Long live the Bangladesh revolution! No compromise with the Hindu capitalists!!

Long live the Bangladesh revolution! No compromise with the Hindu capitalists!!

Revolutionary Communist League Statement

With the installation of the “Bangladesh” government in power in Dacca in the aftermath of the defeat of the Pakistan armed forces in E. Bengal, the postwar status quo set up in the Indian subcontinent by imperialism with the connivance of Stalinism and the Hindu and Muslim national bourgeoisies has been irrevocably ruptured. From now on nothing will ever be the same in this part of Asia. A new period has dawned. 

The breakup of the political framework established by imperialism in the subcontinent is directly and intimately related to the ending of the long period of inflationary boom experienced by world capitalism during the past period, and the development of an economic and political crisis of unprecedented proportions opening up a period of revolutionary struggles on a global scale. The Bangladesh liberation struggle and the Indo-Pak war are the products of this new stage in the class struggle. They are the response of the antagonistic classes in society to the precipitation of this worldwide revolutionary crisis and can be understood only in class terms.

The Trotskyist movement, representing the revolutionary interests of the proletariat, defines its position in relation to all these movements, struggles and conflicts from the standpoint of the proletarian struggle for socialism. It declares emphatically and unequivocally that the task of the proletariat is not that of supporting any one of the warring factions of the bourgeoisie but that of utilizing each and every conflict in the camp of the class enemy for the seizure of power with the perspective of setting up a federated socialist republic which alone would be able to satisfy the social and national aspirations of the millions of toilers in the subcontinent. It calls upon the proletariat - in Pakistan, in India, in Ceylon and in E. Bengal - to prepare its forces for the inevitable revolutionary developments that would emerge in the course of the war and its aftermath.

The Trotskyists, therefore, take their position firmly in support of the struggle of the E. Bengali masses for their legitimate aspirations and for an end to military and national oppression. We unconditionally support the right of the Bengali masses - of the West as well as of the East - to unite as a nation, ending the imperialist carve-up of 1947, and to secede from India and Pakistan if they so desire. The struggle to exercise this right by the Bengali masses becomes inevitably transformed into a revolutionary struggle, because it poses an end to the imperialist-designed status quo and to the rule of the parasitic Hindu and Muslim bourgeoisies. The Trotskyist movement calls upon the toiling Bengali masses to unite the struggle for national unification and liberation with the struggle for socialist revolution as the sole guarantee of victory.

Precisely because the Trotskyists stand unconditionally and unequivocally for the struggle for Bangladesh, they stand for the defeat of the Pakistan army at the hands of the Mukti Bahini forces. We declare that the task of the proletariat in Pakistan is to link its fate with that of the struggle for Bangladesh and to fight for the defeat of “their own” army. The Pakistani proletariat in the finest traditions of proletarian internationalism, should take the Leninist position of revolutionary defeatism, because the war waged by the Pakistani ruling class is a war for national oppression, in the interests of the imperialist status quo.

At the same time we demarcate ourselves clearly and sharply from all those who cover up the annexationist and counterrevolutionary aims of the war waged by the Indians - in the East as well as in the West, by their ostensible support for the Bangladesh movement. We call upon the Indian proletariat to reject the claim of the Indian bourgeoisie to be the liberators of E. Bengal. The Trotskyists declare that the Indian armed intervention in E. Bengal had one and only one object. It was to prevent the struggle for Bangladesh from developing into a struggle for the unification, on a revolutionary basis, of the whole of Bengal. The Indian armed intervention was designed to smash the revolutionary Bengali liberation struggle, to crush the upsurge of the masses in Bengal and to install a puppet regime which, fraudulently usurping the name of the government of Bangladesh, would confine and contain the mass movement in the interests of the bourgeoisie and imperialism. Thus we call upon the Indian proletariat too to take a position of revolutionary defeatism in relation to the counterrevolutionary war of the Indian bourgeoisie, while supporting by all and every means the struggle of the Mukti Bahini.

This is the only revolutionary program for the proletariat in the Indian subcontinent. It flows logically and inexorably from a Marxist analysis of the whole postwar history of the subcontinent.

