March 8, International Working Women’s Day. The day that symbolises the struggle of women the world over against patriarchal oppression and the exploitative system. It is the day when women have mobilised themselves and tested their strength to fight all forms of oppression and injustice. This day reflects women’s collective struggle against the dark forces of reaction.

In the last one year the women’s movement in India has had to confront the onslaught of the Hindu fascist forces and has had the challenging task of uniting the widest possible sections to fight and defeat these obscurantist fascist communal forces. Gujarat has been the testing ground for the Hindu fascist forces led by the BJP state government headed by Narendra Modi with the full backing of the central BJP leadership. They have unleashed one of the most barbaric and inhuman genocides of the Muslim minority that India has seen since the partition in 1947. They have systematically targeted the Muslim minority and through crude Goebbelsian propaganda branded the entire Muslim community as anti-national and anti-social, branded the entire community as terrorist. They have assaulted, burnt and injured hundreds of people, maiming them for life and targeted their properties and assets for loot and destruction. As in similar situations earlier, the Hindu fascist forces have revealed their patriarchal character in the most crude and violent forms. Women and young girls have been abducted, gang-raped and killed. They have been molested and burnt alive in the presence of their children and other family members. The extent of their brutal, rascist thinking can be gauged from the horrifying incidents of the wombs of pregnant women being ripped open with trishuls and their foetuses torn out and burnt. Women have suffered immensely. They have lost entire families. Children have been orphaned. Insecurity and fear still overwhelm them, mental and physical agony and trauma continues.

These Hindu fascist forces have been using women to fan hatred and incite the community against Muslims. They have spread false rumours about Hindu women being molested by Muslims in order to incite ordinary Hindu men to attack Muslims and justify it as being done to save the honour of their women. They have spread obscene propaganda about the sexuality of Muslim men and women. These attacks on Muslim women have also been a means to humiliate the men of the minority community. They have attacked and killed women for daring to save their Muslim neighbours and friends; they have targeted couples who have had the courage to go for inter-religious marriages. All forms of democratic assertion by ordinary people have been suppressed. The anti-woman character of Hindu communalism needs to be exposed widely.

Though this genocide has taken place in Gujarat last year it is neither sudden and nor is it restricted to Gujarat alone. The Sangh Parivar has been spreading its poisonous ideology of communalism over the past two decades rapidly. It has been building organisations like the Bajrang Dal and the Durga Vahini to give military training both to men and women, thus creating a para-military force to impose their regressive Hindutva agenda. Their strategy includes changing the school curriculum at the all India level in order to spread the communal poison in children’s minds and reinforce patriarchal values. They have promoted all sorts of feudal and patriarchal ideologies, consciously rallied and mobilised upper caste women to participate in the pogroms in the name of religion and culture. Nuns in Jhabua district of Madhya Pradesh were attacked and gang-raped some years ago. Two years ago the Christian community in Gujarat, especially tribal Christians came under attack. Communal flare-ups and attacks instigated by these Hindu communal forces and organisations with State connivance have been taking place in Congress ruled States like Maharashtra, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh as well. The growing social tensions are increasing the oppression. Witch-hunting, has been on the rise in various states like Chattisgarh and Jharkhand. Women from the most oppressed castes and communities are becoming the main targets of witch-hunting most often instigated by dominant feudal and political forces. Medieval, anti-women customs like Karva Chauth are being glorified and promoted in the mass media. Such customs, formerly localised, are now being commercialised and propagated at the all India level. Communalism and patriarchy are acting hand in glove in the service of the crises-ridden rulers and their global masters. The victory of the BJP in the assembly elections in Gujarat has further strengthened these Hindutva forces. They are already boasting about their plans to repeat the "Gujarat pattern" in other states of the country.

It is important not to lose sight of the fact that the Hindu fascist forces have grown with the full backing of the Indian comprador bourgeoisie and US imperialism. Faced with a deepening economic and political crisis imperialism is resorting to fascist methods to push its agenda in India and other countries around the world. It is forcing globalisation down the throat of countries with its disastrous consequences for the people. In order to successfully push its exploitative policies of globalisation, privatisation and liberalisation imperialism is propping up and taking the help of reactionary fascist forces. The BJP led NDA govt and the various state governments with their policy of absolute subservience to imperialist dictates have implemented the various conditionalities of the IMF, WB and the WTO. The consequences of these policies have spelt ruin for the vast majority of the working people including the peasantry. To suppress the growing opposition to these policies draconian laws like POTA have been enacted. Labour laws are being changed to allow unobstructed exploitation of workers. Imperialist plunder and hegemony will tolerate no opposition, it accepts no limits. Imperialism relies on fascist forces to divide the working people and mislead them with religious and ethnic jingoism. US President George Bush’s so-called war against terrorism is nothing else but the whipping up of jingoism to isolate and target the Muslim masses around the world who are fighting against their hegemonic policies. Bush’s war against terrorism has come very much handy to the Indian ruling classes. The BJP led NDA Govt has deliberately whipped up panic about terrorist attacks and by thus playing on the insecurities of the middle classes they have sought to gain legitimacy for their tottering rule, and divert the people from understanding the real causes of their increasing misery and crisis-ridden lives. The rise of the Hindu fascist forces is part of the desperate and deliberate attempt of imperialism to revive fundamentalist forces around the world.

On the occasion of 8th March this year we call upon all women to rally in the largest possible numbers to expose and oppose the patriarchal Hindutva fascist forces. Progressive and revolutionary women must seek to create a united struggle in which working women and all other oppressed sections oppose these dark forces of reaction and promoters of imperialist exploitation. We call upon all women to oppose the attacks on minority women and defend their rights and dignity and unite with all other sections of the oppressed and exploited people to isolate and defeat the fascist patriarchal Hindutva forces.