[Marxism] Wallerstein and Mumbai-Resistance

[Philip Ferguson <plf13@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Immanuel Wallerstein wrote:
> When the Forum moved from Brazil to India, the Indian organizing
committee
> dropped the provision about parties. Still, the proscription against
> violence led to a split among the Indians. A small Maoist movement
organized
> a counter-Forum, called Mumbai Resistance-2004, on grounds across the
road
> from the WSF. And they denounced the WSF as a combination of
Trotskyites,
> Social-Democrats, reformist mass organizations, NGO's financed by
> transnationals - in short, a stalking-horse for quietism and
> counter-revolution. They specifically attacked the concept of the open
forum
> (merely a talk show, they said), the slogan (not "another world," but
> socialism as the objective, they said), and the financing of the WSF
(the
> fact that some money came from the Ford Foundation).


Well, three members of the Anti-Capitalist Alliance (NZ) went to
Mumbai-Resistance 2004.  Two of these are members of the Workers Party
(a pro-Mao but not Maoist) group and one is a member of revolution (a
pro-Trotsky but not Trotskyist group).

The Indian Maoist group who were the driving force behind MR-2004, are
not some wee sectarian group.  Their armed detachments control territory
in which 20 million people live, and operate over an area in which about
80 million people live.  They are also attempting to unite all the
splintered sections of the old Naxalite movement who are still committed
to revolution in India, as opposed to the CP and CP(M) who are both
involved in helping run Indian capitalism at state level.

They are highly critical of NGOs, because they see the role NGOs play on
the ground in India - and it ain't revolutionary!

One of the WP comrades who went to MR-2004 mentioned having an
interesting discussion with a Palestinian activist who was staffing a
Palestinian table expressed surprise that she'd been put in the arts and
crafts section but then realised that the whole WSF event was really an
arts and crafts festival.

The three ACA comrades did not merely attend a big conference in Mumbai
but also went on a fact-finding tour, witnessing first-hand the barbaric
repression carried out by the Indian state at local level - widespread
torture and assassination of peasants, especially peasant activists, and
active workers.

Below is an initial email by one of our comrades, Daphna, on the
fact-finding tour, which had to be conducted in semi-secrecy due to the
determination of the Indian state to prevent any kind of investigations
into its repressive activities at local level:


>From Daphna:
We've just finished a 5-day fact finding tour into
allegations of civil rights and democratic rights violations
in  Andhra Pradesh. It had to be conducted semi-secretly as
the state has never allowed foreign fact finding tours and
have refused Amnesty and Human Rights Watch permission to do
investigations in the region.

What we found was pretty horrific. The state repression is intense with
almost daily stories in the newspapers of fake encounters. People are
picked up by the police, tortured, killed. The next day a story appears,
it's always the same, the person fired on the police, they returned fire
in self defence, person killed.

The aim of the state is to terrorise the support base of the People's
War Party (a Maoist organisation with a mass base in that area) and make
it extremely difficult for them to operate in the region.

As well as encounter killings there were other forms of repression.
Teachers playing a leading role in a democratic organisation with 25,000
members were picked up, tortured and given death threats to themselves
and their families if they continued speaking out for the rights of
teachers and students. Their demands were mostly around opposition to
privatisation, the rights of the native language and the right to
organise and speak out.

Another civil rights worker we met had been run down by a
car at high speed. He suffered severe injuries and had just been
released after spending a month in hospital.

A professor at Hyderabad university we spoke with had been taken into
custody, tortured, told he was to be executed and left to wait 45
minutes. He wasn't killed then and there, but promised he would be if he
continued working for civil rights.

We spoke to a woman whose husband had been killed one
morning when he went to the shop. He was knifed in broad daylight. The
police were on the scene in minutes, including the chief inspector of
police. The man had been very vocal in opposing fake encounters, and had
led a campaign to get the bodies returned to relatives. He had received
death threats for months.

I met a woman and her two grandchildren; her daughter had
been cut up into 18 pieces, and the body parts scattered in different
areas. The family were extremely traumatised. The attack happened a year
ago and they were terrified of stepping outside their house. Her
daughter had been a popular singer with sympathy for the communist
movement.

We met trade unionists who worked at a rayon factory which employed
3,000 workers. The factory is located near a forest (rayon is made from
bamboo) where the People's War party has a guerrilla zone. Although some
of the unionists had no direct contact with the party they were
subjected to police terror as if they did. When PW guerrillas were
killed workers would be taken by police to identify them. If they said
who they were they would be implicated, if they wouldn't say they were
accused of protecting PW.

There were 10 people in the fact findng tour, and we divided into 2
groups. Our group managed to avoid police attention but the other lot
were contacted and spent a day in the police station being questioned.
We had been told before doing the tour that we might be deported, but
fortunately that didn't happen.

A press conference was held and an interim report was
released on the last day of the tour. We had to catch a
train a few hours before the press conference, but I heard
it went well and was covered in all the AP papers and on tv
in that state. Interestingly, the press is very sympathetic
in AP.

In our time there we didn't hear a single word against the Maoists from
any of the people we interviewed. There is a long history of struggle in
Andhra Pradesh, going back to the 1940s, so the communist movement there
is deeply entrenched.

Despite the horrors the people were determined to stand up
to the repression. One family was asked how do they maintain their
courage. They answered, because they have the support of the people.

The message people repeatedly asked us to convey is that
India is not a democracy, that is all a sham. The system is fascistic to
the core.









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