The Gypsy Goddess (9 page)

Normally, when the labourers went on strike, they went hungry. When hunger got the better of them, they went to
the landlords to work out a deal. Sometimes, as it happens now, the labourers are bound by their collective decision not to work, and the landlords are bound by their collective decision not to employ. At first, the landlords hurl abuse. They make do with imported labour, bringing in men and women from the famine-hit areas of Ramnad. But the peasant struggle spreads like an infection, it catches the landlords unawares, takes them on from unsuspecting quarters. The threat of a protracted fight brings the landlords to the negotiation table. The proletariat is united and powerful and radiantly angry, but the landlords gain strength from the guns they carry. The landlords know that the comrades know that at least six men would have to die before they are close enough to attack a gun-wielding
mirasdar
. Fear of facing the bullets prevents a spontaneous blood bath. So protests take democratic forms: hunger strikes, hartals and road-blocking
rokos
, demonstrations and processions.

The protests also take dramatic forms. Now a landlord has finished off their charismatic leader and the people do not know what became of his body. This time they have not been given jobs, and outside labour has been employed. This time a landlord cheats them out of their rightful wages. This time a landlord has instructed the shopkeepers not to sell anything to the people of the
cheri
. This time, in
protest, they plan a funeral for the landlord. They prepare his pyre, they lament his effigy corpse on its final farewell. The women beat their breasts and break their bangles. They sing the dirges of disgust, they mourn a monster, who, being alive, understands what awaits him after death. They curse, and it is written in their blood that their curses will come true. They call upon death to visit him at the earliest and, sometimes, the Buffalo Rider keeps his appointment. When women take to protest, there is no looking back.

5.
Marxist Party Pamphlet

Dear Comrades, Brothers and Sisters,

R
ED
S
ALUTE
!

Harvest is the season where patriotic myths come to die. It is the season when pacts are flouted, working people are hounded and Communist cadres are killed by the landlords. The murder of our comrade, S
IKKAL
P
AKKIRISAMY
, in broad daylight on 15th November 1968, is not an isolated incident that should spark anger and tension only in Nagapattinam.

On the contrary, it concerns everyone.

One must be reminded that the landlords had him killed on the day of agricultural strike in East Tanjore, during the public procession, in order to spread terror among the peasants and labourers.

When people in the big cities read such news, they easily dismiss it and do not even question why these murders take place.

Comrade Gramsci, one of the greatest Communist
intellectuals, wrote about the emotional paralysis of our society: ‘As a collective they are not disturbed by the painful spectacles that are presented to them. As a collective they don't faint when the still-breathing corpse of a murdered child is thrown at their feet. The commotion that every individual has felt, the heartache, the sympathy that every individual has felt, has not scratched the granite-like compactness of the class.'

These words were never more true.

There are a few people who, on an individual level, agree that the agricultural labourers live under dire circumstances, that they do not own a foothold of land, that they are mired in debt, that they lose their young children to starvation and their elderly to disease because of a lack of sufficient food and medicine. When these people hear about the plight of the coolies, they cluck with sympathy, but do they dream of change? Why do they react with complacency when they come across news of the broad-daylight murder of a comrade who worked all his life for the poorest of the poor? Do they not realize that it is their duty to stand in support of these oppressed workers? Do they not realize that a strike is not an act of disobedience alone, but an act of resistance? Even if they realize, they will merely stay silent and go about their own work. Why? They are held back by fear, they are held back by selfishness. But, one day, they will pay the price of their silence.
The tragedy around us will affect them too, and, one day, they will understand the importance of supporting the proletarian struggle. That day they will stop believing the false propaganda of the ruling classes. That day, they will know the true people's history. It is not a history that is available in the police records or the newspapers. It is not a history that textbooks will teach, or a history that will catch the attention of petty bourgeoisie writers. But it is a history that we must learn, a history that will set us free, a history that we can harvest.

Communism teaches the people and opens their eyes, gives them the strength to defend themselves, makes them realize their own power, tells them the importance of devoting time for the cause of revolution. Today, we are able to hold meetings, print posters, gather for rallies and hoist our red flag with pride because of the sustained and single-minded devotion with which our comrades have built the cadre base of the party among the proletariat.

It was almost impossible in the beginning. To meet people in the dead of night, to disperse well before daybreak, to talk to them about their troubles, to tell them the history of revolutionary struggles. The British banned all meetings of the peasant unions under the Defence of India Act. That did not deter us. In those early days, we trained the people to think fearlessly. We gave them courage in the face of danger and our leaders taught them
the martial art of
silambattam
, so that they could defend themselves. Alas! Even the sounds of the clashing sticks would arouse suspicion and the landlords would launch yet another inquisition to check if communism had made any inroads into their territory. Death was often the prize if a Communist was discovered by a landlord, and public disgrace if he was discovered by the police.

Those were the days when the party's secret meetings were held in cremation grounds. We used to get away with it because the informers dismissed the light of our torches as the fire-breathing tongue of the
kollivaai pisaasu
. But we managed to take the message of Marxism to the masses. How else would this world have come to know about the rapes and murders of agricultural workers that take place behind the fifteen-foot-high compound walls of landlords? The same landlords who massacre a whole village and walk away with honours? Who else fought against the system of feudal slavery, where husbands were asked to whip their wives if they slacked at work, or spoke back to their masters?

The Kalappal Agreement was the first landmark victory in our struggle. As the working people rallied around the Communists, the landlords were forced to strike a compromise. This deal fixed the daily wage at two measures of paddy and opened the door to an increase in the harvest wages. Today, this agreement is famous because it was the
first to put an end to the cruel practice of whipping and the forceful feeding of
saanippaal
to labourers as punishment. The agricultural labourers were represented by our comrades Amirthalingam, Rajagopal and Kuppusamy, the legendary Kalappal Kuppu.

