People's Democracy

TRIPURA

PD Launches Agartala Edition On Anti-Fascist Day

MAY 9 is a memorable day for the communists --- the day of victory over fascism in 1945. It was to commemorate this event that the Tripura unit of the CPI(M) organised a huge hall meeting on May 8 afternoon. And with this very observance of the anti-fascist day coincided the launch of Agartala edition of the party’s central weekly organ People’s Democracy, its fifth edition so far. It is known that the PD is already being brought out from New Delhi, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Chennai.

On this occasion, CPI(M) Polit Bureau member and PD editor Sitaram Yechury, another Polit Bureau member and chief minister Manik Sarkar and state secretary Baidyanath Majumder urged for an intensification of the people’s movement against capitalist exploitation, imperialist aggression, and against its most cruel form i e fascism. They also insisted on the need of a drive for further expansion and circulation of the party organ.

Besides the said three leaders, the party’s Central Committee and parliament member Khagen Das and state secretariat member and Bengali Daily Desher Katha editor Gautam Das were also present on the dais in the Agartala Town Hall, the venue of the function.

During the ceremony, the first issue of the Agartala edition of PD was released with Sitaram Yechury presenting a copy to Baidyanath Majumder.

Addressing the meeting, Yechury heartily hailed the state committee’s idea of selecting the 61st anniversary of victory over fascism to launch the inauguration of Agartala edition of PD. He said such expansion symbolises the growing prestige of the party in the country’s complicated and quickly changing scenario. Citing statistics for the year 2000, he said the year saw the movement of a total of 400 trillion dollars of securities in the world share markets against a paltry 7 trillion dollars of the overall world trade, with a handful of multinationals possessing 75 per cent of the entire industrial capital in the world. He clarified the neo-colonial political purpose of imperialist globalisation as one of planting puppet regimes worldwide to facilitate gigantic concentration of capital and its free flow everywhere, amid burgeoning joblessness and devastation throughout the world. He said after Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq, it is now Iran and Venezuela that are on the US imperialists’ agenda of destruction. In the existing context of globalisation, the CPI(M) has already put forward a viable alternative whose growing acceptance is evident from the imminent increase in the party’s prestige. The party is not against project-wise inflow of foreign capital in the country on the condition that such capital must augment the means of production, raise the standard of technology and expand employment in the country. Yechury urged all to leave no stone unturned for an increase in the PD’s circulation so that the party’s members and supporters always remain aware about the Central Committee’s policy, standpoints and tactics to face the complexity of as well as the opportunities provided by the developing situation.

Addressing the gathering, Manik Sarkar stressed the need that the sizeable English-knowing section of the total 54,000 CPI(M) members in the state and the members of mass organisations led by the party must subscribe to and thoroughly read the PD on a regular basis. On the theme of the triumph over fascism, he underscored the death-defying struggle of Soviet people against the fascist menace. He said that but for this struggle the history of the world would have been otherwise. Sarkar particularly stressed this point in the face of uproarious reactionary propaganda projecting the supremacy of capitalism in the backdrop of a setback to the socialist system. Yet, he said, the US and other developed countries are now tremendously alarmed over the massive development of China, the sustained growth in other socialist countries like Vietnam and North Korea which are consolidating socialism, the successive winning spree of the Left forces in Latin America and the spectacular fight-back against the severe US onslaught designed to build a unipolar world. In India, Sarkar said that creatively utilising its heritage of anti-imperialism as also the growing power and prestige of the Left in national politics, the frontline party of the working class now has no other alternative but to increasingly rally the masses in the fight against the pro-Fund-Bank machinations of the Congress-led UPA government, just what the erstwhile BJP-led NDA government at the centre was doing. He also warned the party activists in Tripura against any alienation from the people in the wake of the Left victory in successive elections and urged them to seriously set about the task of winning over that 40 per cent part of the state population that still remains in the anti-leftist camp due to misconceptions.

In his presidential address after the inauguration of the PD’s Agartala edition on the day, Baidyanath Majumder described the launch of PD’s Agartala edition on the occasion of the 61st anniversary of victory over fascism as a landmark event. He also announced the party’s programme to enlist the support of all sections to augment the paper’s circulation and also of Lok Lahar (Hindi) and Daily Desher Katha in Tripura. He also announced the party’s decision to observe the day every year with due solemnity as a means of renewing the people’s pledge to fight fascism and imperialism in the backdrop of the rise of neo-Nazi and fundamentalist forces in several countries including the USA, frequent occurrence of violent communal attacks in third world countries as also the government-patronised attacks on third world immigrants in developed countries. He urged the Tripura’s people to unite and intensify the war on imperialist and fascist forces who are hell-bent on destroying the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of India and other third world countries by means of their network of agents in subservient governments and by assisting the separatist militants as they are doing in the North East India including Tripura. (INN)