[Reader-list] K.Satchidanandan's message to national Convention supporting , Chengara Land Struggle

[Anivar Aravind]

Forwarding KSatchidanandan's message to national Convention supporting
Chengara.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: *satchidanandan k*
Date: Sat, May 3, 2008 at 12:35 PM



*MESSAGE*



I believe that the land struggle at Chengara is more than a struggle for
land; it is a political struggle for identity and citizenship, and marks
a new phase  in the history of democratic struggles in Kerala.It is
different from many earlier struggles in that it is not being led by any
single  political party, but is a voluntary struggle entirely initiated
by the landless people quite a lot of whom are adivasis who have
suffered criminal neglect and marginalisation for several centuries.It
may seem strange that it in fact takes up a struggle that had been left
unfinished by the traditional Left in Kerala as the land reforms had not
done anything for the landless adivasi people or even the landless
peasants as they were given only residential land and not land for
pursuing agriculture which is their only source of livelihood in the
underidustrialised Kerala.The land reforms, in short ,did not resolve
the problem of the landless labourers, but only intervened in the
opposition between the landlords and the tenants.

The Chengara people's struggle assumes special significance at a time
when more and more peasants, dalits and adivasis are being robbed of
their land  and their traditional, life-giving  habitat and driven to
starvation and suicide as a result of the neo-Capitalist development
policies pursued by the State and its representatives in the various
states who create special economic zones for the cannibalistic
capitalists at the cost of the poor and the marginalised.We found this
reactionary policy raising  its ugly heads in Singur and Nandigram and
the consequent resistance put up by the affected local populations.Thus
this strggle also represents the quest for alternative modes of
development that are sustainable, free from environmental hazards and do
not impoverish and kill the  already half-dead people  of the localities
being turned into new industrial and commercial hubs.It is also a
continuation of the anti-colonial struggle since it was during the
colonial rule that the forests  were turned into private colonial
property thus alienating the adivasis from their own land and  robbing
them of their means of livelihood.

The struggle is also important as an attempt to organise the unorganised
landless people who had little bargaining power because of the very fact
of their being unorganised.Here is an attempt to redefine the concept of
the class struggle  on more realistic and historical foundations at the
time of aggressive globalisation and the anti-people neo-liberal
economic policies. It is an attempt to formulate new forms of popular
organisation and resistance   fit for the new age ,away from its
  institutionalised forms.Thus it also engages with Power in its new
manifestations and seeks to politicise day-to-day discourses so far held
to have been non-political  and inaugurates a series of micro-struggles
that seek to radically alter our systems of thinking  and  fighting and
of governance.It is precisely this newness of the struggle and its
non-traditional approach to the very idea of resistance  and the
collapsing of categories traditionally held to be contradictory , that
has created embarassment and neurosis in its opponents from the right
wing as well as the traditional left.

I wish the Convention all success and hope that the struggle will find
its fulfilment and revolutionise  our understanding of society and of
resistance.I also urge the Government to intervene positively and reopen
the dialogue with the people engaged in the struggle at Chengara, a
dialogue  that seems to have been closed even before it had begun.

In solidarity, K.Satchidanandan.