederations who, even if they are pushed by the rank and file to continue, make sure they avoid calling for a general strike. Since the beginning of the movement, trade union unity has undoubtedly been a gain, a point of support in the success of the days of strikes and demonstrations. But the inter union coordination has not called for a major social confrontation with this government, and no longer demands the withdrawal of the draft legislation, instead proposing new negotiations and amendments.

The key sectors of the economy have however decided to launch or broaden prolonged strikes. This is the case for example with the rail workers, EDF centres and refineries. In the latter sector this has not been seen since May 68. Since October 14, the 13 refineries are taking ongoing strike action with a total halt to the installation and shipping of fuel to service stations and depots. The strike is huge, renewed with virtual unanimity.

This movement is on the move everywhere, with every day new initiatives, blockade actions (toll points, roads, airports, industrial zones and so on), and local demonstrations taking place in a unitary and inter-professional fashion. Mass meetings of the different mobilised sectors are also taking place every day, small at the beginning, they are increasingly significant now. But it should also be noted that if there are numerous strikes here and there in the public as in the private sector, ongoing action remains still too scattered and a minority phenomenon and the rate of strikes during the national strike days is high but not extraordinary.

For some days and in particular since the day of strikes and demonstrations on October 19, young people have participated fully in the mobilisation, with very significant and dynamic contingents and many high schools blockaded. There is a determination and politicisation here that was not there in previous mobilisations. The more they are said to be manipulated and the more their right to demonstrate is contested, the more their determination grows. The mobilisation in the universities is taking off, little by little. It is the big issue in the coming day, on the eve of the high school holidays.

Faced with this situation, the right, the employers, the government and Sarkozy remain determined to defend this unjust reform. Sarkozy is intent on a test of strength. The use of force is patent as shown by the police intervention against the refinery strikers or against the high school students, strong-arm tactics in parliament and the rejection of any discussion even with the most moderate union leaders. Their determination is understandable since this reform is for them at the heart of their austerity policy to ensure the crisis is paid for by those who are not responsible for it. Success with this reform will boost the financial markets but it is also the opportunity in France to change the relationship of forces and the distribution of wealth in favour of the richest. It is also a chance to get rid of the “social and fiscal burden" which is the legacy of old struggles and to bring the most resistant sectors to their knees. The key element for Sarkozy is also to rally his own camp some months prior to the presidential election. However, he is still far from victory and he has not broken or silenced the resistance.

The breadth of this mobilisation indicates the possibility of defeating the government. That is why the overall unity of the social and political left in this struggle is imperative. That is the meaning of the commitment of the NPA [Nouveau parti anticapitaliste – New Anti-capitalist Party] in all the unitary and political initiatives allowing regroupment of our forces and in particular through the national collective initiated by the Fondation Copernic and Attac. But this unity around the slogan "pensions at 60 and withdrawal of the draft law” does not hide certain disagreements on the basis and on the strategy of ‘action in particular with the Socialist Party. The latter defends the pension at 60 but voted with the deputies of the right on increasing the number of annuities to 41.5, which in fact destroys the idea of defending the pension at 60. Also faced with the growing mobilisation, we prepare for the 2012 presidential election. When there are divergences with the left of the left, in particular with the Parti de Gauche of Jean-Luc Melechon, they concern essentially action strategy. The latter defends the immediate perspective of a referendum which would shift the mobilisation from the street to the institutional level at a time when the social test of forces is still before us!

The NPA has appeared since the beginning of the mobilisation as a party organising struggle, seeking unity around political objectives and demands: the withdrawal and undoubtedly now the abrogation of the law and the resignation of those responsible for the social crisis, Sarkozy and Woerth. We also develop anti-capitalist perspectives though an emergency social and political plan to beat the crisis.

The coming days will be decisive. The law will be voted through but that will not silence or halt this mobilisation because for all those who are today on the streets, on strike, this regime is illegitimate. Also, we know that a law which is enacted can be withdrawn in this country - thishas already happened with the First Employment Contract [Contrat Première embauche] in 2007.

One to watch, then...

