A Leaflet by the Sramik Sangram Committee (SSC) & Krishak Committee (KC) published on 24 April 2008
Right to Fight and Organize is Jeopardized!
Will you call it sedition if someone opposes the policy of Globalization-Liberalization which on the one hand crushes the workers, compels them to work at 50-60 Rs a day by contract work at appalling terms and conditions, and on the other hand despoils agriculture, intensifies pauperisation of peasants and compels them to suicides? Is it a crime to stand in support of the slowly erupting fights of the people of the ‘lower classes' or lower strata who are distancing themselves from all established parties, and to help them so that they can organise themselves independently to take their own fate in their own hand?? And is it ‘just' if for that ‘crime' one has to spend months in prison? Just imagine, is it a punishable offence to oppose or to resist the industrialization policy that was chalked to the benefit of big capitalists and the neo-rich ‘upper-class'?
Will one be booked by charge of sedition for standing in support of the fighting people of Singur and Nandigram, for admiring their struggle, for calling on the agricultural labourers and poor peasants to organise separately (from other strata)? Yes, for this very ‘crime' Sramik Sangram Committee activist Mithu Ghosh is spending almost two and half months in prison being charged for ‘sedition'. Even the High Court didn't grant bail. Police said that Mithu Ghosh belongs to CPI (Maoist) and courts accepted that Mithu is a Maoist leader!
This is a matter of concern for the people who, shaking off their prolonged inertia, have started struggles independently in the factories and fields for a slightly better life and livelihood. We have been witnessing for quite some years that spontaneous resistance struggles of workers and peasants are emerging wherever assaults of globalisation, liberalisation have been intensifying and the drive and plans for super profit extraction are advancing; and in each such case police and administration of the governments have been jumping on the struggle with appalling barbarity, be that in the anti-SEZ fights of Kalinganagar or Nandigram or anti-POSCO struggle or in the case of resistance struggle of HONDA workers or the struggle and organisation formation of workers in West Bengal dissociating from all old established Trade Unions. Impatience of Police, Administration, governments are on the rise. Now the question is: if the arbitrary actions, injustices, oppressions of the police and the govt administration remains unquestioned by the judiciary, by the legal framework of the system, then to what terrible days are we heading? Even if the right to fight and organise remain de jure, will that de facto have any meaning? CPIM leaders will say that any particular person or whoever is a Maoist, the police-administration will accept that; but will the judiciary too will put its seal on that? If this trend continues then will that remain in the confine of putting just a label of ‘Maoist' or this or that on anybody as much as the resistance struggles of workers-peasants will increase? If this trend continues then only a bare skeleton of ‘democracy' will stay behind in our country after sucking the life out of the remainder of democracy that is there at present. Is the ruling class is trying to steer our country to that end – this is the matter of anxiety.
Incidentally, after Mithu's bail plea was rejected by the High Court, we heard it while talking with several people, many lawyers were surprised by this rejection. They have reasons too. For example, suppose the materials that were carried by Mithu when he went there last time. These included “Sandhikshan” which is in circulation since 1972, “Sramik Istahaar” which is in circulation officially from (registered in) 1978 (published since 1974). “Krihak Path” has crossed 28 years too. apart from those there were several leaflets-handbills of Sramik Sangram Committee and Krishak Committee. “Sandhikshan” started its journey in 1972 opposing both the revisionism-reformism of the left parties and the left adventurism of CPIML as expressed by their lines of Trade-Union-Boycott, Election-Boycott, Annihilation-of-Class-Enemy, etc. That same tradition has been continuing for 36 years. Even in the face of huge impediments that journal has been holding high the banner of class struggle on the one hand, and on the other, has been opposing the line of some isolated ‘armed' ‘actions!' detached from the mass-movements, and tried to educate the advanced elements of the working class so as to help them become class-conscious. ‘Sramik Istahaar' is also a journal meant for the workers which focused on the necessity of emerging as a ‘class for itself' along with discussing various problems of the trade union movement. Similarly, the target audience of the ‘Krishak Path' are the agricultural labourers and poor peasants. The organisation, the Sramik Sangram Committee (set up in 1978), of which Mithu is a member, is active in helping Trade Union movement in several industries including Garden Reach Ship Builders, Hindustan Unilever, Bharat Battery, ARCO etc etc, and actively helping the fighting workers to become class conscious and attracted attention of the workers as to it is important to stand by the struggles of peasantry. We, in concert with “Sandhikshan”, severely condemned State Terror. And also we opposed isolated ‘militant' or ‘armed' actions unconnected with the peoples struggle, and we opposed that because those actions do not help class struggle to develop, rather act as impediment to that.
Anyway, by the presence of the abovementioned journals and our literatures which were really there with Mithu at the time of his arrest, it is indeed not possible to term him as a “Maoist” and to put him in prison. So then the police added, with miniscule-handwriting, name of some Maoist literature in their “seizure list”. That these names were planted with mal-intention is visible to anybody who will care to glance over the seizure list submitted to the court by the police. But even this glaring fabrication and so on went unnoticed by the courts! It is not just astonishing, it is of grave concern.
But friends, there is something more, and that is more perturbing. The workers and peasants are alienating themselves from established parties and building up new struggles and struggling organisations – and we find an unambiguous signal from here that both the CPIM and the govt-administration-police are trying to gag these new fights and organisations by intimidation, by terror. Have you ever seen or heard that if an activist of an organisation is arrested (of course by false charges) all leaders of that organisation are accused in that same case! Among those leaders are such people too who have been acting as editors of such publications as Sandhikshan, Sramik Istahaar, etc for more than last 30 years. How severer will be the attacks on the right to fight and organise – that only future can tell; but undoubtedly, what is happening today is of course dangerous.
Sramik Sangram Committee and Krishak Committee are there with the struggles of working class and agricultural labourers, poor peasants and rural people of ‘lower' strata, and so they will be despite state terror. But more important is the fact that after being crushed for a long period the workers and toiling poor of the villages are slowly reawakening in spontaneous resistances, and no assault whatsoever can stop this reawakening. By their struggle they will protect their right to fight and organisation and will march forward towards establishing true democracy.
Sramik Sangram Committee & Krishak Committee
For the Right to Fight & Organise
Workers-Peasants' Protest Meet
3rd May, 3 PM, Moulali Yubakendra
Kamal Tewari (Cell – 9903592064), J – 33, Paharpur Road, Kolkata – 700024, on behalf of the two organisations ; printed from Royal Printers, Garden Reach.