What has been demonstrated during the last 25 years, ever since the fraudulent “independence” granted by British imperialism to its loyal servants, the native bourgeoisie of these countries, is that none of the basic economic, national or social problems can be solved by those bourgeoisies. Their absolute bankruptcy in the face of these historical tasks is proof of the central thesis of the theory of permanent revolution of Trotsky that only the proletariat drawing behind it the downtrodden rural masses can solve these problems as part of the tasks of the socialist revolution. The carveup of the Indian subcontinent, in conformity with the policy of divide-and-rule, supported by the Hindu and Muslim bourgeoisies as well as by international Stalinism was the framework within which the enormous social and national contradictions were suppressed and contained, ensuring the dominance of capitalism and starvation, famine and misery for the hundreds of millions of the oppressed masses. Those contradictions, developing as part and as a result of the development of the entire international imperialist system, can no longer be contained.

What has been put on the order of the day by the simultaneous precipitation of a revolutionary crisis in India-Pakistan and Ceylon is the ending of the imperialist carve-up, together with the class rule of the bourgeoisie through the revolutionary unification of the entire subcontinent under the hegemony of the proletariat.

The desperate attempts of imperialism and Stalinism to reestablish “stability” in this sector of the globe is doomed from the start.

The development of mass revolutionary struggles in Pakistan in 1969, the armed struggles of the peasantry and the continuing struggles of a daily more restive working class in India, the mass strikes in Ceylon - it was with these danger signals that the 1970s dawned here. Unemployment, landlessness, national oppression and rising cost of living, in the context of stagnant economies, were provoking mass struggles everywhere. Even at the height of the capitalist boom the weak capitalist economies never really prospered and it was only thanks to the servile support given to the corrupt bourgeois regimes by the traditional leaderships of the working class, the Stalinists and the reformists, that the bourgeoisie managed to rule. But the aggravation of the economic crisis on an international scale effectively destroyed the basis for class collaboration. Despite the openly counterrevolutionary policies of the leaderships the masses began to move into battle, coming into conflict at each stage with their own leaderships. Truly the laws of history were proving themselves to be stronger than the bureaucratic apparatuses.

It was this movement of the masses, with the working class in the forefront, that now came into direct collision with the needs of imperialism and native capital, now being forced by the economic crisis, rapidly developing into a major recession, to decisively smash the working class and its organizations. The hostile class forces were being compelled by the objective laws of capitalism to change the status quo in their own favor. Society, irrevocably split into two hostile camps, now faced civil war.

The international phenomenon of civil war, predicted by British Tory P.M. Heath, to be the main danger in the 1970s, was expressing itself and emerging into the open in the Indian subcontinent as well. The uprising of the rural youth in Ceylon in April 1971, the mighty movement of the masses in Bangladesh who independently of their bourgeois leaders developed the struggle for complete national independence, the revolutionary struggles in W. Bengal, all these struggles signify the response of the masses to the crisis. The civil war had already erupted. The most fundamental lines of demarcation were being drawn.

The response of imperialism and Stalinism was swift and predictable. Sinking their own differences in their common fear and hatred of independent revolutionary struggles, they threw their full force against the mass movements.

Imperialism simultaneously armed Indian and Pakistani and Ceylonese bourgeoisies. The USSR supplied arms while their local political agents openly collaborated with the bourgeoisie against the mass uprisings while China denounced the struggles in Bangladesh and Ceylon, sent arms and money to the bourgeois regimes, stepped up its policy of seeking détente with Yankee imperialism, and entered the UN.

Despite the repression backed by imperialism and Stalinism, despite the treachery of their own leaderships, the strength of the mass movement was great enough to resist and to fight back. In the very fires of the struggle the will of the masses was hardening, the leaderships were being tested in battle and the masses were moving more and more to the left.

Thus in Bangladesh, the liberation struggle developed in spite of Mujibur Rahman leadership’s repeated attempts to reach a compromise with the military dictatorship. Though the absence of a proletarian revolutionary leadership allowed the Awami League bourgeoisie to take over the leadership of the movement, more radical left-wing forces were threatening to outflank them on the left. The militants in W. Bengal, so long under the grip of Maoism, began to join forces with the revolutionary fighters of the eastern region, in spite of the open opposition of Maoist Stalinists to the Bangladesh struggle. Bengal was being unified - in a revolutionary way!

