 Sahir Ludhianvi When the tide of oppression rises too high It exhausts itself, it must die But the martyr’s blood when it is shed Freezes into a drop of immortality shining ruby-red Blood Martyr’s blood It leaves its stain On the desert sand, On the book of justice, On the martyr’s grave And also on the tyrant’s hand Blood is eloquent, it will not remain mute It cannot be hidden, it cannot be silenced, It will proclaim itself. Let the evil ones operate from their hide-outs The trail of blood will lead to the murderer’s dens Let the conspirators veil themselves in darkness But every drop of a martyr’s blood Will light an immortal flame. Proclaim then, to the doomed prophets of oppression Warn the tricksters of diabolical diplomacy Unveil the blushing bride of U.N.O Warm them all Proclaim to them all--- The passion of blood that defies all tyrannies, The flaming sweep of blood which can drown the citadels of injustice! Beware, beware, you tyrants --Beware, beware, you foul conspirators The blood you sought to hide in desert sand The blood you tried to dam with a martyr’s grave Has flooded the whole wide world Here a flame of revolt There a stone flung in protest And a banner of freedom everywhere Sahir Ludhianvi Translated from Urdu by K. A. Abbas Who held the chisel And carved out the solid black figure A boiling lava of anger Coursing through her veins? Violence tore up her vermillion blouse It dyed her skirt into a blood-black colour Bare-breasted She walked through the streets A drop of milk trickled down her black breasts A drop of water fell from her red red eyes Guarding motherhood And searching the dead body of a black fire The blood is purple Can the white sheet hide this red spot in its folds? The black forests shake And the copper heated sky rumbles The stone gates of the caves have opened The doors of the U.N.O are shut A question arises from the dark continent Like the earth’s red tongue licking the breasts of the sky Amrita Pritam Translated from Punjabi by Balwant Gargi Another start shot in the gloom of night The shackles break, and breaks the chain, And brightens like a chisel’d gem, The conscience of humanity; Again a dagger flashed in some hand, And streams of blood Glittered in the hush of night; And then the breeze blew past my doors this morning, With brows all daubed with the blood of dawn. Glory to United Nations and the “Security” bestowed by it And mind the sway of truth and faith, The cross of hopes Is more pronounced in the wilderness; And lo, another drop of blood Crept down the eye of dawn. So long as the traces of assassins last, Proceed to wipe out each and every trace of theirs--- Awake, Don’t be Silent! Speak! Rise to the Martyrs’ festal days, And listen over there the altar cries: “Keep quiet never more. Ah never more.” Makhdoom Mohiuddin Translated from Urdu by Wahab Hydar  Amrita Pritam
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This year marks the 200th birth anniversary of Dadabhai Naoroji, pioneering economist and fighter for darker humanity. Below we reprint his essay 'Famine in India'.  It was a pure matter of fact that Great Britain, during the whole period of her connexion with India, had never spent a single farthing of British money on the Eastern Empire. All the great wars which had been engaged it had been paid for by the Indians themselves, and it was India, or rather its Natives, who had given this noble heritage to the British Empire. Indians had also shed their blood in order to maintain and extend that Empire. Upto the time of the Indian Mutiny the British Army there never exceeded 40,000 men, while its average strength was from 15,000 to 20,000 men. But the Indian Army of 200,000 was placed at the service of the Empire; it was maintained by India, and it shed its blood for India. Surely these facts required no comment. But that was not all. From the time when Great Britain first obtained territorial jurisdiction in India down to the present day it had drawn millions upon millions sterling from that Empire. Great Britain had appropriated this Indian wealth, thereby reducing the population to extreme poverty. At the beginning of the century only about 3 million a year was drawn from India, but now the amount taken away was officially admitted to be about 30 millions sterling annually. This was an open sore, and no country could withstand being bled unceasingly in this manner.
The result had been to reduce the bulk of the Indian population to extreme poverty, destitution, and degradation; and it was "Great Britain's bounden duty, in common justice and humanity, to pay from her own Exchequer the costs of all famines and diseases caused by such impoverishment". There could only be one ending to this continual bleeding of India. Famine was following upon famine; each visitation was becoming more disastrous, and the present was the most disastrous of the whole century. For from thirty to forty years I had been crying in the wilderness against this terrible treatment. I had realised, and had endeavoured to make the people realise, that a country thus drained must in the end die. Great Britain owed a debt to these poor, wretched, dying people. The British people, through their policy, were the cause of the misery which now prevailed, and the least they could do surely was to try and help the Natives of India in their time of terrible distress. The great idea of the Indian Government appeared to be not to let the English taxpayer have any trouble or annoyance in connection with India. The rulers of that Empire seemed to think that the moment the English taxpayer was called upon to contribute a farthing for the maintenance of India, he would demand to know the reason why India had been treated in the manner she had been. They were well aware, too, that no good reason could be shown for such treatment. Let him give one illustration of the unwisdom of maintaining a running sore. Thirty years ago France and Germany had a deadly struggle. France was beaten and had to pay dearly for it. A heavy burden was imposed upon her, a severe wound was inflicted. But in process of time it healed. France paid her debt, the account was closed, and she became as prosperous as ever. Why was not an endeavour made to treat India in the same way ? Why, having once drawn from her enormous sums of money, was not the account closed and the Natives of India allowed to reap the benefit of the wealth which their country produced ? No. The policy was to keep the wound running day after day and month after month, and they might rely upon it that until the bleeding was stopped India would have no chance of prosperity. It surely was the duty of the British Exchequer, seeing that their policy was responsible for the present famine and disease, to pay the whole cost of saving life and of restoring the stricken people to their normal industrial condition instead of further oppressing and crushing the Indian people themselves by compelling them to find these costs directly or by loan under the