Demand a stop to the war-mongering,
chauvinism and aggression by the expansionist Hindu-fascist Modi regime
against Pakistan!Oppose state terror against the Kashmiri people!
Support the just struggle of the Kashmiri nation for Azadi!
The pre-dawn attack of 18 September on an
Indian Army base at Uri in Jammu and Kashmir left 17 army jawans dead
and at least 20 injured, two of whom died later. This is the single
biggest loss suffered by the Indian Army in Kashmir in the recent years.
Following this, a relentless anti-Pakistan jingoistic chorus was
drummed-up by all ruling-class parties led by the Hindutva fascist
BJP/Sangh Parivar as an expression of virulent Indian expansionism.
Opposition parties vied with one another to look more ‘nationalist’ than
the rest in making anti-Pakistan statements and demanding ‘decisive
action’. Allegations against Modi government for its purported failure
to take “tough action” and “teach Pakistan a lesson” from the opposition
and the corporate media came thick and fast. Modi government and the
RSS, however, needed no prompting to unleash a barrage of tirade
targeting Pakistan in the wake of the Uri attack, terming it a “sponsor
of terrorism”, “a terrorist state”, “epicentre of global terrorism” and
what not.
Amidst the growing cacophony of
big-nation chauvinism by the Indian ruling classes and a similar
jingoistic response by the rulers of Pakistan, an Indian Army
spokesperson (DGMO, J&K) declared in a press conference in New Delhi
that the Army successfully carried out “surgical strike” across the
Line of Control (LoC) on 28 September. It claimed to have destroyed
“terror infrastructure” such as “terrorist launch-pads” and gunned down
several “terrorists”. Only a few days before this, the army had made the
questionable claim of shooting down around ten ‘terrorists’ who were
allegedly trying to cross the LoC, but could furnished no evidence to
back up its claim. In case of the so-called ‘surgical strike’ too,
serious questions have been raised about the veracity of the claim from
various quarters domestically and internationally. Journalists who have
visited the LoC on PoK side and talked to the local residents could not
find any evidence of any ‘surgical strike’ by the Indian armed forces.
The pressure on the Indian government is now growing to furnish credible
evidence of it – a demand it has stubbornly refused so far.
Indeed, the manner in which the
government went about advertising the ‘surgical strike’ and later
stonewalled the call for concrete evidence provide enough grounds to
question the claim. This ‘surgical strike’ has much similarity with the
modus-operandi of the Modi government after the Indian Army suffered a
large number of casualties in an attack SS Khaplang-led NSCN in Manipur
last year. Then too, it publicly claimed that the Army had carried out a
strike inside Myanmar in ‘hot pursuit’ of Naga guerrillas and killed
several of them, a claim which remains unsubstantiated and was firmly
rebutted by that organisation and the Myanmar government. The recent
claim of ‘surgical strike’ too appears to be motivated more by political
reasons than military requirements. It is mainly aimed at assuaging the
domestic Hindutva constituency of BJP/Sangh Parivar and put the
opposition parties on the defensive. But the very act of making such
claims amply demonstrates that while remaining extremely touchy about
the “unity and integrity” of “Bharat Mata”, Modi government has no
compunctions in violating the sovereignty and territorial integrity of
other countries and nations including our neighbours, if it is in the
interest of the ruling classes and their imperialist masters,
particularly US imperialism. In fact, aggression and military
intervention against our neighbours has always been the policy of the
expansionist Indian rulers and remains an integral part of the
Brahmanical Hindu fascist agenda of establishing an integrated ‘Hindu
Rashtra’ in South Asia. BJP spokespersons have announced in the past
that the party is committed to establish ‘Akhand Bharat’ through
peaceful means. It is this expansionist policy of the Indian ruling
classes that is responsible for pushing the country into the brink of
the present crisis.
But even if the question whether or not
the ‘surgical strike’ actually took place is set aside, it can be said
with some certainly that the decision to make this claim publicly was
taken by Modi government with the objective of salvaging its tattered
image after the bankruptcy of its Kashmir policy got thoroughly exposed
domestically and internationally. Unable to respond to the ongoing
historic and unprecedented mass upsurge of Kashmir in any other way than
by military force (which has taken the lives of nearly a hundred
Kashmiris and injured more than 20,000 so far), Modi government
desperately needed a pretext to divert the world’s attention from the
atrocities committed by the Indian occupation forces in Kashmir. The
government wanted to change its image of the perpetrator of state
terrorism in Kashmir to a victim of “state-sponsored cross-border
terrorism”. It has found such a pretext In the Uri attack,.
