REJECT RULING CLASS CONCEPT AND PRACTICE OF NATIONALISM AND NATIONAL
INTERESTS .
(This article published in 'CLASS STRUGGLE',the magazine of CPI(ML)
Earlier, the British Colonialists had imposed their oppressive rule
and retained it by means of force and the policy of division ,
deceiption against the masses of Indian people. It was quite natural
and just for the masses of colonised people to view the revolt
against it and for a free and democratic India as a matter of honour.
The Colonial rulers enacted all draconian laws and freely used all
sorts of ‘legal’ and illegal methods to suppress the people and
perpetuate their rule. They branded all ideas and activities opposed
to the colonial rule as illegal, anti-State, seditious and
anti-national and what not. The army, police, courts, jails and, for
that matter, every wing of the repressive and executive machinery was
at their beck and call. The victims of these methods included not
only those who believed in the methods of violence, armed revolution
and organised struggle, but also those who believed in the
non-violent and passive methods. Many revolutionaries, including
Bhagat Singh and his collegues, were hanged with or even without a
farce of trail. The writers, singers and other artists who used their
creative talents in the interest of freedom struggle too could not
escape the ire of the Colonial rulers.
By its very nature, the British Colonial rule was totally illegal,
illegitimate, oppressive and anti-people. But it paraded itself as
legitimate and the custodian of the interests of India and Indian
people. The Colonial rulers branded and sought to punish the masses
of Indian people who opposed their rule as anti-State and
anti-national. But the Indian people refused to be cowed down by it.
They took such brandings as a mark of great honour.
The Indian ruling classes had stepped into the shoes of British
colonialists in 1947. They adopted a Constiution basing on the 1935
British India Act. They inherited all repressive laws and the entire
administrative, judicial and repressive systems and methods including
those that empower the government to brand an act or view as
anti-State, anti-national and illegal. The Indian Constitution has
provisions that empower to imprison persons under the DIR, PD Act and
other special laws, bring some parts or the entire
Country under the dark rule of internal or external Emergency,
suspend the Fundamental Rights, declare vast areas as Disturbed
Areas, where virtually an Army or police rule is put into vogue.
There are laws that allow the police to impose bans, restrictions and
Sec.144 on the movements and actions of the organisations and
individuals as part of unleashing the attacks on the genuine
democratic activities and struggles of the people. The rulers had
added many new laws like TADA and POTA and other State laws. The
experience of our people show that these laws always are used against
the workers, peasants, adivasis, dalits, women, oppressed
nationalities, religious and ethnic minorities whenever they came
into the struggles for their justand democratic rights.
When the Colonialists were at the helm of power, the masses of Indian
people had no difficulty in questioning their political and moral
authority to brand the freedom fighters as anti-State or
anti-national and to declare Colonial rule as illegal, illegitimate
and anti-people. But after 1947, they are facing some difficulty in
challenging the new rulers because they are pursuing the policies of
mortgaging the interests of our Country and people to the
imperialists under the mask of democratic and independent rule.
Some, who are under the sway of the indian ruling class propaganda
about the policy of development, are finding it difficult to
challenge the ruling classes as they are unable to go deep into the
real nature of the brand of ruling class development policy. But
everyone who is genuinely concerned about the true sense of the term
must first ponder over what the development actually means. Does the
development policy of Indian ruling classes is aimed at and helps our
Country to advance independently and on its own legs basing on the
natural and human resources available in our Country ? Does it help
to raise the economic and cultural level of our people to higher
level with assured means of life and livelihood, or are these
policies helping a handful of foreign and native big exploiters to
recklessly loot the Country’s natural and human resources, earn
super profits, destroy our resources, push our Country into worst
economic and political dependence and the overwhelming masses of our
people into inextri -cable depths of hunger, poverty, joblessnes and
insecurity ?
How a Country maintains its relations and resolves the problems with
neighbouring Countries is an important aspect of its foreign policy.
There occured one war between India and China in 1962 and two wars
between India and Pakistan in 1965 and 1971. These wars had inflicted
serious damages and wounds to both Countries. There continued
tensions, no war and no peace situation between India and Pakistan
for a long time. Endless piling up of new and modern weapons by both
in the name of war preparedness, gaining upper hand, deploying armed
forces and counter intelligence networks along the borders and
maintaining hostilities and mutually suspicious relations among the
people of both Countries had imposed
unbearable economic burdens on the people. Why this situation is
continuing ? Who are mainly benefitting from the conflict between
India and Pakistan ? Is it not true that the same imperialist powers
are selling weapons to both sides, earning super profits and thus had
developed a vested interest in the conflict between India and
Pakistan ? Why the rulers of both Countries are allowing the
imperialist powers to poke their dirty noses into the problems
between India and Pakistan and why they are unable to resolve the
problems among themselves independently and in a peaceful manner ?
