Who are we?
Thus far the bourgeoisie has raced along the track of civilisation at a quicker rate than the proletariat, not because they are intellectually more powerful than the latter; indeed one might properly argue the contrary case - but because the political and economic organisation of society has been such that, hitherto, the bourgeoisie alone have enjoyed access to learning and science has existed only for them, and the proletariat has found itself doomed to a forced ignorance, so that if the proletariat has, nevertheless, made progress (and there is no denying it has) then that progress was made not thanks to society, but rather in spite of it. To sum up. In society as presently constituted, the advances of science have been at the root of the relative ignorance of the proletariat, just as the progress of industry and commerce have been at the root of its relative impoverishment. Thus, intellectual progress and material progress have contributed in equal measure towards the exacerbation of the slavery of the proletariat. Meaning what? Meaning that we have a duty to reject and resist that bourgeois science, just as we have a duty to reject and resist bourgeois wealth. And reject and resist them in this sense - that in destroying the social order which turns it into the preserve of one or of several classes, we must lay claim to it as the common inheritance of all the world.
- On Education/ Mikhail Bakunin
Dear Comrades,
We are some of many antifascists of the State of India. And alive. For now. Yes, the totalitarian, fascist nightmare is already here.
And as such, we want to start ANTIFASCIST ACTION in India as there still isn’t one officially. We want to reach out to as many International ANTIFA groups as possible through the intrawebs because we believe that the visibility of Indian Antifascists in the post-globalised world is imperative to its new anti-casteist, anti-classist, feminist, anti-heirarchical, anti-fascist, anti-capitalist and indigenous revolutions blooming at every corner of this land. As Savarnas and the petit-bourgeoisie enjoying the freedom of the Internet and education we intend to amplify the voices of the most marginalised of Indian society -- the ones already waging daily battles against the nexus of neo-liberal, capitalist Corporate Raj and the Brahminical State in the fields, factories, sweatshops, workshops, forests, classrooms and the streets, armed with stones, education and rifles alike -- we want to spread the word of revolution brewing inside the minds of the Indian Proletariat and connect solidarities from the comrades outside of India that they are yet to meet and pass the mic on to the ones who do not have access to the stage.
The recent movements of India are led by Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims, farmers, students, intellectuals -- so many of them female, so many of them queer -- united in their fight against fascism yet divided by the institutions of class, caste, gender and sexuality -- regularly taken advantage of by the Brahmanical State and its right-wing forces such as RSS (Rashtriya Swamsevak Sangh), VHP (Vishwa Hindu Parishad), Shiv Sena, Durga Vahini and so many more. We as a united force of Antifascist peoples want to spread the discontent further and join the larger movement sprouting in different corners through whatever International solidarities we can gather from this campaign. We draw inspiration from comrades fighting in Latin America, in Kurdistan, in Turkey, in Palestine, in the streets of Athens, and from our Black sisters and brothers of BLM spread across the United Snakes of AmeriKKKa.
The intersectionality of privileges and oppression in India is highly complicated because the caste system exists. The caste system was built to assign and maintain one’s class position in the society according to the caste one is born into. Now it's 2017. And the caste system has evolved into a toxicity existing within all institutions of power that only the Dalits and Adivasis can smash and destroy.
Till the next 2019 elections, our job will be direct action in terms of forming free food kitchens, building cultural centres which will hold gender, caste, class, law and other awareness programs, create free, alternative schools and be a free bastion of resources in terms of information.
By 2019 our hope is to create a well-connected network of solidarity between all the different antifascist movements (Una Movement, Bhim Army, Adivasi resistance such as the one in Niyamgiri, the ongoing fight in Kashmir, and so many North-Eastern regions under the rule of the dreaded AFSPA, such as Manipur, Assam, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram) happening in India right now.
We wish to create bastions and safe spaces of antifascism where womyn, dalits, muslims and anybody else who is interested in antifascist action can come and communicate and use our resources to learn and educate themselves. To steal a quote from Errico Malatesta, we do not want to emancipate the people, we want the people to emancipate themselves!
This was originally a speech given by Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, stolen and edited by us to make the exact same point, within the context of India. Many of you may have read his speech before.
So this is what he had to say, and this is, ultimately what we, as an association of antifascists, as radical feminists, as anarchists, as communists, as dissenting students, peasants and workers, have to express as well.
“Yes, ANTIFA is gay. ANTIFA is gay in Saudi Arabia, black in South Africa, a dalit, a muslim, an adivasi in India, a woman in the streets of Delhi (or anywhere else in this country, really), an Asian in Europe, a Rohingya in Myanmar, an African-American teenager in the United States of America, a Kurd in Turkey, a Yazidi in Syria, a Chicano in San Ysidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, a Mayan Indian in the streets of San Cristobal, a Jew in Germany, a Gypsy in Poland, a Mohawk in Quebec, a pacifist in Bosnia, a single woman on the Metro at 10pm, a peasant without land, a gang member in the slums, an unemployed worker, an unhappy student, a Zapatista in the mountains, and of course, an antifascist in South Asia.