deceptive pretext or disguise of what is called "the resources of the Government of India", which simply meant squeezing the wretched people themselves. The term "resources of the Government of India" was a most deceptive one. They had often been told that India had not exhausted her borrowing powers. But what were the facts ? The Government of India consisted of Europeans. The Indians had not the slightest voice in the expenditure of a single farthing. They had only to pay, and, before any portion of the taxation exacted from them could be used for the benefit of India, 200,000,000 of rupees were annually devoted to the payment of salaries and pensions of Europeans who constituted the Government of India. The population of England paid 5%. per head per annum in the form of taxation. The people of India did not even pay 5%. per head; yet. strange to say, they were crushed by a heavier burden of taxation than were the English. The incidence and heaviness of taxation did not depend upon the amount; it depended upon the capacity to bear it; and the fact was that, while English taxation represented from 6 per cent to 8 per cent of the taxpayers' income, the taxation in India represented 14 or 15 per cent. They all knew how hard it was for a man earning £1 per week to give 1s. out of it. It was far more easy for a man with an income of £1,000 a year to give away £100; and hence it was that the people of India, in their wretchedness and impoverishment, felt so heavily the taxation imposed upon them. Was it not most humiliating and discreditable to the British name that other countries should be appealed to come to Britain's help for the relief of Britain's own subjects after they had been under British rule for a period of 150 years ? British rule was supposed to confer great blessing upon the Indian race. But what had been the results of it ? Millions of the people were dying of famine and disease, and scores of millions from year's end never knew what it was to have a full meal ! As had been well said it was a shame that our own fellow-subjects should starve while the British Empire was the greatest and richest in the world. In treating India as they were doing they were killing the bird that laid the golden eggs. They were deriving great benefits from India, but those benefits carried with them losses to the Indian people. If they would only-treat India honestly, if they would act as honourable Englishmen and fulfil their pledges to India, they would be able to gain ten times as much benefit from India, and those benefits would then carry with them the blessings of the Indian people. More than that, how was the wealth now withdrawn from India distributed ? It went into the pockets of the capitalists and the higher classes. It did not benefit the working men of Great Britain. He had no desire to appeal to their selfishness, but he was bound to point out the economic fact that the doing of evil reflected upon all who had a share in it. Now, in England the production represented something like £40 per head per annum. They exported goods to the whole world, and the amount of exports was placed at three hundred millions sterling per annum. Upon those exports rested the question of their employment. Their own colonies had slammed the door of protection in their face, European countries had also adopted protective tariffs; so, too had the United States of America, and yet, notwithstanding this fact, Great Britain annually exported the produce to the value of three hundred millions sterling. India was the only place where they had perfect freedom of trade, entirely under their own control. But what proportion of the British exports went into that country? Only about twenty-five millions sterling. Why was it that such a small amount was exported to India? Simply because the process of bleeding had been carried on to such an extent that the people had literally, no money left with which to buy British produce. Now if, instead of treating the Natives of India in this cruel and barbarous fashion, they were to deal with them honestly, what would be the result? Let them remember that the Indians were not a race of savages. Two thousand years ago they were the mostly highly civilised nation in the world. And what sort of people were the Natives of England when at that period they were discovered by Caesar? Now, the Indians know how to enjoy the good things of this world, and if they were only allowed to benefit by what they produced they would be able to buy the manufactures of Great Britain. The Government were willing to massacre savages in South Africa in order to find markets for British goods, whereas if they would only develop the resources of India with her three hundred millions of population they would find ample outlet for British trade, and there would soon cease to be any unemployed in Great Britain. Thus if they would only adopt an honest police to India they would benefit ten times to the extent they now did. Nemesis always followed upon unrighteousness, and, as Lord Salisbury once said, “Injustice will bring the mightiest of the earth to ruin.” He did not see why England should be an exception to that rule. British rule had given the people security of life and property; but of what value to them was a life which meant death by starvation or disease, or of what good was property when it was only produced for the benefit Great Britain? The fact was that Indian Natives were mere helots. They were worse than American slaved for the latter were at least taken care of by their masters, whose property they were. All the Indian people asked was that this country should faithfully carry out the terms of the Queen’s Proclamation of 1858 which promised that “Our subjects, of whatever race or creed, be freely and impartially admitted to offices in our service, the duties of which they may be qualified to discharge.” Hitherto the policy of Great Britain had been in distinct contravention of Parliamentary pledges and of the Queen’s Proclamation. The romance was that British rule was a blessing to India; the reality was that it was destroying India, and they might depend upon it that the destruction of India must ultimately be followed by the destruction of Great Britain. Let them alter their policy before it was too late. He very much feared that the present famine would be followed by another famine next year, because the land had become so dry. Things were going from worse to worse, and it behoved the people of Great Britain to arouse themselves, and in the interests of humanity and common justice to adopt such a policy in India as would enable the people to develop the enormous wealth of that country and to enjoy the fruits of their own country. This is the transcript of a presentation given by Anthony Monteiro at the online discussion "The Legacy of the African Liberation Struggles: Continuing Struggle Against Neocolonialism in a Time of Western Crisis", an intercivilizational dialogue organized to commemorate the centenary of Patrice Lumumba. Anthony Monteiro is a scholar of W.E.B Du Bois and founder of the Saturday Free School in Philadelphia. He was involved in the international solidarity campaign in support of the African Liberation Struggles and in the anti-Apartheid and black liberation movement.  I think to celebrate Patrice Lumumba and to be invited is a great honor. Of course, I am going to look at Lumumba, the history of the Congo and of Pan-Africanism from the standpoint of the United States and the current crisis of the United States. Because, you know, I believe that the further we get from the time that Patrice Lumumba lived, the more clarity his life brings to world events.
