India: West Bengal chief terrified of Maoist students

The following video Mamata Banerjee, the anti-communist chief minister of West Bengal becomes angry and storms out of a television station as she suspects students in the audience of being Maoist cadres or supporters. Thanks to B and BJ for pointing this out. 

Indian state ‘discovers’ red Naxal village

The CPI(Maoist) has very deep roots among the people, gaining support in areas that the Indian state was, apparently, not even aware of.

The piece originally appeared at the Hindustan Times. Thanks also to The Prison Gates Are Open site for making it available.

By Harinder Baweja
April 22, 2012

Helicopters were kept on standby for casualty evacuation; targets were chosen with care after studying satellite images and the troops were warned — the encounters would be fierce and the naxals could be in the hundreds, even thousands. After weeks of planning, security forces armed with automatic rifles, satellite phones and Swedish Carl Gustav rocket launchers made their very first foray into the dense Abujhmad jungle, straddling the two states of Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh.  Abujhmad, or ‘unknown hill’ — 6,000 sq km of thick forest — has not been surveyed since the British.

As part of the operation, security forces had zoomed in on a map of the area with the help of Google Earth, on to a couple of structures they identified as a ‘naxal camp’. A plan was prepared to go in and take out the naxalites. The mission had a second aim — the stronghold had to be psychologically breached, since it is as much home to the naxals as it is a zone ‘liberated’ of all government control.

India: An economic analysis of the Nonadanga evictions

Nonadanga residents

Millions of people in India build their homes and shelters on land technically ‘owned’ by the state. In West Bengal, the Trinamool Congress government has been selling off this land to corporations, which means the squatters and slum residents are brutally evicted. All in the name of ‘development’.  Recently officials have set their sites on the Nonadanga slum in Kolkata, attempting to displace residents and jailing all who resist. The following article in Radical Notes provides a useful political and economic analysis of the situation.

Nonadanga is at just a stone’s throw from the eastern metropolitan bypass behind such glitzy corporate hospitals like Fortis, Ruby and Desunand and plans are on to transfer the land at throwaway prices to big real-estate projects by ‘Urbana’ and IT hubs. Obviously, in such a strategic location in a metropolis, they will not tolerate slums and ‘all these dirty people’.

Nonadanga: Against Repression and Arrest

April 11, 2012

by Parag,
Krantikari Naujawan Sabha

Condemn Repression in the name of ‘Development’ of the ‘Beautiful’ !
Demand Immediate Release of Arrested Dissenters !!

The ‘beautiful’ and the ‘developed’ entwined as it is with power, must make war on its underside, the ‘ugly’, the toiling, and demolish it, hide it under the shine of corporate towers and election promises. The brutal violence of the present process of ‘development’ in India comes buttressed with State Repression. This is exposed yet again when the Trinamool-led West Bengal government with its brute police force and Kolkata Municipal Development Corporation (KMDA) bulldozed and burnt the houses of 800 slum-dwellers in Nonadanga, South Kolkata on 30th March 2012 in the name of ‘beautification’. This is backed up with continuous state repression- residents who tried to resist their homes being demolished were beaten, picked up and put into police vans. Picking up pieces from their broken homes, setting up temporary shelters with vinyl sheets and a community kitchen,

CPI Maoist statement on the arrests and torture of activists

Thanks to Revolutionary Frontlines for publishing this statement.

Ramakrishna of the CPI(Maoist)

CPI (Maoist): “Condemn the arrests and torture of Maoist activists in Kolkata and Mumbai!”
COMMUNIST PARTY OF INDIA (MAOIST) — CENTRAL COMMITTEE — Press Release — March 2, 2012

