- Ashish Devrari & Rajesh Tyagi/ 29 Jan 2018
Yuva Hunkar Rally organized jointly by supporters of Stalinists and Ambedkarites on January 9, at Jantar Mantar, failed to muster any political response or even convey any message, alongside its failure to mobilize even a thousand of audience.
Rally was organized chiefly by Jignesh Mewani, newly elected MLA from Vadgam in Gujarat, who expected to make more fortunes in bourgeois political corridors by tapping to casteist identity politics through this rally. Stalinists and other fringe elements were tagged to the rally as an appendage to give the otherwise apparently reactionary caste politics, a democratic face.
Despite all bragging by the organizers of the rally, police or administration made no real attempts to block the rally in any way. However, the arrangements it made at Jantar Mantar for the rally, proved to be futile in view of very low turnout.
Under tremendous pressure of the baggage of Ambedkarite politics, an appendix of Bourgeois liberalism, Stalinists kept their hands off throughout the rally from even mentioning the taboo words like ‘working class’, ‘socialism’ or ‘revolution’.
While speakers at the rally lashed out at Modi government, none of them mentioned even for namesake the misdeeds and criminal past of the successive rightwing governments that had remained in power in the centre and states after 1947. The speakers spoke at the Rally seeking to create an impression as if all ills of today are manufactured by the three and a half years old Modi Government and that fascism can be fought without an overall struggle against capitalism.
Modi government is the custodian of bourgeois democracy today that oversees the administration of capitalism working. This rightwing government is taking out the policies of earlier regimes more aggressively and defiantly. But it is the corrupt misrule and no less exploiting policies of all preceding liberal governments, including that under Stalinists or in alliance with them, that have finally paved way for the emergence of fascism. Fascism has not come as a bolt from the blue, but has grown like gangrene inside the body of old capitalism, the liberal capitalism. The speakers at the Rally failed to mention even a single word of it. Given this, the Rally spoke not even somewhere close to any radicalism but in the language of a meek and weak appendix to Congress.
The speakers consciously segregated the criticism of Modi government from any criticism of capitalism or the other capitalist leaders and parties. This is not without reason! Stalinists and Ambedkarites both are looking for election alliances and tie-ups with Congress, RJD, SP and all other casteist and regionalist reactionary bourgeois parties and leaders that can be roped in opportunist coalitions.
Focal demand of rally amidst all rhetoric of unemployment, dalit repression etc. was the release of Chandrashekhar, the self styled chief of Bhim Army, arrested for fanning caste based riots.
None of the participants in the Rally or their parties had ever been serious even about fighting Fascists. All of them have turned deaf ears to the appeals of WSP to forge a workers’ iron front against fascists and to fight it on roads. The Rally failed to propose any fighting program of its own against fascism, except giving feelers for future opportunist alliances with bourgeois parties.
While turning their back upon working class, socialism and revolution completely, consciously refraining from even mention of these ‘bad and obscene’ words, Stalinist leaders, tapped and fostered religious sentiments repeatedly, in the rally. Kanhaiya Kumar of CPI, focused on the rhetoric around religion alongside his laughable appeals for the defence of bourgeois Constitution. After his implication in an apparently false case of sedition, terrified Kanhaiya Kumar has become an all time propagandist in defence of bourgeois democracy and its Constitution. His only program starts from and end up at the defence of the Constitution. Like his associate Ambedkarites, Kanhaiya Kumar continued chanting for and counting upon what the bourgeois constitution has given to the downtrodden in India and why it is necessary to defend the constitution and bourgeois democracy.
