6th Bihar State Party Conference

Build a political alternative in Bihar!
Build a strong party and powerful mass movement in the State !!

The 6th Conference of Party’s Bihar State unit was held at the historic town of Rajgir in Nalanda district on 26-28 August 2001. Throughout this period the whole of Rajgir, overlaid with red flags, festoons and banners and attractive hoardings designed by Party activists, seemed to acquire a new life. As a mark of respect to the memory of former General Secretary, the hall was named as Com. Vinod Mishra Sabhagar. In addition to the 358 delegates from 35 out of 37 districts of Bihar, large number of guests from among intellectuals, cultural activists and other progressive-democratic personages also attended the inaugural session. While Party General Secretary Comrade Dipankar Bhattacharya inaugurated the conference, (see box for inaugural speech); Party PB members Comrades Swadesh Bhattacharya, Ram Naresh Ram and Kartick Pal also addressed the inaugural session.

Earlier the flag was hoisted by veteran Com. Prithwiraj Singh, one of the founders of Communist Party in Bihar. The Party leaders then laid floral tributes at the martyrs’ column, and proceedings inside the hall began with the singing of Internationale. Hirawal, a Patna-based performance team of Jan Sanskriti Manch, presented Mahabhoj, which was widely acclaimed by the audience.

In the organizational session, Comrade Ramjatan Sharma, Secretary of the outgoing committee, presented the report. Out of 358 delegates present in the conference, of which 42 were women, as many as 298 were whole-timers. Class-origin wise there were 139 delegates from landless-poor peasants, 59 from lower-middle peasants, 100 from middle peasants and rest from rich peasant or petty bourgeoisie. While 54 delegates had come over to CPI(ML) from other left streams, there were 13 delegates who had earlier worked in RJD or other centrist formations. For two days a lively and enthusiastic debate went on over the report and around 150 delegates expressed their views on various aspects of the report and came up with their experience as well as problems. Finally, amidst standing ovation the report was unanimously passed. The session was presided over by a 5-member presidium composed of Com. Pawan Sharma, KD Yadav, Saroj Chaube, Rameshwar Prasad and Shyam Chandra Chaudhary.

The conference took stock of the specific impact of the ongoing countrywide agrarian crisis, a consequence of NDA government’s policies of liberalization and globalisation, on Bihar and noted that the corrupt RJD-Congress government had completely failed to counter its ill-effects. Discontent against these policies and the pathetic condition of Bihar due to RJD’s callousness has reached a high water mark. The situation is ripe for a great mass upsurge. To pose a real challenge to globalisation in Bihar, Party must prepare to lead this upsurge. To this end Kisan Sabha and Khet Mazdoor Sabha must be strengthened and expanded. Delegates emphasised the necessity of developing armed resistance to counter the killings of dalits and the rural poor in various parts of the state, by feudal armies like Ranvir Sena and criminal goons backed by BJP, RJD, Samata and others, including the RJD mafia Shahabuddin. The Party also has to resist attacks by criminal gangs PWG and MCC on its mass base. It was felt that only by launching mass movements on a larger social base and making armed resistance as an integral part of this movement, demand of the changing situation could be met. It was felt that the basic thing was to keep the struggle on agrarian issues in command. The recent positive experience of recapturing land that had gone under the possession of Ranvir Sena was recounted in the conference. Delegates opined that Party should fully utilize the scope of expanding in East Bihar. The conference remained firm on Party’s class line wgile dealing with caste polarisations. Delegates welcomed the proposals to promote revolutionary parliamentary tactics in fighting parliamentary cretinism.

The conference elected a 35-member state committee. Com. Ramjatan Sharma was reelected its secretary. A 13-member standing committee was formed by the newly elected state committee.

Apart from strengthening state-level working class organisation, the conference emphasised the need to expand peasant movement and strengthen Khet Mazdoor Sabha. The conference demanded disarming of Ranvir Sena and other feudal criminal gangs and supplying free arms with license to the rural poor and dalits. The conference reiterated its commitment to build broad-based resistance movement in the villages to fight these feudal-criminal gangs till their end.

