Our community is organizing another demonstration against racist attacks on November 6th, in Toronto. The West Indian community is also organizing the same demonstration and the Canadian people are also sponsoring the demonstration. From the time our people began immigrating to Canada (around 1902) they have been facing this problem of racial discrimination and repression and of racist attacks. Our people have courageously fought these racist attacks and have a heroic history of over seventy years in defending themselves.
How is it that for over seventy years the racist attacks against our community have not been ended? The answer to this question is to be found in the present condition of India and the nature of the state and social system there. The answer has also to be found in the nature of the state and social system in Canada. Furthermore, the answer is to be found in the treachery of the traitors like Bela Singh (1914) and people like Gill in the present time – that is, the treachery of a very definite social stratum in the community who betray the interests of the community in order to enrich themselves and serve their own interests.
India is not an independent country. The two superpowers, U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism and other imperialist powers still dominate and control India. The social base of this domination is the reactionary ruling classes composed of comprador-bureaucrat capitalist and big landlord classes. India is semi-feudal and semi-colonial and the principal contradiction in India is between feudalism and the people of India. The state of India is the instrument of foreign imperialist and social-imperialist domination, on the one hand, and of feudal oppression on the other. The state is more afraid of the people of India than of the imperialists and social-imperialists of other countries and considers social revolution in India as its mortal enemy. Being mortally afraid of the people and revolution in India, it is also afraid of the people of India resident abroad. So, far from defending the people of Indian origin resident abroad, it conspires with the foreign reactionaries to oppress the people. The case in point is the vicious attacks on Comrade Hardial Bains, Chairman of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), organized by the state in Canada in March of 1975. When some reactionary MP’s called for the deportation of Comrade Bains, the High Commissioner of India came to Vancouver to sanction and approve of this deportation. There are many other cases which can be cited. With all the racist attacks taking place against our community, the Indian High Commissioner has yet to issue any statement denouncing them. On the contrary, the office of the Indian High Commissioner as well as the Trade Commissioner of India in Vancouver and in Toronto have on many occasions attacked the people of Indian origin resident in Canada. Just like the reactionaries in the community, the official representatives of the Indian state have never concealed their utter contempt and hatred towards the Indian people.
Canada is not an independent country either. U.S. imperialism dominates and controls Canada alongside with other imperialist powers and the social system in Canada is capitalism, at its highest stage, monopoly capitalism. The state is the instrument of U.S. imperialist plunder and domination of Canada and is the exploiter of the vast majority of the people. It serves U.S. imperialism and Canadian monopoly capitalism. Racism, racial discrimination and repression, is one form of bourgeois ideology which the monopoly capitalists use against the masses of the people in order to split and divide them and to viciously attack a section of them. Racism is the official ideology of the Canadian state and racial discrimination and repression is the official policy. The anti-immigrant Bill C-24, and the infamous document the “Green Paper on Immigration”, are concrete examples of the official ideology of racism and the official policy based on it. The modern state in Canada has borrowed from the arsenal of nazism every racist theory. The Canadian state and the monopoly capitalist class are mortally afraid of the proletariat leading a successful social revolution against U.S. imperialist domination and domination by other imperialist powers, against Soviet social-imperialism and against the capitalist system. The state of Canada is reactionary through and through and the capitalist system is barbaric.
Our community is basically divided along class lines as is the rest of Canadian society. The ideological and political reflection of this division is between those who consider India as semi-feudal and semi-colonial and Canada as being dominated by U.S. imperialism with a social system of monopoly capitalism and that racial discrimination and racist attacks directly stem from the official ideology of racism of the Canadian state and support for this ideology and policy from semi-feudal and semi-colonial state of India; and those who blame the people for racist attacks. The most treacherous and deceitful in this lot are the so-called “progressives” of CPI, CPI(M) and agents of SNS and other opportunists who blame the people for racist attacks and go to the extent of joining the reactionary state to attack the militant defence organization of our people, the East Indian Defence Committee, as the cause of racist attacks. It is quite understandable that those who were the killers of the peasant revolutionaries of Naxalbari in 1967 (it was the CPI(M) Minister who perpetrated this dastardly crime against the peasant revolutionaries in India), and those who supported the crimes of Mrs. Gandhi against the Indian people (CPI), and those who took up the false slogan of “democracy” (SNS and others) in order to liquidate opposition to the “national emergency”, will not support the struggles of our people here. Nay more, they will collaborate with the reactionaries and opportunists to attack those who fight these racist attacks.
Lok Awaz stands for Unity in Action Against the Common Enemy! By this we mean concrete unity, that is unity of the people fighting against the common enemy. This unity can be forged only by first recognizing that it is the official ideology of racism and the policy based on this ideology which is responsible for racial discrimination and racist attacks. We fight both the bourgeois ideology of racism and the policy based on it, as well as those who mystify the issue. There are individuals and certain organizations who suggest that racist attacks are taking place because people in Canada are “racist”. To blame the people for racism is to play directly into the hands of the reactionaries and their state who would like to see the people in Canada fight with one another and let the reactionaries off scot-free. We fully support the slogan: Blame the Rich and Not the People for Racist Attacks! Firm and lasting unity can be established by implementing this slogan. There are those who after following the erroneous line that it is the people who are the “cause” of racist attacks, call upon the reactionary state to “protect” them. How can the state, whose official policy is based on the ideology of racism, protect the people against racist attacks? We fully support the slogan: Self-Defence Is the Only Way!
The way forward for our community is to implement the minimum programme of resisting and fighting the state-organized racist attacks under the four slogans which are being advanced by the East Indian Defence Committee. These slogans are:
BLAME THE RICH AND NOT THE PEOPLE FOR RACIST ATTACKS!
DOWN WITH STATE-ORGANIZED RACIST ATTACKS ON THE PEOPLE!
FIGHT RACIST ATTACKS THROUGH REVOLUTIONARY MASS STRUGGLES!
SELF-DEFENCE IS THE ONLY WAY!
Our people have already grasped firmly the fighting slogan Self-Defence Is the Only Way! and they are vigorously advancing to take up the other slogans. Implementation of these slogans will give rise to lasting unity and will defend the dignity and honour of our community. This is the only way to unite with the other Canadian people. All honourable men and women who see the justness of our cause and the absolute necessity for our actions will warmly hail our timely work in defence of our community.