Underscoring the purpose of the Rally, exhorted a complaint Kanhaiya Kumar, “I want to make it abundantly clear that our sole purpose of coming here, is to defend the Constitution”. Appealing to nationalism and nationalist sentiments of his petty-bourgeois audience, Kanhaiya said, “Save the nation. This is your first responsibility”. Giving a wake-up call, not to workers or toilers, but apparently to the ruling capitalists, Kanhaiya said, “The decline in the reliability of the media is dangerous for the democracy. If you love your country, you will have to restore confidence in media because media is fourth pillar of the democracy”. “You think that labourers have no role in the country, you are wrong. If the labourer would not have constructed the building, then you could not have sit in the AC room of the building claiming the nation wants to know…”, in these words Kanhaiya made pitiable appeals to corporate media. Refraining from any mention of Marx, Lenin or even Bhagat Singh, Kanhaiya extensively quoted in his speech from Hindu epics like Tulsi’s Ramayan to make a point in favour of his sagely preaching for communal peace. To quote him, “Man is made by God, then why to fight in the name of religion”. Cleverly defending and making a victim of Modi out of Laloo Prasad Yadav, sentenced in infamous fodder scam, Kanhaiya retorted to Modi, “….had Laloo ji supported you, would he have been a thief or a saint”. Echoing Bheem Army, a core casteist Amebedkarite group, Kanhaiya spoke, “Bheem Army has rightly said that our caste is the caste of exploited”. Leaving no space for any doubts and doubly assuring himself and his audience, alongside the state, that his path is not the path of Bhagat Singh, i.e. the path of revolution, but a clear path of adherence and obedience to bourgeois liberalism, its democracy and the constitution, Kanhaiya exclaimed, “…..We have to raise a nation of the dreams of Bhagat Singh through the path of Ambedkar. We need not be violent in any case”. After paying tribute to Gauri Lankesh, a pro-Congress journalist, killed in the power struggle of the gangs, Kanhaiya said, “Our religion is the Constitution”.
This rhetoric, glamourising the bourgeois democracy and its constitutional regime, in fact is a maneuver to cover up the cobweb of rising poverty, social inequality, deprivation, unemployment, illiteracy and disease, which India remains mired into, with honeyed words. With red flag in their hands, the likes of Kanhaiya Kumar, are doing an obedient duty for capitalism and its political regime that even fascists and liberals cannot do.
Associates of Kanhaiya, are no less opportunist than him. Umar Khalid, a dropout from the ranks of Maoists, has leaned since then more and more upon the rightwing politics. Though he claims to have left Maoists for political differences, but these differences never saw light of the day. The fact goes that Umar Khalid has left Maoists to eke out a convenient living and a career for that in bourgeois politics.
Umar Khalid also demanded the release of Chandrashekhar while claiming that his Bheem Army is no danger to the nation. He called for unity among muslims and dalits. An ex-maoist, Umar also did make no mention of socialism or class struggle.
Like Kanhaiya and Umar Khalid, Shehla Rashid, is another bankrupt propagandist of bourgeois democracy. Associated with Stalinist CPI ML Liberation, she hardly has any fascination for revolutionary politics. Her sole plank in politics is her identity as a muslim that she taps every now and then for her sectarian politics. In the Rally, both Umar and Shehla had echoed the sentiments expressed by Kanhaiya that never transcend the bourgeois democracy.
Opening her speech at the Rally, with the words, “Multicolor salute to all friends”, Shehla Rashid, made a demonstrative attempt to distance herself from any semblance of Marxism. In her own way, Shehla, conveyed her aversion to what she assumes is Marxism and to which her Party CPI ML Liberation still makes occasional references. “Jai Bheem, Lal Salam” a reactionary cocktail of Ambedkarism and Stalinism, prepared by her party was her next rhetoric. She endorsed that the prime purpose of the rally was to demand the release of Chandrashekhar, the leader of the casteist Bheem Army.
Small audience in the rally was pulled from the Ambedkarite supporters of Chandrashekhar, with even smaller numbers from JNU AISA cadres. Despite the falling graph of Modi government, if the Stalinists and Amebdkarites, even put together, could not draw crowds to their meetings, this is for their renegade past. Both of them have again and again deceived the masses. Wherever the Ambedkarites or the Stalinists have risen to power, they have reinforced the capitalist regime and the pro-investor neo-liberal policies favouring the big business.
Mayawati had been notorious in political opportunism that included making alliances with core right wing parties like SP and even BJP. Her regime was of naked corruption that witnesses the rise of mafias like JP and Ponty Chaddha in UP. Ambedkarites like Jignesh offer no program different than Mayawati. Their only program is to substitute themselves for Mayawati in identity based politics of dalitism.