The second major agreement that came about because of Communist intervention was the Mannargudi Agreement, made between striking agricultural workers and their landlords. Signed in the presence of Tanjore district collector, Ismail Khan – a very good man as our comrades say – the deal guaranteed that the daily wage would be raised to three measures and that the labourers were entitled to a one-seventh share of the harvest. It also made it mandatory for landlords to use standardized measures to pay the labourers and provide a receipt to the local authorities giving details of the total harvest.

Who worked hard, who fought to stop the old convention of making the agricultural labourers work from sunrise to sunset, and instead fixed a day as six in the morning to six in the evening? It was the Communist Party that first succeeded in securing a holiday for the agricultural labourers. The six-day work week might be famous on government calendars, but the poor peasants were not entitled to any such break. When the early Communists campaigned for a day's break, they had to go on strike. Finally, every
amavasai
day was made a holiday because
we demanded that the labourers should at least have the right to remember their dead ancestors.

The Mannargudi Agreement was signed on 25th December 1944, but nearly a quarter-century later, what have we achieved? Though we have a rich history and a long connection to communism, with the Madras Labour Union being the oldest in India, we have not been able to make significant advancement. We still continue to sign agreements with the landlords. We still have not achieved our dream of land redistribution.

In Tanjore district, the area known as the granary of South India, Vadapathimangalam Thiagaraja Mudaliar owns 15,000 acres of land; Kunniyur Subramania Iyer and Sambasiva Iyer own 5,000 acres each; Rao Bahadur Subburathna Mudaliar owns 2,500 acres; K G Estates owns 4,000 acres, K T V Estates owns 3,000 acres and K C Desikar owns 15,000 acres. This is not a Communist Party statistic; it is extracted from a report prepared by the World Bank, that crony of the imperialist powers. It is evident to everybody that land in Tanjore is monopolized by a few individuals. The working people have no lands; those who till the soil have no rights. Peasants are being treated worse than slaves. To talk of land distribution here is to talk of the gross inequality that sustains the feudal structure. To put it in simple numbers, 60 per cent of the land lies with 5 per cent of the people at the top; at the bottom, 60 per cent
of the people own only 5 per cent of the land. And below this are the wretched of the earth: the landless agricultural labourers of Tanjore, who own nothing, not even the land on which their tiny, mud-walled hut stands, not even metal vessels, not even a change of clothing. And it is the rights of these have-nots, these proletarians, that the Paddy Producers Association seeks to crush. Though their powers have been eroded by years of our unrelenting struggle, they enjoy immunity because of their political connections.

When the agricultural labourers protested against the utilization of tractors in East Tanjore, the state provided security to the landlords by drafting in its police force. But, comrades, one day sooner or later, the words of our great leader Marx will come true, and, as he said, the working people will direct their attacks not against the bourgeois conditions of production, but against the instruments of production themselves. They will destroy imported wares that compete with their labour, they will smash to pieces machinery, they will set factories ablaze, they will seek to restore by force the vanished status of the workman.

The landlords have learnt how to quell our protests. They appoint a police force of fifty men and a rowdy force of fifty men to protect every tractor. What can be done in such a situation?

A year ago, we launched a poster campaign so that people would stay brave and have the courage to tackle
the police. We did not want our women to shudder at the sight of a uniform. We designed a poster to directly attack them: ‘Police Dogs! Cause Trouble and You Will Pay Double!' These posters appeared all over the district: Mannargudi, Thiruthuraipoondi, Vedaranyam, Nagapattinam, Mayawaram, Kumbakonam, Sirkazhi. The police, in a shock over such an open attack, alleged in their special reports that these posters were dropped from the Soviet Union with the help of a silent aeroplane. This is an indication of the extent of their imagination. The ruling classes are aware of the benefits of propaganda to ensure that the people are estranged from the Communist parties.

As a result of such propaganda, people are unable to distinguish truth from falsehood. They believe these cock-and-bull stories of the government; they believe that trade unions and strike action of the labourers causes all the problems; they are unaware of the scores of young children who are dying from hunger every day. The middle class, just like the ruling class, conveniently believes that those who die are the surplus people, the ones who took up space, the nation's disgrace. Does the middle class have enough conscience to feel rattled when, every time the monsoon fails, the parched lands grow soup kitchens?

We take this opportunity to remind the chief minister that the previous Indian National Congress government was kicked out of power because of famine and starvation.

The proletariat will never forgive a tyrant who forces them to bury their children. You are in power only because your party's election manifesto promised one measure of rice for one rupee.

In fact, this Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) government has overseen the most difficult year of the last decade. Every time a mill has shut up shop, workers have been forced to flee to other states in search of employment. Workers are striking in rubber plantations, paper mills, rice mills, sugar mills, textile mills. To date, twenty-seven cotton mills have been closed, rendering 20,000 weavers jobless and bringing their families to absolute penury. Teaching and non-teaching staff have not been paid for months in several colleges across the state. Schoolchildren are forced to go without midday meals in several districts. There is not a single class of people that has not been affected by the mishandling and incompetence of the present government. In all the cities, there is water shortage. Cholera and malaria are touching alarming levels.

The bitter truth is, we have an undeclared famine. In the southern districts, rationing is hitting the poor, who are getting less and less from the public distribution system. People who were entitled to 1,200 grams of food grain per week are now being allowed only a maximum of 800 grams. This is a one-third cut in consumption that the government has gifted to the people. Being the wonder that is India,
we also hear reports of fire destroying food-grain storage
godowns
. Only a fool will fail to see the hand of money-hungry landlords behind these acts of arson.