In the last week of February 2012, the police have arrested activists of our Party including some senior cadres from Kolkata and Mumbai. On the specific intelligence inputs provided by the murderous APSIB, joint forces of police and STF of AP, Maharashtra and West Bengal have raided the shelters of our comrades in Kolkata and Mumbai suburbs and arrested at least nine comrades including two women comrades. Comrades Sadanala Ramakrishna, Deepak Kumar Pargania, Sukumar Mandal, Bapi Mudi and Sambhu Charan were arrested from Kolkata while Comrades Dinesh Wankhede, Aasimkumar Bhattacharya, Suman Gawde and Paru Patel were picked up from Thane in Maharashtra. Comrades Sadanala Ramakrishna alias Santosh (62) and Aasimkumar Bhattacharya (65) were the seniors among the arrested. Senior comrade Sadanala Ramakrishna has been working for the revolution for at least four decades. He has been ailing with serious health problems for so many years. A mechanical engineer graduated in prestigious Regional Engineering College (REC) of Warangal from where martyr leaders like Surapaneni Janardhan and Azad were emerged as great revolutionaries of their times, Comrade Ramakrishna sacrificed his bright life for the cause of liberation of the downtrodden.

Both the two women comrades arrested – Vijaya and Suman – have been undergoing medical treatment for some time staying in the shelters outside the struggle zones. Particularly, comrade Vijaya has been suffering from serious heart problems.

The police forces, better known for worst kind of cruelty, have been torturing these comrades mentally and physically in custody. They have foisted several false cases against these comrades so that they could be languished behind the bars forever.

On one hand the ruling classes are asserting that these arrests are a big success for them and on the other hand, they are trying to portray our comrades as dangerous criminals claiming that they have recovered huge amounts of cash and other material that is used for making arms.

These arrests are nothing but a part of Operation Green Hunt (OGH), i.e. the ‘War on People’, which has been underway since 2009. The comprador ruling classes in connivance with their imperialist masters, particularly with the US imperialists, have unleashed this brutal war of suppression in the poorest parts of India so that their neo liberal policies of plunder of resources could get going unhindered. They are particularly targeting the revolutionary leadership and eliminating them. As the Pentagon itself claimed recently, the US Special Forces are not only actively involved, but also assisting their Indian counterparts on the ground in the counter-insurgency operations aimed at eliminating the revolutionary leadership. This fact also shows us that the US has been patronizing in the ongoing OGH making the values such as freedom, independence, and sovereignty of our country a joke. The exploiting rulers of our country are daydreaming that this movement can be suppressed if its leadership is wiped out.

Revolutionary movement cannot be crushed with arrests and murders. The bars of the dungeons can not restrict the revolutionary ideas from spreading among the vast masses.

The CC of CPI (Maoist) strongly condemns these arrests and inhuman torture being inflicted to them. We demand immediate and unconditional release of these comrades, as well as all of the political prisoners languishing in various jails in all corners of our land. We also demand to lift all the false cases foisted against these comrades.

(Abhay)

Spokesperson, Central Committee, CPI (Maoist)

India – Days and Nights in the Heartland of Rebellion

This article was originally published by Sanhati.  We thank them for making this available.

This is the Introduction.  In the coming weeks SAREV will publish the entire article.

Days and Nights in the Heartland of Rebellion

Gautam Navlakha

When every abuse has been hurled and epithet employed against the Maoists, half-truths and untruths begin to acquire wings. They are diagnosed, dissected, and demonized; the intelligentsia ae reluctant to face facts. Yet we are still compelled to demystify reality  and to answer some fundamental questions: Why this war? Who are these people, the “single biggest threat” to India’s internal security. What is their politics? Why do they justify violence? How do they perceive their “people’s war”, their political goals and themselves.? How do they intend to take a leap from their forest strongholds into the world outside?

US special forces on the ground in India, stationed in Nepal

BBC News reports that US special forces are “present” but “not stationed” in India. According to a Pentagon commander, these forces are training the Indian state in counter-terrorism measures. Though the article does not mention India’s Maoist insurgency, it can be assumed that the training provided by US special forces will be used against the CPI(Maoist) and other red militants as well.

Furthermore, the Pentagon official does confirm that US forces are not just “present,” but stationed in Nepal on a semi-permanent basis, no doubt with the intention of crushing any insurrection in Nepal. It is well-known that US forces have a close relationship with the Nepalese Army, but it is disturbing that the Pentagon is now leaking this information to international media.

The article notes that “US teams were also present in…Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Maldives.”

We ask our readers to spread this information to as many sources as possible.