Like Ambedkarites, Stalinists are also agents of capitalism and hostile to worreathingkers and toilers. It was the Stalinist left front that carried out savage repression upon Naxalbari, banned strikes in IT sector in West Bengal, forcibly acquired the peasant lands in Singur and Nandigram in West Bengal and brutally crushed the peasant resistance against it.
Stalinists have long ago abandoned the working class and have turned their backs upon its class struggle and have become totally hostile to socialism. Their reformist bogey is submerged completely in the marsh of bourgeois democracy and its constitutional regime, where they are breathing their last.
It is for their love and respect for the bourgeois democracy and the Constitution, that Kanhaiya, Umar and Shehla have no hitch in sitting even at the tails of petty-bourgeois reformists like Prashant Bhushan and Jignesh Mewani, who outright reject Marxism, class struggle and revolution in favour of a subtle and saint capitalism. Far from being any fighters for democracy, the three are poor victims of a fascist assault upon JNU. Terrified of it, the three had immediately capitulated to the fascist appeal to nationalism and the bourgeois democracy under their feet.
The common aspect among them all is their hostility to the international working class and their adherence to national regime of Indian capitalists. None of them has any faith in the strength of the international working class to revolt and defeat its enemies. All of them agree among themselves that the bourgeois democracy is sacrosanct and it must be defended at all costs.
For revolutionary Marxists, repeating the words of our great teacher Lenin, Bourgeois democracy is nothing but concealed dictatorship of capitalists. From this angle, bourgeois democracy has to be fought against and overturned sooner than later by the revolution. Fascism is punishment to the proletariat for not doing this in time. The duty of Marxists is to fight out the regime of bourgeoisie, not to defend it. The defence of the bourgeois democracy and its constitution is the job of the servants of capitalism.
The frail argument of the pseudo-lefts that they are defending bourgeois democracy against fascism, is an outright deceit and a mockery. The advocates and defenders of bourgeois democracy are not fighters for the cause of revolution but paid guards of capitalists.
Our struggle to crush fascism, is never aimed at defence or restoration of the bourgeois democratic regime, but must be determinedly aimed at a stride forward to socialism. We do not strive, struggle or propose to eliminate fascism to prevent the death of bourgeois democracy, rather we must struggle to destroy bourgeois democracy even before fascists can breathe inside its womb.
Rally was organized chiefly by Jignesh Mewani, newly elected MLA from Vadgam in Gujarat, who expected to make more fortunes in bourgeois political corridors by tapping to casteist identity politics through this rally. Stalinists and other fringe elements were tagged to the rally as an appendage to give the otherwise apparently reactionary caste politics, a democratic face.
Despite all bragging by the organizers of the rally, police or administration made no real attempts to block the rally in any way. However, the arrangements it made at Jantar Mantar for the rally, proved to be futile in view of very low turnout.
Under tremendous pressure of the baggage of Ambedkarite politics, an appendix of Bourgeois liberalism, Stalinists kept their hands off throughout the rally from even mentioning the taboo words like ‘working class’, ‘socialism’ or ‘revolution’.
While speakers at the rally lashed out at Modi government, none of them mentioned even for namesake the misdeeds and criminal past of the successive rightwing governments that had remained in power in the centre and states after 1947. The speakers spoke at the Rally seeking to create an impression as if all ills of today are manufactured by the three and a half years old Modi Government and that fascism can be fought without an overall struggle against capitalism.
Modi government is the custodian of bourgeois democracy today that oversees the administration of capitalism working. This rightwing government is taking out the policies of earlier regimes more aggressively and defiantly. But it is the corrupt misrule and no less exploiting policies of all preceding liberal governments, including that under Stalinists or in alliance with them, that have finally paved way for the emergence of fascism. Fascism has not come as a bolt from the blue, but has grown like gangrene inside the body of old capitalism, the liberal capitalism. The speakers at the Rally failed to mention even a single word of it. Given this, the Rally spoke not even somewhere close to any radicalism but in the language of a meek and weak appendix to Congress.
