Kavita Krishnan.

[In English at http://links.org.au/node/3863. Haga clic aquí para más artículos en español.]

Kavita Krishnan es una de las portavoces internacionales más conocidas del movimiento contra la violencia sexual en la India, que surgió después de una horrible violación en grupo de un estudiante en Nueva Delhi en 2012. Es secretaria general de la asociación Progresista Pan-India de Mujeres (AIPWA) y dirigente del Partido Comunista de India (Marxista-Leninista) Liberation, que obtuvo más de un millón de votos, pero no pudo ganar ningún escaño en las elecciones generales de la India. Peter Boyle la entrevista para la revista australiana sobre las consecuencias para la izquierda india de la victoria del partido nacionalista de derechas hindú Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), liderado por Narendra Modi.

Traducción para www.sinpermiso.info: Enrique García.

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Kavita Krishnan.

Peter Boyle interviews Kavita Krishnan

May 21, 2014 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal/Green Left Weekly -- Kavita Krishnan has become a well-known international spokesperson for the movement against sexual violence in India that grew after an horrific gang rape of a student in Delhi in 2012. She is also a national leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation, which won more than a million votes but failed to win any seats in the general election in India, which the right-wing Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by Narendra Modi, won by a landslide.

Krishnan will soon embark on a speaking tour of Australia. Details of her public meetings around Australia can be found here. She will also be one of several international guest speakers at the Socialist Alliance 10th national conference in Sydney, June 7-9 where she will present a keynote speech on “Capitalism, Misogyny and Sexual Violence”. You can find out more about this conference, and how to register, here.

The Supreme Court verdict that the colonial era Article 377 criminalising alternative sexualities is constitutional has resulted in mass protests by the LGBT community and by its supporters. December 15 was the global day of rage. This is the Kolkata protest. Photos courtesy of Kunal Chattopadhyay.

By Soma Marik

December 15, 2013 -- Radical Socialist -- In 1895, during the trial of Oscar Wilde, the German socialist Eduard Bernstein wrote a few articles in the German Social Democratic press on the issue. While confused by today’s standards, Bernstein made a few cogent points. On the view that same sex relations were unnatural, Bernstein commented:

For more discussion on feminism, click HERE. For more on India, click HERE.

By Kavita Krishnan

Kafila -- First published May 23, 2013, posted at the Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with the author's permission. The brutal gang rape of a woman in December 2012 triggered a mass movement against violence against women in India. The perpetrators were sentenced on September 13, 2013 -- Sexual violence cannot be attributed simply to some men behaving in "anti-social" or "inhuman" ways: it has everything to do with the way society is structured: i.e., the way in which our society organises production and accordingly structures social relationships. Once we understand this, we can also recognise that society can be structured differently, in ways that do not require – or benefit from – the subordination of women or of any section of society.

More than 20,000 villagers protest at the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant on September 9, 2012. Photos from Countercurrents. More photos below.

Neeraj Jain interviewed by B. Skanthakumar

October 5, 2012 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- The anti-nuclear peoples’ movement in India has been gathering momentum in recent years. The courageous struggle of women, men and children of Idinthakarai village in South India, who are resisting the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant, and are under siege by state security forces – with more than 56,000 of whom have been falsely charged, including 6000 for the offence of “sedition”, and 53 imprisoned – has highlighted the people’s movement against nuclear energy.

Wealth and poverty in India. Photo by DaveWilsonPhotography.

By Raju J. Das

April 11, 2012 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- The Bollywood movie The Dirty Picture (apparently) runs on three things: entertainment, entertainment and entertainment. The dirty picture of neoliberalism runs on three things, as well: class, class, and class. Indeed, neoliberalism must be seen as the restoration and reinforcement of class power (Harvey 2005), class power of large owners of business over the working masses.

This article makes a series of observations on the multiple aspects of neoliberalism in India as a class project. What is problematic about the “New Economic Policy” (NEP) is not this or that aspect of it (e.g. the idea that it causes an increase in the number of people below the official poverty line). The whole policy is the problem. So it requires a dialectical totalising critique, one that places its limited benefits in relation to its enormous costs, seen from multiple vantage points.

West Bengal's defeated chief minister, the CPI (M)'s Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, addresses a mass rally.

By Dipankar Bhattacharya, general secretary, Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation

[This article is the editorial in the forthcoming June 2011 issue of the CPI (ML) Liberation's journal Liberation. It is posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with permission.]