• Sandra Demarcq is a member of the Executive Committee of the New Anti-Capitalist pary (NPA) in France, and a member of the leadership of the Fourth International.

This appeared originally in International Viewpoint. http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1938

France: An Explosive situation

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Published on Sunday, 24 October 2010 06:40

An explosive situation

Towards a general strike
Sandra Demarcq

 

The political situation in France is dominated by the mobilization against the proposed reform of the pension system. This reform is at the heart of Sarkozy’s austerity policy. Although it is presented as an obvious demographic necessity, it is meeting increasing opposition in public opinion.

The mobilization has been growing since the start of the mobilizations in May and the first day of action in June. Since the beginning of September three days of strikes and demonstrations (the 7th and 23rd of September and the 2nd of October) have brought out 3 million people on each occasion. The CGT estimates that 5 million people have participated in the strikes and demonstrations since the start.

On each day of action, we have seen that there are more private sector workers, more young people – even high school students are beginning to mobilise and block their schools - and more radical demands.

Popular rejection of Sarkozy’s policies

The battle against the draft law on pensions also shows a massive rejection of the whole politics of Sarkozy. There is not only the question of the pension, numerous sectors are extremely mobilized, on strike on various topics: post offices, in hospitals, the nurse-anaesthetists, the dockers...

Faced with this resistance, the government is more and more unpopular. These accumulated difficulties are provoking a crisis within the right.

To try to reassert his control, Sarkozy has stressed his racist and security policies, in relation to the Roms in particular. But also in the last few weeks, the government has tried to make people forget the social question by advancing the terrorist danger. But without much success.

Dissatisfaction is growing and the situation is "explosive". Faced with the success of the demonstrations and strike days, the government has not moved and says that nothing will be changed in its proposal. The crisis and the debt are poor excuses to justify the reform.

Sarkozy and his government want their reform. Faced with the determination of the government, many workers know that to win it’s necessary to impose social determination.

Today, in numerous sectors, it is time for an all-out strike. For example in the RATP (Paris public transport system), the SNCF (French national railway company), but also in the chemical and engineering industries there is a possibility of a continuing srike from Tuesday. [1]

We know that the next day of strikes and demonstrations, on Tuesday 12th October, will be a success. And today, the idea that we can win is increasing.

The state of the movement

• It is, at the moment, a very political movement. The strike rates are strong but not exceptional. The self-organization of the movement today, is very low. General assemblies in the various sectors have very low participation.
• It is a unitarian movement. There is an inter-union coordinating committee [2], which gives the calendar of mobilisations but which is pushed by the intransigence of the government and by the very radical militant teams.

This movement is characterized by a massive refusal of the reform, a spectacular mistrust against the power, against Sarkozy but we don’t know what will be the end result of this confrontation. Everything is possible.

On the political level

The NPA participates with the whole French left including the PS, but without LO, in a unitarian campaign against the pensions reform .

This unitarian campaign, launched by Attac and the Copernic Foundation, is based on the demand of a pension at 60 years for all and the withdrawal of the law.

Although all the left agrees on these two demands, there are several disagreements.

The disagreement over demands is in particular with the Socialist Party. They agree with the demand of 60 years old as retirement age but they defend the idea that workers must work longer to get a full pension. And so they voted with the rightwing deputies for the increase of years worked to qualify for the full pension.

There are also disagreements about the strategy for winning against the government and obtaining the withdrawal of the draft law. There are disagreements with the Socialist Party but also with the Communist Party and Parti de gauche (Left Party). The Socialist Party ask us to wait for the next presidential elections in 2012 and the other political forces demand a referendum, turning the class struggle into an institutional question. They are all refusing the social confrontation necessary to win.

The NPA’s profile

Since the beginning of the mobilization, the NPA has worked in two directions:

• The first : to be completely in the unitarian campaign, defending retirement at 60 years old with full pension. We also demand the withdrawal of the law. Olivier is the party spokesperson who has participated at the most unitarian meetings around the country.
• For us, the main demand is the redistribution of wealth and the sharing of work. Our profile is clear, since last May we have been working for a massive social and political confrontation.
• As the government is very unpopular, one of our demands is to sack Woerth, the labour minister, and president Sarkozy.

