Comrade Presidium, esteemed guests, delegates and observers assembled at the 24th Congress of the Communist Party of India,

Warm revolutionary greetings to you all.

Thank you, Comrade D Raja, for inviting me to greet this inaugural session. It gives me great pleasure to wish your Congress every success on behalf of the Central Committee and entire membership of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist). I cherish my memories of having interacted with many stalwarts of your party including Comrades Chandra Rajeswara Rao, Indrajit Gupta, AB Bardhan, Jagannath Sarkar, Chaturanan Mishra and Bhogendra Jha. I pay my respectful tribute to all these departed stalwarts of the CPI and the great martyrs and leaders of the historic Telangana uprising and the subsequent waves of struggles in Srikakulam and other areas of undivided Andhra Pradesh.

Comrades, we are meeting at a time when the world finds itself drawn once again into the vortex of a major war even as global capitalism is mired in a deep and prolonged recession and the world is yet to recover from the massive disruption and disaster caused by the Covid19 global pandemic. It has been nearly eight months since Russia unilaterally invaded Ukraine, calling Ukraine's independence a flawed Leninist legacy that needs to be undone. This unjust war has already taken a heavy toll and must be brought to a quick end in a way which respects and guarantees Ukraine’s sovereignty. Amidst disturbing signs of a pronounced rightward shift in Europe, we draw inspiration from the renewed resurgence of the Left in Latin America and the powerful assertion of women in Iran that is growing into a popular uprising against the repressive theocratic regime.

Ever since Modi's second successive victory in the Lok Sabha elections we have been facing a rapidly escalating fascist offensive on all fronts. Proceeding from the 2014 election slogan of ‘Congress-mukt Bharat’ the regime is now bent on making India an opposition-free democracy. Opposition MLAs are being bought wholesale; opposition-led governments are being toppled in a series; opposition parties and leaders are being heckled by central agencies; and movement activists, fake news busting journalists and justice-seeking lawyers are being hounded out and jailed. Muslims are being demonized day in and day out and genocide calls are being issued more openly, frequently and loudly. Dalits are facing increased atrocities and exclusion, the latest example being the persecution of Delhi AAP leader Rajendra Pal Gautam for organizing a mass conversion to Buddhism on the occasion of Ashoka Vijayadashmi.

When JP Nadda boasts that the BJP is the only party that will survive in India, when Amit Shah tells us that the BJP is here to rule for the next fifty years, when Mohan Bhagwat insists that India is a Hindu Rashtra or Hindu nation, when Ajit Doval dubs the civil society the new frontier of war, they portray for us the India of their dreams. This dream of a communal fascist India was rejected by our freedom movement which went on to adopt a constitution and opt for a secular democratic republic. Today from the vantage position of state power the Sangh-BJP establishment is working overtime to subvert and overturn this constitutional vision of a sovereign socialist secular democratic republic to imprison India in its communal fascist framework.

The RSS has all along harboured this design since its inception in 1925, what makes it capable of inflicting its design on the country today is the power it enjoys through the Modi government and its ability to combine this state-power with the street-power of its vigilante squads. The increasing centralization of power in the hands of the Modi government is weakening India’s federal framework and democratic institutions and granting greater patronage and impunity to the vigilante squads of the Sangh brigade. The other source of power is the unprecedented concentration of wealth in the hands of India’s richest billionaires with the government increasingly being reduced to a dispensation of the super-rich, by the super-rich, for the super-rich.

We must rescue India from the ravages of this social, political and economic disaster and rebuild India on the basis of powerful and deep-going democratic foundations to realise the dreams of Bhagat Singh and Ambedkar, Phule and Periyar. We cannot but remember that the journey of the Hindutva forces and India’s communists began around the same time in the 1920s. Today, if the RSS has amassed the strength to inflict its design on the country, we Indian communists certainly have the responsibility to foil this design and lead India towards the fulfilment of the constitutional promise of liberty, equality, fraternity and justice. We understand that this is going to be a protracted battle akin to a second round of freedom movement and we communists need to unite all our strength, harness all our energy and summon all our courage to rise to the occasion.

During the freedom movement and for much of India’s post-Independence journey, the RSS had remained relegated to the margin. We communists must once again push them back to the fringe. We must draw on the entire spectrum of the radical legacy of India’s freedom movement – from the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal struggles to the rich tradition of anti-caste resistance and assertion of rationalism and India’s cultural diversity as well as the vast range of powerful struggles for radical social transformation and defence of democracy in the post-independence period. We must unite the people as extensively as we can in their everyday struggles and build powerful mass opposition to the growing corporate plunder and privatization of public assets and services. And building on the power of united mass struggles, we must forge a broad functional and dynamic unity of diverse opposition forces to isolate and defeat the fascists through a determined resistance. Once again, I wish the CPI Congress every success to this end and promise our fullest cooperation on behalf of the CPI(ML) to overcome the unprecedented challenges facing us today.

Long live the unity of all fighting forces!

All for a resurgence of the communist movement to defend democracy and defeat fascism!

Dipankar Bhattacharya
General Secretary, for Central Committee, CPI(ML) Liberation