In Face of Growing Mass Opposition, the Authorities at IIT Madras, Opt to Restore Registration of Amebedkarite APSC

- Rajesh Tyagi/ June 8, 2015

The registration of student organisation ‘Ambedkar-Periyar Study Circle’ (APSC) at IIT Madras, is restored yesterday, by the authorities under orders of its Dean of Students.

The registration was cancelled by the IIT, Madras, an elite institution in technology, pursuant to a meeting of the APSC on April 14, 2015, after an anonymous complaint that APSC was spreading hatred among communities and against the Government, was allegedly received by the IIT authorities.  

The registration is given to independent and unofficial student bodies, under guidelines of the IIT, that enable these bodies to use the name and infrastructure of the institution for their activities. The rules have no statutory status or backing.

The disputed action in cancelling the registration of APSC was taken by the local authorities at IIT, Madras, in consultation with the Ministry of Human Resources and Development (HRD). It was opposed by all sections across the society, except the extreme right wing elements associated with the Modi Government. The action was broadly viewed as an assault upon freedom of expression and association and is ultimately reversed by the authorities in the backdrop of widespread opposition to it.

Workers’ Socialist Party was prompt in condemning the action of the IIT, Madras and demanded immediate withdrawal of the orders. As a Marxist Party, the WSP was convinced that any such action by the bourgeois state, would ultimately be directed against the working class and its organisations.

Despite its unconditional condemnation and opposition to the action of IIT and the Ministry of HRD, the WSP was clear that the Ambedkarite APSC, an elite circle, based upon caste identity politics, represents no radical or progressive platform and poses no real challenge to capitalism and the rule of corporates. On the contrary, Ambedkarism, an indian school of bourgeois liberalism, is intimately bound up with corporate state and the institutions under it and is a support column to it.

The fake lefts, the Stalinists and Maoists, however, hailed the APSC as a revolutionary platform that, in their fantasy, had posed a challenge to corporate power.

Airing this viewpoint of the fake lefts, Arundhati Roy, one of their chief unofficial spokesperson in India, issued a statement condemning the action of IIT. The statement was widely circulated by Stalinist and Maoist papers, websites and social sites. Exalting APSC as a revolutionary platform, the statement, concluded, “It is because they have seen through this charade and have put their finger on the most dangerous possible place. They have made the connection between Corporate Globalization and the perpetuation of caste.”

This reckless statement is a blatant lie. Ambedkarites have never “made the connection between Corporate Globalization and the perpetuation of caste”, as Arundhati and after her these fake lefts claim. On the contrary, the Ambedkarites have zealously worked to mask this connection behind the smokescreen of fake democracy. The Ambedkarites, are avowed and first line worshippers of bourgeois democracy and its constitutional regime in India, that they claim their own, an assumed endowment from Ambedkar himself. Arundhati, herself a petty-bourgeois radical, and an opponent to Marxism, who fervently claimed yesterday, that “Marxism is nothing but cussing”, is unofficial mouthpiece for Maoists and Stalinist groups and parties.

Adoring the attempts of Ambedkarites, to reconcile the irreconcilable great socialist revolutionary and martyr Bhagat Singh with Ambedkar, who for his entire life was an obedient servant of capital, first of British then Indian, Arundhati’s Statement claimed, “There is hardly anything more threatening to this present Ruling establishment than doing what APSC did—celebrating both Bhagat Singh and Ambedkar. This is what has brought them into the line of fire. This is what is sought to be quashed.”

The Ambedkarites, in order to cover up their most shameful past, where they not only remained adherent to British colonialism, but ardently opposed the anti-colonial struggle, before slipping under the folds of reactionary bourgeois regime under Nehru, attempt to pose Ambedkar in line with Bhagat Singh or even Marx. Instead of opposing this intrigue tooth and nail, all fake lefts from Stalinists, Maoists to petty-bourgeois radicals, enthusiastically assist in reinforcing this false claim of Ambedkarites.

Gradually leaning upon authoritarian methods of governance, the bourgeois rule, attempts to eliminate any dissent to it, liberal or reformist, from top to bottom, from within or without. In doing this, the authoritarian state selects its target, carefully and consciously, wherefrom least resistance is expected. APSC, a small student body inside an elite institution, was thus selected for gagging, not because it was posing any threat to corporate rule, or was making any dangerous connections between this rule and perpetuation of caste or was fomenting a revolution, but because it was viewed as a soft target.

The withdrawal of the impugned orders by the IIT, Madras, again in consultation with HRD Ministry, itself shows that APSC is not viewed as any threat by the bourgeois state and the initial hasty action of the authorities, stands corrected by more sensible administrators inside the establishment. The withdrawal, belies the claim of Arundhati, that, “There is hardly anything more threatening to this present Ruling establishment than doing what APSC did”.

In fact, the fake lefts and the likes of Arundhati, those unfortunate victims of historic myopia, always find the revolution where it does not exist at all and fail to see it where it exists, spectacularly.   

An adverse action by the bourgeois state upon any organization, by itself, does not impart a revolutionary or radical character to the subject organization. Far from being revolutionary, the Ambedkarites are most obedient and faithful adherents of capitalism and bourgeois democracy. Not only the top Ambedkarite leaders of today, from Ram Vilas Paswan to Jeetan Ram Manjhi are sitting in the lap of rabidly right-wing Hindu supremacist Government under BJP, but Ambedkar himself was a right-wing supporter of capitalist rulers of his time.

While promptly and unconditionally opposing any attempt of the bourgeois state to smother any dissent or opposition from any quarter, the task of revolutionary Marxists is not to eulogize the subjects. The task lies in careful study and exposition of the true character and role of this opposition.

The Ambedkarite opposition, is no real opposition to the political establishment of the corporates. The claim that it poses any threat to corporate establishment is an idiotic illusion.

It is not Ambedkarites or any fake lefts associated with them, but the working class and the revolutionary Marxists at its head, that only constitute a serious opposition and real challenge to the rule of corporates. The squeezing space for democratic expression, including freedom of speech and association under decadent political regime of capitalism, is a challenge before the working class in all capitalist countries of the world today. This squeezing of democracy in all capitalist countries, is directly associated with increasing exploitation of the workers and toiling masses at home and wars of plunder abroad, from Ukraine to Yemen.

Needless to say that conscious of the social and political roots of this assault on civil liberties and democratic freedoms, as part of ever deepening corporate loot and plunder all over the world, the Marxists declare their ardent opposition to any such incursion upon the democratic rights and battering of liberties at the hands of the bourgeois state.