[Marxism] ML International Newsletter: November-December 2004 (plain text)

[CPI-ML Intl Liaison Office <cpiml_elo@xxxxxxxxx>]

ML International Newsletter
November-December 2004

 

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An update on news and ideas from the revolutionary
left in India.

Produced by: Communist Party of India
(Marxist-Leninist) Liberation international team

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Website: www.cpiml.org

Email: cpimllib@xxxxxxxxxx and cpiml_elo@xxxxxxxxx


 
Table of Contents 
1)       A Party in Search of an Auspicious President

2)       State-Maoist Encounter: Beyond the Euphoria
of Merger and Truce

3)       Capitalism and Population ? Obfuscation of
Reality

4)       Census and Nonsense: The Sangh?s Communal
Demography

5)       Bangladesh: Driven to Quagmire?

 

Indian Politics
 
A Party in Search of an Auspicious President
 

- Liberation, November, 2004.

 

 

With Advani back at the helm of the Bhartiya Janata
Party (BJP), the long expected reorganisation of the
party has finally begun. Advani has started its third
presidential term by paying a highly symbolic visit to
the RSS headquarters at Nagpur and accusing the
Congress of ?appeasing? the Left and playing with the
country?s security. Another old war horse of the BJP,
Madan Lal Khurana is also likely to end his
gubernatorial sojourn in Rajasthan and return to Delhi
to revive the party?s sagging fortunes in the capital.


 

In the aftermath of the Lok Sabha poll debacle the
party top brass has periodically been going into an
introspective huddle, but nothing definitive seemed to
have emerged so far from such soul-searching
exercises. Introspection apart, during the last six
months the party also launched at least four
high-profile campaigns ? the anti-Sonia crusade, the
tirade against tainted ministers, the tiranga yatra
and the Savarkar satyagraha. All of them began with a
promising bang but ended with a rather pitiable
whimper. And now the Maharashtra election results have
signalled that there is no early end to the BJP?s bad
patch. In such a situation, what other option did the
BJP really have other than turning once again to Mr.
Advani!

 

The BJP?s present phase can perhaps be compared to the
crisis the Congress faced for much of the 1990s.
Nothing seemed to be going right for the Congress as
the party kept tumbling from one poll debacle to
another. Like the BJP experimenting with its string of
presidents from Murli Manohar Joshi and Jana
Krishnamurthy to Bangaru Laxman and Venkaiah Naidu,
the Congress too spent not a few years under Narsimha
Rao and Sitaram Kesri. But at the end of the day just
as the Congress went back to Sonia the saviour, the
BJP too has now returned to Advani the charioteer.

 

But even under Sonia Gandhi, the Congress has
experienced little positive revival ? witness Bihar
and UP, and now Maharashtra. If the Congress has come
back to power at the Centre, it has essentially been
by default as the BJP lost ground after Gujarat and
had to pay the price for the deepening agrarian
crisis. It now remains to be seen what Advani can
deliver for his crisis-ridden party. Those who are
expecting Advani to rework the aura of his Ayodhya
campaign would do well to remember that it was Advani
who had scripted the ?feel-good? fiasco and the Bharat
Uday yatra he undertook during the last elections only
helped illustrate the BJP?s fading fortunes.

 

It is true that Advani?s has been the biggest
contribution to the phenomenal rise of the BJP in the
post-1977 era. The BJP has so far passed through two
crucial phases in its evolution. In the first phase
Advani led it from the front, making the most of a
favourable national and international climate to
secure a powerful identity for the party and set an
agenda for national politics that was tailormade for
the BJP?s growth and consolidation. In the second
phase his role was more of a backseat driver or at
times that of a co-pilot, enabling the BJP to forge a
coalition and return to power for a full term after
being pulled down prematurely in the first attempt.

 

But the BJP?s otherwise smooth rise has been
punctuated by two major jerks causing countrywide
convulsions, the demolition of the Babri Masjid and
more recently the Gujarat genocide. The BJP has
definitely had to pay a big price for these two
chapters; after Ayodhya the party has never really
been able to retrieve its position in UP even though
it did manage to share power with the BSP a couple of
times, and now following Gujarat the party finds
itself weakened in its earlier stronghold of western
India. And beyond its traditional pockets, the party
has also had to suffer quite heavily in all its
potential growth regions except Karnataka.

 

Some friends of the BJP would like to see it grow as a
robust rightwing party avoiding ?aberrations? like
Ayodhya and Gujarat.  Well, for the BJP Ayodhya and
Gujarat are not aberrations, but major milestones, and
the ideology of Hindutva is bound to propel it
periodically to more such milestones. When the BJP
talks of returning to its ideological moorings, it
talks not merely of more market and less government,
an agenda that all governments have been pursuing for
at least the last two decades, but precisely about
more Ayodhyas and more Gujarats that give the BJP its
ideological fervour. India has so far rejected this
ideology, but the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS)
cannot be expected to give up so easily.

 


Indian Politics

 
State-Maoist Encounter: Beyond the Euphoria of Merger
and Truce
 

- Liberation, November, 2004.

 

After few rounds of proxy talks conducted through
mediators and emissaries, the Andhra Pradesh
government and the Peoples? War Group (PWG) leadership
have now embarked on a course of direct talks. As we
go to press, after four days of talks, the PWG leaders
have been escorted back to their jungle hideouts. The
government has expressed satisfaction with the
progress of the talks. At the end of four days, the
PWG-Janshakti leaders have resented the government?s
attitude, but they are nevertheless keen to continue
the dialogue. In fact, they want the next round to be
held on 17 November, when the leaders are supposed to
resurface again to attend a rally in Hyderabad, while
the government has proposed the next round in
December. 

 

Apart from this agreed decision to continue the
dialogue, the other outcome of the talks is an
official announcement regarding appointment of a
certain committee to examine the issue of availability
and distribution of ceiling-surplus lands in the
state. But immediately after the talks, the Chief
Minister of Andhra Pradesh has ruled out any
redistribution of land that has already been
transferred to corporate houses and foreign companies
in and around Hyderabad. As for the most contentious
issue of the PWG being allowed to retain and carry
weapons, it remains a point of discussion and the
ceasefire would continue till the dialogue is on.

 

In a calculated move, on the eve of the talks the PWG
announced its merger with the Maoist Communist Center
(MCC). The new formation has been named as the
Communist Party of India (Maoist). Media analysts have
commented on the military and financial implications
of this merger. Just as the merger has added to the
military prowess and financial muscle of the
organisation, many see in this strength the seeds of a
future conflict over the control of these huge
resources. After all, not so long ago the PWG and MCC
were engaged in major clashes in Jharkhand.

