CAMPAIGN

WE SHALL SPEAK / HUM TO BOLENGE

- NAPM India

Sitting on a burning stump The nightingale sang. The ruler’s gun Couldn’t touch a hair.

- Nagarjuna (1911-1998)

The history of the world has been a history of struggle by people and society, not of rulers. Today’s human civilization has been shaped by this desire to live a life with dignity, and the successful and unsuccessful efforts to fight different forms of discrimination, injustice, poverty and lies. Peoples’ movements have forced the retreat and, at times, decimated the strongest of autocratic forces. The people of this country have gradually gained rights and progressed by fighting numerous small and big struggles in the fields and factories, in the countryside and in cities. The peoples’ movements that emerged in the first half of the 20th century ended the rule of the world’s largest superpower, which was dependent on the plunder of India. History is a witness that the people who rose up for independence were fighting for not just political freedom but also economic and social freedoms.

Today, under the leadership of the BJP, a period of dangerous majoritarianism has shaken the roots of democracy. There has been a successful attempt to undermine all the pillars of democracy in India. Constitutional institutions like the Supreme Court, Election Commission, CAG and CVC are functioning like an extended arm of the government. Institutions like CBI and ED are being grossly misused. The way in which, the three farming laws were passed in the Rajya Sabha shows that the government is willing to ignore all rules and laws to forcefully impose its view. It is their conceit that they have an overwhelming majority. They forget that the meaning of democracy is not “they who wield the stick owns the buffalo”!

This majoritarianism rests on a politics of dividing people and blind nationalism. By spreading hatred in society towards a particular community, the Sangh Parivar is doing what the Nazis did in Germany in the 1930s. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh considers Hitler and Mussolini’s ideals as its own and has steadfastly followed in their path. Whether it is through “love jihad”, imposing their food preferences or accusations of spreading disease, an atmosphere of hatred has been created towards a religion to the extent that crowds of otherwise normal people are killing innocent people. Gandhi’s assassination was a result of this same ideology. Today his killer Nathuram Godse has been declared a patriot and those accused of mob lynching are being honoured.

The RSS, that has justified the caste and varna system as being essential for social harmony is today praising Ambedkar. To mislead people, the Sangh is celebrating great personalities like Gandhi, Ambedkar, Patel, Subhash and Bhagat Singh, while every day they trample on the principles that the nation builders espoused, lived by and left behind for us. The people of our ancient civilization, which taught truth and nonviolence to the whole world, are being scared by lies that Hindus are in danger. Instead of settling disputes with Pakistan and China, geo-political conflicts are being regularly used to gather votes and force our soldiers to be martyred in false battles. Nationalism is being used aggressively against the people of Kashmir and the Northeast, where citizen’s rights are being disregarded every day and to imprison opposition leaders for no reason. Across the country, those speaking against the government are being accused of being anti-national.

The media has been completely captured to create a narrative based on many such lies. Even a pandemic like coronavirus has been exploited through such a policy and the media has been used extensively to target a particular community. Far from providing information to the people and questioning those holding power on their behalf, influential media institutions

have been left with just one task – to propagate the viewpoint of those in power with the people and twist the words of anyone who question those in power.

As the Covid-19 pandemic spreads across the country, we have reached second place and are rapidly moving towards becoming the country with the maximum number of infections in the world. The government which was claiming that it would defeat corona in 21 days is now trying its best to hide data. During the crisis, the country saw how millions of working families had to travel hundreds of kilometres on foot. Many tired workers lost their life on railway tracks and in railway coaches. Research by NGOs puts the number of such deaths at more than 650, but the government says that they do not even have data on the number of dead people!

Today, instead of questioning the government when the country is going through an unprecedented economic crisis and unemployment, the media is diverting the entire country’s attention to the tragic death of an actor, Pakistan and China’s misbehaviour, etc. Rather than rethinking the economic policies that have destroyed the country’s economic situation, the Prime Minister is using the slogan of self-reliance and the pretext of the lockdown to run a campaign to silence opponents and impose various new orders, laws and policies, all with one objective – to make business easier for companies, no matter what difficulties people in cities or villages have to face. Opening coal mines to the private sector, relieving them even from environmental and social impact assessment studies, and handing over 700 kilometres of our coastline to companies so that fisher people who are called the king of the sea are made unprotected laborers on corporate owned trawlers, while ignoring the global crisis of climate change, this is their idea of development.

