Pictured: Patna, Bihar (India), July 25. Women and men protest police brutality and corruption in examinations.
“Each One Teach One” here ♦ Indian Caste System here ♦
“Each One Teach One”
NEW DELHI (India), September 12— “I was 24 years old in September 2020,” said Smita. “ICWP members encouraged me to join a huge protest after a young Dalit woman was raped, murdered, and police secretly cremated her body to hide the evidence.
“I decided to join the communist movement led by ICWP,” Smita continued. “When all the political parties were calling for ‘justice’ to apprehend the criminals, ICWP was calling for a communist revolution. This capitalist system creates sexism. It creates laws and enforces the police. They are all part of the same system.
“Now, six years later, in the New Delhi protest, I was leading many women and men in an ICWP contingent that faced tear gas and rubber bullets,” Smita concluded. “We were determined to create new communists. Over six years of ICWP’s mass struggle, I learned that we need to be clear about the main contradiction in the mass movement. In the last month, we have devoted time in many meetings to understand this.”
Smita and other leading comrades were speaking to our new friends, who are now reading Red Flag regularly.
Class Struggle versus Class CollaborationLeaders of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), which called the Delhi protest, showed signs of class
collaboration when the education minister resigned. They immediately suspended their agitation. And made a fake deal with the administration to exonerate those who were arrested within ninety days.
Students and workers were ready to march to the Parliament building and bring down the entire Modi government. The masses were utterly dissatisfied with CJP’s collaboration. They forced CJP to call for another massive strike on the 5th of September. But CJP called that off, too.
We went on the offensive. We distributed thousands of copies of several leaflets. Each looked at specific events and analysed the main contradiction.
Capitalist Eyes in the Sky versus Workers’ Eyes on the GroundIndia’s Modi, the 2026 BRICS president, is hosting the BRICS summit in New Delhi. To show up its main rival, China, India launched a highly sophisticated satellite system. An Indian official claimed, “We have an eye in the sky 24/7. And we can track Chinese and Pakistani troop movements.”
Our leaflet declared that the advanced satellite will never find those who rape women every 15 minutes. It will never find hundreds of bulldozers destroying the mosques and livelihood of hundreds of thousands of Muslims, Dalits, and other workers. It will never find thousands of soldiers in the Himalayas facing China who are dying of high-altitude sickness.
The real eyes are not advanced satellites, but the masses of workers, students, farmers, and soldiers. They can focus on the root of the problem: the capitalist/imperialist system of exploitation.
Building Collapse: Only Workers Help WorkersWe continued distributing Red Flag and leaflets in Shaheen Bagh, a working-class area housing Muslims and Dalits. Our leaflet addressed the callous response of the Delhi police when a five-story building collapsed, crushing and killing many students. It took Delhi police two hours to send an ambulance. They were busy trying to cut internet service to the outside world while badly injured students were pleading for help and making their last calls to their loved ones.
Thousands of residents rescued the trapped students. In Shaheen Bagh, many buildings could collapse. Workers took to the streets, appealing to everyone to join them and form communist solidarity.
“We have faced bulldozers, bullets, and lathis. They are trying to deport us because many of us are Muslims. Do you think Modi’s government will even come here?” said an angry resident. He loved the idea of communist solidarity.
Capitalist Misogyny versus Communist Women’s LeadershipAnother leaflet denounced the RSS chief’s visit to New York City and the BAPS monk’s presence in Paris. Both carry a rapist, misogynistic outlook based on the super-exploitation and subjugation of women.
In contrast, women have found their voice and inspired everyone in the recent Delhi demonstrations. “We were suppressed all our lives. We were taught to be docile and compliant,” said comrade Sheela. “But we women faced the barricades, defied police, and shielded men. We said we need a new system. And communism is that system. I have not stopped talking to my comrades Renu and Smita, my communist mentors.”
We need many communist mentors. In the dark days of chattel slavery in the United States, the rulers banned the enslaved from learning to read and write. We live in capitalist wage slavery. Our exploiters enslave us by teaching us to read and write in a way that serves the interests of their wage slavery.
We have to popularize “each one, teach one”. Our recent activities have shown that each one can teach many. In the last month, we have distributed over 2000 copies of Red Flag and thousands of leaflets. Let us multiply!
Dalits and India’s Caste System
Caste in India, like “race” and religion elsewhere, is capitalism’s divide-and-conquer policy. Dalits are at the bottom of the caste hierarchy, although a few have been absorbed into the capitalist class.
Hinduism’s ancient and hereditary caste system embodied a social division of labor. It was enforced with ideology and brutality. Brahmins, the highest caste, performed religious duties. Kshatriyas were warriors. Baniyas were traders. Shudras did manual work.
British imperialism adapted this system for capitalist exploitation. India’s 1950 constitution supposedly ended the caste system, but India’s capitalist rulers still use caste and religion to divide the working class. Most Dalits, traditionally assigned the worst manual work, and Adivasis (tribal people) are still super-oppressed.
Our party unites workers and youth across religious and caste lines to mobilize for the communist revolution that will end wage slavery and eradicate the caste system.
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