11th October 2010

Sandra Demarcq is a member of the Executive Committee of the New Anti-Capitalist pary (NPA) in France, and a member of the leadership of the Fourth International.

NOTES

[1] The right to strike is embodied in the French constitution. Trades unions have to give a “warning” (préavis) of a strike for the workers to be considered legally on strike. In these sectors there has been a préavis for a “reconductible” or all-out strike, that is one that is revoted each day by the workers.

[2] [The “intersyndicale” brings together the five confederations, including two usually classed on the “right”, CGT, CFDT, FO, CGC and CFTC; the radical union SUD Solidaires with important implantation in the postal, transport and health sectors, FSU and UNSA (teachers and public sector)

 

Originally published in International Viewpoint. http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1935

THE LEGITIMISATION OF BIGOTRY, THE DESTRUCTION OF REASON IN THE NAME OF THE CONSTITUTION

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Published on Wednesday, 20 October 2010 17:31

This essay was written within a day of the Ayodhya judgement, and we realise that we should be presenting a more elaborate essay. However, due to problems with our website we were unable to do anything for some time. We therefore present this essay as the one promised at the time the judgement was handed. We will make further commentaries later.

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THE LEGITIMISATION OF BIGOTRY, THE DESTRUCTION OF REASON IN THE NAME OF THE CONSTITUTION

SOMA MARIK

The Verdict in the Ayodhya Temple Case:

The Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court, by a 2-1 verdict, has said that the site of the main dome of the Babri Masjid was where Ram Janmasthan had indeed existed, and that since Babar had built the Mosque against the tenets of Islam it was not a mosque. Accordingly, the verdict assigns, one third of the land to the Sunni Waqf Board, one third to the Nirmohi Akhara, and one third to Ram Lalla. Subject to any action that might constitute a contempt of court, one would like to call this verdict a legitimization of bigotry and the destruction of reason. However, these are admittedly strong words, at a time when politicians, the media, are all by and large arguing that this is a nice verdict that will go a long way in healing wounds and establishing peace. So they require explication.

Did Rama Chandra at all exist? The article ‘Three Hundred Ramayanas’ by A K Ramanujan explores the diverse ways of narrativizing the story of Rama. Rama and Ayodhya belong to myths. It is enough to remember that scholars of the stature of H. D. Sankalia threw serious doubt about the meaning of Lanka and Rama’s invasion of Lanka, and also that the place Ayodhya was named Saketa till a Gupta Emperor, probably Skanda Gupta, renamed it as Ayodhya, evidently to garner prestige from being associated with a Rajchakravartin like Rama. To draw the obvious parallel, Schliemann’s excavations showed that Troy, Mykenai, all had historical counterparts. But that has not led to the Iliad being turned into history. Yet that is precisely what the High Court has done in the present case. The process of peddling myth as history had begun a long time back, when the court accepted Ram Lalla as a party to the suits. And now, instead of noting that views about this mythical hero are diverse and cannot be the basis for any court ruling, it has awarded him (or are we hereafter constrained to say Him?) one third of the land. One wonders who his legal heirs are in this world, and how they will handle the property.

Rightward Shift in Mainstream Discourse:

The Hindu Right’s ability to shift the political discourse has never been so evident as now, with the Ayodhya verdict out. Just the string of shifts that have occurred since 1949, have to be noted. In December 1949, a statue of Ram was smuggled into a mosque. The then district magistrate, KK Nayyar decided not to remove it lest “Hindu sentiments are hurt”. No wonder Nayyar soon got picked as a Jan Sangh MP candidate. Neither Nehru nor GB Pant took stern action, assuming that the Muslim vote-bank must support the Congress, is it not? Then in the 1980s comes the shilanyas. The Supreme Court dismissed attempts to block the shilanyas, asserting the rights of Hindus to worship. The shilanyas marked a successful and a decisive breakthrough in the Ram Janmabhoomi agitation, representing the high point of politics as theatre, replete with symbolism and suffused with ritualism. Almost 200,000 villages sent bricks, 300,000 pujas of the Ram Shilas were performed and altogether about 100 million people attended the various processions that carried the bricks to and from Ayodhya. Riots wreaked havoc all over the country.
From the 1980s, of course, the Ram Temple campaign was a core plank of the radical right – the RSS-VHP etc, with the BJP as their electoral face. The fact that the Archaeological Survey of India submitted a report in 2003 asserting that there was a Hindu structure under the mosque is highly misleading. First, the ASI suddenly pushed the date of the site as far back as 13th century BC. According to the ASI the oldest people living there were the Northern Black Polished Ware peoples. But they lived in small units, not in massive urban centres. But the Ayodhya described by Valmiki was an urban centre. So if we are going to accept Valmiki as authentic then the ASI report cannot prove that this present Ayodhya was that Ayodhya. Did the 13th century BC level prove the existence of Rama? In addition, the need to prove a 13th century date seems to have been felt since the Indraprastha site (i.e., “Mahabharata”) has been dated to 12th century BC. In addition, the ASI report does not prove that the mosque was built by destroying a temple. At best it claims that a temple had previously (much earlier) existed, and even such a claim has been contested by many of India’s leading historians and archaeologists. Conveniently, a BJP-led government was at the centre, when the ASI presented this highly slanted report, which has now been cited as evidence in a simplistic manner.

The Politics of Temple and Mosque Destructions:

There have been temples broken, as in Varanasi and Mathura. We do not even need the ASI to tell us that. But such things have happened before. Thus, Richard Eaton has shown that in 642 CE, the Pallava ruker Narasimhavarman I looted  a Ganesa image from Vatapi, the chalukya capital. Half a century later, the Chalukyas raided north India and brought back imagesd of Ganga and Yamuna from defeated powers. Temple destruction in numerous cases were connected to the fact that particular temples were seats of royal power or prestige, and the victors wanted to take away the prestige. But the Indian constitution did not exist in 642, 1528, or in the 17th century. The majority verdict sidesteps the brutal reality that a mob, inflamed by power-hungry politicians, had destroyed a five century old mosque, which too was a part of our heritage. Instead, the court goes on to conclude that Rama was indeed born at that spot, usurping the responsibility of historians and replacing reason by irrational faith. Modern courts are set up on the basis of that nowadays much maligned Enlightenment rationality. Even if god, gods, or God, have any existence, it is beyond the powers of a court to make pronouncements regarding them. A court can say that an action will hurt believers and should be halted in the interests of keeping peace. But theology is not part of its domain. Moreover the court has said, in effect, that since Babar has been deemed to have done wrong back in 1528 or thereabout that historic wrong must be undone. It refuses to look at the destroyed monument as a mosque as it violated the Islamic tenets and built on the past relics of a massive Hindu structure. Hence presumably its destruction does not constitute a crime.

This means the constitutional promise of secularism and the lawful protection of a historic site, are given short shrift. By this, future attacks on mosques is given the beginning of a legal protection, and the Hindutva political mobilizations of the late 1980s – early 1990s are virtually legitimized. The Hindutva forces launched their offensive by presenting Muslims and Islam as the ultimate Enemy. What is the point in condemning the Taliban or other fanatics, if we proceed to emulate them while pretending to follow the rule of law and constitutionalism? If the 1980s saw the RSS-VHP launching their concerted attack on secularism and toleration, the verdict of 2010, despite being dressed up as a sober and balancing one, will ultimately be judged by history as the verdict that legitimated the discourse of fascism while formally proclaiming a democratic constitutionalism. Pure dependence on courts cannot be an adequate answer. Secular forces had taken it for granted that the courts would take a stance close to theirs. If it is the sustained mobilizations of the Hindu right that has shifted the discourse so much that the more intellectual defenders of Hindutva are treated as voices of sensibility then it is only through counter mobilizations – not for a day but for equally sustained periods – that the Hindutva offensive can be rolled back.