ANTIFA is all the exploited, marginalised, oppressed minorities resisting and saying `Enough'. They are every minority who is now beginning to speak and every majority that must shut up and listen. They are every untolerated group searching for a way to speak, for their voice to be heard. Everything that makes power and the good consciences of those in power uncomfortable -- this is ANTIFA.”
The situation in India right now
Let’s go back to the 1940s following the path of history of India’s anti-fascist movement: we’ll find that the spirit of Internationalism inspired the great artists and thinkers of the time to unite against World War 2; after the Independence the face of the enemy changed -- the oppressed became the oppressor -- Indian people hadn’t yet won the class and caste war within, the long bloody battle for azaadi made way into the people’s minds, the Partition displaced thousands of people, India’s map has been redrawn. Newer borders gave birth to newer people’s struggles and movements.
The Kashmiri Intifada came to be against the reign of Indian Occupation. In later years, the Congress regime launched Operation Green Hunt to curb the maoist activities in the Red Corridors, the Indian State deployed armed forces under the draconian law AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Powers Act) to police the daily lives of the people of Kashmir, North-East and Red Corridor areas (Bastar, Dandakaranya). This law allows the military force of India to rape, kill, incarcerate, disappear the civilians of the spaces designated as “disturbed areas”.
India has had a long history of people's struggles but in the recent past, a new wave of anti-fascist movements have erupted all across its land led by the most marginalised peoples. Today, the fragmented nation of 1.3 billion people stand on the bodies of people from Kashmir, Bastar, Manipur, it stands on the trampled bodies of farmers dead in Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, on the bodies of Dalit-Bahujan-Adivasi peoples and Muslims lynched in various parts of the country, it stands on the dead bodies of womxn assaulted, policed, shamed to the point of suicide; LGBTIQA+ people persecuted, murdered, media gagged; scholars, artists and ideologues incarcerated. The promise of Acche Din (Good Days) stand as a farce and laughs at us as the people of the lower caste and lower class falter through the dream of a 'cashless economy' dreamt by the power at the Centre through the overnight implementation of demonetisation to curb the menace of black money yet the people of this land don't have any account of the same.
The Finance Bill, 2017 has taxed sanitary napkins at 20%. The school textbooks are wrought with xenophobia, communalism, Hindutva propaganda, and in some states such as Gujarat, the history books boast about how great a nation Nazi Germany was.
99% of the population today hold the ominous Aadhar Card which is a means to collect the biometric information of the people, to keep them under constant surveillance. A nation which doesn't have the basic impetus needed for the democracy to grow wants its people to go cashless, to become digital.
The Brahminical State of India is forcing people belonging to the lowest rungs of our society to not eat beef, a staple and cheap source of protein in many states such as Bengal, while that very State hypocritically milks cows in hoards and tortures them for their whole lives, and, on top of that, is one of the largest exporters of beef in the world.
- That very state doesn't care about a person’s bodily autonomy;
- it doesn't recognise the rights of the adivasi people fighting for their jal-jangal-zameen (water, forest, land) displacing them for profit, selling their land to the corporates like Tata and Vedanta;
- it doesn't care about the people fighting for their self-determination in Kashmir;
- its law doesn't even recognise marital rape;
- it tells the hetereosexual couple how to give birth to the ‘best Aryan child’;
- like a giant mansplaining machine, it tells the females that motherhood is their only duty -- the new and improved India has no place for womxn, muslims, dalit-bahujans and adivasi (indigenous) people.
With its project 'Make in India', the present government strives to be the global superpower at the expense of the well being of its peoples. The paradox of embracing neoliberal economic policies on one hand and regressive casteist and fundamentalist politics in practice reveals the oppressor's face masked by the fake promises.
The slow genocide of Indian people is now an open secret and people are beginning to unite across the country against the Hindutva regime in power, people belonging to the most marginalised sections of the Indian society. As you read this, the state and its right-wing cadres are torturing and murdering those it deems its enemies, while at the same time, there are brave revolutionaries in collectives and movements like the Bhim Army, the Una Movement, all the Kashmiri people fighting with life and stone, North-Eastern Indians ignored and shamed to the point of oblivion, and adivasis red with anger across the region of South Asia.