The hundreds of thousands of refugees from E. Bengal and the consequent political and economic problems, the rapid development of an economic recession at home, acutely aggravated by the new policy of US imperialism after Nixon’s August 15 speech and the development of a revolutionary situation in Bengal was threatening to unleash massive revolutionary developments throughout India. Precisely at this moment when the bourgeoisie was being forced to provoke the masses into struggle by the economic crisis, when they were faced with the unenviable task of attempting to change fundamentally the class relationships in the country and to crush the inevitable mass upsurge - precisely at this moment the movement in Bangladesh was finding a revolutionary echo inside India.

The Indian bourgeoisie collaborated with the Awami League leadership to hound the left wing of the Bangladesh liberation movement, to imprison the leftist leaders and to prevent a linkup of the revolutionary forces in E. Bengal with those of the West. The Indian bourgeoisie cannot tolerate a revolutionary Bangladesh which would unite both East and West. The grip of the Awami League leadership was too weak to effectively guarantee a stable bourgeois regime in E. Bengal in the event of a Pakistani defeat.

On the other hand, the Pakistan military regime, hated and despised in E. Bengal, increasingly coming into conflict with a militant working class moving into struggles in the West, desperately attempting to continue the subjugation of national minorities to the Punjabi and Pathan bourgeoisie, was facing defeat in the East. The Mukti Bahini fighters enjoyed the support of the masses. They are based on the masses and they are fighting for a cause.

It was in this situation that Indira Gandhi decided on direct military intervention. The Indian bourgeoisie could not allow a really independent Bangladesh to come into being, posing revolutionary unification of East and West Bengal, liberating a powerful revolutionary wave which would sweep away every prop that now kept up bourgeois rule in India and Pakistan.

By its very essence, a Bangladesh confined to the eastern half of Bengal is no Bangladesh at all. A genuine Bangladesh demands the unification of East and West, and thus inevitably poses the question of ending the imperialist inspired carve-up of India. Neither of the two imperialist created states, Pakistan and India, can tolerate an end to national oppression and the right of self-determination in the same way that they cannot tolerate the development of mass revolutionary movements in the subcontinent.

The political vacuum created by the debacle of the Pakistan military forces in East Bengal at the hands of the Mukti Bahini was being filled by the development of new organs of power based on the masses - the embryonic forms of Soviet power. The conditions were becoming favorable for the Bangladesh movement to be taken beyond the bourgeois-democratic framework through the establishment of a workers’ and peasants’ government. The revolutionary proletariat of East Bengal, at the head of the millions of struggling peasants, calling upon the workers and peasants of India and Pakistan to rise in their defense and immediately posing a revolutionary socialist republic in Bangladesh as part of a socialist India through its revolutionary unification, would have unleashed the revolutionary floodgates.

The treachery of the Awami League leadership which had so long played the role of containing the mass movement in East Bengal, striving only for a better bargain with the West Pakistan bourgeoisie, once again came into the forefront at this juncture, exposing the whole liberation struggle to mortal danger. Fearing the revolutionary upsurge of the masses above anything else, it betrayed the whole struggle of the masses into the hands of the Indian ruling class.

The Indian government’s intervention was a completely counterrevolutionary one. Under the fraudulent claim of supporting the Bangladesh struggle, it intervened to crush the development of a unified revolutionary Bengal and to set up a puppet regime in a castrated Bangladesh confined to the east. Its military intervention was designed to annex East Bengal, impose military rule with the connivance of the Awami League leadership and to effectively crush the popular rebellion.

The Awami League, under the pretext of getting the aid of the Indian government, opened the door to the imposition of Indian military rule in East Bengal. Their agreement to set up a joint military command under the leadership of the Indians, effectively destroyed all independence of the Mukti Bahini forces. The masses of E. Bengal, for two decades subjected to the brutal oppression of the Punjabi bourgeoisie, now face the same treatment at the hands of the rapacious Indian capitalists and landlords.

We do not confuse the revolutionary nature of the struggle for Bangladesh with the counterrevolutionary annexationist war of the Indian bourgeoisie carried out under the ostensible aim of helping to set up an independent Bangladesh.

Whatever be the political calculations of imperialism and whatever methods it may utilize, there can never be a return to the old status quo. The point of no-return has now been transcended. Intimidation and pressure on the Indian bourgeoisie to reestablish the old relationships on the subcontinent through political maneuvers in the UN and military maneuvers in the Indian Ocean express the very real fear that imperialism feels at the breakup of the old status quo. A deal between the Indian and Pakistani bourgeoisie with the collaboration of the Awami League leaders - this is the objective of imperialism which needs to preserve a united counterrevolutionary front in this region in order to effectively smash the revolutionary developments that are bound to occur in the coming period. It wants to preserve that collaboration between the national bourgeoisies, the Stalinists and the imperialists that was put into operation against the rural uprising in Ceylon in April 1971.

