A one-
sided
class war
Upper caste violence against the Dalits ("untouchables) in Bihar state reached new levels in December, when 61 people were Slaughtered in an attack on a village in Jehenabad district. The communist left is not immune from caste prejudice, writes Kunal Chattopadhyay. Nor is it willing to unite against it.
This was the biggest upper caste carnage on record, even in this increasingly bloody and lawless province. Upper caste violence claimed over 200 lives in with parliamentary elections due later this month, every bourgeois party in Bihar rushed to show its concern. Bihar Chief Minister Rabri Devi expressed her sorrow. Her husband, exChief Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav, out on bail but facing charges related to the theft of millions of rupees in cattle and food, also rushed to the scene of the massacre The [Hindu communalist] Bharatiya Janata Party,* the Samajwadi Party, the Congress, and the Janata Dal vied with each other to condemn the massacre and other expressions of "caste war".
Much of the Indian left tried to explain the killing as a class, rather than cast issue. Of course, caste identity is never the whole picture. Nevertheless, it is a basic fact of Bihar's class structure that the bulk of the rural rich belong to a handful of castes: Rajput, Bhumihar, Yadav, and Kurmi, whereas the overwhelming majority of Dalits are wage labourers or landless/near-landless peasants. Caste-based politics...
Caste sometimes divides the rural ruling class. But it rarely prevents them from uniting against the rural poor.
In earlier years, communists of the
INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH AND EDUCATION
Lean Production: A Capitalist Utopia?
Tony Smith
• 24/$5/35FF. Cheque payable to P. Rousset, IRE, Postbus 53290, 1007 Amsterdam, Netherlands.
CPI(ML) Liberation group managed to rally landless peasants in Bhojpur district and elsewhere on a class programme, across caste divisions. But the great success of the rural elite in the 1980's and 1990's has been the division of the exploited masses along caste lines.
The bourgeois parties, and the left,
INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH AND EDUCATION:
The Chinese Revolution and the Shaping of the Maoist Outlook
Pierre Rousset
8
International Viewpoint #297 have played a disgraceful role in this process. Caste is written in large letters right across the Bihar political map. The Rashtriya Janata Dal, led by Laloo Prasad Yadav, is a Yadav-Muslim outfit. Its counterpart in Utar Pradesh state, Mulayam
Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party, is seeking to become an all-India party. Nitish Kumar's Samata Party draws its core support from members of the Kurmi caste. The SJP of former Prime Minister Chandra Sekhar is dependent on his Rajput identity for its fortunes. Even India's two 'national' parties, the Bharatiya Janata Party* and the Congress, can only maintain their 'national' identity by federating the support of a range of castes. For Congress, this is increasingly difficult.
As a result, none of these parties is able or willing to do anything about the caste-armies financed by a range of Bihar landlords. On the contrary, each party has weak links with one or more of these private armies. The Ranvir Sena (responsible for this latest massacre is known to be close to the Bharatiya Janata Party. ...even on the left
The left too contributes to the division of the rural poor along caste lines. The Communist Party of India in central and North Bihar draws its support from the specific castes strongest among middle and rich peasants. Each of the three major far left groups operating in this area also have caste links. For example, the Communist Centre (a Maoist group) is heavily Yadav based, and is known to be in proximity to the RJD. This is not the sole reason for conflicts within the far left, but it certainly contributes to it.
The caste conflicts make for a degree of instability in bourgeois politics, as electoral results in Bihar and U.P. have shown in recent vears. But parties are not mechanical reflections of a class. Conflicts between the dominant parties sometimes become so acute that the state apparatus is incapable of sufficient resisting the struggles of workers and the rural poor. This is why Bihar's rulers 'need' armed senas.
The class issues peep out from behind the 'caste war' all the time. The conflict at the base of this latest massacre was a dispute over 60 acres of land, opposing Bhumihar-caste landlords and poor peasants organised by the CPI (ML).
