Unite against the communal violence and fascist terror!
Form People's Defence Committees to fight communal violence!
March 3, 2002
News reports of communal massacres are pouring in from Gujarat and other places. It is reported that more than 500 hundred people have been killed in this latest wave of communal violence, with people being burnt alive in homes or cut to pieces by frenzied mobs in the most ghastly incidents.
Latest reports go further to reveal the attack on the Sabarmati Express on February 27 in which 60 people were burnt to death, was well organised and premeditated. Similarly "retaliatory" attacks in Ahmedabad and other places were also orchestrated and well planned. It is also reported that the agencies of the state such as the police and other institutions were complicit in these crimes by omission and commission. For instance when the people of Shanti Sena, a Gandhian organization wanted to go into a neighbourhood to stop the massacres, the police did not blocked their entrance and refused to issue them curfew passes. At the same time, when the Goondas set fire to an apartment building next to the police station, the police just watched, claiming that they had not received orders to do anything. The chief minister of Gujarat when asked about these massacres stated bluntly that the "People want to punish the criminals", coming close to condoning and justifying the revenge killings of innocents. This comment alone should be enough to dismiss the Modi government in Gujarat, one that has racked up a terrifying record of official neglect and complicity in heinous communal crimes.
Prime Minister Vajpayee has called to for calm but it in these circumstances, his own credibility has been undermined by his involvement along with the home minister, LK Advani, in inciting hatred on the basis of religion in 1992, leading to the demolition of Babri Masjid and communal massacres of almost 3000 people. Seven years before in 1984, thousands of Sikhs were massacred in the nation's capital by the goondas organised by the agencies of the state and Congress party. At that time when the massacres were taking place, Rajiv Gandhi said that "the earth shakes when a big tree falls" refering to the assassination of Indira Gandhi. And it is Rajiv Gandhi who called for "Khun Ka Badla Khun", an eye for an eye, that is finding its terrifying expression today.
However, this cycle of revenge has found few takers across India, as a VHP-called nationwide bandh went largely unheeded. Moreover, people defended each other against the anarchy and violence of hooligans . For example on March 1, members of the Hindu community in the Bihar town of Muzaffarpur came out to defend a Mosque from organized gangs who wanted to vandalise it. The police were no where to be found, when about a hundred Hindus defended the Mosque with their bodies, sustaining many injuries before turning the mob back.
As such, the massacres in Gujarat and other places in last few days and over the last 50 years, points out that people must take matters into their own hands and defend themselves and their neighbours from marauding gangs who would shatter their communities. With the failure of the police to safeguard life and uphold law and order and the emergence of state-sponsored terrorism, people must empower themselves in defence committees to protect their neighbourhoods, villages and Mohallas. Only by actively organizing to stop communal massacres, can lives and livelihoods be saved, and people's power take root in communal amity and solidarity.
Communal violence was started in India by the British as part of their colonial policy of divide and rule leading to the transfer of power and division of India amidst bloodletting of unprecedent proportions. The Indian ruling circles, their political parties, and the state have continued the same policy of division and diversion to drown the struggles of the people in blood. Only by uniting in struggle can the Indian people put an end to these massacres and bring to book those who are responsible for sinking India into depraved barbarism.
Uttarakhand Support Committee.