We felt in the African-American community, although I was a teenager at the time, we felt the assassination of Patrice Lumumba very deeply. We looked upon it as a blow against the anticolonial struggle in Africa and we saw it, and increasingly so, as the West speaking out of both sides of its mouth; claiming to be for anticolonialism and democracy while preparing through the CIA, the British intelligence, and of course NATO to carry out coups and assassinations of African leaders. This was saying, in effect, that the West was not interested in real independence, but were interested in establishing a new order, a neocolonial system and Africa would be a fundamental foundation of this. You know in 1963, in November, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated and when Malcolm X, after giving a speech in New York, was asked what is your view about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Malcolm said it was an instance of the chickens coming home to roost. By which he meant that the assassination of Patrice Lumumba was now being actualized with the assassination of an American president. I would just extend that observation to the over 60 years since the United Nations General Assembly declared 1960 the year of Africa, ironically the same year that Patrice Lumumba became the prime minister of a new Congo. However the Western countries were committed to guaranteeing that there would never be the substance of independence, economic independence on the African continent. In a lot of ways, sixty-five years later after the independence of the Congo, in a certain sense, the political instability and crisis of the United States to use Malcolm X's words is an instance of the chickens coming home to roost. The wars, the destabilization, the assassinations especially of African leaders at every level and the attempt to control the world and to control the wealth and labor and intellect of Africa now is coming home to roost. For people who are not intimately familiar with the situation in the United States, we look like we are in something close to a civil war. The political sides are that antagonistic. I think that we can speak of and think of Patrice Lumumba perhaps as the first martyr in what is this continuing struggle against the global neocolonial system that the West, and especially the United States, wanted to replace the old colonial empires with a new global neocolonial system. This has been a very difficult struggle because whereas in the old colonial system it was very direct. You knew that the Belgians controlled the Congo, that the British controlled Nigeria and Ghana and Sierra Leone, that Liberia was under the foot of the United States even though it claimed to be independent. And that South Africa and Zimbabwe and Namibia and the Portuguese colonies of Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde were controlled by what appeared to be settler colonial regimes or the Portuguese but in fact were controlled from the centers of finance capital, especially in the United States. Here we're talking about Wall Street banks which have now evolved into these behemoths of world finance and investment and trade. We're talking about not just banks in the old sense but investment banks, hedge funds. Then we're talking about the corporations connected to them such as mining companies which have exploited Africa, not only the Congo but South Africa, Namibia, the large oil companies that sought to and have pretty much controlled a good part of the petroleum in Angola and Nigeria. In this larger scheme we're looking at what drove the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the illegal overturning of his government and the attempt by people like Tshombe and Joseph Mobutu, traitors to Africa, to work with the West and Western intelligence for their own interest and sometimes for the interest of small groups of their own ethnic group against the cause of Africa itself. You know, we talk of the Cold War and it's talked about a lot, the Cold War, the end of the Cold War with the collapse of the Soviet Union. But why was there a Cold War? Why was there attempts by the West to guarantee that there would not be an effective pan-Africanism, an economic and even monetary union on the African continent? Why did this never occur? Why were there all of these attempts to undermine positive non-alignment, effective non-alignment? Why was there all of this effort to marginalize leaders like Patrice Lumumba, like Kwame Nkrumah, like Amilcar Cabral and on and on. What they in the West wanted to call radical African leaders as though they were unreasonable. The point was that the two systems, the system of freedom represented by the Indian independence, the Chinese revolution, the Russian revolution, that example could not take root and should not take root in Africa. And thus the Cold War, in many ways focused heavily upon Africa, was to prevent leaders and nations from arising that would unite with Asia, would unite with the Soviet Union and other socialist countries in a win-win economic order. Now here we are 65 years after the Congolese independence and then in 1961 the assassination of Patrice Lumumb. We have a Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting in China and a good part of the delegates representing governments and states were from Africa. Even when they did not make it officially to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting, they expressed their solidarity with China and with China, Russia, Iran, North Korea. These nations that have become the targets of Western corporate and imperialist power. I think that we are looking at a new world order, an anti-neocolonial world order. This is very hopeful. And lastly, on the crisis in the United States. Do not underestimate this crisis. It is existential. The ruling elite itself is uncertain of its capacity to rule a country that is divided so sharply as the United States is. I live through the 1960s, a decade of assassinations. In many ways we look upon that decade as that of assassinations beginning with the assassination of Patrice Lumumba then Medgar Evers then John F. Kennedy then Malcolm X then Martin Luther King then Robert F. Kennedy. This was a period, I would suggest, where elements of the deep state engineered a coup d’état in the