Pentagon commander says US special forces in India

US special forces are present in five South Asian countries, including India, a top Pentagon commander has revealed.

US Pacific Commander Admiral Robert Willard said the teams were deployed to help India with their counter-terrorism co-operation.

The US and India were working together to contain Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based militant group blamed for the 2008 Mumbai attacks, he said.

The US embassy in Delhi clarified that the troops were not stationed in India.

Odisha: Thousands of land grab protesters attacked by security thugs

The following joint statement has been circulating online. It details mass repression against unarmed demonstrators perpetrated by private security forces of the Jindal steel plant, owned by one of India’s richest families. On January 25, thousands were protesting to demand the compensation that had been promised to them (by both the O.P. Jindal Group and the government of Odisha) for the land stolen to build the plant. Hundreds have been reported wounded and hospitalized. The masses in this region, part of the “Red Corridor” of revolutionary power in central India, have also been facing the brunt of terroristic repression by the state police forces and paramilitary groups during the anti-Maoist Operation Green Hunt. Thanks to Women Against Sexual Violence and State Repression. [Introduction by Joe]

Brutal Corporate Attack on Peaceful Protesters in Odisha

February 6, 2012

We are extremely shocked and distressed over the barbaric inhuman violence on peaceful protesters especially woman by the security guards and hired goons of Jindal steel plant in Angul, Odisha.  There has been series of attacks on unarmed peaceful protesters against forcibly land grab all over Odisha.  On 25th January 2012 when the entire Nation was gearing up for the Republic day celebrations and the Indian ruling classes, the big business and the corporate media was busy trumpeting the arrival of India major economical power house these recurring brutal violence by the corporate goons on mass movements in ODISHA exposes the hollowness of our rulers claim of India being the world largest democracy.

Free Speech Radio: Interview with Arundhati Roy on Maoist revolution in India

Dorian Merina of Free Speech Radio News, a progressive radio program based in the United States that airs in over 100 cities nationally, recently conducted an interview with author Arundhati Roy on the Maoist revolution in India. The interview is wide-ranging, touching on her experiences while embedded with Maoist guerrillas in the Dandakaranya forest, as well as the murderous effects of the Indian regime’s Operation Green Hunt and the campaigns against Vedanta’s destructive mining operations.

“What is it that connects the Wall Street occupation to the people in
the forests? And I think what connects it is absolute exclusion of the
majority of the people in the world for the obscene benefit of a very
few.”

Listen to the audio here.

Mining operations stalled in Central India

Much of the February 28 strike action is happening in India’s cities, but there are reports of industries being shut down in rural areas as well. The following report from Zee News discusses the effects of the strike in Chhattisgarh, a heavily rural area in central India. Chhattisgarh is also a CPI(Maoist) stronghold, and an area where the Maoists have struggled against mining interests for years.

Strike hits mining in Chhattisgarh

February 28, 2012

Raipur: The nationwide strike called by the country’s trade unions has hit bauxite, coal and iron ore mining in mineral-rich Chhattisgarh, officials said on Tuesday.

Reports coming in from the state’s northern Surguja district say that bauxite mining has been severely hit at Mainpat area, about 450 km north from here. Aluminium major BALCO, in which Vedanta Resources Plc holds 51 percent stake, has mines in Manipat.

Contracted miners gathered in groups with flags and banners at mines and raised slogans against an alleged anti-labour policy of the Indian government. Dozens of trucks transporting bauxite from Mainpat to BALCO’s plant in Korba town were stranded on forested roads due to the strike.

Maoists in Manipur oppose burdens on children and families

The Imphal Free Press, an English language publication from the region of Manipur (currently occupied by the Indian state), reports on a press release from the Maoist Communist Party, Manipur. The Maoists have issued demands on local educational institutions in an effort to advance the new democratic revolution in the region and to fight for quality education for the oppressed masses here.

[Intro by Joe]

Maoist warns private schools to forego multiple dress code, other extravagances

The Maoist Communist Party, Manipur in a press release by its publicity secretary Nonglen Meitei came out strongly against the imposition of two or three sets of uniform on its students by private schools.