 

Some commentators have also dealt with the legal
implication of the merger. Even as the Andhra
Government lifted the ban on the PWG in the state, the
national level ban on the organisation remained very
much in force, at least on paper, as the entire
schedule of organisations banned under Prevention of
Terrorism Act (POTA) has been incorporated into the
new Unlawful Activities Prevention Act. If the talks
had already made the ban largely redundant, the
formation of the new organisation has created a new
situation altogether. It may well be argued that the
new organisation is not banned at all and the
government is now confronted with the embarrassing
option of both continuing the dialogue and imposing a
fresh ban.

 

More importantly, what are the ideological
implications of the merger? At the time of formation
of the CPI (ML) in 1969, the MCC remained opposed to
the process and a major debate went on between the
MCC?s idealistic and federal outlook regarding the
formation of a communist party and the revolutionary
communist assessment of the urgent task of formation
of a new all-India party. It is not for nothing that
all these years the MCC never bothered to form a party
and remained content operating exclusively as an armed
formation. The PWG has had a different history. The
founders of the PWG were veterans of the Telengana
movement and the formation of the PWG was very much an
attempt to revive the CPI (ML).

 

Looking back, one can say that there were three major
attempts to revive the CPI (ML) after the initial
setback. In the aftermath of the Emergency it was the
PCC (Provisional Central Committee) led by Comrade SNS
which had emerged as the biggest and most widely known
organisation. But it disintegrated as fast as it had
grown and the group that still functions today under
the banner of the ?provisional? central committee is a
very poor shadow of its former self. The two other
attempts were based essentially on the strength of the
revolutionary peasant movement in Bihar and Andhra and
came to be known respectively as the Liberation and
People?s War streams.

 

In the initial years, the PWG too was very much
involved in mass activities. In the 1980s, the Radical
Students? Union and Rayatu Kuli Sangham had emerged as
organisations with an impressive mass following and
most of the PWG?s present base and political cadres
had developed through that practice. It was only in
the 1990s that the PWG relapsed into exclusively
?dalam? or squad activities and took an increasingly
anarchist, Left-adventurist turn.

 

With its present merger with the MCC, the PWG has now
historically moved out of the trajectory of the CPI
(ML). The rupture is indicated as much in the name of
the new party as in all its initial pronouncements. In
their own times Charu Mazumder (CM) and Kanai
Chatterjee represented two irreconcilably different
lines and approaches. The new party has attempted a
major feat in eclecticism by recognising both CM and
Kanai Chatterjee as the founders! What a sense of
history! Two men who had left sharply different
legacies are now being posthumously contrived to
collaborate in an act of magical rewriting of history
as co-founders of the new party! While the PWG is
prepared to give up the very name and legacy of the
CPI (ML), why do they need to drag CM?s name as a
founder of something which he never founded. The two
armed formations, the PGA of the PWG and the PGLA of
the MCC have also been merged. The new formation will
be known as the PGLA but December 2, the foundation
day of the PGA, would be observed as the foundation
day of the new PGLA! While the PWG seems to have
retained the organisational command of the new
organisation, the ideological-political perspective
and orientation of the new party seems to be heavily
influenced by the MCC?s variety of Maoism. Some real
example of give and take!

 

According to the first press communiqué issued by the
new organisation, its primary immediate task will be
to transform the existing PGLA into a full-fledged
People?s Liberation Army and the existing guerrilla
zones into base areas. Armed struggle is once again
proclaimed to be the principal form of struggle. In
fact, the communiqué even goes so far as to say that
the army will be the main form of organisation. In the
course of the revolution in China, Mao had referred to
the communist party, army and the united front as the
three magic weapons, but the centrality of the party
organisation was never in doubt in China. For the
Indian Maoists, however, the army is the party; armed
struggle is supposed to be the key link to the united
front, and mass activities are to be undertaken
precisely to serve the war.

 

The question naturally arises as to where do the
present talks with the Andhra government figure in
this scheme. We do not grudge the new formation?s
right to believe in the fantasy that it can just
militarily fight its way to power without bringing
about a shift in the balance of class forces through a
protracted political battle. The very fact that after
two decades of people?s war the PWG finds itself
negotiating with the state over its right to carry
weapons shows where exactly it has reached. One can
understand revolutionaries negotiating with the state
in a situation of dual power, but nobody in his right
senses would suggest that the Maoists are negotiating
from such a decisive position of strength. If, as the
Maoists claim, everything is supposed to serve their
military strategy, how exactly can the present talks
be expected to fulfil their military game plan?

 

Do the Maoists really expect their demands to be
fulfilled? Certainly they cannot be naïve enough to
expect that the Andhra Pradesh government can be
talked into abandoning the existing path of economic
reforms! Is the idea then merely to have a breathing
space and return to the old mould once the talks fail?
But does it then not indicate a desperate crisis
situation on the front of their armed struggle? Some
commentators believe that the idea is to win some
legitimacy by exposing the insincerity of the state.
In fact, some informed sources would like to view the
talks as a new turning point for the Maoists before
they take to mass political activities including
participation in elections.

 

On the political front, the Maoists have so far only
displayed a high degree of bankruptcy. In Bihar and
Jharkhand their political role has primarily been to
kill CPI (ML) leaders, activists and supporters and
extend armed vote-capturing support to the Rashtriya
Janata Dal (RJD) and its allies including the Congress
and the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM). In their own
citadel of Andhra Pradesh, the Maoists have only been
instrumental in helping the Congress regain political
power and initiative. If they are now holding talks
with the state to make a political or electoral
beginning, they will truly be adding a feather to
their trademark cap of revolutionary phrase-mongering
and political opportunism.

 

More than watching the Maoists, progressive democratic
forces will have to keep a watch on the game plan of
the Indian state. Few will currently buy Advani?s
allegation that by holding talks with the Maoists, the
Congress is playing with the country?s internal
security. After all, by the same token the BJP can
also be accused of having jeopardised national
security by negotiating with the Naga insurgents!
People would rather treat the talks as a sign of
political confidence and administrative prudence on
the part of the Congress government of Andhra Pradesh.
Along with the cosmetic repeal of POTA, the talks with
the Maoists constitute a ?liberal-democratic
credential? for the Congress. And once the talks fail,
the Congress will use precisely this credential to
expose the Maoists for their ?insincerity? and
?stubbornness?, to create illusion and engineer
splits, and to seek legitimacy for mounting a renewed
political offensive against Naxalism in particular and
the Left movement in general as well as for unleashing
a fresh campaign of repression. Real communists and
democrats must remain ready to resist such an
eventuality.