What conditions and weaknesses are standing in their way ? All these
questions are worrying the people and all those who are genuinely
concerned about the interests of people and yearn for peaceful and
fraternal relations between the two Countries. How long the people of
both Countries who are the real and worst victims of wrong policies
of the ruling classes of both Countries keep quite without seeking
proper answers for these questions ?
Our people want the relations with other Countries must be based on
the principles of equality, fraternity, mutual help and peace. They
neither want India to behave like a big brother towards neighbouring
Countries, nor maintain a subservient relationship with an
imperialist or big power. They consider it as their responsibility
and right to criticise and rectify any other kind of behaviour on the
part of Indian rulers.
But the Indian ruling classes, parties and the regimes representing
them are not prepared to respect this right of our people. They think
that the questions like ‘national interest, patriotism, national
integrity, war and peace and relations with other Countries ‘—the
matters concerning the foreign policy - are totally and exclusively
matters of their own concern and domain. They think that the people
cannot sit in judgement of correctness or otherwise of the policies
of rulers and their only job is to extend an unqualified support to
the policies and actions of the rulers. They also think that any
criticism that crosses the framework of extending basic support to
the rulers amounts to going against the national interest and taking
a soft or lenient attitude towards the enemy.
In the context of 1962 and 1965 wars, the Communist leaders, cadres
and democrats were put behind bars under the DIR or PDA. There were
no specific charges against them. The rulers only acted on the basis
of intelligence reports which alleged that such and such parties or
such and such persons are suspected to be pro-China or anti-war and
their remaining free may pose a threat to national security and
peace.
It has become quite normal for the rulers as well as the media
controlled by them to blow up the idea of nationalism and patriotism
into chauvinism before and during war times and subjecting the
organisations and individuals, who were found or suspected not
falling in their line, to various types of pressures, suspicions and
threats. More particularly, the questioning the policies and actions
of the ruling classes at the time of wars is viewed as a big crime
and an anti-national act. Chauvinism, emotions and hate are sought to
be incited against them in a deliberate attempt to silence them and
use the repressive course against them. The religious minorities are
pushed into most humiliating and help-less conditions in situations
like this.
In the year 1970-71, Yahya Khan led Pakistan Govt. had unleashed a
reign of terror against the people in the eastern part of Pakistan
because it found the emergence of an elected govt. there utterly
intolerable.
Quite justifiably, the people rose in resistance against it. It was
also just for the democratic forces of any Country to extend their
political and moral support and solidarity to the democratic struggle
of east Pakistan people. However, the Indian ruling classes had gone
further. They created the ground for a civil war by creating a
liberation army, providing the wherewithel and training to fight the
Pakistan Army. At one stage, the Indian Army had directly stepped
into the scene, entered into war with Pakistan and played a decisive
role in defeating Pakistan and in the creation of Bangla Desh.
India’s
involvement in the internal affairs of Sri Lanka and Nepal had gone
much beyond the nature of maintaining normal relations with other
Countries and attracted criticism in the concerned Countries as well
as the world as an act of intervention and show of a big brotherly
attitude.
Here the question is : Is it correct for the rulers of a Country to
interfere in the internal affairs of anothet Country ? Can a Country
take the side of a struggle that may come up in a part of another
Country and go to the extent of guiding it in military action for a
division of that Country ? For some, any attempt by an Indian citizen
to criticise the big brotherly, interventionist or expansionist
tendencies and actions of the
Indian ruling classes is ‘un-Indian’, ‘un-national’ and
‘unpatriotic’. If this is to be accepted as a standard difinition
of patriotism, the right to independence, sovereignity and
territorial integrity of small and weak Countries would be under
constant and perenial danger. The ideas and arguments of this kind
only make it clear to what depths of vulgarity the Indian ruling
classes have degenerated the idea and practice of nationalism and
patriotism.
There was a time when the Indian ruling classes were uttering the
words like ‘anti-colonialism’, ‘anti- imperialism’ and
‘independent ‘ foreign policy. But they reduced these claims into
empty words and moved fast on the road of subservience to
imperialism. When a situation of two super powers –US and SU- had
emerged in the world, they were showing a leaning towards one or
other super power, while, at the same time, being subservient to
imperialism as a whole. In the subsequent period, they went on tuning
up their foreign policy to suit the US strategy for world hegemony.
India becoming a part of US led US, Japan and Australia alliance came
as a significant development in this process. The change of regime
from UPA to BJP led NDA has further accelerated this process. India’s
collaboration with US in the job of protecting the right of free
navigation in the Indian Ocean and Asia-Pacific region and its
opposition to China, which is considered as a potential road bloc in
the way of US attempts to establish its domination over the seas and
the region, are only a part of the moves to put the aims of this
alliance into practice. The Indian rulers are tuning up and
co-ordinating their economic, political, defence, trade and
intelligence policies and actions to meet these needs. This policy is
wrought with dangerous and far reaching consequences for India. By
this policy, the Indian rulers had only placed themselves in such a
shameless position where they must support or remain silent towards
the acts of intervention, threat, invasion and armed occupation
indulged in by the US in various parts of the world.