It stated that the multiple uniform sets caused unnecessary financial burdens to the parents especially those belonging to the financially underprivileged section. The Maoist`s statement assured that the party stands against such exploitation and will not remain a mute spectator.

Feeling like a slumdog millionaire: Gujarati textile workers strike, organize

Working folks are rising across India. Labor unrest and workers’ struggles have exploded all over the country, parallel to the intensification of adivasi tribal people’s movements and battles for popular self-determination from Kashmir in the northwest to Manipur in the northeast. Amidst this wave, activists have published a report on a strike at a massive textile factory in Ahmedabad, the largest city in Gujarat (a province of over 60 million people in western India). The document shines a light on the working conditions in India’s burgeoning industrial sector and the autonomous struggle that has bursted out among the Reliance textile workers at the Naroda plant. Those familiar
with the contemporary labor situation in places like the United States or Europe may feel a certain sense of deja vu reading about the use of temporary workers, the management-friendly unions, and even the ban on carrying mobile phones at work.

Since February 2nd of this year, the 5,000 Reliance Textile Industries workers have been on strike. They have formed a new, independent union and published a list of demands, which are reprinted here. Thanks to Sanhati for publishing this report. [Introduction by Joe]

Gujarat – A Report on the Workers’ Strike in Reliance Textile Industries, Naroda plant, Ahmedabad

February 8, 2012

[The report was received from activists who recently visited the striking workers at the Reliance plant. – Ed]

Highly exploitative wage structure and abysmal working conditions have led the over 5000 workers to strike work in the primary manufacturing plant of Reliance Textile Industries in Naroda, Gujarat, which is at a halt since 2nd February 2012. While the company posted its highest ever turnover of over USD 44 billion and its net profit increased to USD 3.6 billion, workers in the factory (‘dressing up India’ with ‘fabrics which make you feel like a millionaire’ its website says) which started this empire’s journey find their lives getting cheaper by the day.

Jan Myrdal: On building international solidarity with the Indian revolution

Swedish author Jan Myrdal speaks in India

Jan Myrdal is a Swedish author who has written extensively on revolutionary communist movements worldwide, including works like his well-known Report from a Chinese Village (1963) as well as his recent book Red Star Over India.

He recently spoke in India at the Forum Against War on the People in New Delhi. What follows is the text of a speech Myrdal delivered at the Forum. Thanks to Democracy and Class Struggle for pointing this out. (Introduction by Joe). 

Let’s Stand Against the Indian State’s War on People

Forum Against War on People–Public Meeting, Rajendra Bhawan, DD Upadhya Marg, New Delhi, 6 February 2012

(The text of the speech of Jan Myrdal, internationally well-known writer for his support for the people’s movements world-wide)

Dear friends,

I want to say something on the international solidarity movement with the peoples of India.

We are here because there is an ongoing war against the peoples of India by the Indian state itself or – to put it more charitably – by dominant sections of the Indian state machinery. You as Indian citizens want to stop this war. I and other friends of India abroad are trying to organise an international solidarity movement with the people of India against the horrors of this war.

February 28: Massive strike in India

Workers in India’s cities have an incredibly militant history, and the current moment is  hardly different. Now India’s trade union leaders are planning a massive strike on February 28. The following article, however, prompts questions: how well will revolutionary unions, reformist trade unions, and unions with Muslim members coordinate with unions affiliated with right-wing parties like Congress and the Hindu nationalist BJP? Will the strike present further opportunities for collaboration between revolutionary forces in the cities and rural scheduled castes and tribal peoples? Will the strike be effective in exposing the rotten foundations of India’s “shining democracy” to the world? 

Readers who are closer to these issues are encouraged to post their thoughts and clarifying information. 

The article originally appeared at The Hindu.

TUs gear for all-India strike

by Sunny Sebastian

February 5, 2012

Senior Communist Party of India leader and All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) general secretary Gurudas Dasgupta has termed the joint strike call by the trade unions on February 28 as the biggest show of unity by the working class and the poor.