 

Population Special
 

Capitalism and Population ? Obfuscation of Reality

 

- Padma

 

Capitalism uses the ideology of population control to
obfuscate the issues of development. Since time
immemorial, poverty and other problems in the society
are thought to arise from the procreation of the poor.
This article will look at some aspects of population
and attempt to refute the myths around it.

 

Historical Background: Overpopulation and Population
Control

Thomas Malthus, the English clergyman and economist
propounded in his 1798 ?Essay on the Principle of
Population? that the population increases
geometrically but given the scarcity of natural
resources, the food supply increases only
arithmetically by a constant amount. He sought to
prove that the poverty and misery of the working class
under capitalism was secondary to the rapid growth of
the population and not from the capitalist
exploitation of the workers [6].

 

In the 1870s Malthusianism reappeared in the form of
Neo-Malthusianism. Neo-Malthusian analysts attribute
the growing impoverishment of the working people and
the major environmental problems like deforestation
and top soil loss to increased population pressures
[6]. In recent times, the US biologist, Paul Ehrlich,
has popularized the belief that overpopulation is the
main cause of the environmental crisis. His book ?The
Population Explosion? warns us that nature may end the
population explosion in very unpleasant ways [3]. It
is implicated that famines and AIDS are a direct
result of poverty and can be nature?s way of
controlling population.

 

The United States after World War 2 began to launch
population control programmes in nations that that it
feared would be lost to communist influence- these
came to be known as ?population powder-kegs? of the
underdeveloped world [7]. In the 1960s the
multilateral institutions such as United Nations Fund
for Population Activities (UNFPA) and the World Bank
took over the leadership from the U.S. Poverty
alleviation and economic development were the reasons
given for population control policies and
interventions in the 1960?s and the 70?s. The
environment became the focus for population
stabilization in the 1990?s [1]. A ?Population Summit?
in October 1993 in New Delhi represented by 58
national scientific academies called for planning
efforts to achieve zero population growth within the
?lifetime of our children?.

 

Population Policy and Family Planning in India and the
U. S.

In 1952 India launched a national programme
emphasizing family planning to the extent necessary
for reducing birth rates to stabilize the population
at a level consistent with the national economy. The
National Population Policy (NPP) 2000 affirms the
commitment of the government towards voluntary and
informed choice and consent of citizens while seeking
reproductive health care services and continuation of
target free approach in administering family planning
services. The Swaminathan Commission report, although
not revolutionary, explicitly recognized that future
reductions in population growth would depend on
changes in social and economic conditions of women and
underprivileged groups.

 

In the section titled ?Women and Children? the United
Progressive Alliance?s population stabilization
programme reveals similarities with the previous
National Democratic Alliance government?s documents on
reproductive and child Health. The programme will
target the fertility control of women to achieve its
goals in stabilizing the population. Targeted
population control programmes will begin in October of
2004 in 170 ?high order birth? districts in U.P,
Bihar, Jharkhand, M.P and Rajasthan where the average
number of children is more than two per family [10].
This goes against even the sentiments of the first
International Conference on Population and Development
(ICPD) in Cairo in 1994 and also the National
Population Policy (NPP) 2000 of India. Both the ICPD
and NPP 2000 recognized the need to move away from the
narrow contraceptive ? target approach of the past.

 

Approximately 48.2% of couples of 15-49 years of age
practice family planning methods in India [11].
Sterilization accounts for 71% of the contraception
practice in India. During the period 1975-76, with the
declaration of emergency, civil liberties were
suspended and a compulsory sterilization campaign was
carried out. There were 8 million sterilizations of
which most of the sterilizations were on men.
According to a government appointed commission
enquiry, 1774 deaths resulted from this sterilization
programme. Since 1977-78 female sterilizations have
increased significantly and account for 80% of all
sterilizations performed in India. Sterilization
targets sent down from New Delhi has led to ?target
fever? with doctors trying to out do each other in the
number of laparoscopic sterilizations performed in a
day. Mass sterilizations in India are performed in
many instances in unhygienic conditions leading to
infections and death of women. 44 women died in a
sterilization camp in Rajasthan in 1988 when a bicycle
pump instead of sophisticated techniques was used to
pump air into their bodies. A survey of a family
planning project in Vishakapatnam (A.P.) funded by
British Overseas Development Administration found that
some women had not recovered from post operative side
effects 3 years after the sterilization operation [1].


 

Long acting hormonal injectable contraceptives such as
Depot-Provera and NET-EN are being heavily promoted by
the private medical sector and it has been recommended
that they be added to the contraceptive methods
available in the National Family Planning Programme.
Heavy bleeding that sometimes occurs with these agents
can be particularly serious for already malnourished
women. Contraceptive implants like Norplant which has
a very low failure rate can be a very attractive agent
in population control programmes. Even in closely
monitored trials infections have occurred and this can
be particularly dangerous in clinics in India with
poor facilities. The public health system in India is
in a critical condition. The maternal mortality rate
at 540 per 100, 000 live births and the infant
mortality rate at 68 per 1000 live births are
appallingly high [9].

 

Girls continue to ?disappear? in India. The sex ratio
was 972 in 1901, 946 in 1951 and in 2001 is 933. The
2001 census registered a decline in the child sex
ratio in 80% of the districts in India. In 1991 only
Salem district in Tamil Nadu had a child sex ratio
below 850. In 2001, 49 districts have a ratio below
850. Sex selection is practised through infanticide,
discrimination in nutrition, health care and through
other barbaric methods.  Sophisticated techniques such
as amniocentesis are able to detect the gender of the
foetus and women are convinced or coerced into having
an abortion if the foetus is of female gender. The
Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques
(Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act and Rules 1994 ? as
amended up to 2002 (the PCPNDT Act) prohibits sex
selection by any person, by any means, before or after
conception. Many doctors ignore this act and also
ignore the Code of Medical Ethics in the Medical
Council Act, 1956 passed by the Indian Parliament.
According to government statistics, there are 2,379
registered ultrasound scan centres in Tamil Nadu
alone. Ultrasounds can be used to determine the gender
of the foetus with greater accuracy as the pregnancy
advances. In Chennai, 147 private nursing homes are
allowed to carry out medical termination of pregnancy
and sterilization. Even 2nd or 3rd trimester abortions
are being carried out if the gender of the foetus
turns out to be female [13]. A fine example of the
collusion between the medical establishment and
private interests! The roots of women?s oppression are
in the capitalist system which exploits the majority
for the enrichment of a minority. Capitalism feeds on
patriarchy and along with the feudal practices and
customs prevalent in India causes multiple forms of
oppression of women.

