Year of terror

By MANEK GANDHI

E have now had one year’s rule of the Congress regime in India, headed by Premier Jawaharlal

Nehru.

And it has brought upon the trade unions, peasant movement and Communist party
repression surpassing anything known previously of left wing organizations in India.

Provincial gov-

ernments have armed themselves with more dictatorial powers—called Public Safety Acts—than were

used even by previous regimes
to suppress the upsurge of the
national movement,

Ministers and their police can
now arrest and detain without
charge or trial, as in the Bom-
bay Act, “any person likely to
act in a manner prejudicial to
‘public safety.”

A recent amendment in West
Bengal prolongs the period of
detention from three ito nine

months without reference to a
judge.

In the Central Provinces,
habeas corpus has been sus-

pendea.

Since August 15, 1947, the date
of the “transfer of power,” many
hundreds of active trade union-
ists peasant organizers, student
leaders and Communists have
been thrown into prison under
these measures. ;

These include such. well-known
figures as S. A. Dange, president
of the All-India Trade Union
‘Congress, and S. S. Mirajkar, its
"vice-president and scores of mem-

bers of its general council.

At least three prominent work-
ers’ leaders, such as R. D.
Bharadwaj, have actually died in
Prison after bad treatment.

The worst case was that of
‘Communist leader Moyarath San-
‘karan Nambiar who was. tor-
tured to death by the Madras
Special Police in Malabar, South
India. ,

One group of Communists ar-
rested in Malabar had a part of
their heads shaved in prison.
This was done, they were told,
as it represented “the road to
Moscow.”

6
,
Police opening fire on workers

on strike is now a common oc-
currence,

In Bombay this July police
fired on a demonstration of mu-
- nicipal women sweepers, killing
ne old woman aged 70 and in-

juring seriously a young girl of
13. 4

In Calcutta in August they
fired on Port Trust peons, in-
juring 55, four seriously.

At least one dozen such ex-
amples could be cited in the nine
months since December, 1947.
‘There have been many more
police shootings involving peas-
ants and students.

It is not surprising that pro-
vincial governments have accom-
panied all this with the most
vicious anti-labor legislation.

For example, there oe the
Bombay Industrial Relations
Act.

This act

(a) takes away the right to
strike and imposes com-
pulsory arbitration in dis-
putes.

(b

~

Prohibits protest strikes
against unsatisfactory
awards of arbitration.

~(c) Accords special privileges
to any union, however
small and unrepresenta-
tive, which accepts com-
pulsory arbitration by
embodying it in its con-
stitution; while any union,
however big and repre-
sentative, which does not
do so is denied these
privileges.

And a new amendment in
the act now provides

(a) that any strike launched
against the actions and
policies of the govern-
ment will be illegal.

(b) That any union which
has led or supported such
a strike will have its
registration cancelled or,
if new, cannot be regis-
tered.

Such legislation, with modifi-
cations, exists throughout India
today.

in addition, In many parts
the records kept in trade union

offices have been confiscated. All
this, of course, is intended to
forward the Congress govern-
ment-sponsored labor organiza-
tion, the Indian National Trade
Union Congress.

The edge of ‘this attack against
the working class and peasant
movements is, of course, directed
against the Communist party,
whose members figure prominent-
ly in the list of those imprisoned
without trial.

“The Communist party was de-
clared illegal in West Bengal in
March last year. This was soon
followed by a ban on the party
in Indore State also. After the
entry of Indian troops it was
likewise banned in Hyderabad,
when the Communist party was
leading the famous struggle of
the /Telengana peasants against
feudal oppression,

In other provinces, the Com-
munist party is under actual, if
not legal, ban. .

The Communist press, with the
exception of the Bombay weekly,
People’s Age, has ‘been suppress-
ed. - This includes four daily
newspapers and many weeklies,
with a circulation of over 400,000
copies. ‘ :

As in India there was no other
press which was non-capitalist,
that is a big blow to the work-
ers’ and peasants’ movements.

: All these actions are admin-
istratively the responsibility of
the Congress provincial govern-
ments but on more than one
occasion they have been defend-
ed and upheld in the New Delhi

Assembly by Premier Nehru him- .

silf and Home Minister Sardar
Patel, who has always bitterly
opposed the left wing. -

Thus they are without doubt
a part of the general anti-demo-
cratic policy of the Indian Union
government itself.

‘

@ Manek Gandhi is’ the acting
Secretary of the All-India
Trade Union Congress.

EN PERE SRR NEY

OST-WAR fascism in Britain

—LONDON

has passed into a new phase: from

propaganda to action; from foul-mouthed abuse to open violence.

“the clubs, the broken bottles, the
again appearing; plus an effective
bottle of petrol and a lighted fire-
work. No longer are the Mosleyite
thugs cautious and on the defen-
sive. The fascists are beginning
to attack.

Why, after all, should fascists
be cautious, when a delegate to

. the last Conservative Party Con-

ference could get approving
cheers for a remark like this:
“That group of national traitors,
that hierarchy of senii-alien mon-
grels hermaphrodite communists
that have the impudence to call
themselves what they are not—a
British government.”