All the leading trade unions, including the INTUC (Indian National Trade Union Congress), affiliated to the Congress, and the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh of the Bharatiya Janata Party, besides the Left unions — the CITU (Centre for Indian Trade Unions) and the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) — will participate in the strike.

Indian state, UK capital collaborate to terrorize tribal people

The process Marx called “primitive” or “original” accumulation–pushing people off the land they use to reproduce their lives, and turning them into landless workers–is the front line of struggle in countries like India. In Marx’s day, it was largely a process carried out by the private and state bourgeois forces within one country. In the video and article below, we see a contemporary instance of this process, where a capitalist firm in an imperialist country (here, the UK), unites with the Indian national bourgeoisie–in this case a state corporation–to brutalize and displace tribal peoples. 

This situation is relevant to the discussion of revolution in the Third World below, As Siva wrote in a comment:

The revolutionary potential of the national bourgeiosie as a class has been virtually depleted and now, if at all any section of the national bourgeiosie is contributiong to the anti-imperialist struggle, it is because of specific conditions obtaining in countries and regions under specific global conditions.

The article appeared at Revolutionary Frontlines.
.

India Land Grab: Forced Evictions in Orissa

January 13, 2012
by Jason Overdorf

India’s great land grab continues, with police forcibly evicting tribal villagers in Orissa from land sold to UK-based Vedanta Resources to use as a toxic waste dump, Amnesty International reports.

The evictions come amid a fraught battle between the mining industry and India’s tribal peoples, as well as environmental activists.  Orissa is among India’s poorest and least developed states, but its mineral riches have led to a breakneck race to strip the land of iron, bauxite and other metals needed to fuel the country’s infrastructure and manufacturing sectors.

To gain access to these riches, however, the state government has conspired with industry to run roughshod over the rights of its indigenous peoples, according to their advocates.  Local resentment has also helped to make Orissa one of the flashpoints in India’s simmering Maoist insurgency — a crisis that recently resulted in the deployment of some 50,000 police and paramilitary personnel.

Earlier, Amnesty alleged that Vedanta has done nothing to clean up environmental damage at the site of its Lanjigarh aluminum refinery, after the High Court of Orissa once again supported the central government’s decision to reject Vedanta Aluminium’s plans to expand the facility after finding the project violated India’s environmental laws.

“Research by Amnesty International and other local and international groups documents the serious and continuing pollution caused by the refinery’s operations,” Amnesty said in a press release. “Despite the string of decisions against Vedanta, the company has failed to remedy the pollution.”

Vedanta has vowed to challenge the case again in the Supreme Court.

In 2010, similar accusations of rampant violations of laws designed to protect forests and the environment prompted India’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry (MoEF) to cancel permission for a $1.7 billion bauxite mining project in Orissa’s Niyamgiri Hills — an area held sacred by the local tribe.

The state-run Orissa Mining Corporation (OMC) has challenged the cancellation, and on Monday the Supreme Court fixed April 9 for a hearing on the company’s challenge of cancellation,according to India’s Business Standard newspaper. The court had earlier fixed January 30, as the date for final hearing and disposal of the case.

But Vedanta’s activities — and troubles — are only the tip of the iceberg.

Local villagers are also battling against the allotment of land to Korean steel giant Posco — a deal that represented the largest foreign direct investment ever attracted to India when it was signed six years ago — and the much ballyhooed project exists only on paper.  Despite being owned by the government, OMC is under investigation for alleged illegal mining activities.  And the Congress Party — in the opposition in the state — has lambasted the government for failing to shut down many illegal operations, despite its claims it has shuttered nearly 500 out of 600-odd mines in the state.

Orissa: Police assault, arrest villagers defending their land from eviction

Amnesty International demands that charges be dropped on 47 protesters facing charges (including “attempted murder and rioting”) for protesting forced eviction in Orissa, India. The land is being taken from these people and sold to British-owned Vedanta Aluminum to build a toxic waste dump. Maoists in India have been involved for years in organizing widespread resistance against Vedanta’s land grabs in tribal areas. This video shows footage of adivasis (Indian tribal people) demonstrating against the eviction and the resulting police violence against them. (Thanks to Joe for the intro)