 

The United States just like India has a murky history
in regard to the control of women?s fertility. Since
the early 1900s, state statutes allowed eugenic
sterilizations on the ?feeble minded? or genetically
defective and institutionalized women. Between 1907
and 1964, 64,000 women were sterilized. In the 70?s,
lawsuits exposed involuntary sterilization of many
poor women by government funded clinics and private
doctors. Women of colour have been sterilized in far
greater proportions [2]. As regards the United States
population policy in other countries Elizabeth Liagin
in her book ?Excessive Force: Power, Politics and
Population Control? describes the coercive nature of
the American population policy in aid receiving
countries. A major study commissioned by the Pentagon
concluded that the American population control effort
should be given the same status as the development of
advanced weapons of war.

 

The Real Threat to Environment ? Population or
Capitalism?

In an extensive study of deforestation United Nations
Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD)
found an absence of any close correspondence between
deforestation rates and rate of population growth.
Large scale commercial farming, ranching, logging and
mining activities are mainly responsible for
deforestation. In Brazil, between 1966 and 1975, 11.5
million hectares of forest were cleared - 60% by
highway developers and cattle ranchers and only 17.65%
by peasants. In the Philippines, the dictator
Ferdinand Marcos supported by the U.S government and
the World Bank gave illegal concessions to logging
companies. This led to depletion of forest reserves
from 34.6 million acres to only 5.4 million acres
today [4]. Multi National Corporations (MNCs) such as
Mitsubishi, Maxus and Georgia Pacific are tearing
apart acres of tropical rainforest to supply timber
for Japan, North America and Europe. From the Vietnam
War to the wars in South America the U.S in cahoots
with the elite in those countries has bombed and burnt
forests and fields to destroy any resistance leading
to enormous environmental degradation.

 

In India, several communities have been affected by
Coca-Cola?s bottling plants which are depleting
groundwater sources. Not only that, high levels of
lead and cadmium have been found in the toxic sludge
released from the plants. In the Borra Reserve Forest
(AP), several mining leases have been granted to
private companies leading to destruction of several
houses for building roads. Mining exploration has left
deep holes that have made the land uncultivable.
Capitalism?s drive for profits causes unfettered
exploitation of the environment at the detriment of
human beings.

 

Population Myths and the Reality

While the population of the world increased from 1.6
billion in 1900 to 6.1 billion in 2000 the world gross
domestic product (GDP) has increased between 20 and 40
times [5]. Frederick Engels as early as 1844, wrote,
?Science increases at least as fast as population; the
latter increases in proportion to the size of the
previous generation?..and what is impossible for
science? But it is ridiculous to speak of
overpopulation while ?the valley of Mississippi (US)
alone contains enough waste land to accommodate the
whole population of Europe?.? It is only appropriate
to add at this juncture that 80% of the land in the
world is owned by 3% of the landowners. It is an all
pervasive myth that there just isn?t any space for the
growing population when the real problem is the
unequal distribution of land holdings.

 

Overpopulation is cited often as a cause for hunger
and malnutrition. This is needless to say an absurd
proposition. The Indian economist Raj Krishna
estimates that India alone is capable of increasing
crop yields to the point of providing the entire
world?s food supply. In 1990 the UN Food and
Agricultural Organization (FAO) report on the state of
food and agriculture estimated that with the present
technologies fully employed the world could feed 30-35
billion people. Amartya Sen has demonstrated that the
Bangladesh famine of 1974 ?occurred in a year of
greater food availability per head than in any other
year between 1971 and 1976." The anti peasant
character of the Indian state by implementing
indiscriminate import- export policies and the pro
rich-WTO agreement on agriculture is the cause for the
widespread suicides of farmers in India [12] and not
?overpopulation.? About 1.25 billion people, a quarter
of the world?s population, mostly from the
industrialised countries consume indirectly about 40%
of the world?s grain if the grain used to feed the
livestock they eat is also taken into account [1].

 

Mass migration of people from the rural areas to
cities results in blaming the already victimized poor
for all the problems of urban decay and squalor and is
explained in relation to prolific breeding. Mass
migration in India has occurred in the face of
destruction of people?s livelihood. More than 70% of
India?s population lives in the rural areas while
agriculture only contributes to 25-30% of the GDP. In
India the construction of big dams has led to the
displacement of 110 million people and this population
is then blamed for pressures on the land.  The real
issue is the confiscation of the resources under
capitalism by a small class of rapacious industrial
houses, their MNC allies and the big landlords which
leads to pauperization of the majority of the
population.

 

Lessons from Socialism

Lenin examined the question of child bearing and
opposed vehemently what he described as the
reactionary nature and ugliness of ?social
Neo-Malthusianism? of some intellectuals who asked
workers to practise birth control so that their
children would not be doomed to poverty. While
endorsing the freedom for medical propaganda and
protection of democratic rights he advised the workers
to conduct the most ruthless battles against
capitalism and build a bright future for children. ?We
are fighting better than our fathers did. Our children
will fight better than we do, and they will be
victorious.? Following the revolution in 1917, the
Soviet Union enacted laws that made the status of
women the most advanced in the world. Network of
maternity homes, nurseries and day care centres were
established so that women could take an active part in
all spheres of the Soviet society. The Soviet state
under the leadership of Stalin considered its people
and its children an asset and through socialism
improved the material and cultural wellbeing of all.

 

The Cuban Revolution triumphed in 1959 ushering in
tremendous improvement in the living standards for its
people. Cuban women have a life expectancy of 76 years
and the fertility rate is lower than 2% figures
similar to the imperialist countries. According to
Juan Carlos Alfonso, Director of the Centre for
Population and Development Studies, the low fertility
rate in Cuba barely covers the replacement level and
signifies that population increase will be only
slight. "This is a result of the high level of social
development achieved in Cuba and the progress made in
the status of women, as well as their massive
participation in the diverse tasks in the nation. All
of this has been accomplished despite a rigorous
economic blockade by the United States and in a period
of economic crisis from which very few nations would
have been able to recover."

