Maoist meet after 36 yrs, Kashmir to Manipur on agenda
Thursday, February 22, 2007
NEW DELHI, February 21 Giving the Union Home Ministry a rude jolt, the banned Maoists, who fight a low-intensity war with the Indian state along the “Red Corridor” down a swathe of central India from the border with Nepal in the north to Karnataka in the south, have concluded their ninth party congress somewhere in the “liberated zones” along the Jharkhand-Bihar border with a call to extend support for secessionist struggles ranging from Kashmir to Manipur.
The month-long Unity Congress, held after a period of 36 years since the eighth congress in 1970 and the first to be held after merger of the Maoist Communist Centre of India (MCC) with the People’s War Group in 2004, was attended by 100 delegates from 16 states, including activists of the fraternal Maoist parties from Nepal, Philippines and Bangladesh. It concluded on February 3.
While vowing to fight the SEZs coming up in different parts of the country, the CPI (Maoist) Congress also supported the demand for pardon of Afzal Guru, convicted in the Parliament attack case, as well as for formation of separate states of Telangana and Vidarbha. The Unity Congress also exhorted its cadre to use every possible means to free its detained activists, even it meant organising jailbreaks.
“We should support ‘just struggles’ of nationalities and sub-nationalities that demand a separate state for their development. Kashmiris and various nationalities of the North-East, such as the Assamese, Nagas, Manipuris and Tripuris, have been long waging an armed struggle against the Indian Government for their right to self-determination, including the right to secede from the so-called Union of India,” Muppala Lakshman Rao alias Ganapathi, who was re-elected general secretary, told the delegates.
Focusing on the Kashmir problem, he said: “The conflict between the Indian forces and Kashmiris has generated fresh mass resentment in the wake of the Centre’s designs to hang Afzal Guru. The Kashmiri people, along with the enlightened democratic sections all over India, have raised the just demand to desist from hanging the innocent Afzal Guru.”
The congress decided to form organisations such as ‘Committee to Release Prisoners’, comprising intellectuals, democracy-lovers and members of the families of imprisoned comrades. “Efforts are already underway,” the general secretary said.
According to the Credential Committee report of the Unity Congress, top six activists in Andhra Pradesh and 26 in Tamil Nadu are detained under POTA, while 16 in Karnataka and about 25 in north Chhattisgarh have been languishing in jails.
Upbeat about its “success” in organising Dalit protests and demonstrations against SEZs, the Congress also resolved to further strengthen people’s army, and deepen the mass base of the party.
Recognising the role of caste in class revolution, the congress made significant additions to party documents by pin-pointing the specific character of Indian feudalism /semi-feudalism as being “deeply interwoven with the caste system and Brahminical ideology”.
The Congress reaffirmed the general line of the new democratic revolution with agrarian revolution as its axis and protracted people’s war as the path of Indian revolution.
Labels: NEWS
posted by Resistance 2/22/2007 10:55:00 PM,
