FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!
International Communist Workers Party
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FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM! |
International Communist Workers Party | |
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Thousands of students across India have continued protest marches and strikes at major universities in the aftermath of the extreme discrimination faced by a Dalit student that led him to commit suicide. The mainstream media has completely ignored these demonstrations.
In New Delhi the students responded to anti-Dalit racism by marching to the ideological center of the fascist organization RSS that is responsible for organizing mass murders of Muslim and Dalit workers. Not surprisingly, the Delhi police along with the fascist goons of RSS brutally attacked the students.
The suicide of the Dalit student has galvanized millions of students and workers in India to question and seek answers to the centuries-old caste system that the British colonial administrators created and imposed.
Capitalism Created the Indian Caste and Religious System
Seventeenth-century Britain and other European countries were going through the revolutionary transformation from feudalism to capitalism. The rise of capitalism in Britain required huge amounts of natural resources and cheap labor.
The conquest of India by Britain provided both. But to achieve this, the British rulers had to transform Indian villages that produced rice to feed families into landlord-owned farms cultivating jute, indigo and opium. This unprecedented transformation of Indian villages uprooted millions of peasants. They became landless paupers.
Famine, hunger and starvation followed as rice was replaced by the cultivation of opium and cotton for profit. A third of Bengal’s population perished in persistent waves of famines. But for the British capitalist rulers it provided cotton for the textile mills in Manchester. It also provided opium to open the markets in Manchuria for British manufactured goods by creating millions of Chinese workers addicted to it and unable to work.
The Bengali handloom weavers known for their craft of producing fine muslin had their thumbs chopped off by the agents of the British rulers so that textiles produced by the exploitation of the British working class could flood the global market.
The newly emerging Indian rural and urban workers did not take this calamity created by capitalism passively. Millions of them rose up in arms against British domination and their local agents, Hindu and Muslim rulers. Every year after 1756, major peasant rebellions threatened the very existence of colonial rule.
The British rulers responded to this crisis by assigning Brahmins, the so-called priestly caste, the role of colonial administrators. They were educated in British schools and ruthlessly implemented British colonial rule. Capitalism desperately required the division of the newly emerging working class that was rebelling everywhere. British historians portrayed Muslims as outsiders and oppressors of Hindus, thus creating artificial division between Hindu and Muslim workers.
The rebellious peasants were classified as the ‘untouchable’ caste and many of them are today’s Dalits. Over 3000 castes and 25000 sub-castes were created by British rulers, similar to the way scientists were classifying plants and animals. Each caste and sub caste-was classified in a hierarchy approved by the rulers.
This bitter legacy of religious/caste division is used by the Indian capitalist rulers today to keep the workers divided and super-exploited. The ruling BJP party in India came to power after a series of pogroms against Muslims. BJP tried to ideologically win poor Hindu Dalits to see Muslim workers as their enemies.
Today, India is going through a profound crisis of capitalism. Last week in a northern state, the government announced the opening of 114 jobs for street sweepers. These jobs required no education. Over 19,000 engineers, MBAs and graduates applied for these jobs.
Over 2000 people in India die of starvation every day. These masses of unemployed and starving people can be won to fight for communism. So can India’s tens of millions of industrial workers.
The rulers like BJP and the Congress Party are misleading these workers and creating religious and caste differences to perpetuate capitalism. The Communist Party of India (CPI) and Communist Party of India (Marxist) are nothing but reformist parties trying to save the Indian capitalists seeking to pacify the workers and students by creating the illusion that Indian capitalism can be reformed, and pushing the nationalist lie that a rising India will benefit everyone.
We have many friends and readers of Red Flag in India. We want to carry the ideological struggle for communism to the masses. Our friends must spread these ideas that only communism can smash the caste system and the oppression of Dalits and brutality against Muslim workers. There are 50 million industrial workers in India. These ideas must reach industrial workers and soldiers.
Our party is engaged in this struggle among students at various Universities. A student in India was extremely moved when he received a message of solidarity from a South African worker. He proudly displayed a photo of ICWP members in South Africa for others to see. He wishes to go to South Africa one day to organize for ICWP.
Our party is patiently winning over small numbers and if we carry on our work with vigor and dedication, we will be able in the near future to win over tens of thousands around the world. Joining ICWP, reading, writing, discussing, translating and spreading our ideas in mass struggles is the answer to the bosses’ cynicism and racist onslaught. Fight for communism; Join ICWP today.