interest of a powerful US empire. I think they were partially successful in that. We might now be entering another period of assassinations with the assassination of Charlie Kirk. But more than a period of assassination and unlike the 1960s, the political divisions in the country looked like a low-level civil war. The forces associated with MAGA and Donald Trump have openly said that they will avenge the assassination of Charlie Kirk. They blame his assassination on the so-called left and the rhetoric and the liberals in effect calling Trump and his allies fascists and so on. They say their rhetoric created the psychological conditions for the assassination of Charlie Kirk. I bring this out to say that at the same time that the system of neocolonialism is in crisis, the major hegemon, the major empire in the world, the United States is also in a deep domestic political crisis. The question for us is where do we go from here? This is the transcript of a presentation given by Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja at the online discussion "The Legacy of the African Liberation Struggles: Continuing Struggle Against Neocolonialism in a Time of Western Crisis", an intercivilizational dialogue organized to commemorate the centenary of Patrice Lumumba. Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja is a Congolese diplomat, activist and author. He served as the Permanent Representative of the DRC to the UN in 2022-2023. He is known for his book The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People's History, and has written a biography of Patrice Lumumba.  I am very pleased to know of your vision statement which is excellent and also wish to acknowledge the leadership of India in terms of giving African countries the strength and the courage to start the fight for independence. India was our example for the whole world and Gandhi of course and Nehru are people that we worship in Africa. We are extremely proud of their leadership in terms of ending the British Empire in Asia and of course in the rest of the colonial world.
My statement is going to be quite brief, basically to say something about Lumumba's assassination, who assassinated him and why they did it. I will certainly be able to answer any questions that people might have concerning Lumumba. There cannot be a full restitution for Lumumba's murder. No amount of money or other form of compensation will do justice to the harm suffered by the Congo in losing a 35-year-old visionary leader who could have helped build a great country. No amount of money would be justice to his children after having grown up without a loving and supporting father to guide them through childhood, adolescence and young adulthood. And the same goes for his wife and other relatives whose loss could not be mitigated by material acquisitions. What is needed from all the accomplices in Lumumba's murder is, first of all, an acknowledgment of the crime they committed against him, his family, the Congo and Africa. An apology for the harm done in this regard and an effort to honor the Congo's first democratically elected leader by promoting his legacy through schools, public education and cultural events in all the countries whose leaders took part in this disappearance, beginning with the Congo itself. While the Sankuru region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is mostly known as the home of the Tetela people to which Lumumba himself belongs, it is inhabited by people of other ethnic groups who ended up there either because of the activities of the Swahili Arab slave traders or of Belgian colonialists. These groups include the Kusu of Maniema, the Luba, the Songye and other groups from the Kasai region as well as the Ngombe of Equateur. In addition to growing up in the multiethnic environment, Lumumba's formative years as a middle class civil servant took place between 1944 and 1956 in Kisangani, then Stanleyville, one of the major cities in the Congo and in other parts of a country that was really committed to ethnic diversity, and not through working about one single group. In general, Congolese nationalist leaders were strong believers in nonviolence and Lumumba was no exception. This is why they were all shocked by the mass uprising for independence on January 4, 1959 which erupted in Léopoldville, present day Kinshasa after members of an anti-colonial party were denied the right to assemble. Celebrated today as a day of martyrs, it was the first major outbreak of violence in the independence movement and marked the turning point for the anti-colonial struggle. Later on, these leaders understood that mass violence was a bargaining chip in their confrontation with the colonial masters and the latter found it difficult to maintain law and order in the vast Congo once the masses had rejected colonial authority and were unwilling to obey colonial administrative directives. The Congo crisis cannot be understood without reference to the Belgian engineered Katanga secession in collaboration with international mining companies which recruited white mercenaries to join Belgian troops in backstopping the secession in Katanga. The UN refusal to use force to expel Belgian troops and the mercenaries led to a dispute between Prime Minister Lumumba and UN Secretary General Hammarskjöld, who shared the same world view as a major western power, and was very hostile toward Lumumba as shown by his cable traffic in UN archives. He was the single most important obstacle to the independence of the Congo because for Dag Hammarskjöld, the colonial territories of Africa should remain part of the western sphere and should not be taken over by the Soviet Union. In their mind they didn't think that we Africans can take care of our business ourselves. Instead, they thought that we have to be controlled by somebody else which was total nonsense and racist at best. We do get a glimpse of this vision from postcolonial Congo in several of the major speeches and letters that Congolese and other leaders have made. While preoccupied with the unity, independence and sovereignty of the Congo due of course to the counterrevolutionary situation facing the country from July 10 to July 11, 1960, the Belgian military invasion and the Katanga secession respectively, this main concern was how to transform the inherited structures of the state and the economy in order to improve the quality of life of ordinary Congolese. Like Amilcar Cabral, Thomas Sankara, Steve Biko, Lumumba’s martyrdom transformed him into a powerful symbol, a force that continues to inspire radical movements across Africa. We believe that our people should continue this process. Because for Lumumba he was assassinated, as you know, because of the fact that he did not want to have the former colonial powers and the United States to dictate us how we should run our countries, how we should manage our resources which are abundant. Our country is one of the richest countries in the world in terms of minerals, forests, land, water