The speakers consciously segregated the criticism of Modi government from any criticism of capitalism or the other capitalist leaders and parties. This is not without reason! Stalinists and Ambedkarites both are looking for election alliances and tie-ups with Congress, RJD, SP and all other casteist and regionalist reactionary bourgeois parties and leaders that can be roped in opportunist coalitions.
Focal demand of rally amidst all rhetoric of unemployment, dalit repression etc. was the release of Chandrashekhar, the self styled chief of Bhim Army, arrested for fanning caste based riots.
None of the participants in the Rally or their parties had ever been serious even about fighting Fascists. All of them have turned deaf ears to the appeals of WSP to forge a workers’ iron front against fascists and to fight it on roads. The Rally failed to propose any fighting program of its own against fascism, except giving feelers for future opportunist alliances with bourgeois parties.
While turning their back upon working class, socialism and revolution completely, consciously refraining from even mention of these ‘bad and obscene’ words, Stalinist leaders, tapped and fostered religious sentiments repeatedly, in the rally. Kanhaiya Kumar of CPI, focused on the rhetoric around religion alongside his laughable appeals for the defence of bourgeois Constitution. After his implication in an apparently false case of sedition, terrified Kanhaiya Kumar has become an all time propagandist in defence of bourgeois democracy and its Constitution. His only program starts from and end up at the defence of the Constitution. Like his associate Ambedkarites, Kanhaiya Kumar continued chanting for and counting upon what the bourgeois constitution has given to the downtrodden in India and why it is necessary to defend the constitution and bourgeois democracy.
Underscoring the purpose of the Rally, exhorted a complaint Kanhaiya Kumar, “I want to make it abundantly clear that our sole purpose of coming here, is to defend the Constitution”. Appealing to nationalism and nationalist sentiments of his petty-bourgeois audience, Kanhaiya said, “Save the nation. This is your first responsibility”. Giving a wake-up call, not to workers or toilers, but apparently to the ruling capitalists, Kanhaiya said, “The decline in the reliability of the media is dangerous for the democracy. If you love your country, you will have to restore confidence in media because media is fourth pillar of the democracy”. “You think that labourers have no role in the country, you are wrong. If the labourer would not have constructed the building, then you could not have sit in the AC room of the building claiming the nation wants to know…”, in these words Kanhaiya made pitiable appeals to corporate media. Refraining from any mention of Marx, Lenin or even Bhagat Singh, Kanhaiya extensively quoted in his speech from Hindu epics like Tulsi’s Ramayan to make a point in favour of his sagely preaching for communal peace. To quote him, “Man is made by God, then why to fight in the name of religion”. Cleverly defending and making a victim of Modi out of Laloo Prasad Yadav, sentenced in infamous fodder scam, Kanhaiya retorted to Modi, “….had Laloo ji supported you, would he have been a thief or a saint”. Echoing Bheem Army, a core casteist Amebedkarite group, Kanhaiya spoke, “Bheem Army has rightly said that our caste is the caste of exploited”. Leaving no space for any doubts and doubly assuring himself and his audience, alongside the state, that his path is not the path of Bhagat Singh, i.e. the path of revolution, but a clear path of adherence and obedience to bourgeois liberalism, its democracy and the constitution, Kanhaiya exclaimed, “…..We have to raise a nation of the dreams of Bhagat Singh through the path of Ambedkar. We need not be violent in any case”. After paying tribute to Gauri Lankesh, a pro-Congress journalist, killed in the power struggle of the gangs, Kanhaiya said, “Our religion is the Constitution”.
This rhetoric, glamourising the bourgeois democracy and its constitutional regime, in fact is a maneuver to cover up the cobweb of rising poverty, social inequality, deprivation, unemployment, illiteracy and disease, which India remains mired into, with honeyed words. With red flag in their hands, the likes of Kanhaiya Kumar, are doing an obedient duty for capitalism and its political regime that even fascists and liberals cannot do.
Associates of Kanhaiya, are no less opportunist than him. Umar Khalid, a dropout from the ranks of Maoists, has leaned since then more and more upon the rightwing politics. Though he claims to have left Maoists for political differences, but these differences never saw light of the day. The fact goes that Umar Khalid has left Maoists to eke out a convenient living and a career for that in bourgeois politics.