By Dipankar Bhattacharya, CPI (ML) Liberation general secretary

September 2010 -- Liberation -- Four fighting organisations of the left -– the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation [CPI (ML) Liberation], the Communist Party Marxist (Punjab) [CPM (Punjab)], Lal Nishan Party (Leninist) [LNP (L)] of Maharashtra and the Left Coordination Committee (Kerala) [LCC] -– formed the All India Left Coordination (AILC) at a joint convention held in New Delhi on August 11, 2010.

By Dipankar Bhattacharya

February 2010 -- Jyoti Basu, arguably the most familiar face of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) -- CPI (M) -- in India and the last surviving member of the party’s founding polit bureau, passed away in Kolkata on January 17. In the course of his marathon political journey spanning nearly seven decades, he served for an unprecedented 23 consecutive years as the chief minister of the Indian state of West Bengal. Basu is also famously remembered as the only left leader who had been offered the prime ministership of the country, in 1996, an offer that was declined by his party even as Basu openly differed with the CPI (M), calling its decision an "historic blunder".

Basu stepped down from power in November 2000 when his health started failing, a graceful act which never really received the popular recognition it deserved. Yet, even as he relinquished his official responsibility as chief minister, he did not "retired" from his role as a leader of his party. “Communists never retire”, was his famous statement and he really lived it.

By the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation

September 27, 2009 -- The following appeared as the editorial in the July 2009 issue of Liberation, the central organ of Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) – CPI (ML). Since then, while the paramilitary campaign in Lalgarh has ended, repression against the adivasi (tribal) people of Lalgarh continues, with incidents of rape and violence reported. It must be remembered that the People’s Committee against Police Atrocities (PCPA) began in Lalgarh after adivasi women were sexually assaulted by police during an anti-Maoist raid; one woman was blinded. The state government of West Bengal [formed by the pro-business Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front] initiated an enquiry that established the assaults had taken place – but only offered some monetary ``compensation’’ to some of the victims, refusing to meet their demand of punishment for, and a public apology by, the police authorities concerned.

By Dipankar Bhattacharya, general secretary, Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation

May 24, 2009 -- The results of 2009 elections for the Lok Sabha elections (India’s lower house of parliament) can be described as a string of surprises, not only for many well-entrenched parties and seasoned politicians but also for a host of commonsense notions about contemporary Indian political reality. Of late, it has become customary to look at elections in India through the prism of coalition politics, caste equations and regional diversities. Verdict 2009 has given a serious jolt to this facile view and reasserted the underlying structural dynamics of Indian politics.

By the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation

[CPI (ML) Liberation representative Kavita Krishnan will be a featured guest at the World at a Crossroads conference, to be held in Sydney, Australia, on April 10-12, 2009, organised by the Democratic Socialist Perspective, Resistance and Green Left Weekly. Visit http://www.worldATACrossroads.org for full agenda and to book your tickets.]

March 17, 2009 -- On the eve of the Lok Sabha (national lower house of parliament) polls, which will be held in five phases between April 16 and May 13, the launch of a ``Third Front'' spearheaded by the efforts of the Communist Party of India (CPI) and CPI (M) (the Communist Party of India-Marxist) has been announced. The front, it is claimed, is a non-Congress party, non-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) front committed to ``alternate policies''.

By Vidyadhar Date

The competitive frenzy for winning in sports has been fuelled by aggressive marketing. Together they ensure that while a minority is trained with superlative sports facilities, the majority is deprived of even basic amenities to play and breathe fresh air. In India, market forces have pampered cricket while harming all other games in the process.

India won just three medals at the recent Beijing Olympics, though it did better than in the past. This is seen as a breakthrough by our ruling class,  which now wants the nation to gear up for further success at the London Olympics in 2012.

By Satya Sivaraman

Nandigram and Beyond, edited by Gautam Ray,
Gangchil Publications, Kolkata, 2008, pp 224, Rs395.

In recent times there has been no greater rupture within the Indian left movement than that precipitated by peasant struggles in Singur and Nandigram against forced acquisition of land for industrial purposes. The spectacle of West Bengal’s Left Front regime, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) --(CPI (M) -- sending police and party cadre to gun down poor peasants fighting to protect their land not only earned it the wrath of ordinary Indian citizens everywhere but also left large sections among its own supporters deeply divided.

By Kavita Krishnan

June 11, 2008 -- The Indian ruling class is striving to forge what it calls a ``strategic partnership’’ with the United States, and in this aim the major ruling-class political parties are united. The previous government -- a coalition termed the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) headed by the Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) -- which was in power from 1999-2004, had in the wake of 9/11 strived to prove to the US rulers that India was a more stable and suitable ally on the subcontinent for the US ``war on terror’’ than Pakistan.