and so on. It is up to us Africans to make sure that we follow the teachings of Amilcar Cabral: knowing our own weaknesses and finding ways to overcome them, and the voice of Nkrumah: collective continental security through an African military high command. We need our own equivalent to NATO to ensure the security of our people and of our endangered progressive leaders. As a matter of fact to sum up Lumumba's personality and what his vision was: Lumumba was a person who was committed to using the fabulous resources of the Congo, the wealth of our countries to improve the living conditions of African people, not only in the Congo but across the entire continent. As a matter of fact, when he held a conference of Pan-African people in Kinshasa in August of 1960, he gave a whole program of how Africa can really improve itself and how Africa can be in control of its own territory and not from outsiders. So he was not a communist as the western countries tried to paint him but he was a person who was committed to the independence of the African people like Nkrumah. He felt that independence of one country like Ghana and the Congo was not enough. That we should do our best to make sure that countries of Southern Africa, for example, which were under colonial control by colonial settlers who didn't want to leave (should gain independence). This required that Africans take up armed struggle to be able to end this colonialism and we did our best in providing money, providing security, in providing whatever was needed so that these people can go forward. And so Lumumba was assassinated by the Belgians with the support of the Americans and of course with the involvement of Congolese leaders who were against Lumumba who felt that getting money from Uncle Sam in Washington was better than working with Patrice Lumumba to make sure that the Congo become a big country, a country that can really help Africa move forward. Thank you very much. by Shubham Shinde.  Introduction We are witnessing historic changes. The US, which emerged as the successor of imperialist Britain and France, is undergoing a deep crisis. These events impact our country, and we must understand them independently, on our own terms, with an epistemology rooted in our working people. Such times require a new ideology, and for this, we cannot solely rely on passive information coming from US universities and popular media. To understand our own freedom struggle, we have to study Comrade Dange’s life and interpret his ideology for our times. Dange’s motto ‘Unity and Struggle’ has to be understood in broader philosophical terms, not just in terms of shallow political alliances. Unity has to be forged through shared revolutionary consciousness, and struggle is a process of refining, correcting, and ultimately realizing that ideology in practice. The Indian freedom struggle shaped this ideology. Shripad Amrit Dange (10 October 1899 – 22 May 1991) was a freedom fighter, one of the founders of the Communist Party of India (CPI), and a prominent leader of the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC). In 1922, he started ‘Socialist’ – a weekly magazine in English to propagate ideas of a program for socialism. According to his daughter, Roza Deshpande, Dange was deeply influenced by Lokmanya Tilak and Mahatma Gandhi and considered them his gurus [1, p. 394]. Dange was committed to uniting farmers and workers in the fight against British imperialism. He devoted his whole life to the betterment of working people and sought a theoretical understanding of our society to guide the party. Dange’s motto ‘Unity and Struggle’, which emphasises the dialectical nature of the two, later became known as the ‘two pillars policy’ in the party. This meant that unity with other forces was important. For example, he wanted the communists to participate in the 1942’s ‘Quit India movement’. Later, when the CIA attempted to destabilize Indira Gandhi’s government, he urged the party to unite with the Congress to struggle against imperialism. This article is a summary of key events from Roza Deshpande’s biography of Dange. As someone close to Dange during all his political life, we have to see Roza Deshpande as a witness to all these events. The biography serves as a valuable historical account, as Dange was involved in nearly every major political development of the 20th century. I will discuss Dange’s ideological position on some of the important political developments, like our freedom struggle, the split within the communist party, and the Emergency, all of which have shaped our country. ‘Ye Aazadi jhuthi hai’ In the founding meeting of the Cominform in 1947, Andrei Zhadnov had stated that the world was divided into two, and in every country, class struggle had to be intensified to achieve real freedom. For Indian communists, Jawaharlal Nehru’s government did not represent a narrowly defined communist revolution, and they concluded that India’s hard-fought independence was not true independence [1, p. 391]. Nehru’s leadership was equated to the leadership of the bourgeois class, whereas in reality, it could be argued that Nehru’s government was striving to be truly Gandhian. Nehru always thought in the spirit of the continuity of our civilization, and the newly independent state was not a break from our non-violent freedom struggle [2]. The communists had failed to understand our freedom struggle when it was a truly democratic movement, and party chairman B. T. Ranadive started creating strategies for achieving ‘people’s democracy’. With a final fight with the capitalist state, party members were getting ready to achieve true independence [1, p. 395]. Ranadive wanted to take control of the state in a similar manner to the Russian Revolution. This was to be done via general strikes and an armed struggle. Railway strikes were crucial to this, and Jayaprakash Narayan (chairman, All India Railwaymen’s Federation) had also announced a similar strike. However, Narayan did not like Ranadive’s policies and decided not to participate in the strike [1, p. 396]. Without the mass support of the workers, the strike eventually failed. When asked about why Dange didn’t oppose Ranadive’s policies, he would always say, “But who is going to listen to me?” Finally, in 1980, he told Roza, “Since 1935, when I escaped from jail, PC Joshi, Dr Adhikari, and Ranadive isolated and tortured me a lot. They never accepted my stance on cooperating with Congress. In 1939, when the Soviet Union was attacked, a people's war was declared. At that time, Congress had decided to unconditionally support the war. As soon as the government declined, a fight began. This time, too, my stand was to participate in the fight. My opinion was that even by supporting the war, we could stay on the side of the fight”. He continued, “I was opposed to 1947’s ‘ye aazadi jhuti hai’ campaign as well. My stance was that we should struggle with Congress. But I did not agree with the policy of overthrowing this government