July-August  1999

While the government of India has sold out the country’s interests to imperialism and the multinationals, it is fighting over a few kilometers of land on which not a blade of grass grows. Successive governments have sold out India’s industries, its financial sector, its raw materials, its rich mineral and energy resources, its agricultural produce.... and now even its genes, its intellectual property rights, its land and forest wealth etc. It has recently even turned the lucrative ‘export processing zones’ into ‘free trade zones’ where India’s laws and jurisdiction will be severely restricted. It blindly cringes before the IMF, World Bank, WTO, implementing their orders, yet pretends to be the saviour of the country.

The Indian ruling classes have had a consistent expansionist policy, bullying, threatening and seeking to dominate neighbouring countries. The right-wing BJP, with its Hindu chauvinist agenda, has pushed this policy further, by aggressive sabre-rattling from the very beginning of its 13-month rule. First there were the nuclear explosions; then, a series of high-profile missile launches; a massive increase in the defence budget; huge arms purchases; the setting up of a National Security Commission; further communalisation of the armed forces and bureaucracy; restructuring the armed forces; and, a high pitched anti-Pak, anti-Moslem hysteria. After this big build-up, obviously, it was only a matter of time before it undertook a military adventure. It matters little who fired the first shot, the entire direction of BJP rule has been in a confrontationist mode. And what better time to provoke it, than the present, when it is facing the prospects of defeat in the coming parliamentary elections?

Of course, with the Nawaz Sharif government of Pakistan also facing severe problems, there too, the war is a boon to divert the Pakistani people’s attention from the misdeeds of the government. In this war the gainers are, the governments of both countries, the arms dealers, the war-profiteers; the losers are the masses of both countries.

With the rising tide of protest in India, the government desperately needed a diversion. With the Ayodhya issue having lost its appeal, ever since it spotted the ‘infiltrators’, it has precipitated a war-like situation on the borders. Throughout the period it has been difficult to sift fact from fiction with the Indian rulers dishing out highly contradictory statements. At the very start, diametrically opposite views were presented by the 15th Corps of Kashmir and the Defence Ministry in Delhi. Later, the Indian government not only banned Pak TV but also all journalists from entering the area. Besides, what makes the Indian government’s motives highly suspect is the full backing it is getting from the imperialists, with high-profile US officials in constant touch with the Indian rulers. At the peak of the crisis, in early June, Henry Kissinger’s ‘private visit’ to India has raised eyebrows. This notorious war-monger, who openly supported India’s nuclear explosions, had ‘private’ meetings with the Prime Minister, Home Minister, Foreign Minister, the foreign secretary and the principal secretary to the Prime Minister!!

Besides, the border issue has been blown out of proportion. The fight is over high mountains (15,000 to 18,000 feet), basically inaccessible to people, snow-bound for over six months of the year, and a region where it is difficult to precisely locate the border. Even according to Indian defence analysts, though the Simla Accord (1972) delineated the Line of Control (LoC) on the map, in this region it has never been demarcated on the ground .... due to the inaccessible terrain. In fact, this area has shifted a number of times from control by Pakistan to control by India.

Upto 1965 it was in Pakistan’s control. India took possession of it during that war. But, within a short while, it was handed back to Pakistan in the Tashkent Agreement. Then, in the 1971 war it was again forcibly occupied by Indian troops.... with the status quo being accepted in the Simla Agreement. Yet, not one party has said that the Tashkent Agreement was anti-national ... in fact it has been always hailed.

These border conflicts are nothing but a legacy of British colonialism, who, while departing, left the borders vague in a conscious attempt to enflame wars, in order to weaken the protagonists. Unfortunately, rulers on both sides, fell prey to British colonial intrigues.

In the current war scenario there is no difference in standpoint among the parliamentary parties..... all are resorting to competitive national chauvinism. From Right to ‘Left’ all shriek in the same shrill tone, in a bid to make maximum electoral capital out of the situation. But, amidst the sound and fury of the booming guns at the border, and of the hysterical tone of the media, the real war preparations are being made against the Indian people. In a meeting called of all state-level police chiefs and home secretaries, by the newly-installed Central Home Secretary (a stooge of the fascist RSS), secret plans were hatched for increasing attacks on the Indian people.

The Indian ruling classes have consistently sought to project the Kashmir issue as a creation of Pakistan and ‘infiltrators’ from across the border. If that is the case why is it afraid to hold a plebiscite in Kashmir — a promise given to the UN by Nehru decades ago ? Why does it ban independent media reports from the area ? Why is there such a massive posse of the army and para-military in Kashmir, to merely deal with a handful of infiltrators? Why have 60, 000 Kashmiris been butchered, thousands more raped and tortured during the past decade? These questions remain unanswered.The Kashmiri people have for decades been struggling for their right to self-determination, for their right to exist as a sovereign, independent Republic. Their just struggle is being crushed under the iron heels of the Indian rulers. Yet, their struggle continues.

"Operation Vijay" launched by the Indian ruling classes in Kargil on the plea of pushing out Pak "intruders" is in fact a conspiracy to suppress the national liberation struggle of the Kashmiri people; a conspiracy to whip up national chauvinism among the Indian people and divert them from the deep internal economic and political crises; a conspiracy to further militarise and fascise the state structure and to equip it with the most draconian powers to suppress all democratic dissent in the country.

We, as the advanced detachment of the people in our respective countries, appeal to the people of all countries to lodge their protest against these conspiracies of the Indian ruling classes. We demand :

<Top>