 

In China after the revolution in 1949 top priority was
given to improving the health care with emphasis on
preventive medicine. Fertility decline started in the
1960s and planned parenthood was based upon the
emancipation of women, equality between the sexes and
heightened social and political consciousness. After
the revolution, China became a highly egalitarian
society in terms of income distribution and in meeting
the basic needs of people.  In the late 70s the turn
to ?market socialism? has led to a significant
widening of the income gap and with it marked
deterioration in the living standards including health
care. After 1980, coercive methods for population
control became more common and in 1983, 20 million
people were sterilized in a mass sterilization
programme. In 1991, 12.5 million people were
sterilized; this population programme has led to a
terrible impact on girls with a most skewed sex ratio
[4]. From a relatively normal ratio of 108.5 boys to
100 girls in the early 80s, the male surplus
progressively rose to 111 in 1990, 116 in 2000, and is
now close to 120 boys for each 100 girls at the
present time, according to a Chinese think-tank
report.

 

Conclusions

Immediate steps have to be taken to protect the rights
of all which includes reproductive rights that are
being threatened under the guise of ?population
control?. These steps will include 1) Exposing the
lies and myths of overpopulation being perpetrated by
the capitalist establishment at home and abroad.
Overpopulation is not the cause of poverty,
environmental degradation, malnutrition, starvation or
depletion of resources. 2) Concerted efforts have to
be taken by women?s groups to protest the targeted
population control programmes. In this regard it is
important to coordinate the struggles with groups
fighting for ?right to health care?. The struggle for
free universal health care has to become part of the
class struggle. Both men and women should have access
to a broad range of reproductive health services that
will include safe voluntary contraception including
abortions and sterilizations. To quote Bonnie Mass
from her powerful book- ?Population Target?, ?Planning
a family is seen as one of the many steps in the
process of liberation?.? 3) Finally, the revolutionary
communist movement has to provide the leadership to
unify all the different struggles for social change.
The workers and the peasants who create the wealth of
the Indian society have to take political power and
reorient the Indian economy to attain adequate living
standards for all. Population then will no longer be
the ?problem?.

References:

1.        Bandarage, A., Women, Population and Global
Crisis, 1997.

2.        Davis, S., Women Under Attack, 1988.

3.        Ehrlich, P.R., The Population Bomb,
1968.              

4.        Hartmann, B., Reproductive rights and
wrongs, 1995.

5.        Jan, A.U., Overpopulation: Myths, Facts, and
Politics, 2003.

6.        Lenin, V.I., The Emancipation of Women,
1934.

7.        Mass, B., Population Target, 1976.

8.        Murthy, L., Frontline, Sept 11-24, 1999.

9.        Narrain, S., In a Critical Condition,
Frontline, Vol. 21, Issue 12, June 05-18, 2004.

10.     Rajalakshmi, T.K., Growing Concerns,
Frontline, Aug. 27, 2004.

11.     Sharma, R.S, Rajalakshmi, M, Jeyaraj, D.A.,
Current status of fertility control methods in India,
Journal of Biosciences, Vol. 26, No. 4, November 2001.

12.     Shankar, V, Vidyasagar, R., Harvest of Death,
2004.

13.     Sridhar, L., Female Foeticide: The collusion
of the medical establishment, InfoChange News and
Features, August, 2004.

 

Population Special
 

Census and Nonsense: The Sangh?s Communal Demography

 

- Manisha Sethi

 

A comedy of errors was played out when the Census
Commission first raised the cry of spiralling Muslim
growth rate and falling Hindu growth rate, only to
rectify their schoolchild-like error by admitting that
the growth rate was not adjusted against the 1991
census figures, when the solitary Muslim majority
state was not included. So in fact now, with the
adjusted figures, Muslim population was not rising at
the rate of 36 per cent as declared earlier but at the
rate of 29.3 per cent?down from 32.9 per cent in 1991.
Indeed the Muslim growth rate registered a decline
greater than that of Hindus, which stood at 3.6 and
2.8 per cent respectively. Further, the decline in
Hindu growth rate could have been possibly triggered
not by falling birth rates but because several large
communities who had previously been recorded as Hindus
? the Jains, Veershaive/Lingayats in Karnataka and the
Sarna in Jharkhand - insisted on a separate
identification this time.

 

But the Hindutva brigade would not be pacified.
Praveen Togadia was particularly miffed at the
?adjusted figures? and threatened to move court over
the change whereby the Hindu population ?jumped from
80.5 per cent to 81.4 per cent?. He saw it as a
conspiracy to ?hoodwink? the Hindus about the actual
growth in Muslim population, which was poised,
according to him, to become a majority by 2111, unless
checked. Venkaiah Naidu announced that high Muslim
growth coupled with ?demographic invasion? by
Bangladeshi infiltrators should be a ?cause of grave
concern for all those who think of India?s unity and
integrity in the long run?, namely the Rashtriya
Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) and its affiliates. For Ram
Madhav, the RSS spokesperson, even the earlier
unadjusted figures do not measure up adequately.
According to him, ?our own study has shown much higher
growth [for the Muslims]?.

 

?Our own study?? True, the Organiser routinely lists
horror stories about the rising Muslim population, but
none of these lay claims to being a ?study?.  The
study under question, one can hazard a guess, is
Religious Demography of India by A.P Joshi, M.D.
Srinivas and J.K. Bajaj (Centre for Policy Research,
Chennai, 2003). With its plethora of tables and
statistics on census between 1881 and 1991, it is a
supreme example of how figures divorced from all
socio-economic contexts may be harnessed in the
service of a dangerous ideology. The basic thesis of
the ?study? is thus: The population of ?Indian
religionists? is steadily declining while that of
other religionists, namely Muslims and Christians, is
steadily rising, resulting in a fall of about 11 per
cent points for the former. The downward graph of the
Indian religionists and the upward, resurgent curve of
the non-Indian religionists ?will intersect at 50 per
cent mark just before 2061?, following which the
Indian religionists will be rendered a minority (There
is obviously no consensus in the Hindutva camp about
the precise date of the Doomsday: Togadia predicted
2111).

 

How do Messrs. Joshi, Srinivas and Bajaj arrive at
this calculation? Simple. They take liberties with
conceptual as well as geographical boundaries!
According to them, ?Indian religionists? include not
only Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists?which were in any case
defined by Article 25 of the Indian Constitution as
Hindus?but much more remarkably, also, Jews, Parsees
and Bahais. It is therefore only a residual category,
including under its denomination all those who are not
Muslims and Christians.