through an armed uprising, and it was not possible as well [1, p. 398].” Sino-Indian War and split within the party After independence, the leadership of India and China were close, which resulted in slogans like "Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai" and the ‘Panchsheel’ principles. Nehru’s international policy was applauded by China in ‘People’s Daily’ (official newspaper of the Communist Party of China), which stated that Nehru’s policies reflected the views of the people advocating for peace. But soon, citing border issues – particularly the McMahon line – China took an opposite position and accused Nehru’s government of continuing the legacy of British colonial rule, and of increasingly allowing capital from Britain and the US in India [1, p. 493]. China was also breaking away from the Soviet Union. China believed that as long as capitalism existed, world war was inevitable, and that capitalism and socialism could not coexist peacefully. They also believed that socialism could not be achieved through peaceful means, as Nehru was attempting to do. No communist party in the world openly supported China’s policy, such was the moral authority of our freedom struggle and Nehru’s international policy. Dange had criticized China’s latter stance, and this was not well received within the party. The party was getting divided based on its position towards China. Dange and PC Joshi thought that CPI should be a party that takes independent decisions and should unite with Congress, and simultaneously struggle against those policies of the Congress that were against the people. Ajay Ghosh, who was General Secretary at the time, asked the party to take an independent position and did not agree with China’s assessment of Nehru. However, he died soon after, and E.M.S. Namboodiripad, who was elected General Secretary, maintained that China had not attacked India. Leaders like P. Sundarayya went as far as to say, “China's claim on the land is correct, and they won’t be aggressive. But the Indian bourgeois government can attack to make capitalists happy [1, p. 501].” The left faction of the party was ideologically united with China on the topic of Nehru and the Congress. Nehru wanted Dange to visit socialist countries and convince them of India's policy. Dange met leaders of socialist countries and also other European countries and got their support. Later, an essay in ‘Pravda’ (Soviet newspaper) became famous, which criticized China and praised Nehru’s position against capitalism and as a champion of international peace [1, p. 511]. Eventually, in 1964, the CPI split on the basis of ideological differences. A faction of the CPI always opposed Nehru and tried to bring the government down. The split within the CPI was not an isolated event; similar splits occurred in communist parties in many other countries as well. It is interesting to note that international events can have such profound effects on politics, and rigid ideological interpretations of such events can break political unity. Emergency The year 1969 was important in Indian politics, and the Congress party was split into two. During this time, the CPI under Dange’s leadership had helped sustain Indira Gandhi’s government. At the same time, the CPI played an important role in the formation of the United Front government in Kerala. The United Front government’s program was revolutionary and democratic, with an emphasis on land reforms. Congress leader A. K. Anthony was one of the architects of this unity between the Congress and the CPI. He had earlier criticized the Communist Party but later said, “I was opposed to communism, and it's true that I had demonstrated the black marks as mentioned by Namboodiripad; but under the leadership of Achyut Menon, having worked with the Communist Party of India, I have understood that what I had done before was a mistake [1, p. 554].” After the general elections of 1970 in Pakistan, amid the rising tension between East and West Pakistan, and with the influx of refugees from East Pakistan to India, the question of how to help the uprising in East Pakistan was before India. Simultaneously, the relationship between India and the Soviet Union changed. This led to the formation of the ‘Indo-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation’ on 9th August 1971. The CPI was ideologically aligned with Indira Gandhi’s government on its anti-imperialist position. After the end of the Indo-Pak war, cooperation between Indira Gandhi’s government and the CPI increased. After the formation of Bangladesh, a delegation of AITUC visited Bangladesh. According to Roza, Mujibur Rehman, who was the president of Bangladesh, upon meeting Dange, touched his feet and told her, “He is my guru. I was a member of the Communist Party. It’s because of the teachings of Dange sahab that I could liberate Bangladesh. People of this country have given me immense love [1, p. 557].” In 1973, various movements emerged across the country, taking up the cause of addressing inflation. Jayaprakash decided to step into the growing wave of public unrest. He urged people to participate in movements against corruption and appealed for the creation of a ‘people’s democracy’ instead of a parliamentary democracy. His ‘total revolution’ was to be achieved by general strikes, and on 23 April 1974, the National Co-ordination Committee of Railwaymen’s Struggle (NCCRS) declared a strike from 8th May [1, p. 567]. George Fernandes (convener, NCCRS) was a supporter of the ‘total revolution’ and intended to weaken the railways to weaken the economy. Soon, B. T. Ranadive declared that a class war had started, with the anti-inflation and anti-corruption movement representing the working classes. All of this was very similar to the political situation in Chile in 1973, which led to the assassination of their president, Salvador Allende, and Chile’s road to socialism came to a halt. Transportation workers had gone on strike, which was supported by the CIA. Later in 1975, Mujibur Rahman, who was taking Bangladesh towards socialism, was assassinated under similar conditions. Dange identified the role of imperial powers in the unrest in the country, and he created another trade union to fight the situation. Both Dange and Indira Gandhi identified that the strikes were not just limited to trade union agitations but had political backing from Western powers. Jayaprakash’s total revolution meant strikes, hartal, and arson were going on everywhere. The CPI started organizing people against the total revolution, and the party understood that it had to work with the Congress for this. Dange convinced people that Jayaprakash, knowingly or unknowingly, was representing such national and international forces that wanted Indira Gandhi’s fall and to undermine the democratic system and international policy. The CPI had called Jayaprakash’s movement ‘fascist’ [1, p. 570]. Dange was also close to Nirmala Deshpande, who was a Gandhian leader. She had worked with Vinoba Bhave