People's Democracy

Editorial

Fascistic Cowardice

EXPOSING their true fascistic character, the RSS/BJP launched a violent attack on the AKG Bhawan, CPI(M) national headquarters at New Delhi, on March 9, 2008. This attack took place when the CPI(M) Central Committee was in session. According to the statement made by the Home minister in the Rajya Sabha, the attackers had assembled at the Hindu Mahasabha office, close to AKG Bhawan without any prior permission or intimation to the police. While some of them who were discussing with the police to be allowed to proceed to AKG Bhawan for a demonstration, a group left in their private cars armed with stones and bricks and pounced upon the AKG Bhawan and immediately started pelting their stones. In that attack, ten CPI(M) cadres who prevented the RSS goons from entering the office were injured. These included five Central Committee members - Hari Singh Kang, V Srinivasa Rao, Jogendra Sharma, Kumar Shiralkar and Pushpinder Grewal. In the attack, property was extensively damaged including cars parked outside the Party office.

That this was the pre-planned and premeditated attack was clear from the fact that they came with stones and bricks in their private cars with the intension of attacking the comrades and ransacking the office. Among the 14 who were arrested by the police were two former BJP MLAs and six serving Municipal Councilors. The congregation at the Hindu Mahasabha office near AKG Bhawan was being led by the BJP�s leader of the opposition in the Delhi Assembly and the Mayor of Delhi.

Same night, the RSS elements forcibly entered the house of Karnataka CPI(M) secretary, V J K Nair, threatening his wife, they ransacked his house. The next day, they attacked CPI(M) offices in Dehradun, Nagercoil in Kanyakumari district of Tamilnadu and tried to ransack and set on fire the P Sundarayya Vigyana Kendram in Hyderabad. Clearly, the BJP is seeking to unleash a reign of terror against the CPI(M).

The ostensible excuse offered by the RSS for mounting such venomous anti-Communist attacks are the developments currently taking place in Kannur district in Kerala. Elsewhere in the issue, we have detailed the murderous assaults launched by the RSS against the CPI(M) cadre in Kannur since the LDF government assumed office. Kannur has a long history of RSS-sponsored violence. However, since after the last Assembly elections where the communal forces once again failed to make an entry into the Assembly (they have never won a single Assembly seat since the formation of the Kerala state after independence), they have intensified their anti-Communist assaults against CPI(M) cadre. Of late, there are increasing reports of the fast declining attendance in the RSS shakhas. Their congenital anti-Communism, fed further by the frustration of political marginalisation, explains the unleashing of such senseless murderous violence.

If the RSS is under any illusion that by unleashing such violence, they can frighten or intimidate the CPI(M) rank and file, then they are sadly mistaken. The CPI(M) has a glorious record of resisting fascistic violence and attacks. During the semi-fascistic attack launched against the CPI(M) in West Bengal between 1972 and 1977, thousands of our comrades had become martyrs in the struggle of resistance. The CPI(M) not merely survived such attacks but emerged stronger to win every single election in the state subsequently. At the global level, Hitler�s fascistic military attack against the Soviet Union with the declared objective of destroying Communism was not merely met but the Communist Red Army of the Soviet Union defeated Hitler and liberated the world by hoisting the red flag on Hitler�s Reichstag.

This assault on democracy in India and more specifically against the CPI(M) will be similarly met by working for a political marginalisation of the RSS/BJP to strengthen India�s parliamentary democracy.