The struggle, however, is not over. On the contrary this is just the beginning. Each passing day makes more acute the economic crisis of world capitalism, accelerating the trend towards slump and trade war. It is linked to the enormous crisis which now grips the Stalinist- dominated workers’ states, exploding the myth of “building socialism in a single country.” These developments will aggravate enormously the pressures and burdens imposed on the bankrupt capitalist economies of India and Pakistan by a costly war. Inevitably the bourgeoisie will attempt to shift this crisis onto the backs of the masses already in conditions of abject poverty and near starvation. Those factors combined with the political breakup of the postwar status quo will create the conditions where a revolutionary crisis of unprecedented proportions, depth and scope would sweep through the whole subcontinent finding an answering echo in Ceylon as well.

The forces unleashed by the war cannot be contained except through bloody repression. The youthful fighters of the Mukti Bahini will not accept with folded hands the imposition of Delhi rule. The military defeat of the Pakistani regime in the East will immeasurably strengthen the revolutionary forces in the West. The masses of India will see through the demagogy of their rulers as the very real economic and political attacks multiply.

The Ceylonese Trotskyists call upon all militants in the subcontinent to learn the lessons of the first stage of the unfolding of the socialist revolution in the subcontinent in order to arm themselves for the struggles which will be forced on them from now on.

Stalinism, both the Moscow and Peking varieties, has compromised itself utterly. Both bureaucracies took positions of complete hostility to the liberation struggle in Bengal. Against the revolutionary masses, they lined up on the side of the bourgeoisie. Whatever illusions the militants may have had about Maoism have now been shattered forever and Trotsky’s analysis of Stalinism as the main prop of the bourgeois order in the world has been proved to the hilt.

The Bangladesh struggle has at the same time proved conclusively that the national bourgeoisie can play only a counterrevolutionary role in the mass struggles of today. The treachery of the Awami League leadership is already clear to many militants. It will become clearer tomorrow.

Only the program of the Fourth International of fighting for the setting up of a socialist republic which solves the national problems as well can show the masses the way forward. Only the Fourth International opposed the imperialist carve-up of India in 1947. Only the Fourth International fought and continues to fight for the independence of the proletarian, for the alliance between the workers and peasants, for the right of nations to self-determination and for the voluntary and revolutionary federation of all the nations of the subcontinent.

The proletariat in the Indian subcontinent needs this program for victory. Thus it needs, as the most urgent task today, the building of the Fourth International in this region as part of the building of the FI on a world scale.

It is at this historic juncture that the criminal role of the revisionists who destroyed the Indian Section of the FI becomes crystal clear. The Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India (BLPI) section of the FI founded in 1942, despite its many weaknesses, fought heroically during those difficult days against imperialist and Stalinist repression and against the treachery of the Congress leadership. But its promising beginnings were cut short by the revisionist cancer which nearly destroyed the FI, Pabloite revisionism. The full responsibility for the destruction of the BLPI through its liquidation into the Congress Socialist Party in 1950 and other such formations, must be placed on the heads of the revisionists who today masquerade under the name of the “United Secretariat of the Fourth International” and their collaborators of the Ceylon LSSP.

The Ceylonese Trotskyists appeal to all honest and revolutionary militants to begin the struggle for the rebirth of Trotskyism in India through an uncompromising confrontation with the history and the method of revisionist liquidationism which today leaves the Indian proletariat without a revolutionary party at the most critical moment of history.

The Ceylonese Trotskyists appeal to all proletarian fighters, to the students and the youth, and to the peasant militants to unite on the basis of the founding program, the Transitional Program of the Fourth International. The rebirth of Trotskyism, expressed in the development of the FI through the battle against revisionism waged by the International Committee commencing from 1953 has already commenced in Ceylon. This now needs imperatively and urgently to be extended to the mainland, to India and Pakistan.

Comrades, unite with us to carry through this historic task to a successful conclusion through the building of the FI as the leader of the toilers and the party of the proletariat.

Long live independent, socialist, united Bangladesh!

Down with imperialist-UN intervention!

Down with Pakistani repression and Indian invasion!

Victory to the Mukti Bahini!