on the ‘Bhudan movement’ and was also chairman of Mahatma Gandhi’s ‘Bharat Seva Sangh’ and ‘Harijan Seva Sangha’. During the total revolution of Jayaprakash, Vinoba had asked her to be with Indira Gandhi in Delhi. During this time, she stood by Indira Gandhi and protected her from all the attacks. Dange would remain in touch with Indira Gandhi through Nirmala Deshpande. Indira Gandhi declared an Emergency on 26 June 1975, after discussing alternative options with political leaders, including Bhupesh Gupta of the CPI. In light of the shifting political landscape following the emergency, Dange threw himself deeper into political work. Party chairman Rajeshwar Rao also supported the emergency. Farmers and working people were not opposed to the emergency, as during the emergency period, 17 lakh acres of government land were distributed, and 40 lakh farmers without any land were given a place to stay. The imperialist powers such as the US, England, and France opposed this decision. On the other hand, the Soviet Union, Eastern European countries, Cuba, and Vietnam did not oppose it. During the emergency, the CPI wanted Indira Gandhi to work on the ‘Garibi hatao’ programs and nationalize textile mills. The CPI was the only major political party to stand with Congress during the 1977 elections. Congress lost this election, and this had a deeper impact on both Congress and the CPI. Various leaders in the CPI concluded that it was a huge mistake to support the emergency and critiqued Indira Gandhi. However, Dange maintained that the emergency was an unpleasant necessity and the policy to be with the Congress was correct and should continue that way. CPI was sure that Congress wouldn't win, and they liked Charan Singh more than Indira Gandhi. According to Rajeshwar Rao, “a less powerful capitalist government in power is better than a powerful capitalist government. It would be easier to oppose that government. Also, Indira Gandhi has little support, so unity with her would be foolish [1, p. 589].” In 1980, the party's national council had decided to remove Dange from the chairman position. In a long speech, Dange defended his policies and asserted that his policy was in the interest of the country, the working class, and the balance of power in his country and in the world. Conclusion The preceding events show the lack of understanding of sectarian sections in the CPI leadership of the role of the Congress. Further, the party abandoned its work towards new ideas and revolutionary struggle to focus on limited electoral politics. Dange's Unity and Struggle' motto was understood in a very superficial way of strategic political alliance. It needs to be understood as unity among the people, and struggle against systems of exploitation, not as an electoral strategy. We must understand Dange's assessment of this period of Indian history to understand our task today. References [1] Roza Deshpande, S.A.Dange, Ek Itihas. [2] Russi Karanjia, The Mind of Mr. Nehru, An Interview by R.K. Karanjia. Shubham Shinde is a PhD student based in Bangalore. by Nandita Chaturvedi  The last few months have seen the repairing of the relationship between India and China, in defiance of pressure from the US government. The Indian government, so far having played sweet and non-threatening to the American ruling elite, has finally demonstrated that India is indeed an independent nation, with a foreign policy set by its people and its history, rather than the white world system. India is a difficult nation to understand. As Vladimir Putin once remarked with a smile in a joint press conference with Modi, it is an old civilization, straight answers are difficult. Yet, not only is India an old civilization, with indirect and subtle ways of communication, it is also an incredibly complex and diverse society. In the days following Trump’s comments that the US would impose 50% tariffs on India if she refused to stop buying oil from the Russians, Narendra Modi said in one of his speeches, “For us, the interest of farmers remains our top priority. India will never compromise on the interests of farmers, fishermen, and dairy farmers. I know we will have to pay a heavy price for it, and I am ready for it. India is ready for it.” From the same leader who had planned to open up the farming sector these comments marked a departure. The divergence between India and the US grew deeper this past month as Modi visited Beijing for the meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Pictures of Modi laughing in a close circle with Putin and Xi Jinping made newspapers the world over. This marks a huge event in India’s trajectory, where the media within the nation has been filled with anti-China articles by Western facing and Western trained analysts. The Observer Research Foundation is one such hub which keeps up a constant stream of articles in major newspapers that cite China as a threat, a competitor and an ally of India’s enemies in Pakistan. So then what caused this departure in the government’s stance on China? Indian Farmers and Deepening Democracy The years 2020 and 2021 saw massive protests by farmers organizations and unions in India. These protests were directed against three farm laws that were passed by the Indian parliament, opening up the agricultural sector to multinational corporations. The protests, initially started by farmers unions, pointed in particular to the removal of government guarantees on minimum prices for crops. The protests started in the states of Haryana and Punjab, which are also the two states that produce the maximum of India’s food surplus, but the movement spread quickly nationwide. The protests continued, non-violently through a wave of the COVID 19 pandemic. Farmers from Punjab, Haryana camped right outside Delhi, blocking roads entering the capital. They non-violently campaigned through the bitterly cold Delhi winter, with huge organizing to feed and provide basic necessities to thousands living in a makeshift camp. November 2020 saw a nationwide general strike in support of the farmers and thousands more arrived at Delhi’s borders. Rakesh Tikait emerged as a spokesperson of the leadership of these protests. From a family of farmers, Tikait spent some time working as constable in the Delhi Police. In the leadership of the movement, Tikait firmly stood on the side of non-violent protest. He would invoke Mahatma Gandhi more than once to justify the need for a mass movement. The farmers' protests were a democratic movement by the Indian peasants to defend the gains made by the Indian state to protect its people against foreign exploitation. They were possibly the largest non-violent movement of the peasantry since the freedom struggle. They showed that the Indian people were willing, even in this time, to sacrifice in order to struggle against imperialism, and in defence of the Indian freedom struggle. The Modi government, which had previously painted them as trouble-makers and forces for destabilization, could not ignore