On the other hand, it was looking for an
opportunity to channelise the growing discontent of the masses of the
country harmlessly towards a foreign ‘enemy’. The Sangh Parvar and BJP
have been working in a planned manner since the last parliamentary
elections to win over the Backward Castes and the Dalits to its side in
order to consolidate its social base and to minimise the resistance to
its reactionary anti-people steps. Using the state machinery, Modi-led
BJP has introduced several programmes for workers, peasants, BCs,
Dalits, Adivasis, women and the poorest of the poor with much fanfare.
But ‘Modinomics’ has utterly failed to assuage the growing social crises
and the resulting discontent. It has completely failed to bring any
‘acche din’ to the vast majority of the country’s people. ‘Acche din’
has remained the privilege of only the imperialists and a miniscule
minority of the populace – big capitalists, big landlords, ruling-class
politicians, top bureaucrats and government functionaries, etc. During
more than two years of rule, Modi government has proved its utter
inability to resolve any of the burning economic, political and social
issues of the masses and to address their discontent. This discontent is
getting expressed through various mass movements by workers, peasants,
BCs, Dalits, Adivasis, students, employees, religious minorities and
oppressed nationalities, etc., among which the present upsurge in
Kashmir is the most militant and extensive one.
Another factor behind the aggressive
posturing of the Modi government towards Pakistan is the upcoming
assembly elections. Most important for BJP is the UP elections, followed
by states like Punjab and Gujarat where the fate of its
governments/alliance-governments are at stake. The stakes have become
even higher after its abject failure in the recently concluded assembly
elections in Bengal, Keralam, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry (it could
achieve a consolation win only in Asom mainly due to the 15 years of
Congress misrule). BJP/Sangh Parivar is therefore desperately drumming
up anti-Pakistan pseudo-nationalist rhetoric to serve its own vested
interests before the elections.
Modi government has thus used the Uri
attack mainly to serve these objectives. Its response to Uri attack
along with its diplomatic efforts to ‘isolate’ Pakistan internationally
is in conformity with the same integrated policy of the Indian ruling
classes – national oppression towards Kashmir and expansionism towards
the neighbouring countries. Though this policy has been pursued by each
and every government since 1947, it has found a more vicious, cruel and
brazen expression during the present NDA government at the hands of
Brahmanical Hindu fascist BJP. Not surprisingly, all the parliamentary
parties including the revisionist CPI(M) and CPI are speaking in a voice
similar to BJP and are standing behind the communal fascist Modi-Amit
Shah-Mohan Bhagavat-Rajnath-Parikkar gang, as they all represent the
same Indian ruling-class interests.
Not remaining content with the claim of
‘surgical strike’, Modi government has followed it up with a virulent
chorus of big nation-chauvinism and is trying to build up war hysteria
in the country. It has created an atmosphere of war by deploying
additional army and paramilitary forces at the border, beginning
cross-border firing and bombardment, ordering the residents of the
international border to vacate their homes, issuing ‘high alert’ in the
bordering states and acting on dubious claims of the ‘sighting’ of
‘terrorists’ in Mumbai, etc. It has scuttled the SAARC summit by putting
pressure on a number of South Asian countries, threatened to downgrade
the economic and diplomatic ties and to abrogate the long-standing
water-sharing treaty with Pakistan, and are taking similar other steps.
At the same time, Modi government has intensified diplomatic efforts to
gain international support for its occupation and repression in Kashmir,
for its aggression towards Pakistan in the name of ‘global war on
terror’ and for ‘isolating’ it internationally by primarily lobbying
with the US government.
The Pakistani government led by Nawaz
Sharif, on the other hand, has stepped up its anti-India rhetoric and
jingoism mainly as a response to the prevailing domestic situation in
that country. The Pakistani ruling classes are facing mass anger due to
the deepening economic-political crises and intensifying social
contradictions in the country. The pro-imperialist economic and
strategic policies pursued by Nawaz Sharif government, the ongoing
military operations against national minorities and Islamic forces, its
reluctance in supporting the Kashmir liberation movement in the past,
etc., are resulting in serious unrest among the masses of Pakistan. In
this backdrop, the main ruling-class parties of the country which hardly
come together on any issue, have got united to give India a “fitting
reply” and are urging the masses to unite behind the government.
Pakistan has also heightened its military preparedness and is using
national-chauvinist language to build up a war atmosphere.
