People's Democracy

Agr. Labourers For Organised Resistance To Communalism

  MEETING at New Delhi on May 11-12, the central working committee of the All India Agricultural Workers Union (AIAWU) has called for organising resistance to the communal forces. The meeting was chaired by AIAWU president P Ramayya and attended by 20 leaders of agricultural workerss from all over the country.

  AIAWU general secretary A Vijayaraghavan placed a report before the meeting, highlighting the serious condition in the country following the government’s policies, being implemented under the USA’s arm-twisting tactics. To skirt any attempt by the people to unseat it, the BJP had cobbled together an opportunist coalition whose corruption knows no bounds.

  The people are sick of the NDA combine’s misgovernance and have voted it out of power in almost every state where elections took place in the recent past. But, with utter disregard for the will of the people, they are bent on remaining in power at any cost, as we have seen in UP.

  The utter greed for power has led the BJP in Gujarat to do what even the most degraded political force would not have done. Having lost two of the three assembly by-elections in the state, the BJP government launched a genocidal attack on the Muslims, killing thousands and rendering over two lakh people homeless. It is the first time that a state government has attacked its citizens like this, with the state machinery aiding and abetting murder, rape, arson and large-scale looting by criminals. Even the villages were not spared. The victims of Hindu orthodoxy, like the tribals and Dalits, were incited to attack the Muslims in villages.

  That attempts are on to repeat the gruesome events of Gujarat on an all-India scale was evident from the report by Kumar Shiralkhar from Maharashtra, about the spread of communal poison in tribal areas of the state under the RSS-VHP aegis. Bhuramal Swami of Rajasthan reported the spread of communal virus in that state also, as the Congress failed to come to the aid of the rural poor and agricultural labourers who are faced with starvation. He pointed out how the AIAWU activists opened food kitchens and campaigned among Dalits to ensure that the unity of the rural poor was not disrupted by communal propaganda. Ambika Prasad Mishra from UP reported similar activity related to the “Gujarat Success” being reported by the RSS and VHP on a house-to-house basis in the state, as also the communal riots in Azamgarh district. Dharamvir Singh from Haryana reported a riot in Loharu (the first in the history of that area) as well as the positive role of democratic forces in tackling the situation.

  Placing the course of action before the working committee in the light of these reports, AIAWU joint secretary Suneet Chopra stressed that this communalisation of the environment was a qualitatively different phenomenon from the earlier riots. That is why the union leadership had decided to ask its state committees to take the issue of communal harmony to the grassroots by holding Bhaichara Sabhas at the village level. The state and district level leadership must address these meetings and take part in their deliberations, ensuring that grassroots resistance programmes were evolved and implemented. The AIAWU has given each state committee a month from May 15 to June 15 to implement this programme. Without an effective programme at the village level to prevent the Sangh Parivar’s ideology from percolating to the Dalits and tribals, we will not be able to unite the rural masses for their interest.

  This does not mean that the issues of land, wages and atrocities on scheduled castes and tribes were to be put on the back burner. They will have to be undertaken on an ongoing basis, while special efforts are to be made to ensure the success of the anti-communal campaign among the rural masses. This effort to contain an extraordinary situation must be all the more organised and creative.

  Evidently, these agitational tasks cannot have lasting impact without accomplishing the organisational activity that must go with them. AIAWU joint secretary Hannan Mollah highlighted the need to enrol 3 lakh members; he also placed the details on the fifth all-India conference of the AIAWU scheduled to be held in Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala in November-December 2002. The plan is to hold a conference with 500 delegates from 14 states in India and observers from West Bengal.

  AIKS president and AIAWU working committee member S R Pillai also addressed the meeting. He noted how the meeting reflected experienced inputs from many campaigns and struggles. The martyrdom of our CWC member and Bihar AIAWU state president Comrade Ramnath Mahato reflects how our comrades face, with dedication and courage, challenges of all sorts in their daily lives. There are many type of challenges from mechanisation to laws like POTA. In these conditions, we cannot go ahead without a proper assessment of our work at all levels as to whether decisions that were taken were carried out or not, and what was the level of success achieved. Pillai asked for building up a broad anti-communal front with a sense of urgency.

  The meeting also noted that both S R Pillai and Hannan Mollah had tabled private members’ bills for a comprehensive central legislation for agricultural labour in the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha respectively. It decided to take up the struggle for such legislation at state level as well, so that other states follow the example of states like Kerala and Tripura. The union also reviewed recent struggles in Kerala (reported by A Kanaran), Tripura  (Saroj Chanda), Tamilnadu (S Thirunavakkarassu), Punjab (Chand Singh Chopra), Andhra Pradesh (K Krishnamurthy), and Bihar (Sarangdhar Paswan).

  It was evident from these reports that the mass of agricultural labourers in the country were living on the verge of starvation and death. Nearly 2000 people have been unable to survive the heat wave. Most of them were poor. In these conditions, the most degenerate elements of society are planning to use them as canon fodders and divide the people on communal lines. Imperialism, which has always divided people to rule and plunder resources, is backing these RSS-led forces. The AIAWU is determined to meet this new threat to the unity of the downtrodden and exploited sections and, at the same time, bring relief to them and organise them for an improvement in their living conditions and for a change in society in keeping with the needs of the people.