A petition from the indigenous people of Niyamgiri Hills, Orissa:
NIYAMGIRI SURAKSHA SAMITI
Kalahandi – Rayagada
PRESS RELEASE, 5th June 2017, Bhubaneswar
Intimidation, Abduction and Wrongful Incarceration of Adivasi-Dalit leaders, activists and members of Niyamgiri Suraksha Samiti by Odisha Police to further the interests of Vedanta:
This is to bring to your attention that the Adivasi-Dalit members of the Niyamgiri Suraksha Samiti have been made a victim of a conspiracy between the Govt. and mining company Vedanta. We are being constantly intimidated and pressurized to succumb to the private company’s machinations, and the Police has been made an instrument to suppress us.
We have been spearheading a movement to safeguard our life, livelihood and environment under the banner of Niyamgiri Suraksha Samiti for more than 12 years. We have opposed the mining of our sacred mountain, Niyam Dongar and the construction of the refinery by forcefully grabbing land. The sacred mountain Niyam Dongar is our tribe’s God and worshipped by millions of people. Our opposition and petitions to the apex environmental court, the National Green Tribunal, led to several investigative commissions as well as a historic referendum in the year 2013 as per the Supreme Court of India’s directives, where 12 villages in the Niyamgiri hills held Gram Sabhas that unanimously rejected the mining proposal. The Gram Sabha’s decision was further validated by the Supreme Court in its final verdict on the matter, mining has been banned in the Niyamgiri hills.
Despite the Supreme Court’s decision, the company and State Govt. have colluded to intimidate the same people who had earlier unanimously rejected the mining proposal. As a result many of our people are being branded as Left Wing Extremists and members of the CPI-Maoist, which is a blatant falsehood. Vested interests supporting the company in the ruling party have influenced the local police to frame us and our organization, Niyamgiri Suraksha Samiti, as a CPI-Maoist front. This has led to random detention, torture and incarceration of our people. Being members of a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group, the Dongria Kondh, the people of Niyamgiri are guaranteed the highest form of protection by the Govt., but instead we are seeing even minors are not being spared from this heinous conspiracy.
Dasuru Kadraka (Village – Gorata, PS – Muniguda District – Rayagada) has been languishing in jail for more than a year now charged with several false cases. He was the sole breadwinner of his family comprising of three small children, wife and an old mother. He was picked up from the Muniguda town market in March 2016 and later presented to the media as a hardened Maoist guerilla, which is a complete lie. He has been made to undergo extreme third degree physical torture as well as being subjected to electric shocks in custody.
Saiba Pushika, a 17-year-old boy, also from Gorata village was similarly picked up from the market in February 2017, tortured and is now imprisoned in the Berhampur juvenile jail.
On the 1st of May, the police raided village Gorata at midnight and abducted 20-year-old Kuni Sikkaka, who happens to be the daughter in law of Dodi Pushika, the village headman as well as a highly respected leader of Niyamgiri Suraksha Samiti. Later when Kuni’s family went to secure the release of Kuni Sikkaka, all of them were blackmailed by the SP and DIG to sign statements that they are surrendered Maoists. They were also forced to make false statements in front of the media. When they protested and told the truth to the media, the police manhandled and muffled them.
We have already seen how a young student Manda Kadraka, from village Dangamati, again a Dongria Kondh PVTG settlement, was shot dead in February 2016 by CRPF soldiers and was presented to the media as hardcore Maoist from Chattisgarh. Only when pictures of his dead body published in the media reached his teachers it was revealed that they had killed the boy in a fake encounter and then tried to cover up by presenting him as a Maoist cadre from Chattisgarh. Drika Kadraka of Dhamanpanga village (PS – Muniguda) committed suicide in 2015 after he was tortured and threatened by the Police.
This never-ending assault by the Odisha Govt and State police at the behest of the mining company Vedanta has destroyed the lives of many Adivasi Dalit people in Niyamgiri, where we no longer live fearlessly as we have for centuries in our homeland. Our life and livelihood has been disrupted by this concerted campaign to drive us away from our sacred ancestral land so that the mining company can take over. Today, we cannot go to the markets to sell our produce as the Police randomly picks our people and then slaps all sorts of cases against them, tortures them to make fake submissions, and then they languish in jail.
While we were travelling to Bhubaneswar on the 4th of July to submit this petition to the NCST, our Adivasi friends from nearby villages who were accompanying us were intimidated by the Muniguda Police Station and they had to turn back. Earlier the Muniguda police intimidated those who tried to help us in writing and lodging FIRs against the Police for abduction of Kuni Sikkaka, and other cases. The Police has also threatened us for going to Berhampur city to submit a memorandum to the Chief Minister via the RDC. Is Niyamgiri an occupied territory where democracy and Indian constitution have ceased to exist? Are the Adivasi people of Niyamgiri prisoners of Odisha police who cannot even step out of the area? Why is the Muniguda police not allowing the people to have access to the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes and the other legal recourses available to us? Is it a crime to raise matters of injustice?
Instead of providing health facilities that can stop dozens of our tribe members dying from epidemics every year or education in Mother Tongue, the sole purpose of the Govt. in our area is to terrorize us.
