Comandante Hugo Chávez surrounded by people during a political rally. File photo.
It is said that on a rainy night, in Sabaneta de Barinas, the boy who would become one of the greatest political leaders of Venezuela, and of the Latin American and Caribbean region, was born. This was Commander Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías, the great leader of the Bolivarian Revolution. Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías, peasant boy, baseball-playing teenager, young soldier, insurgent man, firm and loving leader, and leading light of peoples and revolutions.
The great revolutionary leader ventured into the military world in an attempt to reach the US major leagues of baseball, but the call of his homeland, and outrage at a world of inequalities, made him change course. Read More »
On 28th July we commemorate the 50th death anniversary of Charu Mazumdar,who was tortured to death in police custody. It ranks amongst the worst abuse of human rights of a political prisoner or leader in India or the world. Today history is repeating itself in with Custodial deaths being a routine occurrence in prisons.Charu’s assassination illustrated the neo-fascist nature of the Congress regime in West Bengal. The Civil Rights groups undertook extensive research on the fascist nature of the execution of not only Mazumdar but thousands of cadres of C.P.I. (M.L).In 1997 a judicial inquiry was initiated 25 years after the murder by son Abhijit and other comrades, but the petition was dismissed by the high court and Supreme Court.
Charu Mazumdar must be credited for igniting the spark of ‘Naxalbari ‘by giving it a political shape, through, his Eight documents. He planted the seeds of the Indian Communist Movement demarcation from revisionism by formulating path of New Democratic Revolution. Whatever serious errors or dogmatic thinking,Charu Mazumdar formulated a path of agrarian revolution based on teachings of the Chinese Revolution. He stitched the base for re-building an All-India Revolutionary Party by delivering a striking blow to revisionism and parliamentary dogmatism. Naxalbari and Charu Mazumdar are inseparable.
A memorial meeting, remembering Com DV and TN was held in Khammam town of Telangana State on July27, 2022.
Hundreds of people who are fighting for and supporting agrarian revolution attended, including a big number of adivasi and poor peasants, and large number of women. The meeting held in the peak of rainy season went on from10.30 am to 5pm (with 30-minute lunch-break), speakers explaining the revolutionary politics, current politics and ongoing struggles. Far left are adivasi and poor pesant leaders, Muttayya and veteran fighter Padiga Yerraiah (President of Grameena Pedala Sangham of rural poor). Far right is Dr. Jatin Kumar, OPDR leader from Telangana.
Currently struggles of adivasi and poor and landless peasants for podu (forest lands),who occupied and tilled thousands of acres and demanding pattas (legal rights) as per Forest Rights Act , 2006,are going on in various parts of Telangana.
Speakers asked if the newly-elected President Draupadi Murmu, born and projected by Modi-led BJP as adivasi herself will stand by the rural poor fighting for their land and democratic rights.
T.Nagi Reddy died 46 years ago on July28,1976, and DV Rao died on July12, 1984. Every year in July, meetings, small and big, are held across Telangana and Andhra Pradesh by UCCRI-ML remembering the revolutionary mass line they founded, and reviewing struggles along that line. The above is one such well-attended meeting (see photos below)
countercurrents.org has a rich archive on the lives and work of Comrades TN and DV: see at the end of the article for more.
An avoidable controversy has arisen recently due to the unfortunate comments of a politician of Punjab who called Shahid Bhagat Singh a terrorist. That this politician is linked closely to the Khalistani ideology explains his narrow worldview, and his comments regarding Bhagat Singh were quickly dismissed by most people. However to counter false propaganda based on such comments, it will be helpful to record some more details.
Bhagat Singh and his close colleagues made it amply clear time and again that they did not believe in indiscriminate violence and greatly valued human life. Bhagat Singh wrote very clearly, ‘non-violence as a policy indispensable for all mass movements’ while force is justifiable only ‘when resorted to as a matter of terrible necessity.’ During their trial Bhagat Singh and B.K.Dutt said in a joint statement,‘ We hold human life sacred beyond words.’ When asked to define ‘revolution’, they said equally clearly that it did not mean the cult of ‘bomb and pistol’. World level fraternity based on equality and justice was emphasized by Bhagat Singh.
Rosa Luxemburg (1871, Zamosc, Poland–1919, Berlin, Germany) is one of the most fascinating and imposing revolutionary figures in modern European history and, at the same time, one of the most discussed to date. Her friends and adversaries emphasize the penetrating acuity of her intelligence, her great willpower, her lively and impatient temperament, her strong combative nature, and her great moral rigour.