This trend of development in the foreign policy of Indian ruling
classes is a crude negation of anti- colonial, anti-imperialist,
anti- Fascist and peace ethos and historic traditions of protracted
and heroic battles waged by our people to break the shackles of
imperialism and set our Country on the road of independence, peace
and progress. Our people’s sympathy, solidarity and bondage always
remain with the oppressed nations and people of the world who are
still weighed down by the imperialist plunder and oppression or who
are facing the threats, bullying and invasions by the imperialist
powers in general and US in particular. Our people and all the
freedom and peace loving forces must declare from the top of their
voice : We would not allow this subservience to imperialism. India’s
rightful place is among the people and Countries who are fighting
against the imperialist policies of plunder, oppression, domination
and war in the world. We would fight for it.
A handful of big imperialist powers, including US and Russia are
exercising a monopoly over the weapons in the present world. They
possess most modern and destructive weapons capable of destroying the
entire world. Yet they are prohibiting other Countries from
producing, possessing and using certain types of weapons even for
their own defence. They are subjecting the supposed violators of
their dictats by varous forms of punishments like economic sanctions
as the US and other imperialist powers had done in the case of Iran
and North Korea. They are waging the wars of invasion and armed
occupation like in the case of Iraq. On one side, they are funding,
arming and using countless terrorist groups and, on the other side,
are resorting to attacks, invasions and armed occupations in the name
of so called war against terrorism.
In essence, the big imperialist powers here are only making it clear
to the world that they would not allow anyone to challenge their
monopoly over the weapons. The Indian ruling classes are silent
spectators or supporters of all these acts of high handedness on the
part of big powers. It is a matter of shame for our people and
immencely harmful to the interests of independence, peace and
security of all small and weak Countries in the world.
There is every
possibility for the US imperialists, who have roped India into their
strategic alliance, using their ever growing and strong hold on the
Indian economy, resources, politics, military, intelligence and
foreign policy affairs in the service of their drive for hegemonism.
There is every possibility for the masses of Indian people being
turned into a cannon fodder without their knowledge, consent and
concern in their contentions for world hegemony.
Several areas in India have witnessed many small or big terrorist
attacks at different times. Mumbai serial blasts, the attack on
Mumbai Taj Mahal hotel and the attempt to attack on the Parliament
are only a few instances of them. The questions like ,who are the
real engineers of these terrorist attacks ? Who are the executioners
? What are their aims ? , no doubt, need proper answers. But we can
say that these actions deserve all out condemnation. At the same
time, we must also say that the actions resorted to by the Indian
rulers in the name of preventing, countering the terrorist attacks
had only intensified the repression on the people and spread an
atmosphere of fear among the people instead of putting an end to the
acts of terrorism.
We are also witnessing a section of people belonging to one religion
being subjected to various forms of humiliation and sufferings as
suspected or alleged terrorists or their supportes. There are
instances where the innocent persons suspected or alleged as
terrorists or their supporters ended their lives in fake encounters,
languished in jails for years during never ending trails, faced
convictions because they could not arrange proper legal defence or
some were acquitted only after losin a better part of their life and
experienced economic ruinations. There are instances where the
appeals by the innocent accused persons before the authorities,
police and courts that they were wrongly and unjustifiably implicated
in the cases were paid a deaf ear. There are also instances where the
appeals by the families of the convicted persons, democratic and
human rights organisations to the President of India and authorities
for Amnesty in death sentences were bluntly rejected.
It is the consistent allegation or propaganda on the part of Indian
rulers that several terrorist attacks in kashmir and other parts of
India are engineered or propped up by Pakistan. Pakistan government
too, ocasionally, comes up with allegations against the Indian
government that its intelligence agencies are engaged in conspiracies
and attempts to organise revolt inside Pakistan and it has enough
evidence in its possession. These allegations and counter allegations
do not go to the point of striving to end the problem.
The relations between the rulers of both Countries, at times, appear
to be in a worst state of tensions, mutual distrust and on the brink
of war. But, suddenly and drametically, they find themselves chanting
about the need of confidence building, fraternal relations and
peaceful resolution of problems through dialogue. I n Kashmir (as
well as North –Eastern States) the Indian Army rules several parts
by special powers under the AFSPA. Thousands of youth, branded or
identified as terrorists had died in the hands of security forces.
