Red Youth & Workers Bring Communist Solution to the Streets
January 8 – The students of Jamia Milia University in New Delhi, many of them Muslims, led the way. Today the movement has exploded into an anti-fascist general strike of 200 million workers. The International Communist Workers’ Party (ICWP) is injecting communist ideas into this struggle.
Forty ICWP members took our slogans and literature to marches in five cities and two universities. In one city, nine transit workers, mostly Dalit and Muslim, came home with us after the march to discuss our communist ideas. They live in the same neighborhood as one of our comrades, and are interested in being in a study group to continue the discussion.
On December 15, 2019 Jamia Milia students organized a demonstration against two newly enacted fascist laws. These laws require Muslim citizens to produce proof of birth in India. Those who cannot would be placed in detention centers to be deported.
Many people living in rural areas of India, and others who migrated to cities, have no legal documents. These fascist laws target Muslims but attack the entire working class. About 200 million people in India are Muslims, out of 1,339 million total.
On the night of December 15th, police forces smashed into Jamia Milia University. These rampaging fascists mercilessly attacked students in their hostels and library for hours.
The response was swift and massive. Hundreds of thousands of students, at thousands of universities and colleges, walked out of class and marched in the streets. They included Muslims, Hindus, secular people and many more.
Workers joined them. Hundreds of cities in India saw unprecedented demonstrations drawing more than 100,000 people. In large cities like Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata, Delhi, between half a million to a million people marched.
Dharavi (near Mumbai) is the largest slum in Asia. Its population includes both Hindu and Muslim workers. There is a history of deadly fights between them. The fascist ruling party BJP actively organizes there to spread racist hatred and divisions.
But in the aftermath of the Jamia Milia police rampage, almost every Dharavi resident took to the streets to form an endless mass of humanity outraged by police repression.
Women Give Key Leadership
An iconic image shows Muslim female students shielding a male student from vicious police. On the coldest nights in a century, thousands of women, mostly Muslims, have stood like immovable mountains. For three weeks, they (with their children) have blocked a six-lane highway in the Shaheen Bagh area of Delhi.
Their bold defiance has electrified the anti-fascist masses and demoralized the police. The women are supported financially by thousands of workers, mainly Hindu, Dalit and Sikh, who provide food, health care, sanitation and security. Our comrades have been invited to talk to workers in Shaheen Bagh about communism.
Sexist violence is rampant in India. But a group of Hindu and Muslim women joined a demonstration of a million people, mainly men. They described how safe they felt: nobody groped or even touched them. The class struggle against fascism gave them space and respect. When the masses mobilize for communism, we will end the material basis of sexist violence.
Build Communist Red Army to Defeat Fascism
The massive demonstrations took the fascist BJP and its cops by surprise. They did not expect workers and students to confront them so boldly.
Now they are regrouping and counter-attacking the working class with vicious racism. The northern state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) has a very large Muslim population. The UP police are systematically attacking Muslim homes, sexually assaulting women and beating up children and adults. The fascist UP state is confiscating Muslims’ property to pay for the damage caused by its own police.
On the night of January 5th, BJP’s armed militia entered the Jawaharal Nehru University campus in New Delhi and brutally attacked students. They attacked professors who came to intervene. For three hours, police protected the rampaging fascists and then helped them flee.
Volleys of tear gas, water cannons in the freezing cold, baton-wielding cops have made demonstrations bigger and masses angrier, bolder and more determined. We are learning to seize these opportunities to advance the cause of communist revolution.
More dangerous than the fascist cops and paramilitary RSS are the capitalists’ ideological attacks on the working class. Liberals, trade-union leaders and even self-described “communists” try to contain the mass struggle with calls for a “secular democracy.” They push ideas like non-violence, reformism, nationalism, and identity politics that isolate Dalit workers and others from the fight for real communism.
Communism means a world without borders or exploitation. Where the masses, organized as an International Communist Workers’ Party, make all decisions about what to produce and how to share it “from each according to ability and commitment, to each according to need.” Where the unity and practice of our class is grounded in the communist philosophy of dialectical materialism and there are no “races” or religions to divide us.
As capitalism sinks deeper in crisis, its horrors are exposed—including unemployment, hunger, sexism, racist and caste oppression, and barbarous religious dogmas.
Masses in India are yearning for communism. Our comrades are mobilizing for it amidst the street protests. We are building our communist collectives into the nucleus of a mass ICWP and the red army that we need to destroy capitalism. On the coldest nights in a century, thousands of women, mostly Muslims, have stood like immovable mountains. For three weeks, they (with their children) have blocked a six-lane highway in the Shaheen Bagh area of Delhi.
Their bold defiance has electrified the anti-fascist masses and demoralized the police. The women are supported financially by thousands of workers, mainly Hindu, Dalit and Sikh, who provide food, health care, sanitation and security. Our comrades have been invited to talk to workers in Shaheen Bagh about communism.
Sexist violence is rampant in India. But a group of Hindu and Muslim women joined a demonstration of a million people, mainly men. They described how safe they felt: nobody groped or even touched them. The class struggle against fascism gave them space and respect. When the masses mobilize for communism, we will end the material basis of sexist violence.
Build Communist Red Army to Defeat Fascism
The massive demonstrations took the fascist BJP and its cops by surprise. They did not expect workers and students to confront them so boldly.
Now they are regrouping and counter-attacking the working class with vicious racism. The northern state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) has a very large Muslim population. The UP police are systematically attacking Muslim homes, sexually assaulting women and beating up children and adults. The fascist UP state is confiscating Muslims’ property to pay for the damage caused by its own police.
On the night of January 5th, BJP’s armed militia entered the Jawaharal Nehru University campus in New Delhi and brutally attacked students. They attacked professors who came to intervene. For three hours, police protected the rampaging fascists and then helped them flee.
Volleys of tear gas, water cannons in the freezing cold, baton-wielding cops have made demonstrations bigger and masses angrier, bolder and more determined. We are learning to seize these opportunities to advance the cause of communist revolution.
More dangerous than the fascist cops and paramilitary thugs are the capitalists’ ideological attacks on the working class. Liberals, trade-union leaders and even self-described “communists” try to contain the mass struggle with calls for a “secular democracy.” They push ideas like non-violence, reformism, nationalism, and identity politics that isolate Dalit workers and others from the fight for real communism.
Communism means a world without borders or exploitation. Where the masses, organized as an International Communist Workers’ Party, make all decisions about what to produce and how to share it “from each according to ability and commitment, to each according to need.” Where the unity and practice of our class is grounded in the communist philosophy of dialectical materialism and there are no “races” or religions to divide us.
As capitalism sinks deeper in crisis, its horrors are exposed—including unemployment, hunger, sexism, racist and caste oppression, and barbarous religious dogmas.
Masses in India are yearning for communism. Our comrades are mobilizing for it amidst the street protests. We are building our communist collectives into the nucleus of a mass ICWP and the red army that we need to destroy capitalism.
Shaheen Bagh Protests
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