While Pakistani rulers are highlighting
the Kashmir issue, pledging all support to it and are raising India’s
oppressive role in international platforms, the Indian rulers, in a bid
to outdo their opponent, have started to raise the issue of
Balochistan’s national liberation movement. Ruling classes of each
country are claiming their support for the national liberation movements
of the opponent, while at the same time subjugating the oppressed
nationalities and crushing the just national liberation movements within
their own boundaries. This clearly shows the opportunism and bankruptcy
of the ruling classes of both the countries. They are raising the issue
of national oppression and right to self-determination of oppressed
nationalities only to serve their own class interests and of the
imperialist powers and not out of true solidarity with the struggling
nations and peoples. The ruling classes of Pakistan or India are not,
and can never be, the genuine, trusted and reliable allies of the people
of Kashmir or Balochistan in their fight for national liberation.
At the root of this stand-off between the
ruling classes of India and Pakistan over Kashmir lies the clash of
their economic and strategic interests. As compradors to imperialism,
they also represent the interests of different imperialist powers
backing them. The US, Britain and EU have much at stake economically and
militarily in both the South Asian countries. India is an extremely
important market for US imperialism particularly at a time when it is
reeling under a severe economic and financial crisis. So is the
necessity to open up the Indian economy further for unrestrained
neo-colonial plunder and exploitation by strengthening its stranglehold
over India. Moreover, it considers India as an important outpost to
contain the growing influence of its rivals Russia and China in Asia and
China in Asia-Pacific region, particularly when Pakistan’s
economic-diplomatic-military ties with China and Russia is deepening.
In the context of the growing worldwide
imperialist contention between the US and its allies on the one hand and
Russia, China and Iran on the other (manifesting most glaringly at
present in the contention for Syria and Ukraine), the US wants India to
be firmly on its side. Russia’s close relations with some former Soviet
republics of Central Asia and China’s growing economic ties with them is
another cause of concern for the US. The Indian government is also an
important US ally in its ‘global war on terror’. The US and its
imperialist allies are therefore encouraging and utilising the big-power
ambition of the Indian ruling classes and satisfying it to a limited
extent to ensure closer integration of the Indian economy with the
imperialist world market.
At the same time, however, the US also
wants Pakistan to be with it for defending its economic and strategic
interests in South, Central and West Asia, for its Afghan War and to
counter Russia and China. Hence, it is not likely that the US and its
allies will concede to Indian government’s demand of isolating Pakistan
internationally and stopping the economic, diplomatic and military
‘aid/assistance’ to it. Indian government’s efforts to isolate Pakistan
internationally to make it yield and compel it to stop supporting the
Kashmir movement will not work. The strategic support of the imperialist
powers to their Indian and Pakistan compradors will remain relatively
unaltered in the short term, though the extent and level of this support
may undergo some tactical shifts according to the changes in the
international politics and balance of forces. Since behind the clash of
interests between the comprador rulers of the two countries lie the
contention between the imperialist powers, the tension and mutual
acrimony between the two countries will continue and may even intensify
with the intensification of the fundamental contradictions of the world.
Given this context, it is quite clear
that till the time the Indian ruling classes persist in suppressing the
birthright of the Kashmiri people, continue their communal fascist
policies towards the Muslims and maintain their interference in the
internal affairs of the South Asian countries, particularly Pakistan, it
is not possible for them to stop attacks like Uri. Nor is it possible
for the Pakistani ruling classes to stop the oppressed peoples and
nations from carrying out militant resistance against subjugation and
oppression. As long as the comprador ruling classes of the two countries
continue to yield to the strategic and economic interests of
imperialism, they will never be able to restrain the people from
rebellion, armed or unarmed.
The CC, CPI(Maoist) appeals to the people
of India to see through the national-chauvinist machinations of the
Indian ruling classes being articulated through the Modi government and
the parliamentary parties against Pakistan. The people of India and
Pakistan have nothing to gain from a military escalation or war between
the two countries, but have much to lose due to it. The huge financial
burden of large-scale military mobilization at the border will have to
be borne by the people of the two countries depending on the intensity
and extent of this deployment. We therefore call upon the people to
oppose any kind of expansionist intervention by the Indian government
against PoK and Pakistan, be it through ‘surgical strikes’, military
aggression and economic or diplomatic means. The CC reiterates its
unequivocal support to the Kashmiri people’s right to self-determination
including secession from India and urges the people of India to
resolutely defend this right of the fighting Kashmiri people. Let us
declare to the people of Kashmir, “You are not alone!” Oppose the Indian
occupation of Kashmir and continued state terrorism by the Indian armed
forces! Support the struggle of the Kashmiri nation forAzadi! Demand a
stop to the war-mongering, chauvinism and aggression against Pakistan by
the Indian government led by the Hindutva fascists to further Indian
expansionism! Demand a stop to the threats and intimidation of Pakistani
artists and citizens in India! ‘No’ to any type of war with Pakistan!
October 2, 2016 AbhaySpokesperson
CPI(Maoist), Central Committee
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