Fight Capitalist Schooling here ♦ Defeat Capitalist Race and Caste Divisions, Mobilize for Communism here ♦
Karnataka, India, Feb 9 — Students and teachers protest exclusion of women wearing hijab from educational institutions
Working-Class Students Fight Capitalist Schooling
We are a group of students in a fierce battle against the repressive government in Bihar. Many of us are in an unending queue for years to get our exams certified by the state authorities. We have taken out enormous amounts of loans to pay for our education and we feel it was a complete waste. Our parents are from extremely poor working-class families, and they were hoping we would take care of them in their old age. However, our mounting debt is killing us all. Suicide among unemployed youth is rampant.
We are absolutely fed up with the system. Three weeks ago, hundreds of thousands of youths organized demonstrations demanding jobs. The authorities brutally attacked us. Police entered dormitory halls with guns and teargas, and injured students brutally. Many of these students begged to be spared while sadistic police broke their bones with metal rods.
These events infuriated us. Our mass demonstrations turned into counterattacks on the police and the railway authorities. Many railway stations were engulfed, scores of trains were destroyed by massive fires and many railway tracks were uprooted by angry students. The situation escalated and the state government declared a curfew in several cities.
We were very encouraged to read copies of Red Flag. It described the conditions of autoworkers and their plight of instability and lack of jobs. We also feel that we have so much in common with these workers and if we can organize strikes by workers and students, it would have a tremendous impact.
To successfully organize such strikes, we need to be united as workers. The government is trying to divide us by religion and caste which is deadly. We are workers, all of us. We want to read more about Red Flag because from our reading, you are the only organization that puts forward the necessity of uniting and fighting directly for communism.
Our time has come. No more fascist system, no more caste violence, it is a time for revolution.
We have learned that the education the bosses provided us was only for their limited use. Now is time to learn the real education in the streets and battlefields.
— Fighting and learning, student supporters of Red Flag.
Workers and Students: Defeat Capitalist Race and Caste Divisions, Mobilize for Communism
NEW DELHI (India), February 11—Striking students in Bihar declared, “We are angry, fed up and we want revolution now. We will not go back to our way of life, waiting in long queues to be denied our livelihoods. We found Red Flag during our demonstrations. Your article by Chennai autoworkers inspired us.”
Comrades in New Delhi responded with a call for a big collective meeting. More than ten comrades attended, including a new Muslim student with relatives in Bihar. As we prepared for our meeting, we received news of escalating fascist violence in Bengaluru. Some Muslim students wearing hijab were kept out of schools by sexist, fascist goons encouraged by the ruling BJP and their paramilitaries. We tried to call our Bengaluru comrades, who are organizing against growing fascism there, which has spread throughout India.
The Bihar students’ families all live in extreme poverty. They know first-hand the stench of untreated sewers in every working-class area. Having experienced the spirit of fighting back against the system in Bihar has opened their eyes.
“Why can we not organize 28000 autoworkers with students to organize a new communist way of living?” they wanted to know. “We will immediately get rid of money and organize work according to need and ability.”
The task of cleaning toilets was always assigned to Dalits in a racist/casteist system. In communism it will be done by the most committed communist masses. Their commitment will inspire others to do the same.
The masses will build homes, roads, recreation centers that are neglected now because of the profit system. Communist classes will create new theatre, drama, and music.
Our communist classes will explain and deepen our understanding of dialectical and historical materialism – the science and philosophy of change. In communism there will be no distinctions between students and workers, “mental” and “manual” labor.
To achieve this communist society, we must work and organize masses to join ICWP now to prepare for armed communist revolution. To win, we need a deeper understanding of the racist/caste system that keeps us divided by religion and caste.
Caste, Race, and Religion in India
The caste system in India dates back over 2000 years. Division of labor was organized to extract maximum wealth by forcing people who worked in agriculture and enslaving people from defeated kingdoms and empires. Religion played a key role, brainwashing oppressed people into thinking that their suffering will be rewarded in the next life.
Later, the people who preached religion were called Brahmins. Those who worked in agriculture eventually became the lower castes of Shudras. The ancient book of Manusmriti became the foundation of the caste system that condemned Shudras to perform the same task generation after generation. They were ancestors of the Dalits.
Persian, Turkish, and Mughal emperors ruled India from 1100 to 1700 CE, when Great Britain started its colonial campaign. They successfully extracted more surplus by creating fiefdoms that put tremendous burdens on the oppressed class. They introduced Islam, and Mughals became the new rulers. Hinduism was not an organized religion and there were peasant rebellions against the Hindu and Muslim kings.
When Britain consolidated the East India Company (EIC) in the 16th century, they introduced a wage system. Masses of peasants were becoming the new working class. EIC wanted to break the Mughal feudal relations by giving tax collection rights to the British crown. This created enormous changes in agricultural, mining, spices, and gold production.
In 1857, a combined force organized by Hindu and Muslim rulers attempted unsuccessfully to crush the British. The triumphant British rulers dissolved EIC and imposed direct rule on Greater India.
The wage system required an ideological justification of divide and rule. The British colonialists saw a golden opportunity to portray Muslims as the villains. They sought the help of the Brahmins (High Caste Hindus) and brought them into British elite schools.
This is how the British converted Hinduism and Islam into racialized identities. They considered non-Muslims (including Sikhs, Parsis and others) to be “racially” Hindu. Hindus (and in some places Muslims) were then further divided by castes and sub-castes. These racist divisions are the basis of today’s fascist movement. It continues to maximize profits by maintaining racial divisions.
It is vitally important for us communists to reject racist divisions, including the caste system, as a tool of the capitalist bosses. Millions of people in south Asia have been killed in these capitalist conflicts.
We need to fight for communism, the only solution to end all the backward elements that wage slavery has introduced. We are ready to face these challenges by recruiting more and more of our working class. Future articles will describe specific issues in schools and factories we are using to spread communism and reject racist/casteist divisions.
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