Manifesto of the HSRA

MANIFESTO OF THE HINDUSTAN SOCIALIST REPUBLICAN ASSOCIATION*   [ Prepared by B.C. Vohra, it was widely distributed at the time of the Lahore Session of the Congress in    1929.] “The food on which the tender plant of liberty thrives is the blood of the martyr.” FOR DECADES THIS LIFE BLOOD TO THE PLANT OF India’s liberty is being supplied by revolutionaries. There are few to question the magnanimity of the noble ideals they cherish and the grand sacrifices they have offered, but their normal activities being mostly secret the country is in dark as to their present policy and intentions. This has necessitated the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association to issue this manifesto.

Our alternative:resist the capitalist regime!

As the government rains attack after attack on our living standards – whether through cuts in health, education, benefits and local services, through redundancies in both the private and public sector, through tuition fee increases or the abolition of EMA, or through the steadily rising price of basic necessities – the TUC has for months now been telling us to fix our gaze on the Big Demo on the 26^th March. 

The bosses of the trade unions have argued that a very large turn-out on the day will send a clear message to the Lib-Con government, which will start carrying out its spending review at the beginning of April, involving even more savage cuts than the ones we have seen already. It will show that more and more working and unemployed people, students and pensioners, in short, a growing part of the working class, are opposed to the government’s programme of cuts and are looking for an “alternative”.

Maintaining imperialist control over its backyard: Mission Impossible for the Russian bourgeoisie - A comment on Russia's invasion on Georgia.

The impression that Russian imperialism is making more and ground in its immediate sphere of influence has been strengthened by a number of spectacular events recently: the rapprochement with the Yanukovych government in Ukraine and the signing of a an accord allowing for long-term Russian military bases there; the signing of a deal with Ankara for the construction of a Russian nuclear plant in Akkuyu in the south of Turkey; Medvedev's ‘brotherly' visit to Syria in May and the rumours that the elimination of the Bakiyev government in Kyrgyzstan was entirely to the advantage of Moscow. But is this actually the case?

Class struggle in Ukraine: A requiem for nationalisation Submitted by ICC in August 2009

We are publishing an article from the Alliance of Revolutionary Socialists, a group in Russia and Ukraine, the product of a recent split in the Internationalist Union of Proletarian Revolutionary Collectivists. 
The Alliance condemns participation in bourgeois elections and democracy as a disguised form of the dictatorship of capital. It rejects any support for the existing trade unions, which it sees as instruments in the hands of the bourgeoisie whose function is to subject the working class to the interests of capital. It also rejects the idea of creating new radical trade unions, It pronounces itself in favour of workers’ general assemblies and of the necessity for world revolution. 

Genocides being organised by gangster ruling class of Kyrgyzstan against Uzbek minorities.

    Since the fall of the Kyrgyzstan president Bakayev, exiled from the country following violent riots in the capital city Bishkek, the country has become even more unstable, culminating in a number of horrific pogroms, centred round the town of Osh, where the Uzbek minority was subjected to murder, rape, robbery and arson. 

What lay behind these pogroms?

The majority of the people carrying out the attacks were recruited from among the most lumpenised elements of a very poor population. But the operation was directed by a well-oiled machine, involving at least a part of the armed forces - many witnesses testified to the supportive presence of military vehicles

Egypt: The class struggle takes centre stage Submitted by ICC

The tide of rebellion in North Africa and the Middle East shows no sign of abating. The latest developments: demonstrations and clashes with the police in the Libyan city of Benghazi following the arrest of a lawyer involved in a campaign demanding an investigation into the brutal massacre of hundreds of prisoners after a protest in 1996. Qaddafi’s regime again displays its ruthless brutality – there are reports of snipers and helicopters firing into crowds, killing many; in Bahrain, thousands of demonstrators occupy the Pearl Roundabout in Manama, hoping to emulate the occupation of Tahrir Square. They raise slogans against sectarian divisions (“No Shia, no Sunni, only Bahraini”) and against self-appointed leaders (“We have no leaders”). At the time of writing, riot police have now cleared the area with considerable violence – many demonstrators have been injured and some killed. In Iraq, there have been new demonstrations against the price of necessities and the lack of electricity.  

A Referendum for Peace

The larger Sudan region will continue to face many challenges even after the referendum on South Sudan.

A referendum held in the province of Southern Sudan between 9 and 15 January to decide on secession saw voters overwhelmingly endorsing the formation of a new nation state. Southern Sudan has been a semi-autonomous ­region after the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (cpa, also called the Naivasha agreement) that ended the civil war ­between Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir’s National Congress Party (NcP)-led forces and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLa/M).

Assam’s Nationality Question

By: No Author 

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Vol XLVI No.9 February 26, 2011

When will the largest surviving multinational state learn to resolve its nationality question?

Severe military repression over a long period of time does weaken one’s resolve, leading to repudiation of the very raison d’être of one’s existence in a national liberation ­organisation. Finally, after 30 years, an important faction of the leaders of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), the one headed by Arabinda Rajkhowa, the organisation’s chairman, now out of prison on bail, initiated talks with the government on 10 February, in effect dropping the question of the sovereignty of the people of Assam from the agenda. Surely the union ­government views this development as a breakthrough of sorts. It seemed to be in a great haste to flag off the talks before the coming state assembly elections. But what will all the talk of autonomy – yet to be articulated in concrete terms – mean if the Indian state continues to be undemocratic as far as the ­nationality question is concerned? Is the government genuinely interested in reaching an honourable settlement in Assam? And with ULFA ­itself divided over the question of giving up its original raison d’être, is an “honourable settlement” in storefor it?