POLITICAL PRISONERS!
Declaration of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International
INDIA: The Fourth International condemns the Indira Gandhi government's declaration of a state of emergency in India and the measures that have followed it, such as the arrest of thousands of people, the outlawing of twenty-six organizations, and the imposition of rigid press censorship. While presently directed mainly against the right-wing parties, these measures include attacks on working-class parties like the Communist party of India (Marxist) and the banning of several Maoist organizations. They constitute an attack on the Indian workers movement and the oppressed masses os a whole. It is they who will suffer most from the Gandhi regime's dictatorial turn, as has already been demonstrated by the wage freeze and the restrictions on the right to strike. The measures taken by the Congress party government mark a further deterioration of India's already frogile bourgeois democracy and bring the Indira Gandhi regime into line with the other regimes of South Asia: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka are now ruled under states of emergency. In Bangladesh, the newest of these states, this state of affairs has already been institutionalized by the creation of o one-party state, mass arrests of radicals, and the banning of the Jeft-wing weekly Holiday. The suspension of civil liberties in India reflects the Indian bourgeoisie's inability to find a solution to the social crisis that has plagued the country for nearly two decades and has led to a massive loss of confidence in. the Gandhi regime. Indira Gandhi's overwhelming victory in the 1971 general elections was the result of her appearance as the "Iberator of Bangladesh" and of her radical demogogy during the compaign, which was summed up in the slogan "End poverty." This demagogy was given added credibility by her olliance with the Communist party of India (CPI), while of the same time she dispensed with the services of many veteran right-wing Congress leoders and party manage. But the worsening of the social and economic crisis after 197 gradually began to erode popular support for Gandhi and the Congress party. Mass famine on scale not seen since the 1930s and 1940%, food hoarding, a thriving black market, smuggling on a vastly increased scale, and a further generalization of corruption caused the seething discontent of the masses to erupt in huge mobilizations. The failure of the moss warkers organizations to provide leadership for this explosive mass discontent or to provide a national focus for an opposition to the Congress party based on class politics enabled reactionary forces employing populist demagogy to assert a strong influence in the leadership of the mass mobilizations. This explains why the Gandhi 8 regime's attack on right-wing forces is actually a prelude to a broader general attack on the masses as a whole. The tragedy of the Indian workers and poor peasants fies precisely in the fact that the two largest workers parties, the CPI and the CPIM) are completely incopable of developing a struggle against Indian capital in the inferests of the working closs and oppressed poor. This foilure has been clearly manifested in these parties inability to organize ony response at all to the wage freeze and in their abject failure to mobilize support for and solidarity with the 1974 roilwoy workers strike, which was brutally crushed by the Gandhi government. The CP and the CPI (M) have put forward class-collaborationist policies instead of o class-struggle line based on the needs of the masses. Thus, while the CPI has hitched onto Gandhi's coattails, the CPI(M) has blocked with other bourgeois forces, even right-wing communalThe CPI's decision, fully backed by Pravda, to support the state of emergency and to offer its full cooperation to Gandhi once again reveals the political and moral bankruptcy of Stalinism. Under the guise of opposing reaction the CPI is now openly backing repression, justifying the arrest of its former comrades in the CPIM) and proising press censorship. While unequivocally condemning the new measures of the Gandhi government and demanding their immediate repeal, we emphasize that these measures are the culmination of a series of repressive steps that have been taken in India since 1967-68 and have been directed against the workers movement. The international bourgeois press, now shedding hypocritical tears over the demise of "Indian democracy, "has been silent about the continuing imprisonment, torture, and killing of radicals. There are some 40,000 political prisoners in India today, many of them belonging to Maoist groups. Hundreds have been killed in prison, Two of them, Kista Gowd and Bhoomia, are still waiting execution in Andhra Prodesh prison. The bourgeoisie remains silent about these prisoners. The Fourth International calls for a resolute campaign throughout the international warkers movement to demand the immediate end of the state of emergency in India and the release of all political prisoners. We coll for the broadest possible united-front effort toward this objective. July 6. 1975
Indira Gandhi was led to further reduce the already narrow breadth of bourgeois democracy in India because of a worsening of the social, political, and economic crisis of the country. This crisis has many aspects, each of which has played a role in generating the current, virtually catastrophic situation: Aggravation of the social and economic crisis. The available per capita grain and vegetable seed (starches) in India in 1971 was the same as it had been in 1954: 15.7 ounces per day. That figure is lower than it was in the period 1959-65. It has declined further since 1971. Real per capito income in 1974 was no higher than it had been in 1964; the figure for 1975 will be lower. The real wage of an industrial worker in 1970 was lower than it had been in 1939, and has declined continuously since 1970. The official figure for urban unemployment has risen constantly: from 5 million in 1950 to 7 million in 1961, 10 million in 1966, and 15 million in 1974. Ranadive, a leader of the Communist party of India (Marxist) estimates that rural and urban unemployment together amounts to 50 million. Social polarization in the villages and speculation. The "green revolution" has strongly intensified social differentiation in Indian villages. The proletarianized section of the rural population is growing rapidly in size; the concentration of surplus food in the hands of a few rich peasants is concurrently on the rise, In an atmosphere of permanent shortage and endemic famine, there is a good deal of stockpiling of food for purposes of speculation. A typical example is provided by the state of Maharashtra, a reputedly rich area. There are 5.4 million landless families and 1,7 million families working forms of less than one acre in size; that is, a on the