 

India, for them, is not the Indian Union but in true
Akhand Bharat style, subsumes India, Pakistan and
Bangladesh! By their own calculations for the Indian
Union, the fall in the population of Indian
religionists is only about 2 percent?nowhere as
dramatic as 11 per cent. Though by itself 2 per cent
is not significant, what worries them is that while
Indian religionists have been able to rebuff the
advance of Islam and Christianity and continue to form
an overwhelming majority in large swathes of areas,
there are certain regions where the Indian
religionists are under great pressure (Uttar Pradesh,
Bihar, West Bengal and Assam) or turning into a
minority (Kerala, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the
Northeast). The existence of pockets of Muslim and
Christian influence, say the authors, ?formed the
demographic basis of Partition of the country in
1947?, thus hinting that a rising Muslim and Christian
population signals another impending partition. L.K.
Advani who has written the Foreword to the book, in
his own words, was a ?victim? of religious demography
and thus urges all to take serious note of the
findings of the book. 

 

The spectre of ?Muslims overtaking Hindus in India? is
not of recent origin. It is as old as the census
itself and the communalist mythmakers drew sustenance
from it. For instance, O?Donnel, the Census
Commissioner for 1891 calculated on the basis of the
sluggish growth rates of the Hindus in comparison with
that of Muslims the ?exact? numbers of years it would
take for the Hindus to disappear altogether. H.H.
Risley, Home Secretary, Govt. of India, wondered if
the figures of the last Census were a ?forerunner of
an Islamic and Christian revival which will threaten
the citadel of Hinduism? (cited in P.K. Datta?s
??Dying Hindus?: Production of Communal Commonsense in
Early 20th Century Bengal? in EPW, June 19, 1993).
Over the years, it has become a vital component of the
communal commonsense. Best encapsulated in Modi?s
infamous, ?Hum paanch, hamaare pachchis? (We five, Our
Twenty Five) insinuation. (Does he even recognise the
kind of sex ratios that would be required in the
Muslim community for realising his fantastical ?hum
paanch??).  These canards though are easily disproved
through reference to actual facts: Pune?s Gokhale
Institute in the 1990s had calculated that the Muslim
population will remain fixed at 14.2 per cent of the
total even if the same trends persist for the next 100
years. The myth of Muslim polygamy was punctured by
the Survey conducted by Registrar General of India in
1961, which established the incidence of polygamy as
lowest among the Muslims. 

 

What is completely lost in population data based on
religious distinctions is that communities are not
homogenous monoliths but are riddled with internal
socio-economic divisions, factors that actually
determine population rates. It has been well
established that development is the best contraceptive
and population rates directly reflect a people?s
access to a host of factors such as education,
employment, nutrition, health etc. High population
rates are only an indictment of the Indian State?s
inability, nay unwillingness to ensure a just and
equitable distribution of the country?s resources.
Therefore, when a Venkiah Naidu or an Arun Jaitley
preaches to the Muslims to adopt family planning
measures, they are not only bolstering the commonsense
about Muslims as a community that traditionally shuns
family planning but are also cleverly shifting the
burden of its backwardness on to the community. Notice
how Maulana Sayed Kalbe Sadiq was hailed as a model
reformist when he called for a discussion on the issue
of family planning in a forthcoming meeting of the All
India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB). Precisely
because it trained the spotlight on the community and
its alleged need to ?reform? rather than on the
State?s failure to deliver the goods. The Congress of
course, having burnt its hands once over the forced
sterilization drive under Sanjay Gandhi?s directions
sang the song of ?voluntary? family planning.

 

What is as disturbing as the cry of the Islamic
population bomb is the silence over the real bombshell
of the census?the abnormally skewed sex ratios across
communities, reflecting a marked preference for sons.
Again, if one were to go beyond the religion-wise
data, we find that in Haryana, for instance, the sex
ratio in lower income families is an astonishingly
high 1000, while in high income families, it is a mere
600! Clearly, the model ?hum do hamare do? (We Two,
Our Two) high-income (mostly Hindu) families follow
their own population control by killing girl foetuses.
The RSS, naturally, is silent on this murderous trend
in patriarchal Indian society.

 

Between 1991 and 2001, Hindus added to their
population numbers equivalent to the total Muslim
population. Why then this paranoia? It is more than a
simple matter of creating and sustaining stereotypes
or keeping the fires of communal antagonisms
simmering: at its heart lies the project of fashioning
society and State in the mould of a fascist vision.
The model of ?One People, One Culture? conceives of a
seamless Hindu civilization based on Sanatan Dharma,
which countenanced ?difference? or heterogeneity for
the first time with the arrival of Islam and
Christianity. It is only the followers of the
Indic/Indianist/Vedic/Sanatani religion?into which
melt the heterodox faiths of Buddhism, Jainism,
animist religions of the Adivasis and powerful
anti-Brahmanical movements?who are the true
inhabitants of the nation. In We or Our Nationhood
Defined, Golwalkar had declared that ?the Hindus alone
are the nation and the Moslems and others, if not
actually anti-national are at least outside the body
of the nation.?  Thus, if the nation is to be
preserved, the contaminating presence of the
non-nationals and anti-nationals has to be mitigated.

 

In his Foreword to Religious Demography in India,
Advani says, ?? The growth and decline of population
play a crucial role in the rise and fall of nations ?
That is why active and alert societies ? keep an eye
on the changing demographic trends within themselves.?
However, as the sham demographers of the RSS, Joshi,
Srinivas and Bajaj tell us, defending the demographic
balance also requires a vigilante State. Gujarat
perhaps provided the best example of how ?active? and
?alert? societies and an interventionist State may
keep an eye on the demographic trends. Genocide, after
all, is the preferred mode of ?population control? for
the fascists ? recall how the saffron mobs of Gujarat
specially targeted the wombs and unborn foetuses of
Muslim women.

 

South Asia
 

Bangladesh: Driven to Quagmire?

