People's Democracy

Youth Rallies Serve Stern Warning To Extremists

COMBINING vibrant colourfulness with vigorous commitment and proving their patriotism with pulsating emotion, more than 1.5 lakh young men and women of Tripura took the ensuing battle of ballot in the state to the level of a patriotic war on anti-national forces. The occasion was of the landmark youth rallies, organised on January 19 by the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) and its affiliate called Tribal Youth Federation (TYF) at 11 places in the state. These included the state capital Agartala where the central rally was held.

With their youthful spirit and strength, these all-encompassing rallies gave the state capital Agartala in West Tripura district as well as the other 10 key towns of North Tripura, South Tripura and Dhalai districts the look of 11 invincible barricades against fissiparous forces. This added a yet another chapter of pride to the history of mass movements in Tripura.

Alienated from the people but out to hatch a heinous conspiracy to capture power at extremist gunpoint, the Congress party has allied with the INPT. The latter is led by extremist NLFT supremo and pseudo-politician Bijoy Hrangkhawl who has been defending the ongoing violent atrocities of outlawed and ISI-sponsored NLFT/ATTF separatist-extremists in Tripura.

But the people too are on the move. On September 14 last, the peace-loving people of Tripura, tribal and non-tribal, massively rallied in Agartala to serve a stern warning to this unprincipled alliance against any attempts to hijack the polls in the style the Congress-TUJS combine adopted in the 1988 assembly elections. (In a similar fashion, the IPFT, that is, the earlier incarnation of the INPT, which is the NLFT’s political mask, hijacked the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (ADC) in the 2000 elections with the motivated connivance of the Congress party.)

Thereafter, voicing the same vigorous commitment to protect the people’s hard-earned democratic rights, the Tripura Scheduled Castes Coordination Committee held a rally on the same scale, followed in quick succession by three landmark rallies of the All India Democratic Women’s Association. The DYFI/TYF rallies on January 19 were the latest in the series of spirited surge of the people of Tripura, bent upon foiling any move of the international and internal vested interests to dislodge the pro-people Left Front government by undemocratic means.

The statewide campaign for January 19 rallies continued over the preceding fortnight, creating an unprecedented bonding of militant young men and women, tribal and non-tribal, in Tripura. The campaign brought to a naught all the extremist threats doled out against any participation in these rallies. Even though extremists arsoned a wooden bridge on January 17, at Garu Basti on the vital Bishalgrah-Tarakjala road in West Tripura, it failed to hold back the deluge of youthful vitality. Sending shivers down the spine of anti-national NLFT gunmen, valiant youth of Takarjala-Jampuijalak area, deemed to be an extremist stronghold, boldly traversed 10 to 12 kilometres distance on foot before boarding motor vehicles. Huge numbers of young men and women joined the rally even from Khumulawng, headquarters of the INPT-dominated ADC.

The Agartala rally represented the entire West Tripura, with the rally site --- Astabal Maidan --- failing to accommodate all the rallyists who spilled over to several adjoining roads. In fact, those outside the Astabal Maidan numbered a few times more than those inside.

CPI(M) Polit Bureau member Sitaram Yechury and chief minister Manik Sarkar, DYFI state president Ratan Das and TYF general secretary Naresh Jamatia addressed the Agartala rally. The other rallies were addressed by several CPI(M) leaders of Tripura and West Bengal including Lok Sabha member Bajuban Riyan, CPI(M) Central Committee members Aghore Debbarma and Baidyanath Majumder, state secretariat members Niranjan Debbarma, Badal Chowdhury and Narayan Kar, West Bengal minister Manab Mukherjee, legislator Robin Deb, DYFI general secretary Tapas Sinha and several other DYFI and TYF leaders.

At the Agartala rally, Sitaram Yechury set the tone by affirming at the very outset of his speech that the formation of a fifth Left Front government under the chief ministership of Manik Sarkar was a forgone conclusion of the ensuing assembly elections in Tripura. This evoked roaring cheers from all over the rally site. He said the series of martyrdom courted by the youth of Tripura in their protracted struggle against separatist militants, the pro-people and pro-development activities of the Left Front government in the state, the way ethnic harmony has been preserved here and democratic movement has surged ahead since the days of the anti-fedual struggle over half a century ago under the leadership of legendary communist leaders like late Comrade Dasaratha Deb --- all this has riveted the whole country’s attention on the state. And now Tripura people have to play their role in saving the country from the depredations of anti-national forces by decisively defeating the design of the separatists with whom the Congress party has blatantly joined hands for parochial gains. Yechury expressed the opinion that although the RSS-BJP’s communal fascism remains the gravest threat before the country at this hour, one must not forget that it owes its origin to the Congress party’s decades long journey along the bankrupt path of capitalist development, its corruption as well as its compromises with and capitulation before communal forces. In the prevailing situation in the country when the Congress party is hankering for power and the BJP is busy pawning the entire country to corporate capital as well as creating a communal divide in the country, the Left Front governments of Tripura and West Bengal are pursuing the principled politics of pro-people policies and programmes. Now it is up to the youth of Tripura to prove equal to the challenge by trouncing the Congress-extremist alliance and paving the path of a third alternative in the country, he said.

Giving red salute to the thousands of young men and women armed with a firm commitment, Manik Sarkar pledged that the state Left Front would never backtrack from its task of building a prosperous Tripura for all the toiling people. He pointed out that the fourth Left Front government has done more than what it had pledged in its poll manifesto, and that too in the teeth of tremendous hurdles. On the other hand, the Congress is not in a position to contest on a pro-people poll plank and its decades long anti-people stance stands exposed. That explains why, desperate to the core, it has allied with anti-national secessionists, Sarkar pointed out. He fervently urged the rallyists and the whole people of Tripura to ensure the Left Front’s triumphal march once again, so as to further forge ahead the developmental process undertaken by the four Left Front governments of Tripura.

In their speeches, the DYFI and TYF leaders gave voice to the dauntless determination of their organisations and activists to fight as patriotic soldiers to the last drop of their blood, in order to crush the Congress-INPT combine in the ensuing electoral struggle. (INN)