The 6-point resolution adopted by the conference included struggle against growing American intervention in South Asia and ever tightening grip of foreign capital over Indian economy. Another resolution was to take “Vajpayee hatao, desh bachao” movement against saffron onslaught on education, culture, employment, secularism and democracy to every village of the state, and turn Bihar into graveyard of saffron fascists. It also resolved to intensify movement for declaring Bihar as a famine-stricken state and providing relief at war footing. The Conference also appealed to develop popular resistance against growing incidents of mass killings of dalits and rural poor as well as police atrocities in various parts of the state, and put an end to the jungle raj. It expressed concern over the industrial stagnation in the state and demanded special status to Bihar. Party will intensify Bihar development movement against Centre and State governments’ apathy in this regard. Lastly, the conference appealed to all honest and struggling left-socialist forces to join forces in CPI(ML)’s endeavour to put up an alternative against RJD’s ‘Jungle Raj’ and NDA’s ‘Chambal Raj’.

Cadres from Nalanda and nearby districts worked overtime to make the conference a success. Throughout the conference, Hirawal presented revolutionary cultural performances integrating creativity with people’s struggles, and earned acclaim of the audience.

--Ranjit Abhigyan

 

CPI(ML) Must Awaken and Fulfill the Aspirations of a New Bihar

(Excerpts from Comrade Dipankar Bhattacharya’s speech at the inaugural session)

 

Comrades,

This conference marks the coming together of two histories of Bihar. Rajgir and Nalanda are great relics of Bihar’s glorious past and you delegates are ambassadors of the new Bihar which will sweep away all the brutality and backwardness that we see today around us. Let this encounter between the past and the future, the old and the new; produce sufficient light to illumine our journey ahead, the journey that will take us to our cherished destination of a new Bihar in a new India.

The time of your conference is of course no less significant than the place. All over the world we have a new situation with a new message. A great battle has begun for achieving an alternative to the rotten system of imperialist globalisation. Only ten years ago bourgeois ideologues and propagandists were triumphantly proclaiming the end of history and ideology, they were writing obituaries of Marxism and the red flag of the communists. They were arrogantly telling us that the world knew only one road, the killer road of free market capitalism, and we had better follow them on this one and only road. They asked us to limp if we were not well enough to run or walk.

Today the tides are turning. It is now our turn to tell them that we reject this pothole-ridden nightmare of a road and that we will create our own new highway of socialism and democracy. In any part of the world, you now see tens of thousands of people protesting against every major gathering of financial magnates, corporate bosses and heads of states. Like our country, in Europe and America too, activists are now being caned and shot and tortured. Only the other day we saw a 23-year-old Italian youth, Carlo Giuliani, become a martyr in the course of popular protests against the G-8 summit meeting in Genoa in Italy. The times are clearly achanging.

India too is witnessing a growing battle for a democratic alternative. The country is fed up with the corrupt and communal saffron regime. Every day we have a new scam in some new area, in some new department, but almost all these scams are joined together by a common thread that goes straight up to the PM’s office. While the people are starving in several parts of the country, the government is busy hosting conclaves for big industrialists and foreign multinationals. This government has also earned enough notoriety for its unabashedly pro-US policies. No wonder, Bush feels emboldened enough to name his pet dog India. …

In the absence of an alternative, the RJD-led and Congress-backed Laloo-Rabri government continues to rule the roost in Bihar. Following bifurcation and the policies of globalisation, regional disparity has aggravated in our country and Bihar has been pushed further downward in terms of every possible socio-economic indicator. Abandoned by both private capital and government agencies and lacking even a semblance of public welfare and rule of law, Bihar remains mired in stagnation and anarchy. Vulgar consumerism, feudal-mafia guns booming all over the state and scams worth billions of rupees explain the paradox of growing impoverishment in a resource-rich state. This paradox is crying for a radical cure….

As Marxist-Leninists, we acknowledge our mistakes and try to rectify them. We pay heed to the suggestions and critical comments coming from different quarters. Behind these criticisms there are great expectations and tremendous goodwill for the Party. The Party has to grow equal to these expectations. This Conference will have to find ways to strengthen and broaden the Party in all possible fields so that it can tap the vast potential for progress and reflect the Bihari society’s accumulated aspiration for change, for development and democracy.