Towards the end of October, a
peace conference, sponsored by
local trade unions, was held in
the town hall at Stoke Newing-
ton, a suburb in the northeast of
London. Labor MP’s and a high
church dignitary were among the

* speakers. The fascists chose this
_ meeting for their first large-scale

demonstration.

Tickets were forged to enable
a gang of the thugs to get into’
the hall. Then, as the meeting was
beginning a gang of about a hun-
dred, screaming slogans — ‘We
want Mosley! Down with the
Yids!”—attempted to force an

entry. Bricks, bottles, knuckle-
dusters and belt-buckles were
used freely; two anti-fascists

were injured and sent to hospital.
The stewards and the audience,
however, beat back the attack and
drove the thugs out into the road
again. Fascists in the audience
found it more discreet to keep
silent.

After the battle was over, the
police arrived, and made a few
tardy arrests. The thugs were
permitted to spend the rest of
the evening parading up and
down outside the town hall, yell-
ing their provocative and anti-
Semitic slogans.

—SIDNEY
REMEMBER the rapture of
the war years. “Fuzzy

Wuzzy Angels” carrying the
. Allied wounded back from the.

Kodoka Track—tnrough the
stinking jungles of New
Guinea.

But the war is over and now
the native has retreated to the
position of being a “black
Boong” in the eyes of too many
European residents of the ter-

* ritory.

The ‘heroism and_ sacrifice
that paralleled that of the Al-
lied soldiers in every theatre of
war is forgotten. Business
must go on. The business of
extracting profits from copra,
rubber, trochus and pear! shell

the tropics, through the me-
dium of cheap “Boong” labor.

The biggest complaint is the
cost of rations for this cheap

aimed at the native, not at the
ig firms who determine the
cost of living in the territory.

The problems of Papua-New
Guinea are many and varied,
but they all lead to one end—
the complete independence o
the Papuan people. {

At present they are beset
with many ills. The protection
of their land against the needs
of a land-hungry administra-
tion, the demands of the grow-
ing European population for

‘land on which to build, land
for the growing enterprises of
big business.

' Equal to the land problem is
the general attitude of too
many European residents of
Papua to the native people—
one of resentment of their
presence except as a source of
cheap labor.

Forgotten

and all the other products of .

labor and even this grizzle is,

knuckle dusters and the bricks are

new weapon: the combination of a

Two fascists were arrested, one
of whom had an empty bottle and
an imitation revolver in his pos-
session. Both men were discharg-
ed on payment of £1 ($4) costs.
(Ex-soldiers handing out antitwar
leaflets at territorial meetings
have been fined ten times as
much.)

The courtesy the police extend
towards Hitler’s British disciples
has been in evidence on many oc-
casions.

At Lincoln’s Inn Fields, famous
Central London meeting place,
both Tory and Labor speakers
(who have been holding regular
meetings there for years) were
forced by the police to stand down
in favor of a fascist recently.

I know of at least one famous
London hall (owned, incidentally,
by a religious body) where the
neo-fascist ‘union
holds regular weekly meetings.

e s

British fascists have extensive
international contacts. Mosley’s
propaganda has been distributed
widely in Western Germany.

The international situation and
the policies adopted by the West-
ern powers have been very heart-
ening to British fascists.

Mosley wasted no time in issu-
ing a statement which backed the
“United Europe’ Western mili-
tary bloc advocated by Churchill,
Bevin and their opposites in
Europe.

Today, in fact, Mosley proudly
claims to have been the origin-
ator of the Western Union idea.
He told me this himself—a point-
ed commentary on the policies
now being pursued alike by right-
wing Laborites and out-and-out
Tories.

One of the largest stores in
Moresby, for instance, refuses
to serve them, unless they are
shopping for the big Taubada
(white man) or Sinabada
(white woman), This store has
even refused dress materials to
sell white people who wanted
to give them to the natives.
What would the Sinabadas say
if they saw a native woman as
well dressed as themselves?

That is just a small sample
of discrimination in Papua ‘to-
day.

@

The civil administration has
many good plans for the future
of the native peoples, but un-
fortunately, they remain [plans
and apparently more plans are
to be made.

What of the
Hanuabada, the village the
Australian forces destroyed?
It is true there is a plan. A
year has been spent talking’
about this plan but not a sod
dug, not a nail driven.

In the meantime Hanuabada
is referred to as the slum of
Port Moresby and rightly so.
Shacks of galvanized iron
crowded one on top of the oth-
er, disease and sickness ram-
pant with a mortality rate that
is mounting—and still the na-
tive people get plans. :

Each ship brings supplies
for works and housing but
nothing for Hanuabada.

rebuilding of

The Australian labor move-
ment has a big responsibility to
the people of Papua.

Among other steps, what is
needed now is the complete
abolition of the indenture sys-
tem and of the 9 p.m. curfew
with all its degrading implica-
tions, greater native coopera-
tive enterprise, together with
increased wages and controlled

movement’

prices,

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JANUARY 7, 1949 — PAGE 4

—_