Right to Exist, Right to Resist:Expose and Oppose Harper & Modi and their War on the People
International League of Peoples Struggles (ILPS) statement on the visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Canada.
From April 14th to 16th the Canadian State will be rolling out the red carpet for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was previously denied a visa to enter Canada because of his role in the 2002 mass killings and attacks on Muslims in the State of Gujarat. The visit demonstrates a growing closeness between the Modi and Harper regimes based on the common interests of the Canadian imperialist ruling class and the Indian comprador ruling class. In coming to power, Modi and Harper have mobilized chauvinistic and racist ideology to build a reactionary electoral base and sell themselves to their ruling classes as leaders capable of safeguarding the continued exploitation of working class communities, the plunder of Indigenous peoples lands and resources, and a highly militarized and repressive international order.
Plunder of the People to Profit the Ric
Canadian mining companies are heavily invested in India and involved in the plunder of resources from rural communities and Adivasi (Indigenous) peoples, destruction of the natural environment on which these people rely, and extreme repression and human rights abuses by Indian state and paramilitary forces. Modi invites more of this exploitative and oppressive ‘investment’ in his bid to boost India’s economic growth and make a tiny super-rich minority even richer. Policies such as Modi’s Land Acquisition Ordinance are intended to facilitate the dispossession of poor farmers and intensified plunder for the benefit of international mining companies and Indian elites.
Mining plunder and super-exploitation abroad are an extension of Canadian imperialism’s colonial policy and theft and plunder of Indigenous lands within the borders of so-called Canada. As in India, Indigenous communities here continue to resist encroachments on their lands but face serious coercion and repression as resource extraction, particularly oil and gas development, are viewed as the new frontier for big profit making for the Canadian ruling class.
This imperialist and colonial plunder of Indigenous lands and resources stacks on a broader anti-people agenda in both Canada and India of slashing of social programs that benefit poor and working class people, increased spending on military, policing and prisons, and tax cuts to corporations and the rich. In India the rural poor, peasants and landless workers, already squeezed under the neoliberal policies of Congress and other previous governments, face intensified land-grabbing and super-exploitation under the Modi regime.
As the grinding exploitation of monopoly capitalism becomes more acute and unbearable for the masses in its neoliberal articulation, the security apparatus and capacity for repression must be continually strengthened to contain the growing resistance and rebellion of the people.
War Against the People: From Operation Green Hunt to Bill C-51
In both India and Canada rapacious exploitation of people, communities and the land is accompanied and supported by a strengthened regime of repression, bolstered by racist and Islamophobic ‘war on terrorism’ rhetoric.
In India, over 1 million military and paramilitary personnel have been deployed internally to repress Adivasi and communist forces resisting development aggression in the North and East of India and to continue its brutal military occupation of Kashmir. Extrajudicial killings, torture and other human rights abuses on a massive scale accompany this deployment. The same repressive force is used against those who question the roots of massive social and economic inequality in India and seek to organize the masses for social and economic justice. Delhi University Professor GN Saibaba, held in prison for more than a year on trumped up charges, is just one example of targeting those who resist, even as political organizers and intellectual.
In India and Canada, listing of so-called ‘terrorist organizations’, uses the cover of reactionary violence (by actors like al Qaeda and ISIS, with clear links to imperialist intelligence agencies and imperialism’s close regional allies) to attack, isolate and use gross state terrorism against genuine peoples struggles for national and social liberation.
Harper’s Bill C-51 attempts to extend the chill, criminalization and repression of those who question the reactionary policies of his government, Indigenous people who actively resist development aggression and colonization, and people who support liberation struggles abroad that have been labeled as so-called ‘terrorists’.
Canada and India’s increasingly cozy relationship with the racist colonial Israeli State constitutes an international dimension to the same strategy of violent repression and colonial encroachment. Canada unconditionally backs Israel’s war crimes in Palestine and continuing occupation and colonization of Palestinian lands, with Harper proudly declaring himself as Israel’s best friend. India has become the largest purchaser of Israeli weapons and is rapidly increasing trade and military cooperation with the zionist state. Harper, Modi and Netanyahu represent a particular strategy of the ruling classes in their respective countries to mobilize chauvinism and racism behind a strategy of brutal and violent repression of those who stand in the way of profit maximization and super-exploitation.
Right to Exist, Right to Resist
We can’t defeat the Harper-Modi reactionary agenda by voting in the electoral alternatives who function as the ‘loyal opposition’. These liberal or social-democratic parties always prove themselves willing to implement the same anti-people policies, but give themselves a human face by peddling a “kinder, gentler capitalism” and using NGOs, liberal artists, academics, and other such apologists to propagate their line.
We can only turn this tide by organizing for genuine people power and by steadfastly upholding the right of people to exist with justice and dignity; to resist the repressive forces of imperialism, occupation and exploitation; and to rebel and struggle for liberation!
Right to Exist, Right to Resist!
No to the Modi government’s war on the people!
No to operation Greenhunt!
No to Bill c-51: Scrap the so-called terrorist list!
Long Live International Solidarity!