this movement. The government was forced to negotiate with the farmers, and repeal the farm laws. Thus, when Trump demanded last month that India open up its farming sector to American companies, the Indian government knew that this was an issue that could potentially bring them to their knees. The Indian peasantry had already made clear that they would not accept a dismantling of the state, and they were willing to sacrifice for it. Modi and his cabinet could no doubt see that another confrontation with the farmers could cause their legitimacy to crumble. Thus, it was a triumph for a deepening Indian democracy that when the American government put pressure on the Modi government, Modi could, and had to come out declaring “For farmers, fishermen, and livestock rearers, Modi will always stand as a wall of protection.” It was a democratic movement of the Indian peasantry that compelled Modi to seek China as an ally. The Indian people, and their democratic aspirations and capacities constitute a force for peace. For the struggle for peace is one and the same as the struggle to eliminate poverty in India. We in India must learn what we can from the Chinese experience, and work strongly with our neighbours to lift the Indian people to a new standard of life. The Indian people, struggling against imperialist exploitation for a better future for their children, open up the possibilities for a peaceful Asia, and a new world order. Confrontation with the Racial System India does not have a racial system. Most Indians grow up away from the direct influence of the color line, and only deal with the indirect effects of whiteness. When face to face with white people, they assume them to be in psychology similar to themselves. This is, of course, a grave error, and can sometimes bias them towards an unconscious belief in white supremacy. Indians are unable often to read between the lines of white assumptions. Yet, Indians are proud people, and they remember the humiliations of their colonial past, as they remember the West’s treatment of the Indira Gandhi government. All these contradictions have been expressed in the actions of the Modi government over the past few months. Yet none of this is true about the current class of Indian intellectuals. Indian intellectuals, I argue, are one of the biggest anti-China and pro-war lobbies within India. Unlike the Indian people, they are weak and accustomed to getting rewarded for aligning with the white world. They have turned their backs on the people and on their civilization. Invited to discussions on peace in Asia, they only know how to bring up China’s support for Pakistan, neglecting to note that peace in South Asia must be a part of peace in Asia. They bring up the trade deficit, the border dispute, the incident in Galwan valley in 2020, in the name of being ‘pragmatic’. They have no long term vision for the nation or for Asia, and continue to be tied up in the western cast net of ‘pragmatic politics’. Further, they are insecure of China’s rapid rise, and delude themselves by thinking that India is an economic and military rival to China. The truth of the situation is that China is competing with the West, and poses not only an ideological but a technological challenge to the US. As an example, a recent book on China was released in a high profile function in New Delhi where National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon and former Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran were present. At the same event, Manoj Joshi, a fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, said, “The Tianjin summit was a process in repairing the relationship broken in 2020. No one knows why China did what it did in 2020, but this meeting certainly propels the relationship to where it stands today. But let’s not overstate the value of the summit.” He also brought up the contentious point of Tibet. Former Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale, also at this event, called the ‘regime’ in China ‘autocratic’. This is nothing but parroting American ruling class talking points, when everyone in the world can see the huge significance of an India-China alliance. Not surprisingly, when the farmer’s protests were ongoing, the intellectuals had criticised them as being dominated by large farmers and not representing the aspirations of those at the margins. This reflected their leanings towards post-modernism and identity politics. The intellectual class has forgotten the legacy of our freedom struggle, when figures such as Tagore and Tan Yun Shan put forward a new framework and new ideas for thinking of relations between India and China. They did not view India and China through narrow geopolitical or pragmatic terms, but rather in civilizational terms. For Tagore, the relationship between these two great and ancient civilizations could not be based purely on material benefit or trade, but had to be rooted in a common understanding of humanity and peace. Cheena Bhavan, founded by Tagore and Tan Yun Shan, showed a new way of intercivilizational dialogue, not in reaction to the West or drawing from the West, but rather surpassing Western terms. Tagore would say in his trip to China, “My friends, I have come to ask you to re-open the channel of communion which I hope is still there; for though overgrown with weeds of oblivion its lines can still be traced. I shall consider myself fortunate if, through this visit, China comes nearer to India and India to China,—for no political or commercial purpose, but the disinterested human love and for nothing else.” Despite this deep and rich legacy to draw on, the intellectuals in our think tanks and universities continue to draw from Western liberal theory and post modernism. This makes them Western facing, dependent on white intellectual figures for authority and validation. However, as Tagore had pointed out, a leaning towards the west means at best indifference to war, and at worst support for it. Thus, the struggle for peace in Asia and the world is inextricably tied to the ongoing ideological struggle between the Indian people and the intellectuals that set the path for the nation. The Indian people still draw on the philosophies of Gandhi and Tagore, although a leadership that can fully articulate their aspirations is absent. Their frameworks and desire for peace is in direct contrast to Western backed academics and intellectuals, who do not see peace as a priority. Thus, those who want to fight for peace and the elimination of poverty must struggle for a new movement of ideas that can challenge the current intellectual class, and build on the ideas and work of our freedom struggle. We must recognize that domestic movements are not separate from the struggle for peace, but rather that peace goes hand in hand with poverty elimination and a new democracy. Nandita Chaturvedi is a member of the Intercivilizational Dialogue Project and an editor of this journal.
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