The corona epidemic has proved that our country’s public healthcare system has faced budget cuts for years while corporate hospitals were being set up, but these have not come forward to serve the public. Similarly, the New Education Policy 2020 which, by handing over the public education system to the private sector, throws dalits, adivasis, minorities and women out of education will not move us forward. We reiterate the founding fathers’ and mothers of this country that India shall be a secular society that respects equality, simplicity and social justice. Towards that end, we will bring forward an education policy of the people, and by implementing it we will ourselves build a society that respects constitutional values.

Only history will show how we get out of this difficult period, but it is certain that people are raising their voice against it, as witnessed in the massive protests all over the country against the NRC-NPR-CAA. Women are playing a decisive role in this movement and have come out in the streets in such large numbers for the first time since independence. Similarly, ignoring the threat of state violence, the farmers and workers of the country have taken to the streets against the agrarian crisis, land acquisition and changes in factory laws. The Dalit movements have created movements like Bhima Koregaon which gives a new light of inspiration to underprivileged communities across the country. In order to save the environment, communities depending on natural resources, which include fisher people, Adivasis, farmers and common people, have given a tough challenge to the government and strongly opposed changes in environmental laws that facilitate corporate exploitation. Alongside the struggles, small and big peoples’ movements spread across the country have also put forward an alternative model for a better society. Many encouraging experiments based on different economic, social and environmental research and efforts are being undertaken in the country to build a just and equitable society.

The government and the Sangh Parivar are trying to suppress voices brutally misusing government machinery. This autocratic period is even more dangerous than the Emergency because alongside the oppression, the focus on turning people against each other has taken a terrible form. The Delhi riots are a living example of this, where those who advance peace and brotherhood are being called conspirators of the riots and the ruling party’s ministers and leaders who openly promoted violence are being protected. In order to avoid transparency and

accountability, question hour has been removed in the Parliament session and there is a constant effort to weaken the RTI law. It has become common practice to frame false charges and detained in jail anyone who raises their voice and asks questions. In the Bhima Koregaon case, social activists and intellectuals are being called urban naxals and jailed under the UAPA, and the police is not even filing a charge sheet for many years. The ruthless killings of secular, rationalists like Dabholkar, Kalburgi, Pansare and Gauri Lankesh were carried out to suppress dissenting voices by those inspired by a particular ideology which is practised, promoted and protected by the current government.

These are all unacceptable developments! We shall speak!!

The voices of resistance are growing louder across the country. The National Alliance of Peoples’ Movements program “We shall speak” is an attempt to amplify these voices of peoples’ movements at such a time. We want to bring together on one platform, the voices of those fighting for their rights from across the country. In these series of programs, we try to highlight the issues of small and big grassroots peoples’ movements and people in different parts of the country and try to build public opinion for a progressive vision which builds on the constitutional values that the freedom fighters fought for in the previous century. We are starting this campaign on birth anniversary of Shaheed Bhagat Singh, death anniversary of Kishan Patnayak and on eve of martyrdom of Shankar Guha Niyogi, and the historic Harsud rally drawing inspiration from them and strengthen our own movements’ efforts to implement their ideas.

Educate ! Organize ! Agitate !

NAPM India caravan of grassroots struggled organised online started on September 27th and covered a wide array of issues in each of the states and continued through end of the year in 2020. For details see https://weshallspeakup. wordpress.com

State Wise Schedule of the We Shall Speak campaign

September 27 Inaugural Event October 4 West Bengal October 9 Bihar (I) October 10 Madhya Pradesh October 11 Bihar (II) October 13 Jharkhand (I) October 15 Jharkhand (II) October 17 Chattisgarh October 19 Odisha October 26 Andhra Pradesh October 31 Kerala November 3 Gujarat November 7 Telangana November 8 Uttar Pradesh (I) November 17-22 Maharashtra November 29 Uttar Pradesh (II) December 8 Karnataka (I) December 9 Karnataka (II)