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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Dec. 11, 1997
issue of Workers World newspaper
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Foes of imperialism meet in India

Report from Calcutta

By Sara Flounders
Calcutta, India

In this city of 10 million, 2 million people are homeless. Utterly destitute. Whole families live on the sidewalks without even a shred of cloth or cardboard over their heads.

Starving and sick people are everywhere. Even the cows are skeletal. Some people, understandably, seem hopeless, defeated.

Yet there is more to Calcutta. This great city is also where India’s great political movements originate. Communism is the dominant political current among the overwhelming majority of people. There is a long history of labor militancy and mass strikes here.

So it should not be surprising that when news of United States war threats against Iraq arrived here in November, there was a swift anti-imperialist response. On Nov. 17, some 2,000 people protested in front of the U.S. Consulate. The protest coincided with rallies in some 15 U.S. cities the same day.

The Calcutta demonstration was called on a day’s notice by the All India Anti-Imperialist Forum. It took place at the conclu sion of a two-day anti-imperialist conference that drew well over a thousand dele gates from Asia, Europe and the Americas.

Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer, former judge of the Supreme Court of India, is president of the All India Anti-Imperialist Forum. He led the Nov. 17 protest and took a delegation into the U.S. Consulate to deliver a message calling for an immediate end of war preparations, complete withdrawal of the U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf and the immediate end of economic sanctions on Iraq.

The conference and the protest showed that there is growing opposition to Washington’s efforts at world dominance. The All India Anti-Imperialist Conference drew delegates from almost all India’s states as well as other countries.

International solidarity against the threats and demands of the imperialist countries was one theme. Delegates also focused on the need to confront the process of globalization of multinational corporations. The role of GATT, the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in imposing brutal austerity cuts and privatizing nationalized industries was targeted.

Among the delegates from India were people who have mobilized to defend the meager programs that provide food subsidies and the inadequate health and other social services. They made it clear that world capitalism’s austerity demands will meet great popular resistance.

The conference was held at a time when stock market crashes in eastern Asia heralded imminent attacks on the jobs and living standards of millions of workers.

Struggle can stop attacks

India has a long history of mass anti-imperialist struggles. The explosive movement against British colonialism 50 years ago brought millions of workers and poor peasants on the Indian subcontinent into active political life.

The All India Anti-Imperialist Forum is an effort to provide a more consistently revolutionary leadership to the deep current of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist sentiment that is a heritage of these past struggles. It is also an effort to link up with other anti-imperialist movements around the world.

The AIAIF was initiated two years ago at a massive conference and demonstration against global capital. This event in November 1995 drew over 100,000 activists and created a framework for continuing organizing.

Participants in the Nov. 16-17 conference saw in Calcutta a grim reminder of capitalism’s inability to solve the problems of grinding poverty that are the heritage of colonialism throughout the Third World. The coming round of cutbacks dictated by the banks would make conditions even worse.

A statement from the International Action Center based in New York and San Francisco expressed the solidarity of poor and working people from within the largest imperialist power. The IAC state ment denounced U.S. imperialist policies of militarism and war— yet expressed confidence that the response to economic crisis, cutbacks and war would be new revolutionary struggles.

The brutal process of global restructuring that is driving down the wages and conditions of workers in the imperialist countries will revive the conditions of struggle and create a new consciousness.

The writer attended the conference as a representative of the International Action Center.

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