She was born in Poland in 1871, the year of the Paris Commune, the youngest of five children in a cultured and relatively wealthy Jewish family. Intelligent and brilliant in her studies, independent and rebellious in spirit, she was involved in socialist political activity from her early youth. When she was a little girl, as a typical cultured Central European, she spoke three languages: Russian, Polish, and German. She became an activist in the Proletariat Party, founded in 1882 (almost two decades before the founding of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks), in which she organised and led striking workers. In 1886, four of its leaders were executed, while others were locked up and exiled.
The 18th of June marked the 140th birth anniversary of the great Bulgarian communist, leader of the Communist International from 1935 to 1943, Georgi Dimitrov. As a tribute to his memory we publish his famous defense speech during the Reichstag fire trial in Leipzig, when he refused counsel and proudly defended himself against his Nazi accusers.
Dimitrov: By virtue of Article 258 of the Criminal Procedure Code I am entitled to speak both as defender and as accused.
President: You have the right to the last word and you can make use of that right now.
Dimitrov: By virtue of the Criminal Procedure Code I have the right to argue with the prosecution and then to deliver my final speech.
My Lords Judges, Gentlemen for the Prosecution and the Defence. At the very beginning of this trial three months ago as an accused man I addressed a letter to the President of the Court. I wrote that I regretted that my attitude in Court should lead to collisions with the judges, but I categorically refuted the suggestion which was made against me that I had misused my right to put questions and my right to make statements in order to serve propagandist ends. Because I was wrongly accused before this Court I naturally used all the means at my disposal to defend myself against false charges.
‘I acknowledge, I wrote, that several of my questions had not been as apposite from the point of view of time and formulation as I could have wished. May I explain this by referring to the fact that I am not acquainted with German law and further that this is the first time in my life in which I have played a part in judicial proceedings of this character. If I had enjoyed the services of a lawyer of my own choice I should doubtless have known how to avoid these misunderstandings so harmful to my own defence.
Two giants who share a birth date and common ideals. Two men who both, in different times, dignified our country’s past to illuminate our present and future. Two heroes of the Revolution who are June children, Antonio Maceo Granjales and Ernesto “Che” Guevara de la Serna
Distances matter little – in time and kilometers – if two names remain eternal in the memory of a country, fused as the same reference of integrity and courage. Two giants that history has twinned beyond a shared birth date and common ideals. Two men who both, in different times, dignified our country’s past to illuminate our present and future. Two heroes of the Revolution who are June children, Antonio Maceo Granjales and Ernesto “Che” Guevara de la Serna. In Santiago de Cuba the first was born. It was 1845 when the Maceo family baptized the boy who would become a renowned Mambí leader in Cuba’s wars of independence.
Born in Muzaffarnagar, in British India, Aijaz read extensively from an early age and allowed his mind to drift out of the qasba of his childhood. His father shared some radical books with him, which helped him to understand the world outside the doab region of the Indo-Gangetic Plain and the world beyond the confines of the capitalist system. From an early age, Aijaz Ahmad began to dream of internationalism and socialism. He studied in Lahore, Pakistan, where his family had migrated after the Partition in 1947-48, but these studies took place as much in the college classrooms as they did in the cafés and in the cells of political organizations. In the cafés, Aijaz met the finest minds of Urdu literature, who schooled him in both lyric and politics; in the cells of the political parties, he encountered the depth of Marxism, a boundless view of the world that gripped him for the rest of his life. Fully immersed in the left political unrest in Pakistan, Aijaz came to the attention of the authorities, which is why he skipped the country for New York City (United States).
The example and ideology of Hugo Chávez is always present, the Venezuelan patriot “in whose mind the ideas of Bolívar naturally germinated”. | Photo: Twitter @AsambleaCuba
The world remembers the anti-imperialist legacy of Comandante Chavez and his struggle for Latin American integration.
Heads of State, foreign ministers and popular leaders from all over the world remember this Saturday the historical legacy of the leader of the Bolivarian Revolution of Venezuela, Commander Hugo Chávez, in commemoration of the ninth anniversary of his physical disappearance.
Kamla Bhasin (1946–September 25, 2021). Photos: Taken from her Facebook page
Born in 1946 in Shahidanwali village in Punjab (now in Pakistan), Kamla Bhasin grew up in Rajasthan. After completing her post-graduation from Rajasthan University, she studied sociology in Germany and on her return in 1972 joined the Udaipur-based voluntary organisation Seva Mandir, which worked with the rural and urban poor – men and women – with the goal of “mobilising them for their own development”. From that point till September 25, 2021, when Kamla Bhasin, suffering from cancer, breathed her last, her life was a seamless journey of, in her own words, “being deeply engaged with issues related to gender, development, peace, identity politics, militarisation, human rights and democracy”; of exploring and articulating “connections between different issues and to promote synergies between different movements.” It was a journey during which the indefatigable feminist touched countless hearts. One of them was Kalpana Viswanath whose tribute to Kamla Bhasin looks back at three decades of association with her.
Journal of People 