Umar Khalid also demanded the release of Chandrashekhar while claiming that his Bheem Army is no danger to the nation. He called for unity among muslims and dalits. An ex-maoist, Umar also did make no mention of socialism or class struggle.
Like Kanhaiya and Umar Khalid, Shehla Rashid, is another bankrupt propagandist of bourgeois democracy. Associated with Stalinist CPI ML Liberation, she hardly has any fascination for revolutionary politics. Her sole plank in politics is her identity as a muslim that she taps every now and then for her sectarian politics. In the Rally, both Umar and Shehla had echoed the sentiments expressed by Kanhaiya that never transcend the bourgeois democracy.
Opening her speech at the Rally, with the words, “Multicolor salute to all friends”, Shehla Rashid, made a demonstrative attempt to distance herself from any semblance of Marxism. In her own way, Shehla, conveyed her aversion to what she assumes is Marxism and to which her Party CPI ML Liberation still makes occasional references. “Jai Bheem, Lal Salam” a reactionary cocktail of Ambedkarism and Stalinism, prepared by her party was her next rhetoric. She endorsed that the prime purpose of the rally was to demand the release of Chandrashekhar, the leader of the casteist Bheem Army.
Small audience in the rally was pulled from the Ambedkarite supporters of Chandrashekhar, with even smaller numbers from JNU AISA cadres. Despite the falling graph of Modi government, if the Stalinists and Amebdkarites, even put together, could not draw crowds to their meetings, this is for their renegade past. Both of them have again and again deceived the masses. Wherever the Ambedkarites or the Stalinists have risen to power, they have reinforced the capitalist regime and the pro-investor neo-liberal policies favouring the big business.
Like Ambedkarites, Stalinists are also agents of capitalism and hostile to worreathingkers and toilers. It was the Stalinist left front that carried out savage repression upon Naxalbari, banned strikes in IT sector in West Bengal, forcibly acquired the peasant lands in Singur and Nandigram in West Bengal and brutally crushed the peasant resistance against it.
Stalinists have long ago abandoned the working class and have turned their backs upon its class struggle and have become totally hostile to socialism. Their reformist bogey is submerged completely in the marsh of bourgeois democracy and its constitutional regime, where they are breathing their last.
It is for their love and respect for the bourgeois democracy and the Constitution, that Kanhaiya, Umar and Shehla have no hitch in sitting even at the tails of petty-bourgeois reformists like Prashant Bhushan and Jignesh Mewani, who outright reject Marxism, class struggle and revolution in favour of a subtle and saint capitalism. Far from being any fighters for democracy, the three are poor victims of a fascist assault upon JNU. Terrified of it, the three had immediately capitulated to the fascist appeal to nationalism and the bourgeois democracy under their feet.
The common aspect among them all is their hostility to the international working class and their adherence to national regime of Indian capitalists. None of them has any faith in the strength of the international working class to revolt and defeat its enemies. All of them agree among themselves that the bourgeois democracy is sacrosanct and it must be defended at all costs.
For revolutionary Marxists, repeating the words of our great teacher Lenin, Bourgeois democracy is nothing but concealed dictatorship of capitalists. From this angle, bourgeois democracy has to be fought against and overturned sooner than later by the revolution. Fascism is punishment to the proletariat for not doing this in time. The duty of Marxists is to fight out the regime of bourgeoisie, not to defend it. The defence of the bourgeois democracy and its constitution is the job of the servants of capitalism.
The frail argument of the pseudo-lefts that they are defending bourgeois democracy against fascism, is an outright deceit and a mockery. The advocates and defenders of bourgeois democracy are not fighters for the cause of revolution but paid guards of capitalists.
Our struggle to crush fascism, is never aimed at defence or restoration of the bourgeois democratic regime, but must be determinedly aimed at a stride forward to socialism. We do not strive, struggle or propose to eliminate fascism to prevent the death of bourgeois democracy, rather we must struggle to destroy bourgeois democracy even before fascists can breathe inside its womb.
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