Posted on 02/24/2005 4:50:02 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
[India News]: New Delhi, Feb 24 : Two top Indian leftist leaders left for Pakistan Thursday, in a journey that will also revive memories of an era when a strong and undivided communist party enjoyed a formidable hold in that country.
General secretaries Harkishan Singh Surjeet of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) and A.B. Bardhan of the Communist Party of India (CPI) began a nine-day visit during which they will also meet President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz.
Two party colleagues are accompanying Surjeet and Bardhan, who will be treated as state guests because of their proximity to the Indian government.
They are visiting Pakistan on a joint invitation of the Communist Party of Pakistan, Communist Mazdoor and Kisan Party, and the Labour Party.
"We are carrying the message of peace, good neighbourliness and peaceful resolution of conflict," Bardhan said before flying out.
They are scheduled to visit Lahore, Faisalabad, Karachi and Islamabad besides Sahiwal, a small Punjab town where Surjeet was once jailed.
At a time when the CPI-M, the more powerful offshoot of the CPI, has spurned its parent organisation's reunification moves, it is a trip that has a special significance.
Large parts of Pakistan and Bangladesh were strongholds of the undivided CPI for decades. And Muslims were among its strongest adherents.
It was in fact the movement for a separate Pakistan and growing Islamisation that weakened the communists. And the feudal rulers who took power in Pakistan eventually destroyed the communist movement.
The Indian leftist leaders, who now wield great clout in the Indian government, will take part in a seminar on the future of the Left forces worldwide, with specific reference to South Asia.
"The communist movement in Pakistan is far from the mainstream and is just a marginalised lot," admitted a CPI leader to IANS.
The Left in Pakistan is now a miniscule force, its supporters confined to a small section of industrial workers and intellectuals.
Surjeet, who was the secretary of the united Communist Party of India in the pre-partition Punjab, is visiting Pakistan for the first time since independence. For Bardhan, this is his first visit to Pakistan.
Once an underground communist who shuttled regularly between Jalandhar and Lahore, the 87-year-old Surjeet will retrace steps from his past as he visits the Lahore Fort Jail and the Montgomery Jail in Sahiwal where he was jailed during the freedom struggle.
A teenaged Surjeet was in solitary confinement at the Lahore prison in the 1930s and subjected to torture for over three years.
--Indo-Asian News Service
Now let them remain there. No need to come back.
Amen.
I don't think that will happen.Ol'man Surjeet will probably still be around after Pakistan collapses!!!
ISLAMABAD, March 05 : Marxism is fully alive and flourishing with more vigour in Latin America, India and some parts of Europe, said visiting General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) Harkishan Singh Surjeet.
He rejected the notion that Marxism collapsed with the fall of Soviet Union in 1991.
Communist leaders-General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (M), Harkishan Singh Surjeet and General Secretary of the Communist Party of India, AB Bardhan — are visiting Pakistan on the invitation of the Communist Party of Pakistan and had also called on President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz.
"It was an illusion created by the international bourgeoisie that Marxism is dead after the collapse of Soviet Union and it (bourgeoisie) also insisted on the notion ‘end of history’ to sell their point," Surjeet said speaking at a ceremony here.
He explained that in Latin America, Marxism is flourishing in a number of countries, as is the case in Europe where places, like the Czech part of Czechoslovakia, communists have 23 percent votes.
The visiting Communist leader also stated that the CPI and CPI (M) have not been affected because "they have understood the mistakes committed in the Soviet Union".
"Today, in India, the left plays a vital role in formulation of policies by the government. In fact, the left ensures stability to the Indian government," he remarked.
Responding to a question, he said terrorism has to be fought across the world but what the United States was doing under the garb of the "war on terror" was in fact a "war of aggression". He said the United States had already occupied Iraq and was poised to attack Iran and other oil-rich Muslim countries under one pretext or the other. "So it’s not a ‘war on terror’. Their objectives are quite different. The US aggression is creating more grounds for terrorism to grow," he said.
To another question, he said it was true that fundamentalism was flourishing in India, where the BJP represented its political wing, it was more aggressive. "Our experience is that ‘majority fundamentalism’ gives support to ‘minority fundamentalism,’" he said, adding: "If Hindu fundamentalism flourishes, Muslim fundamentalism will also gain strength. Fundamentalism in fact is an outcome of capitalism.
It’s a by-product of the frustrations of dying capitalism. Capitalism generates fundamentalism. People who are frustrated seeks refuge in fundamentalism."
Joint struggle needed against imperialism, globalisation’
KARACHI, March 04 : The visiting leaders of Indian Communist Parties (CPI-M and CPI), A B Bardhan and Harkishan Singh Surjeet have said that the composite dialogue between India and Pakistan was a good omen for the people of both the countries and in the region and urged the people of both the countries to fight jointly against the imperialism, fascism, and globalisation.
They said that the dialogue process was the result of the pressure of the people of both the countries and hoped that all the problems would be resolved through dialogue.
The leaders of Indian Communist Parties said this while addressing a reception hosted at the Karachi Press Club and later talking to newsmen after the meeting with PPP leaders at the Sindh Assembly.
The reception was hosted by the newly-formed Joint Left Front comprising the Communist Party of Pakistan, Communist Mazdoor-Kissan Party (CMKP), Labour Party of Pakistan (LPP), and the Karachi Union of Journalists (KUJ).
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