{"id":5149,"date":"2012-11-20T20:00:04","date_gmt":"2012-11-20T19:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/socialism.in\/?p=5149"},"modified":"2012-11-21T04:40:51","modified_gmt":"2012-11-21T03:40:51","slug":"welcome-to-senacracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.socialism.in\/?p=5149","title":{"rendered":"Welcome to Senacracy!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Abraham Lincoln once said \u201cDemocracy is the Government of the people, by the people, for the people\u201d. But for the rich and the powerful, bourgeoisie democracy is merely another tool for oppressing the exploited classes. The same holds true for Indian democracy as well, where incidents after incidents have shown that the so called world’s largest democracy has been failing over and over again to even meet the basic rights as to lawfully protect its people from abuse by the state.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

For instance in September of this year, Aseem Trivedi<\/a> \u2013 a cartoonist, was famously arrested on charges of sedition by the Mumbai Police on mere pretext of caricaturing Indian democracy in his cartoons. The mockery of Indian democracy was there for all the world to see when the state was contradicting itself, on the one hand, by guaranteeing the so called constitutional Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Press, and on the other hand by arresting a person who has not committed any crime at all, even going by the (well masked) draconian standards of the Indian Penal Code<\/a> (IPC).<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>But probably the most ridiculous will be the recent incident involving two young girls (Shaheen Dhada and Renu Srinivasan<\/strong>) from Maharashtra arrested for voicing their opinion on the social networking site – Facebook<\/strong> against the complete shutdown of Mumbai following the death of Shiv Sena<\/a> supremo and the unrepentant fascist – Bal Thackeray<\/a>. Booked under IPC Section 295A (outraging religious feelings) and Section 66A, IT Act (offensive message through a communication device), they have been left terrified.<\/span><\/p>\n

The arrest has attracted wide spread condemnation on both, social networking and mainstream media. It is ironic that the girls were arrested for \u2018outraging religious sentiments\u2019 while posting about a man who once quoted \u201cMuslims are spreading like Cancer and should be operated on like a cancer\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

If there is one man who should have been behind bars long time ago time, it was Bal Thackeray. Not only was he responsible and indicted under a government appointed commission for the Mumbai riots that followed after the destruction of Babri Masjid<\/a> in 1992, but he was also responsible for a host of hate crimes against people of different cultures, backgrounds, religions, ethnicity, caste and class.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nurtured under various Congress government as a bulwark against the left and the working class, the Shiv Sainiks (or the Shiv Sena’s variety of SS like stormtroopers) under Bal Thackeray were primarily responsible for breaking Trade Union militancy that Mumbai was most famous for till the 80’s.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>A man who should have been treated no less than a criminal, is today being lauded and praised from the Prime Minister downwards to Bollywood celebrities. It probably reached the height of insanity with Maharashtra government conferring full state honours during his funeral, with a guard of honour and a 21 gun salute by the Mumbai police.<\/span><\/p>\n

Incidents such as these only demonstrate the real state of affairs in this so called world\u2019s largest democracy. Bal Thackeray for all his well documented crimes, was nurtured and protected with z level security by the state. The working people, on the other hand, are made to bare the brunt of not only the state’s brutal economic policies, but also face terror from bigots like the Thackeray’s, Togadia<\/a>‘s, Modi<\/a>‘s and host of such like-minded demagogues, who keep popping up from time to time just to keep the working people at bay.<\/span><\/p>\n

New Socialist Alternative<\/strong>\u00a0(CWI<\/a>-India) categorically opposes the arrest of the two girls and we demand that they be immediately cleared of all charges. We also completely oppose the sectarian demands, especially the lumpen, right wing culture of banning and removal of written texts or censuring the media. This intolerance as a growing trend smacks and stinks with fascistic thinking of the crisis ridden capitalist class and their system.\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Maddy<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Bangalore<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Abraham Lincoln once said \u201cDemocracy is the Government of the people, by the people, for the people\u201d. But for the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":5151,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pune"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.socialism.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.socialism.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.socialism.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialism.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialism.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5149"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialism.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5161,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialism.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5149\/revisions\/5161"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialism.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.socialism.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialism.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialism.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}