There are instances where the people moved in thousands in protest
actions asserting that the arrested or killed persons are not
terrorists and demanding the release of arrested persons or handing
over of the dead bodies. A protest movement of parents and human
rights organisations is still going on in Kashmir to know the fate of
more than 7000 ‘disappeared’ persons and for the identification
of persons buried in 8000 unmarked graves. The role of Indian govt.
in the creation of Bhindranwale in Punjab and the phenomenon of
terr-orist groups at one time in Sri Lanka is known to all.
So no one need be carried away by the claims and propaganda of Indian
ruling classes. In reality, they are using ‘terrorism’ as a
double edged weapon. They create and use it as and where it serves
their interests and purposes. They are using the talk abou the fight
against terrorism as a smokescreen to wage and intensify unbridled
attacks on the rights and genuine struggles of the people and as a
tool to divert the people from their real issues. They are also using
it to divert the attention of people from the crises and failures of
the ruling classes which are an inescapable consequence of their own
anti-people policies. It has become a habit for the Indian ruling
classes to deny the right of our people to question their
definitions, conclusions and actions on ‘terrorism’ and brand
such questioning as pro-terroris and a punishable act.
This cannot be accepted. The Indian ruling classes have no right to
play with the lives of our people. BJP and its Sangh Parivar are
doing everything to dismantle the fact that India is a Country of
different nationalities, tribes, ethnic groups with their own
languages, cultures, religious beliefs, life styles and food habits
and impose their own code of dress, food habits, culture and life
styles as dictated by their concept of Hindutva. They are warning
those who are refusing or considered to be opposed to fall in their
line. We have seen how the Hindu communal forces have attacked and
murdered a good number of rationalist, democratic, progressive
intellectuals and social activistsin the last two years. Brutal
killing of Dabolkar, Pansare in Maharashtra, Kulburgi in Karnataka
and Rohit Vemula’s forced suicide are only a part of them.
Many others were subjected to all types of insults, humiliations,
threats, mental tortures and coersions by the Sangh Parivar forces
while the BJP govt. looked other side and extended moral support to
these acts. We have seen the fascist trend of intolerance towards
differing views and the attempts to silence them by violent means.
All this was done in a planned way. This nasty drama was scripted,
directed by the Head quarters of Sangh Parivar. The Hindu communal
forces and the govt. leaders are playing their roles in perfect
coordination. In this, some would not oper their mouths, many would
blow up their longues with no rule or rythm; some would indulge in
threats and violent attacks; some preach about dharma shastras, moral
princples, values, ptriotism and nationalism; some talk about
Constitution, law and civilised behaviour.
But, unfortunately for the Sangh Parivar and most welcome for the
people the these acts had encountered and are encountering powerful
opposition and protest, wider in scale, from the intellectuals,
democrats,rationalists, progressive and secular forces and people.
The Indian ruling classes have reduced the words nationalism and
patriotism into an empty shell devoid of their content to suit their
needs.
The Indian ruling classes describe the hailing the Country as great,
supporting their chauvinist, expansionist ambitions and activities
towards neighbouring Countries, subservient policies and relations
towards the imperialist powers, upholding the wars waged by the
ruling classes and dieing for the cause of ruling classes as
patriotism and nationalism.
The Indian ruling classes present India as a single nation and the
acts of denial, suppression of the rights and struggles of
nationalities as the acts aimed at protecting the national interests,
the unity and integrity of our Country.
All those who are really concerned about the interests of our Country
and people must realise that in modern times imperialism is the
greatest road block on the road of a free and all round development
of Countries like India. Imperialism is a fountain head of all evils,
reactionism and decadence.Therefore, any idea or talk of nationalism
and national interests which refuses to or fails to see this reality
is empty and deceptive. The interests of our Country and people can
be protected and advanced only by a firm, consistent and thorough
going struggle by our people to remove this imperialist road block in
India as well as at the world level.
We must respect the fact that India is a Country of different
nationalities with their own diverse and specific features and their
own historical courses of development. A real and lasting unity among
the people of various nationalities can be forged, cemented and
sustained only in the course of common struggle of various
nationalities against imperialism and for democracy and by ensuring
proper conditions and democratic atmosphere for the exercise of their
national and democratic rights and not by denying and suppressing
them; not by discriminating one nationality from other; not by
creating a condition of inequality between them and not by setting
one nationality against the other which remains a disastrous policy
of Indian ruling classes.
All attempts to make India a Hindu Rashtra are disastrous and
divisive. This idea must be fought in every sphere- ideological,
political, cultural, social and practical – thoroughly and to the
end. Scientific, rational, progressive, democratic and secular ideas,
forces and achievements of our Country in the field of philosophy,
science, literature, history, art, culture, technology and other
fields are most precious wealth inherited by our people from our past
generations. This wealth must be proudly owned , protected like our
eye balls from the attacks of reactionary, retrogressive and
obscurantist forces which are determined to turn back the wheel of
history and take our achievements. We must take our achievements to
new heights.
Let the people take the future of our Country into their own hands.
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