 

- Soumitra Bose

 

It was those heady revolutionary days of 1971 when the
entire Sub-continent was brimming with revolution a
new discourse started. Much maligned and most
misunderstood as it was, the two Bengals across the
international border did choose two entirely different
tracks of people?s movement and people?s wrath against
their respective rulers. When the Indian province of
Bengal plunged into the most valorous class struggle
against the Indian comprador ruling class and world
imperialism. The then Pakistani part of Bengal plunged
itself into a national liberation struggle. The twist
of reality was tragic; the marauders in the Indian
side of Bengal became the harbinger of liberation for
the other side. The revolutionaries saw a split of
camps; some revolutionaries on the Indian side opposed
the liberation movement of Bangladesh totally. That
gave rise to a tendency among the Bangladeshi
revolutionaries who opposed the formation of
Bangladesh and the liberation movement and
collaborated with the Pakistani military junta, they
saw the Indian interference as an act of aggression
and therefore the liberation movement as a reactionary
movement. On the other hand another band of
revolutionaries in Bangladesh completely capitulated
and collaborated with the Indian ruling class. It was
then Comrade Charu Mazumdar, the greatest teacher of
Indian revolution came out with the famous slogan
?When Mujib shouts Joy Bangla, we give our Call
China?s Chairman is our Chairman?. He supported the
people?s upsurge and Bangladesh liberation and yet
pointed out the future dangers of nationalism sans
class struggle. He guided us how through the peasants?
own initiative and class struggle the dissected people
of Bengal and therefore India can achieve peoples?
unity, how the present nationalistic zeal can be
turned towards sub-continental wide class struggle. He
opposed both the right trend of capitulation to either
of the ruling elites and the left trend of ignoring
and opposing peoples? genuine aspirations.  We did not
learn! Bangladesh was formed and yes, with the help of
the Indira Gandhi, who led the Congress and the Indian
Bourgeoisie, the same bourgeoisie which was busy
annihilating every expression of people?s interests
within India.

 

Bangladesh came into existence amidst the highest
mobilization within a country in the history of human
civilization [98.3% of the population were found on
the streets actively joining in some form or the
other, the liberation movement]. She was formed amidst
all bonhomie and good things that can accompany the
formation of a ?modern? nation-state. It was declared
a truly secular country [despite the fact that 90% of
the population were Sunni Muslims] Bangladesh was
found to even fight against the hidden communal habits
which still are found within Indian media and in the
Indian popular culture. Bangladesh was formed as a
?Socialist? country! Though it was fashioned in the
same pattern of Nehru-Indira brand of sham Socialism
yet it had really elements of pro-peasant legislations
to start with. It even almost declared to have a land
reform programme moulded in favour of the peasants.
The active participation of the peasants in the armed
liberation struggle empowered the peasants and brought
them very close to the revolutionary petty
bourgeoisie. Soon after the liberation movement the
Bangladeshi youth plunged into a kind of anarchist
socialistic movement and sacrificed to a very high
extent [Almost 75% of the activists were decimated and
just to put things in the perspective, every students
union in every college belonged to that movement and
there were youth wings in every single village of
entire Bangladesh, in terms of cadres even the
Bangladesh liberation struggle did not have so many
active youth cadres]  That was the rise of the
revolutionary epoch, when almost every active youth
was in the revolution. The euphoria did not sustain.
The anarchist trend did not have the stomach to take
the ideology for a protracted struggle; they were all
poised for a ready and fast victory. When that could
not be achieved the right reaction came back as a slow
and steady stream.

 

As it always happens in the history, the failure of
left popular movement in power-capture and/or in
achieving its objective; follows a right backlash in
the form of a harsher reaction. The ideology of
socialism in a half-baked peasant conscious country
with Sunni predominance without the history of any
major social movement has given rise to the most
reactionary style of ?secular?-communal-military
politics of chauvinism and obscurantism. It was not
based on any high philosophical religious reform
movement turned reactionary like Wahabism. In fact
Wahabism has been imported much late in the last half
of the twentieth century into prominence [very
interestingly during the entire period of Pakistani
occupation Wahabism never was a factor within that
territory]. The communal and so-called fundamentalist
reaction is actually perpetrated by those who practice
some kind of apologetic western attitude and style of
life, where they are least religious, extremely
poly-tricking and extremely individualistic and
opportunist. This is the section of intelligentsia,
which once flanked the ranks of leftist organizations,
are now the mainstay of most reactionary chauvinists
and communalists. All these in the name of opposing
regional imperialism that is India! Thus they have
transformed their slogans to use the parlance of
political-anti-imperialism i.e. politically
anti-Indian, and yet economically pro-globalisation
and in a round about way economically pro-Indian. This
very complex logic is only possible in the (post)
colonial third world theatre like Bangladesh, which is
reeling not only under the general globalisation but
also under the perceived and in many ways true threat
of regional hegemon like India. Communalism is a
modern artefact there, a most reactionary form of
social and cultural oppression [in addition to the
usual chore of political oppression by a comprador
ruling class on its own people] bereft of religious
theocracy. The fundamentalism in Bangladesh is a
political and social tool used by the clerical class,
which maintains its thievery, thuggery, feudal corvee
system [and not production relation, which you might
find in India] aided by state militarism. The clerical
power is not really theocracy, it is poised in a
?modern? stage of nation-state, the definition of
which has become progressively narrow into the present
concept of Bangladeshi Sunni Muslim and Bengali
speaking community educated in the concocted and
corrupt proto-religious system. Bangladesh in all its
social and cultural yardsticks stands apart in the
entire world. She has now developed her own measures,
on which she wants to grade herself. Even that has no
takers in the Saudi dominated world. The chauvinism
suits their hurt and incompetent pattern in the best
way and gets its justification by proclaiming a
hurt-sentiment. Hurt by India, hurt by the west, hurt
by the other sects of Muslims, hurt linguistically,
hurt economically and so on and so-forth, they are
hurt all the way and therefore they want the attention
of an international cry-baby. The cry-baby-syndrome is
a fantastic and powerful political weapon, which on
one hand raises the bar for ultimate obeisance to the
nation-state and a kind of ?patriotic? zeal.
Bangladesh thrives on this Social-Capital.

 

This is the backdrop of the recent mayhem of the
ruling clique of Bangladesh on the minorities.
Bangladesh has three types of minorities: religious
minorities are Hindus, Buddhists and Christians and
then with a different degree the Shia Muslims and the
Ahmediya Muslims and the Sufis [the fundamentalists
are demanding them to be struck off the roll of being
Mussalmans], ethnic minorities who are non-bengali
speaking like the Chakmas and Garos and other tribals,
and the political minorities ? the communists.

 

In the very similar style of Bhartiya Janata Party
(BJP) and Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), the
Indian counterpart, the right reactionary and modern
party called Bangladesh Nationalist Party represents
the ruling clique of Bangladesh and the obscurantist
militant party of the Sunni fundamentalists goes by
Jamat-e-islami.  They are undertaking an organized and
consorted nation-wide campaign of case-by-case
annihilation of the opposition leaders while planning
in such a sly way as to implicate and even indict the
minorities. As examples recently prominent journalists
have been eliminated and those who are apprehended for
their crimes are Hindus too! False cases are posed in
the judiciary with no one to oppose and no one to
testify against. The parliamentary opposition is the
centre right Awami league [the party at the helm of
Bangladesh liberation]. Every mobilization of that
party and that by the leftists are attacked and mauled
by the ruling party and just days later one would find
a Hindu apprehended for the ?crime?. Bangladesh has a
peculiar breed of ?Maoists? who are simply gunrunners
and munitions-smugglers. They are killed in false
encounters and then some Hindu or some other communist
revolutionaries are apprehended and/or eliminated
thereby. No country in the world has experienced so
many of peacetime rapes on a daily basis. One would
see rape following a definite pattern unlike that in
India or South Asia. Either Hindu minors are raped or
workingwomen are raped. A study reveals that much more
than 70% of the helping-maids in the city of Dhaka are
raped at least one time in their lifetime. The
percentage among the Garment worker teenaged girls is
an unbelievable 89% to 91%. In fact the worst
expletive one can hurl on a women is ?garment girl?. 