The massacre took place in Jehanabad, an area close to the CPI (ML) Liberation stronghold. But the Liberation current is being challenged in Jehanabad by a rival CPI (ML) current, called Party Unity. This massacre obviously aimed to demoralise local CPI (ML) supporters, and weaken their organisation in the area. Sectarian violence...
Immediately after the massacre, the CPI (ML) Liberation proposed a united front stretching from the CPI (which is in government) and the CPI(M) across to the CPI (ML) Party Unity group on the ultra-left.
Maoism in India began with a glorification of violence, of terrorism decked up as class war, and of every manner of ultraleftism. Those parts of the CPI (ML) which have begun to act above ground since 1977 have been condemned, and physically attacked, as "liquidationist."
Peter Clarke: The CPI (ML) Liberation current and others have lost hundreds of activists and sympathisers in inter-group violence. One police report claims that over 450 Maoist activists and their sympathisers have been killed in inter-group conflicts since 1994. The real total is much higher, since conflict between the CPI (ML) currents began several years earlier.
In this depressing situation, the extreme left groups have taken the easiest way out. They have joined hands with the CPI(ML) Peoples War Group, active in Andhra, which in turn has proclaimed solidarity with practically every ethnic, religious minority or other group in India that uses guns. Through links with some of these groups, Peoples War Group has acquired AK-47 rifles, and other weapons. This is changing the traditional pattern, where the upper class's gunmen have always been better armed than P.U. and MCC fighters. With training and equipment provided by the PWG, these groups can now put up a stiffer fight.
But this politics of retaliation is useless, and even counter-productive from a class standpoint. The MCC has in the past killed and maimed in the name of revolutionary justice. Its logic is no different from that given by the anarchist Emile Henry at his trial, a century back. "We will not spare the women and children of the bourgeois, for the women and children of those we love have not been spared." ...or united front?
For all its shortcomings, Liberation's United Front appeal is the only strategy that makes any sense. If the left is unable to unite even to defend direct assaults on cadres, how is it supposed to resist fascists like the Bharatiya Janata Party?* Ultra left nihilism, posing as Marxism, can only damage the revolutionary cause. It is only when masses are mobilised. when hundreds of thousands come together for their class demands, that any question of real class terrorism can come up.
India
We are not Gandhians. As long as the ruling class murders us, maims us, we have to fight back. But the gun must not dictate politics. A united front, on even the simple goals of mobilising to resist the Sena thugs and to carry out the redistribution of surplus land can being about a major change in class relations.
Unfortunately, for most of the left, transitional demands and a conception of the united front corresponding to them, is a sealed book. Each group, including PU and MCC, talk about democratic rights, but expect human rights groups to keep silent when their own group murders activists of rival left groups. This narrow vision prevents them from any serious struggle for democracy.
The response to the Jehanabad massacre will probably be counter-killings, rather than a united front to defend and broaden democracy, and to re-distribute land to the poor.
As long as the larger left parties, the CPI and the CPI(M), can claim that the conflict is only between "rival armed
, they can continue their united front with the bourgeoisie, in which a "Communist" [CPIl Union Home Minister sits in silence as the landlord's armies go on murdering the exploited.**
But by repeatedly offering issue-based united fronts, the far left can force the "mainstream" left into action. One encouraging example comes from Calcutta, where even the CPI (M) led Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) was drawn into protests after the Jehanabad massacre. * The author is a member of the Inquilabi Communist Sangathan (Indian section of the Fourth International). * The author calls the BJP "fascists." Some Indian revolutionaries preter to charactense unem as "communalists", mobilising on the basis of the majority Hindu community in opposition to the Muslim minority. ** India's Union or Central Government Home Minister (Interior Minister in some countries) is a leading member of the Communist Party of India, Indrajit Gupta. The CPI unlike the CPI (M) is a member of the United Front Government. The larger CPM is also part of the UF electoral alliance and now regards its non-participation in the bourgeois government as a "historic blunder'
9
China