Therefore, we have demanded an inquiry by the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes to investigate the matter, punish the culprits responsible for terrorizing us, direct the Govt. to free our people languishing in jail as well as take measures to protect us from such political violence.
We have also urged the NCST to look into the reasons why several resolutions and demands made during the 2013 Gram Sabhas have not been accepted. We demand that the entire Niyamgiri hills be rightfully declared as Dongria Kondh habitat area as per the Forest Rights Act 2006. We would also like the Govt to recognize the Niyamgiri Suraksha Samiti as per the Forest Rights Act as the official organization that is protecting Niyamgiri forest. Unless such action is taken, we fear the already marginalized population of around 8,000 Dongria Kondh people living in Niyamgiri, will get wiped out totally as a tribe.
We would also like to emphasise that this conspiracy by the Govt and Vedanta has also endangered the lives of our leaders like Dodi Pushika (Village – Gorata), and Lado Sikakka (Village – Lakhpadar), who were also petitioners in the case against Vedanta. We have demanded that the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes should advise the concerned authorities to safeguard the life of our leaders.
Today on 5th June when the whole world is observing World Environment Day, we the people engaged in protecting the environment are facing intimidation, torture, abduction, and wrongful incarceration by our Govt. itself. Even then Niyamgiri Suraksha Samiti will continue to campaign for the protection of the Niyamgiri hills that are home to hundreds of endangered flora and fauna species, as well as the source of rivers Vansadhara and Nagabali that sustain life for hundreds of square kilometers in Odisha and Andhra Pradesh. The Govt. needs to function like a democracy, we are fighting peacefully and using legal measures for our Constitutional rights. The Govt. has to stop this witch hunting of Adivasi Dalit leaders who are opposed to the nexus between the Govt and Vedanta.
So what will we use the funds for?
Much of the funds we receive will be utilised for the creation and facilitation of a cultural center (run by the Niyamgiri Suraksha Samiti) in Niyamgiri, Orissa and one in Calcutta that will include:
- Working on the building up of resources and facilities in the library and cultural centre which will be run by the indigenous NSS (Niyamgiri Sukraksha Samiti).
- An alternative school to teach English and other vernacular languages, along with international and local antifascist revolutionary histories of movements and people, permaculture, law, self defence, direct action strategies, and the true histories of South Asian revolutionaries, co-opted by neoliberals and fascists, and erased from state textbooks.
- A free and inclusive antifascist library containing resources such as books, pamphlets, music, art, etc in english and other vernacular languages in order to amplify womyns’, dalits’ adivasis’ and other mariganlised people’s expression and Herstory in patriarchal and Brahmanical culture.
- A collaborative, open workspace and idea incubator for strategising, mobilising and organising against the right-wing of India.
- A store and cafe for selling art and handicrafts to fund the expenses of running an ANTIFASCIST ACTION cultural centre, a website and also support all the artists, artisans, journalists, writers and other volunteers helping the collective.
- Both the cultural centres will work as a meeting point for the activists and the politically inclined, a space for education, workshops, performances, film screenings, open mics, discussions, antifascist, inclusive anticasteist and feminist art exhibitions and activities that challenge prevailing gender, class and caste attitudes thereby promoting encouragement to actively participate in direct action and question the normalised, daily violence of casteism, classism, patriarchy and capitalism.
- The funds will also be used to create a portable, free kitchen that we will take to the homeless, to slums, to villages and other marginalised, ignored spaces within the borders of India.
- We want to install sanitary napkin dispensers for lower-class, lower-caste women who don’t have any access to the resource that they can’t choose to not use.
What impacts we expect:
- A greater understanding and awareness of the workings of Brahminical, patriarchal machinery, through introspection, discussion, direct action, library resources, interaction with feminists, Adivasis, Dalits and Muslims and through collaborative campaigns and events.
- Greater participation and creativity within the team.
- Media outreach, media literacy and international solidarity.
- Development of praxis, resulting in effective activism.
- Strengthening of antifascist solidarity within the different movements already happening in this country.
- Building unity among the different marginalised communities and minority groups to counter patriarchal, classist and casteist backlash.
- Engaging the people by reaching out through our blog, through events, etc, and creating a community of support that has no regimented hierarchy.
- Combating corporatisation & censorship through direct action.
To end with, here is a well known quote by Bhagat Singh, a revolutionary the right-wing is frantically trying to co-opt. This is a tiny quote from a blood-boiling final letter that he wrote to the British state before he was hung:
‘Let us declare that the state of war does exist and shall exist so long as the Indian toiling masses and the natural resources are being exploited by a handful of parasites.’
Contribute to our cause here, or spread the word to those who can!
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Love and solidarity,
Antifascist India <3