 

Secular minded intellectuals, who are either activists
or outspoken against this guttery socio-politics are
individually targeted, the pattern is known, they are
first threatened, then warned through minor physical
bantering, then attacked lethally and eventually
killed. The last act becomes so redundant that it
becomes a fait-accompli- the classic example is Prof
Humayun Azad- he was maimed to an extent that he would
die soon and that he did. Every revolutionary activist
regardless of his/her class and position had been once
in their lifetime hurt or attacked. Comrade Anu
Muhammed had been attacked in plain day light many a
times. 

 

The Bangladeshi communal reaction picks on the Hindus
as soft-targets. They would prey as predators on those
hapless poor Hindu families who have nothing other
than some landed property. The corruption and
criminalization is so all round that almost every
local neighbourhood BNP leader or local
self-government head calculates his plan how many
Hindu properties are there within his jurisdiction and
how many of them they need to grab and how and in what
staggered time frame they would do it. They would
intimidate the Hindu, Budhhist or Christian or
Ahmediya family to make them desert their place and
would usurp that land and property. Women are a part
of these properties on one hand and on the other hand
they are actually a soft point which can be hurt to
bring them the ultimate shame and blow to the hapless
family. 

 

Historically Bangladeshi middle class is a rogue and
bandit middle class. This is a nation where within a
period of 25 years three well established middle
classes were washed out, first the Hindus, then the
Punjabis and then the secular middle class [the last
one in a slow trickle] and now the left over
minorities are targeted as they have no organized
leadership to represent them. The Bangladeshi military
feudal rogue militaristic middle class thrives on this
?grab-industry?. A country with minimum
industrialization where organized working class is a
myth, where peasant movements never took massive
mobilization and mass resistances, we see only form of
industry ? the ?grab industry?.  The backbone of sweat
industry that has come up thanks to fragmentation of
labour in globalization is the teenage-working-girls
and the hapless hunger-flocked girls from villages to
cities. They are the softest targets; they come to get
raped and killed and thereby loose all energy to
organize, as the society is so ?izzat driven? or
?honour driven?. Once raped, they lose the world, they
lose their relations, they lose their identity and
fell easy prey to international flesh trade ranging
the whole of West Asia to South East Asia. Thus rape
is a special Bangladeshi tool to make a Bangladeshi
girl mobile enough in the flesh trade - another facet
of the ?grab industry?.

               

We here one Manik Saha, one Partha, One Humayun Azad,
One Purnima and the news of hundreds of their likes
are suppressed thereby. We have recently observed a
peculiar phenomenon in South Asia, including India!-
the media propagates one incident and absolves itself
from reporting tens and hundreds of similar incidents.
The world comes to know one incident of the type and
the number quantitatively do not stand anywhere near
the alarm level.

 

When a Hindu establishment is attacked, a Hindu or an
Awami leaguer will be apprehended, when a Ahmediya is
attacked a Communist party activist will be implicated
and so on! No one now dares to question the obvious
ludicrous act of the Regime. The only form of
day-to-day politics in Bangladesh now is to deal with
developing and managing various levels of
crime-syndicates- the pay is in kind, in land and
properties.

 

Bangladesh is a poaching ground for all kinds of
imperialist lifestyle and service products. A sizeable
section of their middle class is stinking rich
enjoying the highest echelon of comfort even by the
American Standard and European Standard. They thrive
on ?aid money? as the country only survives on foreign
aids flowing in. The more they can sell their poverty
and distress, the fatter will the middle class grow.
The country is run by the NGOs in the social arena.
They bring in money with advertisements of ?distress?
and ?poverty?. They grab the money and throw the
pittance to the hapless poor.

 

The country has a whopping 5-per-mother rate of
production. The official foreign-economic policy of
the country is to ?export cheap human power? to all
countries in the world and thus to get some remittance
money. The inflation rate in the country is much
beyond alarming and still it does not affect the
super-rich who lives on ?aid money?. The transactions
are ostensibly Islamic and therefore no interest
should be taken but their only iconic model of a
development is that of a Gramin bank which exacts an
interest of 19.5% from the borrowers [even the Jamatis
do not object to that]. For any major medical help one
has to go to India and spend wealth there at a rate
much more than the Indians would have done. For any
decent education they students start their life by
taking a flight and then once in that foreign land,
become illegal and stay there indefinitely without
promise.

 

Even when an estimate of 12 Hindus are persecuted
every day [recently it has gone up in bursts as the
persecutions are taking place in bulk], when about 5
to 6 political workers are killed [mostly communists
and Awami leaguers- this figure does not take care of
the attacks on mass demonstrations] , when at least
anything between 14 to 17 teenage girls are raped in
workplaces [leaving aside the local pogroms by BNP
leaders or government sponsored hoodlums] the
government does not consider this to be any matter of
concern! The figure is not alarming given the
Bangladesh scenario; we do not know what happens in
the countryside, in the alleys of the cities most of
which get unreported.

 

There is the other part of the story. However small in
number, however pocketed they are in the cities, youth
in Bangladesh is the most active and most conscious
lot within South Asia. The protests are spontaneous
and they come out without looking back. The protest
movement is most ardent and most committed and most
sincere on the cities of Dhaka, Rajshahi, Chittagong
than any part of the world on such a sustained and
continuous basis. The leftists are struggling with
ever increasing mass mobilization and yet they are
very inadequate. Some bandits operating under the name
of Maoists are working as mercenaries of the ruling
BNP and yet despite all these threats the general
urban youth are increasingly up in arms, organizing
and protesting pledging their own life. Bangladesh is
as always a theatre of massive people?s activity.
Through this pangs and pains we will see the best
example of a civil society fighting within and against
world imperialism. The point however is to integrate
this mass movement with class politics and base the
movement on the producing and toiling classes!

 







                
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